Hammer sucks

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Bast.7253 said:

Hammer would be significantly better if the energy mechanic didn't exist so you could initiate a fight with stab instead of struggling for 30 seconds trying to stay within range or land enough attacks to slowly build it. 

The ironic thing is that the energy mechanic favours hammer because hammer is designed to replenish energy quickly. Removing energy would also increase the viability of core weapons with catalyst.

[Kaleban.9834]

Here's how the Ele elite specs should have been designed:

 

Tempest - Main hand pistol designed around mid-range AoE effects; overloads (i.e. overload ammunition) are targeted AoEs just like Harbinger elixirs with an effect at target and on self if in range; essentially a magical gunslinger

Weaver - Melee staff/spear designed around melee AoE with large range, essentially the GW1 Dervish; Main hand sword is fine too, as long as the AoE is larger and hits all targets in range

Catalyst - Longbow designed around 1500 range attacks; essentially an arcane "zen" archer

 

Ironically given the flavor, the Weaver's meshing attunements make more sense on the Catalyst, while the energy based AoE buff field from the Catalyst makes more sense on a fully melee character like the Weaver.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Kaleban.9834

[SAROMON.9158]

4 hours ago, Kaleban.9834 said:

Here's how the Ele elite specs should have been designed:

 

Tempest - Main hand pistol designed around mid-range AoE effects; overloads (i.e. overload ammunition) are targeted AoEs just like Harbinger elixirs with an effect at target and on self if in range; essentially a magical gunslinger

Weaver - Melee staff/spear designed around melee AoE with large range, essentially the GW1 Dervish; Main hand sword is fine too, as long as the AoE is larger and hits all targets in range

Catalyst - Longbow designed around 1500 range attacks; essentially an arcane "zen" archer

 

Ironically given the flavor, the Weaver's meshing attunements make more sense on the Catalyst, while the energy based AoE buff field from the Catalyst makes more sense on a fully melee character like the Weaver.

Actually making spear for land combat shouldn't be any problem. Any weapon is okay for the elementalist, but hammer was the least preferred one. Mace would be much better idea + one more off-hand option. It's no wonder they won't do anything about the current specialization, but let's hope they will get the new elite with the next expansion right.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

9 hours ago, Bast.7253 said:

Personally - I think they should still figure out a way to rebuild hammer 3 mechanic into the spec mechanic similar to overloads. It's still going to be clunky but then they can give hammer 3 combo fields or something while also providing benefit to every other weapon choice for the spec.

 

It's my biggest issue on catalyst.

This mechanic is too overiding for energy, buff, and direct dps too with the big combo finisher.
You don't really adapt your rotation to your build (if you're condi fire/earth, power fire/air air/water, or range build ...) or the situation (CC, heal...), you just rotate between all #3  and add others skills as fillers.

 

It's quite "interesting" and unique as weapon for GW2, may be that's why I can't really enjoy it as an oldf*g.

 

[draxynnic.3719]

I must say, I was expecting a dervish-like elite specialisation with a greatsword instead of weaver. Which is not to criticise weaver, it's just that's what I was expecting.

Catalyst hammer, ironically, does have that dervish feel when you get down to it, but it fails as the ranged/melee hybrid it wants to be. While the Catalyst trait design is... questionable at best.

[Ace.1784]

As an open world/instanced pve/WvW player (large, mid, small, and roaming), I find this funny because I think hammer is the best Elementalist weapon for three reasons.

First, the ideal rotation between attunements is very smooth. This is in a open world/instanced PvE context. It's very easy to animation cancel and multicast spells to create a strong spike. Hammer also has a great consistent DPS, as long as you're mindful. With that said, Hammer is flexible enough to allow you to create rotations for a specific situation, much like 2012 Staff. In many instance situations, you may need to adapt your rotation for a CC phase or during a specific mechanic, it may be wiser to not attune into earth/water. Perhaps you need to gap close, so you need to swap into water earlier. The key here, is understanding what abilities do what and throughout this thread, I have seen people demonstrating they do not understand this concept.

