Hammer and Weaver

[posthumecaver.6473]

Only thing seemed interesting to me to test was to see how Hammer will behave with weaver, i am really impressed they implemented the dual skill but orbs doing only 1 damage is really annoying. I didn‘t parse it but I understand why it has to be that way with Catalyst because of its crazy damage but if it is not overpowered can you put some damage to Hammer 3‘s, can be 1000 damage anything but not 1.

Edited July 2, 2023 by posthumecaver.6473

[Serephen.3420]

I found weaver hammer awfully unfun to play, sword/warhorn was not only superior damage wise but much smoother to play.

Honestly wish hammer 3s did some damage or made to be more than some pseudo utility/trait like buff rather than actual weapon skills.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Serephen.3420

[Axl.8924]

I kinda like the sword for weaver myself pretty cool  I vote that deepnding on instance weaver sword should stay as main DPS weapon for weaver moves and maybe other ones with niche stuff on it.

[Bizgurk.5639]

15 hours ago, posthumecaver.6473 said:

I didn‘t parse it but I understand why it has to be that way with Catalyst because of its crazy damage but if it is not overpowered can you put some damage to Hammer 3‘s, can be 1000 damage anything but not 1.

I agree with you. On Catalyst, even if it does only 1 damage, it still has its purpose to grant energy for deploying Jade Spheres. Since there is no Jade Sphere on Weaver, the low damage of those orbs seem rather unreasonable.

[Markus.6415]

22 hours ago, posthumecaver.6473 said:

Only thing seemed interesting to me to test was to see how Hammer will behave with weaver, i am really impressed they implemented the dual skill but orbs doing only 1 damage is really annoying. I didn‘t parse it but I understand why it has to be that way with Catalyst because of its crazy damage but if it is not overpowered can you put some damage to Hammer 3‘s, can be 1000 damage anything but not 1.

You were what? Impressed by the hammer dual skills? They did the bare minimum as in... just coloring new ability icons, the skill funktion is exactly what the normal 3 skill does. Could have at least added something different ontop of it.

[Markus.6415]

6 hours ago, Bizgurk.5639 said:

I agree with you. On Catalyst, even if it does only 1 damage, it still has its purpose to grant energy for deploying Jade Spheres. Since there is no Jade Sphere on Weaver, the low damage of those orbs seem rather unreasonable.

But it's still such a weird design choice. They could just take a little damage from something else and add it back to the orbs. Especially when playing in low lvl areas where you are downscaled those orbs crit for 0 damage, ZERO.

[Ghostkat.9580]

18 hours ago, Serephen.3420 said:

I found weaver hammer awfully unfun to play, sword/warhorn was not only superior damage wise but much smoother to play.

Hard agree here. What this entire beta highlighted for me is how unfun and poorly designed Catalyst is in general, as well as how useless Hammer is as a weapon outside of Catalyst. The devs seem intent on trying to boost the popularity of specs and weapon choices by making them powerful, but at the end of the day, more people than not won't care if it's clunky and unfun. For all of the rhetoric surrounding how Weaver is like "playing piano," Catalyst is the one that expects you to be pushing all the buttons and then cycling through all of the elements. With the other especs, there was always a decision-making process about why you're choosing to go into a particular element, and you could make various builds that allowed you to stay in one or two and still be viable in non-competitive content. I think what Catalyst mains find appealing about it is either just how powerful they've had to make it through buffs, them not understanding how Weaver or Tempest work so a "pushing all the buttons" spec feels more braindead to them, or one hell of a lot of copium.

My guild and I did some testing and I made a variety of Ele builds. Here's what we found:

Sword/Warhorn opens up a new era of gameplay for Weavers and Tempests alike, and you can make a multitude of different builds now for either.

For Weaver, there are more "restricted element" (staying in one or only a couple) builds which are now viable for most content, with different levels of engagement depending on how exciting or how simple you want the gameplay to be. "Summoner" builds using the summoned elementals are now far more viable against champions and running meta events. There's a water-only build that is practically immortal and is great at support with heals while also doing a more-than-acceptable degree of outgoing damage.

For Tempest, sword main-hand allows for a new chapter of exciting gameplay opportunities that I think Tempest mains will find lots of fun, and ease the transition into Weaver if they've been putting it off, since its actual complexity is only marginally higher once you get used to sword + overloads. Similarly, the more exciting gameplay will draw Weaver mains back to Tempest for a different style of gameplay. 

I made a lightning-only summoner Tempest build that is really good, has great sustain and is a lot of fun to play, and makes use of the Conjure Lighting Hammer. The Conjured Hammer is, quite honestly, a superior hammer to the equippable one in every way imaginable. It has a better and more fun move set, does great damage, has the leap finisher in a logical place on the hotbar, and is pretty much everything you'd want out of an elemental hammer. The only downsides to it are having to pick up the second lightning hammer to extend the duration, and waiting on recasting Conjure Lightning Hammer.

I tried to see how hammer would work on this build if I used it whenever Conjure Lightning Hammer was on cooldown, and it was just terrible. Not only was the damage output inferior, even with a legendary hammer, but it was just so unfun to use and the weapon's kit was multiple shades of awful and useless. Unless you REALLY have your heart dead-set on that Thor power fantasy no matter what, it doesn't matter to me if they buff the damage. The kit is so terrible and clunky to use, there's no incentive to use the thing outside of Sword main-hand and dagger/focus/warhorn on off-hand.

To make matters even worse, Conjure Lightning Hammer's leap finisher is also on 2 with AoEs on 4 and 5 which gives it amazing parity with Fire Element Sword. 3 being a knockback that does CC is also great. Conjure Lightning Hammer's Wind Blast (the 3 skill) does more damage and more CC than regular hammer's Wind Storm (the air 4 skill). The arrangement and organization of the skills makes it so if you're used to Sword Weaver, the skills you'd need for your combo finishers are all in the same places so it's ultra convenient. On Cata's hammer, you have to swap to Water and push 4 for your leap finisher, or air and push 4 for a worse CC skill. You can't set up a combo field and leap through it for a combo aura on Cata, at least not easily unless it uses sword. Weaver can do it and with sword, now so can Tempest, but Cata's traits are built entirely around the main hand hammer, and likewise, hammer's skills are designed completely around Catalyst's wells. 

Ele mains have said this enough over the years but I wish these things were a toggle instead of a time-limited thing. It sounds fun on paper to have the second one spawn so a friend can pick it up and have fun with it, but realistically this causes a lot of rotation problems. If "Conjure Lightning Hammer" was instead changed to "Conjure Elemental Hammer" and we could just have the same animations as Conjure Lightning Hammer with different weaponskill stats and visual effects, it would instantly be a far more ideal hammer than what Cata has to work with.

It just serves to highlight how useless and poorly-designed of a spec Catalyst is.

I honestly really think that since two NPCs in Cantha (Master Stonefist from the tutorial area and Officer Aimi in the Janin meta) use elemental martial arts, what eventually was turned into Catalyst was originally meant to essentially be Element Monk. Then, at some point during development, all the "Dragon Jade Tech" stuff was added and the Jade Brotherhood was given scrappers, ANet tried with haste to slap together an Elementalist version of Scrapper, with the four elements being tied to holographic representations of the now long-dead corrupted celestials from GW1 who we kill to go "Weh no Su" and gain dual-classing in Factions. It's like they tried to make it "Scrapper, but also FFXIV Summoner" (in lieu of not understanding how XIV SMN works), because all of the other especs from EoD are basically mashed together versions of several ideas that don't go together naturally, including bootleg XIV jobs. Considering the devs talk more on their social media accounts about FFXIV than their actual game, this - along with the obvious FF player bait in the gemstore - should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. I was expecting ANet to try and justify Catalyst's existence by having something like the Deadeye boss fight in PoF, where a major character was going to show up using this thing to try and market it to the player base, but nope, it has zero representation in the actual story and game otherwise. At least Willbender shows up during the guild hall acquisition quest.

I get this is like CMC's baby but there are better hills to die on instead of doubling down on trying to force people to like Catalyst. It's the one spec in the game I think should be deleted and downright replaced on principle, due to how poorly thought out it was from the ground up. Element Monk still makes the most sense to me as the ideal EoD Ele espec, and is supported by GW1's story due to the marriage of Cynn and Mhenlo. Not to mention, all the Focus skins that still look like knuckles style weapons in other MMOs...

[scerevisiae.1972]

11 hours ago, Markus.6415 said:

You were what? Impressed by the hammer dual skills? They did the bare minimum as in... just coloring new ability icons, the skill funktion is exactly what the normal 3 skill does. Could have at least added something different ontop of it.

This. dual orbs was literally the least effort possible solution.

Just like the budget gen3 legendaries we got, and now the budget expansion we're getting with no elite specs.

If they were going to make cuts, I'd like to cut all the story, the voice-acting and the cinematics, it's expensive, minimally replayable and frankly not very good anyway. The combat and elite specs are the core of this game.

[posthumecaver.6473]

On 7/3/2023 at 4:02 PM, Markus.6415 said:

You were what? Impressed by the hammer dual skills? They did the bare minimum as in... just coloring new ability icons, the skill funktion is exactly what the normal 3 skill does. Could have at least added something different ontop of it.

I am impressed they did something, I was expecting no dual skills on Hammer 🙂

[Stallic.2397]

The dual skills should round out the weapon. You could add a water field, an evade skill would be nice, another leap, etc. All the things hammer seems to be missing on catalyst.

That being said, the bonuses from the orbs, plus the weaver bonus do add up quite nicely. 

I didn't get a chance to perfect the build, but the orbs grant 12% crit  chance, and the trait superior elements grant 15% against weakened foes which air orb inflicts every second. 

That makes it easier to use grieving or wizard stats in pvp cause you don't have to worry about precision 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Stallic.2397

[Eddie.9143]

Haha it's soooo strong.