Guild Wars 2

Can we have some Hammer damage or speed buff for God’s sake?I am alone at amber in SW,killing 5 menders for about 5 minutes.As soon as i drop them to low hp,here comes long cast swing,and they heal fully.

Either add them cooldown on heals,because they spam it every 2 sec,or do something about it.

Hammer guardian needs some actual love.I haven’t seen hammer guardian besides me in any kind of PvE except those people who have legendary hammer,and even they,using it just to showoff.

I do not like meta,because that for me means no fun.I do not like nor love to play something that Arena Net pushes me to do.

I do not like being kicked from raids,fractals dungeons or any kind of group event after hammer link in party chat.

If some Arena Net designer doesn’t like hammer,and pushes and forces people to play meta,sorry to say,but that person needs to be replaced.

When i say i like hammer,in any GW2 chat,people make fun of me.

Is that kind of “nice community” you bragging about in every video?But then again,its your fault A Net.

Welp, it isn’t THAT bad.
The medi hambow build I use now is great for lots of CC and weak-decent close combat capabilities but it is still crappy compared to most classes.
There are hammer guardians for sure that run PvE/P, WvW but mostly due to that they like hammer as a weapon for roleplay or just to fool around instead of being truly serious (there is always someone who is).
I gave up ranked matches because I also don’t like the meta and I don’t find it amusing getting ripped to shreds. Yet playing unranked matches on non-meta build is still lots of fun. Though when I tried scrapper power build it was so fun to run around with that hammer that I almost cried why Anet abandoned guardians and gave improved spirit weapons (gyros) to engineers.
It feels like we got DH just out of mercy because every other class got an elite spec

Anyway, we have to wait until devs return from their slumber, do a bunch of fixes and maybe in few months we might get a chance of any updates to guardian as a whole so we can get out of our wretched “good spot”.

I think hammer is a “camper” weapon. You do not just swap for a hammer to do a blast finisher and swap out ASAP. If you have a hammer you want to use it’s abilities.

But they are on an awful long CD apart of MB. Heck even the 3th auto is on a ~3 sec CD if you can land it.

So I would like to see a general -10-20% CD on every hammer skills apart of the MB (not counting the trait). Including the almighty lightfield AA#3.

The other small adjustment I would make is either reduce the CD on the GH trait to 10 seconds or keep the 15sec CD but increase the damage by 20% and the duration by +1 second. And get rid of this 50% chance on crit… make it 100%.

Such way a chill hammer guardian with Ice and Chilling sigil can do a nice 55% chill uptime build. So by sacrificing energy-force-whatever a hamguard would be able to disturb the supports in PvP with two chill application and a fairly strong spike damage.

I think these steps are the bare minimum to make the Hammer viable again.

Happy Guardin’!

As a WvW only player, I absolutely love Guardian hammer and don’t want to see any changes to it. Well, aside from damage or animation improvements.

The short CD blast/damage of MB, all the CC options, Glacial Heart(!), and how combat just seems to flow with the weapon equipped. All very good in my opinion.

Boreal.9826:

As a WvW only player, I absolutely love Guardian hammer and don’t want to see any changes to it. Well, aside from damage or animation improvements.

The short CD blast/damage of MB, all the CC options, Glacial Heart(!), and how combat just seems to flow with the weapon equipped. All very good in my opinion.

What about improvements for hammer, scepter, staff and sword so people will actually want to use them ?
What about the 1/3 to 1/2 of the traits that are absolutely useless?
What about the 1/2 of the utility skills that never get used because they are useless?

Boreal.9826:

As a WvW only player, I absolutely love Guardian hammer and don’t want to see any changes to it. Well, aside from damage or animation improvements.

The short CD blast/damage of MB, all the CC options, Glacial Heart(!), and how combat just seems to flow with the weapon equipped. All very good in my opinion.

If you are satisfied with hammer you clearly haven’t used Revenant, Engineer or Warriors hammer.

Ragnarox.9601:

If you are satisfied with hammer you clearly haven’t used Revenant, Engineer or Warriors hammer.

Yup, even warrior’s hammer is far superior.
I tried scrapper, never played engineer before and I ate everything in both PvE and PvP now I have a hard time to decide which to play more, I like guardian due to lore but hammer is kinda underwhelming.