Second, Hammer is the first Elementalist weapon that benefits from going into all attunements (let's ignore Weave Self for a moment), even for a DPS build. To maximize your damage capabilities, you need to visit each attunement once, as they each have strong skills that maintain your DPS. This gives you the opportunity to reflexively use any other skills you may need. This slightly blends into the first point, but this helps if you specifically need something

Third, Hammer offers a more interesting playstyle that Elementalist had before but lost. For those of you who have played in the beta of GW2 and early on in release, the current way Hammer plays is very similar to Staff back then. You use your body and CC to bait your enemy into a coordinated spike bomb. This playstyle is what made me fall in love with Elementalist and it was nerfed pretty hard (for a good reason, it was pretty unhealthy for game balance). Hammer brought this playstyle back in a more balanced way and we got a super good zone control weapon DPS weapon to complement the other assortment of Elementalist playstyles.

It is no surprise that the Elementalist forum didn't like Catalyst. First, it was useless because it was "only a benchmark build that could only perform on the golem". After it was demonstrated you could translate this performance on bosses, it was "a PvE only weapon and was useless. Then the Hammer PvP and roaming build came along, and now it's "just a build for PvE and on a capture point for sPvP or roaming". Those making this claim about Catalyst, outright refusing to play the class, missed one of the most broken moments of Elementalist because they didn't like Hammer. I can sympathize, because I too started playing Elementalist because I typically play mages in most games. For me, it was finally trying dagger/dagger that got me into the Elementalist playstyle. So yes, some Elementalist weapons/elite specializations don't play like your typical mage archetype—it's the best experience of any mage I've ever played in my 15 years of gaming.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Ace.1784
Light grammar edits, expanded on my WvW play experience

[draxynnic.3719]

Sadly, best elementalist weapon is a pretty low bar to meet.

It actually does work fairly well if you regard it purely as a melee weapon. The rotation is (now) pretty smooth if you don't care about trying to stack those conditional damage modifiers from traits, and if you need to be self-sufficient, 10% less damage in exchange for quickness, more Might, and so on is a worthwhile trade. Staff and scepter are both in fairly poor state, and dagger can't keep up with energy generation (at least not last time I tried). While weaver sword is much more complicated to operate.

Part of the frustration with hammer, at least from my perspective, is that it's just so close to being something great (and unique for elementalist), but it's ended up being just another melee weapon. Better than sword in that respect (IMO), but still.

And from the general Ele crowd, it's the fact that the typical mage archetype has been left to rot for a decade. It's great that there are other options, but ArenaNet does need to come back and touch up the core concept sooner or later.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

1 hour ago, Ace.1784 said:

First, the ideal rotation between attunements is very smooth.

I wouldn't necessarily call the PvE dps rotation smooth. Its an incredibly fast pace skill mashing build that is very unforgiving on making mistakes. Not keeping up 10 stacks of EE? Rip ~15% dps, accidentally cast Grand finale supoptimally? Rip 10% missing augment sphere combo? Rip 5% missing air sphere/no energy? Rip 20% to whole party, messing up Fire augment-> skills order? Rip 10% dps. 

Wnna play quick cata? 40% dps loss and still unreliable quickness. Also air 4 is one of the most hated and buggy skills Anet has ever developed, managed today to get stuck in a wall twice while doing 5 pvp matches. Also due to the speed of skill mashing: rip any player that (partly) skillclicks or plays on steamdeck. 

 

Its good for spvp and roaming, but don't pretend its working smooth for instanced PvE and WvW zergs. I love the idea of the hammer cata, but the design unfortunately has alot of flaws. Most of the Cata's i've seen in strikes/raids were often averaging 10k dps tops

[draxynnic.3719]

To be fair, a large part of that is due to Catalyst's design rather than hammer's design. It's pretty crazy that DPS catalyst is reliant on not one but two stacking buffs, and that one of those has 55% of the total effect reliant on keeping up all ten stacks, and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg where Catalyst is concerned. Whole set of traits probably needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. 

One could well make the observation that Catalyst's problems are essentially hammer's problems because you have to slot Catalyst to get the hammer in the first place. But I think there is a distinction between hammer problems and problems you'd still have (often worse) with a core weapon.

