I love the thunder hammer. It’s an awesome weapon which is unfortunately let down by a few issues. I’m listing them here so it can hopefully get some love in the future.
Hammer charged attack occasionally does no damage.
This is a bug which really hurts and occasionally results in a players untimely death. The sound plays, the self stagger from impact happens, 0 damage is done. Unfortunately I do not know how to repeat this bug but I suspect it has something to do with movement and lag.
Vulnerability after hammer swing is painful.
I understand there needs to be some downside to this weapon but currently there is too much. It’s already slow with bad cleave damage and low mobility. It doesn’t need to be impossible to use a charged hit in a pack too. In order to fix this I propose picking one of these 3 suggestions:
a) Deliver a small aoe stun on hit. I’m talking a fraction of the size of the crusher aoe. We don’t want it to do the same job. This would allow us to hit something in a pack without always immediately taking a hit for it.
b) Let the hammer pierce 1 poxwalker level enemy. This would let us actually get our swing on to the target we want to hit without making it a fully cleaving weapon. We’d still be punished for using it in a pack, but at least we could hit the right target.
c) Remove the self stagger entirely. Probably my least favorite fix as I feel the self stagger makes the weapon feel more impactful. But it would solve the issue and probably make players that hate movement impairment rage less.
Hammer kills could feel more impactful.
The blue glow circle definitely looks awesome on targets that are still standing. However when we kill something let us REALLY kill it. Turn the part we hit into paste. Blow a giant chunk of their body out the back. You get the picture.
Thank you for listening. I was really impressed with how much feedback was taken on board during the beta and I hope this process continues for the future.
I don’t think you should be punished for using it in a pack when things like power swords and brutal momentum axes exist. While I think it would be better overall if the charged heavy was an overhead so you could actually target the enemy you want, I think if they don’t even do that at the very least you should be able to cleave through more than 1 enemy, especially since enemies you cleave through after the first one take massively resuced damage.
fatshark wants you to abuse that bug.
you know the one.
Also ghosthit is pretty common, it’s just extra obvious on the trashhammer.
Pretty ironic they have hit effect for boltgun of enemy exploding but you don’t get to see it with a hammer hit. Just like how you have executioner’s sword headshot sound effect that isn’t applied to Warpick(the #1 headshot damage in game iirc) in VT2.
The best way to use trashhammer is to not use it; if you have to equip it as melee weapon, use autopistol to kill most enemies (it does the job way faster especially when against ragers/anything maniac, which is a lot of specials). You realistically only need trashhammer for doing monster/unyielding damage(still way safer with autopistol and often faster if you’re on cooldown). If you need to blow an ult to kill crusher you can just spray at it with autopistol for ~1k dps without +%carapace perk.
As for feedback from beta, considering chainsword(one of the most iconic 40k weapon being such garbage) - not much was taken.
I tried one yesterday, 378, fully upgraded, with thrust 3 blessing, still not good.
Without charge it’s just meh, poor mobility, mediocre dmg, ok CC but stops when you hit elite, so you can’t cleave through real horde on damnation.
The charged attack is useless most of the time due to this horribly long backswing and 0 penetration. In practice it’s only good against Mutant and Nurgle Beast.
So… No.
btw power maul (crusher) is a much better weapon and actually feels impactful.
I will simply link to my post here and call it a day. I originally agreed with OP that removing impact stun would make hammer feel less impactful. I don’t agree with either past-me or OP. Making enemies blow up when killed would make it impactful. The rest is here.
This thread has a lot of valuable feedback about the thunder hammer, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to chime in.
The issues I have with it are:
1)ratio of speed of attacks to cleave and damage dealt is below acceptable.
2) the special weapon activation’s damage/time to cleave ratio.
3) armor penetration/cleave-through is far too low.
Very little with the weapon needs to change if just one variable in each equation is buffed with the exception of the third problem which needs be raised period.
cont: If I can spam heavy attacks fast enough to stagger trash on either side of a special I can’t cleave through, then I can effectively CC and be helpful to the team. Or, if I can cleave through armored guys to at the very least stagger trash (even without damaging them) on the other side of the specials, then I can be fit for a purpose. If I can cleave through the trash and deal damage to the special, then I can work towards killing it while CC’ing the half of the horde I swung through, and still be somewhat effective. – I feel I’ve explained this point enough.
Being relegated to zero cleave with special weapon activation kind of speaks for itself; having a pox walker take the hit designed for a rager to then get shredded by the rager due to the stun happens far too often to be viable. Either stun has to go so I can dance and fight or the cleave needs to remain on the weapon attack.
The VT1 and 2 hammer had the basic function of the 2h hammer done right; high armor pen vertical light attacks with no cleave and moderate stagger, and low armor pen high stagger and cleave heavy attacks. The Darktide hammer has below average armor pen light attacks with no cleave and no stagger, and abysmally low armor pen heavy attacks with no cleave vs armor and high stagger. With the weapon being a slow attacking weapon that doesn’t allow for dodges to come out fast and long, it’s simply not viable.