Ragnarox.9601:

Boreal.9826:

As a WvW only player, I absolutely love Guardian hammer and don’t want to see any changes to it. Well, aside from damage or animation improvements.

The short CD blast/damage of MB, all the CC options, Glacial Heart(!), and how combat just seems to flow with the weapon equipped. All very good in my opinion.

If you are satisfied with hammer you clearly haven’t used Revenant, Engineer or Warriors hammer.

Revenant hammer is a massively OP ranged weapon. No thank you. I do have a Scrapper and, while hammer is definitely strong, I just prefer the feel of Guardian hammer. I don’t have much experience on Warrior.

I’m not saying it couldn’t use an adjustment. I just don’t want traits messed with or increased cooldown on skills like Mighty Blow. Basically, I don’t trust Anet and fear they will ruin what I find to be a great weapon as is.

The balance update will arrive shortly and it is said that traps will get a nerf (Don’t mind it and im kind of glad). But they also said that guardian will have traits and abilities both updated. Do you think they might also touch some of our weapons ?
Though they mentioned weapons in other classes, I really hope that hammer might get a tweak as well as it is clearly a weapon that is used rarely in both pvp and pve

Rodzynald.5897:

The balance update will arrive shortly and it is said that traps will get a nerf (Don’t mind it and im kind of glad). But they also said that guardian will have traits and abilities both updated. Do you think they might also touch some of our weapons ?
Though they mentioned weapons in other classes, I really hope that hammer might get a tweak as well as it is clearly a weapon that is used rarely in both pvp and pve

Although I still hold out hope, I personally think Hammer needs a heavy redesign and since it wasn’t specifically mentioned in the update (like many other classes), it still might get some numbers tweaked, but I doubt it will get the attention it needs.

Hope and faith are what keeps guardian’s up and running

Perhaps we didn’t call out long enough for devs to really take note on hammer to revamp it.
Let us see what this balance update brings and if needed, we shall continue this thread as long as it takes.

I’ll join in on the Hammer-love!
The AA isn’t bad, the Symbol is great! (Protection!)
Sadly the symbol doubles as a light field which ruins it all.
If we could change the light field to a (blue) fire field for some more DPS. we’d already fix a lot. Eventhough the 3rd symbol-AA is still terribly slow.

For Mighty Blow, a damage buff, vulnerbility or a longer leap would be great!

Zealot’s Embrace? Please make it faster or add a 2nd skill to it.
I’d love to immobilize enemies and then be able to pull them towards me.

Then Banish a bit faster would be great as well, this is already a good bar-breaker.
(Imagine pulling someone close with an updated Zealot’s Embrace and immediately blowing them away again! (Hammer Guardians know how much fun it is to play around with trash-mobs using Ring of Warding + Banish.))

Ring of Warding is -with the exception of fighting some trash mobs or veterans- horrible.
it’s slow and most foes walk through it anyway.
But this isn’t a problem for hammer alone.

The Guardian is one of the few classes able to “ward” foes off.
Ring of Warding, Line of Warding… they’re amazing skills but useless as long as they don’t work. A Guardian deserves the ability to tell his foes to “Stop” because it’s most definitely Hammer Time!

Immobilization itself should be reworked.
What about immobilizing your target and if your target has stability it slows them down instead + removes stability?
This is terribly powerful but we guardians deserve some power!

How often is immobilization used anyway?
I have to admit, I haven’t done PvP in over 2 years though.

I’m sorry if my current suggestions are more than imbalanced, Greatsword as meta has been annoying me for years and I miss playing hammer without being laughed at.

A hammer has so much more character than a greatsword!
Wielding a hammer as a Guardian feels like stepping forward, calmly telling your party you’ve got this, and watching enemies grow desperate as they know they’ll surely have a hard time getting past this wall of fortified magic and steel forged in the flames of justice!

“Please sit down sir, you’ve made your point clear.”

Alright… ._.

Nero.8047:

A hammer has so much more character than a greatsword!
Wielding a hammer as a Guardian feels like stepping forward, calmly telling your party you’ve got this, and watching enemies grow desperate as they know they’ll surely have a hard time getting past this wall of fortified magic and steel forged in the flames of justice!

