Silver noob tried hammer spellbreaker and...

[Maxter.6530]

... got his bottom handed to him.

 

Silver noob being me, just to be clear. I'm playing GW2 for about 1.5 months.

Initial Impressions

Used this build (omg it was removed from metabattle yesterday 😄 Unlucky me I guess). Played around 20 matches, won around 4 of them.

• That guy can deal some freakin' insane damage (got a 10k crit from hammer2 once), 6-7k crits are regular.
• This guy can survive: 2 stun breaks, invul, big health bump from ulti, condition cleansing.
• Mobility is a bit limited but hey, you can't have everything, can you?

Problem

Consistency.

• Landing CC or damage is a coin toss. You make your huge swings and nothing happens most of the time.
• Surviving while focused is coin toss. Sometimes there is a brawl, sometimes I just explode. Invul... there were multiple times when I pressed that button with low health and died anyway. Conditions apparently. 

Due to limited mobility, if you go in a fight, you either win it or die (mostly die). There is no escape.

Matchups

That guardian dragonwhatever. You step on a trap - lose half health, he comes and blows up the remaining half. I dunno what to do.

Soulbeast. You lose half health just to get in melee and when you do he pulls his big greatsword out of his pants and your insane burst ends up licking that hard steel while he's blocking. Then he blows up your remaining half health. I have no clue how to counter this guy.

Daredevil. I just can't hit him. Even with Eathshaker. End of story.

 

Comparison to Reaper

I got initially placed into Silver 1 as a holosmith and hovered in that spot. Then I picked up a reaper and was steadily climbing (almost into gold, was 2 points away). Then I tried this spellbreaker and... well, you know how that went already. Reaper is consistent and brings a lot to a teamfight as long as you are not getting focused hard.

 

Any advice aside from trying out those problematic classes and sucking greatswords on them too?

[youle.5824]

Don't use meta builds for silver gold, meta means most efficient, it assumes you play the build to its full potential, which is not possible for newer players, even 'veterans' in some cases. Basically ask around in game or in forum what is the best build for carrying a new player in rank. I could suggest a few but might not be the best ones since I haven't been in that rating range since forever. What I can say is you should probably stick to a dps teamfighter spec since thats the one with the easiest rotation, just follow teamfight. Roamers and sidenoders need more map awarness. Among dps in low rating you should prob stick to something tanky with low apm, tanky specs are often  condi because of the amulet design. Something like necro minionmancer would have worked at that rating for a beginner in the past , maybe still would work a bit in silver early gold. But I'm sure lower rated players on the forum can give you their secret sauce to ez carry specs in gold. 

[jdawgie.1835]

I want to commend you for this awesome post. This is wholesome. Add me and if im on and can help you at all I will. Warrior is one of my mains so if your interested in that let me know. I also main thief and guardian so I can lend you some advice on how to fight Daredevil. 

[Hotride.2187]

Despite the recent forum crying (partially for good reasons, have to admit) there aren't that many good spbs.

Hammer spb in particular was a meta build (for a bit anyway), but not a build that will hold your hand that much. You still have mostly melee skills after all. Dagger/shield/greatsword remains stronger and more versatile. The change to FC proccing adrenal health only if FC connects was a good change, IMO it added enough counterplay.

I don't want to bash on necro players but most of necro builds play themselves. Good reapers are also few and far between, most just go through their skills and things happen (this is a theme with a lot of new players, they use their skills, their opponent ... dodges ... and then the crying in chat starts). Going from reaper to spb will be rough if you've not played the game for a while.

Also note that war is overall bad in team fights, at least when there are players who don't have 1+ seconds reaction time.

Edited March 27, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Greyrat.2378]

20 hours ago, Maxter.6530 said:

Problem

Consistency.

• Landing CC or damage is a coin toss. You make your huge swings and nothing happens most of the time.
• Surviving while focused is coin toss. Sometimes there is a brawl, sometimes I just explode. Invul... there were multiple times when I pressed that button with low health and died anyway. Conditions apparently. 

Due to limited mobility, if you go in a fight, you either win it or die (mostly die). There is no escape.

Yes, that's warrior hammer in nutshell.
You have crap ton of dps loaded into hammer 2 which you can reset by hammer 5, yet both of them are quite slow and very predictable, very short range and well telegraphed, which is why you need to land your CC for proper setup and hope that you don't get blinded/ opponent does not have another stunbreak etc.
Fact that you are not running resilient roll and cleansing ire makes you very vulnerable against conditions.
You also don't have enough mobility to disengage compared to GS, which is another problem.

Hammer is strong but it's difficult to utilise it's full potential against more competent player, GS is much safer option.
 

20 hours ago, Maxter.6530 said:

Matchups

That guardian dragonwhatever. You step on a trap - lose half health, he comes and blows up the remaining half. I dunno what to do.

Soulbeast. You lose half health just to get in melee and when you do he pulls his big greatsword out of his pants and your insane burst ends up licking that hard steel while he's blocking. Then he blows up your remaining half health. I have no clue how to counter this guy.

Daredevil. I just can't hit him. Even with Eathshaker. End of story.

Problem n1. with Dragonhunter is you stepping into his traps. He has very high burst but can easily die as well.
Can't really comment on Soulbeast, but if he utilizes the range advantage and mobility you are probably going to have rough time against him. Either utilize LOS, take shield master for reflects and try to get into melee range for CC or go help somewhere else.
For Daredevil don't stand in smoke fields, bait them out and try to land your CC.

I've been playing reaper for some time as well and it's much safer playstyle.
You have decent mobility and some options to disengage (shroud 2, flesh wurm), decent CC and lot of cleave which is easy to land compared to hammer spellbreaker.
 

Hammer can carry you against newbies and some melee builds with low amount of stunbreaks, but GS is far more reliable.

Note that these are just my personal observation as very average player, can't really comment on how it works in higher elo (plat and above).

Edited March 27, 2023 by Greyrat.2378

[Hotride.2187]

34 minutes ago, Greyrat.2378 said:

Problem n1. with Dragonhunter is you stepping into his traps. He has very high burst but can easily die as well.

I can comment on this, a good DH will drop traps and stay in them. There is no way around not going through the traps as a power spb; your best bet is dodge roll / GS 3 / FC through and all of these can be risky. Essentially against a good trap DH if you are not running endure pain you are dead meat as spb. But that is a rare matchup, as there arent many good DHs.

[JTGuevara.9018]

What people do NOT tell you about warrior is that you need some initial skill to make use of it. Because of its limitations in mobility and AoEs in this action combat system, it struggles often. You need to be crafty and nuanced in its approach and that does not come without experience.

Other classes like guardian and engi you can pick up and play easily and have more success. Because why? Again...guardian has plethoras of AoEs and engis have a plethora of mobility.

But yeah...the streamers and twiterrati are NOT going to tell you actual facts. They're just going to bandwagon to the latest popular thing..

[Nylarx.9671]

As someone that is a low gold warrior in Pvp, may I suggest these two other builds:

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Spellbreaker_-_Defense_GS/Dagger_Duelist

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Bladesworn_-_Power_Shoutsworn

I personally loved the Hammer build of Spellbreaker, but I personally am not skilled enough to land the hammer CCs. I went with GS/Dagger as there was more mobility and it is easier to land Arcing Slice, and when SB was nerfed I went back to Power Shoutsworn. I personally liked it more than SB because of the range on your Gunblade and the constant sustain you had.