Guild Wars 2

Learn to dodge. Seriously.

I hate to mention in, but earthshaker is only a follow up to the initial static field, judges or whatever initiation. They don’t even matter that much against most guilds since they have such have stability uptime.

Also, Anet doesn’t have any interest in changing large scale wvw (unless as a byproduct of spvp balancing). If you are looking for change, await master Sacrx glorious return and wait for all the guilds to change their playstyle depending on what he’s doing.

ITT: pugs believe that removal of hammertrains will stop them from being smashed by guilds.

Dodging and strafing won’t bring a hammer train down. Because they can stack, move constantly, heal while moving, run with near full time stability, dish out constant control, tons of AoE DPS, lots of CC and soak up tons of damage they are near impossible to bring down without a substantially superior force.

Adding to this is that inexperienced and low skill players can be highly effective in these as long as the remain stacked. Even when they start to fall banners tend to bring them back up. I have seen the Agg guild come back from almost a complete wipe.

How to solve the problem… that would mean rebalancing heavies almost entirely.

Junkpile.7439:

Warrior survivability is too high if you think how much dmg they can do. I don’t really want that they nerf hammer dmg or stun because i use hammer too, but they need to do something about survivability. It’s kind of boring when you don’t even need to dodge at all.

This is the crux of the problem. Not only do they do good, dare I say great, damage while putting out CC, they also have tons of survivability and mobility while doing it. Two major things need to happen 1. Base health of classes needs to be the same a crossed all classes 2. Armor classes need to be available to all classes with pros/cons attached to them. These two alone are contributing quite a bit to class imbalances. warriors wouldn’t be able to do nearly the same damage if they actually had to worry about toughness or vitality up to certain levels. Only when everyone starts on an even playing field can we begin to actually balance the skills/scaling/cooldowns/etc of the classes.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

- Move out of the train (left or right of them)
- Dodge straight through the train
- Stability
- Stay at max range
- Spread out, if you all stop balling up the hammer train becomes ineffective.
- Spam clones. Nothing funnier than watching clones get earthshakered

To many people complain about things in this game that can be countered by playing better, instead they just scream for nerfs.

All of this. Btw to the person mentioning thieves. You can get a nice stack of stability with dagger storm. Pop it and either ride it out or dodge/esc. By itself it gives around 9 seconds of stability, I use lyssa runes in WvW which adds another 4 seconds or so. That is plenty for a profession that can juke as much as we can. Steal from a Mesmer and get even more. If you get caught shadow step away, you should be able to do so before you die.

I frontline a thief and while I usually run a lot of survival, I have also frontlined in full zerker armor and PPT jewelry.

Stylo.6259:

Make 1 million of these ridiculous forum posts and it matters not. Warriors are frontline melee and are structured to do just what they are doing, steamroll your face.

Of course are they frontline, and indeed they steamroll it all. But that would be the main reason for making this complaint in the first place.

Why would you stand and take the ham in the 1st place ? if you are not built for it

playing game sometime require more than fingers u know …. something start with br_ _ _

WvW is unbalanced by default, cheating and abuse of overpowered build is acceptable.

Dee Jay.2460:

AoE stuns should be well-telegraphed and on lengthy cooldowns.

Unfortunately they aren’t in GW2.

ANet can either reduce the amount of CC Hammers can apply, say by changing on the the stun-attacks into something else, or they can make Stability the only counter to CC more available to ALL classes (including Thieves).

Thief doesnt need stabilty, if you get hammer trained while playing a thief with the ammounts of dodges, teleports, stunbreakers and stealth you should really stay out of wvw.
Gw2 Hammer is the most telegraphed weapon in the recent history of mmos.So where do you get your input from claiming aoe cc is not telegraphed?If else mesmer and ele aoe stuns are not telegraphed but warriors are as extremely telegraphed as they could possibly get

Liza.2758:

Why would you stand and take the ham in the 1st place ? if you are not built for it

playing game sometime require more than fingers u know …. something start with br_ _ _

Yeah I choose to take the hammer, why didnt I think of it. I can also dodge 20 warriors, and run like hell and have unlimited stability.

aspirine.6852:

Liza.2758:

Why would you stand and take the ham in the 1st place ? if you are not built for it

playing game sometime require more than fingers u know …. something start with br_ _ _

Yeah I choose to take the hammer, why didnt I think of it. I can also dodge 20 warriors, and run like hell and have unlimited stability.

