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

I agree. The tradeoff with the Thunder Hammers is sub par horde clear. The Ironhelm, if built and played correctly, is just a straight upgrade from the Crucis. As I said before, there is only so much “get good” you can do in this game on high difficulties. An enemy you didn’t see is going to come on screen and stop your swing. You will be pushed into a bad spot with no room to clear the chaff. You’ll be put into a clutch situation without additonal support. In almost every single situation the Ironhelm outpreforms the Crucis. You are purposefully nerfing yourself to use it, just to get increased boss damage.

I 100% think it is neccassary. I don’t believe that having such a high punishment which the Ironhelm ignores, for something other weapons, either ranged or melee, have to worry about, is good design. I still find it is a choice between fun, fluid gameplay or clunky and frustrating one.

I believe there is a better solution and I admit I am shocked at the almost fanatical defense it’s getting.

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“Enemy you didn’t see is going to come on screen and stop your swing”
Take feats that make your attacks uninterruptible, use stun grenades, use the Zealot’s charge ult to stagger enemies in front of you while you wind up a swing, push then slide back then wind up a special heavy…there are many options available to you to deal with this issue.

“You will be pushed into a bad spot with no room to clear the chaff”
That can happen sometimes if you position yourself badly, yes. In which case, the Crucis’s inability to cleave on its special isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that you are trapped in a very bad position with no room to maneuver. If this is a situation where the Crucis can’t save you, the Ironhelm won’t really save you either.

“You’ll be put into a clutch situation without additional support”
Also bad news for an Ironhelm, yes. Plus, clutch situations are fairly niche–not exactly something that happens every game. Further: even if the Ironhelm might be a little better than the Crucish in this situation (it won’t be by a lot, thanks to the Thunder Hammers’ universal bad dodge distance, bad dodge counts, and slow swing speed) will make clutching extremely difficult regardless of whether you bring a Crucis or an Ironhelm.

“You are purposefully nerfing yoruself to use it just to get increased boss damage”
Eh, I honestly like bringing the Crucis over the Ironhelm over a lot of situations, not just because of superior boss deletion, but also because it’s nice sometimes to be able to horde clear by just spamming heavies instead of having to push attack → heavy or light → heavy.

“I still find it is a choice bettween fun, fluid gameplay or clunky and frustrating one”
To each their own, I guess. I find it to be fun, fluid gameplay when there’s a meaningful distinction between the Crucis and Ironhelm, as well as challenging myself to find good openings to use my special heavies on the Crucis.

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I’ve been wanting them to utilize that glorious hammer explosion again (hey at least on legend it scales well and can sometimes evaporate a line of skaven slaves lol), but it will probably be saved for the Graia Thunderhammer when its added…can’t really think of a niche otherwise, but overhead hits that blow up would be neat.

Remember when, before the Thunder Hammers got their cool down reduction on special hit, people where saying that it was already OP and it shouldn’t be changed or buffed in the slightest? That is what I feel like I’m fighting here. There is only so much you can mitigate all the extraneous factors.

Thanks for proving my point.

Or something like this would work as well.

I suggest playing with the Ironhelm more than.

The entirety of what you’re saying comes down to, “they should feel different,” which I have already addressed ad nauseum, or the self nerf that comes with using the Crucis. If the challenge of the Crucis was hitting weak points, or when its safe to use charged attacks, I feel the challenge is already sufficient.

Just because you’re good with a weapon doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be changed.

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I’ve been making do by using a gore mod, which lets me add client-side gibbing to weapons that don’t normally have it, and/or change out certain kinds of gibbing for other ones. I have it set so that my special thunder hammer attacks get treated like I’m hitting enemies with the plasma gun, i.e. a big flash of blue and smaller enemies exploding to bits. It adds a lot and it’s great fun.

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He meant eat your charged attack. not get hit and be staggered out of a charged swing. Otherwise his complaint would have applied equally to the Ironhelm

Yep, a buff would be a cool thing

There are several distinct stages here. Early on when people found the animation cancel a lot of people who used it a bunch felt pretty good about it. Then they removed the animation cancel and even long time Hammer enthusiasts were not particularly happy, and DID ask for reduction in the recoil. That was a pretty widely desired thing, then we got it. Then in patch 13 we got extra buffs we weren’t really expecting, but horde clear being unnecessarily terrible WAS a relatively common complaint about the weapon, so those changes made sense enough. Again in each of these stages there were things that were pretty commonly desired by BOTH less and more experienced T Hammer users.

Now by comparison I linked this post to the resident Hammer god of the Zealot Discord (I wouldn’t be surprised if they had 1000 hours in just Hammer) and this was their response word for word:

“this hurts so much to read, holy skill issue”

I’m not quoting that to be mean, but to point out that the more somebody likes Hammer, the more time they’ve spent with it, the less they seem to agree with your take here. Read that how you will, the logical conclusion seems pretty clear to me. So really what the hell are your credentials here that multiple people will tell you no it’s good as it is and you turn around and basically say “no this NEEDS to happen I know it and my opinion trumps your combined experience”. Some people really enjoy a weapon you don’t. Ok then it’s not for you, it doesn’t have to be twisted to fit what you want. The heck should someone who’s spent a tonne of time with this weapon have it dumbed down and made less enjoyable for them because you say so? You have the ironhelm, you have your option if you don’t like Crucis, so just use it and leave Crucis to the people who enjoy it.