You got me right there bro.
This is what guardian lacks, which is intimidation (besides DH which is kind of no more aw well due to trap nerf). People do not fear us but underestimate us when wielding a hammer.
Sometimes I can pull off some sweet CC combos that allow me to easily dispose of certain enemies, but this takes way too much effort and is very risky (compared to what others can do with like one or two button mashes) and my adversary must be on lower or same combat capability level playing a non-meta build.

Anyway… first balance update is live so we should reactivate our threads along with meta thread and hope that some devs see this and note that down that guardians desire hammer changes.

I wanted hammer changes with this update. Guess not. Sad guard is sad. The revive change let me hope for bunker guard changes aswell.Guess that didn’t happen either. All is vain

I think changes to light fields would help hammer just as much as weapon speed increases. All but two finishers cleanse conditions, so if blast would do an aoe cleanse instead of an aoe retal application.

From the perspective of one of those filthy casual PvEers (me), I actually like the hammer a lot. Traited with Glacial Heart and Writ of Persistance, you can keep up a perpetual Protection buff, and 3/4 of the time Retaliation buff with just skills 1 and 2. Mobs tend to close into melee, which keeps them in the symbol.

According to the Wiki, the power modifier to Mighty Blow is 1.75… yeah, that’s not the modifier on the auto attack, but for a trait that you can spam every 4 sec (traited), that’s huge… and it closes the distance.

I can understand why hammer is unfavorable in PvP and WvW… it’s really not built around the constant mobility necessary for those areas. It’s really built around circling your enemy/target who’s standing in the symbol, while you lay into them. In fact, I suspect all of that is why the chill is part of Glacial Heart… in order to help keep up that fighting style even if your target is moving so you can get that Mighty Blow combo before your enemy leaves the symbol. It’s just not a perfect solution.

Also, the one time (yes only once) I brought the hammer into WvW I did discover that flaw that the swing for 3rd chain of 1 is so long that it’s easy to interrupt. It was definitely frustrating. But, as far as the zerg goes, if I got the symbol off, it didn’t matter that people weren’t constantly standing in it… there were so many people that there was always someone in it… then I use MB, give my allies retaliation and do a huge spike damage to the unlucky person who was passing through my symbol.

So, I think that the symbol is supposed to be used more for the Mighty Blow blast finisher to constantly apply retaliation. If your opponent just happens to spend a lot of time in the symbol, that’s just a perk.

I think the main problem with the hammer is my main frustration with the Guard as a whole: the fact Guards don’t get a traited speed buff of any kind. Even in PvE I really dislike that I can’t keep up with any large group… whether it’s the Silverwastes train, or the rush to kill the Karka Queen. And, the staff isn’t a helpful solution since I have to stop and stand in the symbol in order to apply enough swiftness to be worthwhile.

Sorry for the ramblings. I’ve been playing GW2 off and on for the last few years… Guard is my favorite class and I spent much of that time using the hammer… but I understand that my knowledge is still very limited. So, flame away if I’ve said anything to upset y’all. Also, I know I didn’t address skills 3-5, but I feel this post was getting too long.

~EW

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

From the perspective of one of those filthy casual PvEers (me), I actually like the hammer a lot. Traited with Glacial Heart and Writ of Persistance, you can keep up a perpetual Protection buff, and 3/4 of the time Retaliation buff with just skills 1 and 2. Mobs tend to close into melee, which keeps them in the symbol.

According to the Wiki, the power modifier to Mighty Blow is 1.75… yeah, that’s not the modifier on the auto attack, but for a trait that you can spam every 4 sec (traited), that’s huge… and it closes the distance.

I can understand why hammer is unfavorable in PvP and WvW… it’s really not built around the constant mobility necessary for those areas. It’s really built around circling your enemy/target who’s standing in the symbol, while you lay into them. In fact, I suspect all of that is why the chill is part of Glacial Heart… in order to help keep up that fighting style even if your target is moving so you can get that Mighty Blow combo before your enemy leaves the symbol. It’s just not a perfect solution.

