Just wanted to say think you for the combo guide portion of this video. I loved the idea of this weapon but always struggled with it. After watching this I absolutely demolished the next mission. It felt so good knowing exactly which combo to bring to bear.
Very happy to have done so! I think its an overlooked part of many guides so I started putting it in all of mine since then. I think the weapon is a lot of fun so I am glad you had fun with it
I'm SO glad to see weapons like the Crusher getting brought up. I think Fatshark is on a really good path here. Btw i feel like the crusher and las pistol go best with the robocop armor lol
Just used this build today, it’s a lot of fun and you can really get your team out of sticky situations with the special against hordes. The only thing I did differently was speck into the fury keystone tree a bit more and putting one point into getting fury grants 50 percent toughness. It really helps squeeze some extra damage out of the crusher with the crit chance.
I did hear someone say they liked running crit and crit regen. I think that's totally valid. I am very partial to inexorable judgement for the extra swing speed and damage on first contact with a group of enemies, plus it has a speed boost right next to it. But the nice thing about the zealot tree is how easy cross specing is. The internode taxes are low.
@@Reginald-sc9tk The damage doesn't actually apply from the judgement keystone until your second strike. The hit that procs the 20 stacks doesnt actually receive the damage buffs from the 20 stacks, only your swings thereafter will. For this reason I usually run martyrdom because it gives a lot higher damage output and just feels stronger overall imo after playing with both for a while
That's actually untrue for melee attacks last I tested it. The damage from Inexorable Judgement is applied to the melee attack that triggers it but the swingspeed and shoot speed buffs don't apply until after. This means its great for big bonk sticks like hammers and works well for the crushers. Martyrdom is solid, I like it, so its down to taste I think.
I tried it on a full middle path relic zealot build and it basically felt like being a paladin. The reliable and flexible profile of the new crusher combined with the special attack pairs well with the sheer control that the relic and flame grenade give. I passed over fury of the faithful because I saw no obvious synergy like crit eviscerator but may try it after watching. Also thank you for showing that combo to kill the bulwarks, cracking them open is another one of this things nice support abilities.
You can get some decent damage spikes with Fury, though I'm a big fan of Chorus myself. I bet your build is very fun. I tend to like my builds to snag movement speed buffs, as a zealot they feel very strong. Letting you be where you need to be, for the same reason I like Fury as its a good mobility with a solid damage spike that can be used to bail party members. A FotF powered overhead can set the stage for a daring rescue very nicely.
I have t4 trauma and t4 thunderstrike on my indigatus and run a martyrdom build. If you pop celerity while at low health, you turn into a death blender. Get Restoring faith for extra health. Get until death + Holy revenant. Run Fury. You can even slap around crushers if you have the right impact blessing and take some impact passives. Make sure you take punishment and sustained assault. Waves of 10+ Ragers? Knock them over and send them spinning. Great fun, wildly cathartic, and entertaining to send them flying.
I HAVE REJECTED THE CHAINSWORD, THE HAMMER, AND THE CUTLASS! I RETURN TO THE TRUNCHEON! Sidenote; I have a question. Given you play mostly on higher difficulties and Auric, do you think the new health pools for elites are healthy for the game or not? I play mostly on heresy and regular damnation and decidedly felt the jump, but I want to see what the upper percentile thinks.
I think its good for the game personally. I felt like, at least at high levels, elite spam was becoming a problem. Their health pools were low enough in patch 13 that it was easy to consistently oneshot them like trash, but there were so many of them they felt like trash. I'd rather have a sense that when I see a few elites in a pack I am concerned about it rather than just slightly annoyed by another 30 dreg gunners. Luv me crusher. Glad it got buffed.
Now they're more annoying to kill when you encounter them. Unloading your entire bolter on a Singler dog isn't the right direction and fun. It's unrealistic and stupid.
To my knowledge they nerfed dogs health between patch 12 and patch 13 and did not receive any health buffs in patch 14 either. Its only crushers and some larger targets that got buffed. @@Anomalyy666
Crusher gang is so back. Also I enjoy running Holy Revenant on the Crusher. Getting a Power attack in along with some strikedowns pretty much gurantees that full 25% health heal. Also while in a vacuum the boss damage is very middling, if other teammates stagger the boss, your skullcrusher will kick in and start doing some nasty damage. Have had it work on the beasts and the spawn, need to see if it works on the Plague Ogryn. I run the Las Pistol with Infernus and I love it. A huge reason I run, besides the amazing hip fire, "clippy" nature, and fast swap time, is the speed you get. The crusher is a bit slow, so being able to zoom around with the Las Pistol to get Judgement stacks and get into melee feels great. Going to try my Hammer Matrydom build with it at some point and will let you know how it works out.
