Jaykay.9641

Awesome! Another Hammer thread. Time for my obligatory post I will keep posting until something is done with Hammer 2 to be changed to the underlined standard below! Look, Hammer 4 is great now; it's an excellent change. But until Hammer 2 is reworked to the above standards, the weapon is going to suffer. It's that simple. This is the biggest issue, so let's get it fixed. My dream scenario would be CoR to create an Ice Field to maximize the AA finishers and dual blasts from Hammer 3, 5. Very unlikely, but I can dream. But your last part about a simple AoE with cripple is in the realm what I was thinking - All I really want is a Mesmer Greatsword Mind Stab (GS 3) variation for Rev Hammer 2. To put some Rev flavor on it, I picture a new Hammer 2 to have the current CoR Animation that does a small amount of PBAoE damage on cast finish and then has a 2nd eruption at the skillshot circle AoE target for additional 1200 ranged damage. Why do I think this is better? The current cast time on CoR and the long travel time of the cascade is so slow and is unreliable at 1200 range. Needs to be more snappy. A quick PBAoE followed by a 240 radius target AoE damage would be faster. A circle AoE can be cast on walls for siege offense. It's so ironic that the only game mode where an AoE weapon like Rev Hammer is truly used in (WvW) cannot use it's 2 ability on wall siege. This blows my mind. Players have asked for Hammer to do some light melee damage for guaranteed damage as all its abilities are skillshots with long cast times. Again, makes the ability more reliable especially in melee. My version listed can also double hit enemies in close range if the get hit in the PBAoE and the delayed eruption. Final thoughts: PvE damage on Hammer? - cool. Hammer 4 changes? - super cool! Hammer 3? - fine as is and I'm starting to appreciate it more. Don't fix what isn't broken. Hammer AA's? - eh, we make it work. Enjoy the 100% finishers Hammer 5? - give us damage back in competitive please? If not, let it inflict like 10-15 Vuln for hitting this to setup follow up. Hammer 2? - Fix Change this broken ability to something RELIABLE! Change Hammer 2 and you change players' perception and usability of this weapon. Get to it Anet.

I think you're right on Hammer 4 being really good now. I rewatched the stream and Roy hovered the tooltip for Hammer 4. The Aegis is great, but the damage from the bolt is similar to auto attack damage and a projectile finisher. Pretty good damage and the lifesteal w/ it. Same CD, duration and cast time.

Revenant This update is focused on improving revenant's short bow, shield, and hammer weapons. We've made piercing part of the short bow's base attacks to make it more appealing to non-renegade users. The shield changes improve its usability as a support weapon, while hammer has gotten some improvements to both its damaging and defensive capabilities. Hammer Bolt: Increased the power coefficient from 1.15 to 1.35 in PvE only. Coalescence of Ruin: Adjusted the damage areas to begin at the player's location instead of being offset from it. Increased the power coefficient from 1.75 to 2.0 in PvE only. Reduced the cooldown from 10 seconds to 7 seconds in PvP only. Phase Smash: Increased the power coefficient from 2.0 to 2.2 in PvE only. Field of the Mists: This skill now grants aegis to the user on activation and will fire a projectile at up to 5 enemies around the target. The projectile destruction wall will now activate immediately. Drop the Hammer: Increased the power coefficient from 2.3 to 2.7 in PvE only. Increased the knockdown duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds in PvE and PvP. Envoy of Exuberance: This skill now grants protection to allies at its impact point instead of when the projectile passes through them. The impact now also grants aegis to allies. Increased the missile velocity from 900 to 1,200. Increased the healing coefficient from 0.5 to 1.0. Crystal Hibernation: This skill now also heals allies in a radius of 360 around the user. Shattershot: This skill now pierces. Bloodbane Path: This skill now pierces. Sevenshot: This skill now pierces. Inspiring Reinforcement: Increased the duration of the initial stability from 1 second to 1.5 seconds in PvP only. Increased the duration of the pulsing stability from 1 second to 1.25 seconds in PvP only. Spiritual Resolution: This trait now activates when invoking a legend instead of when using an elite skill. Set in Stone: This trait replaces Eye for an Eye. Gain protection when you use profession skill 2. Contained Temper: This trait has been reworked. Gain energy when you break out of stun. Herald Forceful Persistence: Increased the bonus damage from 15% to 20% in PvE only. Increased the bonus damage per herald upkeep skill from 5% to 7% in PvE only. Renegade Bold Reversal: This trait has been reworked. Gain resistance when you use a healing skill. Heartpiercer: This trait no longer causes short bow skills to pierce. Vindicator Reaver's Curse: This trait has been reworked. Reduce the recharge of Energy Meld. Energy Meld enhances the effects of your next dodge. Angsiyan's Trust: This trait has been reworked. Energy Meld no longer has an energy cost and grants energy when used. Song of Arboreum: This trait has been reworked. Energy Meld grants more energy and also grants its energy and vigor to nearby allies. Hammer updates, Shield updates with Aegis and AoE healing pulse, Retribution changes, baseline Shortbow pierce for all, Vndicator Master talent updates... Pros: Overall, sounds good on paper. Shield gonna be better in all modes now. Hammer 4 much more versatile. The Demo by Roy on Hammer two seemed like it cascaded faster. Jalis road wont' have the random interrupts because of duration anymore. Like the Vindi master tier updates. Cons: Slightly concerned that the shortbow pierce will lead to future shorbow damage and CD's nerfs in competetive modes. No word if Hammer 2 is still super buggy on terrain. Really concerned with Condi Rev in competetive with the new Relic that increases Poison effectiveness. Still need a way to deal with Poison in Mallyx. Still no damage back on Hammer 5 in competetive. I don't want more knockdown duration., I want more damage on it. It's one of the longest cast abilities in game and should be rewarding to hit in WvW/PvP.