Also, the one time (yes only once) I brought the hammer into WvW I did discover that flaw that the swing for 3rd chain of 1 is so long that it’s easy to interrupt. It was definitely frustrating. But, as far as the zerg goes, if I got the symbol off, it didn’t matter that people weren’t constantly standing in it… there were so many people that there was always someone in it… then I use MB, give my allies retaliation and do a huge spike damage to the unlucky person who was passing through my symbol.

So, I think that the symbol is supposed to be used more for the Mighty Blow blast finisher to constantly apply retaliation. If your opponent just happens to spend a lot of time in the symbol, that’s just a perk.

I think the main problem with the hammer is my main frustration with the Guard as a whole: the fact Guards don’t get a traited speed buff of any kind. Even in PvE I really dislike that I can’t keep up with any large group… whether it’s the Silverwastes train, or the rush to kill the Karka Queen. And, the staff isn’t a helpful solution since I have to stop and stand in the symbol in order to apply enough swiftness to be worthwhile.

Sorry for the ramblings. I’ve been playing GW2 off and on for the last few years… Guard is my favorite class and I spent much of that time using the hammer… but I understand that my knowledge is still very limited. So, flame away if I’ve said anything to upset y’all. Also, I know I didn’t address skills 3-5, but I feel this post was getting too long.

~EW

I’m fine with mighty blow as it is, and the AA. For me #4 and #3 are the main culprits, if hammer 3 would grant you light armor that would give you some kind’ve buff, then giving you the option of exploding the armor in a flash of light for a stun, would be much more usefull and fit the theme of guardian well. Number 4 is just a bit too slow, I would be fine with a shorter launch if the cast time of banish was 1/2 a second. Or even a damage nerf for a shorter cast time and the same distance launch. These would be welcome and easy changes to make.

I think they should fix zealot. It should be an AOE.

For the most part, the hammer lacks AOE

Granrey.8920:

I think they should fix zealot. It should be an AOE.

For the most part, the hammer lacks AOE

Zealot’s Embrace is up to 5 targets in a line though

I think the main issue with hammer is the light field on auto attack honestly (and the speed of the symbol) , since sometimes you don’t want it. If you blast it with hammer 2 you get retaliation.

There are just a few slight changes needed for hammer to become viable again imo:

3rd AA casttime decreased to 1 sec down from 1 1/4
Zealots Embrace casttime decreased to 3/4 sec down from 1, increased “travel speed” by 50%
Banish casstime decreased to 3/4 sec down from 1
Ring of warding can now be cast while moving (same speed as whirling wrath)

I’m a huge fan of the hammer’s feel. Hammer auto #3 really feels like you’re swinging something heavy and unstoppable. What if it gave a short stability during the third swing?

Also, the cast time being long can always be rewarded with higher numbers. I just feel like in a game where people get to wave around huge swords that feel like they’re made of paper, an auto attack feeling heavy is important. If they do any changes to it I still want it to feel heavy.

Eh frankly they could keep the feel of the AA by reducing the last attacks cast time to 1/2 second, removing the after cast & reducing the symbol duration to 1 second (2 pulses)

That would leave you with the same protection uptime but speed up the chain by a good second.

Another easy fix they could do is take a note from the warrior hammer AA chain and always let it complete even if the swing doesn’t hit anything.

This ^ would mean that even if your enemy dodges away you will still complete the AA chain and lay down a symbol making them less likely yo want to move back to that spot & giving yourself/allies some protection.

As for the other abilities.

Zealots embrace could easily be doubled in speed or get a increase in speed & width of the cone.

Banish could easily be sped up to 3/4 second and be allowed to hit multiple enemies.

The ward could also easily be changed to be usable while moving, though given how plentiful stability and teleports are I don’t know how much good the last one would actually do.

Lastly as for light fields, they need a complete overhaul and light aura just needs to go.

I mean light aura has to be the most useless thing ever, needing to get hit first so that you can get a retaliation boon that is already nerfed in PvP ? That just sucks.

I’m pretty sure Banish should have a lower cooldown, its pretty hige right now for a 1 target CC with and extremely obvious tell and 1 second cast time

I’d love the same skills as Engie hammer since no matter how you buff Guardian’s version, it won’t even be close.