[Mauti.3520]

No

[xChris.8904]

On 8/27/2022 at 8:52 AM, brandies.8673 said:

I'm trying hard to like it but skills just feel thrown together like a kitchen sink, just feels bad.

I don't like the circular projectiles at all, makes me feel like I have to be in melee range, which is not what I want.

Why do water and earth attunements have no ranged skills?

Why does this weapon even exist on what the website describes as a "ranged caster"?

Just a terribly designed weapon IMO.

</feedback>

I love hammer. Mainly because it is the first weapon which provides value out of every attunement. I like the half ranged/half melee gameplay, like at the part of my rotation where i swap to fire and then air i can take some distance and then i have to go close, this makes things more interesting because i have to modify my positioning instead of being just fully ranged (boring imo) or fully melee (dps loss if the boss is locked in deadly fields). The orbs are just a cool visual effect at this point, they don't do damage so you don't have to be close, they serve 3 purposes: 1) offensive buffs, 2) energy generation (not so important), 3) grand finale. Overall it is my favorite weapon, i am glad elementalist got a 2handed and i think it really fits the catalyst theme

[xChris.8904]

15 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

I wouldn't necessarily call the PvE dps rotation smooth. Its an incredibly fast pace skill mashing build that is very unforgiving on making mistakes. Not keeping up 10 stacks of EE? Rip ~15% dps, accidentally cast Grand finale supoptimally? Rip 10% missing augment sphere combo? Rip 5% missing air sphere/no energy? Rip 20% to whole party, messing up Fire augment-> skills order? Rip 10% dps. 

Wnna play quick cata? 40% dps loss and still unreliable quickness. Also air 4 is one of the most hated and buggy skills Anet has ever developed, managed today to get stuck in a wall twice while doing 5 pvp matches. Also due to the speed of skill mashing: rip any player that (partly) skillclicks or plays on steamdeck. 

 

Its good for spvp and roaming, but don't pretend its working smooth for instanced PvE and WvW zergs. I love the idea of the hammer cata, but the design unfortunately has alot of flaws. Most of the Cata's i've seen in strikes/raids were often averaging 10k dps tops

It isn't incredibly fast paced. It has to be incredibly fast paced if you want to squeeze out the most dps out of it, which is true for most rotations, but with the orb effect renewed by 15secs every time you activate a new one (compared to 5 sec on beta), it definitely doesn't force you to rush. Upkeeping 10 stacks of EE is a lot easier than people think. You start with 3 in combat, molten end in fire sphere gives 1, shock blast in air sphere gives 3 (disable + aura), cleansing typhoon into air sphere gives 2 (dazing strikes count as disable), crashing font into water sphere gives 1. That puts you at 10 before even going to earth where you can get another 3 from ground pound. Obviously not executing the rotation perfectly will be a dps loss but less than people think unless you are not doing a rotation a lot. Casting grand finale by mistake is the only major way to gut down your dps output. But that just takes time to get used to, you can always use hammer 3 while another skill is casting to avoid it. I don't disagree it needs more practice than other specs and has a higher skill ceiling but most things you mention are the very basics and can be learned by spending an hour in the training area and then some more hours in simple encounters. I kinda dislike how it became the norm for people to expect builds to have an extremely easy rotation that requires no effort at all. Also a good catalyst will be easily topping the dps charts and personally the few people i see (myself included) that still play this spec, usually can perform. 

Edited September 10, 2022 by xChris.8904

[draxynnic.3719]

17 minutes ago, xChris.8904 said:

It isn't incredibly fast paced. It has to be incredibly fast paced if you want to squeeze out the most dps out of it, which is true for most rotations, but with the orb effect renewed by 15secs every time you activate a new one (compared to 5 sec on beta), it definitely doesn't force you to rush. Upkeeping 10 stacks of EE is a lot easier than people think. You start with 3 in combat, molten end in fire sphere gives 1, shock blast in air sphere gives 3 (disable + aura), cleansing typhoon into air sphere gives 2 (dazing strikes count as disable), crashing font into water sphere gives 1. That puts you at 10 before even going to earth where you can get another 3 from ground pound. Obviously not executing the rotation perfectly will be a dps loss but less than people think unless you are not doing a rotation a lot. Casting grand finale by mistake is the only major way to gut down your dps output. But that just takes time to get used to, you can always use hammer 3 while another skill is casting to avoid it. I don't disagree it needs more practice than other specs and has a higher skill ceiling but most things you mention are the very basics and can be learned by spending an hour in the training area and then some more hours in simple encounters. I kinda dislike how it became the norm for people to expect builds to have an extremely easy rotation that requires no effort at all. Also a good catalyst will be easily topping the dps charts and personally the few people i see (myself included) that still play this spec, usually can perform. 

