Weapons like the PowerSword (PS) and ThunderHammer (TH) & other weapons (chainsaws?) have specials that have a specific animations.
Those have no cooldown, so can be spammed, like the PS special grants it insane cleave, lasts two hits, so you are incentivised to power it up every two hits as the animation is swift.
Some other animations, like the TH or Chainsword specials have special activation animations that feel slow and clunky.
Proposition: make the effect last longer, but have an innate cooldown to balance it.
This would immensely reduce usage fatigue (LMB LMB Special & repeat is not an interesting combo loop, sorry)
Give the powerhammer crazy cleave in addition to the damage burst for that one swing
Give the chainsaws insane bleed damage for a few seconds
You get the idea
Also regarding the thunderhammer, it feels REALLY bad, when you take the split second to charge it up to smash an elite in the hord, and trash mob gets in the way negating the hit.
I am swinging a bloody THUNDER HAMMER, let it smash through anything small!
I don’t like the special activations but for me it’s less about controls or balance and more about the feeling of the weapons. It’s not cool to have to break combat flow to charge up a sword every 2 swings. It’s like the things have a dodgy battery or a dying engine. Imo style/fun factor should be the priority with these weapons.
Having the powered up mode to last longer and have a cooldown seems like a good compromise to me.
I do feel the Thunder Hammer needs some love. It felt better in the CBT. The charged attack either needs to be stronger against armor, because right now its kinda poor, or it has to pierce.
Making the light attacks atleast moderately armor piercing would be appreciated. Its a complete copy from 2H Hammer in Vermintide, a weapon that was already not seeing any significant meta play, except a little weaker.
Honestly, I don’t know why the specials on these weapons are basically the normal functionality of the weapon to begin with. Power weapons just have a power field, chain weapons always havea running chain blade. Give them something cool to do with the secondary ability (Explosive parry, DOOM Chainsaw?) and just let them always have the chain/power-field visual and sound effects.
Force Swords get a pass because charging them up is basically how they work in all other 40k properties.