@LeahBonser I'm very lucky because mine has Ghost and Infernus paired together on it. Want to try Infernus and Dumdum at some point but it works so well as it is
Your game looks like it runs fantastically! Do you use aftereffects for your posted videos or is this actually what your game looks like during gameplay?
Dumb question, but what attack for horde clear? Heavy attacks all day long? Because of the high stagger, they sometimes get pushed around in a wide circle and I can get encircled by my own stagger
Light-Heavy - light light light - heavy. Swing for heads. You will have to sweep the ground sometimes, its part of using the weapon you will need to get used to. Setting ragdolls to 3 (minimum) can help improve your perception of what is still in need of beating up. At least until you get used to it.
@Reginald-sc9tk was pretty awesome man, just using purple hammer trying to build up my resources, but even with that I had a couple games where I took down like 6 maulers at once using the crazy crowd control on that thing, (not to mention there were like 500 other things in the group lol). im glad it got buffed I was getting tired of always using chainswords haha, love the bonk stick. Also the build overall was awesome, that corruption removal really helps.
I think so too. I've gotten good value out of corruption removal compared to the less noticeable value from the other two auras. Plus its just a derivation of zoom zealot which always manages to delight. Go fast, hit hard. @@Cederlof_Ink
This looks fun. Do you have any recommendations in regards to a characters height? Like is maxing out height unwise because you have to look downwards to swing?
There is a mod now that should let you adjust after the fact. I believe max height characters have some advantages over shorter characters in that they typically can get easier horizontal cleaves on horde heads and reach crusher heads more easily. My character is about 80-85% height on the bar. I find this works good as a middle ground and it's very easy for me to use enemies as cover against ranged fire.
Wanted to say that I absolutely love this build. Love the T-hammer and Eviscerator and have been using both for over 1k hours but lately wanted to mix it up a little. Currently having a blast bashing heretics with the Crusher 10/10
Cool crusher content. I was a big fan of the donk stick and i was running it with the movement tree. Way fun to cave those skulls in. Finally gave it a new try tonight and damn, that push attack ends so much faster it looks weird.
Another great build and bonking fun. Damnation / auric ready from first playtest. You and cashcrop have best content/inspiring build ideas imo. Keep it up! PS Infernus on the las pistol is indeed great, although I guess 25% flak&maniac helps as well ;-) Running with 3x+3 stamina, it's fragile but manageable usually. Sneaky Trappers in clutch largest risk for death
Yes, you can see it in my footage in the demo where there's a cool special effect that activates after a short pause. It causes slightly higher damage, better armor penetration and an AOE stagger or higher cleave (depending on heavy or light attack usage) @@tommyVCE
I have used the electric Q-tip for at least the last 6 months for its amazing ability to CC the map, before psykers had smite this would stop a train of crushers or whatever. Now that its buffed in damage I look like just another lemming on the FOTM weapon buff, when in reality I was faithful to it all along and nobody used it :-) 1st world issues...
Yep. Crusher was my pick. I felt like I'd figured out how to use it right where others overlooked it. Very team-based weapon, which I liked. Haven't played yet since update, but I feel a little more encouraged after Reginald giving it the thumbs up.
I liked the crusher before too - but its a stand out weapon for me right now. Fun combos with solid horde clear and still hits that nice niche of being a good tool to support the team. The build I have here is sort of a soft paladin with light team corruption clear and good rescue options. @@astrovarius543
I’m a big zealot lover, I love having a Ranged option like the Mrk 3 Vraks HH or a revolver, I am glad to see Crusher is getting love, just after I deleted mine. It wasn’t a good stat roll so I’m not too upset about it. I love having my firearm be for longer range and I use options for CC. Chastise is great but the relic is just god tier
i always liked the bonk stick but it felt too weak when not powered up. delighted to see it improved. 0:33 3x stamina curios? i run 1 stam 2 health on my zealot. will see if this makes him better.
Its a quirk of mine. Pretty sure its not actually that useful, but it does come in handy when I use weapons that do a lot of push attacks or need to block a lot (like rezzing in a horde). I rez better than most ogryn.
