Winchester Smythe Anus III.2153

Agree 100% that Hammer should be a true mixed melee/ranged weapon and not the 90% melee weapon it is now. But this is Anet, who'll happily leave utility skills in the dumpster for 5+ years before making them relevant and useful while churning out BLTC skins every other week. They don't care.

WVW, the forgotten game mode. Even with the buffs you've suggested, I'm not sure hammer would be competitive as a DPS, but at least it wouldn't suck.

This. There is literally no reason to ever play hammer in WVW, it's garbage tier.

Sad but true.

Over 250 votes and more than 2/3rds voted hammer as bad or terrible. And that was before the recent nerfs. With this level of bad feedback, people should be getting fired. You don't belong in game design if 2/3rds of your customer base hate your work.

Just give it some ranged skills. Sword is just better than hammer at everything hammer wants to do cause the weapon design is so limited and melee-focused. Just a stupidly-designed weapon TBH.

Hammer so bad it made me stop playing GW2. Sword was bad too but at least it filled a niche. Hammer has no niche. It was so poorly designed that it's only useable in PVE and directly competes in PVE with sword. Just a really stupid, pointless weapon. No amount of buffs going to fix it. Needs serious rework to make it playable in WVW/PVP.

Even if they made those changes, it would still be just another melee weapon with very limited use outside of raids and faceroll open world content, where it either makes sword obsolete, or is made obsolete by sword because they are such similar weapons.

Well, you were certainly right, Hammer is a tremendous disappointment. I have zero interest in playing a melee Ele.

I read the Ele forums often and haven't seen a single post where anyone says this. Let alone "a majority of posts". Exaggeration much? I think most of the hammer hate stems from the fact it's a melee weapon that doesn't have a lot of mobility nor sustain, which makes it suck everywhere but beating up golems and static raid bosses that don't move.

Kinda doesn't matter cause hammer is unusable in WVW by design. As if you would design a PVE-only weapon when Sword already solidly fills this space.

Don't forget Staff and Scepter are the only ranged weapons Ele has had since release, 9years ago. Warhorn was mostly melee, Sword completely melee, and now Hammer nearly completely melee. Character creation screen says Ele "favours ranged".... WTF is going on?

Yep. Incredible. Sword already fills this space pretty well, though it needs its own minor tweaks. I think it's ridiculous that Anet would add another raid-only weapon when Staff and Scepter are the only ranged weapons that Ele has had for 9 straight years.

It's not even 600 range. Most of the skills (3/4?) are melee. It's not even a 600 range weapon, let alone how bad 600 range is in this game.

Disagree, the whole spec has nothing going for it. It's just core ele with a bonus field. Who cares. You're right that hammer is god-awful but I don't think a few tweaks will fix it. The entire design of it as yet another melee weapon is wrong.

Yeah hammer is total dogshit in WVW. Sword was dogshit too but at least it was a good duelling weapon. If you want to play Ele in zerg, you're stuck playing staff/dagger same as it has been for the past 9 years. It's like Anet is begging me to switch games.

We can argue the finer details of whether XYZ skill/weapon is melee/ranged/hybrid but I don't think it would change the overall picture. I kinda knew Ele was the more melee-oriented of the light armour classes but I didn't think it was as bad as this lol. In making hammer a dagger/sword-style melee weapon, Anet clearly want Ele to be a melee caster. Yeah like a lot of Ele players I am super disappointed with hammer but the simple fact is if you want to play a ranged caster class then mesmer or necro is the better choice. Harbinger and Virtuoso are both solid ranged caster specs.

QFT

Yes. Strong agree. Hammer never going to be used outside of raids/useless golem benchmarks unless something is done to make it not so melee-based. I like the 600 range cone AOE idea but SOME skills should be 900+ range as well.

I think having 2 semi-ranged elements and 2 pure melee is really stupid and feelsbadman so personally I'd be happy with anything that gives me more ranged skills so hammer doesn't feel like just another melee weapon that's competing with sword and dagger. Cone AOEs would be cool, nice idea.

Ele has more melee weapons (3) than ranged (2), and more melee weapons than necro (2) and mesmer (2) (the other "main" casters).

just watched this stream now and yeah USA got farmed and Grimjack fed hard on Catalyst... I also note he switched from hammer to D/D after losing 500-0... and still didn't achieve much. lol yeah sure Grimjack, Cata doesn't need improvements... lol And this is in a mostly dead game mode that doesn't punish slow/immobile/melee range builds like hammer Cata. Regardless, the real issue here is that Ele didn't need another melee range bruiser weapon because dagger and sword already fill that space and frankly do it better anyway. All of which means hammer is not just trash, it's redundant trash.

I think the problem is that it's unreliable. IT's not a bad skill but I wish it made you go forward not backward.

Hated hammer so much I asked for a refund. I just can't see them changing it enough that it will be playable in WVW. Also because I have no interest in fishing, skiffs, generic gen3 legendaries... nothing for me to look forward to.

Agree, the hammer is already very clunky and energy just makes it even more clunky.