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I’m going to hazard to weigh in again before i see what patch 14 entirely has to offer and what testing bears out. Assuming the hammers have both benefited equally from the increased player power generated as a consequence of patch 13 and future patch 14 changes. Whatever that exact % is, we can reasonably say that my patch 11 and 12 hammer data is still relevant but merely adjusted by n%.

Then and now, to my knowledge, both hammers hit the same key breakpoints against all elites and specialists. The only major distinction between crucis and ironhelm is fully maximized boss damage, which is extremely niche except for Monstrous Specials. However the Ironhelm gains a SIGNIFICANT usability advantage allowing priority targets to almost always be struck and killed or injured. Unlike the Crucis. Considering these facts the Crucis is, thereby, the inferior hammer. The resolution is to improve the usability of crucis. But not as much as ironhelm. I think the Crucis should recieve 1-0 cleave based on hitmass. While the ironhelm has 2-5 based on hitmass.

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Again just because someone can do good with the weapon doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be switched.

And explain to me HOW getting cleave somehow ruins the weapon? As if it suddenly loses all identity? I guess it will never be changed because a group of stubborn ideologues have been coping with it since release.

You’ve been quite rude this entire thread so I doubt that. And you continue that theme in this post. And based and your and this “Discord Hammer God’s” responses it seems that is where discourse goes to die.

I’ve been playing with the Crucis since launch. The Thunder Hammer is one of my favorite 40k weapons. I’ve hated the lack of cleave since then. I believe one of my first posts on here was asking for the activated strike to be an overhead instead of a sweep. I’m sure I don’t have as much playtime with it as other people but I have logged in enough hours with it where I feel confident suggesting a change towards it.

“And explain to me HOW getting cleave somehow ruins the weapon?”

For me, finding opportunities to get a clear shot in with the Crucis is a lot of fun. The same way that getting clean headshots or snapshots with the revolver is fun, or getting clean headshots with the throwing knife is fun. The limitations constraining the Crucis are fun for me. There’s nothing really more to say beyond that.

Go easy on Alsozara, he’s just a staunch arguer like me.

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Both of those have cleave (or at least the throwing knife is getting cleave) lol.

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But the cleave isn’t the reason why I enjoy snapshotting and headshotting with them? The cleave makes them more mechanically effective by letting me take out specials through hordes, but I get a little shiver down my spine when I’m able to plug a Trapper in between the time I hear her winding up a net and her actually firing one.

Especially for the throwing knives, I’m pretty sure the throwing knife have 0 cleave right now (though this will apparently get changed in Patch 14). It’s completely useless for taking out a Trapper who’s hiding in the middle of the horde. Yet, I’m not demanding more cleave for it, because I still have a use case for it, and the fun part of the throwing knife isn’t me hurling a knife through 5 bodies to kill my target.

Adding cleave tbh is just a lazy way of buffing the weapon. It needs an identity, not just become another “hit specials really hard in the middle of the crowd” thing.
Imo, adding an actual explosion to an attack is that identity. You still get the crowd damage you want, but the weapon will feel different and unique to other examples we have.

The goal isn’t crowd damage, i think, but more reliable priority target hits. 1 cleave would solve this problem, an explosion radius would not. Though it would be stylish.

Not that i disagree with this premise but doesn’t this become quite similar to the Indignatus Crusher?

Here’s the buff that the Knives are getting.

Honestly I should have just posted this because it perfectly summarizes why the Crucis should at least get minimal cleave.

And I don’t get why the Crucis shouldn’t get that same Mechanical Effectiveness that many ranged single target weapon have, that the throwing knives are getting, and that both the Eviscerator and the Ironhelm have. If it’s that much of an issue than I believe that at least cleaving one enemy would be nice although I would prefer the same behavior as the Ironhelm.

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This is the main part I still don’t understand, why are you not content just using Ironhelm then? FS literally gifted you the weapon you want at the small price of somewhat less gigantic single target damage.

So why does Crucis need to be that too? Why not let the “stubborn idealogues” have their 1 damn weapon, you already have yours, it’s ironhelm.

If it’s literally 1-2 poxwalkers of cleave fine, it just changes its use way too much if you give it anywhere near to ironhelm cleave.

It’s chill homie I do come out swinging, so getting this response sometimes is expected.

Exept it would. If you hit somebody close to the target, they (the target you originally wanted to hit) will take the damage. I’m looking at a krak grenade for main idea. Small radius, big damage, little stagger. Maybe even keep the directional damage blast that krak actually has.

While it can seem a bit like stepping into indignatus territory, my idea was for thammer to have a small but high-damage (and high opportunity cost with charge up and recovery) aoe that would allow you to delete a small group.
Indignatus is a pure CC weapon, like the paul. While i’m intrigued to see how patch 14 will play out for it, fatshark clearly stated that they want to keep it a CC based weapon. Which means keeping huge hordes on the ground.
So, on one hand we have deleting small tight groups. On the other we have keeping an entire horde on the ground. Still plenty identity to go around as i can see.

Variety is the spice of life, and the Crucis is weak now compared to the Ironhelm. I want to make it better. Again you can do good with it not saying you can’t.

Although my problem with this is that you are still risking way more for almost, if not exactly the same pay off as the Ironhelm

I firmly disagree but I guess we’ll never agree on anything on this point.

You could stand to be more polite in the future.