Guild Wars 2

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Use any means necessary to support your argument: pictures, videos, and/or mathematics. Since a gap remains between PvE and PvE, lets make sure we state which aspect of the game our arguments are based on.

Correction: PvP and PvE I think you mean.

Anyways, too lazy to do math, but greatsword has a great variety of options for different occassions. Generally, people who like speed go for greatsword.

Whirling wrath : Greatest physical aoe, works well with crit chance and dmg

Leap of faith: Blindess, and mobility; can be used for transportation and closing the gap in combat

Symbol of wrath: Retaliation(lulz), and light combo field (very useful for the spin finishers which lead to CONDITION removal—another condition remover at your disposal)

Binding blade: Great control and setup move. You can use it for offensive and defensive. Offensive use can be to get your enemies close to you for combo setups. Defensive use can include pulling enemies from your allies or knocking them down when they are about to do a move

PvP from experience in WvW: Greatsword is amazing in closing the gap—it adds yet another move at your disposal to catch people who are on par with your foot movement speed but are a little ahead. Binding blade is soooooo good in battles because of the 10 second period it allows before you “pull”. This allows you to tag your opponents and whenever they try to run or do a heavy move, you “pull” them and disable them from what they were doing temporarily (up to 5 ppl too!).

PvE: Same thing pretty much. Use leap of faith to get to your enemies faster, use binding blade to control them or stop them from doing moves (for example, a graveling is about to howl—pull them down to stop them) and then whirling wrath does wonders in aoe dps. Also, have some conditions on you? Np, Symbol of Wrath->Whirling wrath and done. That and signet of resolve should be sufficient in most cases.

Edit: Also, binding blade can sometimes break confusion when an enemy goes stealth and disappears and your camera is all over the place. You can wait a bit and do binding blade and the blades will auto target nearby enemies—auto targetting rules. In PvE, for mob tagging, binding blade will also hit mobs before they actually render if you time it right. So you always get the first hit before zerg hogs it.

I used to love GS, especially because I do 90% of the time WvWvW. It has a good damage, great speed and the AOE eh awesome. But since I got my Hammer I felt in love it. #1 do lots of damage and retaliation on 3th hit. #2 is the best AoE damage of the weapons and the CD is really short so you can do twice more AoE than with GS. #3 skill is awesome to immobilize runners and freak them out. #4 is the funniest thing and make them s**it their pants (extra funny on edge of cliffs). #5 is an awesome for combination to either keep enemies in or out, is great when you see a friend that is about to be finished you do the combo #4+JI > #5 > rez. Since I changed to Hammer I havent yet lose any 1v1 and on a gank is pretty harder to take me down. One of the factors for that is that with GS you have to invest a lot in Zeal trait and Hammer you invest in Valor giving you much more toughness. I used to not like hammer because like many other people find it too slow, but believe me is not that bad and is reaaaaaally worth it.
Hammer hands down…

The hammer 5 +judges intervention gets me a lot of kills in wvwvw and spvp.

I really like Mighty Blow because of the leap. You seldom miss. Whereas WW can miss for no reason at all. A person can be a sword length away and start running and it misses. Not to mention Blinding Blade, which is the most frustrating skill in the game and fails more often than not.

@Drgori-5724
retaliation with the hammer symbol?
It gives u protection. U only get ae retaliation if u use #2 as blast finisher on the symbol.

@topic
U cant compare those weapons. GS is more dmg and hammer cc.
Both r nice and depending on the situation, one is better than the other.

Thorwyn.8469:

@Drgori-5724
retaliation with the hammer symbol?
It gives u protection. U only get ae retaliation if u use #2 as blast finisher on the symbol.

Simbol of protection=light field
Light field + mighty blow= AOE retaliation

@topic
U cant compare those weapons. GS is more dmg and hammer cc.
Both r nice and depending on the situation, one is better than the other.

Its not truth, hammer can do a really good damage not higher than gs for sure, but pretty high and no cd dependant.
Gs can do a lot of damage, but only when you use all your skills, then you have an autoattack phase and you damage drop down, below the hammer ^^

I recently joined the hammer crew after using GS + Staff, Now I like to combine my Hammer + GS together and chain their attacks. for example, my main catching combination would be to Cast Ring of Warding and during mid-cast use judges intervention, you teleport onto the enemy and instantly ring them, then cast Mighty Blow and switch to GS then Whirl on their face, if they try to run you can Bind them back and keep beating on em. If they get away again you can always switch back to your hammer and Wrap them up again or leap on their back.. I play like this as a tank and all they can do is try to fight back because theres a slim chance of escaping from personal experience, and I outlive anyone

@Ganzo
Nice work, u can quote me to write excactly that what I wrote.

