I have noticed a stealth nerf to croms blade. It seems like any thrall I give my croms sword to refuses to attack half the time. They either go unarmed and start punching or they just stand there with the blade out. I have tested this on 3 different thralls and all of them attack less than with other weapons. If I swap the croms out with a different weapon they attack normal.
If you have a croms blade are your thralls having this same problem attacking with it?
Some people seem to think that thralls have been given some sort of stamina bar equivalent, which is why they will only attack once with the Sword of Crom.
Thrall A.I is screwed up after update this happens with various weapons at randoms times with various thralls.
I tested with 3 different thralls. None of them exhibited the same behavior using other weapons. When I equipped the croms sword all three would do the same non attacking behavior. I have about 1800hrs in this game so I know how the thralls react.
The theory that Funcom is trying to add some kind of thrall stamina limitations actually has merit. I myself saw a stamina bar over one of my thralls one day. The fact that the Crom sword insta drains all stamina would make sense because the thrall takes one swing and stops. The problem apparently, if this is true, is that once they are drained of stamina, no matter what weapon they are using, they stop fighting. So obviously IF this is the case, Funcom has broken the thralls by attempting to add this feature.
I hope they figure it out quickly, I’m tired of looking around during a fight to see my thrall standing waiting for some fisticuffs with the Kinscourge.
The theory of a suggested thrall stamina deplited with one swing of Sword of Crom like it happens for a player must be wrong. Or atleast the implementation of it is broke atm. If they have implemented some sort of stamina for thralls, which I would like in general, the current behaviour doesn’t fit to this theory. Sometimes the thrall steps in, does one swing only and goes backup. Sometimes he attack with a full combo chain before doing a break. My guess is, that its supposed to be a general kind of “nerf” to make thrall fight more like a supporter and not like a killing machine. Now it looks like your buddy fellwo is waiting for the right moment to make his move instead auf foolish running into the brawl.
I noticed my thrall tends to bug out when I switch weapons during combat. Usually when I see a t4 thrall and give my follower a truncheon. If I make him swap weapons during a fight. They tend to go stupid.
Bright side is that doing the weapon swap during combat again has a chance to debug the thrall into attacking. So swapping weapons during combat can bug and debug your thrall.
I also heard taking off armor and putting it back on helps debug thralls. So i think it has to do with how they interact with their own inventories.
Someone else posted on one of the threads about how to switch out weapons without bugging the thralls. I tested it last night and it worked great. Dont “swap” the weapons in the inventory, and dont put it in their hand. Put the new weapon in the second slot. In all cases my thrall used the second weapon. After the fight I removed the first weapon. It worked 100% of the time and I went thru 4 swords and a two handed mace. Not once did he bug out.
It also heavily relies on server performance, thrall AI seems to have a rather low priority in server calculations, so if a server is running on high load, thrall AI is one of the first things to fail.
The problem here is, none of us know how thralls behave after each update to their AI, no matter how many hours of gameplay we have. Heck, I’ve conducted extensive scientific experiments on thrall AI behavior, and it all went down the drain a few updates ago.
For our thralls with sword of crom i
Don’t notice this problem, they do full combo like always, but they really seems more stupid than before 
It should be called RI (random intelligence) rather than AI. I don’t know how easy or hard it can be to program a toon’s preset actions and reactions, but AI is going too far when describing the npc and thrall behaviour in CE. Sorry to say this, it’s my experience since EA. Never fully trust a thrall, I myself have been using them only lately to carry extra load when going to the mines and need an extra carrying capacity. Else, they stay in wheel or sit in a chest.
PS: Also given up on figuring out thrall behaviour…
Heh, I swear. Thralls / thrall AI are like the Bermuda Triangle of CE. People can and will attribute any and all unexplained phenomena to changes or undocumented features of the thrall system.
Making them do unarmed and then put a weapon in their hand during the fight has also worked every time for me so far.
But I just tried your method. My slave always have the same weapon and I only switch it with a truncheon sometimes. Tried putting it in the second slot and it worked fine. 
I have now had the chance to test this myself. My Captain indeed took big breaks (walking backwards) between the attacks with Sword of Crom even though they performed full combos once they were ready to attack again. The bosses in UC took noticeably longer to solo. Swapped to Blade of the Adventurer and no such breaks were observed.
A funcom dev already confirmed on reddit that this is behavior is some sort of intended. So yes SoC is not worth it anymore. Better go with BoA
definition of working as intended - Your thrall stands there and cheers you on as you die because HE pulled every NPC in Sep, love it.
I’m using blade of the adventurer on thralls now (2h too). Crom sword make the thralls bugging so hard that they become irrelevant. They hit once after 10-20 seconds, then they move back slowy for another 10-20 seconds to either make a full heavy combo, hit with fists or stop attacking completly while reseting the enemy aggro. Basically making both the thrall and the target bugging.
Link please?