Guild Wars 2

1(3), 3, and 4 need to have their wind-up reduced by 1/4 second?

They seem too slow tbh. I also think maybe doing bonus dmg on 4 when you hit knock someone into a wall.

I would also reduce 3 range to 900 but give it a higher velocity.

Obviously their dmg would be reduced slightly to make up for it, they just feel really clunky right now.

Thoughts?

Inb4 “we’re in a good place”

I’d rather have all classes buffed to balance the game so we don’t have undesirable actions on our skills lol.

3 seems fine to me.

3rd hit of the auto chain is definitely slow, but justified due to the symbol. It’d be too much if it were sped up.

4 I definitely agree with, though. A single-target knock doesn’t really need such a long windup. I’d gladly settle with a reduced knockback range if I could get a faster startup in return.

Electro.4173:

3 seems fine to me.

3rd hit of the auto chain is definitely slow, but justified due to the symbol. It’d be too much if it were sped up.

4 I definitely agree with, though. A single-target knock doesn’t really need such a long windup. I’d gladly settle with a reduced knockback range if I could get a faster startup in return.

But for the auto attack 3, you could just reduce the values (for the symbol and the final hit) to make them have the same technical dps. Worst case scenario you get protection a quarter second faster and even then, you can just take a tiny bit more off the power.

And 3 feels fine? It’s hard to hit people in pvp imo because its velocity is too low and you can see it coming from a mile away because of the wind up. Again, changing the values around would balance it out I feel.

Hammer 1c - Suggest reducing the symbol duration by 1 second. Then lower the cast time a little and adjust the direct damage to line up. The biggest problem with hammer is the awful sustained damage and how clunky the auto-attack feels.

Hammer 3 - Projectile needs to be slightly wider. It’s way too easy to side-step it.

Hammer 4 - Mostly fine as-is. The cast time and cooldown is in-line with other single-target CCs. Possibly increase the damage coefficient.

Exedore.6320:

Hammer 1c - Suggest reducing the symbol duration by 1 second. Then lower the cast time a little and adjust the direct damage to line up. The biggest problem with hammer is the awful sustained damage and how clunky the auto-attack feels.

Hammer 3 - Projectile needs to be slightly wider. It’s way too easy to side-step it.

Hammer 4 - Mostly fine as-is. The cast time and cooldown is in-line with other single-target CCs. Possibly increase the damage coefficient.

The sustained damage is pretty good when you have the symbol up all the time (with the trait that increases symbol uptime). But that is if you only use auto attack lol

I’d like to see 1/2 a second removed from the cast time of Symbol of Protection then take away 1 pulse of the symbol and adjust any damage values to compensate.
Little quality of life change for the combat flow with the weapon.

Mighty Blow – Possible increase to 450 range? With the delay before jumping you don’t actually gain any distance with this leap compared to anyone moving away from you.

Zealot’s Embrace is ok, but the chain could use a slight velocity increase.

For a single target knockback Banish is a little slow, perhaps 3/4 because it’s not as powerful as something like Backbreaker where the target is immediately going to receive huge damage while knocked down, Banish is more control.

Ring of Warding – I’d like to see get the same love as Staggering Blow got a while back by being cast while moving.

As a 95% hammer guardian in all game modes i think:

Reduce cast time on third step in the chain
Remove one tick on the symbol
Increase range on 2 so you at least gain some distance
Increase damage on 3 and 4 so they fit into a dps rotation which would make the weapon more fun in pve. Dont change casting time, add damage instead.
Make i possible to move while using 5, just like the hammerwarriors (same animation) got back in the day as a QoL change.
Make 5 a fire or water field which would benefit both pve and pvp/wvw.

The weapon, atm, is to difficult to master for the masses imo.

As Ring of Warding is a ward it could be thematically possible to make this a Lightning Field.

It would be nice to have some variety and Blast / Leap options beyond endless Light Fields and Retaliation.

Plus some different Swiftness access options.

Ring of Warding – Lightning Field.
Mighty Blow – 450 range.
Symbol of Protection – 3/4s cast time, remove one pulse of the symbol.

Would make the Hammer lovely.

What’s the knockback range on the Hammer? Might be worth boosting it a bit to make it a better management tool for throwing things into traps.

I would like Mighty Blow to go further as well; it’s somewhat slow anyways and it should help cover more distance.

Lemondish.3268:

What’s the knockback range on the Hammer? Might be worth boosting it a bit to make it a better management tool for throwing things into traps.

The launch is actually pretty high at 750 meanwhile ele’s Updraft is 200 according to the wiki. So the launch isn’t the problem, its just so slow. I also did say it would be cool for the skill to do more damage if you launch someone into a wall/object. But that is just wishful thinking really.