It's a catalyst problem rather than a hammer problem, but...

The problem is that Empowered Empowerment does nothing until you get to ten stacks, and then getting that tenth stack immediately changing a 9% bonus into a 20% bonus. Which shifts it from 'if I'm short a couple of stacks, that's not ideal but not a big deal" to being a pretty significant chunk. It'd probably feel better if it just doubled the bonus, or made it 1.5% per stack with an extra 5% on the final stack, or some other way to change the trait from going straight from doing nothing to +10% to all stats.

Personally, though, I'm just using it for open world so I usually use the other two GMs. 

[xChris.8904]

57 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

It's a catalyst problem rather than a hammer problem, but...

The problem is that Empowered Empowerment does nothing until you get to ten stacks, and then getting that tenth stack immediately changing a 9% bonus into a 20% bonus. Which shifts it from 'if I'm short a couple of stacks, that's not ideal but not a big deal" to being a pretty significant chunk. It'd probably feel better if it just doubled the bonus, or made it 1.5% per stack with an extra 5% on the final stack, or some other way to change the trait from going straight from doing nothing to +10% to all stats.

Personally, though, I'm just using it for open world so I usually use the other two GMs. 

I explained in my comment why EE stacks aren't an issue. Yes in solo play your uptime of 10 stacks will be too low to be worth taking the trait and you just go with sphere specialist instead. But in organized group play, just by clicking your skills in the right order and dropping spheres under you, you will easily have 10 stacks most of the time. It won't be 100% uptime and to be honest it is good that it works that way, the better you play, the more you are rewarded. If i can average 9,5 stacks during an encounter and someone can average 9, then it is logical that i will get that little more dps. I like specs that have this kind of depth. 

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, xChris.8904 said:

I explained in my comment why EE stacks aren't an issue. Yes in solo play your uptime of 10 stacks will be too low to be worth taking the trait and you just go with sphere specialist instead. But in organized group play, just by clicking your skills in the right order and dropping spheres under you, you will easily have 10 stacks most of the time. It won't be 100% uptime and to be honest it is good that it works that way, the better you play, the more you are rewarded. If i can average 9,5 stacks during an encounter and someone can average 9, then it is logical that i will get that little more dps. I like specs that have this kind of depth. 

You're missing the point. EE stacks aren't the problem. The problem is that if you're using Empowered Empowerment, which is clearly the intended DPS grandmaster, then the difference between having 9 average stacks or 9.5 isn't really what matters, what matters is whether you're at 10 stacks and for how long, since so much of the effect is loaded onto that final stack.

[xChris.8904]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

You're missing the point. EE stacks aren't the problem. The problem is that if you're using Empowered Empowerment, which is clearly the intended DPS grandmaster, then the difference between having 9 average stacks or 9.5 isn't really what matters, what matters is whether you're at 10 stacks and for how long, since so much of the effect is loaded onto that final stack.

I don't think i am missing anything because that is exactly what i am saying. I am using the average because that is the only way to track your stacks in the entire fight, the longer you drop stacks, the less average you will have, it should have been obvious. And again if you do the rotation as intended you will be only dropping them for less than a second each time, which has a minor effect on your dps. Yes dropping stacks here has more impact than most other things i can think off in gw2 regarding rotations but personally i like that you are being rewarded the most for playing good. They could also have made it double them anyway no matter the amount i guess

[draxynnic.3719]

7 minutes ago, xChris.8904 said:

