Hammer need more than just a little buff

[trunksam.3497]

With the new patch preview we get to see some change to the hammer dmg, but it's still a minor buff (pve only).
The hammer need a global change like the riffle of engineer.
Maybe more attack speed, maybe redo a spell or two.

but most of all it need more dmg in PVE cause even if the actual number get double it's still gonna be lower than just double sword.

[SamuelW.2685]

Realistically we'll need to wait and see how it's damage is when the patch comes out to come to any definitive conclusions, but I kinda agree we might need to see it's anim's sped up, they're so slow I'm not sure a damage buff will help. that much.

All from a PvE perspective btw, it's still good in WvW

[Sereath.1428]

Coalescence of Ruin is still f. awful usability wise, this is hopeless.

[Obtena.7952]

These threads are weird ... The DPS buff on the auto is 15%. I guess that's 'little' to some people. Think you need to wait to play it before you judge this so strongly. 

[Zaret.1450]

its a buff,  thank god we get a buff and dont do too much noise, we dont want the hammer to fall on our heads instead XD.

now seriously, hammer isnt gonna become a goid weapon for raids or fract bosses because some number changes, it is slow and there are better options, just no ranged, but its a decent change nontheless, instead of more hammer changes id be more interested in a remade of the energy sistem, it is too punishing and unrewarding, it becomes just a limitation overall, yeah we have 2 legends but it is just like having 4 weapon sets instead of 2, and having the current cd + energy requirement is too bad, maybe something like thief, weapons have cooldown and legends have energy cost, so it becomes cleaner and we can actually do interesting things.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

These threads are weird ... The DPS buff on the auto is 15%. I guess that's 'little' to some people. Think you need to wait to play it before you judge this so strongly. 

Hammer has been "the only reason you'd take this outside of WvW is because you need some ranged weapon and you're not playing Renegade" since before ArenaNet was using skill splits, and has issues beyond the numbers. So yeah, a 15% buff on the autoattack is... well, better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick, but it certainly doesn't fix the problems. 

[Angesombre.4630]

The problem with the hammer other than its slowness, is the skill 2.

[Obtena.7952]

45 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Hammer has been "the only reason you'd take this outside of WvW is because you need some ranged weapon and you're not playing Renegade" since before ArenaNet was using skill splits, and has issues beyond the numbers. So yeah, a 15% buff on the autoattack is... well, better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick, but it certainly doesn't fix the problems. 

To be fair, this wasn't a 'fix the problems' balancing patch anyways so ... not sure why people expect MORE than what we are seeing. The overwhelming changes here are just coefficient adjustments and the ones we got on hammer are good. 

Yup, other things about the hammer like #2 are frustrating, but no one should have expected to see fixes to those this patch. 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Endaris.1452]

37 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Hammer has been "the only reason you'd take this outside of WvW is because you need some ranged weapon and you're not playing Renegade" since before ArenaNet was using skill splits, and has issues beyond the numbers. So yeah, a 15% buff on the autoattack is... well, better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick, but it certainly doesn't fix the problems. 

I honestly never felt Hammer was truly weak, I've been using it all the time in PvE on my Herald. With all the boon happyness Herald provides you can kill about any regular mob with 2-3 auto attacks, the projectile hate can be incredibly convenient, as can the CC.

With the piercing projectiles and the AoE from 2 and 3 you can easily demolish a mob group within a second.

The real problem is what others mentioned already: The absolute awful interaction of Hammer 2 with terrain, making the skill utterly useless in some scenarios. And Hammer Rev relies on this skill working properly, otherwise it completely lacks the AoE and burst presence it needs.

[Sereath.1428]

@Obtena.7952
Bruh, it is very clear that you haven't used Hammer Rev outside of WvW, probably at all.

