Folding shovels can one-shot Crushers, and brutal momentum turns that into multiple Crushers with the cleave if you line them up.
yeah and similarly to plasma gun its kinda demolishing any difficulty in the game, I was making a case for the brute brainer 3 shovel.
Here is the outcome of my last test regarding skullcrusher (a while ago, so it might have been changed again since then, although i doubt it):
TLDR: since it got changed, it is a somewhat bad blessing that only does anything at all, if you can stagger the target and keep the target staggered for long enough to hit it again.
Skullcrusher only has an effect on enemies that are staggered at the time you hit them.
In other words: If an enemy is not currently staggered, then skullcrusher does absolutely nothing.
In detail:
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Applying skullcrusher stacks, requires your attack to stagger the target, or for the target to already be staggered at the time you hit it.
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The bonus damage from the skullcrusher debuff, requires the target to be staggered at the time you hit it.
If you hit an enemy that is not currently staggered, you will not deal any bonus damage, even if the target currently has stacks of the skullcrusher debuff on it.
(if you use the debuff indicator mod, you will see that even if the debuff is still on the enemy, your damage won’t be affected at all, if the enemy is not staggered)
And a general thing that goes for all of the blessings of this type:
The max debuff is independent of blessing tier. The max number of stacks that can be applied to a target, does not depend on the blessing tier. Lower tiers simply take more hits to apply the same number of stacks.
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I was going to say this was obviously implied. But then I realized what you meant: Many blessings and talents apply to all (your) sources, not just the weapon itself, so long as you’re curretly equipping the weapon with the blessing. So I tested this with the Skullcrusher and FoF ult. And you’re absolutely right!
Skullcrusher only applies the debuff when it’s the weapon itself doing the staggering (and push counts, as you said). I also verified that it does work for your ranged, which makes it very likely that it buffs your team’s dmg too.
I want to apologize btw. While I always appreciate the opportunity to learn, I felt quite offended by your earlier “100% false” comment and tone. Sadly too many people are more concerned with pointless toxicity rather than genuine dialogue and learning from each other. You even edited your earlier message and gladly acknowledged where I was right, concentrating only on the accuracy of the info itself. It’s clear your concern here is the truth, not your ego (or taking down others), and I admire that about people. So thank you! 
And I’m sorry for not realizing that sooner.
With these tests I realized I’ve been wrong about a few other things too, not just Skullcrusher. I’m really happy to get these things sorted out now and learn better. 
I was sure I pointed out earlier that this ofc. assumed the push being enough to stagger the enemy, and the followup connecting before it recovered. Now I’m not sure if I edited that out before posting.
But either way yes, you’re right. Pushing staggers most enemies but definitely not all. And a few are inbetween where you need to stack a bit of extra for the push to work. There are even weapons where the followup is too slow.
This btw illustrates a frequent problem I’ve had with Darktide. Usually you want to be brief & to the point, to get that point across and give advice for example. But so many things Darktide simply aren’t that. So there’s a lot of stuff where I need to weigh between massive long paragraphs of details and minutiae, vs. something short and concise but technically not accurate. 
I know it’s ironic from someone like me who always posts long massive walls of text. But I really do try to make them as short yet clear as I can…
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This is not true.
The staggering does not have to be done by your weapon.
Anyone can stagger the enemy with anything.
And when the enemy is staggered, your weapon hits will apply skullcrusher.
Yes it is a debuff.
That means, it applies to the enemy, not to you.
Which means that all attacks against that enemy (from any player, not just from you), will benefit from it.
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I’m honestly having difficulties wrapping my head around the technicalities here. x.x
You’re probably right. I’m not gonna go out and test it again for the 10:th time and just assume you are. I was too focused on how the blessing won’t apply unless using the weapon is involved. As opposed to something like say, Pinning Fire which applies as-is an doesn’t care which source the stagger comes from (you can stack it with ult, nades, etc, as long as the weapon is equipped). But yeah staggering (with the weapon), or hitting a staggered target with an attack made by that weapon, applies the debuff.
