With Hammer Damage getting nerfed over time was wondering if can get a Defense buff

Hammer getting nerfed in terms of damage. So I was wondering if it can get a buff in the defensive area to become more of a defensive weapon choice in SPvP/WvW

Just tone down some cast times on the 1 and 5 skills mainly. The only reason anyone complains about hammer being too strong is because it is high damage per hit which is necessary to compensate having lowest attack rate of all player weapons in the game. Hammer bolt's attack rate of once per 1.25 secs is way slower than any other auto attack.

Just waiting for them to nerf phase smash now.

"reworked phase smash into a more support oriented skill. Leap to target area and drop stability orbs on route. On arrival, teleport back. Removed damage portion of the skill and increased recharge to 15 seconds. Fixed a bug that caused players to trigger marks and traps while leaping toward target location."

with that you need a little knowledge in balancing, but well....

@"Justine.6351" said:Just waiting for them to nerf phase smash now.

"reworked phase smash into a more support oriented skill. Leap to target area and drop stability orbs on route. On arrival, teleport back. Removed damage portion of the skill and increased recharge to 15 seconds. Fixed a bug that caused players to trigger marks and traps while leaping toward target location."

THIS 15 chars

Hammer 4 is all the defense utility you need.

Remember DPS is the best form of CC - dead enemy players do no damage.

@ArthurDent.9538 said:Just tone down some cast times on the 1 and 5 skills mainly. The only reason anyone complains about hammer being too strong is because it is high damage per hit which is necessary to compensate having lowest attack rate of all player weapons in the game. Hammer bolt's attack rate of once per 1.25 secs is way slower than any other auto attack.

Fireball has 1.4 sec/attack and worse tracking then hammer bolt.

@Agrios.9071 said:

@ArthurDent.9538 said:Just tone down some cast times on the 1 and 5 skills mainly. The only reason anyone complains about hammer being too strong is because it is high damage per hit which is necessary to compensate having lowest attack rate of all player weapons in the game. Hammer bolt's attack rate of once per 1.25 secs is way slower than any other auto attack.

Imagine uronically comparing staff ele with 4 autos, 16 skills and kitten of utility to hammer.

If theres one thing hammer should be compared to its war rifle/ranger or dh lb

They are very much comparebly, Fireball is the ONLY auto attack on elementalists staff that does anything meaningful.Necro Staff auto attack is also slower than hammer bolt just btw (1.32/attack). Looking into this subject it appears thatthe auto attack from revenant is the fastest of all the zerg classes (not counting ranger's longbow, only looking at 1200range attacks).Additional hammerbolt can hit 5 targets and ist rather fast while other classes auto attacks easily get sidestepped and only hit3 targets (fireball, chain lightning), 1 target (stoning) and 5 targets (necrotic grasp).Hammerbolt also has the benefit of beeing a physical projectile finisher (100%).

The usefulness of most elementalist skills is also rather questionable, as most are terribly outdated.And if there is 1 thing to compare revenants auto attack it would be Elementalists Staff or Necros Staff as those skills have similar usagein wvw while rifle (warrior) and longbow (ranger) dont really have the same use in wvw.

Another Point is that Heralds dmg was actually nerfed AND buffed at the same time in this patch, you are now more useful in melee rangewhich makes this weapon more reliable and better and not worse as argued here.

@Agrios.9071 said:

Another Point is that Heralds dmg was actually nerfed AND buffed at the same time in this patch, you are now more useful in melee rangewhich makes this weapon more reliable and better and not worse as argued here.

Hammer's damage is actually crap if your not filled with 25 stacks of might (which you can't longer have) and even then, has only relevance in spikes along other team mates in WvW, because in both burst and sustained damage the best Rev weapon is sword's aa, and that doesn't change that for power builds this class is at the bottom of the chain food.

This doesn't mean that I wan't a buff in hammer's defensive capabilities (when there's the short bow and the shield being almost useless in that department), but I disagree about your portray of the hammer as something powerfull otr plenty of uses: the thing is that very niche weapon with 0 use in 95% of the game content.

@Agrios.9071 said:

Another Point is that Heralds dmg was actually nerfed AND buffed at the same time in this patch, you are now more useful in melee rangewhich makes this weapon more reliable and better and not worse as argued here.

Except the entire point of Hammer is to be at range, so while yes, it’s a minor increase in damage for CoR at close range, it absolutely does not make up for the fact that it loses damage at long range which is the entire purpose of the weapon.

Also don’t compare Hammer to Necro Staff. The damage isn’t even close the same and Necro staff is more of a utility weapon than anything else. You say Warrior Rifle is less comparable than Necro Staff, but in actuality it’s more similar to Hammer since Gunflame Berserker has huge AoE burst potential in zergs. It’s incredibly easy as a gunflame to near insta kill a FB and anyone in the direct radius around it which is something that can’t be done with Rev Hammer without support from boon corrupt scourge, etc.

