We all know how thunderhammer is in a bad place with situations when you charged attacks dont register, or bug out, or while you trying to get heavy attack you get pushed or enemy moves etc.
But i’ve encountered a different problem. It’s survivability. Whenether you kill an enemy - you restore 5% tougness. Doesnt matter if it’s a poxwalker or a crusher. You get 5% toughness on kill. You can ramp up to 7.5% with talent Blood Redemption. that increases toughness replenishment on kills. And you can add Vicious Offering that give you +7.5% toughness on heavy attack kill.
So you can get +15% toughness if you kill an enemy with heavy attack. I mean, yes, you can build into it, losing some other good talents. But most of the time your typical thunderbonk zealot will look something like this. You can swap keystone to Martyrdom. So you cant squeeze in all toughness replenishment and toughness dmg reduction talents you want.
So if you fighting a pack of enemies - you discouraged from charging your hammer and killing crushers, maulers, bulwarks, scab ragers. The enemies you think you supposed to prioritize with thunderhammer. Because you will lose more toughness by random melee/ranged hits, than you get from killing elite enemy.
And even if you clear horde first and then kill elites - you end up replenishing very little toughness by killing such big and dangerous enemy.
With veteran you rewarded for prioritizing elites. You can ignore horde melees and let them hit you several times if you kill elites and specials in meantime. Because you have talent that replenishes 10% tougness on kill and 20% more during 10s. And this talent is stacking and very easy to get.
Should zealot have a similar talent, that replenishes toughness on elite kills? Can be something like “Replenish 20% toughness over 3s on elite kill. And replenish 100% toughness over 5s on monstrosity kill”. It can be balanced however you like.
Or even better - a blessing. Like “Replenish 10% toughness on Ogryn and Monstrosities hit”
Wont work on specials, as i feel it’s not the zealot role to deal with those.
I mainly play support thunderhammer, so i dont have these problems with support build. I played few games on damage thunderhammer build and i instantly realised, how i’m punished for doing what my role is supposed to do. Even if i look for openings and windows to charge and hit elite enemy. I’m still better off prioritizing horde enemies, rather than killing elites.
ok. once again people misunderstanding what i’m saying. Can you point out to me what part of my post led you to this interpretation?
I believe i stated clearly enough, that the problem with thunderhammer DMG builds. That charge up hammer. And hit SINGLE enemy elite (crusher, bulwark, mauler etc). Is what leaves you opened to be attack by enemies and losing your toughness. While not replenishing enough by killing that elite.
In other words: You hit crusher. You kill crusher. You replenish smol toughness. You lose much toughenss.
Or you implying that Momentum blessing works with charged Thunderhammer attack against SINGLE elite enemy?
thunerhammers are honestly in a good place rn man, only thing left is to be done w/ that stupid stunlock on special action on crucis. ironhelm is w/e rn, good as is
i get what ur say OP but… you have to pick the right time for these kills. zealot has very good toughness management: you ult/dodge/exist, u generet temp
again, lets just agree its the self stunlock thats dumb. w/o that, the problems your having would not really be there, maybe? look at your talent tree, just having second wind in the top right is more than enough. couple that w/ dash charge your good. thats what i use. you even have double ult.
I mean… swapping the Momentum augment to the other one does replenish a ton of toughness when you cash in the pool… so if you’re problem is lacking toughness, get that 2% per stack at LEAST.
Ditch hammer, grab knife and stealth, get 50% toughness and insane DR every 5 seconds?
Doesn’t fix the hammer of course, but not sure you really can build for hammer in a way that makes it even slightly comparable to other builds/weapons.
is it in a good place tho? I did today an Auric Maelstorm I-IX-E-F. Yes, thunderhammer deals dmg. But it punishes you for doing what is meant to do. If you trying to charge in and bonk elite enemy - you will get hit a lot. And punished for that. Yes, you will kill targeted elite. But you will be punished for it with taking too much dmg.
I’m not the best player. But i also dont consider myself an average one. And still got downed 6 times and died 2 times, while having pretty much all talents for survivability.
It’s funny that thunderhammer is better be used just as regular weapon. Without charging. Just swinging it around. And that defeats it’s purpose of being “oneshot” machine.
yes, you can say “skill issue”. And you will be totally correct. But that’s the problem. If you need a lot of skill just to use weapon as it intended - it needs some buffs. If you not skilled enough to dodge in time and look for windows to be animation locked in - fair, just pick talents and blessing to solve that problem. Sacrifice some dmg talents for some survivability talents.
It’s on a timer. It’s more clunky than is ideal, but it’s not random and you can CHOOSE when to swing, that’s entirely controllable. Momentum feels like it’s about knowing when to back off and re-engage. If you’re literally trapped in the mob, yes, you’re limited on options… kinda why Chorus is just so good rather than either of the other two abilities-- if you’re in a tight spot you can give yourself and your team breathing room.
I mean… what’s the point? If i’m charging into Crusher with my ability - i already replenish 50% toughness. So i’m going into the crusher full toughness. It’s just AFTER i killed crusher - i have no toughness because enemies attack me, while i’m locked into animations.
So that talent will replenish my toughness on hit. But not AFTER the hit. Which is where you recieve most of the dmg.
