Thunder hammer bug?

Posting this in the gameplay section as I am unsure if this is a bug or a design choice but is the thunder hammer supposed to do no damage to carapace on the light attack?

Coming from 1k hours of vermintide 2 with the majority of it as IB using a 2H hammer, this just seems a bit of a nonsensical design decision. If this is indeed intentional then why this change? The 2H hammer from vermintide was near perfect in its moveset in that you have wide sweeping heavies that control hordes and have high stagger but dont do a lot of armour damage and then you have the overhead light to pick off elites and specials within said hordes with its high armour piercing and accurate attacks.

Assuming this is an intentional design decision and not a bug, why? What is the purpose of using the light attacks on the hammer now? Your heavies both sweep and do some armour damage while your lights are slow, single target, and do no damage to carapace. Heavies are better in every way. The lights no longer have their niche to delete specials/elites in mixed hordes.

I have seen some posts suggesting the special charge be made to do more AOE but this doesnt fix the fact the lights are now pointless. Please can we get the 2h hammer from vermintide 2? Either this has been done to push the idea that the power attack should be used to hurt armor or it being a case of not wanting to have a carbon copy of the hammer in vermintide but thats silly when the innovation is to ruin the role the 2h hammer played.

TLDR: Thunder hammer light attacks have no purpose as they deal no damage to carapace. No reason to ever use them over heavies. Please consider reinstating the armour piercing attacks on the light overheads. This would bring me much joy. If it aint broke, dont fix it.

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Agree completely. The V2 hammer was a good allrounder that rewarded play with it once mastered. With the low dodge count, the user had to encompass the entire moveset of Light, Heavy attacks whilst moving, blocking, push-stab and dodging. The v2 hammer was never considered overpowered and received several buffs over the years whilst viewed underpowered.

The original previous closed beta version was a near perfect implementation and extension of the v2 version; the empowered (special atk) being the extension. The design being a high-power strike but with high hit stun to the user, which meant finding the right time to use it when Armoured enemies were in the horde was part of the skill (& importantly fun). If the original version was ‘too strong’. My suggestion here is that there could be a different effect for the lights and heavy swings, lights dealing high penetration damage on armour and the heavy swing having high knock back.

The design philosophy of certain weapons having heavy to clear hordes and lights for single targets exists in over weapons; note intentionally not giving a comparison for fear of another ‘fix’. Every weapon being heavy = armour damage reduces gameplay variety. If the reason for this is to simplify for a more casual approach a fix could be in the training section to change the help text to say weapons move sets vary, etc. Note the V2 armoury had a breakdown for this information.

Testing in the meat grinder, it feels counter-intuitive for a single target attack to do 3 damage to carapace compared to a high cleave attack doing ‘normal’ damage. This completely negates any reason to utilise light attacks in nearly any circumstance. The amended design reduces user agency and engagement (& fun) to ‘heavy attacks go brr’.

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100% behind this.
I played 2h hammer/flamer Bardin, and was really looking forward to doing the same on Zealot. While I absolutely love the flamer, the Thunder Hammer seems underwhelming due to the reasons outlined by you.

It sadly seems that, at this point, eviscerator is just a better overall weapon.

I have played zealot for more than 40 hours. Thunder hammer is definitely the most disappointing weapon. Extremely slow attack speed with terribly low damage make light attacks meaningless.

Special attack is also terrible, u have to bear a very long charging time, even after that i don’t think its damage can be compared to the hammer light attack in vermintide 2.

Honestly it HAS to be a bug. Doing 2-3 damage on a light attack headshot makes absolutely zero sense.

On the other hand, a fully charged heavy attack with the special effect can 1-shot a lot of Ogryn mobs, but still, 1 to 3 damage?

Either it’s a bug, or somebody on the balance team has some kind of neuroticism that compelled them to actually break the weapon into near uselessness.

No cleave at all on the special attack, either?

Doesn’t make any sense.

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Sadly seeing them butchering everything that made Vermintide melee system so good and reading out-of-touch justifications from developers on this forum to some nerfs/changes I am afraid you might be more correct than you think.

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Most likely. I do wonder if the balance team is actually doing high level play. You’d have noticed an issue like that right away. As it is right now the only way to play Zealot in the (likely) intended way on heresy and above is to use a crit knife/tac-axe build.
Which is a shame as many of us were looking forward to the hammer and eviscerator

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I just can’t justify switching from the MkV axe at the moment. Did some testing and posted it on some of the Reddit comments but the axe just out performs the hammer in the majority of scenarios, all while attacking faster.

