Yeah they aren’t bad, but they don’t remove a group the way immolation can.
Also credit where credit is due. I have modified the build a bit, but @Reginald put me onto the stelff spam with this:
You give up too much for immolations unfortunately. They are definitely my preference, but knives are a very fair consolation prize.
High flex ceiling on them as well.
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The whole point of thunderbonking zealot - is to charge up hammer, dash into crusher, slam him with a hammer and then retreat back.
This talent is taken purely to survive the animation lock on bonking the crusher and to allow you back off to safety.
Outside of charging crusher you dont have problems with survivability. Because you kill horde enemies easy and replenish a lot of toughness from killing them. Not to mention that you staggering all enemies, not letting them hit you.
It’s the single target survivability i have issues with. As if you will be constantly charging up hammer and bonking crushers, maulers, bulwakrs and etc - you will get down fast. Because you replenish very little toughness from killing ONE enemy at a time.
The fact, that from killing a single poxwalker you replenish the same amount of toughness, than from killing a single crusher - is what the problem is. You not rewarded for targeting elites with thunderhammer.
Veteran does have a talent, that rewards him for killing elites and specials with 30% toughness over 10s, stacking.
But zealot does not. For zealot killing crusher and poxwalker results in same toughness replenishment. So what’s the point of fighting elite enemies, if you better off killing horde enemies
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By this logic no one other than vet should kill elites, and no one would kill bosses at all.
I rush ragers and crushers down because they are far more threatening than pox walkers. My “reward” is them not killing the team.
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I do have one but its only a little out of date so I probably wont update it for a bit. Gotta do all the new weapons still!
It doesn’t need survivability though. What it needs is to do its freaking job. The hammer doesnt need more damage. It needs more special attack damage on flak, maniac and carapace. Its otherwise okay and okay is fine. Its THE melee snipe stick. And its WORSE at that job than chain axes which makes no sense.
I mean sure, ill never use that blessing, but it makes more sense than Momentum!
I wasnt aware there was any other way to use the hammer in the first place. Are you telling me people use the weapon and intentionally avoid the whole reason to take it? [Terrifying]
But i want to firstly say that yours is an excellent scoreboard and I don’t think anyone could impune its caliber. Well played. The problem i have is that this is me running the mk4 chain axe.
Here is the build i came up with some time back. Its not the build i would run now however, given better knowledge of the skill tree. I’d run my MK4 chaxe build. I’ll post both.
Hammer build:
Mk4 build:
In the interest of full honesty I don’t happen to have a recent game with the Ironhelm. But here is one from back when I was testing this build more than a month prior. I very obviously didn’t match your stellar horde clear numbers. But then again I was simultaneously testing my Lawbringer for its capacities as a horde clear backup for hammers specifically so…there ya go.
In any case the point isn’t really how well I did or didn’t play, nor how well you did or didn’t play (and I would say you played better than me in your game). In fact my build, being martyrdom, if played well should outkill your IJ build. But rather the key point is: whether or not the Hammer is unsafe to use. My mad mallet build is kinda meh in my estimation at this point. Yet I clearly took only around 900 damage with only 1 toughness generating node. AND I was still dealing with the miserable push-attack overhead change. I just don’t think survivability is the problem with the weapon.
3 Likes
By this logic there are classes, which have a base role on the battlefield. Which can be improved with talents or switched to deal with different role.
The role of Veteran is to kill high priority targets from range. He has talents to improve that. He also can take talents to fill up different role, like a horde clearing.
The role of Psyker is to kill hordes from range. Hence all of his staffs being AoE. He can further improve that. He also can take talents to fill up role of killing elite and specials.
The role of Ogryn is to kill hordes in melee. He can further improve that. He can also take talents to be more single target dmg dealer.
The role of Zealot is to kill high priority targets in melee (elites, specials, monstrosities). He can take talents to become horde clearing machine. But none of the talents improve his capabilities to deal with single target enemies (other than purge the unclean?)
Zealot is the only class, that has no talents benefitting him from killing elites or specials. Not a single one.
If zealot needs to replenish toughness - he’d rather kill poxwalkers, than elite enemies. If veteran needs to replenish toughness - he’d rather kill special or elite.