The thing with the GS CD’s. Yeah its true that when u use all skills together that u only can do auto attack after that, but when does this happen?
Only in long PvE Boss fights and for that u always have the chance to switch weaponset, use all skills on the other weaponset and switch back.
Apart from this, the game is made for this, to change weaponsets, so no there is no autoattack phase on GS.
Only for those ppl who dont know, that there is a second weaponset u can use.

@Ganzo
Nice work, u can quote me to write excactly that what I wrote.

lol you are right, i have really made a mess with the first thing.
xD my bad ._.

Only in long PvE Boss fights and for that u always have the chance to switch weaponset, use all skills on the other weaponset and switch back.
Apart from this, the game is made for this, to change weaponsets, so no there is no autoattack phase on GS.
Only for those ppl who dont know, that there is a second weaponset u can use.

even if you can weaponsswitch (and i switch a LOT, even before the 10/7 patch) there is a problem with the too long CD of GS…
yes you are right when you say that this thing is a PVE problem, because that patch have caused EXACTLY a pve problem. Anyway the problem is when you switch from a weapon to GS, and you have at least 3 skill on CD, the only skill usable always after a switch is WW, and maybe you have 2 sec on leap of faith, and in that case you have the belowed autoattack phase, you are tied waiting the simbol after WW (and you cant spam LOF, because is more a defensive skill when in close combat)

Imo GS is bursty type of weapon where you want to finish off someone asap while hammer is the one you want to use for a prolonged battle.

To make it simple,

Short battles=GS
Long battles=Hammer

I found the Hammer more appropriate for longer drawn fights while the GS is good for getting something down quick. Because the GS is cooldown based, it allows you to unload yourself at someone at once at risk of being dodged or avoided. While 3/4/5 Hammer takes skill to use and time, #2 I found more reliable in hitting targets compared to GS #2. In PvE I carry both with me while in PvP I prefer the Hammer.

dont get me wrong, I still like GS, I use sometimes as my second weapon. Is it great and for sure has more damage if you spec your traits in the right way. but when using the hammer and re-spec the traits you get more for the buck. You still do a good damage but you get a lot more survivability, so overall I prefer Hammer as main weapon now, second weapon is between GS and staff depending on the situation.

Thorwyn.8469:

@Drgori-5724
retaliation with the hammer symbol?
It gives u protection. U only get ae retaliation if u use #2 as blast finisher on the symbol.

@topic
U cant compare those weapons. GS is more dmg and hammer cc.
Both r nice and depending on the situation, one is better than the other.

Exactly, you have to use the combo…please, it’s a no brainer…

As a guardian, I use mace/focus and greatsword. Started out with greatsword only in levels 1-15, but then I tried mace/focus and found it to be AMAZING for survivability, but still use greatsword mainly.
But on the topic of greatsword/hammer, i think greatsword is a lot more powerful. For starters, the auto attack is much faster, does high damage, and also gives you might. If you use you traits right(I think 5 in the trait that gives you health and healing) you get vigor whenever you critically hit an enemy. Since greatsword attack is very fast, it is easy to gain vigor, making it easier to dodge and evade attacks. The 2nd skill is a very good AoE attack. I sue the third as an AoE attack and to leap into battle. The symbol can heal you(when traited) and also give you retaliation, which helps a lot. The 5th skill is very good for interrupting enemies, getting ranged enemies close, and dealing damage as well.
Hammer, on the other hand, has more crowd control skills. Immobilize, knock down, and prevent movement inside or out of an area. It’s auto attack does more damage, but takes much longer, so greatsword overall outputs more from auto attack.
All in all, it depends what type of play style you want. Greatsword gives you more mobility, whereas Hammer limits your opponent’s mobility. Greatsword would also probably be better at groups, since all of it’s attacks hit a wide range, and hammer might be better for single target combat.

I find relatively the hammer graphic looks clumsy an functionally isn’t as robust as the greatswords, so I use the latter. Others I adventure with love it too, especially Binding Blades for grouping enemies (PvE) over ground effects. Very handy. There’s various other reasons too, but they’ve already been stated so I’ll not repeat.

why hammer vs GS, better run with hammer AND GS, will make your life easier in both PvP and PvE

^ this

… err. did someone google “greatsword vs hammer Gw2” or did someone go waaaaaay back in the dead-topics-archives?

Waraxx.4286:

… err. did someone google “greatsword vs hammer Gw2” or did someone go waaaaaay back in the dead-topics-archives?

Or maybe someone decided to continue this one instead of making their own new post on the same/similar topic?