Thunderhammer Zealot survivability

[CommanderJ]

Considering the relatively absurd packs of Crushers, Maulers, Ragers (and more) you get in 5++ these days, I’d have to say that Thammer being able to boink them more easily is a far bigger problem than toughness regen / survival ability. Some weapons might be overtuned, but with the current state of the game, it would be pretty insane to suggest that only Thammer should be able to deal with Crushers. I know that’s putting a point on it, but you did say that Crushers should be nigh-unkillable, that other weapons were overtuned, but that Thammers should kill them more easily.

These things are pretty tricky, though. If you give the Thammers AoE stagger, that might quickly make them incredibly OP.

It’s not like one can just rush into a group of Crushers and Maulers with Chaxe 4 or 12 and safely enter into heavy sawing animation. You’re going to be trading unless there is a teammate (or a grenade) staggering the enemies. So while Mk12 meets breakpoints the Thammer can only dream of, it still doesn’t allow you to just delete a Crusher while ignoring all other enemies. I’m not sure exactly what you want from Thammer. That you should be safe?

Edit:

I’ll also add that in my opinion, Zealot being able to regain the same toughness from trash as from elites and specials is a feature, not a bug. If you were to give him some kind of bonus elite toughness regen, that node would have to be seperated from all other toughness regen, and almost have it’s own talent tree dedicated to elite killing and nothing else. Otherwise if it could combo with other Zealot builds it would be super OP.

[NemesisNidhoggr]

@Rumeht

with sufficient player skill, control a near infinite amount of elites.

No you cant. There is a thing in game, called “hit mass”. Your thunderhammer will bounce off the first elite. Which means each swing you stagger only one elite. It’s not Crusher MkIV. The crowd control on Thunderhammer is simply a way for it’s user to survive in horde scenario, when you dont have elites to kill.

@Rumeht

So the Crowd Control Obliterating weapon having to choose between crowd control and obliterating is fine.

I agree, you should be able to build weapon into horde clear or single target elite killer. The problem is - for killing single target elite you not getting any benefits over killing a single poxwalker. Which means you rewarded for killing horde and not rewarded for killing elites.
You dont get cd reduction. You dont get buffs. You dont get extra-toughness.

@Rumeht

I’ve got plenty of these where I’m gold in damage taken.

sadly your base scoreboard doesnt show much to examine. Maybe you killed most of melee elites with revolver/bolter? Maybe you had different weapon? Maybe you werent playing thunderbonking style and instead was just swinging uncharged hammer, clearing hordes?

I dont argue, that thunderhammer is best to be used just like a regular weapon. I will kill a pack of Scab ragers faster with just swinging uncharged hammer, than by charging up and killing each of them individually.
And that’s the problem we discussing. How to make it worth for thunderbonking to kill pack of ragers with charged attacks and not just swinging it around.

You may say “well, you not meant to kill pack of ragers with charged attacks” but if i can kill pack of ragers by just swinging my hammer - i can kill a single rager by just swinging my hammer. What’s the point for me to ever charge up my hammer against elites, if my basic heavy attacks kill them faster and safer.

@Rumeht

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 problem is - heavy attack swing on thunderhammer kill horde enemies in ONE swing. Which means you dont benefit from Scourge. You do benefit from Blazing Fury, as you do occasionally crit and 25 killed enemies will trigger this keystone. But it’s irrelevant to everything we have conversation about. Since FotF already gives you 100% crit chance. And it doesnt matter if you reduce your cd by swinging at horde or by getting backstab kills on poxwalkers (which if you swing at pack of poxwalkers from back - killing at least 4 will reduce your cd by 100%)

[NemesisNidhoggr]

@CommanderJ

It’s not like one can just rush into a group of Crushers and Maulers with Chaxe 4 or 12 and safely enter into heavy sawing animation. You’re going to be trading unless there is a teammate (or a grenade) staggering the enemies. So while Mk12 meets breakpoints the Thammer can only dream of, it still doesn’t allow you to just delete a Crusher while ignoring all other enemies. I’m not sure exactly what you want from Thammer. That you should be safe?

Well first of all - they can actually dodge out of it. Hammers cant.
Second of all - i replied to complaint about dmg numbers, that chain axe having more dmg than thunderhammer is a problem of a chain axe, not a hammer.
Thirdly - i can dance with a group of Crushers and Maulers with my combat knife, axe, dueling sword, any ogryn weapon. And actually kill them. So the weapons that are NOT meant to be elite killers are better at killing elites, that weapons that ARE meant to be elite killers. Interesting, huh?

