So i decided to give thunder hammer another go since we got a new variant and buffs to it in the past. However it really seems like to me Fatshark missed the mark here quite a bit.
The hammer now deals armor damage with its heavy and light attacks which boosted it up from “completely unusable” to “still a meme” category. But why does it simply not compete with any other melee weapon in the game? Well let me explain;
Mobility
Mobility is the most important thing in DT. If you have a melee weapon that allows you to move fast you can deal with literally any situation. The perfect example to this is Combat Knife, the reason why you can solo anything with this weapon is not because it deals ton of damage, its not even because of the bleed stacks, its because of mobility. Nothing can hit you as long as you keep spamming dodge and slide, not even gunners will be able to hit you.
Well now you might say “ok power sword is a low mobility weapon why is it so good?”. You are correct my friend, power sword is a low mobility wepaon BUT the reason why it is really really good is because of its mass killing power. It is also helpful to point out here power sword cannot deal with every situation due to the fact that it has low mobility, however it is still a way better balanced weapon compared to thunder hammer because you actually get something useful as a tradeoff.
But it has single target damage and horde clear does it not?
Well in theory? Yes. In practice? No.
The only real application to thunder hammers single target damage is mini-bosses. You can utilize your single target damage on mini-bosses just fine, however do keep in mind it can still get almost impossible to use against a mini-boss due to gunners or a horde, so it will still have consistency issues.
But can’t we kill elites within a horde easily since it has high single target damage and special now doesn’t get stuck on small enemies(for the most part)?
No, not really.
You see the only problem with thunder hammer was not the special getting stuck on small enemies. It was the most obvious problem but the second most obvious problem is what happens after you heavy charge attack an elite. You do not want to smack an elite that is inside a horde, because you will eseentially lock yourself into the attacking animation and die inside the horde.
Ok now lets talk about the horde clear part. We might say here “ok but this weapon can cleave through a horde like butter! it surely must be good at horde clear?”
Well, no. Its not.
Actually most weapons in the game clears a horde faster than thunder hammer. This is because Fatshark insisting on making 2h hammers not do any damage since V2. The hammer will push everything around, but it will stop doing full damage after the second or third enemy. So you will basicly end up pushing everything around and not killing barely anything. This simply makes everything worse. You never wanna push enemies around its not a good thing to do. You want to control the horde and avoid having the horde going random places. This has been a fundamental problem with hammers since V2.
“Look OP, ok we understand what you are saying but isn’t throwing enemies around good for our team? Don’t we wanna stagger stuff as a frontline?”
Well yes and no.
Yes staggering enemies is important but it is nowhere near as important as it was in V2. You see melee hordes are pretty much a non-issue in this game. Anyone running a high mobility weapon can clear them taking absolutely zero damage in damnation. In V2 stagger could be huge because kiting hordes was a lot harder and most elites could straight up oneshot you in Cata.
But what can be done about this weapon?
Well here are the few things thunder hammer really really needs.
1- Allow the special attack stagger animation after the attack to be canceled into anything. Let it be a followup attack or another special charge up or a wepaon swap. It is already a very sluggish attack and difficult to land it on what you actually want. There is no reason for it to literally pin you down after every attack.
2- Honestly simply remove the damage fall off on cleave. This weapon is already massively handicapping your mobility. There is no reason for you to take 10 years killing 10 poxwalkers.
2- Actually reduce the knockback. There is no reason for this weapon to launch a poxwalker to the other side of the room with every attack. Like i said this is not actually a good thing. Less pushing things around, more killing things.
3- A really weird thing i noticed with this weapon is, it does extremely low damage on assassination targets shields. I can take a shield out within 10 seconds with a combat axe on damnation but this weapon for some reason can’t do it in 10 minutes. Special attacks should do waay mroe damage to assassination targets shield i would say.
