Normalize Thunder Hammer Cleave, or at least make the Crucis less Frustrating to Use

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I fully believe that the powered up Thunder Hammer damage for both variants (the Crucis and the Ironhelm) should be (mostly) normalized, and that they should both have the cleaving mechanic the Ironhelm currently has.

Currently the Crucis has a higher damage, but only has wide horizontal swings and stops on the first enemy hit, while the Ironhelm has less damage but cleaves until the first elite, specialist, or monstrosity hit. With the enemy concentrations on Auric missions, I find it frustrating rather than skillful to use the Crucis. A lesser enemy that got knocked over walking into the right of your screen shouldn’t completely neuter your damage against high priority targets.

While personally I believe that the 2 movesets are different enough to warrant them having the same special attack stats, if there was to be a more pronounced difference between the 2, I believe something interesting would be that the Crucis has higher base damage, but the Ironhelm has higher finesse damage (these could be switched around). That way the Crucis has more consistent, strong base damage, while the Ironhelm has stronger weakpoint damage, but lower body shot damage.

I wanted to make this post specifically because of the changes coming up to the Thunder Hammers:
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The Ironhelm does not need the change to it’s swing pattern. It’s certainly nice, but it already cleaves through enemies. Why does it need the powered up overhead, when that is something the Crucis desperately needs?

I’m honestly a bit confused on this decision, and at this point the Ironhelm’s attacks are better fitted for the Crucis’ special action more than it’s own attacks.

If Fat Shark is hard set on making the Crucis never cleave, than I believe it should receive someway to access the activated overhead attack. While it might still have some frustrations with enemy clipping and targeting, it would be far more useful on it and make it much more consistent.

I would also like to take a moment to address some potential responses to this:

If you do well with the current Crucis, that is great and I am happy for you. However I believe a change is still needed on the Crucis to make it stronger and more reliable against the mixed swarms that are commonly present in high tier missions.

As mentioned before, I believe that adding the cleave to the Crucis would not make the 2 hammers feel the same, as the Crucis has a better horde clear pattern while the Ironhelm has the overhead heavy 3 to target high value targets without using its special activation. However if that is still not enough, I believe some more nuanced differences, such as the finesse different, would be a better way to differentiate the two and would still reward more skilled players with higher damage.

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It does, it’s called the empowered light attack.

It’s already generally considered vastly superior to ironhelm. What’s more the T Hammer’s are some of the best weapons in the game currently. And you’re asking to buff them.

No.

If you can’t stand finessing Crucis then it’s simply not for you, use Ironhelm instead.

People need to stop asking for buffs for things that are incredibly strong because they simply refuse to go through the learning curve.

FS absolutely do not buff T Hammer more, even the extra dodge coming soon is dubious.

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I 100% disagree with you. I use the Ironhelm exceptionally well. I do not use the Crucis because it is unfun and frustrating to use. There’s no amount of “finessing” that makes a poxwalker walking through a Crusher or an out of sight enemy to your left or right go away.

My bad, I meant a useful attack.

Yes. It does.

Also for all your talk of buffing “op weapons” when simply having the Crucis cleave would not be that big of a deal. I don’t understand people defending it at all. With how this game works, there’s only so much you can do to mitigate a wasted strike, and it makes the Crucis far inferior to the Ironhelm.

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don’t change a thing but add another chargeup lvl after another 0.5s that then has the cleave, problem solved

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That’s an interesting idea, however I just don’t find the Crucis not cleaving to be a compelling mechanic in the slightest, and I feel that would be an overcomplicated solution for a simple problem.

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i don’t think remembering “maximum charged attack= cleaving attack” is asking too much of players

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I mean I agree, I just think its sort of an unnecessary. Simplest answer is usually the best, as they say

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It seems everyone wants Coghammer the crap out of Crucis.

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By people who are wrong.

I strongly disagree with this take. They’re only strong against monstrosities right now, which hardly makes them the best weapons in the game. They’re poo poo melee weapons for basic horde work which is what you mostly want melee for in this game at this juncture, and then despite all those costs they also have bad armor busting speed compared to other (mostly ranged) weapons. They are better in Patch 13 but not so much better than they were in Patch 12 on that front. I do like them and preform well with them but I think there’s something wrong with the way they work right now. I’ll be doing more testing after Patch 14 to see where they need to go. So for me the jury is out but I generally agree with Drago and don’t (personally) see why the Crucis shouldn’t at least get…like 1 cleave compared to the Ironhelms 3-5.

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I never played with the Cog hammer, can you explain to me what that means?

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Coghammer has Tank modified cleaving light attacks, which are great vs hordes and very very good overhead heavies to take down elites.

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Eh I understand their logic but I do also like Ironhelm personally. I’m just happy to admit it’s because I can’t be assed learning to jump headshot things properly. My only real complaint about Ironhelm is the weird delay on the wind up of heavy 2, especially noticeable when comboing after a light attack.