Coalescence of Ruin hits for the same as Phase Smash , but in an obscenely slow and telegraphed way and with a 40% chance that the attack won't connect, or a 30% chance that the attack will deviate to a totally different direction. It is only ever decent when the target is in a straight line in front of you, semi afk and the terrain is not uneven.

The skill needs to be deleted. Its design is atrocious.

[draxynnic.3719]

5 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

To be fair, this wasn't a 'fix the problems' balancing patch anyways so ... not sure why people expect MORE than what we are seeing. The overwhelming changes here are just coefficient adjustments and the ones we got on hammer are good. 

Yup, other things about the hammer like #2 are frustrating, but no one should have expected to see fixes to those this patch. 

Sure, this certainly does look like it's mostly a numbers tweak patch, but "this isn't enough" is still valid feedback.

 

4 minutes ago, Endaris.1452 said:

I honestly never felt Hammer was truly weak, I've been using it all the time in PvE on my Herald. With all the boon happyness Herald provides you can kill about any regular mob with 2-3 auto attacks, the projectile hate can be incredibly convenient, as can the CC.

With the piercing projectiles and the AoE from 2 and 3 you can easily demolish a mob group within a second.

The real problem is what others mentioned already: The absolute awful interaction of Hammer 2 with terrain, making the skill utterly useless in some scenarios. And Hammer Rev relies on this skill working properly, otherwise it completely lacks the AoE and burst presence it needs.

And skill 2's problems is a large part of why just buffing the autoattack is not sufficient.

But still... compare to what renegade shortbow can do. Or guardian ranged weapons and warrior longbow, to pick examples of other professions that are still mostly melee-oriented. Hammer might have some very specific use cases for clearing tightly packed trash mobs but this doesn't make it a strong weapon. And that's without considering that condi builds that aren't renegade really have no decent weaponswap options.

[Sereath.1428]

Coalescence used to be a good reliable skill, then they just made it the way it is now, it is not only a matter of damage.

Edited August 14, 2022 by XxsdgxX.8109

[Endaris.1452]

26 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Or guardian ranged weapons and warrior longbow, to pick examples of other professions that are still mostly melee-oriented.

If hammer 2 wasn't bugged, I would consider the weapon more or less on par with those. Especially LB on warrior feels super weak on core warrior, even when traited and there is hardly ever a reason to run it if you aren't playing Berserker. Rev hammer at least has its niches.

But yeah, if I could choose between the numbers and fixing hammer 2, I would certainly choose the hammer 2 fix as well.

[Infusion.7149]

CoR has been unreliable for a while now in WVW. It's the main thing holding it back in PVE as well.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Endaris.1452 said:

If hammer 2 wasn't bugged, I would consider the weapon more or less on par with those. Especially LB on warrior feels super weak on core warrior, even when traited and there is hardly ever a reason to run it if you aren't playing Berserker. Rev hammer at least has its niches.

But yeah, if I could choose between the numbers and fixing hammer 2, I would certainly choose the hammer 2 fix as well.

Can't agree... and I like how you picked out the weakest of the examples I gave, which I threw in at the last minute just for completeness. But I do find that warrior longbow, even on non-berserker, is more functional than rev hammer (which is an indication of how low that bar is). The main problem there is that spellbreaker and bladesworn are very definitely power elite specs, so condition-based weapons are pretty much limited to berserker or core because of how the specs are set up, not (entirely) due to deficiencies in the weapons. And warrior LB is getting equivalent buffs this patch (heck, with a second ammunition skill now, it might actually be useful for Bladesworn after all, although like rifle, losing the burst skill hurts). 

If your use case is "I can delete a trash group in seconds"... well, that really isn't impressive. You can delete a trash group in seconds with sword/sword, even though that's optimised for single target. Pretty sure you can delete a trash group in seconds with warrior hammer, and that's not a weapon that's really been taken seriously in any mode since Feb 2020. Renegades always take shortbow for ranged, even if they're going full power, for a reason.