If zealot needs to reduce cd on his ability - he’d rather hit poxwalkers. If ogryn needs to reduce his cd on ability - he’d rather kill elite enemies. I
If zealot needs to recieve dmg buffs - he’d rather hit poxwalkers. If psyker needs to deal more dmg - he’d rather kill elite or specialist and talent Perilous Combustion will spread soulfire.
You see? There is not a single scenario, in which zealot will get benefits from hitting elites or specials.
Eh, it is about how hammer is unsafe to use. You took almost twice as more dmg than other zealot, despite being less active in melee combat. I feel like in my game i took 3 times more dmg, than should’ve. And downed two times where if i had Untill Death - could’ve survived.
Sadly your scoreboard doesnt show how many times people were downed and died. But overall it does showcase, that thunderhammer is quite unsafe weapon to use if you playing it thunderbonking style.
Btw IJ and Martyrdome isnt relevant here. You can go either way. I’m going IJ just because i took 20% cd reduction on backstab kills. Since it’s the only way for me to reliably reduce cd on my charge
I’m fixated on survivability, because it’s a “horizontal” buff. Not “vertical” like straight up dmg buff. You can oneshot crusher with thunderbonk on charge. And even without charge - your team, usually, damages it enough for you to kill him with just charged attack.
It’s just i dont see the profit for zealot to kill elites. You replenish the same toughness if you kill a poxwalker. And it’s easier to kill 10 poxwalkers, than 3 crushers. And horde enemies to pose threat to your team, so clearing the horde is as rewarding for teamplay, as killing elites. But being locked into just a “hordeclearing robot” isnt something i find interesting. I wanna try out different things, go for different targets with different builds. Experience a different playstyles.
Buffing dmg is a “vertical” buff. And it straight up makes weapon better than others. We see it with plasma veterans. But buffing something else can make weapon fun and viable. Even something like a AoE stagger from Crusher’s charged attack, but on charged elite kill. Like a shockwave than knocks back enemies withing 3m. That will create space for you to retreat or to charge another attack into another elite.
P.S. your first game is amazing. Rare to see so many blocks. seems game was rough and long and you still pulled it off! Graz!
I mean what’s your solution here? Giving zealot buffs? Or just the toughness on elite kill for hammer which I can understand more.
Can be a talent, that replenishes toughness on elite kill.
Can be a blessing on weapons replenishing toughness on elite kills, that made to kill elites (thunderhammers, eviscerators, chainaxes).
I mean we have now ability to break animation on chain weapons by dodging out of it. A lot of people were defending those animations by saying “skill issue, just find openings and windows for attack”. Not saying we should remove animation lock on Thunderhammers. But at least make it worth killing the elite with extra toughness replenishment.
yep, pretty much that.
A talent is out of the question. As a dagger enjoyer I can say the class is far too op (with a dagger). A better animation + blessing would probably be ok.
Or they could also make activated hammer (just hammer not evis) kills give additional toughness as a best of both worlds kind if thing. You keep damage blessings that way, or have the option to also double down on replenishment with the elite kill blessing.
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yep. hammer has blessing that helps it replenish toughness on hitting 3 targets. So it makes sense for him to have blessing that replenishes toughness on killing 1 elite. 20-30% per elite kill feels fair. Not specials, only elites.
I also thought about blessing having something like 5-10% toughness on charged HIT. To be able to dance with chaos spawn a bit longer and having some way to regain toughness without killing.
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If ogryn can have their chain hit blessings which are far less tight on their activation requirements then I don’t see why 8-12% wouldn’t be viable.
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They’re in a decent place but so is every weapon. A good place is how I’d describe things like Chain Axe, Devils Claw, and especially the XV, dagger, new shovel, and Crusher and nearly every melee weapon across the entire game including my bae the obscuros. It’s not unusably bad or anything insane like that and it’s my most and, at this point, only weapon I take into Aurics these days.
You can do well with it and consistently so. But that remains true for nearly every weapon if you’re good.
However I’d argue that it’s about pre-rework pickaxe tier. I used the pickaxe rather extensively and still do to this day before it’s second revision back when it’s horde clear was decently good but it’s second stage charge attack was… it required finesse to say the least. And it was also slow, the pickaxe that’s in VT2 is much much faster than the base pickaxe.
