As another one of the people asking for a bit of love for the hammer, I agree with everything you say apart from wanting the special to do some AOE. I feel like the special is in a good spot at the moment and just needs a bit of tweaking but the complete neautering of the lights really make no sense to me.
If the combat designers are going to take the moveset of the 2h hammer from VT2 (one of the most balanced and rarely buffed/nerfed weapon in the game), then why try and reinvent the indentity of it by removing its main draw where it can pick elites out of the crowd and cronch them.
It just feels bad and makes no sense to me. I did some testing with thunder hammer and MkV axe and the special of the axe, which is a stab with the axe hilt, does 5 times more damage than the 2H hammer light to carapace (11 vs 2 damage). Thatās just silly.
For sure it was made that way on purpose. The bad thing is though that the special ability to nuke Monstrosities and specials (except for the carapace armored ones) is not what your melee weapon is for, unless you run a flamer with it I guess, but that is a different bag of worms, you canāt really use that in a pickle if you get surrounded and you are basically useless against the most important enemies that stay long range.
Itās so outweighted by the fact that you canāt effectively deal with a horde, or the specials you are supposed to nuke if they are inside a horde, so bad, that you canāt survive at Heresy or above. The time it takes to nuke something (you even canāt when there are more enemies around), you making yourself so vulnerable that you will get hit like 80% time, get staggered and miss makes it really really bad. Monstrosities are not that big of an issue anyway and all the things thunder hammer does, can be done with a bolter in far safer and more reliable way. Heck swinging the eviscerator at the armored enemies is way more safe and probably takes the same amount of time anyway, especially since you can rev it up and swing almost immediately.
My main issue is the poor cleave and no chance of hitting the target with the special if they come with a horde. That means you effectively donāt have a wave clear or crowd control (compared to evis or axes) and the OP special is basically useless since you canāt hit the target most of the time. Meanwhile you can switch to bolter and nuke anything you see. And saving a weapon just for monstrosities is really bad if you canāt contribute otherwise.
Just want to leave my feedback on this topic and I agree with the OP.
Thunder hammer feels very underpowered, the damage is too low and especially the special it done wrong. It leaves you exposed for a long period of time without having an aoe stagger. The heavy swing in particular just feels so underwhelmingā¦ I was expecting it to blow up in an aoe and knock people back. As it stands I canāt ever use it in hordes and god forbid you charge a heavy and it hits something that came running in other than your main target and then you just take damage for no reasonā¦
Also agreeing that the thunder hammer needs a buff for basically all of the reasons mentioned in this thread. Increasing the cleave amount on heavies and push attack, and increasing the damage/AP of the lights would fix it. Weapon special is optional change depending on how risky the devs want it to be. People just will or wont use that function as long as the rest is good
Just want to say I agree with this. Currently running the eviscerator and itās way better than TH, just more viable in far more situations. TH is pretty much only for killing elites/specialists. Would be good if you could use lights to stagger a bunch of poxers or something like that. Just give it a bit of a broader useā¦
The problem is that they took Vermintide 2ās hammer and gave it a skin and a special button, a thunder hammer is a very different weapon and darktide is a different game.
Thunderhammer light attacks should be horizontal and the heavy should be a huge, slow overhead swing.
All powered attacks should do aoe damage, but the weapon should have a delay before swinging again to balance the power.
All the thunder hammer needs is a cleave that actually cleaves instead of pushes enemies around, and its special attack to do AoE. It does more than enough damage, it just doesnāt clear as well as it should. Pushing enemies around with a heavy attack feels worse than ripping 3 guys in half with one swing.
No it doesnt deal more than enaugh damage. It cannot even headshot oneshot scab gunman at Malice difficulty. 80 damage, 78 armor pen, 78 first target(the damage related stats). Simple scab gunner lives after being struck with a hammer in the head. In Heresy real fun starts. You need to do 2 headshots to kill any trash mob. And charging heavy every time isā¦ It fells really wrong.
It does ass damage and has ass armor pen. Put it on the shelf until better times come for this weapon.
Also depends on the bonuses and blessings, but I get you. Granted if Iām playing Malice Iām using whatever I want because thatās not a challenge. On Heresy and Damnation Iām typically just spamming the flamer.
Itās baffling. Literally all they had to do was copy the tome + skullsplitterās charged AoE attack and not a soul would complain about the thunder hammer ever again. As it stands, a special attack that deals fair damage but locks you into not one but two animationsāthe initial charging, and the absolutely brutal self-stagger upon hitting a foeāis functionally useless on higher difficulties. The damage it does simply is not worth the inevitable hits youāll take when youāre trapped in a half-second stagger after killing one of the dozen elites in front of you on heresy+ā¦ and thatās assuming you actually even kill an elite instead of the swing getting cockblocked by a single poxwalker.
Light special should be a vertical swing that causes a small AoE explosion on impact with any enemy. Heavy special should be a horizontal swing that cleaves through light enemies and deals high single target damage to the first hit elite, along with a small AoE centered around the point of impact with the elite.
There, thunder hammer is viable. Itās as easy as that.
I agree with those changes, though it honestly might end up a bit too good at that point. Were they to implement all those changes a ~10 second cooldown on the charge might be appropriate.
Iād personally prefer the charge is really impactful, but limited in frequency over being able to use it whenever but feeling bad regardless.
Agreed. I really love to use hammers as my weapon in many different games, if they have one. But the thunder hammer just feels lackluster. Especially the charged attack really needs to do some sort of shock wave to surrounding enemies.
I think making it so itās charged up attacks cleave through trash mobs like normal and it only discharges the powered blast when it hits enemy of a certain size, that way you can actually put that powerful damage where you want it rather than completely nuking a random pox walker that got in the way. This would improve it a lot and get rid of one of the more annoying things about it.
Or if anything the powered up attack should create a concussive force that knocks down all enemies behind the target hit in the direction hit. You know like in DBZ when you see them punch someone in the gut and shockwaves blasts out behind the guy that got hit. SOMETHING LIKE THAT XD
I feel like the animations are fine right now, just like the eviscerator, heavies are for crowds, lights for single enemies standing around.
Hord clearing would become really tedious if you could only light attack them all and it just kept on staggering everything without actually killing it, at least the heavies really knock things around.
The charge attack releasing on the first enemy it hits though is kinda garbo, I agree.
The chainswords all cleave weaker enemies until they hit something hard and then start sawing.
Although from a lore perspective it actually makes perfect sense, it has a capacitor that discharges on the first thing it hits, so maybe it would make more sense to give it an AoE effect like the powermaul?
Overkill damage blasts out in an area, bigger targets absorb the whole impact.