Getting same talent as veteran, that replenishes toughness over time AFTER killing - feels much better
no its not always skill issue, you could have valid points. im not here to say that. im jus saying toughness is never a problem. you should never use a blessing for toughness. your talent tree has some wasted points for what you want to accomplish. the hammer is currently a cleaving damaging monster and zealot is currently a toughness replenishment monster. the only real problem is the weapon special activation on crucis if thats what you’re using. im saying you are at your weakest when your powering up not your strongest. you should be powering up rarely almost
my honest tip, drop the 3 points top middle atleast after unyeilding if you must have that. you dont even need that unyeild damage/everything in the top middle nade area. slot crit cooldown and you will be ulting constantly. i mean like 1k crits a game or more. thats DR. thats toughness. thats slaughter. the feeding really starts when we start stunlocking ourselves
remember, you can stagger everthing in this game with Thammer heavies w/ only using headtaker. ragers, overheads, all that. start ulting with guarenteed crits and it becomes a nice cycle of everything being staggered, bleeding, dying. crushers, ragers, they’re all getting thrown on their ass
oh, absolutely. I do have support thunderhammer build. And i use it just as swinging machine. No problems with that. It’s a beast and a clutcher.
It’s the “Charge up and bonk” builds for thunderhammer that i’m discussing. They are bad because you die a lot, while trying to charge up and bonk elites. A lot of drawbacks for not much of value.
And i’m discussing buffs for that particular thunderhammer builds, to make them more… valuable?
Let’s take an example what i mean in real combat scenario. On maelstorm with “Only Scab, Mostly Melee, No ammo pickups” modificators. Everyone knows how many chunky bois there are. Seems like a perfect place for a thunderbonking zealots, right?
Now let’s see how all classes deal with toughness management while fighting 3-4 crushers and 5-6 maulers.
Veteran: if he kills at least 1 enemy from that pack - he replenishes 30% toughness over 10s. Stacking up with further kills.
Psyker: he replenishes toughness constantly by gaining and quelling Peril. Maybe even 5% with each critical hit. He doesnt even need to kill any enemy.
Ogryn: he replenishes 25% toughness just by hitting enemies. Not even need to kill them.
Zealot: he replenishes 5% tougness on kill. Up to 15% if he picks 2 talents (Vicious Offering that give you +7.5% toughness on heavy attack kill. And from Blood Redemption that gives you 50% more tougness on kills).
So not only he NEEDS to kill enemy. But he also replenishes the least amount out of all classes. Despite being in melee, where he most likely to get hit.
In situations where horde enemies present - yes, he kills in melee a lot. He kills them fast. He replenishes a lot of toughness. He is a horde clearing monster. No questions about it.
But in 1v1 situations he replenishes very little toughness and there is no ways for him to replenish more. No talents. No blessings.
Which makes builds, focused on killing single targets, not viable.
Giving him ways to replenish more toughness on killing single, strong, enemies - would be a good solution. That will reward zealots prioritizing elites over the horde enemies.
it’s just exaggurated example. Even during normal Auric i find myself struggling with replenishing toughnes if i’m not fighting the horde. With any weapon.
If you fighting monstrosity. If you fighting left-overs from the horde. If you fighting bunch of ranged enemies scattered around.
As long as you dont face 4+ enemies - your survivability drops drastically.
Veteran - no matter which weapon you have. Just kill 1 specialist and you get 30% toughness. Dont need to be killed with your gun, you can melee and still get benefits. Or kill with ranged headshot and gain 15% tougness AND toughness dmg reduction. Or both with 4 talent points wasted.
On Psyker - no matter which weapon you have. Just gain/quell Peril or do critical hits and you replenish toughness. 3 talent points worth spend.
On Ogryn - just hit a single enemy and you gain 25% toughness. 2 talent points used.
On Zealot - kill 1 enemy and replenish 5% toughness. Up to 15% with 6 talent points used to get them.
Furthermore the abilty cd reduction on zealot heavily favors fast attacking weapons. Not “kill elite or special and gain cd reduction” like other classes.
This all locks zealot out of certain playstyle. I dont like when classes are locked out of certain playstyles or weapons. Simply because they “dont belong there” or they “not viable there”
Why shouldnt thunderhammer belong to “Only Scab, Mostly Melee, No ammo pickups”? Especially when hammer’s charged attack deals so much damage to those elite melee enemies.
Because it lacks survivability. Hammer, compared to other zealot weapons, has low mobility. And zealot in general has bad toughness replenishment against single targets.
So you better off zooming around with combat knife, that for some reason kills crushers faster than THUNDERHAMMER, having insane ability cd reduction on crits.
No Stealth. FotF is way better, the 20% attack speed for 8 seconds is permanently up vs hordes with a knoife. With lacerate thrown in you also have a permanent additional 30% crit rate.
Stealth is better for nothing other than one shot boss gimmicks.
Pretty sure this is a non-response overall though. I’m almost certain there are a lot of zealots that don’t like the facerolly nature of knife builds same way you can just tell any veteran “just go plasma, lol” the moment they complain about say MK VII HH, or MG XII Las having absolutely crap breakpoints.
I disagree. Outside of monstrosity damage they fail entirely to hit the key breakpoints the kind of weapom they are should hit and are pretty mid besides.
This is a design feature that should remain on the weapon and the only reason its even a problem is that the hammer is completely unable to 1tap properly.
God i hope not. Right tree top really doesn’t make sense on hammer compared to left tree top for numerous reasons. But i digress. I don’t really see a problem here. Killing elites provides some toughness back but zealot’s real survivability on hammer comes from stagger and attack speed beyond his excellent toughness and stamina regen. I’ve never, personally, had any issue with toughness gen on hammer zealot. Hammer zealots issue is bad damage.
Boss damage is the absolute last reason why I run stealth. Momentum also gives all the attack speed and bonus damage one could ever want. Stealth is amazing utility, can save teammates, get out of/into trouble. Not to mention facetanking just about anything with 50% toughness and added DR every 5 seconds.
You don’t actually need to go fully down the Blazing Piety to have insane crit % and crit cdr, you know.