Hammer 2 fix is obviously the top priority, because we can't realistically judge where it would actually sit if hammer 2 worked until it does. But rev hammer was already pretty much abandoned outside of WvW even when hammer 2 worked a lot better than it did now. 

Edited August 14, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[Obtena.7952]

11 hours ago, XxsdgxX.8109 said:

@Obtena.7952
Bruh, it is very clear that you haven't used Hammer Rev outside of WvW, probably at all.

Coalescence of Ruin hits for the same as Phase Smash , but in an obscenely slow and telegraphed way and with a 40% chance that the attack won't connect, or a 30% chance that the attack will deviate to a totally different direction. It is only ever decent when the target is in a straight line in front of you, semi afk and the terrain is not uneven.

The skill needs to be deleted. Its design is atrocious.

Well, I have and it's awful. whether it needs to be deleted or not has little to do with the fact that the DPS buff Anet give hammer isn't 'little'. 

Edited August 14, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Shao.7236]

Coalescence of Ruin needs a little damage buff and have one second shaved off then hammer will be good enough stats wise, quite comparable to Greatsword but ranged.

Functionally Coalescence of Ruin needs to get bug fixed badly and it's hitbox location needs to be adjusted so that you don't miss targets point blank. They could make the skill work the same as Dragon Slash - Reach/Vengeful Blast, those are not projectiles and work fine overall across terrain.

One thing that I've come to notice too is that Inspiring Reinforcement combo field doesn't work consistently with Hammer Bolt, that needs to be checked too.

[trunksam.3497]

i think hammer 3 can be speedup too, i love the animations but a little more faster could be good. (something like 15% faster)

 

for hammer 2 everyone say the same, please anet fixed it !

 

hammer autoattacks need something, it feels bad.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 8/14/2022 at 12:12 AM, XxsdgxX.8109 said:

Coalescence of Ruin is still f. awful usability wise, this is hopeless.

Same with Unreliable Assault sword skill 3 on sword, sometimes hits everything except the target.... very unreliable .

[Shao.7236]

9 hours ago, trunksam.3497 said:

i think hammer 3 can be speedup too, i love the animations but a little more faster could be good. (something like 15% faster)

 

for hammer 2 everyone say the same, please anet fixed it !

 

hammer autoattacks need something, it feels bad.

If you speed up Hammer 3, you speed up the evade. It's best leaving it as it is, the skill is fairly good for offense and defense in it's current state.

For Hammer 2 I agree that it needs sound, hitbox and reliability fixed.

For Hammer 1 I suggest you try playing with Archemorous for Quickness on Vindicator. If you don't want to use the elite then Shiro with SoTM is your best bet to make AA good offensively. Don't forget that it has 100% projectile finisher on it so there's a lot to add within it, it can also pierce (infinitely?) through targets which is very useful.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Shao.7236

[Justine.6351]

The sad part about cor is the targets it hits are not actually the ones being targeted.

[captrowdy.9561]

Um there’s no problem with hammer. I see it all the time in wvw 

[draxynnic.3719]

56 minutes ago, captrowdy.9561 said:

Um there’s no problem with hammer. I see it all the time in wvw 

But almost only in wvw. Hammer started out really powerful in wvw and only around adequate everywhere else, and because Arenanet was still stubbornly refusing to do skill splits at all for a few months after HoT, nerfs intended to bring it under control in WvW blew back to other game modes and made it terrible in PvE and sPvP. Most of the time it gets used anywhere else is a pure 'I need a ranged option and this is literally all I have unless I'm running renegade'.

Anecdotal arguments regarding seeing it in wvw are completely missing the point.

[Shao.7236]

1 hour ago, captrowdy.9561 said:

Um there’s no problem with hammer. I see it all the time in wvw 

Try using it in PvP and see how many bad regs you'll get.

[Virdo.1540]

The aftercasts on some skills needs to be reduced & Hammer 2 needs.... a fix? a rework? Its imo on the edge to being broken