I worry about the thunder hammer

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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So up front i want to say i enjoy using the thunder hammer, and balance wise it is slightly underwhelming but i think its not in that bad of a place balance wise. It really isnt as different from the eviscerator as many people probably see it.

However, i do feel it doesnt quite fit a role that the fandom will probably percieve it should fill and the 40k purists are going to be disapointed with it.

The thinder hammer in general in the lore is a shock and awe weapon, its supposed to cause a scene when you swing it. It is after all a softball thick light saber … yeah the thunder hammer doesnt actually “Thonk” things to death the explosion comes from the power field evaporating the matter that comes in contact with it, and because thunder hammers are bigger two handed weapons they enjoy a stronger power field than most smaller weapons in the power weapon category.

I think you should think of the thunder hammer as a tank role weapon it should cause more havok when it attacks even if it has to come down in damage some. it already has +3 stamina making it a great blocking weapon but the problem comes from animations that are not selling the thunder hammer (it bounces back on impact it should cut like butter). and the fact that it has little effect on a crowd of enemies. I understand that it is an amazing elite eraser, maybe a little too good at that specific role. I think however if you take it into a horde that has you surrounded on all sides you will see what i mean … i have no trouble killing the horde, but it takes forever and its about picking rare repostes or shots when you have an opening … because of the wierd animations your swing speed is even more slow than it appears and recovering to block afterwards is a slow process.

It might be better to tone down its single target damage slightly, have the animations finish thier swing instead of rebounding and either have it electrocute nearby targets stunning them for no damage or maybe a pulse or two like the psychers electric staff.

A slight address to the time it takes after any swing to return to block, it is a two handed weapon and a heavier one, but war mauls were never wielded that clumsy in real life and they weren’t also metal vaporizing light saber mauls.

I think having it “optimal for elites” is still a great place for it but i think its a little too specialized right now and fans of the series will probably reject the weapon in its current state.

Also an interesting side note, there is a far more common weapon similar to what you have in the game called ashock maul, which DOES NOT have a power field it is a combination mace and taser combo that the arbitas generally use with a combat shield that could be a great fit for the preacher giving them a shield (away to tank the deamonhost if theres no ogryn) and the ability to stun opponents with a faster one handed weapon group.

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Thunder hammer in the TT and in the lore (iirc) is our 'You see that armor right there? SCREW that once piece of armor." and "You see that one guy wrapped up in super armor? SCREW him in particular.

In Darktide, it’s moveset is exactly that of the 2h hammer of Vermintide, and it’s a fantastic general use weapon in that game. Until the stagger rework it was the ‘tanking’ weapon of choice because of how well it both CC’d and damaged hordes with it’s heavy while also having answers to armored enemies in it’s light. The downside was that it was slow, so the person using it had to know when to use the various attacks and the heavy had this sort of rhythm to it involving stepping back while charging and pushing forward and dragging the camera while swinging. Once it ‘clicked’ that weapon hard carried people and one of the most common ‘true solo’ weapons in VT1.

TBH what I think they got wrong is how little the overhead actually does to any type of armor. Someone actually got numbers for me to look at (and changed my stance on the damage) and the damage of the overhead hits, even including weak spot damage, is severely lacking. I like that the special charge cranks up the damage to armored targets to 11, but without doing that, it’s not worth trying to take down any armor because of how little it does without it.

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In my limited time with the hammer it felt like it was, as in the description, mainly a crowd control weapon with its heavies and elite killer with its special + heavy. Left click does next to nothing. problem is, there are plenty of weapons that not only control hordes but kill them at the same time and you can pop specials far faster and at a distance with other weapons. It really lacks a role it does better than any alternatives IMO.

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It doesn’t crowd control well at all or at least the version i have, its reposte is probably the most reliable cc its a 15-30 degree arc on your right, or after an attack charging the second strike does a wide sweep in front of you. however in all cases the hammer rebounds when charged completely nullifying these strikes sweeping motion and if you look carefully it only hits one target.

Crowd control would imply that it exerts some “control” over the crowd via stun, knock back or knock down which it doesnt do very much at all … it is very much a single target whackamole weapon if you look at all its animations as a total sum.

I think it would be much more sensible as a weapon if its quicks at least did 30 degrees right then 30 degrees left and its charged attacks did more of a 120 in front then an overhead critseeker type attack.

I think in general the "activation"of the power weapons are way to tedious and buggy many times i have charged the weapon and then not had an empowered attack … i also think they would be healthier from a gameplay enjoyment angle if thier default state was “empowered” and they each had a certain number of swings instead of timeframes before you had to juice them again.

I get that they are trying to simulate that we have the detritus and trash since we start as criminals, but i dont think a power weapon that only works 10% of the time IF you stay on top of activating it would be fielded at all …

Its not just my opinion … but in most groups me using a thunder hammer has been viewed as a handicap not an asset. Its fine to feel otherwise, but do keep in mind that thunder hammers have been shown in multiple media to be an explody, knockbacky, spectacle type weapon so it might rub those coming from non Fatshark games to a fatshark for the firt time the wrong way…

Additionally with the introduction of the Deamonhost and the internets complete inability not shoot first and process what you see second theres going to be a lot and i mean a LOT of deamonhost fights that need tanking in diff 3-4 and the game could use a second tank option for it either through this weapon being able to stagger it or a shock maul/mace and shield combo …

To say nothing of the probably 30% + times the daemon host has spawned in an impassable place and fighting it is mandatory, because stealth(Crouch) does not prevent its aggro.

