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Hammer QoL changes we need


Ragnarox.9601

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What I've always disliked of hammer is skill 5, it just seems to have very limited use outside of PvP. That's probably the skill that needs the most a change.

One possible solution could be to move the symbol from skill 1 to 5, and adjust duration / cooldown accordingly. If a short duration symbol is preferred instead, then it could be moved to skill 2. The autoattack chain could be speed up, and the third strike could either cause some condition (like weakness) or it could become the blast finisher of the weapon (similar to elementalist lightning hammer conjure).

Finally, banish needs better utility, rather than launching enemies backwards, it could blow them upwards in place, and increase the disable time a bit.

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@Skotlex.7580 said:What I've always disliked of hammer is skill 5, it just seems to have very limited use outside of PvP. That's probably the skill that needs the most a change.

One possible solution could be to move the symbol from skill 1 to 5, and adjust duration / cooldown accordingly. If a short duration symbol is preferred instead, then it could be moved to skill 2. The autoattack chain could be speed up, and the third strike could either cause some condition (like weakness) or it could become the blast finisher of the weapon (similar to elementalist lightning hammer conjure).

Finally, banish needs better utility, rather than launching enemies backwards, it could blow them upwards in place, and increase the disable time a bit.

5 isn't even useful in pvp, you can't land it without using judges intervention.

Same for 4, why would you want to launch someone away from you with a melee weapon on a class with bad mobility?

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@"RisenHowl.2419" said:Same for 4, why would you want to launch someone away from you with a melee weapon on a class with bad mobility?

Agreed - it's also useless for OW group events, where its detrimental and bad manners to launch a mob away from your melee allies.

I'd prefer #4 was a Daze.

I wonder what it would be like to have a build that takes all the Zeal+Honor+Virtue symbol-related traits listed here?:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Protection

If that makes Hammer viable, then it would likely show that Hammer damage is being suppressed due to an edge case of trait combinations, which Anet should fix and then increase Hammer dmg.

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I've only tested out the hammer recently and The hammer on guard feels rather slow and lacking places, it does need improvements.Personally I forgot hammer even had a symbol because of where it is.It should be close range weapon but the banish skill is rather stupid for it since it knocks foes out of your symbol and ring of warding. A questionable choice at this point. because if i use it then the foe gets knocked 750 range away and Guards don't have any skills on me that i can use to TP me there other than JI, by the time I get my SLOW guardian there, they've gotten up already.

Here are ideas and tweaks for Hammer, to make VERY control and trapping.

  • Symbol of protection should be moved off the auto attack and moved to skill 5, and fused with Ring of Warding. Call it the Symbol of Warding or something. So when you place down the symbol it gives you protection and damages but also prevents the foe from escaping. Due the warding's duration the symbol's pulse damage should be lowered slightly due to it goes on for longer but the overall damge should remain the same. Secondly fusing the symbol and warding would allow you to use traits to effect the trapping.
  • Change Banish's launch distance to 0. Like Holosmith's Holographic shockwave (i don't know why you want to launch a foe with a weapon like this, it seems akward and a bad choice)
  • Zealot's embrace give this a pull so you can drag back foes to you, so you can fight them close range, if or when they escape your symbol. OR to for it be used an opening to pull them to you, then use symbol so they can't escape.
  • The Auto attack chain should be sped up. the finishing attack on auto-attack chain it feels off, with the changes above, the symbol is no longer a part of it. So having a normal quick 3 hit combo chain should be ok.
  • Mighty Blow and Glacial both need to be quicker, they seem like they take too long use, and or Increase their damage radius to 240 from 180.
  • Alternate to the above symbol change mentioned would be to move it to skill2 instead, making symbol of protection be it's own skill then have Glacial heart trait effect either symbol and protection or the Ring of warding, or both.

what do you think?I feel that hammer SHOULD be a weapon that keeps your foes close at all times.

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1) hammer swing 1/2 strike your foe Damage 323 (0.8)1) hammer Bash 1/2 Bash your foe Damage 363 (0.9)1) wrathful blow 1. Strike you foe damage 450 (1.0)

2)mighty blow 3/4 knock down and damage your foes (5) damage 847 (2.1) blast finisher.

3) Zealot's Embrace 1 send a wave ( cone shaped) toward your foe thay inmovilize and slow your enemies 2 sec each. Range 1200 damage 300(1.0)

4) heaven smash teleport to target area and knockdown all foes in the area max 5 range 1200 damage 404(1.0) blast finisher.

5) simbol of warding. Create a simbol that foes cannot cross. Trapped enemies cannot exit the simbol while the simbol is active. Damage 1350 (3.35) applies 1 sec of protection simbol last 5 secs.

What you guus think of these changes. Would it make hammer competitive or op?

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@"TheAgedGnome.7520" said:

I wonder what it would be like to have a build that takes all the Zeal+Honor+Virtue symbol-related traits listed here?:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Protection

If that makes Hammer viable, then it would likely show that Hammer damage is being suppressed due to an edge case of trait combinations, which Anet should fix and then increase Hammer dmg.

I played around with this build last nite. The general idea was a OW support build with CC abilities. Not claiming this is a super-duper build, I just wanted to try to use the relevant symbol traits in a hammer build. Some gear choices were also based on what I happened to have at hand.

While it worked and generally survived quite well, it felt incredibly clunky and laborious. Any need to move to evade mobs or reposition meant breaking the AA chain, which meant restarting the 3-hit sequence to finally achieve the symbol on the last hit. This build did typically stack 16-20 vulns on the target, so that's something. Liberal use of Mantra of Truth added more vuln and the blinds helped with dealing with multiple mobs. Quickness helps defray the clunkiness somewhat, but can't truly compensate for fugly skill design and synergy weaknesses. Finally, the need to leverage the symbol traits seems to mean that a hammer build must center around the weapon rather than the weapon usefully complementing a desired build.

