It’s this simple imo. Even if I would like some Rending changes across the board, if they don’t do that than I think just reducing how string rending is on the knife, like what they did for Hand Cannon, is fine.
Mk 6 is probably the best melee if you want to turn brain off. The only thing you have to learn is to push attack and switch to your ranged option to run and it’s the plasma gun of melee weapons.
Yeah I might have to go back to chainsword tbh.
Chainaxe was actually alot more fun than I thought. It’s great for plowing through the tougher enemies. It really sucks if there’s a dense horde though. Bizarrely doesn’t seem to cleave through multiple enemies… It kinda just ‘boops’ them 
Chainaxe is whack-a-mole basically lol.
Depends on what Chain Axe you are using, but fir the MK 6 the lights are songle target only, while the heavy attacks and oush attacks are for horse clear. If you get Slaughterer it can actually clear through hordes at a respectable rate, although I don’t usually run it with it.
Bruh ye even if u do get a crit and stab the ogryn in the eye, im sure it still shouldnt be one shotted, but i dont know sht.
Ah maybe that’s what I was doing wrong.
I hate using heavy attack in thick crowds though as it makes me feel so exposed/vulnerable.
Maybe I’ll practice in some lower difficulty smaller hordes
Cleave stops at 3, so it’s pretty terribad, even with full slaughterer / headtaker. It gets the job done, sort of, but it can’t do anything against superdense or huge hordes. Takes 20 minutes to kill them.
Is there somewhere in the game that actually shows the proper breakdown (limits, cooldowns, etc) of the various blessings?
Or anywhere outside of the game for that matter.
Lack of info is a blight on this game
Push attacks here are your friend. You can chain from push attack to heavy attack pretty fast. This makes it a bit harder to use it on vet because of the worse stamina management, but it is still my main melee weapon on my vet “try hard” build.
Practice with it makes perfect. I’ve been using it for like half the game’s life span so I have a lot of practice with, and it’s probably my favorite melee weapon atm.
It’s not noticeable on Zealot, and on Vet it’s only a problem if you get stuck in a Bruiser horde without frags. If Bruiser hordes were more common it would be an issue, but it attacks fast enough and has a good push attack that I haven’t found it to be a significant issue with the weapon.
It’s not heavy sword clear, but it’s still a good bit above Thammer clear.
I’ll say specifically about these builds, which are bleed-based.
It takes too long to deal with the hordes. There is a problem with penetration of armoured enemies. If you get pinned in a corner, you’re probably dead. Mediocre damage, so you’ll notice that most of the kills aren’t done by you, and most of the damage isn’t done by you. After that, I don’t think you’ll feel useful, unless your team is made up of, say, cucumbers.
Yeah I’ve done it too, with a martyr build and ran it for a while. It just always felt kind of painful dealing with hordes with it, and when things like Evis XV exists… eh. It can be fun though, but it’s not anywhere near ‘optimal’, but of course balance is all over the place in this game.
The other Chaxe however I could never get to feel even remotely good or fun. The lights are weak as hell, and the heavy is way too slow and dangerous. It does a crapton of damage, but there’s no way you can ever actually do heavy in any kind of hectic situation. Which is always on auric.
Personally I consider it among the strongest melee weapons in the game, for how easily it trivializes groups of melee elites and specialists. And I’ve never felt the lack of cleave damage distribution to be a big issue.
Might be a feeling thing. As I mentioned I’ve used it for awhile, and when it’s damage was pathetic and hordes were actually a massive roadblock to get through.
Chain staggering elites and specials is fun, yeah. It does suffer from some of the same as all the other weapons that can’t (shouldn’t) be crit built, though… that once you’ve played the other stuff, it feels incredibly bad not to have FotF up all the time.
Ive seen zealots one shot full strength monstrosities with it. I think it’s perfectly fine. We don’t need to make that functionnality more reachable
@alsozara and I have talked about T Hammers a lot. Unyielding (which is the armor type mini bosses are) are what the Thunder Hammer is best against, and what needs no help, or maybe even a nerf.
The problem is is that the Thunder Hammer makes you feel absolutely god like for the 10 - 30 seconds it takes to kill the boss, and horrible for the rest of the mission.
So an increase in damage across armor types except unyielding would be fine imo. There is more nuance and details to discuss here that would be better for a different thread.
Thammer should one-shot everything not a boss on Damnation with a special+heavy and a reasonable talent build.
That or it ditches the stun. But that would be sacrificing a unique mechanic.
I would say have it 1 shot enemies with special heavy headshot, with either a dedicated + damage perk or thrust being needed to get 1 shot body shots.
This would mean that skilled players would not need thrust and could use other blessings, but would also make it so that thrust isn’t just a boss killing blessing.
There’s also a discussion about what the difference in break points should be for tbe Crucis for thr Ironhelm, but again I believe that is for a thread that isn’t the knife thread 
Yeah but given Crucis having a wide-swing heavy…eh, thrust being enough to hit that point’d be enough ig.
Before I thought it was a technical limitation, but with the mk4 chaxe (I was calling it the 6 earlier, my bad. Damn Roman Numerals!) they showed off that they can change what the first attack off of an activation is. So ideally the Crucis (and maybe Ironhelm?) would get that.
Thunder Hammers atm have very clunky design choices that don’t mesh well with how the game works right now.
Yeah pretty much what @dragomusic said. I’d be happy for the boss damage to be nerfed if anything for more consistent elite breakpoints. The difference in damage between unyielding and other armour types is just kinda silly.
The way Thunder Hammers randomly destroy unyielding but are middling on all other armor types reminds me a bit of how shotguns randomly struggled to kill packmasters in VT2. It feels very video gamey and makes the weapon feel strange and inconsistent, even if I do see the design reason behind it.