I don't think i am missing anything because that is exactly what i am saying. I am using the average because that is the only way to track your stacks in the entire fight, the longer you drop stacks, the less average you will have, it should have been obvious. And again if you do the rotation as intended you will be only dropping them for less than a second each time, which has a minor effect on your dps. Yes dropping stacks here has more impact than most other things i can think off in gw2 regarding rotations but personally i like that you are being rewarded the most for playing good. They could also have made it double them anyway no matter the amount i guess

Eh, it's not as simple as that. An average of 9.5 requires having at least 50% uptime of all ten stacks, but is it that, or is it 95% uptime of ten and 5% of none, or, more likely, somewhere in between? Is an average of 9 a case of actually always having nine stacks and NEVER getting that 10-stack bonus, or is it having ten stacks 90% of the time and otherwise none, or somewhere in between?

If it was linear, these questions wouldn't matter, except perhaps for lining up burst skills. As is, though, this is a big difference - the difference between two of those extremes is the difference between never having the benefit of that trait and having it up 90% of the time.

Now, what's probably more realistic is that an average of 9.5 means that it's up 50% of the time since it's either 9 or 10 stacks, while an average of 9 means it's up 33% of the time since it's roughly equal periods split between 8, 9, and 10 stacks. Now, if it was a linear relationship, this would be a pretty minor difference in performance. As is, though, the person who has 50% uptime is simply getting 50% more benefit from the grandmaster trait than the person who only has it up a third of the time. (And this is still a fairly simplistic analysis - in practice, I'd expect the 9.5 average person to have an uptime higher than 50% and the 9 average person to have an uptime below 33% because of how statistics work.)

Which all serves to increase the impression that catalyst is a hard spec to get the most out of, especially since 1) it puts a lot more pressure on the player to maintain that perfect 10-stack, where usually being down a stack or two of a buff that stacks to ten isn't a big deal, 2) it's not the ONLY stacking buff you have to worry about and 3) people playing in open world and experiencing that they're usually not getting ten stacks to begin with are probably not going to intuitively think that they're suddenly going to be easily making 10 in squad-based instances (especially since hammer doesn't have that many finishers to trigger Elemental Epitome). There's also the aspect that some mechanics may force you into situations where you lose your stacks and have to start again from scratch, and that hurts a LOT more when you have a lot riding on the final stack rather than having linear scaling.

[Ace.1784]

4 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Eh, it's not as simple as that. An average of 9.5 requires having at least 50% uptime of all ten stacks, but is it that, or is it 95% uptime of ten and 5% of none, or, more likely, somewhere in between? Is an average of 9 a case of actually always having nine stacks and NEVER getting that 10-stack bonus, or is it having ten stacks 90% of the time and otherwise none, or somewhere in between?

If it was linear, these questions wouldn't matter, except perhaps for lining up burst skills. As is, though, this is a big difference - the difference between two of those extremes is the difference between never having the benefit of that trait and having it up 90% of the time.

Now, what's probably more realistic is that an average of 9.5 means that it's up 50% of the time since it's either 9 or 10 stacks, while an average of 9 means it's up 33% of the time since it's roughly equal periods split between 8, 9, and 10 stacks. Now, if it was a linear relationship, this would be a pretty minor difference in performance. As is, though, the person who has 50% uptime is simply getting 50% more benefit from the grandmaster trait than the person who only has it up a third of the time. (And this is still a fairly simplistic analysis - in practice, I'd expect the 9.5 average person to have an uptime higher than 50% and the 9 average person to have an uptime below 33% because of how statistics work.)

Which all serves to increase the impression that catalyst is a hard spec to get the most out of, especially since 1) it puts a lot more pressure on the player to maintain that perfect 10-stack, where usually being down a stack or two of a buff that stacks to ten isn't a big deal, 2) it's not the ONLY stacking buff you have to worry about and 3) people playing in open world and experiencing that they're usually not getting ten stacks to begin with are probably not going to intuitively think that they're suddenly going to be easily making 10 in squad-based instances (especially since hammer doesn't have that many finishers to trigger Elemental Epitome). There's also the aspect that some mechanics may force you into situations where you lose your stacks and have to start again from scratch, and that hurts a LOT more when you have a lot riding on the final stack rather than having linear scaling.