@CommanderJ

I’ll also add that in my opinion, Zealot being able to regain the same toughness from trash as from elites and specials is a feature, not a bug

it’s intendend mechanic. Every class replenish 5% toughness on melee kill. No matter if it’s poxwalker or crusher (i believe veteran is the only one, who replenishes 5.5% on melee kills, doesnt matter really).
BUT. Every other class has either better and safer ways to replenish toughness REGARDLESS of which weapon they use. AND also have talents, that benefiting from killing elites/specials.

Yes, zealot is a beast and can replenish TONS of tougness. But you do it by killing the horde or by having fast attack speed weapon and broken crit build, which allows you to spam your ability constantly. But once again - you dont HAVE to kill elites to get benefits. Unlike other classes. If you low on toughness and you see rager and a poxwalker. It’s better and easier for you to kill poxwalker. And recieve the same rewards as if you killed rager.

So that locks out zealot out of playing slow and heavy weapons like thunderhammer. Because you lose survivability by playing thunderbonking hammer.

The talent points limit exists for a reason. If you want to build your zealot into a horde clearing machine - feel free to do so.
If you want to build your zealot into elite sniper - you should be able to do so.

You cannot have both, without sacrificing something. Either you lose dmg, or horde clearing potential, or elite killing benefits, or survivability.

Talking about OP. Veteran has:

• 30% toughness replenishment on elite/special kills over 10s. Stacking 5-7 times.
• 15% tougness replenushment and 10% toughness dmg reduction on weakspot kill. Stacking 3 times.
• Replenishing 5% toughness per second if no enemies around 8m
• Replenishing 100% toughness and getting extra 50 toughness on ability use.
• Getting 50% toughness dmg reduction while above 75% toughness (which is almost all the time).
• Replenishing 25% toughness on elite kill with plasmagun.

All of that while being RANGED class that is FURTHEST away from danger.
Now tell me that zealot can rival that. I’m not even going to speak about ogryns.
As a veteran player - I IGNORE the several melee horde enemies, that attacking me. And shooting elites. Killing them. Because i’m rewarded for prioritizing elites over the horde with this build, and i replenish more toughness, than i lose to melee hits from horde.
But zealot is not allowed to do the same?

So i dont see the problems with giving zealot toughness replenishment on elite kills.
Because by the time you kill 1 elite - you can kill 4-6 poxwalkers. Which will give you same amount of toughness

[NemesisNidhoggr]

btw looked at your chart and that got me thinking…
First of all you tested it again crushers that stand still or attacking you?
Second did you tested it baseline with no talents?

Because i think i can kill crusher with catachan sword on veteran faster, than thunderhammer…

Hell, i may even make a Veteran into better Zealot, than Zealot itself… With all his juicy “rending” and “brittleness” talents and toughness replenishment on elite kills…

[Reginald]

I’ll have to get back to you on your other post, I’m a bit indisposed and its well stated so it deserves proper attention. But as to my testing apparatus its is thoroughly defined in this video including the placement of enemies, their types, and how they are triggered.

Gross or Gold - Weapon Testing | Aggressive Testing 3 | Patch 14

I have 4 other contributors now, besides myself, testing various weapons including ranged weapons. Because of our superior numbers we’ve moved away from just testing a singular build as a ‘baseline’ and have moved to testing more ideal builds crafted with intent for a given weapon. The leaderboard is an extraction of the best score from among some number of tests. I did reliability testing since the Patch 14 video and 4s is about the margin of error on the horde test. The Crusher test tends to be a bit more swingy but 4s is still a safe margin of error across a set of tests. At some point I will put out a video on all our data but at the moment I am working on a video on the MK12.

[Tempest_yo]

Lol, good luck trying to make veteran a better zealot. I have both geared out, and my vet doesn’t hold a candle to the blazing napalm that a zealot is in melee.

The raw tankiness of a zealot gives you insane uptime, and paired up with the crazy attack speed…

You know what? I’ve said all of this before. I think you got grass-is-greener syndrome.

[Rumeht]

Alright. I’m going to run a game real quick just to get fresh examples.
Before that-

@NemesisNidhoggr

Your thunderhammer will bounce off the first elite.

I specifically mentioned the enemies you can’t cleave at all the post before last. Bulwarks, Mauler skulls, and Crushers.
You can cleave through everything else including bulwarks and a limited amount of either flavor of Ragers (an example of that later).

But that’s not the point. I didn’t say easily cleave hordes of elite. I said control a near infinite amount of them. There’s 4 melee weapons in the game that can convincingly control something like entire hordes of swinging ragers or entire bulwark brigades and 1 of them is the TH. It’s not as easy as the Shield, Maul, or Crusher, but it exists to be exploited.

