Two-Handed Training and Hammer

[Buzzbugs.1236]

This trait increases damage for greatsword and spear, but not hammer? It feels like an oversight. it has Fury gain when disabling a foe, which is perfect synergy for hammer. It just needs the other benefits like the 10% damage increase and 20% recharge reduction.

Edited January 6 by Buzzbugs.1236

[DarkFlopy.8197]

Trust me, GS is not even close to hammer in terms of DPS, I don't think it's going to be a good idea giving Hammer an additional 10% damage and 20% CD reduction not to mention the fury on CC.

Hammer has 3 skills that can rival and surpass GS #2 (Maul) in terms of damage, not to mention Hammer has 2 CC skills where one of them is actually 2 if you hit the first one to cause the follow up.

I love Hammer as a weapon and it's playstyle but in my opinion that will make the weapon just too strong.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

I'd love it to have the CD reduction because I feel like that what its sorta lacking compared to the other weapons. I use hammer alot but there are situations that make me go "dam I wish I had a cd reduced for this ability" Or I guess I can use that skirmisher trait that reduces the skill by 66%

[Gotejjeken.1267]

7 hours ago, DarkFlopy.8197 said:

Trust me, GS is not even close to hammer in terms of DPS, I don't think it's going to be a good idea giving Hammer an additional 10% damage and 20% CD reduction not to mention the fury on CC.

Hammer has 3 skills that can rival and surpass GS #2 (Maul) in terms of damage, not to mention Hammer has 2 CC skills where one of them is actually 2 if you hit the first one to cause the follow up.

I love Hammer as a weapon and it's playstyle but in my opinion that will make the weapon just too strong.

Depends on mode--in PvE, I'd agree--but in competitive, hammer lacks the defense GS has.  In that light, think the CD reduction would actually be very beneficial there, as if you miss ANY skill on hammer you are at a bad disadvantage.  

[DarkFlopy.8197]

11 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Depends on mode--in PvE, I'd agree--but in competitive, hammer lacks the defense GS has.  In that light, think the CD reduction would actually be very beneficial there, as if you miss ANY skill on hammer you are at a bad disadvantage.  

Well yes of course,

But I cannot agree on having all 3 points for hammer (10% dmg, 20% cd reduction, fury on disable).
I can agree with you on the CD reduction and perhaps fury on disable but not all of the points at once, Hammer has really high damage in all game modes so combining all 3 points will be a bit too much in my opinion.

[Zenos Osgorma.2936]

It'll be fine for hammer , considering you have to use Cantrips etc for immunity rotation plus passive condi clearing on dodge or swap a whole trait line to gain condition removal from wilderness if you don't plan on using Cantrips.

I toyed around with hammer a for a bit and its damage is good but it certainly is no GS that has more Pressure, hammer by all means should be hard hitting so adding it to two-handed training makes sense as it doesn't carry much Mobility or Escape , the leap damage as base h5 is horrid and slow for a reason because the other skills are ment to hit like a truck.

H5 is still a tad under powered when at a low 1.8k pre might , it does 5 damage against an average training golem xd but the leap is slower than a gs3 so it's easy to dodge such a choreographed animation.

hammers damage seems to come from the stacking of damage outputs like boon % , stun + opening strikes and Dragon stats to even achieve the damage some testers are doing and still keep the HP/Tanky aspects.

 

that'll be

Marksmanship

Untamed

and a very poor choice of Nature magic , beast mastery or skirmishing if you want to use Cantrips for the boon + regen from the other two trait lines gain , giving you

Might, Protection, fury (depending on weapon/trait), Stability Resistance, Resolution, swiftness , Vigor, quickness (depending on what trait line) maybe Aegis if you got allys near and due to the cooldown of cantrips without Concentration you won't have all these at the same time , so the damage boost from boons is typically 4-8% without a weapon cooldown and you won't be using 100% power stats in pvp or wvw..

you are reliant on Damage negation for survival when using untamed and as a trade off the damage per hit should be higher than a Traited GS DPS, such threat that people must run away when a thumper is going off on a combo one Bear like gs2 isn't going to scare anyone in pvp/wvw it'll only scare the noobies.

I remember the old days of Gw1 pvp Bunny thumpers being one myself.

They were designed to be Mobile (leap skills, reflexes as any Ranger would have), quick hard hitting but slow Mobility movement speed but Still Squishy without utility to protect them, you let a bunny thumper get into melee range you should be pinned, and heavily damaged considering theres almost 0 Mobility in the hammer the leap alone isn't scary damage at all.

 

.

this is my first impression of Gw2 hammer.