Believe it or not, the crusher actually works great in a crit build. It swings fairly quickly and although its base crit isn't huge and it doesn't have crit blessings with Fury (may even spare a point for the extra 10% crit chance) and Purge The Wicked in between you'll still be hitting crits frequently. If you have an Ogryn on your team dishing out bleeds of their own then its just a cherry on top.
I am running an 13th gen i9 w/ 64gb ram and am RTX 4090. I run it with DLSS turned on, set to balanced, frame generation set to on. Settings are generally set to extreme.
Its funny but I think its just a weird quirk of their calculation system. Its +3 stamin, +4% (lvl 4) ability regen and +15% sprint efficiency (lvl 4) and +15% gunner resistence (level 3). The 154 is basically the same with two level 4s and a level 3 perk and +3 stamina. Who knows how that calculation works.
I am running an 13th gen i9 w/ 64gb ram and am RTX 4090. I run it with DLSS turned on, set to balanced, frame generation set to on. Settings are generally set to extreme.
How does this compare to the thunderhammer after the patch? When I tried the crusher before the patch, I felt like the horde clear was a little bit worse than the thunderhammer and the special charge attacks felt way lower damage and less impactful than the thunderhammer, which is why I didn't run it.
It now has superior horde clear to the hammers but far inferior sniping. It isn't awful at elite bonking, as shown in a few clips. But its no hammer. Its main advantage in powered attacks is great stagger. Making it a good to excellent horde clear weapon with excellent safety, solid team support, and a fun swing pattern.
Have you tried the stealth version of this? Power up crusher, stealth, and 1 shot backstab Crushers with a crusher. I've been running all the impact/stagger talents with a crusher and it makes it so easy to reposition and get free backstabs on everything to reset stealth with the CD on Backstab Kill talent. Most fun I've had with a Zealot so far. Also clutches extremely well since you CC and clear hordes easily, while giving stealth revives.
Sup! I did some of this rework and all I will say is - mess around with push attack headshots for fun and profit! Try empowered push attack headshots on carapace. You might find some... spicy things! There is a deep satisfaction to a left dodge push attack -> light strikedown heavy strikedown rotation Also worth noting the empowered lights get vastly improved cleave - and with its hugely reduced special activation radius directly striking specials with the attack itself is v important
Thanks so much on multiple fronts. Including your work making this weapon enjoyable to use at last. I've enjoyed the four games I've had time to play with it and I appreciate a lot of the changes. I'll certainly be testing your proposed techniques! Out of curiosity, since I have you here, how come it feels like normal heavy attacks don't have much damage differentiation from empowered attacks? I'm all for giving power weapons an "always on vfx" with a "more power" button. But it did confuse me a bit. From a lore perspective you expect a power weapon to simply be more powerful than an unpowered one. I know you only did part of the rework, so just curios if you know the reason. I'm quite pleased overall with the weapon and it has consistently been a favorite for its interesting combos. Cheers!
@@Reginald-sc9tk Basically the heavy empowered attack is purely a cc move now - that's where the aoe explosion went. As it's nominally a crowd control weapon not a force weapon the extra damage element was kept purely vs lighter targets. Light special spam was the degenerate case; ideally I would have gone with a staged heavy to power up the aoe but this was a good compromise at short notice. The key consideration was that the weapon feels fast and activation is purely tactical - it's designed not to be an activation for damage weapon, it's an activation for *utility and cc* weapon. The light activation attacks do get a decent power boost and slight adm improvements to offset the dps loss of the activation but the heavies do not because... you just dropped the stagger bomb and that should be why you activate heavied. There's already a slow activation -> poundtown hammer type weapon and it's real handsome. The activation now has multiple use cases; to hit specific stagger bps (eg without trauma stacks up a light sweep will stagger a rager on headshot; with activation it will stagger on bodyshot...), for aoe safety on heavy, to guarantee a cleave to cc multiple ragers or maulers that the default sweep cleave would fail on, etc. The weapon has such a beautiful flow between its actions we wanted to encourage you to lean into beating ass rather than thinking "I need to do my MMO rotation". You're doing a drum rotation... ON HIS SKULL. Also worth noting; the heavy strikedown range increase is very important. It lets you snipe ragers eg outside their range, but that also lets you retreat and get space to enter a fight with a heavy activation attack... Example of a cleave extension on a push attack with the activation: medal.tv/games/warhammer-40000-darktide/clips/1wA2exkqvHj6cj/d1337DmWLRf9?invite=cr-MSx6NHosMTU3ODYzOTYwLA Anyway I could go on about this weapon it was so much beautiful animation work that was languishing. There's a lil push attack cancel you can do from the H1 too...
