3.5-5% Strength for 3.5s on Hit. Stacks 5 times.
Up to 5-20% Strength based on the charge time of your heavy attacks. Stacks 3 times.
4.5-6% Critical Chance for each expended round in your weapon (resets on reload).
10% Critical Chance for every 0.3-0.45 second while aiming. Stacks 10 times. Discharges all stacks upon firing.
Every Zealot looks at the Thunder Hammer with tears in their eyes, they wish it was good, they try really hard to justify using it to others, but they just can't. Even a 10 hour long video essay and multiple cherry-picked clips of it killing Crushers with 10% health left could only justify putting the Thunder Hammers in B tier.
The heavy sword, the axe, the combat knife, even all of the chainswords are not only better weapons, but also give you access to crit builds, which are the best builds in the game.
But we're going to use it anyway, and we're taking it to Auric because we love the Thunder Hammer.
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Tl;dr Your role is a tanky support, you keep your team alive with your Chorus ability, you pick off dangerous specials (Snipers, trappers, hounds) with your revolver before they become a threat, and you swing your charged hammer through the horde to slam that rager hiding in the middle of them.
Detailed guide
Martyrdom
You deal more damage the less health you have, but that doesn't mean you should be running around at 1% HP. Ideally, you should be at around 25% health so you have a buffer, and you should use medicae stations you come across. Don't be that one Martyrdom player who insists on staying at a sliver of health and constantly goes down.
Zombie mode
When you go down, Until Death will make you invulnerable for 5 seconds, during this time dealing damage will heal you, the best use is to slam a special with a charged hammer blow to recover HP to the cap.
This combos incredibly well with Restoring Faith, which heals you for 25% of all damage taken, this still works even when you're in zombie mode, so hits you take whilst invulnerable will actually heal you (up to the 25% cap)
Against Bosses
If your team is in danger, or, blessed be the emperor, the boss is on a ledge you can push it off, use Chorus to stun it and replenish your team's toughness.
Otherwise, you'll charge your thunder hammer. Go for the head, and try to activate your damage buffs beforehand (Desperation will be active if you sprinted towards it, Duellist will be active if you dodge an attack whilst charging a heavy attack). The Ironhelm deals less damage, but does have a shorter post-hit stun, which means you can get more attacks in. With a little practice you'll find you can annihilate bosses even with the lower damage the Ironhelm provides.
Horde Clear
Horde clear is your biggest weakness. The Thunder Hammer just doesn't have the damage to be able to clear a horde in a reasonable timeframe, and I'm sorry to say it, but those reddit posts claiming that "Only knocking down enemies with a maxed out charged heavy is okay because killing enemies is other people's job :)" are cope.
Fortunately, most other builds actually have great horde clear. In dire situations, you can use your grenades to quickly deal with a horde. So your priority during a horde is to be looking for dangerous specials to pick off with your revolver. You can help clear with your thunder hammer until you hear the audio cues that require you to quickdraw your revolver and send some lead into a trapper's brainbox.
Use the revolver against
Every ranged special, groups of ragers. Bombers, snipers, trappers and hounds are priority targets. It can shred hordes if they're nice and stacked up as well. The revolver will be doing the majority of the work in this build. Use it to pick off priority specials before they can deal any damage. The revolver is fantastic, it's so accurate it's basically a pocket sniper rifle.
Make sure you're diligent with reloading whenever you get a break, the revolver has a long reload time and the last thing you want is to be in an open area with a sniper staring at you with no rounds to send him to the shadow realm.
Using your Thunder Hammer
The Ironhelm has odd attack patterns that take some getting used to.
Against hordes, you can go heavy -> heavy -> light, then spam heavy -> light forever. Or you can just go light -> heavy which is easier to remember.
Against heavier targets, like crushers or bosses, you push attack into charge attack, this puts you into the strikedown attack, which deals slightly more damage. You can also just charge a normal heavy attack if you don't have time/can't see your target through the horde/don't trust your aim. Always aim for the head.
But with if I'm not in range? I'm so slow when charging an attack.
Young thunder hammerer, you must learn the art of crab walking.
Crab Walking
You might notice that the Thunder Hammer slows you down a lot whilst you're charging a heavy attack, which is very awkward because due to how the Thrust blessing works, you leave yourself vulnerable for a very long time to deal max damage, so ideally you want to start charging out of range, and move into range when the attack is ready. But you're so slow whilst charging a hit. How do we deal with this?
We crab walk.
If an enemy is out of range, first, you must activate your hammer and start charging your heavy attack.
Then, you turn 90 degrees to the right
You might now be saying "But I can't see my target anymore??" and you are correct. But seeing the enemy you are about to kill is for other weapons, weapons which have sensible attack patterns, weapons which don't slow you down to a snail's pace whilst attacking, weapons which instead speed you up when you use heavies. The Thunder Hammer is not one of these weapons, it's a slow piece a junk and you have to think like a crab if you want to use it.
Now, start dodging to the left, towards the target you can no longer see
Once you think you're in range, release your charged attack and spin back to face them. If all went well, you just landed a headshot and killed an enemy. Or maybe you just crabwalked off a ledge, such is life as a Thunder Hammer enjoyer.
Recovering team mates
Since you're so tanky, you should be one of the last people down, so you'll be responsible for recovering your squishy friends more often than not.
Under ideal circumstances, if a downed teammate is surrounded by crushers, you can just use your ability to stun them all whilst your team cleans them up and/or revives. This doesn't always happen though, especially in pugs. If your team isn't able to help, instead drop an incendiary grenade on your downed team mate and use chorus, hopefully anything that survives this should be easy fodder for your hammer.
As with any build, untying a teammate who got netted is always priority #1, even before killing the trapper who just netted them. The only thing that comes first is preventing yourself from going down/getting netted by a different trapper.
Why the Ironhelm over the Crucius?
The Crucius has higher damage and simpler attack patterns, but it always discharges its damage on the first enemy hit. With how wide the thunder hammer swings are, you can't guarantee you'll hit the mutant charging you, this is especially the case on Auric difficulty where it's very rare for any special to not be surrounded by an army of poxwalkers.
It's true that jumping sometimes lets you hit specials in a crowd of enemies, but unless you're literally the perfect human I doubt you'll land these hits even half the time on Auric difficulty. Every other melee weapon mentioned can cleave through multiple enemies and still kill the mutant charging you, so it's a requirement for this build too.
Why Chorus over Fury of the Faithful?
Chorus is just too good to pass up, especially in Auric where it's common to be surrounded by multiple different specials. It buys your team the precious time it needs, replenishes your team's toughness and even gives them a damage boost. This does leave you lacking some damage, especially for dealing with Crushers, but where Fury can let you kill 1-2 crushers, Chorus will let you stun any number of them. Fury lets you get sick-ass kills, but Chorus saves runs.
How do I deal with groups of Crushers? My heavy sword cuts through them like it's a lightsaber but the thunder hammer often can't even kill them in two hits even with the activation animation and long heavy attack buildup.
That's the neat part, you don't. (Sorry)
Your best bet is using an incendiary grenade and keeping them in its radius with Chorus whilst your team works through them, otherwise you can keep backing up whilst hitting them with charged heavies. It's not as efficient as some other weapons, but we knew that when we picked the Thunder Hammer anyway.