Auto-attack protection needs to last longer, so we can have perma protection even if we want to use other skills. Skill 2 is OK, but should execute faster – the animation is clunky and locks you on spot after you hit the ground. Skill 3 needs to be faster. Skill 4 needs lower cooldown. Skill 5 needs to be less clunky – it shouldn’t lock us on spot when casted and in PVE it should work as CC for everything locked inside of it (even if their hit box doesn’t cross the circle.)

This is what I would do if I didn’t want to think about how to completely re-do hammer. What do you think guys?

Well my ideas:

If MB was buffed to something like 750 leap… No aftercast.
Zealot’s Embrace to be a cone attack (max target:5) or faster velocity.
Banish could use a .0,5 cast time and have a 3 target limit.
The Ward should be able to cast while on the move and blocking all attacks or it should have a chain skill what heals and gives protection to allies and knocking enemies down. Such you could prevent a feeing foe to escape the ring (because of the hell-long cast time) by simply cast the second ability. But sacrificing the Prot and Heal.

And my final dream (was mentioned many times here…)

Glacial Heart trait: -20% CD reduction, your critical hits chill enemies, your Symbol of Protection is a Fire Field….

Aggrostemma.1703:

Glacial Heart trait: -20% CD reduction, your critical hits chill enemies, your Symbol of Protection is a Fire Field….

why would a trait called Glacial Heart ever drop fire fields? Ice fields would be more thematic and also more useful

Darknicrofia.2604:

Aggrostemma.1703:

Glacial Heart trait: -20% CD reduction, your critical hits chill enemies, your Symbol of Protection is a Fire Field….

why would a trait called Glacial Heart ever drop fire fields? Ice fields would be more thematic and also more useful

Why does a guardian even have a trait that is called Glacial Heart and is the only chill on the entire class.

because giving guardians actually useful combo fields is forbidden.

It’s pretty amazing to think how much of a better spot Guardians would be in if they focused on any other field instead of light (even dark fields).

Call it Focused Light… Your Light Field are so focused they are a Fire Field…

Anyway who gives a kitten about thematic at this stage?

Indure.5410:

Darknicrofia.2604:

Aggrostemma.1703:

Glacial Heart trait: -20% CD reduction, your critical hits chill enemies, your Symbol of Protection is a Fire Field….

why would a trait called Glacial Heart ever drop fire fields? Ice fields would be more thematic and also more useful

Why does a guardian even have a trait that is called Glacial Heart and is the only chill on the entire class.

It like many traits is a relic from early in the game when they thought it was wrong to give guardians access to cripple & weakness

Darknicrofia.2604:

because giving guardians actually useful combo fields is forbidden.

Light fields used to actually be more useful.

In the closed beta before head start blast finishers on light fields did an AOE blind which worked quite well with the vulnerability on blind trait.

They got worse again with the introduction of light aura because instead of simply giving retaliation when you did a leap or blast the aura required you to get hit first before it would give a short duration retaliation boon.
^that made light fields not combo well with altruistic healing and further made self sustain with anything but meditations crap.

Frankly I wish they would overhaul the combo effects from light fields and get rid of light aura.

Having to get hit first to get retaliation is the most stupid thing given how hard stuff can hit.

There are lots and lots of stuff we could add to hammer and all seem pretty reasonable from what we see but we should keep it tight because Anet won’t allow guardian’s to have that much fun with their weapons

I guess that for now, 3rd AA should be slower, down to 1 second might be enough (prot from symbol could stack if traited with writ of persistence).
Mighty blow is mediocre at best and to make the most of it we have to make judge’s combo with glacial heart+air+fire sigil (if all proc then it is a beautiful sight to see, yet rare).
Sometimes I think that MB should have an increased cooldown and drop a longer lasting prot field so that we might have it on demand, the other option I saw on my mind is to make MB stack might depending on the number of foes hit (1 enemy – 1 might, 5 enemies 5 might, simple) in a 600 radius so allies also get some of that sweet might. Plus it would synergise well with might on crit trait so we could have a sweet might stacking guardian build.
Banish is also a tough choice, it’s cooldown could be dropped by 5 seconds and made a cone attack to knockback up to 3 enemies, that would bring guardians a lot of disruptive support to the fight, but with such hard CC utility, banish should stay a slow cast (we can always fake-cast to force people to waste dodge).
Zealot’s embrace could have a projectile speed increase and a pull option to it.
Last but not least, ring of warding is what we all are sure of what we want, and that is cast while moving (just like whriling wrath might be enough). Perhaps a 5 seconds of cooldown reduction but that is not necessary.