From what I’ve heard, the thunder hammer wasnt like this in the closed beta so I’m wondering why this decision was made to remove the damage on lights to heavy armour.

Glad to see people are finally getting their hands on this thing and are realizing how dissapointing it really is. Ive posted my opinions on this thing at length elsewhere but yeah the thunder hammer needs help

Yeh first thing I did when I unlocked it earlier in the week was make the post asking if it was a bug or intentional because it doesn’t feel right. As someone who used the 2h hammer as their primary weapon in VT2, I really miss my sweet boy. They’ve abandoned their child.

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2h hammer bros for life!

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Huh I find the opposite. I use light attacks very often to kill hounds, dreg ragers and the untaggable enemies. You are very mobile during the light sequence, barely any slowdown vs regular movement speed.

They can’t be used on carapace armor which is like 3 enemies total at the moment, and only one of those is protected fully by it. But nothing else in the game will 2 shot a crusher, especially not melee. It also drops bullgryn shields in one hit with either attack. And the massive falloff in chain weapon effectiveness on 4/5 is real, this is the best weapon he has. Very much the reason to play Zealot.

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Lights are not pointless currently, it’s just not effective against 1 of the enemies and requires some non-traditional thinking with maulers. It still does damage through flak and unstoppable.

You still have the vertical attack to get weakpoint hits easier, and it still is a faster attack then a heavy.

Would I like to see it get carapace armor piercing? Absolutely. Is the light attack useless as it stands now? Absolutely not.

Vertical special is marginally faster but does far less damage meaning you dont hit important breakpoints and it still locks you in place for 4 seconds meaning its incredibly unsafe. Also noone is saying the light attacks are useless just that they were needlessly nerfed from vermintide 2. I still stand by that they dont do enough damage

Just to clarify, the weapon isnt garbage, but it doesnt feel good to use.

Yeh I was a wee bit dramatic with my statements regarding lights. I understand they have purpose but my main issue is that where you weave in a light, you could also have used a heavy to pretty much the same effect. Yes it a bit slower but you cover more area and cleave.

The weapon just feels too clunky now in my opinion whereas I used the 2H hammer for 90% of my 1000h on vermintide. Always loved the way the wH hammer broke the mold in that lights were the AP and the heavies were for controlling crowds and staggering but with little armour pen. It felt great. I just can’t justify switching off the 1h axe now as it’s faster and does more damage in practically all cases outwith the special bonk.

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I’ve almost always have my hammer in DT as a zealot, because of how rare ogryns are in my game and I’ve been loving it. I also mained the 2h hammer until the changes to stagger in VT2 (where I switched over to my true love in that game, shields), so I’m pretty familiar with how it works in that game.

The only other weapon that I switch to is the chainsword (not the eviserator), and those two weapons carry me through all the content that I’m doing.

I can’t justify switching off to the 1h axe, because of just how bad that weapon deals with hordes. The thunder hammer absolutely can still perform the role it played in VT extremely well by controlling and killing hordes, dealing with most armored with lights, and the additional bonus of having a giant stagger/damage hit with it’s special.

If anything, it’s more versatile in DT then it is in VT2, because of how fast it can tear down a monster by itself. That was always the weakness of the 2h hammer, was that it wasn’t as good for monsters as it was for everything else. Now that’s not the case for the thunder hammer.

On the other hand though, it could just be different strokes for different folks, because I’m very much not on the eviserator hype train, despite trying very hard to make it work for me. Keep on reading people gushing over it and it performs worse for me then the thunder hammer regularly.

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Oh yeh im the same with regards to the evicerator. I don’t get the hype around it. I just couldn’t make it work. I’ve fallen in love with the 1H axe because I found one with a trait on it that ignores enemy mass on headshot kill for 3s, basically removing all negatives from the weapon. It’s OP as hell.

I’ve just played a couple more games with the thunder and while I do like it, it just feels off a bit and a bit clunky. I think the changes to dodging in the most recent patch has hurt it quite a lot.

I’d like to see a balance pass on it at some point before I switch to it again but it just feels weird the lights doing feck all to carapace. Just give me a smidge of damage ;).

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I think the problem that is happening is that the stats and perks are all over the place. No point in using a hammer if it does jack all cleave or damage but has great mobility.

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The thunder hammer is just done wrong in various levels. It’s very underpowered and some decisions like the one you state make no sense.
That + the fact that you have a large period of time where you are staggered after using the special that only hits a SINGLE target… it’s just horrible and there’s no real reason to use the weapon as it stands.

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