 

Edited January 6 by Zenos Osgorma.2936

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

1 hour ago, Zenos Osgorma.2936 said:

hammers damage seems to come from the stacking of damage outputs like boon % , stun + opening strikes and Dragon stats to even achieve the damage some testers are doing and still keep the HP/Tanky aspects.

 

that'll be

Marksmanship

Untamed

and a very poor choice of Nature magic , beast mastery or skirmishing if you want to use Cantrips for the boon + regen from the other two trait lines gain , giving you

Might, Protection, fury (depending on weapon/trait), Stability Resistance, Resolution, swiftness , Vigor, quickness (depending on what trait line) maybe Aegis if you got allys near and due to the cooldown of cantrips without Concentration you won't have all these at the same time , so the damage boost from boons is typically 4-8% without a weapon cooldown and you won't be using 100% power stats in pvp or wvw..

Actually, I've been using Hammer with Druid and still relying on 100% power build, but it s a mix match of Dragon/Valkyrie/Crusader. They way I generally mitigated the telegraph thump is in-conjunction of astral form 3 and 5 as setup while 2 and 4 were mainly used as a defensive option to create an opportunity window for a burst, Also to add the invis so it hard to read the telegraphed animation.  Although I will admit, I have a hard time chasing people down in WvW as a roamer, usually if they get to close you can really lock them down and burst them hard with this setup. That is why I pair up hammer with a mobility weapon such as Sword.... since it good enough mobility to chase and created distances.... not mention both unleash hammer 2 and sword 2 do 20% more damage to CC target. Majority of the fights I have with this setup are really consistent and I can go toe to toe with Celestial Harbingers which ether comes down to who makes a first mistake.

You might be asking, How am I getting the burst in while have little to no crit, you can thank opening strike with remorseless and a relic which I find an absolute must of you're not relying on two-weapon training.  This opens up alot of other non-elite spec lines you can use which doesn't pigeon-hole you to use Beast mastery for the opening strike-remorseless combo.

Whats even neat is that even though you don't succeed or mess up the burst, with the right pets can dish out some funny damage unsuspectingly with opening strike, just to name few.

Turtle - heavy shot can hit decently high

Tiger - setup f2 provides fury when its doing its attack so its attack always an opening strike.

Phoenix - Dash attack and f2 can hit decently hard along with have the CC to setup its burst properly. With proper timing with fury generation you can make this combo attack on untamed hit for ta total of 5k-10k or more depending on might generation & vuln and other modifiers 

There's alot more I can list but a few examples.

Edited January 6 by Oahkahmewolf.6210

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, DarkFlopy.8197 said:

Well yes of course,

But I cannot agree on having all 3 points for hammer (10% dmg, 20% cd reduction, fury on disable).
I can agree with you on the CD reduction and perhaps fury on disable but not all of the points at once, Hammer has really high damage in all game modes so combining all 3 points will be a bit too much in my opinion.

Think they would just nerf hammer modifiers a bit if they were to add it to 2H training.  

Still really unsure if it helps the situation though, as while hammer can be a menace in a group setting like WvW, it really does punish you for messing up.  Say with GS, can miss the hilt bash and still put up the block and get kick CC => Maul, or Sw/WH can basically spam your sword skills and if those miss, WH daze => stealth, etc. for escape.  But hammer, if you miss the thump or don't chain a CC into a #2 correctly (get blinded), you have to weapon swap or you have no other meaningful way to disengage.  

That's a problem to me and think it's a reason you don't see it often in high level play.  It just gets competitively outclassed by the other melee weapons; dual maces may be closest parallel, but even those may have more disengage potential with the #4 on mace OH or couple WH with mace mainhand. 

[Beddo.1907]

If they added hammer to the trait, they would most likely also nerf it to lower the damage in PvE. I'd prefer not being forced into a trait in that case.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

To be honest.

Weapon Traits should not be a thing anymore in the first place.

[DarkFlopy.8197]

26 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

To be honest.

Weapon Traits should not be a thing anymore in the first place.

I agree on this one.
Weapon traits should not be a thing anymore when it comes to straight up buff the specific weapon alone but just give benefit for those choose to use it, for example Strider's Strength "You and your pet gain power. Gain additional power while wielding a sword. Successfully evading an attack grants might", it does not force you to take sword and as a none-sword user you get 2/3 of the trait and yes you can argue that Two-Handed Training does the same but actually it doesn't because it gives 2/3 of the trait stuff to the GS and its not just power its flat 10% damage which is arguably higher.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

13 hours ago, DarkFlopy.8197 said:

Two-Handed Training does the same but actually it doesn't because it gives 2/3 of the trait stuff to the GS and its not just power its flat 10% damage which is arguably higher.

