Pretty long post about wierd Thunder Hammer damage

[Smokevich]

Hello everyone. Zealot lvl30 here. Recently I started playing more games at difficulty 4 and 5 and started noticing some wierd things about Thunder Hammer and it’s damage. In this topic i will talk about normal “bonks” of the hammer.

All pictures here are from difficulty 4 “meat grinder”. I did only clear hits with no stacking passives to the same target (sometimes I needed to refresh the target so it will take full damage and not just die because it already was at low hp).

First of all. Stats of my hammer:

Yes it’s green but the power of weapon is basically sum of this bars in numbers + flat amount per speacial ability and perk of the weapon. So this hammer actually has pretty solid damage/penetration and damage to the first target.

I want to introduce my biggest concern.

This one is strike to the body of random gunman:

This is bonk to the head of the same target:

I clearly see that he has helmet on his head (flack armor whe you hit him to the head) but Holy Emperor in what universe you deal less damage when hitting someone with GIANT MAUL to the head than to the body. I know he wears helmet but HAMMER… To the head… random trash mob with a gun…

You may tell that it’s because of armor and you’ll be right so lets’go furhter.

Pox walker body:

The head:

Well… So you’re telling me that rotten head of this dude takes 22 more damage (14.5%) more than body? Hell yeah that’s a lotta damage.

And another one.

This time it’s unarmored body:

Unarmored head:

You may start laughing now.

Rager body:

Rager head:

Now it’s time for even laughing.

Same dude same armor type but I deal TEN(5.5%) more damage to the head? I’m sorry what?

And this one.

Body:

Head:

Like… What is that? how is that OK? It’s clearly some bug or something… It doesn’t make any sense.

And another one.

uneylding body:

head:

I think I showed enough so everyone can understand the issue.

On the other hand charged attacks deal significantly increased damage to the head. For example:

charged body:

charged head:

It’s solid 30% damage increase compared to when you hit the body.

And the final one (Just to compare things a little). Remember gunBoi from the first two images?

Eviscerator to the gunBoi body:

Eviscerator to the gunBoi head:

Yep. He’s dead.

Eviscerator stats:

As you can see the damage and penetration are even lower than same stats on the hammer and they have pretty similar rating overall. I know that comparing weapons in such crude manner is wrong but still gunBoi is ded even tho he’s wearing exact same helmet. That’s wierd

I swear theese are the last:

body:

head:

Yeah carapace armor but just to remind you: I’m using the HAMMER

I don’t want to make this post more of an elder scroll so let me end this series of screenshots.

I know and it warms my heart that many people saw and felt the underwhelming expirience with Thunder hammer and made couple of posts about it’s problems so I won’t talk about them for another one time. I made this post after I started noticing that I cannot one hit to the head huge amount of dudes( even ranged ones on difficulty 3) with my Thunder Hammer. And charging heavy every time just to hit singular trash mob is… wrong?

You may call me little whiner and that I want my weapon to be buffed but believe me I’m not. I’m only trying to adress some clear issues with damage numbers of the weapon that are absolutely wrong. You cannot just look at all theese screenshots and say that dealing 10 more damage to the head than to the body ( of the same target) is OK. And for god’s sake GunBoi cannot just take 24 less damage to the head even tho he’s wearing a helmet ( But at the same time he dies from being struck to the head by Eviscerator). I’m smashing your head with big Thunder Hummer at the very least. I think there’s something wrong with this weapon and it needs some attention and adjustments.

Thank you all for reading this post and forgive me for (probably) insane amount of mistakes since English is unfortunately not my native language:

[visick]

This has to be bugged. You would think a massive hammer blow to the head would deal great damage even with armor.

[Padds]

id also think a blow to the anywhere would deal great damage with that thing

i guess it has close to zero finesse

[Schuetzenhaus]

I played 1 map with the thunder hammer and immediately sold it. It felt so bad to me because of that.

It’s just a gimped version of the maul in VT2. Yes, i know the two games are different, but why would I enjoy a weapon which was copy/pasted over but then is just objectively worse to use?

[BlindPanda]

My Thunder Hammer does wonders - but I may use it differently.

Against any elite I give it a charge, and it’d help if the charge animation was quicker, but a charge heavy bonk to an elite will put it on it’s ass or in the grave.

Against non-elite “horders” or packs I use an uncharged heavy swing to knock over and proceed to bonk from there. The heavy swing to control, the bonks to kill, heavy again, repeat till horde is dead.

It feels effective, but honestly, I too am underwhelmed by the thunder hammer. A charged thunder hammer heavy “sweep” attack “bonks” and stops on the first enemy hit. Would be AWESOME to see it blast a lightning charge that wrecked a pocket of enemies.

That’s just flavor and may be poor game balance, but a charged relentless attack into a horde causing several horde members to go flying or get shocked sounds cool.

Anyway, I like the ThunderHammer, does feel clunky, just my thoughts if they’re worth anything.

[Schuetzenhaus]

my biggest issue with the charged attack is there’s a 2s delay after it hits before you can dodge or block. So it’s basically useless when trying to take out an elite in middle of a horde.

[MarxistDictator]

The other big issue with the charged attack is that it doesn’t use single target priority, despite robbing the move of all cleave to do a single target strike. So if you’re trying to hit an elite in the middle of the horde with a zap heavy you’re almost guaranteed to have the move connect almost off screen on some random pox walker. The regular zap bonk light attack has a serious almost 50% damage penalty, which should be looked at. The end lag is like the same as a charged one, this isn’t like the giant commitment time difference force sword’s brain-special heavy has vs a light. The damage should be near equal, have the heavy be what you use for ogryns and monsters or fix the targetting most preferably of all. But seriously an empowered light attack should be more useful.