@NemesisNidhoggr

you not getting any benefits over killing a single poxwalker

Which, as mentioned before, is a good thing. It means you benefit on everything. The benefit you get for killing elites is removing the elite.
Also as stated before, you’re not guaranteed to take damage if you time your strikes and properly CC. So lets take a similar scenario to what you propositioned not that long ago

@NemesisNidhoggr

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.

A gaggle of mobs 4+ and some elites. In this case it’s three ragers. You don’t mindlessly go in there trying to hypertrade, you CC the enemies, isolate the ragers, and only when you’ve created sufficient space charge bonk. Your weapon can do these things. It’s just slow.

The problem I have with this interaction is that without the exploit (which isn’t used in this example) or a Fury charge, the third rager would have done more than hit me once (which if you notice even with the overshield I get that instantly back due to burning a fury charge) which is why I previously mentioned that I want that recoil gone.

Ah speaking of. Small tangent

@Reginald

Its THE melee snipe stick.

Technically the TH is the dedicated boss stick. And it does that job admirably.
It’s just outside of monstrous specials. In a 28-35 minute mission. Bosses occupy at most 2-4 minutes of it. Since aurics were even a thing across all my careers I have seen a wipe because of a boss a grand total of 2 times in hundreds of hours of play.

(Admittedly not a useful metrics as I don’t generally see wipes in general but you get the point, right?)

I was fine with this before the XV, and both shovels started existing.

@NemesisNidhoggr

The problem is - heavy attack swing on thunderhammer kill horde enemies in ONE swing. Which means you dont benefit from Scourge. You do benefit from Blazing Fury, as you do occasionally crit and 25 killed enemies will trigger this keystone. But it’s irrelevant to everything we have conversation about. Since FotF already gives you 100% crit chance

In no order

• You’re not killing more than 2+ (up to 4 with Thrust IV against poxwalkers and only poxwalkers and an additionaly 1-2 more with 3 stacks of martydom) enemies at a time with a swing. Not even with purge the unclean, Thrust IV max charge, with max headtaker and sustained assault with 20 stacks of momentum on a fury crit 20% headshot chain into a horde of pox walkers:

and for a practical example;

• You’re not Fury of the faithful striking on every strike. No this part isn’t irrelevant to the conversation which itself is a clarification on a point you objected to when counting the attack speed of the hammer and it’s ability to effortlessly charge it’s crit, namely

@NemesisNidhoggr

Your attacks too slow and crit chance too low have cd reduction on crits.

In the same way that you’re not fury striking every single elite. “more often than other careers” does not mean “on every single swing”
Though I guess “every other swing” wouldn’t be that far off.

@NemesisNidhoggr

if my basic heavy attacks kill them faster

• This part also isn’t true. Unless you’re running thunderous, TH’s TTK is laughably slow on a non bleed+crit build. This is the conversation that Reginald is addressing and I agree with. The base damage of the TH on elites is low. Painfully so. And a significant amount of the weapons killing power is trapped inside blessings (most typically thrust IV for non martyr builds) which doesn’t feel right.

Here’s what the TH looks like with 20 stacks of momentum into a pack of ragers with a great rolled TH that additionally also has 20% maniac damage:

Here’s that again but with charged bonks:

It’s nearly half the time. It’s not even close.
Sweeping them and CCing them to death is significantly safer. But it is not significantly faster. Not unless you’re bleeding them to death.

Lastly

@Reginald

Here is my leaderboard data for best times against 6 ragers (3 of each type) in the same space.

I hate to double reply but I forgot two things.

@Reginald

Moreover if you could kill a berserker every swing without a bunch of Thrust this would also dramatically improve the weapon.

You can. The average headtaker hammer in a post dreg-rager hp nerf world can 1 tap each of them with just a single stack of headtaker and sustained assault or 2 (to 3 hammer bars willing) on a martyrdom build of either variety:

You can also technically one tap crushers too without thrust.
But the setup that requires it is a bit more insane nonsense and is hardly reliable.
At least headtaker and slaughter III at max stacks along with sustained assault and 6 stacks of martyrdom

Maulers don’t require that much, 2 stacks of headtaker and sustained assault. Still full martyrdom though so…

Really if they are balancing around maximums it just goes to show how effortlessly VT2 sidestepped this issue. Zealot Saltspyre only steroids his attack speed and Slayers Trophy Hunter was baseline.

Like I’m not crazy right? Balancing around a bunch of convoluted conditions is pretty dumb, right?