TH in Darktide has it’s own unique set of issues. Namely that self-stun, it’s default killing power, and it’s cleave.
Crit hammer is general purpose and extremely easy to use but a lot of it’s heavy lifting comes from bleed.
Full on speccing into boss damage with the deadly trio of martyr, headtaker, and Thrust IV severely kneecaps your ability to handle mixed hordes (on the crucis) given you’re cleaving down 2 enemies at a time and tickling another 4 unless they’re all pox walkers.
I disagree. No amount of damage is worth over 2 seconds of being unable to dodge. They gave the chain/force weapons the ability to cancel for a reason. Crusher doesn’t even deal with a stun at all despite having infinite suppression in it’s radius.
You can (with heavy investment) have a TH that one taps anything. Some people run that. That 2 seconds of being able to just eat it or the times when you have to watch a trapper/sniper(significantly less of a problem in comparison but listed anyway)/overhead chain happen still sucks which is why it’s a point of contention.
I do agree that the issue I have is that you need too much investment to merely make it work. The crusher is the crusher regardless of what blessings you take on it. The TH can’t even be entertained against Crusher packs without stealth/fury and/or a near god roll to enable the one shots without having to stack V V on headtaker and sustained.
Lastly
Let me preface this by saying that like you all I run is aurics and maelstroms and all I use is TH. And much like yourself I have decent results
So for my opinion on this matter;
All 3 of our career skills can replenish toughness and we additionally can hyper replenish our career skill cooldown. Nobody gets to loop career skills even remotely as efficient as a zealot. You also (can) get 25% DR per dodge and an additional 15% toughness per dodge. No other career gets to replenish their toughness just by ambiently dodging gunner fire.
The source of your issue is that there are many many situations where you can’t charge bonk and that’s certainly an issue. But it’s an issue detached from our general survivability. Getting 20% regenerating toughness over 3s means very little if that source of damage you took was from a crusher overheading you while you couldn’t dodge.
Not the thunderhammer. Your attacks too slow and crit chance too low have cd reduction on crits.
And 20% cd reduction on backstab kills also not as good on thunderhammer.
Meanwhile Ogryn and Psyker dont even need to kill enemy themselves. If elite or specialist dies from ally in coherency - you get ability cd reduction.
Veteran does required to kill. And required to kill specialists. But he gets flat 6s reduction, which equal to ~20% cd reduction.
Furthermore - this is also the problem. That zealot doesnt have a elite/special requirement on his ability cd reduction talents. So once again you get the same benefit from hitting poxwalker, as from hitting the crusher.
Invocation of Death: reduce ability cd on critical hits by 1.5s
so you just slash a poxwalker horde a few times and you ability is ready. If it was “on critical hits against elite/speacialist enemy” that would’ve been a completely different story, wouldnt it?
Pious Cut -Throat: reduce ability cd on backstab kills by 20%.
once again, just backstab poxwalker and get a quarter of your ability back. If it was “on backstab elite/specialist kills” that would’ve been a completely different story
It is directly linked to our survivability. If i know, that for killing that elite enemy, i will replenish a good chunk of toughness - i will charge him and kill him. And i will go for a build, that ramps my dmg so i can oneshot him.
20% regerating toughness wont save you from crusher’s overhead. But i’m not asking to make thunderhammer the OP weapon, that let’s you charge into pack of 5 crushers with no consequences. I’m asking it to be viable to charge into 1 crusher, surrounded by pack of melee horde.
Let’s make an example with eviscerator. Imagine you charge you chainsword and hit the crusher. While both of you locked in revving animation - 4 horde melee smack you, remove your toughness and deal dmg to your HP.
It’s bad, you havent done anything wrong, you did charged a single crusher, you killed dangerous elite enemy as you supposed to do. And you got punished for that by losing all toughness in process to some horde melee.
Same goes for thunderhammer.
But if you entered a block stance while you locked into revving animation? Same as one when you reviving downed teammates.
Now you can actually block hits from those 4 horde melee enemies. You killed elite enemy. And you didnt lost any toughness. Completely different deal.
And you can say: “well, that’s OP”. But it’s not. You have limited stamina and you cant block hits from 7-10 horde melees. You cant block overhead from crusher or mauler. Ragers will tear though your block in seconds. Ranged enemies will ignore block.