Ever seen a bunch of Necros shut down a Hammer train? You should guest to Maguuma, and talk to a VR member in LA. They’re the best anti-hammer train guild in NA. Even Black Gate fears them.

It’s been about a year to the day since RG and some other European guilds transferred to NA T1 and sorta brought this meta with them. True, it’s slightly less effective than it was at first with the culling fix (can at least see players after they break veil stealth) and nerf to omnomberry pie (can’t run full zerk and live with massive lifestealing). It’s still “the” meta though because there is nothing as simple and ruthlessly effective.

There are counters and other ways to play theoretically, but they require a lot more discipline and a group of dedicated players willing to re-gear, possibly even roll new characters, which takes way too much time. Most every player that is at all serious about WvW has a GWEN that’s setup for the hammer train / muderball / zerg ball (can we think of a name?) stuff. Why bother wasting your life on a new character and training with people to maybe be 10% more effective with a different play style under ideal circumstances.

It’s obvious that anet has no solution to the problem. They have been throwing band-aids over every trouble spot with the game since the beginning and unwilling to address the underlying problems. Heck even when the devs post on this forum about new stuff and the we’re listing bit, it’s like once a month, and then they’re gone until a major ruckus is stirred up and they basically have to respond. Maybe they want everyone to get bored and quit because the operations cost of the game are getting too close to revenue from the mighty gem store.

Oh and to respond to the “just move out of the way” argument, duh. There’s always at least a few random pugs that don’t though, or even a good player that happens to get caught in an imob stack or something and is instagibbed before they can respond. Usually things start to spiral downward after the first few players go down because they are sitting there as rally bait if you get some reds downed or the driver starts making poor decisions because someone is downed.

Having played 6 out of 8 available classes in the game in WvW, including hammer warrior, hammer guard and their respective hard counters, the necro and to small extent mesmer, I can say that the current group meta favors the hammer train by far. It isnt that it cant be done, but the amount of work, cordination, preparation and effort are extremely overall disproportional. A group of players set-up for hammer train counters is by far harder to play then being part of the hammer train.

Honestly I would address this via class balance and “kill 2 birds with 1 stone”. The main problem as I see it, is that in group situations, boons, especially stability both group and individual, and condi removal is far to easy to achieve and far too frequently executed then boon stripping.

Boon stripping needs to be far more frequent to balance application of boons.

To fix this, as stated above I would use class balance issues and fix rangers in group WvW in the process.

1. Give rangers an AOE boon strip ability via traits which does not rely on pets / spirits and which would prioritize stability. It is paramount that this ability is not pet dependant due to the already existing pet problems in the game.

2. Make the above mentioned boon strips only mediocre at best if untraited so that the rangers would have to give up something in order for it to become powerful thus not create another balance problem.

3. Give engis an AOE boon strip as well, on same principles as the rangers, not tied to any turrets, pets, etc. and just mediocre if left untraited.

4. Improve mesmers AOE boon strips, either lower the CD on null field significantly, or make it more powerful, or give them another AOE boon strip tool. This would also hopefully make mesmers in WvW groups more useful for something besides portal/veil thus less of them would quit playing one. Currently Null field is not very useful in 1 v 1 or small group situations, as a mesmer I have far better options, so changes such as this would not affect spvp or small group play.

So there are many ways and things that can be done, not just that but they can be done simply and can address other problems within the game at the same time, the question isn’t “what can be done ?” but rather “what is a-net willing to do ?”.

Deli.1302:

Learn to dodge. Seriously.

Dodging: the solution to every imbalanced skill in an online game…

“My skill keeps you permanently immobilized/stun so that you can’t do anything to defend yourself, doesn’t matter, just dodge”.

Tongku.5326:

Having played 6 out of 8 available classes in the game in WvW, including hammer warrior, hammer guard and their respective hard counters, the necro and to small extent mesmer, I can say that the current group meta favors the hammer train by far. It isnt that it cant be done, but the amount of work, cordination, preparation and effort are extremely overall disproportional. A group of players set-up for hammer train counters is by far harder to play then being part of the hammer train.