[NemesisNidhoggr]

@Tempest_yo

The raw tankiness of a zealot gives you insane uptime, and paired up with the crazy attack speed…

the raw tankiness for zealot comes from being able to spam your ability with broken CD reduction mechanic on fast attacking weapons and boosting it’s crit chance.

You hit more → you reduce more cd → you use ability that replenishes toughness → you hit more.

This is why zealot players are so against changes to it’s ability cd reduction talents.
This is way zealots play weapons with fast attack speed (catachan sword, combat knife, new eviscerator, i dunno if antax still meta, seen many with rashad lately).
So the whole point of zealot survivability - is killing as much enemies as possible.

It is more possible to kill 10 poxwalkers, than to kill 3 crushers. So benefits to your survivability comes not from WHAT target you hitting. But HOW MANY of them you hitting. And that’s the problem i have.

it’s not the overall zealots survivability i have problem with. It’s a specific playstyle of “elite hunter” that has no bonuses from your talent tree or blessings.

Coming back to veteran:

• you have talent, that gives you toughness on elite/specialist kill, 30% over 10s. Perfect for “elite/specialist hunter” playstyle. Pick up revolver, hellbore lasgun, boltgun, plasmagun and go sniping those elites and specials.
• you have talent, that gives you extra toughness on any kill with any weapon. Great for “horde clearing” playstyle. Pick up fast firing autoguns, shotguns, recon lasguns, hell even go full melee. And shred those hordes.
• you have talent, that gives you toughness on headshot kills. Great for “sniping ranged shooters” playstyle. Pick up any accurate, semiautomatic weapon and pop those heads and get toughness.

But zealot has none of those. He only has “7.5% toughness on kill”. “2.5% toughness if you near 3 enemies”. And “replenish 50% more toughness on kill”.
All of them work regardless of what target you pick. And it’s value increases with how much weaker enemies you kill.
If you get same toughness replenishment for killing a poxwalker - why bother killing crusher.

Zealot talents actively encourage you to prioritize horde enemies over elites and specials. As there no requirements for you to kill specific targets.
You will kill poxwalker faster than rager and recieve the same amount of toughness for it.
You will slash few horde enemies and get more cd reduction, than hitting a crusher.

[NemesisNidhoggr]

i hope you understand, that such convoluted requirements to wield hammer even on a basic “charge up and bonk” with massive threads, videos and mechanics, already speaks about need to make it more “noob-friendly” x)

Great points, cant argue that. Which i can argue - i will x)

@Rumeht

I specifically mentioned the enemies you can’t cleave at all the post before last. Bulwarks, Mauler skulls, and Crushers.

well, pretty much all elite enemies. not to mention the stagger immunity they get after recovering from stagger, enough to guarantee a single hit on you.

@Rumeht

Which, as mentioned before, is a good thing. It means you benefit on everything. The benefit you get for killing elites is removing the elite.

The benefit i get for killing elites on veteran - is killing elite AND recieving extra 30% toughness replenishment.
The benefit i get for killing elite on psyker - is killing elite AND getting reduced cd for me and whole team. Heck, maybe even free stacks of soulblaze on nearby enemies if you picked the talent.
The benefit i get for killing elite on ogryn - is killing elite AND getting reduced cd for me. Heck, maybe even free 15% rending on my weapon if picked talent, which helps me kill more elites.

See the pattern, bud? All other classes get benefit of killing elite plus extra. Only zealot does not.

@Rumeht

Sweeping them and CCing them to death is significantly safer. But it is not significantly faster. Not unless you’re bleeding them to death.

says you, while on your own video you safely killed rager without charging up your bonk (0:08) and couldve killed another ones.

Plus i jumped in and tested your scenario. I believe we have different weapons. Because i killed my pack of 5 ragers with just heavy attacks in about 15-17 seconds, due to Ironhelm’s overhead attack. Which is still longer than just smacking them with charged up attacks, true, but more dangerous.

You, yourself, stated multiple times, that “you need to find openings for bonk”. Which means you cannot mindlessly charge up and chain kill a pack of ragers. You will spend time dodging, staggering, blocking, looking for openings.

So in the end you will spend MORE time bonking pack of ragers in real combat scenario, than just by safely swinging your hammer, not caring about openings for bonk.

Also about your poxwalker statement:
i think this is also issue of us, using different weapons. I’m playing ironhelm and constantly charging up my hammer even if i go for horde swipe (just in case dog, or special, or elite happens to be hit by it on accident). And i always kill A LOT of enemies. And now you show me crucius and that got me thinking why you kill so little.