Which would mean that it’s like @BongoSkaggs said and pushing counts as an attack, and the blessing checks the condition for the debuff after the attack: if the target is staggered after it, regardless of whether the attack staggered it or not, then the debuff is applied. And any following hits, while the enemy is staggered, will get their dmg buffed.
I’m usually very, very meticulous about this stuff. I can’t believe this back & forth confusion here. 
With Darktide I tend to avoid assuming anything if I can. There are too many exceptions, too many blessings & talents that don’t work at all as advertised or have hidden properties mentioned nowhere. It’s a big part of its charm. c:
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Skullcrusher is mostly useless, always pick thunderstrike instead.
There, I summed it up for you.
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Just start looking at skullcrusher as if its haymaker and you just get a random chance to benefit from some fat extra damage and it’ll make sense
There’s plenty of situations where you beat something up while its staggered and it seems to work in those situations
You will never have it up vs ogryns and monsters, and you don’t need help hordeclearing with BM. Thunderstrike amps bleed on armored targets without having to pay attention to it, making it infinitely more consistent, and as such, the superior choice.
Skullcrusher vs haymaker on clubs is debatable, but when it comes to shovels, not so much.
If you have charge you can pretty frequently stun the hell out of ogryns and anything else though, I just don’t see much benefit from BM on an MK3 shovel. What oneshot breakpoints can it even hit?
I’m actually testing it now. Here’s some things I found out, tested without any talents or other blessings:
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skullcrusher does infact stack its stacks with ANY hit that staggers. Even if it’s the initial hit. ALL animations resulting from damage count as stagger, even the little flinch anims. Pushes also apply skullcrusher stacks. The damage bonus then only functions while they’re staggered.
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The MK3 shovel heavies are infact fast enough (with 0 talents) for the followup heavies to benefit from the initial heavy stagger + skullcrusher for a fat damage bonus (440 headshots going to 750 on a scab rager for example). Horde clear combo also gets benefit 100% of the time with followups.
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The shovels crowd control stat affects stagger durations. If skullcrusher sucks for you check if you dumpstatted it.
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Skullcrusher does great work on bulwarks since their whole shield opening anim counts as a stagger. Same with reapers that you punch once and fall on their ass slowly with the punch.
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For testing this I rolled a new shovel because my old one was blessing locked and couldn’t get thunderous off to get a clean look. I spent a couple million dockets rolling for one that had similar stats as my old one at 370+ (took 150 rolls) and when I upgraded it it got a t2 blessing. Always good to be reminded of why I didn’t touch this dumpster fire of a crafting system in a year straight.
Overall compared to BM I found that it deals with elites way better, whereas BM deals with poxwalker crowds slightly better. BM gives no benefit anywhere else outside of incidental headshot kills, unless you stack it with thrust, at which point you have no thunderous. Ew
I’m also not considering an entire factor of benefit here because skullcrusher says it works for your whole team. Assuming that actually works then that’s a pretty solid benefit for killing crushers and bosses (as they do quite frequently get staggered, then take a massive amount of bonus damage for the duration of it)
Not every blow has to be a killing hit for brutal momentum to have value? Most times you’re dealing with about a half dozen ragers and a bulwark in your face when you’re slabbing up the front line. On the second hit, that kills a rager, you can spread that damage to 4 enemies. BB3 can 1 and 2 shot every elite running HH/thrust and carapace damage. Also the difference in horde clear is insane, shovel is almost on par with a knife or shield also packing this blessing. Without it its hardly better than the club even with 6 targets factoring attack speed and the huge cleave fall off. You need BM. It even makes the strikedown light attacks more practical.
I compared it just now. Just some random comparison points for a generla idea of how it performs in an actual game.
40 groaners:
Skullcrusher/Thunderous: 14 seconds
BM/Thrust: 12 seconds.