In theory, this is correct; however, in practice, it's not that important.

If you follow the rotation correctly (SnowCrows has a more updated one btw), it's incredibly easy to maintain the stacks of both stacking buffs. You may drop a stack here and there, but the goal isn't to be perfect. This is true in raid situations for buffs overall.

Yes you want 100% quickness uptime, but getting 80%-90% uptime is still really good (which could be true based on boss mechanics) and is much better than 0% uptime.

When I play Hammer in open world and meta events, I don't really focus on maintaining perfect stacks unless I have a quickness and alacrity source (which turns the situation into a raid practice). Otherwise, I just focus on maintaining the muscle memory of the order to press my buttons in, correcting for the lack of offensive boons with earth auto attacks.

 

I agree with 3), this is not intuitive to people. In fact, this is true for the ideal raid comps. I am willing to bet majority of GW2 players underestimate how strong boons are (you even see it this forum). I've been playing a silly support builds with some friends new to the game and they are always surprised at how much more damage they output when given full buffs.

~

This is not part of the original discussion, but I also wanted to apply this sentiment to Staff Catalyst in WvW. People focus on maintaining 100% uptime on elemental empowerment; however, you're not bombing 100% of the time. There's movement phases to get better positioning. There's shade spikes and range spikes to trigger certain CDs. And yes, finally, there is the ranged bomb. 

I don't care if I don't have 10 stacks of EE for a shade spike or if we're moving to get a better position. I focus on having 10 stacks when it's time for the big bomb and that is more than enough to top the meters on down contribution, kill contribution, and yes, damage.

[draxynnic.3719]

I think it's still majorly problematic that it creates a GM trait that basically does nothing unless you get that full 10-stack. I was paying attention to my stacks in the Desolation today, and I was seeing 5-6 stacks. I'd have more if I was running Vicious Empowerment instead of Energized Elements, but I'd also have less sphere fields to finish to trigger Elemental Epitome. While it's reasonable that you'll have some traits that are good for raids and some that are better when solo, it's a big feels bad if a GM trait needs optimal conditions in order to do anything at all.

I'd agree that dropping Empowered Empowerment uptime is probably less significant than losing Quickness, but it's still one more thing that puts more pressure on Catalyst raiders to perform perfectly than other raid builds.

[Ace.1784]

On 9/11/2022 at 1:20 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think it's still majorly problematic that it creates a GM trait that basically does nothing unless you get that full 10-stack. I was paying attention to my stacks in the Desolation today, and I was seeing 5-6 stacks. I'd have more if I was running Vicious Empowerment instead of Energized Elements, but I'd also have less sphere fields to finish to trigger Elemental Epitome. While it's reasonable that you'll have some traits that are good for raids and some that are better when solo, it's a big feels bad if a GM trait needs optimal conditions in order to do anything at all.

I'd agree that dropping Empowered Empowerment uptime is probably less significant than losing Quickness, but it's still one more thing that puts more pressure on Catalyst raiders to perform perfectly than other raid builds.

This is all a fair assessment of the situation.

One thing to add, Vicious Empowerment is very strong on Hammer Catalyst, even in open world. I find Energized Elements useless since abilities charge so much energy anyways.

[draxynnic.3719]

3 hours ago, Ace.1784 said:

This is all a fair assessment of the situation.

One thing to add, Vicious Empowerment is very strong on Hammer Catalyst, even in open world. I find Energized Elements useless since abilities charge so much energy anyways.

Might have to give that a try and see. My experience, though, has been that I'm often able to switch to an attunement, drop a sphere, and be almost done with that attunement and switch to another by the time the sphere expires, and Energised Elements fuels that. It's nice to know that if I switch attunement I'll almost always have enough energy to drop a sphere right away.

But maybe the extra EE stacks are worth slowing this down a tad.

[Serephen.3420]

On 9/9/2022 at 11:22 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

The ironic thing is that the energy mechanic favours hammer because hammer is designed to replenish energy quickly. Removing energy would also increase the viability of core weapons with catalyst.

It would also free up hammer to do more interesting things with it's 3 skills than what it's limited to now.