Just to play devil’s advocate here for a moment, some of these are really non-issues, or at least should be if you play the weapon right. Weapon swapping can mitigate low mobility, high stamina use, etc. The hammer does NOT need more cleave, and the slow attack speed is a feature, not a bug (and less of a problem nowadays with the new keystones). Oh, and it’s probably a good thing that no one else can hear your hammer, the soundscape is kinda crowded already.
But yeah… it could use some more oomph.
I honestly wouldn’t mind if the thunder hammer lost a bit of its damage vs unyielding in exchange for a buff to damage vs carapace - and a few other select categories as well (the damage you deal to a dreg rager with an unpowered heavy is downright pitiful). Hyperspecialization isn’t healthy for the game anyways. The hammer would be better served giving up a bit (emphasis on A BIT) of power in the boss killing niche and trading it in for some (targeted) buffs elsewhere.
Oh, and as for the knife, uncanny strike is a ridiculous blessing that shouldn’t exist on that weapon in the first place. A combat knife has no business providing exorbitant amounts of rending. Or any rending at all, actually.
I agree but bosses feel like they are in such a weird state right now…either they die instantly or are a huge pain, no inbetween.
Don’t forget rending backstab or whatever its called that gives like 140% rending on backstab paired with the 25% inherent backstab damage which can be paired with the 20% backstab damage talent node Zealot gets.
10000000% this
I am so tired of every weapon being normalized into “kills everything, just use it.”
Why can autoguns just annihilate crushers? Why are 6" knives good against ogryn who’s skin is so thick and tough they wouldn’t give the faintest? Everything shouldn’t kill everything. I have two weapons, I used to have to think about which two i brought. Now I just take anything and it works against everything. Its dry as hell. Patch 13+ weapon balance is better in some ways but way worse in others and this is one of them.
Ironically the thunder hammer is a good example of that. Used to be terrible at horde clear, and now isn’t anymore. It’s not great at it or anything, just good enough that you don’t need to think a lot about what to bring with it anymore. It’s not that I don’t understand the argument that it just doesn’t Feel Good™ to have a giant hammer that can’t kill more than one poxwalker per swing… but this is what happens when you start turning weapons into all-rounders when they shouldn’t be.
It seems like we’ve moved on to a new kind of meta where actual weapon WEAKNESSES aren’t really allowed anymore. Your weapon can now specialize in one thing while being moderately good at everything else. And that’s considered the norm. The result is bland gameplay.
I don’t know how realistic it is to unring that bell though.
Absolutely not.
VT2 greathammers mop the floor with DTs versions. Kruber and Bardin have the same greathammer and both kill several enemies per swing as well as slatzspires greathammer which has a slightly better cleave damage distribution, iirc.
ANY of these kill hordes better than any thunderhammer in DT.
What you misremember here was that you can’t damage more than 1 armored enemy per swing except for a few specific attacks on a certain few weapons. Coincidentally, the greathammers all belong to said group that can damage multiple armored enemies per swing.
While I can see that line of thinking, I simply do not agree with it. If your melee weapon does not handle the most numerous kind of enemies decently quickly on a melee class, you’re simply not doing your job well.
I also don’t see the logic behind making the thunderhammers be more effective against hordes as making them more bland. Currently they kill exactly 1 zombie per swing, maybe two if you have a build specifically for doing that but either number is simply too low.
I’d like to see them kill 3 per swing and maybe 4 on a crit. It’s not broken, it doesn’t change what role the weapon fulfills and it doesn’t exceed at clearing hordes than weapons that specialize on that.
And if that’s somehow still too good, how about adding in a 3rd thunderhammer which doesn’t share the moveset of the VT2 greathammers but the holy greathammer instead? (Saltzs greathammer)
That one could be better against hordes and be less focused against single targets.
This is very true, with it being pigeon holed into one specific niche in a game where you are only allowed one melee weapon, you are being a drag on your team. It doesnt matter if god-tier single target, you are still not being as effective as you could with another weapon.
In VT2 you could pair the hammer with classes that could take 2 melee weapons which worked perfectly. horde density is higher in this game also so that means you need to bring down more targets than in VT2 so if you dont have a weapon that deals with trash at a reasonable pace than its likely on the weaker side of the weapon list, hence why that is the case for the thunder hammer here
Thunder hammer isnt terrible or unusable even on the highest difficulties in this game, its just not as good as a weapon that kills armor slightly slower but horde clears significantly faster
Just to play devil’s advocate here for a moment, some of these are really non-issues, or at least should be if you play the weapon right
Sorry about the confusion. That was intended to be a list of the downsides to the hammer, not a list of what’s wrong with it. I just wanted to really show how many downsides it has compared to its upsides. It should remain a low cleave, low mobility slow attack speed weapon. It just needs to be better at killing things other then monstrosities.
Vt2 greathammer is my favorite weapon fatshark has ever made. Staggering mutiple elites with heavies and weaving in lights to bop them in the head just feels so good. Darktide thunderhammer just feels like a different beast to me much more about the single target damage than being all about controlling the fight. Idk if we should really compare them at this point. That being said, thunder hammers need to fill their perscribed role better and should have more consistent elite breakpoints as has been stated by multiple people in this thread.