I also tried 5 dreg ragers, 2 maulers, 1 crusher and 30 groaners. Just some random stuff basically. Charged once just to emulate sort of normal conditions (it’s not unreasonable you would charge such a stack).
Skullcrusher/Thunderous: 34 sec
BM/Thrust: 30 sec
Charging once, 5 crushers:
Skullcrusher/Thunderous: 25sec
BM/Thrust: 30sec
Measurement error +/- 1 sec because I can’t be bothered to look at split seconds on the recordings
This is all tested with them attacking back btw. No just standing there sandbagging. Light heavy horizontal combo for crowds, occassionally overheading elites to make optimal use of BM/thrust and making more use of thrust as situation calls for. For the crushers mostly overhead spam with the occasional sideways hit when I mess it up, and charging up whenever I can with thrust.
As I said I think considering skullcrusher and thunderous also benefits allies and juices up the bleed more I personally prefer it and to say it’s statistically very far behind BM/Thrust is wrong. Also when allies stagger something you get value out of skullcrusher too if you’re fighting that thing.
There’s also the other minor consideration that you’re not incentivized to ever hold a heavy with skullcrusher/thunderous so you generate more toughness overall
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So to make completely sure, i tested again:
Skullcrusher debuff can be applied to an enemy if:
- you hit an enemy that is not already staggered, but your weapon’s hit causes it to get staggered (push, weapon special, light/heavy/push attacks)
- you hit an enemy that is already staggered, independent of your weapon’s ability to stagger the enemy (example: You can NOT stagger a crusher by pushing it. Pushing it, will do absolutely nothing. However, if a crusher is already lying on the floor, your push will still have no staggering effect, but it will apply skullcrusher stacks, since the crusher is already staggered.)
However, the debuff only actually has an effect as long as the enemy is staggered.
Even if an enemy is still debuffed (debuff lasts 5 seconds), they will not take extra damage, if they are hit while no longer staggered.
And because it is a DEBUFF that is applied to the enemy (not a BUFF that is applied to the player), ALL damage that hits the debuffed enemy is increased (while the debuff is in effect).
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Does the bonus damage from skullcrusher affect the attack that applies it, for example dealing additional damage on your first attack against an enemy someone else staggered?
Any debuff will only affect stuff that happens after the debuff was applied.
So an attack that applies skullcrusher or brittleness, will not already benefit from the stacks that it, itself, just applied.
To draw an image for you:
If i punch a guy and knock him out, that punch did not hit a guy who was ko.
But any consecutive punch will then be counted as “punching a guy that is ko”, which is bad and something that you shouldn’t do.
Except when you punch a guy that is debuffed with skullcrusher, that is good and something that you should do.
Because the guy is bad.
And I don’t suppose bowling enemies over with charge applies skullcrusher stacks does it? 
Just seems like a whole lotta pushing people around and not a whole lotta skulls getting crushed!
It does not.
Only those do:
Before the debuffs were nerfed, any hit would apply them as long as you held the weapon with the blessing in your hand.
For example, you could use a double debuff shovel or club, charge through a bunch of crushers and apply bleeds to them with the extra talent for the charge.
Within about a second, all of them would have max stacks of both debuffs on them.
Or when you hit an enemy with a heavy attack, applying bleeds to them, the bleeds would stack up the debuffs while you were charging your next attack.
It was glorious right after the talent tree rework.
You could kill every single enemy (except bosses) in 2 heavy attacks.
Shotgunners just like crushers.
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After playing around with Skullcrusher some, the benefit is really noticeable against certain enemies:
- Ragers: Punch - heavy - heavy kill
- Reapers: Heavy - punch - heavy kill
- Bulwarks (I forget the exact sequence but it’s faster than before!)
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to help much against armoured units or basically anything that I’m used to two-shotting like shot/gunners. I may test with the mod vs. hordes and the like since it’s hard to keep up with the carnage!
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