But yeah, the main problem is that its too slow.

just look at new engi hammer skills, they are awesome and he gets improved spirit weapons haha

we get traps while…

Necro gets our GS skills
Engie gets improved hammer (what Guardian should have had)
Revenant get better shield skills ( -||- )
Mesmer get better shield skills ( -||- )
Thief get awesome staff skills ( -||- )
Warrior gets better torch skills ( -||- )

Someone is laughing hard at Guardians

We got owned this elite spec expansion, hope next will be better ( 3 years and counting).

Mighty Blow was never intended to be a major gap closer, nor should it be. It’s a high damage attack and a blast finisher with a low cooldown.

In beta it didn’t move you at all. The small movement was added so you could hit things just outside of melee range. If you want to do something, clean up the after-cast a bit.

The game has developed a lot more movement and ranged combat since the beta weekends. Guardian sustainability isn’t what it was back then either.

Exedore.6320:

Mighty Blow was never intended to be a major gap closer, nor should it be. It’s a high damage attack and a blast finisher with a low cooldown.

In beta it didn’t move you at all. The small movement was added so you could hit things just outside of melee range. If you want to do something, clean up the after-cast a bit.

Personally I’m fine with it not having THAT much range. But the biggest issue is the 3rd skill of the auto attack, its really bad. Also, skill 5 should be able to be used while moving. Why the hell is it still like that.

From a closed PvE view (dungeons/fractals), the 2 main things dragging hammer down is the light field on AA (ohh god WHY anet.. just WHY) and the low dmg.

Making AA nr. 3 casting time faster will help on the dmg, since about 50% of the AA dmg come from the field, and having to wait 3? sec for this to kick in is ALONG time in dungeons/fractals.

The light field problem… someone need to hit someone at anet hard and make them change this (or better make light fields worth bringing).

As it is now, hammer is sadly not a weapon worth it for closed PvE concent, unless we are talking lvl 50 fracs and you are in a really bad pug group.

Every thing I say here is in the mind set of wvw/pvp where mobility fighting is the main consideration.

SKILL 1 FIX: Initiate combo after first attack. So that 2nd and 3rd attacks if missed will still cast the symble.
SKILL 3 FIX: Make this skill work like the new longbow skill “deflecting shot”. Where you can pick its direction to cast.
SKILL 4 FIX: Apply hit to 5 people.
SKILL 5 FIX: Cast when moving.

These changes with out increasing damage, cast time or range will balance things out a bit and not feel like us guardians are getting the end of the stick when it comes to all other hammer using classes.

hammer skills are too slow for me – even if they might be balanced like this, its just really boring… if at least not ALL hammer skills were that boring… i think a bit of a mix up would be good with the hammer tbh…

Exedore.6320:

Hammer 1c - Suggest reducing the symbol duration by 1 second. Then lower the cast time a little and adjust the direct damage to line up. The biggest problem with hammer is the awful sustained damage and how clunky the auto-attack feels.

Hammer 3 - Projectile needs to be slightly wider. It’s way too easy to side-step it.

Hammer 4 - Mostly fine as-is. The cast time and cooldown is in-line with other single-target CCs. Possibly increase the damage coefficient.

if they reduce the symbol duration we may as well not even have it to be honest, its terrible in it’s current state. I’m sure anet could at least make our auto chain the speed of warrior hammer. Yes we have a symbol on the chain but warrior hammer is also twice as effective of a weapon so I think it’s fair.

Ezrael.6859:

As Ring of Warding is a ward it could be thematically possible to make this a Lightning Field.

It would be nice to have some variety and Blast / Leap options beyond endless Light Fields and Retaliation.

Plus some different Swiftness access options.

Ring of Warding – Lightning Field.
Mighty Blow – 450 range.
Symbol of Protection – 3/4s cast time, remove one pulse of the symbol.

Would make the Hammer lovely.

More like Light field.

Killyox.3950:

Ezrael.6859:

As Ring of Warding is a ward it could be thematically possible to make this a Lightning Field.

It would be nice to have some variety and Blast / Leap options beyond endless Light Fields and Retaliation.

Plus some different Swiftness access options.

Ring of Warding – Lightning Field.
Mighty Blow – 450 range.
Symbol of Protection – 3/4s cast time, remove one pulse of the symbol.

Would make the Hammer lovely.

More like Light field.

We currently have 15 ways to access Light Fields.

Line of Warding
Ring of Warding
Shield of Absorption
Symbol of Faith
Symbol of Protection
Symbol of Swiftness
Symbol of Wrath
Refraction
Spear Wall
Sanctuary
Wall of Reflection
Symbol of Judgment
Retaliatory Subconscious
Protector’s Impact
Zealot’s Speed

And another coming with the Longbow

Do you not think a little variety and less Retaliation might be a good idea?