Guild Wars 2

My Juggernaut is waiting for better times ;(

Rodzynald.5897:

Brutaly.6257:

The more i think of it moving glacial heart and making it transform SoP into an ice field is an easy but yet interesting solution.

Just remove one second of SoP, reduce casting time on aa and up the damage on skill 3 and4. This with the new and improved glacial heart sounds pretty sweet tbh.

Considering that SoP is already like two seconds, it should stay as it is (or make protection last longer if SoP gets reduced to one sec). But it might work out, I think we could also drop a 600 yard ground targeted mighty blow and I’d call it a day

It applies the first tick when the last hit on the chain makes contact. Most players actually missed this and thinks its just two hits from the symbol. It ticks for a total of 3 ticks which makes it 3 seconds of protection. Making it 2 seconds would actually make writ of persitence relatively stronger for a hammer guardian.

My Juggernaut is waiting for better times ;(

Mine along side my celestial armor servs well on my revenant.

But the juggernaut really misses the guardian even though rev is kind of fun.

I’ll give some feedback!

1: The auto attack desperately needs either a speed increase OR a huge increase in utility/damage. (This may sound op but what about making the symbol a fire field

2. Increase the leap range of mighty-blow and maybe add an evasion on top of it. Aside from being the only class without a 25% movement trait/signet, we’re also the only one without ANY evades on ANY skills.

3. Increase the duration from 2-3 seconds since this ability is so easy to avoid.

4. Change this to an AoE frontal KB but lower the KB range.

5. Allow this to be utilized while mobile.

Even if these changes were implemented, it’s highly unlikely i’d take it in spvp but this would be a start.

Honestly, I think that if we moved Glacial heart to valor master tier and switched it with strength in numbers (since we already have the shield trait and 300 toughness isn’t kitten) and mighty blow able to be used with Judge’s intervention, I feel like that would please the most amount of people. Some people like the protection on Auto attack like if you’re jn the front line of a zerg in WvW. IMOP this would help out the most.

@arken
I think fire field is an interesting suggestion, it might actually make bunkers valid again. The longer the fight the more dangerous it becomes. Its also a huge buff to ah compared to medis.

@timston
Any solution that dont adress:
Speed of AA
Imobility on 5
Placement of glacial heart
Wont even be close to enough for pvp and wvw, the upsides on hammer wouldnt be enough compared to the other weapons we have.

Any solution that dont adress:
The lightfield in sop
The fact that MB isnt a part of the damage rotation
Wont be close to enough for pve. It would still be the most boring weapon in the game.

Hoping that anet would roll back a bug fix just so MB can work smoother with JI is a bit far fetched tbh.

Brutaly.6257:

Hoping that anet would roll back a bug fix just so MB can work smoother with JI is a bit far fetched tbh.

Yep, nail in the coffin for me here. The hammer feels outdated, its trait is practically unable to be taken, and a good portion of its combo power got removed just because a few people are able to use JI to unfairly reach npcs in a single location in one game mode. I think some overhaul to its skills could encourage more hammer use and its trait could use either a balance change, or movement to another line.

For PvE, can anyone tell me how they use #5? I have no idea how to use that yard effectively in PvE

#1# Auto attack could use some speed incrase without symbol at the end
#2# could use some range increase to 600 plus base dmg buff by 100 points
#3# could use activation time buff to 1/2 sec
#4# activation time buff to 3/4 plus adding blind
#5# total change from ward into protective barrier like fractal hammer (moving sanctuary) 3sec duration 60 sec cd

this is my ideal hammer and i could use it instead of my GS

Ragnarox.9601:

#1# Auto attack could use some speed incrase without symbol at the end
#2# could use some range increase to 600 plus base dmg buff by 100 points
#3# could use activation time buff to 1/2 sec
#4# activation time buff to 3/4 plus adding blind
#5# total change from ward into protective barrier like fractal hammer (moving sanctuary) 3sec duration 60 sec cd

this is my ideal hammer and i could use it instead of my GS

I would find this acceptable also if Anet:

Make all the steps in the chain aoe to fulfill the description that Anet published about the hammer.
Increases damage on 3 and 4 so they fit into a damage rotation

Imo 5 is good if they just make it possible to move while casting. But i have to admit, a moving sanctuary (dome and heal) would be pretty neat. Just make it a fire or water field and it would be close to hysterical.

Okay so let’s be realistic and see what Anet could really do first about hammer.

1. I am sure that they could give us ward being cast on movement, just like shield’s dome.

2. Probably boost AA damage or make it cast the symbol faster.

3. Perhaps touch mighty blow to give it range increase and maybe damage boost.

4. It’s really crucial and this should be the first thing, which is moving Glacial Heart trait to Honor, Valor or Zeal. (It should get reworked as well but I don’t think they will do that anytime soon).