Honestly I would address this via class balance and “kill 2 birds with 1 stone”. The main problem as I see it, is that in group situations, boons, especially stability both group and individual, and condi removal is far to easy to achieve and far too frequently executed then boon stripping.

Boon stripping needs to be far more frequent to balance application of boons.

To fix this, as stated above I would use class balance issues and fix rangers in group WvW in the process.

1. Give rangers an AOE boon strip ability via traits which does not rely on pets / spirits and which would prioritize stability. It is paramount that this ability is not pet dependant due to the already existing pet problems in the game.

2. Make the above mentioned boon strips only mediocre at best if untraited so that the rangers would have to give up something in order for it to become powerful thus not create another balance problem.

3. Give engis an AOE boon strip as well, on same principles as the rangers, not tied to any turrets, pets, etc. and just mediocre if left untraited.

4. Improve mesmers AOE boon strips, either lower the CD on null field significantly, or make it more powerful, or give them another AOE boon strip tool. This would also hopefully make mesmers in WvW groups more useful for something besides portal/veil thus less of them would quit playing one. Currently Null field is not very useful in 1 v 1 or small group situations, as a mesmer I have far better options, so changes such as this would not affect spvp or small group play.

So there are many ways and things that can be done, not just that but they can be done simply and can address other problems within the game at the same time, the question isn’t “what can be done ?” but rather “what is a-net willing to do ?”.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Mine
Only 3 classes even have AoE boon strip and Engineers get two spammable ones in one utility slot.

glaphen.5230:

Tongku.5326:

Having played 6 out of 8 available classes in the game in WvW, including hammer warrior, hammer guard and their respective hard counters, the necro and to small extent mesmer, I can say that the current group meta favors the hammer train by far. It isnt that it cant be done, but the amount of work, cordination, preparation and effort are extremely overall disproportional. A group of players set-up for hammer train counters is by far harder to play then being part of the hammer train.

Honestly I would address this via class balance and “kill 2 birds with 1 stone”. The main problem as I see it, is that in group situations, boons, especially stability both group and individual, and condi removal is far to easy to achieve and far too frequently executed then boon stripping.

Boon stripping needs to be far more frequent to balance application of boons.

To fix this, as stated above I would use class balance issues and fix rangers in group WvW in the process.

1. Give rangers an AOE boon strip ability via traits which does not rely on pets / spirits and which would prioritize stability. It is paramount that this ability is not pet dependant due to the already existing pet problems in the game.

2. Make the above mentioned boon strips only mediocre at best if untraited so that the rangers would have to give up something in order for it to become powerful thus not create another balance problem.

3. Give engis an AOE boon strip as well, on same principles as the rangers, not tied to any turrets, pets, etc. and just mediocre if left untraited.

4. Improve mesmers AOE boon strips, either lower the CD on null field significantly, or make it more powerful, or give them another AOE boon strip tool. This would also hopefully make mesmers in WvW groups more useful for something besides portal/veil thus less of them would quit playing one. Currently Null field is not very useful in 1 v 1 or small group situations, as a mesmer I have far better options, so changes such as this would not affect spvp or small group play.

So there are many ways and things that can be done, not just that but they can be done simply and can address other problems within the game at the same time, the question isn’t “what can be done ?” but rather “what is a-net willing to do ?”.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Throw_Mine
Only 3 classes even have AoE boon strip and Engineers get two spammable ones in one utility slot.

omg can u just lay off with you rwiki spamming already?!?!?. enjoy your warrior and the 111 eartshaker brainless gameplay, but stop making comments like these. none of the boonstripping abilities are spammable. nullfield acts slow,often get avoided and also has an enormous cd. those mines are a joke as boon removal! 18 seconds is not what i call spammable. they are soo easy to avoid and the range is 900, which means u actually have to get reeeal close to the hammer train which = death for anything else than a guardian or warrior.
seriously just checking wiki is not gonna make u understand any class. u even state the mes is the best boonstripper in the game eventhough any commander would ask a necro to corrupt boons and not a mes. most of commanders prefer mes taking feedback rather than nullfield.

