The Sledgehammer & Vehicle Re-Balance
Greetings!
I come here to the Battlefield Forums to talk about the Sledgehammer and the relatively recent Vehicle Re-balance that was done to make Vehicle Combat better during the start of Season 3.
Now you might know why this is probably connected but to fill in the dots for those who don't, ever since the 1.0 Release of Battlefield 6 (Maybe even in the Beta if I'm remembering correctly), the Sledgehammer has stood out to me due to 3 points:
- The Sledgehammer can Damage or Destroy Buildings.
- The Sledgehammer restricts your movement speed while equipped to the same as holding your Primary or Secondary.
- The Sledgehammer can Damage Vehicles.
These three points give the Sledgehammer a Unique Identity compared to the other melees, and allows classes like Support to have access to a utility that can deal damage to vehicles, granted a very ineffective way to deal damage and a bad trade-off when considering infantry melee but a way nonetheless. I do hope that in a future season we'll get another different melee like the Sledge or even another melee with it's own unique properties that expand our options besides "Default Knife Remodel #4."
However as of the Season 3 Re-balance that improved the state of Vehicle Gameplay, the Sledgehammer without being mentioned in the patch-notes ended up getting nerfed (or possibly sometime earlier in Season 2, I didn't check during that period). The only vehicles the Sledgehammer can damage now is any Lightly Armored Vehicle, and while logistically speaking that this makes sense, it's still a bit sad to lose a small niche utility that the Sledgehammer had to itself.
And that's why I'm here today, in a probably vein effort to bring back the ability to deal melee damage to all vehicles with the sledgehammer!
Is this a stupid way to play? Yes!
Would your efforts be better elsewhere? Also... yes.
But is it fun? Well that depends, do you like doing dumb stuff in a Military Setting like pulling off a Rendezuke? C4 Bombing with Vehicles? then yes, it's fun that gets players to think creatively to pull off stupid stuff in a video game, maybe even with a full squad of friends, and if you and your squadmates are smart enough to pull it off then you deserve to have fun with it.
2026-06-25 - Edit: Change the title to put the Sledgehammer first, since that's what this post was mainly about