So turns out charging up ironhelm and swinging at 5 poxwalkers with no talents (only headtaker+thrust blessings) kills 4. Without charging up ironhelm i only killed like 1-2 and didnt even got others to half hp.

BUT
This is all irrelevant. No matter how good of a player you are. And you are good, i dont doubt it, very skillfull hammer zealot (which also makes your opinion on this matter invalid, as your point of view comes from fleshed out playstyle of a pro, not from perspective of new players picking up this weapon).

It’s still doesnt change the core principle of a problem.
Have 0 toughness and with your zealot build of whatever flavour you like, kill 1 rager in melee. Look how much toughness you regain for killing a dangerous elite enemy, that can hit you even if you playing good.
Now again have 0 toughness and with same build kill 1 poxwalker in melee. Look how much tougness you regain for a weak, horde enemy, that you can kill easily in high numbers.

it’s the same amount, isnt it?

Now do this exact same experiment with other classes on whatever the build is.
You will notice that other classes, for some reason, not only regain more toughness. But also get other benefits for killing rager. But do not get benefits for killing poxwalker.
That’s what makes those classes, in certain builds, to prioritize killing elites over the horde enemies.

Zealot does not have such builds. All his builds benefit from killing as much enemies as possible. And it is easier to kill bunch of poxwalkers, rather than bunch of ragers.

I did a bit different experiment. Quite bad if i’m being honest. But eh, maybe it will help to understand my point better. Who knows.

So i simulated the situation in combat, where you killing enemy elite, while being attacked by enemies (horde melees, elites, specials, ranged enemies, whatever can and will hit you during your mission).
I used 1 rager as an example and 2nd as substitude for those incoming dmg sources. I also used weapons that lock up or disable enemy to showcase how you can be damaged during locked animations. As well as to kill another rager safely. No ults, no grenades, no ranged weapons, no dodging, no blocking. Start with full toughness.

As you can see - zealot the only class, that replenished the least amount of toughness under similar conditions to other classes. Proving, that there is no way for zealot to consistently replenish toughness outside “fighting the horde” scenario.

Zealot: got some health damage, lost all toughness i gained from killing first rager. So ended up with tougness from killing only 1 elite

Veteran: got some health damage (i believe i had talent that gives 50% TDR if you above 75% toughness, otherwise he wouldve taken much more health dmg). Has full toughness after killing both ragers. Which partly a reason this simulation is bad, since i killed 2 elites. But even if i did killed only 1 elite - still would’ve had more toughness than zealot.

Psyker: poor boi almost died xD Still has almost half of the toughness, more than zealot. Thanks to me charging sword to kill ragers, gaining and then quelling the peril.

Ogryn: eem… should we even discuss it?

[DeathLD]

The Thammer is useless, slow, and clumsy; it takes away your mobility and deals little damage. Moreover, any DR you might obtain is also ineffective since enemy spam is so ridiculous, and some have absurdly high damage that it’s simply pointless to go with a DR build without stealth, which is what really helps you survive to compensate for all the shortcomings the hammer has. They would need to give it significant buffs to the extent that it would have to be like before, where you could make elites disappear with a charged hit, regardless of their type.

[Tempest_yo]

Again, I get what you are saying, but I run ZERO toughness replenishment talents on zealot, and I have an equivalent zero issues to match the regen talents I don’t run.

Is it because I’m a dagger user? Absolutely, but if talents are suddenly available that let me get toughness regen like veteran then I’ll go from mostly unkillable while having to dodge to fully unkillable with only disablers being my only threat (which is basically already the case).

You are unfortunately running something that is heavily off-meta, and buffing the class outside of what we previously discussed with the thunderhammer getting some specific buffs you’d be buffing what is already an exceptionally powerful class that is capable of soloing things that full teams can struggle with.

As for “what’s the point of killing * insert elite name here * ?”

I’ll give you the answer I gave you before, and what Rumeht also responded with:

You get to kill the elite before they hurt the team. That’s reward enough.

There’s always enough horde to refuel your toughness. I don’t see that as a problem.

[NemesisNidhoggr]

your knife survivability comes PURELY from crit build and Blazing Fury with cd reduction on crit hits.
Which means you HAVE to build into blazing fury tree.
Which means you have VERY LITTLE talent points left to invest into something else.

i would much like to see a fix for zealot crit build problem. Like “Melee Critical Hits reduce ability cooldown by 1.5s. Occurs once every 5s”. It will fix the problem of zealot knife builds having ridiculous cd reduction, while still having cd reduction at a good pace.