Reposting
I would love to see who avoids a mine in a zerg. I didn’t even comment on Mesmer in this post so stop being a kitten if you can even help.
Is the mod happy with kitten?

glaphen.5230:

Reposting
I would love to see who avoids a mine in a zerg. I didn’t even comment on Mesmer in this post so stop being a kitten if you can even help.
Is the mod happy with kitten?

i know in this u didnt specifically mention the mes. u did in the other before though and u also mentioned 3 classes and we both know u meant mes with one of them. saying the mine is a spammable ability though is false!t18 seconds cd and very little dmg. so 1 boon gets removed….and withing the next 18 seconds anyone can apply twice as many boons back on. if thats spamming then mes musthave perma swiftness then because they can spam it right!…wait
boon removal is very hard and and yes a mine is very easy to avoided or blocked.
boonremoval alone is not the problem though with the hammertrains. hammertrains are so powerful atm due to cc and perma interrupts while being super tough, dealing a ton of aoe dmg , having high mobility, a massive health pool and high passive healing. the survivability of hammer warriors is way to good for the amount of cc and dmg they put out. i think either bring other classes up to such a level where they can all aoe cc and survive longer or make the warriors have to choose between cc spam or dmg. or simply make cc non stackable and make the victim immune for a few sec after being hard cc’ed.
there is many things that need adjustments to create balance in wvw.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mine_Field
They get that too from the same utility slot. It can also be reduce by 30% cooldown and 20% for Throw Mine. Possibly 30 boons removed every 15 seconds and every 14 seconds just from one utility slot.

selan.8354:

…none of the boonstripping abilities are spammable. nullfield acts slow,often get avoided and also has an enormous cd. those mines are a joke as boon removal! 18 seconds is not what i call spammable. they are soo easy to avoid and the range is 900

You’re right that one engi with a mine isn’t going to make any difference at all, but it can be part of a boon stripping strategy in an organized group. These sorts of comments are really interesting to me; it’s like people really cannot understand how the most simple things work without giving 100 reasons why it will not work.

A small group of engis using the mine does work, again in conjunction with other strips like null field, well of corruption, maybe acidic elixirs and searing flames too, and it’s actually quite powerful because engis also pack the most punishing launch to break up the melee ball, and do considerable nuke damage with traited bombs. I’ve seen it happen first hand a few times where big ol’ bombs completely wreck the whole thing.

Again though, getting back to my earlier post, this takes a higher level of discipline and coordination than the basic GWEN train.

zen.6091:

selan.8354:

…none of the boonstripping abilities are spammable. nullfield acts slow,often get avoided and also has an enormous cd. those mines are a joke as boon removal! 18 seconds is not what i call spammable. they are soo easy to avoid and the range is 900

You’re right that one engi with a mine isn’t going to make any difference at all, but it can be part of a boon stripping strategy in an organized group. These sorts of comments are really interesting to me; it’s like people really cannot understand how the most simple things work without giving 100 reasons why it will not work.

A small group of engis using the mine does work, again in conjunction with other strips like null field, well of corruption, maybe acidic elixirs and searing flames too, and it’s actually quite powerful because engis also pack the most punishing launch to break up the melee ball, and do considerable nuke damage with traited bombs. I’ve seen it happen first hand a few times where big ol’ bombs completely wreck the whole thing.

Again though, getting back to my earlier post, this takes a higher level of discipline and coordination than the basic GWEN train.

yes everything can be powerful if coordinated. why else do u think glam mes groups used to be so popular, but yeah they did get nerfed to the ground. a coordinated engi group is very strong actually, we have a guild on our server that has mainly engis and they test a ton of different builds too. i used to run with a mesmer guild around, but after the nerfs we had very little left vs the GWEN meta. as a mes u are only there to veil/tw and maybe pull but nothing else. no one will say hey we need an engi to boonstrip or hey we need a mes to kill stuff. or hey get on your ranger we need him….no its always we need more war…oh we lost because we didnt have enough staff eles for waterfields,oh we need more guardians and we need necros for corrupt boons.
the main problem is that anet balances around spvp, where war needed a buff(not as much as anet went with it, but it needed a boost there)
u cant balance classes around their 1v1 performance in a game mode where u use diff armor, dont have siege, not food buffs and dont have to run long distances with massive battles..it simply will turn into a disaster and thats why thief, mes, engi and ranger are on the bottom in wvw eles and necro are only part of the meta because they have lots of aoe. if anet doesnt rework all classes it will soon be only GW trains without any of the other classes. if veil gets nerfed for example, why would u need a mes?if corrupted boon well and necromarks get nerfed, why would u take the necro and not a war or guard? all u need is to be tough, have cc and high dps and the winner is warrior!!by far

mini.6018:

Dee Jay.2460:

AoE stuns should be well-telegraphed and on lengthy cooldowns.

