I saw the new charged Crusher in my Zealot’s curio shop today and decided to pick it up.
It is, in a single word, underwhelming. It falls somewhere between the Heavy Eviscerator and the Thunder Hammer, and it falls pretty flat.
The one thing this weapon manages to do well is stagger enemies in a sphere around you, but ONLY when the Crusher itself is charged. This is one of its biggest problems, IMO, because…
The charge animation is, or at least feels like it, painfully slow. It slows you down to Quell Peril speed, it takes too long to fire up and swing, and can be interrupted by enemy attacks. This is the Crusher’s best feature and it’s frustrating-at-best to activate in the heat of battle.
The charge itself doesn’t add enough damage to make the Crusher worth using over the Thunder Hammer or Eviscerator. It adds a fair amount of stagger, but chaining these hits doesn’t lend itself to horde clearing or special/elite control. If anything, you just end up putting them around the floor and wasting time between charges trying to keep them from getting up and interrupting you. The sphere of stagger on a charge impact is nice, but appears to have an upper target limit, which means it’s only somewhat useful against hordes (and if you have a big enough horde, you’ll probably get interrupted during a charge).
The attack angle on the Relentless attacks (comboing Light, Heavy, repeat) is clunky and tends to miss things at your screen’s 7 o’clock - which means enemies to your left might not get hit by a cleaving swing because the angle goes from upper left > lower right. The overall ‘crowd control’ combo here doesn’t feel nearly as effective as the Hammer’s heavy combo or the Eviscerator’s Heavy>Light>Repeat combo.
I cannot think of any scenario where I would use the Crusher over the Eviscerator or Thunder Hammer. I spent a handful of missions trying to learn and understand the Indignatus (one mission gave me a purple one as a reward so I figured I’d give it a college try) and I spent all of those missions wishing I’d brought another weapon.
Overall, the Indignatus felt like it was attempting to fill a gap between the Eviscerator and Thunder Hammer, but I don’t feel it’s managed to do so in any meaningful way. It does many things, but none of them well enough to put it into the running as more meta weapons.
I haven’t yet played with it in an actual match, but just from testing in the Psykanium, I can already tell its damage is painfully low without the power-up, and even with the power-up it isn’t that high (worse than both Evi & Thunder Hammer), which doesn’t lend itself that well to the Zealot playstyle of killing priority targets quickly.
This weapon might actually be worse than the Thunder Hammer, which is saying something.
I will say though - it’s very cool, and I like the idea of it. Just needs tuning.
I personally love the Thunder Hammer, but yeah, agreed on all points. Even charging the Crusher and mixing it with the Zealot charge, a guaranteed crit on a Mauler is still about 45% of it’s total HP no matter where you hit it(!). The Thunder Hammer will more often than not kill a Mauler if you land the hit on its head or on its thigh (where it has no armor, hilariously).
If the Crusher gets a better charge or even a mild damage increase I think it could be the crowd control answer to the spots the T.Hammer and H.Eviscerator are lacking. They can still do the job, but it can be a bit janky to get the flow going.
… I actually think a substantial problem-solving buff to the Crusher would be to let the charge persist for a few seconds regardless of hits, much like the Veteran’s Power Sword. If it could do that it would be much more effective.
It’s literally surge staff on steroids but in shape of a club and insane AOE CC. I’ve done some funny shenanigans on Damnation with this weapon. And it was good.
Damage is lower that is correct. But!
Maul is substantially faster that TH. Charging takes almost no time. And There’s no awfully long recoil after charged attack. You can dead ass CC into oblivion any mixed hord without breaking a sweat. Crushers/maulers/ragers etc. And since maul also has huge suppression AOE from explosion even ranged dudes who happened to be next to your empowered bonk flee in fear like cockroaches. Maul creates so much space it’s actually mindblowing.
Not a single Zealot weapon in the game is capable of doing it like maul does.
Exelent weapon and they implemented it perfectly. TH needs pretty big adjustments to compete with that beast. I think they need to go all in on single target damage for TH leaving heavies as a crude trash mob whacker. And for the love of emperor remove 2s stun after charged attack…
As soon as people actually realize what devs gave us Eviscerator will finaly have solid competitor.
The Crusher is similar to sienna’s flame flail in vermintide, but not as op. Yes it doesn’t do as much damage but with the chargers hits explosion you can stun lock a lot of enemies with it.
I’ve tried so hard to find the same joy you have in the Crusher. I just cannot get it to work as effectively as the T.Hammer or H.Eviscerator. Every time I take it out, it just feels like I should have brought another weapon.
I’m glad it’s working for you but I still think it’s clunky. Maybe this is a skill/use issue, maybe not, but it leaves my Zealot in a weird spot - a spot where he’s not focusing on killing Elites or holding off hordes.
In regards to this:
Is there maybe a stat for the Crusher archetype that changes charge speed? I swear on my life that every time I charge mine, I get slowed to Quell Peril speeds, the charge takes 1+ seconds, and it can be interrupted by melee. Not saying your experience isn’t happening, only that I can’t get this damn zap stick to power up without taking a few whacks from the enemy in the process.
I’d love to use this thing, it’s a great concept, but the charge on the ones I’ve used doesn’t justify having to power it up every single swing just to make the stagger happen reliably (hence my Power Sword suggestion).
No-no, you are slowed for like 1,5 seconds after charging your maul it’s true but when you’re surrounded by hordes and this hordes are lying around on their asses its not a big deal.
I also found something strange. It’s stun refresh for enemies. When you hit someone and he is hard stunned aka almost unconscious trying to get up and if your impact activates weaker stun effect aka flinch, enemy instantly gets up without animation. It threw me off couple of times…
I just cannot deal with 2s of locking myself on place after TH big bang. Kinda too yolo move.
TH and the IC suffer from the same issue: obnoxiously long animations.
With the IC, in the psycharium, mobs respawn before I can even finisht he activation animation and land a hit…
And for the TH, the charge hit should probably still cleave as a normal hit… It stopping on the first target feels super bad when it hits a poxwalker instead of a zerk
I can’t pass judgment on Crusher since I haven’t played enough with it yet (so far it feels pretty bad). What I don’t get is if they clearly have the tech for it why don’t the TH have the same AoE suppression effect? It would make it an actually good weapon and the self-stun wouldn’t feel so ridiculous when using the special especially when you “miss” the intended target.
It doesn’t stop you dodge sliding, which is how I’ve been circumventing that. I do think the movement slowdown on charge is egregious though. Also once you get it going it’s stupid safe. I can literally charge → heavy overhead a crusher in the middle of a dense horde on repeat and nothing can get up and reach me before the next explosion goes off. It’s like reverse Thunder hammer, once you start the charge attacks nothing in melee can touch you (worth noting AoE size scale with the power charge stat or whatever it’s called). It’s a bit dull to just charge → light/heavy attack over and over but it’s unquestionably ridiculously safe and absurd CC. Oh the charge attacks also have a suppression affect in a significantly bigger radius than the actual blast. Just tonight I was standing in a dense group of gunners and everything in the vicinity was being constantly suppressed.
If you’re not just spamming charge for control, the better horde combo is light->heavy->light->light repeat. 3/4 hits in that combo are straight horizontals, can’t ask for much better horde angles than that.
To completely deny every melee enemy horde and elite alike from entering a zone. Also to completely bully Ogryn elites regardless of how many enemies are around them. It can hold a doorway against basically any number of elites indefinitely. Can’t think of any other weapon that comes close in control.