Rn, the knife, heavy eviscerator, heavy swords are all pretty good for the zealot and I’d like to see the thunder hammer reach parity with those. None of them are near OP, but just good-- some with blessing combos are much better than others and some have bugs still, but none of them need changes to their core mechanics.
I actually think the thunder hammer isn’t that far from being a good weapon. It already has the potential to do very well against armored targets, which is obviously its intended niche. It just needs a few functional improvements to help leverage that power. What’s holding it back IMHO is primarily 1) the completely unnecessary recoil animation after a charged hit and 2) an inability to consistently land charged hits in mixed groups. The first is easy enough to fix, just remove it. You can play around it anyway by re-selecting the weapon, which is just a silly extra step that shouldn’t exist. The second is where it gets interesting. There are several potential candidate solutions (add a small AoE, change the move set, etc), but whichever way you go it needs to be addressed.
I’m absolutely fine with the thunder hammer’s rather low-end performance against hordes though. It should be relatively cumbersome to deal with horders of poxwalkers when you receive the best armor busting potential in return. But it needs to be possible to land those big armor-busting hits consistently in order for them to be worth something. Potential isn’t enough if it doesn’t translate into value in practice.
Thunderhammer also really needs buffed block cost. It takes 50% more stamina to block than a tactical axe, which is absurd especially considering the hammer has the defense stat.
Yea I would love if the special heavy could cleave through at least 1 chaff enemy, having some random small guy walking through the Ogryn I intend to it tank the Thammer instead just feels bad.
If there wasn’t the animation freeze and movement slow down (the “stun”) with the special weapon property connecting to a target it wouldn’t be nearly as punishing… then in theory you could still dodge and defend yourself afterwards
There are only 2 things I’d really like to see done with T Hammer.
Remove self stun (we all be cancelling it anyway, take out the middle man).
Increase speed and damage of the light attacks. This would allow you to weave light attacks into your combos where safe to increase trash clear speed as the cost of control. Currently the only reason I have to use light attack is with special active to snipe a Rager or something out of a group.
T Hammer is a good weapon that can be used to great effect currently, it mostly suffers from having borderline useless light attacks.
Only other thing that might be nice is significantly less damage drop-off between the first and second target of the heavy cleave. Being able to kill 2 poxwalkers with a heavy swing with slaughterer stacks active and maybe a part charge with Thrust would be a neat break point to have. With my suggested light attack buff though this wouldn’t really be necessary.
In my last damnation game zealot oneshot plague ogryn with th, after me and other psyker with lacerations popped him once xD, that was fun. Does lacerations debuff stack from different psykers? Bcuz it certainly feels like it does…
The lights realllyyyy do need help. I think that better damage cleave should be base though, and the blessings help it further. They could/should remove stagger to try and balance it, bc tbh the current stagger is also anti-helpful considering it throws everything on the ground and forces you to use the shite light attacks to clean up. I think if people want the sort of stagger to throw everything on the floor, the blessings could do that too.
So I mentioned some recent experiences that justify my position and I’d like to provide them here:
From 4:10 to 9:10 or so you can see all of the problems the Thunder Hammer has. Don’t feel obliged to watch the whole thing unless it amuses you. I record whole games for my own analysis and amusement, not to be a youtuber.
I am stuck soloing a mixed, mostly heavily armored, horde. This is where the hammer should excel. Instead its a huge drawback. Any axe would have been better in my estimation, though admittedly I don’t use axes much. Look how long this takes and how few powered attacks I can safely do.
Yeah. The high stagger on heavies is not so helpful because the Zealot already has a dedicated feat to improve it, it’s got blessings to improve it, and even a simple +Power blessing will sufficiently improve stagger to topple any enemy.
But even then, the TH’s high stagger isn’t actually decent ! Because in difficult situations where it should shine, like against a mixed horde with a Crusher or Bulwark thrown in, the heavies will just stop dead against carapace and do very little damage.
The best thing to do here is to proceed as you usually do with other lighter, more agile weapons : run away, pop ult, and unload into carapace armor with an Autogun or Bolter.
They really need to import the shove-attack profile from vermintide2. I’m honestly baffled that they pretty much copy pasted the weapon from the previous game but somehow left the good parts out of it.
Light attacks need help, in general i hate how many weapons in darktide compared to vermintide2 seem to have extremely statted heavy attacks ,leaving light attacks in many cases in a odd spot.
Self stun needs to be removed from the active ability and i personally will never use this weapon until it is removed (i really cant be arsed to cancel this crap).
The active ability would also really benefit from slight aoe stagger when you bonk something. No need to be as extreme as crusher/pmaul.
I also don’t think in a game where many weapons seem to kill multiple enemies in a single swing (lol powersword) 2 target damaging cleave is really enough. I would personally love to see this in 3-4. I personally don’t belive “high” stagger alone justifies it to be so low.
I agree with the rest of what you said but this part is silly and over the top. Self stun removal is enough to make it doable to get special attacks off under almost any circumstance with sufficient skill. Having weapons with a big skill curve is fun, it still has the best single target damage in the game, it shouldn’t be made easier than what’s already been suggested to use that damage to its full potential.