[Ultimaetus]

Thunder hammer charge should release an explosive shockwave. It also annoys me that psykers powersword does the same thing. That should be an exclusive risk reward to chainweapons

[Smokevich]

For me TH is working too. Swinging this thing left and right is certanly cool but “working” is kinda weak word here. When some random dude can take a hit in the head with giant maul then just flinch a little and strike you back with whatever he strikes you back… It fells underwhelming. I cannot clear a trash mob with a single hit because he takes only like 10% more damage to the head no matter the type of the enemy.

Once again from (I really don’t like the word) META perspective or just gameplay expirience there’s no reason in using Thunder Hammer instead of Eviscerator. The latter can obliterate hordes as well as Thunder Hammer if not even better. And single target damage is… Well you saw everything on screenshots.

[Bubby]

With this many threads i have high hopes fatshark will at least take a look at the weapon.

[Leadpaintchips]

I know everyone and their mother says to use the eviserator instead of the hammer, but for the life of me I can’t get it to work for me while I can do just fine with the hammer. I’ve been pretty outspoken both on the forums here and on the subreddit about how much I think the hammer doesn’t suck.

I know when I first was playing with the hammer, I felt something was off. After a couple of missions though, it clicked so I just chalked it up to me needing to get used to the hammer’s moveset again after spending so much time with the shields in VT.

The numbers shown here though are concerning. Combined with my own testing after reading this (which showed me the lights do less damage when it’s not a weakpoint hit), and It’s made me reconsider trying to brute force the eviscerator for myself. I don’t know if it will bring the same amount of CC that the hammer has (I can basically sub in for a ogryn because of it), but if it can match my regular chainsword’s killing power for both hordes and single target while having more cc, then I think I need to move on or at least consider that the hammer does need some more buffs on lights. I don’t think I’m going to give up my denial that the charge needs splash damage on it though, that ability is already hilariously strong.

Thanks for doing the testing and screenshots, you made me reconsider my stance on this.

[tarsus999]

My issue with the thunderhammer is that it is basically a worse copy paste of the vt2 2h hammer (worse in terms of damage).

Give us new attack patterns at least,.

[Leadpaintchips]

Personally I liked that it used that, since the attack patterns are very good for a generalist weapon that doesn’t skew too hard one way or another, and who’s downside is the slow attack speed. Adding in the thunder part is an interesting twist on it, but they do seem to have scaled back the base armor damage too much.

‘Don’t try to fix what ain’t broke.’ I feels applies to the hammer’s moveset.

[LittleGreenFriend]

Even if the Thunderhammer light attack can penetrate the carapace, its damage is still too low. You can’t actually use it effectively against single enemy.

[godtrog]

This is because they for some strange reason made the hammers armor penetration absolutely trash, while in vermintide 2 it is actually balanced right

[joaquox]

Vermintide 2 weapons were not balanced by fatshark though, they owe this to the community mod.

[Hoooldini]

I really feel like the hammer’s move set is great, the damage output is just extremely lacking for a weapon with no speed or dodge.

I would love for the heavies to be used to control hoards and disrupt enemies. But I’ve noticed that the hammer has a nasty habit of not cleaving all the way through a group because of a single armored enemy in the middle of it. Pushing through enemies and knocking them all away to protect yourself and your team is what I wanted from a giant and unwieldy weapon. That’s what it should be.

I also think that the hammer’s inability to one shot basic dregs and scabs feels awful considering how axes seem to do that just fine. A big two handed hammer should not be slower AND weaker than a one handed axe. The light attacks are what would be perfect for dealing with shooters once the hoard has dispersed. The hammer should not be taking more than one shot to kill basic mobs.

And that charge up is very, very underwhelming in terms of damage. It should be the answer to the most meaty and mean of the enemies. Those attacks take forever to come out, so I want it to absolutely destroy those hard to kill maulers, crushers, bulwarks and monstrosities. But as it stands right now, I feel like the guy at Boston Dynamics that just pushes the robot over.

The hammer has a moveset that could (and should) make it the most versatile melee weapon in the game. It’s the perfect weapon to make the zealot feel like they have a place in every combat encounter. If they’re going to be the “melee class” then they should be given a weapon that enables that.

Could that make the weapon a bit strong? Yeah. But a bit strong is a far better state for the hammer than being way too weak.

The hammer is my favorite weapon because of how cool it is. Everything in me wants to like it. But I can’t help but feel that the crit + bleed knife build will always outperform the hammer due to the raw damage and mobility it gives me.

[Nikonthenet]

Excellent post, perfectly highlights my experience with the hammer.
Its genuinely disheartening for one of the most iconic weapons to be this weak.

[Hanatani]

Also worth noting that the special action of the thunder hammer will detonate on any trash mob getting in the way when trying to dispose of high value targets while the special action of the Eviscerator will cleave through trash MORE EFFICIENTLY THEN WHEN NOT REVVED and then bite into any high value target it finds along it’s path.

And the armor damage is just abysmal, especially considering that blunt weapons, while devastating against unarmored targets, was seen as an effective counter to medieval plate armors as you could pretty much bash a man to death inside his armor, and that’s with a one handed cudgel or mace, and this is a massive sledgehammer, and it can only deliver enough force to do 2 points of damage? WTF?

While I want the Thunder hammer to be as good as it’s cool, right now it’s just less viable then many other weapons for the role it’s supposed to fulfill.
Currently the Thunder hammer is only good at fighting Plague Ogryn and Bests of Nurgle, and occasional Demon hosts, and that’s only when trash mobs don’t get in the way, all other roles there are better weapons for.