As a note: the empowered push attack can do some... interesting damage: medal.tv/games/warhammer-40000-darktide/clips/1Al2Wrc3d5knrE/d13373bgaJqu?invite=cr-MSx3eWIsMTU3ODYzOTYwLA
I fully agree with leaning into the weapons normal attack chains, they're extremely satisfying, well animated, and have always felt great to use. The light-heavy-light-light-light-heavy chain is super fun to use in hordes and the overhead combo is just stellar and feels great. Ultimately I am extremely satisfied with the changes I'd just love to see the lore rolled back into the weapon a bit. For me that's giving it the VFX of an always on low power field. It doesn't need to do anything special, just look like its humming with power. It might help explain some of the big highs of a S3 character bonking ogryns to death with a big stick. From a pure gameplay perspective though its one of the most satisfying weapons in the game for me right now, beyond my usual drum beat of chain weapons. I like that the special attack has been moved down in priority a lot so I can just swing my weapon and break out the special attack for special circumstances. I've played around six games with it so far, between testing other changes, and it really feels great on offense and defense with good weight to it and a strong sense of identity when compared to the hammers. Thanks again for your efforts, you've helped bring us all a treat.
@@Reginald-sc9tk 100% agreed. My feeling with all activation weapons (but I'm just a playtester who worked with a designer on it so obviously I do not controlle ye SWEDISH FISH) was that I would want end chain combo attacks to have activation by default (so strikedown l4 on weapons like psvi), and for weapons like the crusher to have a flash of activation on eg the push attack hitting a weakspot so the damage is explained by the user *doing* something. That way it's not just "either im hitting them with a stick or the spicy laser version". For the crusher given the level of baseline stagger the thing should be lightly humming for sure - especially given it now hits hard enough to justify it. Unfortunately due to timing this had to be constriained to working with assets and functionality already there - so moveflow, speed, chaining properties were the only menu options. Luckily the guy who made this weapon put in a tonne to work with. If you like this might be worth giving the DC7 and PSVI a look - both got a push attack focused rejig to complement their movesets, with the PSVI push attack block cancel mechanic being incredibly fun when combined with the block cost reduction, and the dc7 just finally having its moveset have its strength in the right place. The parry followup l3 now has armour pen so you can trade into a crusher or mauler if you want to take the risk instead of retreating back to a parry...
I run it as a crit weapon, taking Fury over Judgement and bleed on crit. Its high finesse benefits massively from more crits and its crit rate seems high enough to make it worth it. I’ve had pretty much permanent 50% toughness damage reduction thanks to that talent and frequent enough bleeds.
Ha, used a loadout very similar to this one today to finish off weeklies. Didn't feel too strong, but it was great for support. Same old stunning 3 crushers and 3 maulers at once, except now Indignatus can deal more damage than a wet noodle.
Its a lot better. Some of my scoreboards and those of my friends are showing some very impressive kill numbers. Its no micro-eviscerator as horde clear goes but its quite competitive in general. The title of this video is a touch click baity to be fair, but it works so I'm cursed by the algorithm as we all are. I will say its not too far from the truth. This thing can really put up some impressive numbers while still being quite good for support and stagger.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I agree that its better, as I used Indignatus a lot prior to patch 13. There are still some moments where it feels weak, such as damage against Mutants. Can't punish their charges quite as well as Hammer/Heavy Chainsword would, so you get neither damage nor CC and 3 of them might juggle you around ezpz. Still, I think what pushes Indignatus to feel better, for me personally, is that now I can *actually* be a supportive CC Zealot. I can spec into skills that grant me the ability to help my team in more ways that dealing 15% more damage or stagger with my melee. I no longer have to imagine that its my play style, game actually supports it via character building.
@@Poppenheimer69 If you wait for the mutie to hit an object, you probably know this already, but it counts as staggered. Helps to clean them up faster in that case. Skullcrusher procs and backstab damage and all that.
So glad both of my favorite melee weapons had gotten buffed. But now it is hard to decide to play with the heavy chain sword or the power maul D: At least, if I recall correctly, my power maul I do have is god rolled with the perfect blessings already as well. Nothing shall stand it's might! Mainly because the weapon only has impact blessings as options in general.