I'm going to keep linking this quote until Hammer 2 gets reworked to the underlined standards provided by Grouch. A weapon's skill 2 needs to be a RELIABLE skill usage that will almost always be a net-positive during gameplay. Rev Hammer 2 is none of these things. Whether it's bugged, inconsisent, slow, can't hit anything on the Y-axis (elevated ground) or goes the wrong direction, it's always a crapshoot with this ability. With all Rev's getting access to Shortbow in about a month, Hammer will be virutally useless outside of the one specific function of a gamemode it was probably designed for(WvW zerging).

With the announcement of the new expansion Secrets of the Obscure, all elite specializations and core specs will be able to wield any weapon in their professions kit, regardless of the current elite spec selected. This means and Rev spec can use Shield, Shortbow, and Greatsword with any spec (and the new Scepter) and even together. Personally, I'm very excited as we can finally have a viable ranged weapon (shortbow) useable on any spec. On the flipside, the elite specs will only bring three specific concepts to each spec - elite spec mechanics, utilities, and traits. For this reason, I can see some specs dying off in some game content - an example would be Renegade in PvP/WvW as it was only picked because of the weapon; it's traits, utliites and mechanics aren't very suited for those game modes. Now that any spec can use Shortbow, Renegade might be relgated to PvE duty now unless changes to it happen. Another aspect is that Core specs will probably see ALOT more play, especially in PvP/WvW. With no limitation on weapon combos, this will open up alot of theorycrafting. Anyway, what's everyone's thoughts on how this change will affect Rev? I'm very interested to hear some opinions.

I understand the Banish Enchantment CD is tailored to limit boon strip in blob fights, but this change nukes the condi Rev roaming variants even worse. My take is to lower the Banish Ench. energy cost to 25 and have the cooldown scale based on enemies hit, such as 1 sec per enemy hit. If Banish Ench. hits all 5 targets like in a blob fight, the CD goes to 5 secs. If it his one enemy, it's only a 1 sec CD. This allows Condi Rev's to keep the versatility of the low CD and affects the blob fights as it's intended. ANet has already dabbled with these types of abilities such Untamed Unatural Traversal CD reduction if enemy hit, I'm sure they can code something like an ability to scale CD off of multiple enemies hit as well.

I think @Yasai.3549 is smart enough to know that Resistance doesn't 'remove' the conditions, but just puts them on standby. Assuming they just kept the typing short and sweet. But to your point, I agree with you that the duration and activation are absolute key in this. As you mention, 1-2 secs? Probably not gonna cut it. Great than 2 sec would be ideal, but I think we know it will probably be 2 secs. And activation: does Resistance come online during the channel of the ability? After the animation is complete? The reason this is important is that if we gain Resistance after the ability cast, we could get rooted by Druid, use Staff 5 and still be rooted in place, and then gain Resistance after the cast. This is poor design. It needs to be activated at start of cast. Also, one more thing about Aggressive Agility and the Resistance change, is that we can be much more 'proactive' in fights instead of reactive. We can stick to Rangers much better since we don't have to wait to be rooted to use a movement ability to get out. We can teleport and proc Resistance negating their reaction; this in itself is a welcome change. Also, this change gonna make it much easier vs. Necros now - all their soft CC (weakness, cripple, chill, fear) will be much easier to negate AND they lost a substantial amount of boon corrupt. Excited to see this matchup play out now.

