Fatshark, please buff the thunder hammer. It’s such a fun and iconic 40k weapon. Why does it always need to lag behind most other weapons? It doesn’t have to be the best, but why can’t it ever be good?
I know it’s usable, I know you can make it work with skill and experience. I make it work all the time. But it feels more like a handicap than a holy blessing from the God Emperor.
It sacrifices so much in order to be good at killing bosses. It’s so slow, its base stats and non-activated damage are so lame, that it just doesn’t feel worth it. Many other weapons do great boss damage too, while not feeling like gimmicks or handicaps!
I’ve said this in another thread, but it feels like Fatshark applies stricter balance principles to some weapons than it does to others - the thunder hammer is one of the best examples of this. It’s like some dev is SO worried that it will become OP if they’re not careful. Listen - it’s not gonna be OP, it has never been OP, lots of other things are already OP. Just let it be good already. It has earned it at this point.
I’ve asked the same question for years and I can summarize the answers I received.
Lore and Canon is less important than Balance.
Balance makes every weapon equally strong.
However, nobody will ever acknowledge to you that weapons with the Finesse attribute have a significant advantage by design, which means Fatshark game designers favor small and fast weapons over large and slower ones.
The Thunder Hammer is outclassed in practically every way by the Relic Blade. It’s always been middling, doubly true for the Ironhelm. They’re not unusable but certainly not amazing. I hope they do something more in depth with them someday, whether through stats or ideally some sort of rework.
It’s too weighted on ST damage. Going against more than 1 elite enemy at a time just puts you at a disadvantage compared to virtually any other melee weapon.
Redditors will be very upset they can’t post Daemonhost one shots if it ever gets changed.
Thunder Hammer requires learning the skill to use it against hordes, and picking talents that make it shine.
Going with Shroudfield Stealth or Fury Of The Faithful Fanatic choices into Martyrdom seem to help with the increased damage and uptime for Zealot that takes chip damage if the momentum of swinging the T Hammer is disrupted or whatnot
If you happen to be teamed up with players that are doing well with Crowd Control, you have a good opportunity to be bonking all the Elites and Bosses as well
i think at this point it needs a complete overhaul , its a release weapon with release chains and mechanics (yeah i know they tweaked the activation)
but of course so many weapons int eh same boat and if we need a complete rewaork of weapons that could be tied in with a total overhaul of enemies and us , sort the whack power balance out
If they could/would change thrust just for THammer (or everything, idc) to actually activate faster with the abundant attack speed available in the tree, it would go a very long way. It’s anemic and stupid as all hell it gets nothing and takes the same amount of time regardless.
It was desighned initially to work with zealot’s talent Punishment, that gave 25%x5 stagger strength. With this on realease it was okay crowd contol weapon with function to bonk monsters.
At base currently TH unable to stop berserker’s combo. Toghether with zero damage to maniacs, every pack of berserkers is a death sentence to TH carrier.
Stagger talents currently barely let you fight berserkers on auric, not help at all on havoc. Taking stagger in talents leave you without damage reduction or damage.
You also can take Hammerblow blessing. Now you literally do zero damage on top of already given problems, becasue someone desighned recent rework that TH must have Slaughterer to fight trash mobs without need of hit every single bruiser several times.
I mean…you’re not wrong. If all the other weapons were balanced appropriately, using the same balance principles that have been applied to the thunder hammer, I think that would be ideal. I just don’t believe that will ever happen. What you’re proposing would require some serious nerfs to very popular weapons, and I think the current culture surrounding games like this is very anti-nerf (HD2, anyone?). But in a perfect world I agree that this would be a great solution.
While I’m sure it’ll never be perfect, I do believe they could make the thunder hammer feel better without a complete overhaul. I’m not asking for perfect. I think they could tweak its impact/stagger and non-activated damage profile to make it feel less bad with relatively minimal fuss. If its inherent damage was better, maybe I’d feel like I could sacrifice a damage blessing for an impact blessing. Or you could introduce a new mark that works differently, idk.
I get that launch weapons are often held back by mechanisms that are now outdated, but look at the eviscerator - they’ve done pretty well with that one, all things considered. It has had tons of uplift from its pitiful state a few years ago. It’s definitely better than the thunder hammer right now, imo. It can be done.
The biggest problems with thunder hammer are its unpowered state and the self-stun after special attack. Self-stun in particular makes no sense. To my knowledge, this mechanic only exists on thunder hammer and just makes the weapon feel terrible. Thunder hammer is already a clunky weapon to use with poor cleave and poor damage outside of the special attach, and the stun means you can’t even play aggressively as a Zealot since using a special attack in a mixed/elite horde just leaves you defenseless. Thunder hammer should be useable outside of the special attack as well, since unpowered it has arguably one of the worst melee damage profiles in the game. Unpowered damage needs to be brought up so you can at least deal with hordes and special damage needs a slight bump so thrust is not a must take to hit breakpoints on any elite in higher difficulties. Alternatively, bring down thunder hammer’s peak damage on special attack and increase the activated uptime like power sword so the power is spread out and not so all or nothing.
I’m ok with thunder hammer being an “all-or-nothing” weapon, that seems kind of like its vibe to me. Right now it’s just a lot less “all” and a lot more “nothing”. I think buffing its unpowered damage and impact as well as reducing its self-stun is the path of least resistance.
I think the Thunder Hammer needs to absolutely one shot a Crusher at base with an empowered heavy to the skull and a half decent build.
Instead you have to stack like four different buffs to barely achieve the same effect and still suffer worse than some Dueling Sword nitwit who can achieve far better performance for a fraction of the effort or risk.
If TH is meant to be a powerful yet risky weapon, let it be powerful. If it’s not, remove the risk.
it has its use-case. I like to delete big things every so often, and I use the thunder hammer for that. It’s not as performative in other areas, but that’s the tradeoff. It can oneshot trash mobs with lights now, which was the really annoying thing that it couldn’t do before. I’d say it’s in a decent spot balance-wise.
Yes, all high mobility weapons are better and will always be unless they heavily nerf carapace/unyielding damage on dagger/duelling.
It’s still a great weapon if you know how to use it.
Self stun has been greatly reduced (2023 flashbacks here),
You can literally 1 shot all h40 bosses except twins,
Anti horde combo is slow, but you’re not supposed to clear the horde with this weapon (just kill some and focus on bosses/crushers/bulwarks/reapers/ragers/disablers/specials),
It 1 shots h40 rotten armor crushers,
Compared to Evis, you aren’t stuck in the special animation, you can just bonk and go out which is much much safer,
Heavy attacks do the same damage single target damage as light attacks in normal combo (without activation ofc) but are much slower, use light attacks more often.
It doesn’t need a rework, it’s the op stuff that needs nerfs.
Here’s a scoreboard of my yesterday’s rotten+purple h40.