But even without such fix - you are a knife zealot. If thunderhammer got a blessing “Replenish 20-30% tougness on elite kill” would that make your knife zealot build unkillable? I dont think so.
Or what if a martyrdome keystone had an upgrade, that gives you 10% toughness + 20% toughness regen over time on elite kill. Would that make your knife zealot build unkillable? I dont think so, you cant pick 2 keystones.

You dont have to tell me about soloing stuff on zealot, while we have ogryn in the game. You dont have to tell me about OP zealots, while we have plasmagun veterans in the game.

@Tempest_yo

I’ll give you the answer I gave you before, and what Rumeht also responded with:

You get to kill the elite before they hurt the team. That’s reward enough.

and i will give you an answer i already responded to him:
all other classes get the same reward as zealot - killing elite + extra. Whether it’s toughness replenishment, cd reduction, weapon buff or aoe dmg.

[Tempest_yo]

@NemesisNidhoggr

your knife survivability comes PURELY from crit build and Blazing Fury with cd reduction on crit hits.
Which means you HAVE to build into blazing fury tree.
Which means you have VERY LITTLE talent points left to invest into something else.

I’m Inexorable judgement. Try again.

@NemesisNidhoggr

You dont have to tell me about soloing stuff on zealot, while we have ogryn in the game. You dont have to tell me about OP zealots, while we have plasmagun veterans in the game.

Nothing ogryn has is on par with Zealot. Not even close. Mobility is so vastly underrated when people look at raw damage numbers.

Plasma gun vet is easy as hell. I’ll give you that, but not better than zippy boi with a dagger.

[NemesisNidhoggr]

@Tempest_yo

I’m Inexorable judgement. Try again.

np. good luck picking 2 keystones. having Invocation of Death reduce your cd by 1.5s on hit once every 5s. Switching knife to thunderhammer for 20-30% toughness replenishment on elite kills.

@Tempest_yo

Nothing ogryn has is on par with Zealot. Not even close. Mobility is so vastly underrated when people look at raw damage numbers.

i’ve seen a lot of you, dagger zealots, with FotF. None of you outdmged me yet. And i’m not a skilled player. Neither i am a meta-build player.

I’m actually had 3 games in a row with combat knife zealots in my teams today. With FotF. Dunno which build exactly, maybe you personally far better than them. But i’m talking about average random experience with 3 knife zealots in a row.
Let’s see examples:

1st game. Was going pretty normal. Psyker and ogryn were dying a lot, i’ve been picking them up. One time psyker downed under 2 crushers. I ran 25m to res him. Couldve entered stealth, but was possibility he will get killed by crusher the moment i get him up. No grenades. Have to kill crushers and save my boi. Charged up my axe, did a heavy into crusher head. And for some reason game decided NOT to stunlock him. So he turns and instantly drops hammer on me.
My mistake, no question, i’m still forgetting that i can dodge out of revv animation. Got downed. Ogryn somewhere alse also downed.

This zealot had 2 stun grenades. Didnt bothered to come and save psyker, me or ogryn. 3 of us died. He zipped around for few minutes and came to save us. A “clutch” which was his fault for not coming to rescue psyker or, at least, throwing a single stun grenade there.
So even with me, being dead for solid few minutes, he still not even close.

my second game. I remembered! when we got to a healing station, before i could use it (since we were fighting), zealot blew up the barrel and knocked me on lower level where chaos spawn appeared. So i had to dance there with monstro + crusher + 2 maulers + scab rager + dog. I was left with very little hp and when was scavenging for ammo - some scab melee jumped down behind me and killed. So i was left with 1 wound. And then when i tried to push poxbuster in next zone - zealot charged it with FotF, instakilling him in our faces. Killing me outright xD

my third game. pretty much nothing important happened

you say about mobility and how knife zealots unkillable - they unkillable because they not playing with their team. In every game i took the least amount of dmg. Less than knife zealots. And when i died (at least one time that i remember) was due to saving my teammate. Which knife zealot didnt do.

Their main strong side - being able to revive teammates. And they still not doing it. In every single game i revived same or more than them. And i’m a bloody veteran without Voice of Command.

Maybe you not played veteran much. But i dont know how you can say, that zealot is better than OP meta plasmagun build. When it’s not better than even some off-meta builds for fun.
i played veteran much. i played zealot much. i played ogryn much. havent played psyker much. And i see how zealot struggles in certain scenarios, where other classes do not. Because they have talents for those certain scenarios to not struggle. Unlike zealot, which is locked into a single playstyle “hit fast and much enemies”

Those are my 2 builds:
game 1 and 3 build

game 2 build.