Its a, fortunately, fairly easy weapon to godroll. I've always liked its intricate swing patterns so I'm thrilled it got buffed at last. The heavy chainsword also feels great these days. I'm pleased by how many weapons feel usable at last.
highly recommend anyone using spammy semi auto guns to try out the full auto mod to save your fingers from unnecessary pain and damage basically just adds a built in macro to fire anything full auto that u can turn off at the press of a key that also adds a UI element so u can see when u have it on/off
Finally a reason to level Zealot up and get something close to V2 Zealot playstyle, especially if +AtkSpd Martyrdom is viable (also imagine telling players that Crusher is a weakspot centric horde clear weapon now and not giving it Thrust, Brutal Momentum or Uncanny Strike lol)
It has a weird blessing pool but its easy to roll a good one. Martyrdom is viable, but I think inexorable judgement and general movement speed builds feel better.
I probably did not explain it well, but it comes up a little in my discussion section. While I am not focused on back stabbing with this build I expect to knock people on the ground or stagger them otherwise and circle around them frequently. In my demo footage at the end there's a rager I swing into the floor. As I'm dodge dancing the horde I naturally end up behind him because of how he got spun around, and get a clean overhead into his back. I get a nice damage boost from this and skull crusher as well as regen for FotF. At the cost of 2 nodes with little else i was desperate for, I felt this kind of situation would occur often enough to be valuable. This goes double for monstrosities where I expect to frequently be swinging at their backside if I don't have aggro.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Ah, that makes it much clearer. I actually forgot that enemies lying on the ground can be backstabbed. I see now how backstabbing makes sense with the crusher.
Its ok. No one is going to force you to put away your revolver. But considering you went down in almost every one of my video clips it might not be that hard ;^) (I may have blown you up with a burster two of three times)
I have been playing Eviscerator since start but I tried Crusher today I find it much fun. Knocks down everything it touches and wont let it stand up to fight back.
They should keep the mace thing as it is now(maybe buff power heavy attack damage slightly) and then make the hammers devastating in terms of damage. So you’d have the faster, more versatile but weaker mace thing and the slower but devastatingly powerful hammer. Then use the chainswords for crits/bleed high mobility fighting. Right now the hammers and chain swords feel weak and borderline obsolete, let alone compared to the mace thing.
I haven't tested the chainsword since the patch, actually, but I will be doing pretty aggressive testing on TTKs against various targets. I suspect the chain weapons will out preform the crusher against hordes despite the buffs. The hammers, this patch, hit a lot of easy breakpoints. 2 tapping crushers and 1 tapping almost everything else. With the right build they annihilate bosses. If it weren't for what they did to the ironhelm I'd say they did a good job actually.
Weapon is really good it's a shame the blessings are so shit. It would really benefit from momentum and some of the other blessings available to the thunder hammers.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I honestly can't play any zealot weapon that doesn't have momentum or something similar at this point lmao. I have all toughness trinkets which gets me up to 211 toughness, making momentum alone give me about 30 toughness per swing. I can tank any amount of gunners or anything really so long as I have something to hit.
My advice is actually to go watch The Wile Spice's latest video where he discusses Dodging in some detail. It is a key tecnique for zealots to master. I'd also, if I were you, just start running a weapon without momentum so you can learn how to play without it. You'll die at first a lot but each time you do you can learn from it. That's how I weened off momentum (which I still think is a great blessing! btw!)
@@Reginald-sc9tk I can play without it, but the blessing is completely busted, more so the better you are. if you can mitigate most damage by just playing good, momentum becomes broken because it will just instantly heal any damage you take. If you have more than 150 toughness you will just never take health damage.
If you think that highly of it I will give it a shot again and see if it makes a difference in my experience. I have been experimenting with tanky builds as opposed to finesse builds and I am finding them fun to play. @@blighter88
Its funny but I think its just a weird quirk of their calculation system. Its +3 stamin, +4% (lvl 4) ability regen and +15% sprint efficiency (lvl 4) and +15% gunner resistence (level 3). The 154 is basically the same with two level 4s and a level 3 perk and +3 stamina. Who knows how that calculation works.
I find the opposite to be true, you're welcome to propose an alternative. The buffed crusher is now a solid horde clear weapon with great general utility.
