Thrust: In my opinion, Thrust should be a monstrosity/boss-oriented blessing. The Thunder Hammer should be able to kill a Crusher without needing to dedicate a full weapon slot just for that. That said, I think Thrust should be reworked into something like “Stored Charge”, where holding the special attack button charges up after activation, with the damage bonus scaling the longer you hold (same numbers as current Thrust). The charge is released on impact. This would feel way better and reduce those frustrating moments where your target gets killed mid-charge, giving you more control and reliability in real combat
Self-stun: Please remove it. It makes no sense. The TH should be something you can rely on under pressure, not something that punishes you for using it when it matters most.
Shield break: A critical hit should go through shields. Fury of the Faithful shouldn’t be completely shut down by a single Bulwark standing in the way. Crits should pierce.
Interesting suggestions! I definitely agree that balancing the hammer around thrust seems strange. Many weapons are great generalist weapons and kind of have thrust or uncanny as icing on the cake.
I ran Ironhelm a lot before, but with the current setup it’s even more niche. I’ve had to switch to crucis to reach any meaningful breakpoints.
In meatgrinder, with crucis, I’ll one shot maulers with little set up, but in missions it seems to rarely one shot them without stacking some buffs. Something is up with it for sure.
Some of my favourite changes to date have been to modernise older weapons so they keep up with new features.
Chaxe comes to mind, and TH of course by giving it an alternate heavy post activation. IMO more weapons should have sprint/slide attacks because they feel truly wonderful.
What I would most like to see for TH is an Arbites shockmaul QoL where the alternate is a fluid attack you can combo with. Working this into TH would remove self-stun, and could be balanced around charge time (built-in Thrust for special attack only).
It would be a buff no doubt, so tweak numbers accordingly. Most of all it would just feel karkin’ glorious!!
No but seriously, the most lazy way I can think to make the TH more appealing to its power fantasy is just making it a slower but more powerful version of the Crusher and other blunt weapons such as the Arbites maul.
Basically add more cleave to it so the charged hits don’t get stuck/wasted on the 2hp poxwalker 3m behind you while you try to deal with a boss/carapace. More cleave in general would help with its poor horde clear too, hitting enemies individually in a horde game doesn’t feel good unless your swings are extremely fast and killy or come with a defesive tool like bardin’s hammer and shield weapon in vt2 or arbites maul and shield here, those feel ok for what they represent, but a 2 handed giant powered hammer shouldn’t feel/act the same but worse than that in my opinion.
Also, maybe add a blessing for being always empowered, with a possible downside of being slower swings.
another suggestion, add a special attack/activation/mark that behaves like space marine 2 thunder hammer, you swing at the floor and knocks/staggers/shock everything around in an area, that would help with hordes.
Or don’t change anything about it, but add fire damage on unpowered hits, so it kills hordes/chaff more consistently.