[Tempest_yo]

This is sure a lot of subjective player skill scenarios you’ve brought up. Pointless.

I can link my own scoreboards if you tell me where they are stored on my PC. I don’t care to know because they are ultimately far too subjective with far too many variables.

If I were to use scoreboards then it means every class other than my level 19 ogryn (on this specific scoreboard) is a terrible class because I was using gunlugger with kickback with people who were very clearly new to the game despite being all max level, and I topped scored instead of them. Not by a close margin either.

I ran with a random 336 thunder hammer zealot on my 50 dagger zealot, and they didn’t even come close to beating my damage.

It means nothing. I don’t know what that TH zealot was doing. They might have been feeling off, not trying, or had kittens on their lap taking out their earbuds. I don’t actually know.

Zealot so far is the only class I’ve seen do Reginalds melee only solo challenge on Damnation, and the only class to solo Hardmode Damnation Twins event.

I see you throwing the subtle hints “skill issue” at me. If you post your gameplay I’ll post mine, or you can dig through my posts if you need to. I know what I’m talking about. I make statements from experience.

You only have subjective data that involves comparing to other players in what could be entirely hypothetical scenarios you made up. I’m not saying you did, but regardless they are ultimately meaningless.

[NemesisNidhoggr]

Subjective? A random game with random players, playing random builds. Cant get more objective than that.
I wasnt trying to beat zealots on anything. These games occured before your reply. Was just playing as i normally do. Chilling, watching youtube on second monitor. Having fun with my non-meta builds.
While having knife build zealots, which you say are incredibly good.

Maybe it’s not the build, that good, but you? I wasnt throwing skill issue hints at you. I’m genuienly assuming you are a good player. As Reginald and Rumeht are.
That doesnt solve the issue.

if some weapon/class/build baseline requires a high amount of skill to be viable - it needs a change.
The rule “easy to learn, hard to master” should be at the most in such games. Not “hard to learn, hard to master”.

If my sub-par builds, by being a random player, are better performing than knife zealot builds three times in a row with different players. That means that build isnt that good for average player.

And you saying that thunderhammer player in your game was useless - is the exact reason why i’m discussing buffs for thunderhammer playstyle.

Of course Reginald of Rumeht are top-tier players and they learned how to overcome the problems of thunderhammer with dozens of hours invested gameplay to be able perform on same level as lazy meta OP plasmagun.
That doesnt solve the problem why new players have to do the same instead of just playing braindead builds that yield the same result.

It’s not even that i’m asking for much. Blessing on thunderhammer is good enough as it is.
Martyr’s purpose talent rework (as it reduces cd only on HEALTH dmg, not toughness. So it’s incredibly bad) - to give 10-20% cd reduction on elite kill. you may say that’s too much, but with zealot knife you reducing cd much faster that killing elite. And 20% reduced cd on backstab kill works against poxwalkers too.

And going further down the martyrdome path - keystone can have upgrade to replenish toughness on elite kills. You say it makes your knife build OP? But if you constantly dodging and not getting hit and spamming FotF - you wouldnt need to take this talent. As you can just hit enemy with a knife couple of times and use FotF instead.

So no harm to you, or your build, or your playstyle is done. But it openes up ways for a different playstyle. With a different weapon. Prioritizing different targets. Without the need to learn massive amount of mechanics, animation cancel abusing and other bs thunderhammer and chain weapons have to deal with

[Tempest_yo]

@NemesisNidhoggr

Subjective? A random game with random players, playing random builds. Cant get more objective than that.

Only objective data would be the same set of players using different builds, and getting data points that way.

Random game with random players means there is the overload of variables I kept harping on about.

By your logic of:

@NemesisNidhoggr

And you saying that thunderhammer player in your game was useless - is the exact reason why i’m discussing buffs for thunderhammer playstyle.

EDIT: Just realized you weren’t using TH in the screenies (or even zealot). I didn’t read them carefully. I don’t delete my shame though, but you can ignore this section.

I could turn that against you say because you were top score in the screenshots you posted means that you disproved your own point about TH Zealot being in need of buffs.

If I cared to I could just post every time I completely obliterate a plasma vet on the scoreboard on any class. Still proves nothing.

The weird part is we mostly agree on some stuff which I think Thunderhammer should get some defensive buffs. Either specifically a blessing for it to get toughness on elite kill, or simply a passive that gives it toughness on any activation hit. Just baseline, no consecrations.

