Thunder hammer / crusher balance

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

These weapons are borderline unusable in 5 + difficulties:
→ you have two dodges: This means if there is more than one mutant, you are grabbed (you’ll need one dodge just to make sure you can actually dodge the mutant if youre fighting anything else).

→ you sprint slower than a slug, your stamina dissapears like youre sprinting on mount everest: This means youre always behind on your team, with the “tank weapons”.
The amount of times ive told my team “hey guys wait up, im using thunder hammer i dont have mobility” is sad, frankly.

Meanwhile they do less damage per hit than just a combat axe, while swinging way slower.

Against hordes: Sure, they cleave and stagger, but theyre also so slow you will take chip damage if youre not smacking the horde through a doorframe. Meanwhile, theres also weapons like devils claw or power sword that just cleave and kill waaaaaay better, with more movement speed, a moveset that allows you to take hordes without taking chip damage and double the dodges available to you.

Against troopers: By far the most deadly enemy at the moment is just anything with a gun, the fact that these two weapons take 2-3 light attacks to kill troopers (one light attack on combat axe btw) while also having such low mobility (you need mobility to weave through troopers without just getting shot to death) makes these weapons the worst a zealot has to tie down shooters.

Against big bois:
On thunder hammer specifically: the fact that it doesnt stagger in an aoe and leaves you open for so long means you cant even use it against melee elites most of the time… And then theres so many times when a random poxwalker goes “get down mr president” right before thunder hammer smacks the crusher-> crusher smacks you instead of getting smacked.

Crusher is kinda fun vs big bois … in a big staggerstick kind of way? The weapon special feels good but the overall dps is way too low to make it actually fun in a good way.

Theyre both fun weapons, but theyre just very very very bad atm.

suggestion: 3 dodges, more damage on light hits, slightly faster heavy hits and make the thunder hammer either be able to block/dodge faster after weapon special or give it a a small aoe stagger (comparable to but much less than the crusher)

2

well your going to see various weapons skills even classes drop off as you go to the extremes , even to this day they never got it so all class’s weapons were welcome in cata, i really wouldnt expect it to happen here either, thast just something that happens on those fringes.

you cant use a decent mobility ranged weapon?

id agree the thunder hammer heavy attack is just a smidge too slow to be reliable.

compare anything to the power sword its going to look weak :wink: im surprised to hear the ctachan is that good at killing though have to revisit that one.

on malice you one shot those, i thought you did on heresy to?

i think the thunder hammer needs some sort of smart targeting , if your aiming at a special or elite it should hit them not a random poxwalker. it could also do with an ae stun like the new power weps got as it stuns us to.

the dodge thing doesnt bother me i so rarely dodge but sure 3 isnt excessive. not sure on the extra damage , but definitely agree with the need for slight improvement on heavy attack speed and either some stagger to them or the removal of it to us. its very awkward to use without getting clobbered as it is.

barely used the the maul have to reserve judgement on that

3

the problem is on difficulty 5+ you will see a combination of trapper+ mutant(s) + dog(s) very very very often, while in a horde: two dodges at those moments allow you to dodge on or two of them (if youre not fighting a horde that can surround you at the time) and then you just …pray, skill matters not at all any more.

As for the damage of the thunder hammer: yes it is impressive in the meat grinder, but on higher difficulties the downsides of the weapon special are just too bad, this simply isnt the type of game where you can stand still for 1 second.

as for mobility on ranged weapons: I tried dude, the stub revolver, lasgun and autopistol are all really, really, REALLY bad at killing shootieboys, which are your biggest threat already on zealot and especially so when wielding these slow weapons.

basicly; instead of being the stabilising force for my team, the one who saves them, when playing with these weapons you are the one who needs handholding and saving, all so you can kill a single melee elite slightly faster than with combat axe/eviscerator/tactical axe/chainsword/chainaxe, provided there is literally nothing else on your screen, its the definition of “win harder and lose more often” at the moment.

4

The Zealot Crusher weapon seems like its intended to be pure CC. If you power it up and immediately light attack and just repeat that, the explosions knock everyone over repeatedly. You can cancel the activate animation with light attack so its quite fast keeping an entire group of ragers and ogryns stumbling about. It doesnt do great damage but it does lock them down for your allies

2 Likes
5

well you are always going to run into issues at the fringe, i think at this point some team playmight be essential.

well we do all agree it needs some buffs

see that puzzles me, Vermintide was that type of game really wouldnt say that was true in this game , infact id say the opposite the less you dodge teh more manageable combat becomes. well with weapons like this anyway, maybe the super fast ones its different but the volume of clicking puts me off those so dunno :wink:

well what range are you using? imma go ahead and guess it does have mobility on it as and i hadnt realised this myself but every zeal ranged weapon does. even the bolter and flamer , which really surprised me

well we do agree at the core the weapon needs a few tweaks.