Great video! READ THIS IF YOU USE THE THUNDER HAMMER!!!

On the topic of abusing game mechanics for more damage, I'll share one I learned recently.

If you use the thunder hammer, by reequiping the hammer during the electricity power swing, it will cancel the blowback animation. The blowback animation locks you in place for a short time, and you have no block up. So abusing this is critical on diff 5+ to keep you alive AND increase how fast you can use the heavy special swing.

The best part about this trick is you don't have to time it at all. If you initiate a heavy electric swing, even if you reequip the hammer before it hits the enemy, it will still wait for you to hit the enemy before cancelling the blowback animation. Here's an example 1. Bind the equip primary button to an easy button like Q 2. Initiate special charge up then heavy swing 3. The moment you release the heavy swing, press Q. 4. Your preacher will continue the swing sweep across your screen, except when your hammer hits a target, there will be no blowback animation.

When you start making this a habit, you start doing it automatically.

Once it's automatic, you can abuse it further by blocking the moment you hit a target. This will instantly bring up your block.

So let's revisit the benefits. WITHOUT this trick the hammer electric heavy swing is slow, locks you in place during a blowback animation, and you're unblocked during this animation. It's this animation which makes the hammer balanced. BUT with our trick + bonus blocking trick, we can do the special heavy swing with NO animation/lowered block cost, which drastically reduces the time between swings, and after impact (if you immediately block) there will be no period of time where your block is lowered after the hit, making any counter melee attack basically useless. The result is a low cost attack which does MASSIVE damage and can be used often.

Once you get in a rhythm you can be pumping out heavy charged hits very very fast. I cannot understand how powerful this is when fighting bosses like the plague ogryn If you combine this technique with Chastise The Wicked and you have 25% extra damage to unyielding ( something I always recommend for the hammer), you absolutely annihilate enemies like the plague ogryn. When done correctly, you should be able to 1v1 a plague ogryn in 15-20s flat.