Eh I don’t really agree. Their damage cleave is a LOT better now and Zealot tree has even more access to bonus attack speed and damage, the former of which is extremely noticeable on T Hammer which also gets extremely good cleave and high stagger, so you really can afford to be a little slower killing chaff. They also stealth buffed special endlag duration (didn’t see it in the patch notes but had it confirmed by several people it was indeed reduced, immediately noticed it when picking Hammer up post patch 13). You honestly slay elites pretty damn fast with it now with even less risk. Also wouldn’t underrate the boss damage when bosses can easily be run enders and we now have a whole condition that spams you with them.

TL;DR combination of Zealot tree and significant buffs have really lessened their biggest weaknesses and let you push their strengths even further. Will see how things feel after the elite health changes though, those could definitely be a big deal for the weapon.

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Better yet, don’t turn thammers into better evis. Instead give them both a small, but high damage (like a krak grenade) explosion on special action hit.

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It is. The light charged essentially does the job you want the non-cleaving heavy to do. And it does it reasonably well. It’s especially useful vs bulwarks or for temporarily disabling ragers. It won’t do everything that a charged ironhelm heavy will do, but that’s part of the tradeoff.

As for the the charged heavy attack on the crusis, its already powerful enough. It does not need a cleaving effect, and in its current state I thoroughly prefer it without one anyway. If anything, Crusis TH is a great all-rounder for zealot currently. It does not need further buffs.

I’m not going to speculate on the changes to ironhelm yet and how they feel. Patch notes usually don’t mean much to me, but if it turns out there’s anything wrong with it then that’s an ironhelm problem, not a crusis problem. It sounds to me mostly like you’re unhappy with the incoming changes to ironhelm, so you’re trying to remodel crusis into a new version of the ironhelm you did like.

Crusis TH is strong against most enemies. It’s best in class (for zealot) against monstrosities.

No. Just no. The argument that crusis hammer is bad against hordes doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Not after patch 13. If what you mean by “bad” is bad compared to a top performer like the eviscerator or heavy sword, then sure. But the post-patch crusis hammer is entirely capable of horde clearing in a way that it simply wasn’t pre-patch. I play a lot less with ironhelm, but I’d wager the same is true there. Thunder hammer being bad at horde clear just isn’t a thing anymore.

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I will have to test both after patch 14, im open to having a bad take here since i’ve only played about 6 games with the hammers in patch 13.

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I will say, as someone who’s used a lot of Crucis in Patch 13, the hammer definitely feels better at managing hordes than before Patch 13. I’ll be waiting on Reginald’s tests to confirm this, but I don’t feel like I struggle with hordes at all with the Crucis when I’m by myself, compared to before.

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I wondered the same thing when saw those changes.
“Why give the cleavey hammer easier access to powerful overhead swings vs the non-cleavey smitier one?”

I was more worried that using ironhelm was going to be way more annoying when fighting hordes because there are officially no attacks that follow the pushattack that are horizontal and sweep. You will now have to either no longer push attack or animation cancel.

Letting the crucis deal damage to everything in an imposssibly small radius might work to prevent the pox walker clipping through a crushers legs from saving his life.

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I don’t get this frankly, in my opinion, stupid idea that the Crucis for some reason needs to be frustrating to play to be fun. Having to jump attack to be viable is dumb and emblematic of some sort of problem. Having the Crucis have cleave wouldn’t be game breaking in the slightest and would make the weapon more fun. I haven’t seen you say at all why the Crucis shouldn’t cleave other than, “It shouldn’t be buffed just cause.”

Thunder Hammers are better at clearing hordes and can do it fine, they just do it slowly.

As for the light overhead, why would I ever waste time staggering something instead of killing it. If it had an actually damaging heavy overhead it would only be used in niche desperation cases.

It seems like everyone has been coping with the Crucis lack of cleave for so long they refuse to admit it’s a bad mechanic and makes it fundamentally worse than the Ironhelm at everything except cheese 1 shot boss builds.

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I would be for this, however giving the Crucis cleave wouldn’t make it “a better Eviscerator.” The Evis can chew through hordes way faster than the T Hammers, and can be used far more effectively for crit builds, and is just more versatile in general.

And I don’t see why giving the Crucis cleave, WHICH THE IRONHELM ALREADY HAS, would put it in such a situation.

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But the Crucis not cleaving on special attacks is not a bad mechanic? Certain limitations can make gameplay interesting rather than frustrating.

The point of the Crucis is to deliver the single most powerful single hits in the entire game. The tradeoff is that you have to seek proper openings to deliver those hits, and seeking those openings is part of the challenge of the Crucis and a large part of what makes it interesting.

And besides, most things you’d want to bonk with a special heavy on the Crucis are taller than the horde enemies they hide behind., so aim a little higher and smack them on the side of the head If somehow you still can’t bonk them, then…back away. Use your ranged weapon. Reposition. See if you can lure your target out of the horde. Use a grenade. Spam regular heavies until you knock down enough of the horde and give yourself a clear shot at your target.

There’s lots of things you can do to play around the Crucis’s limitations. I play with the Crucis a lot on Auric missions, and these limitations are part of what makes the Crucis fun. I wouldn’t say that giving Crucis the Ironhelm’s ability to cleave on specials until it hits something taggable is necessary.

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