Trying to list the thunderhammer's probelm from my experenice, this weapon really needs some buffs

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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English isn’t my first language, I am trying my best to explain the problems, hope it’s clear enough to read.

  1. Extremely extremely low weak spot damage.

This weapon only increases 5%-10% damage when you hit the enemy’s head for most of the types, only when against flak armor has around 15%, while other melee weapons usually increase 50% percent or higher.

This is the part I don’t get the most, gameplay should encourage you to attack enemy’s weak spot and gives you significant rewards, other weapons are doing fine, I don’t get why to treat thunder hammer so differently.

Just bring the bonus damage to regular amount and the problem solved

  1. Charged attack is very limiting in a lot of situations.

The charged heavy attack is a single target horizontal swing,and stuns yourself for a while after using it.

This weapon is supposed to be an elite killer, you need to charge the weapon and then charge your heavy attack to make a significant impact. But it is a horizontal swing, which makes it very hard to deal with elite enemies hiding in the horde, it is easily wasted on pox walkers and makes yourself open to attacks, it’s really frustrating.

I get the stun animation shows how powerful the attack is, but maybe let the charged attack stun a small radius of enemies around the target as well, kinda like the bolter’s small explosion.

  1. Thunder hammer doesn’t really fit in Zealot’s feats.

There are some directions you can go as a Zealot:
bleed+crit+damge reduction+cool down reduction: dagger is the obvious choice, the tactical axe works too.
Keep your HP very low to boost damage/attack speed: Not really practical under the chip damage system, extra hard for the thunder hammer since it slows your speed, and weakens your dodge.
Extra impact: quite good for the eviscerator, but thunder hammer already has enough impact.

Thunder hammer just doesn’t have much to choose from, dagger feels more like the zealot’s “unique weapon” if you look at the feats.

  1. Compare to the Power sword, thunder hammer is really underwhelming

Especially the veteran class is supposed to be the sharpshooter, having a much better power weapon compared to the melee specialist zealot feels really off to me.

I have seen other discussions about the sword, some say the power sword is too op, some say it’s on a good spot, its all the other weapons need some buffs. I just wish the sword and hammer could be at least on the same level.

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It has to be something off with TH. Even if you check it’s stats in game they don’t make any sense. Like look:

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Maul has way less armor piercing than chainsaw despite having noticeably more percentage “bar” stats.

It doesn’t really seem right to me.

TH is just a mess right now that is suitable for yeeting and staggering hordes left and right. But in reality power of the weapon is very low.

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Damn, it sucks so bad that this post hasn’t gotten more traction yet! It’s very important that the TH gets changed because it’s so utter bullsh*t that I’m actually ashamed to admit I get angry at the programmers of this weapon when I wield it!

The 2nd point of the OP is the absolute biggest issue: the fact that the power attack is SINGLE TARGET ONLY?! Like what the actual bleep? The elite killing attack of the TH is a fully charged power attack, which takes a long time to wind up and if ONE poxwalker is between your hammer and the elite in question, your hammer obliterates the poxwalker, you get stunned and the elite wipes the floor with you.

Fix: Remove the goddamn stun?! I mean, come on!? Secondly, make it so the charged up power attack CLEAVES POXWALKERS until it hits an elite.

So: Remove stun, cleave poxwalkers. Problem solved.

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Fatshark needs to watch gameplay of the space marine third person shooter/hack and slash with captain titus.

The thunder hammer in that game felt great so they should take that power level but make the weapon a little more unwieldy bc it is being handled by a mere human.

A charged heavy swing should have a cc aoe like a bolter, I want to see zombies fly even if they balance it by making your character take a second to ready the weapon again after that massive swing.

Light attacks should be a little slow but knock a target on its back even if it doesn’t kill.

Thunder hammer is a sledgehammer on crack, it needs to be slow and weighty with swings that launch foes.

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I honestly love the power hammer on my preacher. I mean it’s 495 so it packs a punch.
I can oneshot everything but monstrosities with rush and charged up bonk.

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Excuse my maybe inaccurate ignorant understanding of weapon applications.
I thought one of the major advantages of a hammer (blunt weapons) is that it’s very effective against metal armor. Buckling it and denting it into the body parts causing damage and preventing the body to return from it’s temporary deformed state from the impact.

TH is such an iconic power fantasy, I want it to be viable… but swinging it around, all I feel like I’m doing is knocking chaff around. It shines during ST, but it shouldn’t be abyssmal in aoe.

I think they should make it so the powered up state doesn’t get blocked on non-specials, like chain weapons. Just let me power it up and then go golfing with 20 poxwalkers a swing.

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They really did us dirty with the 2H hammer in this game.
In v2 it was lights are good against armour heavys are the horde use.
Now i dont know what the point of the light attacks are since they dont do anything

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Yeah they botched it hard with the TH. And exactly: the powered up attack shouldn’t be blocked by normal foes. Absolutely ridiculous, especially because the powered up light attack doesn’t do enough damage compared to the mobility you sacrifice. In other words, in order to do any real damage to elites, you NEED the powered up strong attack which is a horizontal swing. Again: one poxwalker between your hammer and the elite can block your attack and leave you stunned and open for the Crusher to… well, crush you.

