I just learned that Guardians have Hammers

[aaron.7850]

Been playing my guardian for years now and I just noticed today that I can wield the hammer, maybe its a fact I once knew but have since completely forgotten, a faded memory like Bing Bong from  Inside Out.

 

Anyways, does anyone use this exotic and peculiar weapon?

[cat.8975]

It used to be a decent weapon in PvP, but the damage is no longer high enough to justify using it most of the time.

[Infusion.7149]

People use it as a fun weapon in WVW sometimes due to the prot uptime and to punt people off ledges... but generally it isn't a great weapon because it just spams prot , a line immob, and makes a symbol to trap people.

In core days it used to be much more popular since you can blast fields with mighty blow (2 skill).

[Hogwarts Zebra.8597]

I sometimes meme around with hambow DH in pvp 

drop hammer5, freecast for 5 seconds. cast LB5, freecast for another 5 seconds 😆

[hash.8462]

I have a full celestial firebrand using it (open-pve and wvw) and works fine.

[cat.8975]

1 hour ago, hash.8462 said:

I have a full celestial firebrand using it (open-pve and wvw) and works fine.

Sure, it "works", but there's never really any situation where it's the best weapon choice for a particular job. Perma prot is a meme, the CC skills are useless for PvE, ring of warding is buggy in pvp (people manage to slip out of it after getting knocked down once), hammer 2 damage is pitiful even when traited, and the immob is garbage.

Hammer definitely feels like a remnant of launch days where some weapons would just have trash skills on them sometimes. (Anyone remember how bad ranger's axe 5 used to be?)

[hash.8462]

2 hours ago, cat.8975 said:

Sure, it "works", but there's never really any situation where it's the best weapon choice for a particular job. Perma prot is a meme, the CC skills are useless for PvE, ring of warding is buggy in pvp (people manage to slip out of it after getting knocked down once), hammer 2 damage is pitiful even when traited, and the immob is garbage.

Hammer definitely feels like a remnant of launch days where some weapons would just have trash skills on them sometimes. (Anyone remember how bad ranger's axe 5 used to be?)

I can agree with you to some extent, the hammer can't cover a role that no one else can...

The problem is that the hammer is a hybrid weapon, partially offensive and partially defensive (with some cc); in seeing it just ad a power weapon you would make the same error as to see the sword on a warrior as just a power weapon, if you want to use the hammer on a guardian you have to accept it as the offensive and defensive hybrid weapon that it is.

 

[Sonork.2916]

They just need to add more to Hammer's current abilities.

 

- Reduce the delay on the last swing in the auto attack by half.  (So you can actually land it)

- Make skill #2 evade during the leap and leave a chilling patch of frost on the ground pulsing chill for a few seconds.

- Make Skill 3 have a wider hitbox.  Let it persist in a line on the ground for 3 seconds and pulse immob every second for something 1.2 second immob duration per pulse.

- Make Skill 4 unblockable and hit up to 5 people.

- Add a 600 range teleport to Skill 5 so you can trap moving people with it.

 

There, now it's a decent CC weapon.  Something the guardian doesn't have.

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Sonork.2916

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

The AFK hammer guard was really cool at the release of Specializations. Or for meme group like 5 or 10 hammer guards.

Mostly when WoP was buggy ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoNanuuJrow )

 

 But honestly ... I don't see how to buff it without make it "OP". We're talking about may be the most braindead weapon of the game, even in competitive mode. Even staff mirage has more buttons. Too much buff ? Bam army of guards spamming 111111111111111

 

Maybe the auto attack could apply slow too at  the second hit, it would help to get the foe in range for the symbol. It could also have synergy with FB Stoic Demeanor and there are may be some classes that need slow, like chrono with Danger Time !?

Skill #3 could work  a bit more like the hammer primal burst of Berserker or the revenant sword #4 : a cone, so you know,  we could hit people sometimes; would be great.

 

Edited June 5, 2021 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[Ratnoon.4251]

I started using Hammer again this week! And I'm having a blast with it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvDQ_Aio8_8&t=16s

[Kanto.2485]

In PvE it's good on Quick Heal FB in encounters where you need cc and you don't need much healing (think of raid bosses like samarog). You can play it on power and you'll get over 20k dmg by pressing 111 2 111 2 and nothing else, kind of a meme but if you're just messing around i suppose it does that.

In WvW zerg you only switch to it to press 2 and blast fields.

In PvP/WvW roaming it's a decent weapon both for power or cc spam builds, though it really needs some fixing like longbow did (i would happily take 6k crits on hammer 2 instead of 10k if the skill had a shorter and less explicit cast time, skill 3 has pathing issues like any skill in this game that works in a line so they could make it a cone instead or smth, skill 4 is fun but it need to either deal damage, get buffed to 3 targets or also get shorter cast time, and skill 5 should not prevent you from walking while you cast it in my opinion).