So you still have to be mindful on when to engage crusher. If he surrounded by 10+ enemies - then it’s not a good idea to charge. If there is several crushers - not good idea to charge.
Same with thunderhammer.
If by killing elite enemy you replenish more toughness - you can charge into crusher and take few hits from horde melee. Because you replenish good chunk of toughness from killing crusher.
But you dont. You replenish same toughness for killing a poxwalker, as for killing a crusher.
P.S. i do like when people say “thunderhammer doesnt need survivability” and then proceed to show scoreboard stats of their game, where they took the most health damage amongst the team xD
well if thunderhammer didnt need survivability - you wouldnt have taken so much health dmg, right?
Gameslantern is strange. You direct link works, but searching for the build yields nothing. How odd.
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Oh ok, had no idea that was a feature.
Nope its not that.
But whatever, this thread isn’t about my builds anyway. Its about the Thammer. I’m just here to argue my case independent of whatever meaningless internet reputation points I do or don’t have.
I took a paltry amounts of damage for an auric monstrous specialists mission on a build that doesn’t even have any active toughness generation on a martyrdom build. I can’t really remember anymore but I’d wager that at around 900 damage I didn’t even down one time. It also shows that me and sraku made lots of space for our squishier counterparts since they took so little damage. But when I have a chance (aka when the mission board allows) I will try to run my preferred build in auric maelstrom monstrous specialists and demonstrate its effectiveness.
You can onetap a crusher every single special attack with the MK12 chain axe and do the same FotF attack with the Heavy Chainswords and Mk4 Chain Axe. Meanwhile the Thunder Hammer is THE primo-40k anti-armor weapon and it cannot 1tap unless using FotF. This makes absolutely no sense AND ruins the design and function of the weapon. Sacrificing some modicum of safety to achieve these highs is exactly the design of the weapon, even desirable in my mind.
I don’t know where you came up with this number. The hammer’s self stun has been reduced to irrelevancy and was never very long to begin with. If memory serves, prior to patch 13, it was set at 0.6s. It was reduced to 0.4s in Patch 13 (though it doesn’t say in the notes, I recall testing it) perhaps someone will have more luck finding the actual number as its been a while for me. In any case you are fully able to recover before most enemies even have a chance to swing unless you time your attack badly against multiple overlapping enemy queued swings.
Yeah - players who didn’t bother to learn the weapons complained that a hard mechanic was hard. Fortunately the implementation of their dodge out mechanic is actually really solid and added depth rather than removing depth from the weapon since costs are quite high against stamina. But in either case this isn’t what makes the MK4 chain axe good anyway. What makes the MK4 chain axe is very specifically the fact that its light attacks do actually good damage now. Which is exactly what I argued for over and over.
To clarify - while I am openly hostile to changes to the stun mechanic at this point, as it barely exists in a meaningful capacity. I understand the general complaint. The hammer requires too much time investment for the payoff. But I see Thrust as far more of a problem right now due to being a literal requirement caused by the incredibly poor elite damage the thunder hammers have. You have to charge up this enormous heavy swing only to deliver suboptimal damage. The self stun is merely a cost/reward structure around what should be a high damage attack. Try doing sequential light special attacks some time and you will see what I mean. If you could easily and efficiently kill a crusher every swing this problem would go away in large part. Moreover if you could kill a berserker every swing without a bunch of Thrust this would also dramatically improve the weapon. But you can’t, you need two swings even with martyrdom stacked to full and thrust 4 stacked to 3 and +25% carapace to kill crushers and a bunch of Thrust stacks to kill Ragers on headshot. Only FotF brings you over the line. That’s true for Maulers too if memory serves.
Here is hard data on best performance times against 4 crushers in tight spaces.
Here is my leaderboard data for best times against 6 ragers (3 of each type) in the same space.
The hammer should be THE elite sniping weapon.
2 Likes
Which is a good thing.
Now before I go into specific, the weapon has two functions
Crowd Control
Obliterating
You can control a horde and strike down elites.
And with the TH, sometimes you have to prioritize controlling the horde. The TH isn’t a dagger, you’re not expected to surgically removing a single crusher in a mixed horde given that unlike a dagger you can, with sufficient player skill, control a near infinite amount of elites.