What are everyone's thoughts? Seems Rev getting picked apart again for the second major balance update in a row and also the least amount of changes of any class. No Hammer or Shield changes, Empower Misery getting nerfed again in WvW. Support Vindi in WvW in shambles. The Herald changes will be interesting for PvE, but essentially this felt like a big WvW slap in the face for Rev.

Big picture view, this is a very large update to game balance and profession mechanics and should be applauded in it's scope. However, as a mainly Revenant player, I'm very disappointed in basically no changes to the profession outside of some competitive changes. I really hope Revenant is the main focus for the next major balance patch. Personal gripe: I'm very saddened in the Imperial Impact Chill removal in PvP modes. I used this function a lot on a condi-Vindi build to proc Abyssal Chill trait in Corruption. Please find another way to nerf the ability if it's too bloated.

Severely disappointed. Basically every other profession got heavy number changes, ability reworks, and trait updates. Rev got nothing. Nice buff to AlacRev I guess. Celestial Rene will prob see some more play again in WvW. Chill removal from Imperial Impact was unnecessary and very mad about that; Big nerf to condi Vindi playstyles. Summer balance patch better have Revenant as THE premier profession changes. So many things needs adjustments and nothing happened for Rev in this otherwise massive patch for the rest of the game.

It's already been mentioned, but this is really all that is needed in WvW is a change from 30 to 25 energy as it is now in PvP since the Nov. 29th Patch. At 20 energy, Banish Enchantment was borderline spammable and lowkey OP. Even while roaming I spammed this ability constantly. It's unblockable, 900 range, 5 targets, and hits three times (and procs Abyssal Chill each time. Could easily get 9-12 stacks very quickly with that trait). the best part about it, was that you can use it while running away and target enemies behind you; love(d) this ability in WVW. So let's just move it to 25 and call it a day. 30 is too much and 20 wasn't high enough. 25 is the sweet spot. It can give you 2 fresh casts every swap into Mallyx (3 with Charged MIsts). The skills is so good as it is, just lower the energy to 25 and not any changes to Corruption or Mallyx is needed. However, if we're looking for other ways to add boon rip, I would recommend something like Spellbreaker has where using CC on an enemy removes a boon. That could set up Some Call to Anguish/Staff 5/Axe 5 combos but that's probably OP with Absorption sigils even after the ICF fix.

Was in a similar situation as you when deciding on a legendary hammer. In the end, I chose Juggernaut for a few reasons: It was the cheapest option of the three. Hammer is a two handed weapon so there are some decent hammer skins outside of the Aurene variants. By going Juggernaut, I felt I didn't have to keep using the exclusive skins that Sharur or Aurene variants provided. I had one left over Gift of Exploration and had all of the other Gen 1 Legendaries I wanted. Finally, with EoD, there's a total of 6 professions that can use a Hammer so the price point of Juggernaut give me more value as I play all the other Hammer classes frequently. The effects of Juggernaut are sub-par although Rev has an extra animation with it's auto attack which is cool. In reality, I chose Juggernaut because of the value with little care for it's visuals.

Not very consequential from a competitive perspective. I had high hopes for some Hammer changes and Vindicator rework. The double dodge changed so much about the spec that there needs some changes to compensate. It basically feels that the Master traits and and Energy Meld are dead traits/abilities. Would love to see the Mallyx energy reduction on Banish Enchantment brought to WvW. 30 is too much and 20 was almost spammable. 25 seems like a nice balance for both competitive modes. Bring the condition damage increase to Seething Malice in WvW as well 🙂

Wasn't able to watch the stream, can someone explain this in bold/underlined? The underline quote makes it seem we still have 100 endurance bc it doesn't consume all energy, but then it mentions dodge costing 50 endurance. So does it have 2 dodges with 50 endurance each or is it basically a copy of Mirage dodge situation?

It seems like there is some consensus on Hammer 2 being in pretty poor state and I will agree; it's holding back the weapon as a whole. Fittingly, we have a developer response that we can reference as we keep complaining providing feedback about Rev's Hammer 2; emphasis on bold/underlined: With the above statement, every weapon 2 should be a RELIABLE, safe, and positive skill action and should potentially be used off cooldown (my capital emphasis on reliable). Rev hammer 2 is none of these things. It almost feels like a punishment for using it because of some glitchy bug that takes you hours to understand how it works or because it takes 2 secs for the last ground animation to hit. While I have dozens of issues with Rev Hammer as it is (as others have already mentioned like attack speeds, animation locks, etc.), fixing Hammer 2 is a prerequisite before any other changes to Hammer can be made.