  • 4 - As has been mentioned. Banish is mostly counterproductive, so you really only have 4 weapon skills.

  • 5 - Ring of Warding is such a long CD (30s) and has no damage so that it acts more like a niche utility than a weapon skill, which leaves us with 3 usable weapon skills.

  • 2 - Mighty Blow is pretty decent, except that the 300 leap range is unfairly gimped compared to the 600 range for sword & greatsword leaps.

  • 3 - Zealot's Embrace immobilize works; but like Banish, its often counterproductive since after immob a target up to 1200 away, you then need to use up a leap to reach the immobilized target. But again, your leap max is 300, so they don't synergize well.

  • 1 - The AA chain - the symbol on hit 3 makes the symbol a 2 1/4 sec skill to reach, and also seems an intentional and unwarranted punishment for any repositioning which breaks the AA chain. The absence of a CC on the symbol also detracts from the notion that hammer is a desirable CC weapon.

I get the RP idea that hammer is a big, heavy, slow weapon so that it could make leaps short or it could make AA chain slower or it could have powerful strikes that launch an enemy, etc., but taking all those RP rationales together is just multiplicative gimping of skills, which gives us the current state of hammer.

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@Brokensunday.4098 said:1) hammer swing 1/2 strike your foe Damage 323 (0.8)1) hammer Bash 1/2 Bash your foe Damage 363 (0.9)1) wrathful blow 1. Strike you foe damage 450 (1.0)

2)mighty blow 3/4 knock down and damage your foes (5) damage 847 (2.1) blast finisher.

3) Zealot's Embrace 1 send a wave ( cone shaped) toward your foe thay inmovilize and slow your enemies 2 sec each. Range 1200 damage 300(1.0)

4) heaven smash teleport to target area and knockdown all foes in the area max 5 range 1200 damage 404(1.0) blast finisher.

5) simbol of warding. Create a simbol that foes cannot cross. Trapped enemies cannot exit the simbol while the simbol is active. Damage 1350 (3.35) applies 1 sec of protection simbol last 5 secs.

What you guus think of these changes. Would it make hammer competitive or op?

Make Symbol of Warding a ground targeted attack (similar to Scrapper hammer 5) but with 600 range. Make it much better for trapping foes. Can copy the same animation too.

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@Obtena.7952 said:Hammer has always been prevented from getting love because there is simply too much going on Auto; Anet can't do much with any of the other skills without breaking the thing.

Anet, your experiment has failed. Decouple the symbol from 1 and give hammer the bandwidth it needs to improve.Yeah, I would actually put the Symbol on Skill 3 (removing the old Skill 3 entirely) and give it a bit more functionality (e.g., stability). Then adjust the Hammer 1 AA chain as needed, maybe even just make the Glacial Heart chill baseline.

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@Genesis.8572 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:Hammer has always been prevented from getting love because there is simply too much going on Auto; Anet can't do much with any of the other skills without breaking the thing.

Anet, your experiment has failed. Decouple the symbol from 1 and give hammer the bandwidth it needs to improve.Yeah, I would actually put the Symbol on Skill 3 (removing the old Skill 3 entirely) and give it a bit more functionality (e.g., stability). Then adjust the Hammer 1 AA chain as needed, maybe even just make the Glacial Heart chill baseline.

I also think that moving the symbol to 3 and removing the old skill is the best option to move forward. As long as it is 10 secs CD 4 sec duration, with protection, that would be more than enough. The anet can change the auto by buffing the damage. In PvE it should deal around the same damage as sword/focus in a power build.

Skill 4 & 5 can stay as is.

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@Opopanax.1803 said:I'd like a 1 sec chill on #3 of the AA. Or a cripple. Something to help provide the weapon with a little more control.

Skill 2, 4 and 5 apply chill (glacial heart and it does not even require CC, just hit) and 3 is a root. The issue is not the weapon has no control effects, but that the damage, sits mostly on one skill and the weapon overall deals abysmal damage everywhere; hence it is not used. Also, for control, axe with FB mantra of truth, for exceeds anything hammer can ever dream of doing.

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These upcoming changes in these symbol traits should help out hammer: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/81729/upcoming-balance-notes

  • Symbolic Avenger: This trait has been reworked. It now increases the guardian's damage by 2% stacking (max 5 stacks) for 15 seconds whenever a symbol hits a foe.
  • Symbolic Power: Increased the symbol damage from 10% to 30%. This trait no longer has a chance to inflict burning. Instead it causes symbols to charge your Justice passive effect twice as fast.
  • Symbolic Exposure: This trait now increases damage to vulnerable foes by 5% in addition to its previous effects.
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@"TheAgedGnome.7520" said:These upcoming changes in these symbol traits should help out hammer: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/81729/upcoming-balance-notes

  • Symbolic Avenger: This trait has been reworked. It now increases the guardian's damage by 2% stacking (max 5 stacks) for 15 seconds whenever a symbol hits a foe.
  • Symbolic Power: Increased the symbol damage from 10% to 30%. This trait no longer has a chance to inflict burning. Instead it causes symbols to charge your Justice passive effect twice as fast.
  • Symbolic Exposure: This trait now increases damage to vulnerable foes by 5% in addition to its previous effects.

You cannot use zeal with hammer outside of PvE. So, all these buffs are not relevant outside of playing core in PvE. They also impact all weapons. I would argue that the symbolic avenger, in particular, has no addition benefits to hammer compared to other weapons, considering that you could hold symbol up time.

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