Thunder Hammer needs shortened/no recoil on special attack

[videogame]

Hello, so I understand that the fast weapon swap was a bug for the Thammer to avoid the recoil upon using the special attack, and as developers its your job to fix bugs in your game to polish the game etc. Very understandable and thank you for fixing bugs in this game, we appreciate this.

Before I continue talking about how this was a negative change, I will illustrate how the bug functioned, and what this bug enabled for the Thammer. So upon using the special function for the Thammer and landing a special attack with the weapon, you will enter a state where your movement speed is greatly reduced, and you have no ability to block, dodge, or attack for either 2 seconds or 3 seconds depending on if you performed a light special or a heavy special respectively. This time of no inputs after performing the special attack has been called recoil.

This state of no inputs however can be nullified if during any time of the recoil phase one would either reequip the Thammer or swap to any other weapon or item, thus allowing for full speed movement, blocks, dodging, attacking etc.

So now that i’ve gone over the mechanics of how recoil works and the bug that nullified it, I would like to speak of how this bug put the Thammer in a much better situation then it is now currently after the bug fix. In the following text I will be talking about the Crucis (the first Thammer released) however some of the things mentioned may apply to the Ironhelm as well.

The Thammer has downsides and needs skill to utilize in a fashion that benefits the team. The hammer has poor crowd clearing ability and can be overwhelmed in situations where other zealot weapons would have no problem in. It has the ability to knock multiple opponents around but the actual cleaving damage is very poor (max damage for cleave is 3 targets, after that other enemies are knocked back with no damage received), expect to kill one trash mob every heavy swing, maybe 2 depending on blessings and previous damage. This makes for a large investment of time to kill 1-2 trash mobs every heavy swing. The Thammer must play defensively in a horde scenario, often conceding ground to gain breathing room depending on the density of trash. A Heavy sword would be a much better decision in this regard.

Along with this the Thammer has poor sprint stamina consumption and sprint speed, making you slow and forcing you to use sliding to consume stamina more efficiently, as well as often sacrificing a curio slot for more stamina. The actual light and heavy attacks are noting to write home about either. Their impact damage is good, however the actual damage is middling at best. An axe would perform much better in this arena.

The special attack often gets caught on noble bodyguards (poxwalkers, groaners, the usual trash mobs) meaning you have to understand and manipulate the way you attack with the Thammer, sometimes even jumping into mixed hordes to get the headshot you need to take down a priority target and to avoid the trash that would get in the way of your swing. This takes skill and understanding of the weapon to properly utilize, unlike some of the other weapons where you mash mouse 1 all day. (please note i am not disrespecting personal skill of the game if you use Zealots other weapons, I just hope you appreciate the Thammer takes more understanding to utilize in a way that does not hinder your team)

However anybody who uses and enjoys the Thammers does not use it for these functions however, we use it to blow up crushers, slay Pogryns and show demonhosts the light of big E. We use it because it is a fun and because we understand how to nullify the large weaknesses it has (crowd clearing, the stamina issues and the potential difficultly of landing a proper special attack). And we use it because it looks bad ass.

So now with the understanding of the weaknesses of the weapon and the many downsides to running it versus the large arsenal of Zealots other candidate weapons, I think you may start to see an understanding of why the special attack should be something, well, special.

The fixing of this bug is detrimental to the Thammer. The recoil takes away all input from the player for 2-3 seconds. In a game like this that is a death sentence. You no longer can contribute to taking out hostiles in an active fashion, or properly in a mixed horde. Frankly the idea that we’re punished if we use the special attack with the Thammer against more then 2 ragers makes me very sad.

With this recoil, diving on a pack of reapers is very deadly. No ability to dodge for 2-3 seconds while in this scenario, which was previously manageable, is now a death sentence. You also cannot properly 1v1 a Pogryn anymore and use your special attack. The recoil is too long and you will be punished by Pogryns attacks due to no ability to dodge or block. In damnation Hi-int this makes the Thammer extremely punishing to use, as opposed to the much better and safer choices available.

With this bug fix, in order to use the Thammer special attack, you must make sure of these things

1. No ranged hostiles in the vicinity or that have line of sight
2. The opponent you are special attacking is alone and isolated
3. No melee hostiles will be able to approch you in the 2-3 seconds of recoil
4. No specials are around to take advantage of your situation (trapper, dog, mutant, etc.)
5. I know i just mentioned specials but snipers are very punishing with this cooldown, as it is uncommon for a previously unseen sniper to appear and capitalize on your recoil state

The Thammer is now in a state of severe defensive play, which to me feels like the antithesis of what and who the Zealot is (this is not to say the Zealot should dive every triple gunner patrol they see, but you understand my point). This class is the premiere melee class, and it can easily be argued that even with this bug existing the Thammer floated in the middle of the pool of Zealot weapons. Now it is in a very sad state.