You’re not just sniping single elites. You’re controlling entire swarms of them and, when the opportunity presents itself, THEN sniping elite. You’re swapping between your two functions (rather seamlessly if you’re using the ironhelm) because the Crucis (build dependent) is capable of doing both and should do both.
So the Crowd Control Obliterating weapon having to choose between crowd control and obliterating is fine.
The issue is
- that the weapon does such poor damage baseline that you have to hyperstack just to perform it’s default function and
- The weapon leaves you wide open limiting the number of applicable situations you can even go for a swing if the mixed horde is dense enough.
Does this help? How about this?
I’ve got plenty of these where I’m gold in damage taken.
There’s a difference between taking a lot of damage because you have no choice and trading intelligently on a career that can deny death once every 2 minutes.
Such a powerful weapon lets you grind out on the frontline trading into hits whenever you feel like it and not once being at a risk of death if you’re running a sufficient enough build.
The crit build gives you a potentially 65% chance to crit. Up to 25% from Blazing Piety and Righteous Warrior. 5% base. 5% if you craft it onto your hammer. This brings you to a standing 35%. or just over 1/3 sweeps
Then 10% for 3 stacks of scourge which you can reasonably just choose to give yourself whenever you want for a 65% or 2/3 sweeps.
As you cleave near every thing in sight as long as it’s not a bulwark, maulers helmets, or crushers, you can crit everything in reach. You can max out your bar with a single swing into a dense horde. Maybe 3 to 4 if things are sparsely packed.
The actual game.
The time between the point of no return of a swing in attacking and being able to block/attack again is 0.5
The time between attacking and dodging again is nearly 2s
Listen to the audio. This is me spamming dodge.
This on the other hand is an exploit workaround that lets you ignore the self-stun entirely.
If you didn’t notice the 2s dodge lockout, it’s because your shift button is permanently engaged which is what triggers the bug in the first place.
You can verifiably confirm this on your own. Feel free to do it yourself.
I am quite intimate with these timings given you can quite literally both hear and still get netted in the time it takes to recover (but that’s more of an issue of silent spawning trappers STILL occasionally being a thing)
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this is not the problem of Thunderhammer being too weak. It’s a problem of Chain Axe being too strong.
Crusher is the STRONGEST enemy in the game (excluding monstro and bosses). He is supposed to be unkillable, armored, ogryn. And i think it’s totally fair for thunderhammer to oneshot this enemy only with stacked dmg buffs.
The fact that other weapons do it better and faster - isnt the problem of thunderhammer. But the overall dmg balance of all weapons. The fact that sapper shovel oneshots crusher is kinda ridiculous. Or that revolver kills crusher faster than boltgun.
I agree, that thunderhammer cannot oneshot certain enemies, that he should. Charged up light attack in the head of gunner and he survives? But not being able to baseline oneshot crusher is fair.
The intended mechanic of the weapon SHOULD NOT be hard. Low-skill players should not be punished for using special attack on chain weapons or thunderhammers, just because they dont know when it’s safest to use that mechanic.
You know what mechanic is hard? Using your special attack on a weapon on specific attack. Push-attack skipping certain attacks in your weapon combo, to get that one attack, that deals most dmg and then using your special attack with it.
Like with ironhelm thunderhammer, skipping first 2 wide swings to get 3rd powerful charged overhead. That’s a hard mechanic.
If you get punished while performing this - it’s the skill issue.
But using BASELINE special attack of your weapon and being punished for that - it’s the problem.
So as i. I’m not asking to remove the stunlock animation. Not from hammer, not from chainweapons. I’m asking to add some survivability, that you wont get punished for doing what’s this weapon is meant to do.
Fatshark added ability to dodge out of lock animation on chainweapons. I dont like it, i feel like you should commit, but have some defenses (like blocking stance while revving). And i feel like thunderhammer should have it’s own mechanic. Like toughness replenishment or AoE stagger (but AoE stagger already on Indignatus Crusher MkIV)
Yes, and for players to target elites - they must have a reason and reward for doing so. Reducing cd on it’s ability, replenishing toughness, etc.
Currently there is no difference for zealot in killing elite crusher or random poxwalker. The reward in terms of toughness replenishment and reduction of ability cd is the same.
And hammer being THE elite sniping weapon will let players to reap those rewards.