[Experimental] Why nerf Balor's hammer?

[Suslik]

I used to love this weapon so much that the first time I found it, I literally stopped my playthrough and went on to create a new dedicated character specifically to try to make use of that weapon.

Time went on, I gained more experience, but Balor's hammer remained one of my favourite weapons just because of how ridiculous it is and how much investment it takes to make it even barely work.

On dominating difficulty this weapon used to be viable but far from the power level of many other weapons. Even crafted sledgehammers used to deal very similar damage per AP when balor's hammer was 25AP. But why is it 30 now? Now crafted options are just hands down better and so much easier to build around. It seems like the whole investment into having ridiculous amount of strength is no longer worth it because of its increased AP cost.

Honestly I was really excited with this patch when you said that most unique weapons got buffed, I fired up the game to see what happened to my hoard and while most of the stuff got really interesting buffs/updates (tesla armor, i'm looking at you), Balor's hammer specifically made me sad.

[Jean-Luc]

I think the change was made because you can now carry over 10ap into the next turn which means Balor's Hammer could get 3 hits every other turn with just base ap and no bonuses (assuming you're using the Lifting Belt).

But I have no experience using hammers and if crafted ones really could achieve the same "dmg per turn" maybe the change wasn't needed.

[Vlad_Tech]

Well you still get 2 hits off minimum a turn thanks to the lifting belt. It is unfortunate you can't adren for 3, but the captain's statement is correct on why.

Was it needed? No Balors isn't even that good when you can just tichrome everything to death or use stun + tungsten for comparable damage and CC.

[Zeem]

Because Balor's was just plain superior to almost any other hammer once you could wield it, and with specced Pummel you could have a 0 AP attack that was still strong enough to nuke most enemies.

[happybjorn]

I am somewhat curious to see if the increased item level super steel can make it compete with TiChrome hammers.

I always felt that Quake was the superior unique. It carried through mid game and you could craft excellent hammers before you could effectively wield Balor's. Quake is changed too now, so that will be interesting...

[Voroff]

Well, i mean, theres that one time where i did make a chara with spears, hoping that Throwing them was a thing i'll do ... But my chara was low dexterity and by the time i got that i was a bit late to reconsider and restart, so i rolled with it. What my chara had, was a big bulk of strenght.
So i took the hammer, and had very good chances to hit, so i became my secondary weapon. To spice encouters and their resolve. To vary a bit. T'was better than spears to BLONK turrets and bots, and while no man survived a single thrust of the spear (energy-tipped) at the mid-end game, so no one survived a swing of the hammer too.



Where i want to go with this small rant, is that an expert spearman with all the feats and his weapon of choice was doing the very same BLONKS with an hammer no-feats. Just the belt-thingy to reduce AP cost, but that was ...whatever. That was on hard, on dom' there may be differences and egdes may count more for the resolution.
But Balor's Hammer was my sidearm :) T'was fun :p

[Serendipitous]

Originally posted by happybjorn:

I am somewhat curious to see if the increased item level super steel can make it compete with TiChrome hammers.

It already could, since under adrenaline (70 AP) and with fatigue debuff after adrenaline (35 AP) you have same amount of attacks with tichrome and super steel, with super steel having better damage for the same quality. Also, the problem with tichrome is that if you ever spend more than 2 AP in a turn, you loose that additional attack, which usually happens when you use a drug, recharge your hammer (which you need on tichrome every other turn) or use pummel with less than 4 spec points in it. So in reality it was never as straightforward as 3 vs 2 attacks per turn. Super steel also leaves 16 AP to get the grenade toss, dirty kick or even tichrome swing after two hits.