Make Hammer Great Again

This is a sPvP-oriented thread, please refrain from commenting about PvE or WvW.

Hammer is so 2012. And I mean that in a good way, it's a reminder of what life was like back before HoT powercreep showed up and we stopped being rewarded for carefully planning when to use exactly the right skill. At this point, hammer is a good dps weapon and an... interesting support weapon, to say the least. There are a few quirks to it that I think should be ironed out:

1. The autoattack and the symbol should be separated. The symbol should be moved to hammer 3 or 4. 3 would be an interesting choice if it planted the symbol under the target (assuming they're hit by the bolt) rather than under the guard.
2. The autoattack's casting time should be shaved a bit. It's very, very slow, in fact so slow that completing a full chain is unrealistic. Moving the symbol off of it would make it reasonable for the final hit to also be 1/2s or 3/4s casting time.
3. Banish needs a legit animation, for 2 reasons: It's a cool skill name/idea, and it's pretty much impossible for the person being hit by it (I like to call them The Banished) to actually anticipate it. sPvP needs for high-impact skills (i.e. ones with CC and decent damage like Shield Bash) to be telegraphed enough to anticipate and dodge.

That's it! I'm interested to hear anyone else's ideas about improving hammer. Though I hope nobody suggests any big buffs, it doesn't really need buffs, just a bit of re-purposing.

1. Move the symbol to skill 2 and increase the range to 600 is imo a better route to go. That wouldnt kill the protection uptime and also make skill 2 a part of a dps rotation in pve. Make skill 2 blast the light field from the symbol.
2. Yes please, just use the animation lenght of the warrior hammer and we are good to go.
3. What!!?? Do you think the animation cant be detected or do i misunderstand you? Banish has a very long duration on the animation and is telegraphed. Keep the animation as is and increase the numbers of targets to 3 (this skill needs a buff) or dramatically increase the damage.
4. Make skill 5 usable while moving. Once again the animation is in the game on the warrior hammer.

Back in the day anet made a bunch of Qol changes to warrior hammer and what they did back then can be ported directly to the guardian hammer, i dont understand why they didnt see the same need in the guarian hammer since they share animations.

Man these are all big buffs you're proposing. Guard hammer is definitely superior to Warr Hammer, they both have 2 CCs (Guard hammer 5 is a CC unless you're using it wrong) but Guard hammer 3 is 1200 range and immobs (not 600 range and cripple) and Guard can blast its own light fields for condi cleanse. If you look closely they have almost identical damage values, the final hit of the autoattack is weaker for Guard, but that's not including damage from the symbol. I'd pick Guard hammer any day over Warr hammer.

Moving the symbol to Hammer 2 AND doubling the leap range would be a massive buff because it would make the symbol even more spammable than Scepter 2, as well as make hammer a movement weapon like GS. That totally changes the dynamic of the weapon, currently the fact that it's slow and difficult to use in melee is what makes it not OP. Most likely if Anet made that change, they'd either nerf Hammer 2's CD, which would ruin it as a DPS weapon, or nerf its damage. The reality is that when something gets big buffs, people start complaining, then it gets nerfed. The hammer build on Metabattle.com is already very strong, if your buffs were implemented then it would be out of control.

1 moving the symbol to mighty blow actually reduces the uptime on the symbol2 moving the symbol to mighty blow reduces the amount of condition removal3 moving the symbol to mighty blow decreases dps4 there are actually 3 cc (4 traited) on guardian hammer

5. Mighty blow isnt even a gap closer with its current range
6. RoW will miss the target if it moves away from you and is under influence of swiftness.
7. RoW and Banish are extremely telegraphed and should have an impact that reflects that.

The proposed changes lower hammer impact in pve and increases its usability in pvp.

I use nothing but hammer in pvp, the thing that'd make it perfect for me would be to give it some burn stacks on the auto although if i really wanted to make it awesome i'd give the add the hammer 5 effect to auto 3

Only buff I want to see for hammer is #2 range increased to 450 and #4 evade when casting.

@Brutaly.6257 said:

6. RoW will miss the target if it moves away from you and is under influence of swiftness.

Exactly why RoW should be usable while moving. Pretty much the only way to make RoW reliably land is to pair it with JI which is pretty awful. If you try to trap someone with RoW any other way, you take heavy damage before-hand. Considering guard isn't designed to be able to deal with this like warrior is, I'd be all for small buffs/changes like making RoW mobile.