Honestly Id laugh if I was able to get the extra 10% buff,  man I'd kill Celestial Harbingers faster. Meanwhile, they enjoy having death carapace which I personally think is an insane stat stick mechanic, I dunno half of me say its justify to throw hammer in there because of other classes mechanics and gimmick but then the other half doesn't want the buff because then people would be doing the kitten I'd be doing in WvW and Spvp. ( i only started getting into Spvp)

Uh I guess a sample of a duel. Imagine hammer doing more damage.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

9 hours ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

Uh I guess a sample of a duel. Imagine hammer doing more damage.

For my money, that was mostly sword/Eclipse doing the work there. 

Every time you switch to hammer harb had time to rest, as non-quickness hammer animations are very slow and usually miss just by the opponent moving or spamming dodge (guessing that reason for running what looks like celerity sigil). Also, reason I personally have issues about running hammer on hybrid druid as the Thump => #2 combo only did like 2.8k there (~24s mark)--it can hit upwards of 9-10k on a full power build.   

Anyway, have a feeling if it hadn't been a mismatch to begin with (harbs are generally ranged vs. your pure melee) and they went reaper instead, I think we would see a different outcome if you had to use the hammer to kite with, even with all the cleanse your build has.  With weapon master I'm actually not sure why more necros don't just switch to reaper and use the pistol--to me it's way stronger than harbinger is.

Anyway, one thing to keep in mind if you want to port this build over to sPvP is cele gear isn't a thing nor hybrid stat combos, so you'd have to go either pure power / support or pure condi (and that wouldn't use hammer).  

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Anyway, one thing to keep in mind if you want to port this build over to sPvP is cele gear isn't a thing nor hybrid stat combos, so you'd have to go either pure power / support or pure condi (and that wouldn't use hammer). 

I forgot to mention, I was using a combination of Dragon/Crusader/Valkyrie stats.  The harbinger which I asked after the fight what stats they were using were full celestial. Most of the time if the opponent I am facing doesn't have toughness, I can generally hit around 6k-10k depends on specific conditions met. In Spvp I've been running Valkyrie Amulet and I've only started at the very end of the season just meekly reaching gold 2. I could push for gold one if I really try to however, I am extremely invested in finishing some legendary armor through Wvw since the only sets I need is Light and heavy.

You are correct that the sword & horn mostly did the work, as its generally the Engaging Or backing off weapon, though Hammer adds a good potential of finishing a person off for good, most players with  this particular build ranger should respect the oppressive dazes and stuns I have to offer, This include both the turtle heavy shot, its slam and wyvern's wing attack & lighting dash, not to mention the lightning field it leaves behind which if leaped through  can cause a daze attack per leaping finisher.  This build really throws a lot of CC if you are not prepared for it, I find my luck using hammer due to the fact of that + Astral form can essentially setup your combo for hammer by leading it with lunar impact > go out of astral for the invis and super speed > Ether uses non-Unleash 3 or 5 depending on distances and when landing that stun you can follow up with unleash 2. The benefit of having the ability to choose your weapons skills for hammer makes it formidably powerful in the right hands.

Edited January 8 by Oahkahmewolf.6210

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

I forgot to mention, I was using a combination of Dragon/Crusader/Valkyrie stats. 

Wait, you are not running any condition damage but using Eclipse? 

Not to get too far in the weeds here, but cele would benefit you in WvW as the conditions there were even doing more work than the hammer was.  

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

5 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Wait, you are not running any condition damage but using Eclipse? 

Not to get too far in the weeds here, but cele would benefit you in WvW as the conditions there were even doing more work than the hammer was.  

Therotically yess, But I dont use it for damage, I generally use esciple for cover condi for imob and if they do say linger there, it just increases hammers 4 dmg by a bit. 2% more damage per condition +20% if they are also disabled. It was the most logical one to take over Alacrity one. The other thing is Chill is kinda nice for certain fights so it help and 1 is nice if you just want to apply vuln while ur pet is beating up on them. Eclispe to me is far more useful atm for both condi or even power, and I can kinda push it to sorta hurt if I run hunter gaze, since stacking 25 is generally not difficult if the enemy is committing the fight onto you.

 

If you are every interested, I do implore a duel with me so I can demonstrate the synergy with it, although I'll be honest I'm still learning some stuff about other class to excel the build further... this also pertains to other spec I run with hammer and just melee builds in general.

----edit----

ALso sometimes my pet hits for 2kto 6k depending on stuff.

Edited January 8 by Oahkahmewolf.6210