So the Thunder Hammer does have some good strengths, mainly the fact is has amazing wave clear, staggers like crazy, and is easy to bop heads.
The problem is that the secondary, and most iconic, part of the hammer, which is it’s massive single target damage ability, is nearly impossible to use in most situation for several reasons.
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The target you probably want to hit is surrounded by tons of trash mobs, so the chances of you actually hitting it can become uncertain because trash mobs seem to love crowding around and tanking the hit.
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The charge time is too long. In the 1 or 2 seconds it takes to charge this thing, and then slam it even with a light attack, you’re probably going ot start taking melee hits, or getting shot. You can pre-charge it, but that leads into the problem of sometimes allowing all the trash mobs to get too close which then negates the use of it because you’re going to end up hitting them instead, which leads to the next two problems.
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After you hit something with it, even if it’s your intended target, the recovery time is massive and you can’t cancel the animation into a block, so you’re going to eat 3 to 4 melee hits, which is really bad at Heresy and Damnation. You simply don’t recover in time as a front liner after hitting stuff to make it a good idea to use it when you actually need it.
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The other part that is annoying is that if you’re trying to wait for the opportunity, after charging it up, your window to use it is WAY too small. You can charge it as the enemies are coming, start strafe dodging for that opening, and you’ve lost the charge and now are doing a puny normal hit.
All in all, I really like using the thunder hammer, but the times I get to actually use the actual special attack feels really few and far between, at least in a manner that is effective. I often find myself either hitting the wrong target, or in a long recovery window that gets me stabbed up and losing a lot of health for no reason, only partially mitigated if I can hit my target then dash backwards out of melee range.
It’s also important to note that if you somehow end up hitting the wrong target against a Rager or Mauler, not only do you waste a single target damage attack on a stupid poxwalker, you’ll probably eat a massive hit from the intended target before you can back dash out. It’s really annoying.