Here is a poll about the trait placement:

http://strawpoll.me/6087828

I claimed in a issue didn’t bothered me. And well I doesn’t since I do not use Hammer. Yeah it was fun to start with but feels useless.
So all in all I agree with most of the people. Make it shine, make it less clunky.

Rodzynald.5897:

/snip

4. It’s really crucial and this should be the first thing, which is moving Glacial Heart trait to Honor, Valor or Zeal. (It should get reworked as well but I don’t think they will do that anytime soon).

Here is a poll about the trait placement:

http://strawpoll.me/6087828

I honestly don’t get why so many people think its crucial to move it out of Virtues. As it stands now, Glacial Heart is largely a PVP trait and if you are PVPing you are most likely going to go down this line. Although it would be great if it swapped places with Retaliatory Subconscious so it wouldn’t compete against the other tier-2 traits.

In my opinion, if you really want to help the hammer out, the trait that should move is Writ of Persistence to the zeal line. Wasting an entire trait line (Honor) to pick up Writ of Persistence for the necessary ~20% damage increase for hammer sucks and is terribly limiting. If Hammer builds could pick up all their offense in Zeal, utility in Virtues, then they could have a lot more variety with their last trait line.

Hey you see it wrong!

AR should swap place with UC

All problems sorted

@Indure
Ofc you are correct, the real issue isnt that its in virtues. Its what it competing with in pvp and wvw. This is whats needed to be changed.

The reason i think it should be in valor is that valor is more or less mandatory in a competitive build in pvp/wvw and it would boost hammer relatively more to have it in a traitline that im willing to invest in when i play those formats.

Hammer being one of the best weapons for AH builds would make it possible to go for honor (shout trait) and it would leave a choice of either DH or virtues.

So the single reason why i want it in valor is to make AH builds relatively stronger compared to medi builds.

And i couldnt agree more, writ of persistence should be moved so all symbol traits are in the same traitline and also placed in such a fashion so a full blown symbol build is possible.

@Brutaly
If Glacial Heart stays exactly as it is now then moving it to Valor is good since it is largely a PVP trait.

But, if they make any changes to Glacial Heart so that it becomes worthwhile in PVE then it becomes more detrimental in Valor.

Indure.5410:

@Brutaly
If Glacial Heart stays exactly as it is now then moving it to Valor is good since it is largely a PVP trait.

But, if they make any changes to Glacial Heart so that it becomes worthwhile in PVE then it becomes more detrimental in Valor.

True, i do agree, if hammerskills are changed so -20% cd on skills actually influence dps in pve or that the trait it self changes so it has a major impact in pve valor isnt the best place to put the trait. Even more less so if the symbol traits are merged, imo the best place to put the trait might be the line where/if they decide to merge symbol traits.

Correct me if I’m wrong but, people keep on spouting nonsense about Revenant sword autos being the “strongest”. I mathed it out myself, giving each class the approrpriate damage traits and guardian hammer auto chain came out to be ~20% stronger than revenant sword auto chain (assuming ~5 boons on revenant and target that is crippled and burning). This is for single target only. I came out with:

Guardian: 2.65 p/s (no Spear of Justice), 2.92 p/s (with Spear of Justice), 2.73 (Spear of Justice used on cooldown)

Traits: Fiery Wrath (7% burning), Symbolic Power (10% to symbol damage, (turns the 2.5 power coefficient into 2.75)), Symbolic Avenger (10%), Writ of Persistence (+2 ticks, turns 1.5 power coefficient on last auto into 2.5), Zealot’s Aggression (10% crippled), Pure of Sight (7% at 0-600 distance), Big Game Hunter (10%, but with low uptime = 3% if used on cooldown).

Hammer has 10% more weapon damage than sword, so that’s the same as having a 10% damage trait on permanently.

Revenant: 2.22 p/s (5 boons), 2.01 p/s (>50% hp), 2.41 p/s (<50% hp)

Traits: Vicous Lacerations (10% after hitting 5 times), Targetted Destruction (7% vulnerable), Swift Termination (20% while under 50%, or pretty much 10%), Ferocious Aggression (7%), Elder’s Force (2% per boon, 10% if have 5 boons, good average I’d say).

Yes, revenants have a lot more group damage buffs, and a strong burst skill on sword 3, but they do NOT have the strongest autoattacks. Their autoattack is ~20% weaker than guardian hammer auto. Twenty, freaking, percent.

Sorry for all the math, I just got annoyed from constantly hearing how god kitten ed strong the revenant sword auto was.

Used power coefficients and autoattack sequence length from wiki.

Edit: I found what I was missing: reve gets the +20% crit chance trait, so with ~220% crit damage that would essentially be a 24% damage trait which would make that 2.22 become a 2.75. I’m slightly sad now.

make the auto attack 3rd skill 3/4 second and summon a symbol that lasts for 1 tick

add a functionality to hammer 4: if you banish a target into a wall (or a solid object), they take additional damage

make skill 5 usable while moving

that would fix hammer

Xhyros.1340:

Correct me if I’m wrong but, people keep on spouting nonsense about Revenant sword autos being the “strongest”. I mathed it out myself, giving each class the approrpriate damage traits and guardian hammer auto chain came out to be ~20% stronger than revenant sword auto chain (assuming ~5 boons on revenant and target that is crippled and burning). This is for single target only. I came out with:

Guardian: 2.65 p/s (no Spear of Justice), 2.92 p/s (with Spear of Justice), 2.73 (Spear of Justice used on cooldown)

Traits: Fiery Wrath (7% burning), Symbolic Power (10% to symbol damage, (turns the 2.5 power coefficient into 2.75)), Symbolic Avenger (10%), Writ of Persistence (+2 ticks, turns 1.5 power coefficient on last auto into 2.5), Zealot’s Aggression (10% crippled), Pure of Sight (7% at 0-600 distance), Big Game Hunter (10%, but with low uptime = 3% if used on cooldown).

Hammer has 10% more weapon damage than sword, so that’s the same as having a 10% damage trait on permanently.

Revenant: 2.22 p/s (5 boons), 2.01 p/s (>50% hp), 2.41 p/s (<50% hp)

Traits: Vicous Lacerations (10% after hitting 5 times), Targetted Destruction (7% vulnerable), Swift Termination (20% while under 50%, or pretty much 10%), Ferocious Aggression (7%), Elder’s Force (2% per boon, 10% if have 5 boons, good average I’d say).

Yes, revenants have a lot more group damage buffs, and a strong burst skill on sword 3, but they do NOT have the strongest autoattacks. Their autoattack is ~20% weaker than guardian hammer auto. Twenty, freaking, percent.

Sorry for all the math, I just got annoyed from constantly hearing how god kitten ed strong the revenant sword auto was.

Used power coefficients and autoattack sequence length from wiki.

Edit: I found what I was missing: reve gets the +20% crit chance trait, so with ~220% crit damage that would essentially be a 24% damage trait which would make that 2.22 become a 2.75. I’m slightly sad now.

no one doubts the hammer auto attack chain is strong, it just feels so kitteng awful to use it

Oh! I love these kind of threads. Regardless of profession.

I think the hammer needs a lot of love in terms of feeling and useability, some other weapons need some love as well, sword comes to mind, scepter too, greatsword as well, but slightly less.

My suggestions:

—Let’s start with the Autoattack, it definetly feels slow, clunky, and not really fun to use at all most of the time. It also places a light field on the ground, overlapping some other more useful fields, which is a big nono. It’s also mostly unuseable in PvP due to its incredibly long cast time.

Proposed solution. Let’s ‘normalize’ the autoattack cast time, and remove the Symbol of Protection from the 3rd attack of the chain.
New attack, Protective Bash (or whatever, you know). ¾s cast time. Hard hitting attack that applies 2 seconds of protection to allies if you hit a foe.

—Now with Mighty Blow. It’s definetly lacking something and now Symbol of protection needs to go somewhere. This particular attack doesn’t really feel impactful enough, it can do decent damage and be used as a blast finisher, but it also sadly helps in the overall clunky feeling of the weapon. It needs more OMH in my honest opinion.

Proposal. Mighty Blow leap range increased to 600. CD doubled, increased to 10 seconds. Whenever you hit a foe, you drop a Symbol of Protection at their feet that lasts 4 seconds.

—Zealot’s Embrace turn. This attack is really weird and doesn’t really feel ‘sinegistic’ with the weapon itself. The description says it’s a wave attack, when in fact it really is a tiny projectile that doens’t really act as a projectile. It’s as if this attack belongs to an entirely different weapon altogether in spite of its CC nature.

Proposal. Zealot’s Embrace is now a proper wave attack. It now acts as a cone attack very similar to Warriors Hammer Shock skill. 600 range. Cast time and CD ramain the same. It now immobilizes for 2 seconds up to 5 targets in the 600 range cone attack.

—Banish. This skill has a high CD, a high cast time and is very very telegraphed. It’s a really strong CC, though. The most important issue here is that it only hits a single target. How many times have you wasted this high CD CC on a random trash mob among a clusterkitten of mobs? Or even against a random ranger pet, or mesmer clone, or even a MM necro minion in PvP?

Proposal. Banish now affects up to 3 targets.

—Ring of Warding. We all know how fluid and fun it became the day warriors could perform their Staggering Blow while on the move. It wouldn’t make RoW too strong becouse it has a decent cast time as well as a really high CD for a weapon skill.

Proposal. You can now cast Ring of Warding while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time (like with Whirling Wrath).

Glacial Heart trait. As many have pointed out here already, it’s very badly located which also reduces hammer viability as a whole becouse it competes with two much stronger traits.

Proposal. Glacial Heart is moved to adept in place of Master of Consecrations. Such trait now takes the previous place of Glacial Heart.
_______

The hammer would end up like this:

> Hammer Swing . ½s cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>> Hammer Bash . ½ cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>>> Protective Bash . ¾s cast. 3 targets. 130 range. 2s of protection to allies in 300 range.
Mighty Blow. ¾s cast. 10s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. Applies Symbol of Protection that lasts 4 seconds if an enemy is hit.
Zealot’s Embrace. 1s cast. 15s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. It’s now a proper cone attack like warrior’s Hammer Shock skill. Immobilizes for 2s up to 5 foes hit in the cone.
Banish. 1s cast. 25s CD. 3 targets.130 range.
Ring of warding. ¾s cast. 40s CD. Can now be used while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time.

Glacial Heart and Master of Consecration traits switch places.

Khenzy.9348:

Oh! I love these kind of threads. Regardless of profession.

I think the hammer needs a lot of love in terms of feeling and useability, some other weapons need some love as well, sword comes to mind, scepter too, greatsword as well, but slightly less.

My suggestions:

—Let’s start with the Autoattack, it definetly feels slow, clunky, and not really fun to use at all most of the time. It also places a light field on the ground, overlapping some other more useful fields, which is a big nono. It’s also mostly unuseable in PvP due to its incredibly long cast time.

Proposed solution. Let’s ‘normalize’ the autoattack cast time, and remove the Symbol of Protection from the 3rd attack of the chain.
New attack, Protective Bash (or whatever, you know). ¾s cast time. Hard hitting attack that applies 2 seconds of protection to allies if you hit a foe.

—Now with Mighty Blow. It’s definetly lacking something and now Symbol of protection needs to go somewhere. This particular attack doesn’t really feel impactful enough, it can do decent damage and be used as a blast finisher, but it also sadly helps in the overall clunky feeling of the weapon. It needs more OMH in my honest opinion.

Proposal. Mighty Blow leap range increased to 600. CD doubled, increased to 10 seconds. Whenever you hit a foe, you drop a Symbol of Protection at their feet that lasts 4 seconds.

—Zealot’s Embrace turn. This attack is really weird and doesn’t really feel ‘sinegistic’ with the weapon itself. The description says it’s a wave attack, when in fact it really is a tiny projectile that doens’t really act as a projectile. It’s as if this attack belongs to an entirely different weapon altogether in spite of its CC nature.

Proposal. Zealot’s Embrace is now a proper wave attack. It now acts as a cone attack very similar to Warriors Hammer Shock skill. 600 range. Cast time and CD ramain the same. It now immobilizes for 2 seconds up to 5 targets in the 600 range cone attack.

—Banish. This skill has a high CD, a high cast time and is very very telegraphed. It’s a really strong CC, though. The most important issue here is that it only hits a single target. How many times have you wasted this high CD CC on a random trash mob among a clusterkitten of mobs? Or even against a random ranger pet, or mesmer clone, or even a MM necro minion in PvP?

Proposal. Banish now affects up to 3 targets.

—Ring of Warding. We all know how fluid and fun it became the day warriors could perform their Staggering Blow while on the move. It wouldn’t make RoW too strong becouse it has a decent cast time as well as a really high CD for a weapon skill.

Proposal. You can now cast Ring of Warding while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time (like with Whirling Wrath).

Glacial Heart trait. As many have pointed out here already, it’s very badly located which also reduces hammer viability as a whole becouse it competes with two much stronger traits.

Proposal. Glacial Heart is moved to adept in place of Master of Consecrations. Such trait now takes the previous place of Glacial Heart.
_______

The hammer would end up like this:

> Hammer Swing . ½s cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>> Hammer Bash . ½ cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>>> Protective Bash . ¾s cast. 3 targets. 130 range. 2s of protection to allies in 300 range.
Mighty Blow. ¾s cast. 10s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. Applies Symbol of Protection that lasts 4 seconds if an enemy is hit.
Zealot’s Embrace. 1s cast. 15s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. It’s now a proper cone attack like warrior’s Hammer Shock skill. Immobilizes for 2s up to 5 foes hit in the cone.
Banish. 1s cast. 25s CD. 3 targets.130 range.
Ring of warding. ¾s cast. 40s CD. Can now be used while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time.

Glacial Heart and Master of Consecration traits switch places.

Now that’s some dangity dang good changes, I’d definitely go with those, even Mighty blow seems nice but I think if it gets 10 seconds cooldown, it should definitely get a true shot damage OR more overall sustained damage, otherwise it will just be a poke>poke>bash and CC without any impactful damage on demand so our enemies might just outheal the damage or soak it in straight to the face and not get intimidated by the fact that we are using hammer. (Trust me, Mighty Blow at times feels just like 3rd AA blow)
Psst… though I cross my fingers and wish for 3rd AA to remain slow but apply some CC like 1 second daze, but that’s just me

@Khenzy
Nice stuff even though i still would like to see some sort of aoe from the hammer aa.

If they put SoP on MB would it still be a blast finsher? Mb would still need a boost in order to be part of a damage rotation in pve.

The changes to 3 and 4 are nice but i would also like to see a damage increase so they are on par with todays MB. With some damage add and the casting time you propose uit would make them part of a dps rotation in pve and a burst rotation in pvp/wvw.

Personally i would like to see Banish to affect 3 opponents and the damage component to be a self centered aoe.

RoW should have been gotten the same treatment as staggering blow, especially since Anet made that change as a QoL change and its really weiord that they didnt think that the guardian hammer deserved the same treatment.

In a perfect world RoW would be a fire field or smoke field. That would bring some really nice synergies with DH line and trapper/DH runes.

Why not just lower the CD on every hammee skill? I mean Might blow might hit 4 CD with Trueshot on 4 and CoR on 2, both 1200 range, I see no problem in having it on 4 sec cd, even as a blast finisher.

Phoenix the One.4071:

Why not just lower the CD on every hammee skill? I mean Might blow might hit 4 CD with Trueshot on 4 and CoR on 2, both 1200 range, I see no problem in having it on 4 sec cd, even as a blast finisher.

It wont address the issue that spamming aa in pve is the optimal damage rotation. (Boring)

It wont adress the issue that glacial heart is blocked by an essential trait in pvp. (other weapons are better)

It wont solve the issue in pve that the symbol blocks more important combo fields. (Non guardians dont want to have hammer guardians in a large part of the pve content)

It wont solve the issue that MB isnt a gap closer even if one might perceive it as such. (In fact the freeze will instantly make out of range after you land it. Hence i want it to be ground targeted)

It wont solve the issue that skill 4 and 5 absolutely needs to be used with a specific utilities (Judges Intervention) in order to work in pvp. Bound to use one build medis and forced out of investing in glacial heart since improved virtues are a no brainer in pvp.

Etc.

The issue with hammer isnt cool downs. One of the issues though is that reduced cool downs dont improve overall dps. Casting times, low damage and slow and clunky gameplay are some of the issues. Non of them are addressed by a cool own reduction. This has become even more evident after HoT due to the power creep and increased fluidness of other professions and even our LB.

Wasn’t so much as a solution, just adressing the idea of increasing mighty blow to 10sec. Yeah longer cd means more carefull rotations and less forgiving when you kitten up, but I think that a general lower CD on hammer would be a nice start.
But as with the shield change it does not make it more useful og less clumsy.
That said please keep the heavy feeling to it.

I increased the CD of Mighty Blow becouse I massively increased its functionality (by increasing its leap range up to 600), and its damage (by placing a 4 second duration Symbol of Protection if you hit a foe). I also increased its potential damage on multiple moving targets so they stay inside the symbol by Improving Zealot’s Embrace and Ring of Warding. Banish just recieved a QoL change.

You have to criticise all the skill set as a whole and start from there.

• Also @Rodzynald, 1 second daze or any such strong CC for that matter on an AA will never be a thing, it’s just too much.

• @Brutaly, I’m afraid we wont see a smoke field on guardian for a while, they’re not really thematic to this profession at all, and I don’t see it as a necessity in the slightest. Also, RoW should not be touched that much apart from being able to move during the cast, it’s a really strong CC already when PvP is considered. All it could have added is a stronger impact when depleting breakbars, but that would be it for PvE.

Know what would be a welcome sight? Replacing all of the Symbols light-fields with Fire-fields. I’m partly serious.

Yup, hard CC on AA is too much, perhaps blind every 3rd AA might be as well (though mesmers can spam this easily with shatters or whatever they have and I envy them :C).
What if hammer had LoF range and do as a mobility skill as well ? Along with symbol bonus blast damage and ticks it should work out just fine.

About fields, all light fields should be either improved or changed into fire field (cause purifying fire concept… you know the drill).
Perhaps our light fields could pop 1 stack of burn per 2 ticks this could make an interesting burn symbol build but I am afraid that with writ of persistence it might become a yet another cancer burning build that would be a pain to fight on points if someone decided to go with mace and just keep perma symbol.

What i would like to see on aa (besides making it faster) is that there was two damage components on each swing. One direct damage and one aoe damage.
With that setup it would be pretty neat that instead of chill on glacial heart, glacial heart should improve cd AND adding conditions to each of the aa.

This in combination that each aa would hit 6 times (3 direct and 3 aoe) on a single target would make:
1. Hammer a weapon that could create cover conditions.
2. Hammer really nice weapon for burn builds due to multiple hits in combination with permeathing wrath and cover conditions from glacial heart.

Why not just copy the conditions from warrior 1h sword to glacial heart.

Arken.3725:

Know what would be a welcome sight? Replacing all of the Symbols light-fields with Fire-fields. I’m partly serious.

If you look at the state of the game i think you are entitled to be partly serious.

What i would like to see is that different symbols have different combo fields. Fire, smoke, lightning and water would be very nice. With the addition of DH/trapper runes i think all of them fit the theme of the Guardian.

Tbh in the current state of the game light fields are close to worthless.

Hammer 2, 3, 4 could use some buffs just so it feels more like a Bow and GreatSword to play, just to add them to rotations but not much above auto, and combining the Honorable Staff trait and the Glacial Heart traits into one place in honor would be obvious changes I would suggest.

But In my view the problem with most suggestions here is removing the symbol from AA would completely destroy the flavour of the weapon. It is used now in Raiding because it constantly pulses these symbols giving protection and healing in a large area.

In my opinion a lot of the problems with Hammer stem from the huge weakness of Light fields, they are by far the worst field types so I suggest Glacial Heart instead of chilling on crits(horrible synergy) instead swaps light fields to ice fields while wielding a hammer.
(read my virtues and radiance/signets feedback threads for more)

Arutha.9874:

I suggest Glacial Heart instead of chilling on crits(horrible synergy) instead swaps light fields to ice fields while wielding a hammer.
(read my virtues and radiance/signets feedback threads for more)

This is one of the suggestions already made in the thread and i do agree, this would be very nice in all game modes.

I think most of us want to keep the suggested changes really simple and realistic because we believe that if they are easy to implement there is a greater chance that they are implemented.

Personally i would like a symbol but with only two ticks and a faster third step and on top of my wishlist is a fire field.

Brutaly.6257:

Arutha.9874:

I suggest Glacial Heart instead of chilling on crits(horrible synergy) instead swaps light fields to ice fields while wielding a hammer.
(read my virtues and radiance/signets feedback threads for more)

This is one of the suggestions already made in the thread and i do agree, this would be very nice in all game modes.

I think most of us want to keep the suggested changes really simple and realistic because we believe that if they are easy to implement there is a greater chance that they are implemented.

Personally i would like a symbol but with only two ticks and a faster third step and on top of my wishlist is a fire field.

Yeah I think cutting .5 seconds off third step won’t even make the symbols overlap so I don’t really see a problem with doing that in reality.
I didn’t see the previous suggestion I guess this thread is getting too large. I suggest ice field with the traits because in my opinion fire field is a little too far and I like the idea of a chill guardian similar to the reapers.

I would say people in this forum have a wrong outlook on the development process. I don’t think this “focus on one thing and make small suggestions” will catch the eyes of the Devs. If they are going into the fundamental skill code they might as well go the whole way and implement every change required to make the weapon more balanced.
And if we have a lot to point out maybe they won’t just change one thing when they check the forums before next huge feature pack update. :-)

What about….

Might-stacking on the auto(like Engineer’s)
1200 Range leap with an evade(like Engineer’s)
AoE Frontal Sweep(like Mesmer’s)
Mobile while casting RoW.

I know i’m supposed to give constructive information but..a lot of these kits(Hammer obviously) are so outdated that it’s almost comical to not ask for stuff like this.

Guardian is overall outdated, looking at certain traitlines of other professions (not all ofc) they seem to have better traits to choose between and what seems most important – better passives.
Someone laughed at it when I said that guardians have weak sustain passives and couldn’t name anything more than just aegis, and traited maditations… now let’s look at how elementalists just roll their faces over the keyboard, look up and see a wide variety of boons and life saving immunities, stabs and blinds, but that is for another thread.

It is really bolstering that this thread had started a chain reaction of other feedback threads, we just have to keep the Meta thread up and maybe try to lure Karl into it

Khenzy.9348:

• @Brutaly, I’m afraid we wont see a smoke field on guardian for a while, they’re not really thematic to this profession at all, and I don’t see it as a necessity in the slightest.

Before DH i would have agreed with you but after the launch of traps and in combination with rune of the trapper it fits the theme imo.

Ofc it isnt a necessity but adding a smoke field to LB would spice things up and would infact add a ton of back line support to DH. Just drop the LB symbol on your team (vigor and smoke) and trigger it with a blast from hammer or a projectile from true shot. Combine this with stealth from traps and we got some decent disengage as well.

Think i prefer the frost field better as that would give us frost armour when blasted which would help out our team and enhance our support

Rodzynald.5897:

Khenzy.9348:

Oh! I love these kind of threads. Regardless of profession.

I think the hammer needs a lot of love in terms of feeling and useability, some other weapons need some love as well, sword comes to mind, scepter too, greatsword as well, but slightly less.

My suggestions:

—Let’s start with the Autoattack, it definetly feels slow, clunky, and not really fun to use at all most of the time. It also places a light field on the ground, overlapping some other more useful fields, which is a big nono. It’s also mostly unuseable in PvP due to its incredibly long cast time.

Proposed solution. Let’s ‘normalize’ the autoattack cast time, and remove the Symbol of Protection from the 3rd attack of the chain.
New attack, Protective Bash (or whatever, you know). ¾s cast time. Hard hitting attack that applies 2 seconds of protection to allies if you hit a foe.

—Now with Mighty Blow. It’s definetly lacking something and now Symbol of protection needs to go somewhere. This particular attack doesn’t really feel impactful enough, it can do decent damage and be used as a blast finisher, but it also sadly helps in the overall clunky feeling of the weapon. It needs more OMH in my honest opinion.

Proposal. Mighty Blow leap range increased to 600. CD doubled, increased to 10 seconds. Whenever you hit a foe, you drop a Symbol of Protection at their feet that lasts 4 seconds.

—Zealot’s Embrace turn. This attack is really weird and doesn’t really feel ‘sinegistic’ with the weapon itself. The description says it’s a wave attack, when in fact it really is a tiny projectile that doens’t really act as a projectile. It’s as if this attack belongs to an entirely different weapon altogether in spite of its CC nature.

Proposal. Zealot’s Embrace is now a proper wave attack. It now acts as a cone attack very similar to Warriors Hammer Shock skill. 600 range. Cast time and CD ramain the same. It now immobilizes for 2 seconds up to 5 targets in the 600 range cone attack.

—Banish. This skill has a high CD, a high cast time and is very very telegraphed. It’s a really strong CC, though. The most important issue here is that it only hits a single target. How many times have you wasted this high CD CC on a random trash mob among a clusterkitten of mobs? Or even against a random ranger pet, or mesmer clone, or even a MM necro minion in PvP?

Proposal. Banish now affects up to 3 targets.

—Ring of Warding. We all know how fluid and fun it became the day warriors could perform their Staggering Blow while on the move. It wouldn’t make RoW too strong becouse it has a decent cast time as well as a really high CD for a weapon skill.

Proposal. You can now cast Ring of Warding while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time (like with Whirling Wrath).

Glacial Heart trait. As many have pointed out here already, it’s very badly located which also reduces hammer viability as a whole becouse it competes with two much stronger traits.

Proposal. Glacial Heart is moved to adept in place of Master of Consecrations. Such trait now takes the previous place of Glacial Heart.
_______

The hammer would end up like this:

> Hammer Swing . ½s cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>> Hammer Bash . ½ cast. 3 targets. 130 range.
>>> Protective Bash . ¾s cast. 3 targets. 130 range. 2s of protection to allies in 300 range.
Mighty Blow. ¾s cast. 10s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. Applies Symbol of Protection that lasts 4 seconds if an enemy is hit.
Zealot’s Embrace. 1s cast. 15s CD. 5 targets. 600 range. It’s now a proper cone attack like warrior’s Hammer Shock skill. Immobilizes for 2s up to 5 foes hit in the cone.
Banish. 1s cast. 25s CD. 3 targets.130 range.
Ring of warding. ¾s cast. 40s CD. Can now be used while on the move. You move slightly slower during the cast time.

Glacial Heart and Master of Consecration traits switch places.

Now that’s some dangity dang good changes, I’d definitely go with those, even Mighty blow seems nice but I think if it gets 10 seconds cooldown, it should definitely get a true shot damage OR more overall sustained damage, otherwise it will just be a poke>poke>bash and CC without any impactful damage on demand so our enemies might just outheal the damage or soak it in straight to the face and not get intimidated by the fact that we are using hammer. (Trust me, Mighty Blow at times feels just like 3rd AA blow)
Psst… though I cross my fingers and wish for 3rd AA to remain slow but apply some CC like 1 second daze, but that’s just me

Frankly the range on mighty blow is fine, if they just tacked on “Drop a symbol of protection if you strike an enemy” then it would be more worth it as the symbol would add to the damage anyway.

staff is the best burn condi weapon for guardian but why does anet put staff trait in honor line?

honestly.

sorrychief.2563:

staff is the best burn condi weapon for guardian but why does anet put staff trait in honor line?

honestly.

For Shaman burn support obvs.

Yes… ice field symbol would be great to make some nice AoE support than just protection (plus prot doesn’t even stack). Banish for sure should affect 3 targets and get a damage boost to fit in a dps rotation.
As for Zealot’s Embrace, a cone attack would be glorious, but it needs to be more serious so:
Enemies in 300 yard radius get stunned for 3 seconds instead of rooted but those who find themsevles between 300 and 600 yards will get rooted.
Hammer could use some real hard CC than just Banish and long CD ward (To be honest, during the era of Stab Wars 2 and constant random immunities, it would work out just fine for more frequent crowd control abilities on our hammer) at least that if we won’t get a proper damage boost on un-mighty blow

EDIT:
There is a poster on the home page of GW2 that depicts a guardian wielding a hammer… hammer revamp confirmed

By the way… is there any pro league player that plays a guardian with a hammer ?
Becuase if there is then we won’t get an update cause’ “hammer is viable in pro league argument”.

Rodzynald.5897:

EDIT:
There is a poster on the home page of GW2 that depicts a guardian wielding a hammer… hammer revamp confirmed

That is either two revenants disguised as a warrior and guardian, or they wanted to reflect the bottom bracket players.

The very low cooldown on Mighty Bash and slow but considerably impactful chain makes the Hammer unique imho.

Not that tweaks such as
AA #3 could be buffed by 1/2-1/4 sec

1. +150 range
2. gain a boon such as retaliation
3. quite simply a lower cooldown
4. damage while inside or crossing would be in line with it’s CD
   wouldn’t be appreciated. The Hammer doesn’t need to be comepletely reinvented.

Remember this thread fellow guards? I do. Though our hope (well at least my hope) is dashed by Condi revenant and bunker mesmer) maybe we can hope for changes? Though these changes will be largely overshadowed by the fact that you shouldn’t pvp onless you are on rev or Chrono I can still hope, right?

Timston.1976:

Remember this thread fellow guards? I do. Though our hope (well at least my hope) is dashed by Condi revenant and bunker mesmer) maybe we can hope for changes? Though these changes will be largely overshadowed by the fact that you shouldn’t pvp onless you are on rev or Chrono I can still hope, right?

Our dreams are shattered due to this meta. We will have to wait for much, much longer before all of our feedback threads will be noticed and taken under consideration.
I still run hambow meditation and I do well but still I am forced to go meta with traps on guild premades.
It is slightly more efficient but I do not feel the thrill of battle dropping all traps on one point and pulling someone into them (except chronobunk and revenants cause these guys just pop evade/invuln or passive glint shield and it eliminates all of the traps’ effects).
If you have luck, tons of luck to get 3 procs of air, fire sigil and chill then mighty blow hits like a truck along with JI but you have to give up a lot, to get a rare effect.

There was a post somewhere, not that long ago that guardian is one of the first classes ever created in GW2.
I start to think that our core is just a test without any upgrades for 2 years.

A thought, although not specifically about hammer, but coinciding with many of the ideas generated in this thread.

If Glacial Heart is moved out of the Virtues line, I would like its replacement to be:

Elemental Wrath:
On activation of a virtue, the next symbol cast will have its light-field switch to a different field corresponding to the Virtue used.

Activation:
Virtue of Justice: Next symbol used will be a fire field (within next 10s).
Virtue of Resolve: Next symbol used will be a water field (within next 10s).
Virtue of Courage: Next symbol used will be an ice field (within next 10s).

This would keep Guardians focus on light fields, but would let them strategically use other fields with fairly long cooldowns. Although its cool that with Radiance (a trait line focused on burning), Renewed Focus would give you permanent fire fields as long as you are constantly killing mobs.

Would be nice to get traits similar to what Engineer’s got for their hammer and some more functionality on the kit. I’d propose a bit of an overhaul but you know how that goes….

Given how warriors & elementalists can become moving combo fields due to their new traits/skills am I alone in wishing that symbols would be placed on the guardian him/herself instead of on the ground?

That alone would make them much more useful & possibly make for some very unique/cool visuals.

just like the guardian hammer, this thread is dying

RaNoGa.6348:

just like the guardian hammer, this thread is dying

Yea but I found that my The Juggernaut can be useful again on my engie, that is fun class, better than guardian. Last time I logged on my guard was 1 month ago I think. Guard is borring class, burst or die, there is nothing inbetween. Engie is far more superior, ->charge into fight -> if all odds are against you activate stealth gyro and escape. With my almost full zerk engie I have aprox 1000hp regen/sec (500 superspeed, 150 regen, 150 swiftness, 150 from food + elixir gun 250hp/sec) for 5 sec + 5k+ heal on 20 sec cd + blocks, reflects, stealth, 2 stun breakers on demand, knockdown, daze, might on every 2nd autoatack….should I continue?…

Core guard is just broken unfun class, DH is worse… If they give medium classes option to use wardrobe of heavy classes I would never come back. Plus if engie gets greatsword on next elite spec I will delete guard for sure.

Btw…guard giving boons and clear conditions? Yea give me a break, engie can do that and better.

Engie is a walking multi tool that people claim to be hard to play (which is a load of crap by the way).
Unless guardians get such proficiency like engie has, we will always stay on a “good spot” or lower (like now).
For now devs are chillin’ on their holidays so we won’t get any responses or Karl might not even check our feedbacks here anytime soon.
P.S.
We will never get such capabilities like elementalist and engineer due to “class diversity” which has to be maintained.
Oh wait… revenants aquired such versatility.