Everyone seems to agree both hammers need to get tuned up in some respects. Killing elites… basically… if not clearing trash more easily to then manage the elites more easily.
I just spent the past few weeks playing lots of vermintide, and I’ve been loving returning to the old Greathammer. Wish I could use that weapon in shopclick. It’s better than the thunderhammer in every metric EXCEPT monster damage.
Thunder Hammer definitely needs a buff at the very least versus Crushers and Bulwarks. Of all the great heavy weapons there’s no reason to pick TH over the Crusher / Combat Axe / Eviscerator besides its high boss damage which itself is not even a major benefit unless I’m going to be fighting Daemonhosts every single match. I have a godroll with Slaughterer 4 and Thrust 4 and a Martyrdom build and when I play this build in pubs I still feel like I have to work way harder for kills than I would if I picked any of the other weapons I named with a virtually identical build.
I should be able to 1-shot Crushers on charged headshot more consistently than now. I don’t think Bulwarks are particularly dangerous in any case but one thing I want to suggest that I expect would enhance the identity of the TH is if it could knockdown stagger Bulwarks with a single charged heavy, even if it hit their shield. I also do not think these changes would be unreasonable given this weapon is so vulnerable to ghost hits ruining the fun at any moment.
Based on my data it actually very likely would meet or exceed other weapons in horde clear at that pace. The weapon just simply doesn’t need better horde clear. The IndyCrusher is the bonkstick with big stagger and horde clear. What we need is a hammer that is actually good at its intended role - specialist sniping. Everything in the game doesn’t have to be a revolver for the game to be fun.
Sure, it doesn’t need better hordeclear but then again, “it also doesn’t need better single target damage”.
Both would simply be nice to have, that’s all.
Just for my curiosity; what exactly do you mean by that?
It already one-shots every single enemy besids the crusher and there are more things a melee weapon needs to be able to do in order to be a good pick.
Just because you can nuke every single enemys bloodline with one swing, doesn’t make it a good melee weapon.
It needs to be good enough at chewing through hordes (and no, one at a time is not “good enough”, I won’t have that arguemnt)
It needs to be good (enough) against armor and specials and maybe one thing it exceeds at.
In the thunderhammers case: it’s good against armor and specials and exceeds at killing one enemy really hard but is lacking in savety and horde clear speed.
That it doesn’t one-shot a crusher without abilites is just not as big an issue as that “killing hordes one zombie at a time” in my eyes and makes the weapon feel so much worse than a missing 15% carapace modifier.
And just to nip this in the bud before anyone brings it up: the way the thunderhammer works, can be fine as is but not for the class it’s put on.
As a zealot, a melee specialist class, your melee weapons need to do better in melee than other classes in many (aka not just one) aspect OR you’re not doing your job as a zealot.
I.e. killing hordes one at a time is the 2nd worst possible way of killing them, especially at the “speed” you do it at, and that is just not ok for a melee specialist.
No it doesn’t. Weapons CAN have weaknesses.
It can one-shot every single enemy asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, aseterisk.
It can one shot every single specialist with the right perks and often times some stacks of buffs including Thrust. We should tighten that up a lot. No thrust should be required to onetap anything short of muties, ragers, maulers and ogryn. A little thrust for muties (as is already the case) would be fine. Maulers should become low thrust bodyshot onetaps and NO thrust headshot onetaps. Ragers should be NO thrust headshots and high thrust bodyshots. Bulwarks off hand are fine I think but reapers need easier breakpoints to bodyshots and headshots. CRUSHERS w/ NO stacks should headshot 1tap. w/ 3 stacks should two tap bodies. Then, to help solidfy its role, every other melee and ranged weapon should struggle more on crushers and maulers. This is how you design the weapon sensibly. It has weaknesses but specific utilities too. Making it good against hordes is just blandifying it.
Terrible take. Zealot is the melee class that doesnt mean his melee has to do literally everything better than someone else in every concievable role at the same time. Why does everyone want grey blob weapon design?
Just to add to this, if every one of his melee weapons needs to have good horde clear then why does flamer even exist as a Zealot locked weapon? Clearly it’s there to cover mediocre horde clear melee weapons when you don’t trust someone else on your team to be covering that.
I mean you say that but realistically the best way to deal with a guy in armour you otherwise cant penetrate is to take a slim sharp stabby thing, violate their personal space and stick it up em chinks. Ive always visualised the daggers AP like that rather than cutting through the armor, hence why the light attacks usually just bounce off.
Eh, I dont know if even zealot builds taking the knife to the extreme are one-shotting crushers with it though.
Ramming the blade in around the head, neck and shoulders as much as you have to in game to fell one is plausible enough to hit something important nerve or arterial related, even on an ogryn, at least within the power scaling of Darktide.
If nothing else, if Catachan can use their knives to have a good stab at Orks I dont see why the same tools would suddenly be useless on mutated humans.