Again though, I understand the idea that this was a bug, and it should be fixed. This is how it is viewed from a game development standpoint. That being said however the bug made the weapon fun and dynamic for the people who used this, and allowed the let the weapon rise from unfortunate mediocrity.

With this information presented I think people can understand my viewpoint that the recoil should be severely shortened or completely removed. From a game polish standpoint the recoil being absent might not be viable. Lets say .25 seconds of recoil is acceptable.

In closing (or TLDR) I feel with many of the weapon disadvantages of the Thammer, and due to the weapon competition it has, it needs something special and unique. The fixing of this bug removes one of the biggest redeeming features of the weapon and makes it extremely situational, thus the recoil should be removed or changed to .25 seconds.

[coolcab]

@videogame

please note i am not disrespecting personal skill of the game if you use Zealots other weapons, I just hope you appreciate the Thammer takes more understanding to utilize in a way that does not hinder your team

as someone who more or less exclusively plays the much more mechanically simple weapons, i still generally think there is a place for more technical choices like the prenerf thammer. like it’s not for me but frankly that’s fine, games are better when they give lots of different options to facilitate lots of different playstyles (in my opinion). the nerf made that playstyle much more difficult - when it’s already the difficult choice.

devs should always be careful when they intend to squash a bug and instead issue a nerf. everything breaks someone’s workflow and animation cancels are a huge part of many other weapons in this game. thammer was always an extremely niche technical build, it for sure was never meta or dominant or anything like that. as such breaking some of the kit will make the item underperform, if that part of the kit was on purpose or not. just like the antax fix that got revered really but on a much less widely used/appreciated item. misstep, imo.

[Sarumane]

The irony is that even without the recoil the TH would likely be a meme. Melee cc is just not worth a whole lot in this game and melee elites not numerous enough for the special to be busted. The lack of mobility and crowd clear is such a drastic downside in comparison it’s not even funny.

Honestly just make the recoil block-cancelable and be done with it. Then it’s still a meme but at least not a complete safety hazard.

[Edax]

Meanwhile cancels that exist in the game:

1. Infinite block cancel to tanking anything which is not an unblockable attack including DH
2. Block cancel
3. Q-Q cancel for every freaking weapon in the game
4. Sprint reload cancel
5. Quell cancel for staff where people abuse macroses for machine gunning primary/secondary attacks
   And so on. But no, it’s a Thunder Hammer is problem. I get where they come from, thinking that new TH would benefit from it, but hilariously it’s not. Because with power buffs(you want power buffs o hammer) it’s just cleave through a lot of priority targets and do nothing. I don’t mind cancel is gone, but give us options to work with. There shouldn’t be recoil at all or very minimal.
   Now weapon just fall behind even more in niche and doesn’t make sense to take it over fast and broken weapons like antax or heavy sword. Just take it with flamer and any game trivialized to lvl where you can take a cup of tea and watch film while holding LMB.

[Manacraft]

I’ll be honest, thunder hammer is far and away my favorite weapon in Darktide. But it’s much more of a liability to use with the animation cancel gone. Which is not all bad by the way, I actually agree that animation cancelling is a completely unnecessary step that quite frankly shouldn’t exist in the first place. But the real problem was never the animation cancelling, it was the animation itself.

After a few test games on damnation with my Crusis hammer, no cancelling results in only using the power-up ability when I have a high degree of confidence that I can get away with it. You can say that’s a good thing of course, it’s a matter of skill to be able to recognize those situations so you can make the correct play. That’s all well and good, but if that’s the case, then those situations are simply too few and far between to make the hammer worth running.

Bottom line is that the recoil animation has got to go. It’s entirely unnecessary. It’s not as though those of us who used the animation cancelling “tech” pre-patch became OP by doing so.

[Osseric]

Took the only melee weapon I enjoyed on the zealot and made it extremely aggravating to use. Animation should not be a thing and the cancel is what made the weapon bearable. It honestly feels like Fatshark doesn’t have a QA department and go looking for issues where noone was asking for a “fix”.

[alsozara]

Great write up OP, strongly agree with all of it. Ideally the recoil animation is cut down to a fraction of a second or removed entirely.

If FS isn’t fond of that idea I have another suggestion that would be acceptable to play with. Instead of being an animation lock that prevents you doing most actions, the recoil could instead be a 2-3 second cooldown period where you cannot activate the special again, but all other normal actions are allowed. This way they could still limit how quickly you can chain special actions without making it unnecessarily dangerous to use the special under pressure. I would find that an OK middle ground.