Fatshark needs to fix this pronto. The weapon is broken.

PS: And the guy who loves it on his Zealot? We can all wait for the moment the 30eth poxwalker blocks a killing blow for him to convert to our side…

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What makes this worse is that the penetration stat only scales heavy attack damage against carapace armour, cucking the light attacks even more (though their base damage does that plenty on its own).

Agreed with most of the points in this thread. Just want to add going back to a single target push attack like the early VT2 days makes absolutely no sense. You just spam heavy attacks with this weapon, they’re basically the best choice in every situation. It’s silly.

Saving grace of the weapon is the +15% toughness on multi hit blessing, but most of its other blessings are unimpactful, one of them is reducing hit mass of enemies for 0.5 seconds after kill. It takes half a second just to wind up a heavy attack, how are you ever meant to actually use that? Most perplexingly that blessing is exclusive to the thunder hammer. It just doesn’t make any sense.

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To your last point: you kill during the swing, which means it can proc during a swing and is effective during the swing it procs in.

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Funnily enough, a friend of mine and myself were discussing that the Thunder Hammer and Power Sword probably should be swapped. Power Sword for Zealot and Thunder Hammer for Veteran. The hammer is more of a specialist weapon as designed.

Without going into balance and whatnot, the role the thunder hammer serves as is would fit Veteran a lot better, while the power sword would fit how Zealot plays a lot better overall. Need elite kill? Charge on vet, slap something. Need horde clear? Heavy attack spam.

Though, in general, my opinion of the Thunder Hammer is basically: “They took one of the best weapons in Vermintide 1 and 2, the 2 handed hammer, and somehow managed to make it bad.” Regardless of what happens, it definitely needs work. It and the eviscerator.

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Eviscerator also feels like it just knocks things around instead of actually powering through on an activated heavy cleave, and the thing canonically has the same exact power field tech and molecule sharp metal the sword does. It’s also not a very crit focused weapon exclusive to a class they’ve suddenly decided to make revolve around crits.

Funnily enough, a friend of mine and myself were discussing that the Thunder Hammer and Power Sword probably should be swapped. Power Sword for Zealot and Thunder Hammer for Veteran.

Lol absolutely not, besides, we already know zealot likely has the 2h power sword on lock.

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Why not? Just think about it outside the rationality of “This fits here lore-wise.” The thunder hammer, as it exists, is a very good niche weapon for specific purpose use, but not for general purpose melee. The power sword is very good for general purpose use, but not for specific, niche uses. They’re on the wrong classes, gameplay wise.

There are plenty of reasons why a Vet-Marksman shouldn’t have a thunder hammer, or a power sword. Hell, none of the rejects should realistically have thunder hammers or power swords for purely logistical reasons. Yet, here we are.

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Why not?

Because it’s gameplay inappropriate for a purely ranged class to have access to what is supposed to be a devastating melee weapon in both the case of power sword and thunder hammer, it’s thematically inappropriate because it’s a guardsman, go ahead and try and find me examples of guardsmen with thunder hammers, and Zealot won’t need a single handed power sword once they get the two handed variant.

There are plenty of reasons why a Vet-Marksman shouldn’t have a power sword

Not really, actually, they’re pretty common among highly ranked guardsmen as status symbols if not actual weapons, and inquisition acolyte is a pretty high rank.

I understand that you want to weasel veteran out of the inevitable 1h power sword nerf, but just accept it.

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I hated my low combat rating Thunder Hammer, but when I got a moderate combat rating Thunder Hammer I loved it and I can’t wait to get a high rating one with optimal blessings.

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Doing charged attacks “With special attack” with the hammer, makes you vulnerable for some time, which its as if the recoil of the explosion.

The animation is nice visually ,but should be if a player starts the next attack or block it should cancel the animation.

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I hated my low combat rating Thunder Hammer, but when I got a moderate combat rating Thunder Hammer I loved it and I can’t wait to get a high rating one with optimal blessings.

QFT. But that doesn’t remove the main problem with the thing: 1 little poxwalker between you and an elite, and the poxwalker takes the entire electrified power strike. Ridiculous.

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I think the light attack overhead version of the charged special makes sense to need careful aim for full effect, but a special charged heavy swing should add maybe a Vermintide style shield bash stagger that knocks most enemies down and staggers larger enemies near the point of impact.

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Good point. It stacks 5 times though, and since the hammer has terrible damage cleave I’m not sure how reasonable it is to keep it stacked up. Really wish we had UI indicators for when blessings are active.

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It might be the easiest fix but keep everything the same but when you use special to charge up your heavy is now and over head strike right down the middle instead of a side swing.