Unfortunately they aren’t in GW2.

ANet can either reduce the amount of CC Hammers can apply, say by changing on the the stun-attacks into something else, or they can make Stability the only counter to CC more available to ALL classes (including Thieves).

Thief doesnt need stabilty, if you get hammer trained while playing a thief with the ammounts of dodges, teleports, stunbreakers and stealth you should really stay out of wvw.
Gw2 Hammer is the most telegraphed weapon in the recent history of mmos.So where do you get your input from claiming aoe cc is not telegraphed?If else mesmer and ele aoe stuns are not telegraphed but warriors are as extremely telegraphed as they could possibly get

Telegraphed in duels maybe, but not in overall combat and especially not in zerg-fights. But then again, almost no skills in GW2 are nearly as well telegraphed as they should be.

Anyway, a Hammer Warrior will have

• Earthshaker on an 8 second cooldown
• Staggering Blow on a 16 second cooldown
• Backbreaker on a 24 second cooldown

That means your opener might be with Earthshaker into Staggering Blow into Backbreaker which is 3 consecutive stuns within 6 seconds, which could then be followed again by another Earthshaker just a few seconds later.

How does a single stun-breaker with a 30 second cooldown help much?

Without Stability surviving such a CC-cleave-train is impossible.

Also consider that all of this CC isn’t just applied to a single target, but rather to a rather generous Area of Effect.

So please reiterate how 2 dodges every 20 seconds and 1-2 stun-breakers on a 30-60 second cooldown are supposed to counter that?

Anet can remove hammers from game, and instead replace them with rubber ducks. Skills stay the same.

selan.8354:

yes everything can be powerful if coordinated…

the main problem is that anet balances around spvp

Well, there you go. Like I originally said, there are other ways to play than the GWEN train, but it’s so easy and doesn’t really require that much effort to be effective. In many ways it reminds me of the IWAY builds that were popular in GW1 tombs / HoH for basically the 6 years it was active. Anyone who really believes there is a chance that anet will nerf the GW2 melee ball so badly it’s no longer effective needs a reality check…it will be effective as long as WvW has enough players in it. The underlying game mechanics with cleaving melee weapons, boon mania, W/G trait synergy, unlimited blast per field, and some other things make it so.

And yes, what game balance there is being based around 5v5 and fixed gear combinations, and then somehow being expected to work in battles with 40+ players that have some stats potentially twice as high, well it shouldn’t be shocking that it’s failing badly.

Dee Jay.2460:

mini.6018:

Dee Jay.2460:

AoE stuns should be well-telegraphed and on lengthy cooldowns.

Unfortunately they aren’t in GW2.

ANet can either reduce the amount of CC Hammers can apply, say by changing on the the stun-attacks into something else, or they can make Stability the only counter to CC more available to ALL classes (including Thieves).

Thief doesnt need stabilty, if you get hammer trained while playing a thief with the ammounts of dodges, teleports, stunbreakers and stealth you should really stay out of wvw.
Gw2 Hammer is the most telegraphed weapon in the recent history of mmos.So where do you get your input from claiming aoe cc is not telegraphed?If else mesmer and ele aoe stuns are not telegraphed but warriors are as extremely telegraphed as they could possibly get

Telegraphed in duels maybe, but not in overall combat and especially not in zerg-fights. But then again, almost no skills in GW2 are nearly as well telegraphed as they should be.

Anyway, a Hammer Warrior will have

• Earthshaker on an 8 second cooldown
• Staggering Blow on a 16 second cooldown
• Backbreaker on a 24 second cooldown

That means your opener might be with Earthshaker into Staggering Blow into Backbreaker which is 3 consecutive stuns within 6 seconds, which could then be followed again by another Earthshaker just a few seconds later.

How does a single stun-breaker with a 30 second cooldown help much?