Where we disagree on (heavily) is you calling veteran this god of melee because they have the ability to regen toughness on elite kill. Veteran can hit harder on a swing by swing basis in melee but that’s the only thing they have going for them when you compare them to zealot.

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@NemesisNidhoggr

if some weapon/class/build baseline requires a high amount of skill to be viable - it needs a change.
The rule “easy to learn, hard to master” should be at the most in such games. Not “hard to learn, hard to master”.

Not necessarily. I think that’s the stuff that’s missing from the game.

Take throwing knives on Zealot. They are absolutely insanely powerful. I’ve seen what they can do at high levels of play, and why I’m practicing with them myself.

They aren’t good in the hands of bad players even remotely. Should they get dumbed down? If they did you’d have to nerf them.

I think some stuff being skill walled is totally fine as long the majority of the weaponry isn’t.

There aren’t enough aspirational skill builds.

@NemesisNidhoggr

It’s not even that i’m asking for much. Blessing on thunderhammer is good enough as it is.
Martyr’s purpose talent rework (as it reduces cd only on HEALTH dmg, not toughness. So it’s incredibly bad) - to give 10-20% cd reduction on elite kill. you may say that’s too much, but with zealot knife you reducing cd much faster that killing elite. And 20% reduced cd on backstab kill works against poxwalkers too.

Accidentally buffing evis zealots. Not a great idea. Let alone knife zealot. You may say “oh well more CDR would be redundant”, but more CDR is more CDR.

I probably wouldn’t take it on knife though since yes it would be overkill for me (I don’t even take the backstab one), but other already op zealot builds would be able to.

@NemesisNidhoggr

And going further down the martyrdome path - keystone can have upgrade to replenish toughness on elite kills. You say it makes your knife build OP?

I mean I wouldn’t even have to dodge. At least make knifey bois have to dodge ya know?

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The problem as I see it is that Zealot has insane toughness DR, and already has very good toughness regen through CDs, and mass killing power.

You getting the changes you want means you’d have even more toughness regen with the Toughness DR on top of it pushing the class over the top even further. It would go from being an evasion tank to just a straight up tank with more EHP than ogryn at times which would be unacceptable.

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My suggestion is learn the animation cancels. You had to in VT2 with over half the melee weapons. Some of which weren’t even good without the cancels in the first place (looking at you, halberd horde clear rotation). Those we’re RSI inducing, the ones here aren’t bad at all, and overall quite reasonable.

[souI23]

I agree with the op. I mean, both Thammers need some love… but part of the problem comes from Zealot too, I feel like he has synergies only with fast, damaging weapons like knife or eviscerator

[Tempest_yo]

I mean I agree with him as well. Just not the method of giving zealot general buffs. I think targeted buffs that only apply to the thunder hammer would be fine.

EDIT: As for the the synergy only existing with fast weapons there’s a similar issue with Marksman Focus on veteran tree only truly making a different for automatic weapons while being almost entirely meaningless on semi autos.

The True Aim node on psyker I think was meant for staves, but is absolutely insane with autoguns as well. The faster the better. MK V as an example has 100% crit on psyker because of that one node.

FS is just bad at balancing slow firing/swinging weapons. In general they do not make them rewarding enough.

[NemesisNidhoggr]

true. So having synergy from talents agains elite enemies and not packs of poxwalkers. Or having synergy for heavy hitting, one shotting weapons (like old eviscerator and thunderhammers). Would be nice.

@Tempest_yo

As for the the synergy only existing with fast weapons there’s a similar issue with Marksman Focus on veteran tree only truly making a different for automatic weapons while being almost entirely meaningless on semi autos.

Exactly. So psykers do have a talent, that rewards them for playing with fast weapons (i have two builds with that talent, one ranged on autoguns and one melee on catachan sword or illisi force sword).

But they also have a talent, that rewards them for killing elite and specialist enemies (the reduced cd and the one that spreads soulflame). Which is easier to do with some heavy hitting weapons like revolver, dueling sword, surge staff, brain burst blitz.

Psyker can go both ways, depending on which talents he picks and which weapons using.
Zealot can go only one way: hit fast, hit many enemy. As no talent gives him any bonuses from killing elites or specials.
You do kill elites and specials. But it’s mathematically more profitable for you to prioritize killing poxwalkers over killing elites.

@Tempest_yo

or simply a passive that gives it toughness on any activation hit.

That wouldve been awesome. I have easier time dancing 1v1 against chaos spawn with my combat knife/catachan sword build zealot. Than with thunderbonking zealot. Simply because i dont have ways to replenish toughness outside my ability. And with thunderhammer i dont have ways to reduce cd of my ability by hitting monstosity