If every skill had such utilities, then guardian’s hammer might be on par with rev’s and scrapper’s blunt brethren.
As for the trait, I guess that it would be reasonable to make it proc on any hammer attack, every 10 seconds (just like heavy light).

People asking for a hammer dps increase should note that the current meta dps build with the highest sustained damage for DHs uses Hammer. The being said the rotation is quite simple and shows the true problem. because the rotation is 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, 1n …

#1
I think our AA is good as it is. swing 1 and 2 could be a lillte faster but 3 gets a good effect for its duration and you can easily skip it if you do not want it or the situation forbids it.

2
Mighty blow is good too. yes damage could be higher but you can not overlook that it is a blast finisher on a 6 seond CD which can even be lowered. The only thing I would like to see is ot give it a tad more range. maybe 50 or so. The animation looks so powerful but it feels that you try to jump far but cant.

#3
This skill bothers me the most. So easy to dodge, slow, immob. can be effective but it needs a bit more. either in terms of support or CC. I would opt for 3 secs of stability for you and every ally in its path. Offensiv wise I could see a 3 stacks of 8 secs of torment. added. A daze would also be cool t ad to the CC natrue of the weapon. In general the projectile should be faster or it should send three chains that are homing.

#4
Keep the CD and make it unblockable and I am good with it (hibernation cracker). The launch distange is hugh and it kills breakbars nicely. Banish should be uncompromising banishing.

#5
so many option…

Reduce the casttime to 1/2s.
Make instant and a stun break – increase CD
Make it slow people during the current casttime
Lose the root
…

The only problem I have with the hammer is the last AA skill being slow but with FMW and a Chrono its fine. For me the hammer is the best weapon on guardians with its dps and utilities.

However some changes I would make are:
Increase the range on Might Blow,
Change Ring of Warding so it can be cast while on the move just like staff Line of Warding.

The rest I think are good enough.

#1: Make it faster, turn it into a fire field
#2: Longer range, more dmg
#3: Shorter cast-time, shorter cd
#4: Turn it into an aoe KB instead of a single-target
#5: Cast while on move, have the inside circle do damage.

Done.

Frankly I would be alright with them reducing the cast time of the last AA to 1/2 second even if that meant they needed to reduce the number of protection pulses from 3 to 2 and reduce the damage somewhat.

The overall damage would still be the same, the burst would still be largely on mighty blow and the protection up time would be the same, the AA would just be faster.

skill 1 is not the problem…. 2, 3, 4 and 5 is

2 needs longer leap
3 needs shorter CD
4 needs shorter CD
5 needs to be casted while running and shorter CD

but there are other weapons that need some love too….
Sword:
1 needs boost,
2 is ok
3 needs boost and turn of the root
4…oh it doesn’t have 4 xD

Staff:
1 is ok,
2 is too slow and detonating it shouldn’t make the CD longer (at least not that much)
3 is perfect
4 needs to be casted while running
5 needs shorter CD

Shield is perfect.

Focus 4 needs much faster projectile

Torch 4 needs to remove conditions from the caster too
Torch 5 throwing skill cast should be faster + the fireball should travel faster. If the throwing part is not activated, the skill should go on 50% cooldown

With all the feedback from the community about the hammer and it is still in the same stale state it has been in for almost 4 years now. We have seen every classes weapon updated apart from guardians set (shield took 3 years after daily complaints)

This thread alone shows the amount of respect guardians get from Anet. I remember a rangers pet (i think smoke something) had the move removed and the ranger community raged at it, not 24hrs later it was changed back. For years we have complained about various issues concerning the class about our traits and and weapon skills with no avail.

Now look at the class… it has been pigeon holed into using the same 3 trait lines with no diversity. The Guardian forum is now full of the same posts either complaing about the class or saying we are in a good spot (devs after 3 and a half years how can you not tell we are being sarcastic?). The class honestly needs to be looked at and i think the guard community needs to start raising their voices A LOT higher if you want them to hear us.

sorry for the mini rant.

RaNoGa.6348:

With all the feedback from the community about the hammer and it is still in the same stale state it has been in for almost 4 years now. We have seen every classes weapon updated apart from guardians set (shield took 3 years after daily complaints)

This thread alone shows the amount of respect guardians get from Anet. I remember a rangers pet (i think smoke something) had the move removed and the ranger community raged at it, not 24hrs later it was changed back. For years we have complained about various issues concerning the class about our traits and and weapon skills with no avail.

Now look at the class… it has been pigeon holed into using the same 3 trait lines with no diversity. The Guardian forum is now full of the same posts either complaing about the class or saying we are in a good spot (devs after 3 and a half years how can you not tell we are being sarcastic?). The class honestly needs to be looked at and i think the guard community needs to start raising their voices A LOT higher if you want them to hear us.

sorry for the mini rant.

Join the club “we are in a good spot” we have cookies.

longbow is longer range, faster hammer with higher damage. buff hammer damage or make it faster or both. taking away the cast time on the 3rd hit would be an easy buff. do SOMETHING to hammer anet jfc

As others said its lacking, I would prefer it to be faster, it will help me bring the buff quicker to protect your team and help in pvp.

Oh boi, I was so occupied with other things that I forgot about this thread.
It’s nice to see that people still contribute to it in some way.
I had a lot of thought recently while playing some other classes to feel them what they do.
I wonder why scrapper’s abilities have damage and utility at once? Their electro whirl does twice as much as mighty blow + it has reflection.
This is just one example, of how weird that is. Guess that making symbol 3rd AA be as fast as other hammers so we could keep 100% protection uptime, as Guardians this is what we are meant to do, not elementalists or others. Protection and blocks are our job and we should do it to its full extent, much better than any other profession in this game.
Either make AA chain faster or protection boon last longer. Either way even that way we could not keep the prot all the time if we were to use other abilities like mighty blow, zealot’s embrace etc. I feel that 2,3,4,5 hammer skills should get an additional utility effect just like scrapper has.

I’ve read most suggestions for this thread and most of them are nonsense as they would leave the hammer as the most OP weapon in the whole game. The main problem with buffing damage or attack speed would be that in raids guardians would become the highest damage dealing class. If i recall correctly it was the third most dpsing class over time. Imagine with a higher symbol damage or less casting time between symbols it would be insane (I would love it though, yet not viable)
Now the only possible buff we could get would be a damage increase to #2, and casting time and/or reduced cooldown on #3,4,5. The dynamic of hammer skills are fine as they are the problem as was stated before was the duration/channeling/cooldown. That is what we have to aim to get Anet to modify.

On a side note though… hammer aa in spvp is not viable, do not try to make it happen because it will not happen. GW2 pvp is fast paced, the hammer swing is slow and since it’s attack speed won’t likely change we might as well forget it.

holychampion.7386:

On a side note though… hammer aa in spvp is not viable, do not try to make it happen because it will not happen. GW2 pvp is fast paced, the hammer swing is slow and since it’s attack speed won’t likely change we might as well forget it.

I am a living evidence that proves your statement wrong.
It is hard tho to play with hammer but if you get a premade a well placed ring of warding can shut down a whole enemy team on point, stop them from passing narrow points and force them to pop stab if they want to keep up.

I must admit though that as I play with hammer, it is so efficient only because there are little to no hammer guardians in pvp and even in ranked pvp. This is good in a certain way as my build is to support my team which I can do with a hammer. Enemies do not expect me to drop JI+Banish and cut their path short with ZE or RoW to decap a point.
It is a very rare sight, thus it gives me advantage.
Ironically, it is a very good weapon against 1v1 and even 1v2 thieves

But in the end of the day, it still needs tweaks here and there.
You might be right about giving to much to it, but take a look at scrapper’s hammer. Almost all of his abilities have a secondary effect such as reflect, block, evade and stun along with a considerable ammount of damage, isn’t that too good?