Without Stability surviving such a CC-cleave-train is impossible.

Also consider that all of this CC isn’t just applied to a single target, but rather to a rather generous Area of Effect.

So please reiterate how 2 dodges every 20 seconds and 1-2 stun-breakers on a 30-60 second cooldown are supposed to counter that?

and thats the problem a powerful cc should be on a long cooldown like it is in other games. if it was the only cc the war had i think the problem wouldnt be so big, but having this many cc for one single class that has the highest stability plus invul, plus massive regen, plus toughness, plus great condition cleansing, plus dps…i very wrong.
meanwhile the mes is stuck as being a duelist same with the thief and the ranger….
either take some stuff away from war or give all other classes boosts. make rangers longbow as strong as the warriors give mes viable aoe and stop making them a FAKE medium class duelist, give necros better defenses… etc

Dee Jay.2460:

mini.6018:

Dee Jay.2460:

AoE stuns should be well-telegraphed and on lengthy cooldowns.

Unfortunately they aren’t in GW2.

ANet can either reduce the amount of CC Hammers can apply, say by changing on the the stun-attacks into something else, or they can make Stability the only counter to CC more available to ALL classes (including Thieves).

Thief doesnt need stabilty, if you get hammer trained while playing a thief with the ammounts of dodges, teleports, stunbreakers and stealth you should really stay out of wvw.
Gw2 Hammer is the most telegraphed weapon in the recent history of mmos.So where do you get your input from claiming aoe cc is not telegraphed?If else mesmer and ele aoe stuns are not telegraphed but warriors are as extremely telegraphed as they could possibly get

Telegraphed in duels maybe, but not in overall combat and especially not in zerg-fights. But then again, almost no skills in GW2 are nearly as well telegraphed as they should be.

Anyway, a Hammer Warrior will have

• Earthshaker on an 8 second cooldown
• Staggering Blow on a 16 second cooldown
• Backbreaker on a 24 second cooldown

That means your opener might be with Earthshaker into Staggering Blow into Backbreaker which is 3 consecutive stuns within 6 seconds, which could then be followed again by another Earthshaker just a few seconds later.

How does a single stun-breaker with a 30 second cooldown help much?

Without Stability surviving such a CC-cleave-train is impossible.

Also consider that all of this CC isn’t just applied to a single target, but rather to a rather generous Area of Effect.

So please reiterate how 2 dodges every 20 seconds and 1-2 stun-breakers on a 30-60 second cooldown are supposed to counter that?

You have not run with any good commanders fighting hammer trains. I know this because you are flat out wrong.

The first rule of facing any hammer train is do not be anywhere near the head. The telegraph for incoming cc is that the head is coming right at you. The counter is to get off that forward axis. We have done this on Mag with nothing more than competent commanders and mumble with what are technically pug zergs. Some of our guild teams are even better at it.

Have I been crunched before? Sure, but it happened because I didn’t position properly, or got caught with my britches down.

Rule two is scatter your Zerg, find the enemy zerkers at the back of the train, and kill them. Then finish off the heavies.

I promise you, do this and, you’ll never feel the need to complain about hammer trains again.

There isn’t any need to change Earthshaker, just learn where to be and where not to be. Tactics at its finest.

call the IRS. I hear they are real good at stopping “hammer time”

Junkpile.7439:

DeadlySynz.3471:

Play a ranged class and kill them before they get to you. Hammer train = free kills.

Those of you who are getting smoked by these; I thought at the beginning of these fights you generally would pop some sort of stability so your not getting stunned.

How you plan to kill them when you can only hit 5 and and even full glass cannons doesn’t really hurt full defense warriors and guardians that badly + train heals like crazy.

Well I don’t take on a hammer train alone, but if I encounter a hammer warrior 1v1 despite even me being a glass cannon, they are good as dead and it’ll be quick.

I play full glass cannon, and a simple auto attack against a full defense warrior or guardian will still do between 3-4k. Barrage will still hit for 1k-1.5k per tick. Rapid fire will still hit for 15K. This being with no stacks of might either. Factoring in that when a group battle starts, stacks of might is almost always activated so the hits are harder.