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in my experience the heavy attacked cleaved through enemies just fine and knocked them down, just needed like 3 heavy hits for zombies to kill them. on dif 2. maybe i had a perk that improved its cleaving or something along the lines. found it very underwhelming and clumsy to use, if anything it might be good at killing monstrosities when i’m thinking about it a bit more with special + heavy attack. giving up anything else for a bit more monstrosity killing power, that can be acchieved differently, doesnt sound like a good deal to me. actually was a fan of hammer bardin in vt2 though it’s been a while since i’ve played so i was looking forward to the hammer and was kinda dissapointed how it was so much worse despite the visual and swing pattern analogy.

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If compared to the power sword, it’s obviously in a worse place. As mentioned above it’s really lacking in crowd control (against mixed groups).

Using heavy attacks

  • If you charge it, it will deadstop at the first enemy even if all enemies are unarmored horde type.
  • If you swing without a charge it does very little damage and will deadstop as soon as you hit heavy armor, and it’s slow enough to cause major inconvenience if you face horde with just a single heavy armor enemy.

I feel like it has similar issues as the single target attack on chain weapons. I love the feeling of it on armored enemies, but everytime you make a single target attack you’re locked down to sawing the enemy in question, which takes notisably more time when compared to regular swords. That is disregarding if you active the weapon special or not.

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From the little I’ve actually been able to stand using it, it’s felt awful. It’s so slow, damage feels lacking, and the charged hit just doesn’t do enough to be worth using. I was hoping it’d be more like the explosive sledgehammer in Killing Floor 2, using the alt attack to clear some breathing room, but it just kinda… sucks? Idk why I would ever use it over the 2h Chainsword.

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My main criticism of Thunder Hammer are:

  • weak cleave damage on heavy attacks
  • lack of (just too weak?) AOE stagger with charge attack (the lack of cleave on charge attack is fine IMO)

It’s a big weapon and should feel a bit slow and clunky, but the cleave damage is underwhelming.

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The damage cleave doesn’t need to be touched. 2H hammer has always functioned this way and functioned well, because in return you get extremely high stagger cleave, high stagger levels, and in VT2, the light attacks were strong against armour, and extremely strong against super armour (carapace armour being the DT equivalent).

Here are the key problems with the Thunder Hammer as I see it. Firstly, the light attacks have been heavily nerfed from VT2, now doing mediocre flak armour damage, and downright attrocious carapace armour damage. My knife does more headshot damage to a crusher than my 2h hammer overheads, it’s just silly. The terrible light attacks feed into the subsequent issues with the special attack, since it forces you to rely on them for single target damage.

So the special attack, it’s very cool, and its absurd damage against unyielding enemies is definitely a huge asset against bosses, bulwarks, and reapers. Being able to break bulwark’s block is also nice. Unfortunately, between the special attack being single target, and the significant time you are locked out of dodging and blocking after it lands, it rarely feels like you get the opportunity to make good use of it. Mostly you’ll be spamming heavies (pretty much all you’ll ever be doing since the light attacks have terrible single target dps) until the key target you want to hit has had enough space cleared around it to safely pull out the special, at which point someone else in your team has already killed it.

They handled the special attacks of the evicerator so well, I really just hope they apply the same logic to the thunder hammer specials. AKA the special heavy attack cleaves enemies with a slight damage bonus and when the cleave is stopped by an enemy it then applies the proper big thunder hit to that enemy. It would make sense for the damage of the big hit to scale down somewhat based on how many enemies it cleaved through before hitting the key target. The special light attack should also be brought much closer to the special heavy in damage, the difference between the two is too large currently and heavily discourages ever using the special light to pick key targets out of crowds (as does the awful cooldown afterwards but we’re getting to that).

Lastly yeah how long you can’t block or dodge after the attack connects is just egregious, it rarely feels safe outside of killing a single elite on its own. The time could probably afford to be cut in half but any reduction would be very welcome.

If those things were addressed I think it would genuinely feel wonderful to play with. If with those changes combined it ended up being too much of a buff, a cooldown timer on the lightning charge could be implemented to keep it in check effectively. I think the feeble light attacks are the highest priority to be addressed, but as a final side note I also don’t understand why they went back to a push attack with no cleave, something they rightfully changed later about the VT2 implementation. What purpose does the current push attack even serve? Let us use it as a quick get off me option, which matches much better with the animation anyway.

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The Darktide thunder hammer is crap. Easy fix: make the thunder attack be AoE with high stagger and little damage.

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Two things I would do:

  1. Make explosion AOE (not a big one, like 2-3 grunts every direction max) with main target taking 100% damage and rest around 60-70% damage
  2. Make ovehead light attack deal same amount of damage as charged side attack when doing special attack explosion. So you can actually HIT TARGET YOU WANT TO HIT instead of trash mob always getting in a way of hitting elites in hordes.
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I think you are overly comparing VT2 and DT.

Thunder Hammer shouldn’t cleave till charge proc because that would take away the skill needed to connect that powerful hit and you would be just swinging heavies even more then now, not to mention you wouldn’t have any penalty for charging that attack on every pure horde when you know nothing is going to proc.
If you are in a crowd with an elite, you can use the charged overhead light attack, and I agree that it might need a bit of a buff since it’s a single target overhead charge attack and should be more in line with the heavy, but the heavy should still deal more damage because it’s more difficult to pull off.
Let Evi be Evi, and leave Th. Hammer to be different. Why have the same mechanic on both?
You may be right about some minor tweaks to make the standard light overhead a bit stronger, but I still think it shouldn’t be a great weapon for both hordes and single-target without charge.

This same problem gets mitigated with a better cleave damage since you can clear the mob around the elite easier. That’s why I suggested it.
Also, better AOE stagger on charge proc, which I also suggested, mitigates the problem you described with being unsafe to use in the crowd, but faster recovery would also work, just less fun :smiley: