Another round of hammer buffs

[cat.8975]

And it'll probably still be bad in PvP!

Mighty Blow needs more burst. It used to be balanced around having Judge's Intervention, Smite Condition, and Glacial Heart all going off alongside Mighty Blow. When those utilities were nerfed and Glacial Heart was changed to do 50% less damage and no longer had the ability to crit, it gutted the burst.

I understand that the high-damage instant cast skills were toxic gameplay, in addition to the crit on glacial making the damage much less predictable, but hammer guard just hasn't felt the same since. The weapon just doesn't have any teeth, and is 100% reliant on comboing its damage with an elite spec utility in order to take people down.

[Sonork.2916]

Single big hits are simply hard to land these days.  Pretty much every class has aegis or some kind of block/invuln at this point, and a single slow, heavily telegraphed attack are the easiest to avoid.  It's good they're speeding up Hammer's attacks, another step to making it viable.  Would still like to see glacial blow trait make it hammer 2 unblockable or something as well.  But it's nice that Hammer 4 resets mighty blow, making a follow up mighty blow possible.

[otto.5684]

Beside hammer issues, guardian dps, as a whole, is bad in spvp. 

[Saiyan.1704]

I'm eons more excited for this change compared to their first changes with hammer.

It means hammer has a chance to do nearly two back-to-back hits with Mighty Blow, assuming the first doesn't get immediately blocked/blinded/dodged. Considering most Guards engage with Mighty Blow anyways (one of the issues with their first Banish changes) we can instead Judge's + guarantee Banish a person then enter Mighty Blow a second time. The playstyle will be very interesting.

[Falseprophet.1502]

move symbol off the autoattack; going to be a clown weapon until this is done.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Falseprophet.1502 said:

move symbol off the autoattack; going to be a clown weapon until this is done.

Nah, weapons behaving differently is a good thing.

[Helvalith.2170]

Hello, i've read the balance preview about hammers for guardians and i've some questions:

• why they keep reducing autoattack animations?
• why hammer is the only guardian weapon that have symbol inside autoattack? i immagine they dont want to delete an existing weapon ability, but having it on a different button would be better
• why the hammer trait (glacial blow to mighty blow) is inside virtue that is a condi trait line? hammer is power based weapon, would be better to have the trait on a more power based trait line

thanks for the answers.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Helvalith.2170 said:

Hello, i've read the balance preview about hammers for guardians and i've some questions:

• why they keep reducing autoattack animations?

Because one of the common criticisms of hammer is how long the autoattack chain took.

1 hour ago, Helvalith.2170 said:

• why hammer is the only guardian weapon that have symbol inside autoattack? i immagine they dont want to delete an existing weapon ability, but having it on a different button would be better

Because weapons are allowed to have different behaviours. Having the symbol being something that you can keep planting down regularly gives hammer a very different feel to the other guardian weapons.

1 hour ago, Helvalith.2170 said:

• why the hammer trait (glacial blow to mighty blow) is inside virtue that is a condi trait line? hammer is power based weapon, would be better to have the trait on a more power based trait line

Virtues has both power and condition traits. Guardian doesn't really have pure power or pure condition traitlines, which is fitting because you have to work hard to make a guardian that doesn't have burning and good power coefficients.

[Sonork.2916]

I know all guardians ranged attacks outside of LB are designed to be kitten, but can we make it so Zealot's Embrace can hit moving targets?

Can be done by increasing the chain's speed or width.

Thanks.

https://imgur.com/gqIwMNx

Edited November 1, 2023 by Sonork.2916

[Kraav.8136]

The hammer buffs are long over due and welcome. Hammer #5 needs to usable while moving. 

If they were smart they would move Glacial Heart Master Trait to the Zeal trait line and swap it with Kindled Zeal.