The way hammer trains work with healing is all great and theory and looks great on paper, but in reality, they are completely ineffective against a team that has just a couple of heavy hitters in the back. I suppose it would work great if the group you were fighting against was incompetent and didn’t use stability or any tactics, or had an idea what the dodge button is for.

For example; if a hammer train is called out on the map before the fight starts, all I do is wait. Once the battle starts, I wait a few seconds, maybe even go into stealth if I can (I’m a ranger so it’s iffy if nothing is around to hit). Once a few seconds have past, pop fury moa, pop Rampage (over 100% crit), Barrage, quickness, maybe rapid fire and you have a pile red down arrows on the front line. I wish the AoE cap was bigger than 5, but it doesn’t really matter in this case. Most players don’t stand in barrage for more than 5-6 ticks, they dodge it and a new players take their place. Even if the cap is 5, 10-15 players can easily be hit for a few ticks. Mix that in with rapid fire + piercing and you deal a lot of damage.

Works every time.

player collision! body block! omnomnom

Just nuke them down and CC them.

One thing people need to remember is that in small scale the heavy classes r pretty balanced with everything else. If you reduce their cc or survivability they will lose that balance

Valik Shin.9027:

One thing people need to remember is that in small scale the heavy classes r pretty balanced with everything else. If you reduce their cc or survivability they will lose that balance

The ability to Chain cc was not a very good design either

Groups of anything is strong if you’re not prepared. Ever come across a herd of Zerker Thieves? 15 invisible Backstabs hurts much more than any Hammer train could.

May I present this great instructional video on how to deal with hammer trains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgyk71VRoUE

Deli.1302:

Learn to dodge. Seriously.

Basharic.1654:

Dee Jay.2460:

mini.6018:

Dee Jay.2460:

AoE stuns should be well-telegraphed and on lengthy cooldowns.

Unfortunately they aren’t in GW2.

ANet can either reduce the amount of CC Hammers can apply, say by changing on the the stun-attacks into something else, or they can make Stability the only counter to CC more available to ALL classes (including Thieves).

Thief doesnt need stabilty, if you get hammer trained while playing a thief with the ammounts of dodges, teleports, stunbreakers and stealth you should really stay out of wvw.
Gw2 Hammer is the most telegraphed weapon in the recent history of mmos.So where do you get your input from claiming aoe cc is not telegraphed?If else mesmer and ele aoe stuns are not telegraphed but warriors are as extremely telegraphed as they could possibly get

Telegraphed in duels maybe, but not in overall combat and especially not in zerg-fights. But then again, almost no skills in GW2 are nearly as well telegraphed as they should be.

Anyway, a Hammer Warrior will have

• Earthshaker on an 8 second cooldown
• Staggering Blow on a 16 second cooldown
• Backbreaker on a 24 second cooldown

That means your opener might be with Earthshaker into Staggering Blow into Backbreaker which is 3 consecutive stuns within 6 seconds, which could then be followed again by another Earthshaker just a few seconds later.

How does a single stun-breaker with a 30 second cooldown help much?

Without Stability surviving such a CC-cleave-train is impossible.

Also consider that all of this CC isn’t just applied to a single target, but rather to a rather generous Area of Effect.

So please reiterate how 2 dodges every 20 seconds and 1-2 stun-breakers on a 30-60 second cooldown are supposed to counter that?

You have not run with any good commanders fighting hammer trains. I know this because you are flat out wrong.

The first rule of facing any hammer train is do not be anywhere near the head. The telegraph for incoming cc is that the head is coming right at you. The counter is to get off that forward axis. We have done this on Mag with nothing more than competent commanders and mumble with what are technically pug zergs. Some of our guild teams are even better at it.

Have I been crunched before? Sure, but it happened because I didn’t position properly, or got caught with my britches down.

Rule two is scatter your Zerg, find the enemy zerkers at the back of the train, and kill them. Then finish off the heavies.

I promise you, do this and, you’ll never feel the need to complain about hammer trains again.

In all seriousness, talk to the Maguuma guys. They have spent a lot of time breaking up hammer train meta and have come up with some gimmicky, yet fun ways of dealing with them.

As a hammer warrior I have to tip my hat to them.

Commander Duck from Maguuma’s VR guild is the best. Join us on Mumble, and ask him to share his dolphin war cry.

New meta is use PvE spec, run about same direction and when enemy come scatter around and try to kill many as possible alone.

i did contact someone from VR and he contacted me back but it was like he said on older presentation of them whiping trains. Would appreciate it of the commander of the VR guild made a nice newer youtube movie about it.

Dee Jay.2460:

mini.6018:

Dee Jay.2460:

AoE stuns should be well-telegraphed and on lengthy cooldowns.

Unfortunately they aren’t in GW2.

ANet can either reduce the amount of CC Hammers can apply, say by changing on the the stun-attacks into something else, or they can make Stability the only counter to CC more available to ALL classes (including Thieves).

Thief doesnt need stabilty, if you get hammer trained while playing a thief with the ammounts of dodges, teleports, stunbreakers and stealth you should really stay out of wvw.
Gw2 Hammer is the most telegraphed weapon in the recent history of mmos.So where do you get your input from claiming aoe cc is not telegraphed?If else mesmer and ele aoe stuns are not telegraphed but warriors are as extremely telegraphed as they could possibly get

Telegraphed in duels maybe, but not in overall combat and especially not in zerg-fights. But then again, almost no skills in GW2 are nearly as well telegraphed as they should be.

Anyway, a Hammer Warrior will have

• Earthshaker on an 8 second cooldown
• Staggering Blow on a 16 second cooldown
• Backbreaker on a 24 second cooldown

That means your opener might be with Earthshaker into Staggering Blow into Backbreaker which is 3 consecutive stuns within 6 seconds, which could then be followed again by another Earthshaker just a few seconds later.

How does a single stun-breaker with a 30 second cooldown help much?

Without Stability surviving such a CC-cleave-train is impossible.

Also consider that all of this CC isn’t just applied to a single target, but rather to a rather generous Area of Effect.

So please reiterate how 2 dodges every 20 seconds and 1-2 stun-breakers on a 30-60 second cooldown are supposed to counter that?

Evade,blind,block the 1st stun

Use stunbreak>evade frm second break the chain.L"2dodge,l2 bind,l2 block,l2 interrupt at the right time.I always do it without stability when i fight another war.

Counters exist but players just want afk wins and spam skills.

Reiterated.

Caliburn.1845:

You want to stop hammer trains? Let’s handicap zerging as well, I like killing two birds with one stone.

Two words,

“Player collision”

Do it Anet! Do it!

You mean bodyblocking. I’m in favor.

1) Hammer F1 and Hammer 4 damage was just nerfed by 20% damage.
2) If you’re getting knockdown as soon as you get up, it’s probably not the warriors. You’re probably standing on a guardian line of warding.
3) Get stun breaks/stability/party up with a guardian or two.

Sirendor.1394:

You mean bodyblocking. I’m in favor.

This would never happen.

Quick Mouse.7635:

Sirendor.1394:

You mean bodyblocking. I’m in favor.

This would never happen.

Probably not, because WvW is broken and Anet likes that it’s broken (because they think it’s alright coverage > win).

Sirendor.1394:

Quick Mouse.7635:

Sirendor.1394:

You mean bodyblocking. I’m in favor.

This would never happen.

Probably not, because WvW is broken and Anet likes that it’s broken (because they think it’s alright coverage > win).

Or the people requesting this have no idea the issue it causes, not to mention the increased lag. Collision detection has been done and it was a nightmare for several reasons.

Hammertrains get absolutely wrecked by an outnumbered ranged aoe comp, heavy zeles/zecro with a few guardians and venomshare thief. You kite around the outside (unstacked) with reasonable pressure. When their stab runs out they are stacked in a static field and you kill everyone in seconds with 12k meteor showers.

This doesn’t work very well in a 3 way when you can only spam 1 though, so if that’s how you like to play I suggest continuing to complain. It is also hard countered by several other comps (although they are much more rare than than hammer meta)

Give every class:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Balthazar's_Pendulum

“Elite Enchantment Spell. For 5…9…10 seconds, the next time target ally would be knocked down by a foe, that foe is knocked down instead.”

I have had no trouble dealing with Hammer Trains. I just run behind a tower and drop meteors on them. Simple.

Maybe I can try organizing a Meteo Train and have a bunch of Eles drop thousands of meteors on them, should fry everyone in a jiffy.