@Buran.3796 said:

Hammer's damage is actually kitten if your not filled with 25 stacks of might (which you can't longer have) and even then, has only relevance in spikes along other team mates in WvW, because in both burst and sustained damage the best Rev weapon is sword's aa, and that doesn't change that for power builds this class is at the bottom of the chain food.

This doesn't mean that I wan't a buff in hammer's defensive capabilities (when there's the short bow and the shield being almost useless in that department), but I disagree about your portray of the hammer as something powerfull otr plenty of uses: the thing is that very niche weapon with 0 use in 95% of the game content.

Herald still reaches 25 might in wvw, where hammer is primarily used, once CoR is fixxed it will see more use again. I never claimed it beeing great at anything else however it is very good in zerg fighting.

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:

Also don’t compare Hammer to Necro Staff. The damage isn’t even close the same and Necro staff is more of a utility weapon than anything else. You say Warrior Rifle is less comparable than Necro Staff, but in actuality it’s more similar to Hammer since Gunflame Berserker has huge AoE burst potential in zergs. It’s incredibly easy as a gunflame to near insta kill a FB and anyone in the direct radius around it which is something that can’t be done with Rev Hammer without support from boon corrupt scourge, etc.

I was only comparing the auto attacks because it was mentioned how bad hammerbolt was supposed to be. I cant really see how Gunflame as a projectile based meme build really compares to herald as a whole.

Revenants Hammer is clearly designed for fights against groups of enemys (wvw) and performs outside of the bugged CoR very well at this. It also gives required boon support to the team and has strong utility in form of AoE superspeed. Asking to make such a weapon viable for dueling or spvp seems a bit weird since you do have other weapon options. If those are underperforming in pvp then that is another discussion.

@Agrios.9071 said:I was only comparing the auto attacks because it was mentioned how bad hammerbolt was supposed to be. I cant really see how Gunflame as a projectile based meme build really compares to herald as a whole.

Revenants Hammer is clearly designed for fights against groups of enemys (wvw) and performs outside of the bugged CoR very well at this. It also gives required boon support to the team and has strong utility in form of AoE superspeed. Asking to make such a weapon viable for dueling or spvp seems a bit weird since you do have other weapon options. If those are underperforming in pvp then that is another discussion.

Regardless as mentioned Necro staff isn’t comparable to hammer since it’s a utility weapon and isn’t intended to do damage as it’s primary purpose. Even its autos are really just there as filler and to help build life force. If you’re going to compare range power damage for Necro to Rev you should be comparing axe autos and hammer autos. Also if we’re comparing “just autos” then certainly all of the autoattacks you mentioned have the same issue of “projectile destruction” just as much as the “gunflame meme” build.

Obviously Herald is the stronger build over Gunflame, but it’s worth including in your list, especially when you’re counting/cherry picking Necro staff since Staff isn’t the reason Necro is strong in the first place. Warrior has good access to unblockable and when picked up by a skilled player with the right build Gunflame can actually turn entire Zerg fights around. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times over the years. It’s a fairly underrated build, especially for pug zergs/groups (which is the vast majority of WvW gameplay).

And to be fair to ArthurDent he didn’t say hammerbolt was bad just that “the only reason anyone complains about it is because of its large damage per hit, yet they don’t factor in the large cast time.”

Regardless of all that my main point was in the first paragraph; the damage loss for CoR isn’t good for it overall and the “buff” it received is still a net loss overall. Hammer remains unusable in PvE (and even less so now in open world; previously it was easy to nuke mobs at 1200 with it) and even worse in PvP. I never wanted it to be a “dueling weapon” persay (tho I enjoy using it in duels), but now it’s majorly struggling (outside of WvW zergs) even in small groups to even do “teamfight damage” or “anti-range” which were its main focuses beforehand. Granted, the CoR change isn’t the only reason it’s not great in PvP; the recent might nerfs and impossible odds change did nothing to help the weapon either. This analysis doesn’t even factor in the increased visibility of the skill which adds counterplay which does decrease its overall usability and damage output since people can dodge it easier

@LucianTheAngelic.7054 said:Also if we’re comparing “just autos” then certainly all of the autoattacks you mentioned have the same issue of “projectile destruction” just as much as the “gunflame meme” build.

If you play herald or weaver in wvw and fight against organised groups you do see most of your projectiles hitting nothing, this applies for pretty much all ranged auto attacks. So yes all the ranged auto attacks are quite terrible and only used as fillers.

Lastly we just had a patch that tried to normalise things in wvw by nerfing the overtuned stuff. Since CoR is bugged we cant really say how it all turned out so i dont think asking for buffs right away is the correct thing to do. If something now overperforms in comparism it might need further tweaking.