Guild Wars 2

I like the number 7, so:

1. My intent is to make a dungeon/fractal friendly guardian, she’s currently level 43, and I intend to make her AH based, with probably a 0/10/30/30/0 or 0/0/30/30/10 (I’ll worry about that when I get to level 80). Maybe I’ll also WvW at some point, because comeon AH is made for WvW, but I still like PvE better. This leads me to…

2. Weaponset and utility skills for AH based guards. Now obv, everyone <3 greatsword, every skill is useful and has a purpose (a novelty for me, as I main a thief and there is always that 1 weapon skill that no1 uses…). On top of that, it’s fast, it has good mobility, built in blinds, and I love pulling all targets to melee range with the 5 skill. But…

3. On paper, the hammer seems to be better suited for a AH based guard build. Built in boons in the autoattack combo field and ability to trigger your own combo field to give more boons to yourself and allies. Sounds great but…

4. The kitten thing is so SLOW! It has AoE but I feel like I have more AoE on GS, and it has some degree of gap closing with MB but not as much as GS. I feel like I have to face tank with the hammer since its so slow, which should be fine theoritically with SoP and supposed more dps than GS, but honestly I can face tank with GS even better and things die faster… (more to the point with the GS i don’t have to facetank anything I’m quite mobile, I can’t say the same for Hammer). This finally brings me to…

5. I’m defn playing this hammer wrong. Obviously I dont have the full complement of traits to optimize playing hammer in AH but I’m defn feeling like I’m missing a big piece of the puzzle. I’m autoattacking, SoP, activate SoP with MB and then autoattack again, MB again, etc etc. Every now and again I’ll banish (because I can, not because I necessarily see a point…) and I hardly ever use the 3 (only when people are running away) or 5 skill (never use it at all). Therefore,

6. Can someone tell me if there is a rotation I should be doing specifically? When the 3 4 5 skills are warrented? And also…

7. Utility skills: will save yourself trigger AH with all the boons I get? Outside of save yourself and hold the line (for breaking stuns) what other utility skill is generally useful for PvE?

Any input is much appreciated!

I really enjoyed using the hammer and had for quite some time before trying out the Greatsword recently. For the moment, I still think the Hammer is better if you are going the protection route. I ran a 0/0/30/20/20, AH/shout-light build adding some boon duration with runes and in PvE you can keep Protection up nearly the whole time on yourself. Comes in pretty handy to stand toe to toe with enemies that normally it was difficult to engage with in melee. Just my playstyle though.

But yes, the Hammer is slow and that is something you’ll need to get used to along with less AoE. I found it best to pair up with the Staff to compensate. The light field for Area Retaliation is on a shorter cycle with the hammer and combined with Protection mentioned above means they’ll nearly always be on. So yes you’ll have to facetank but the point is that you’ll be providing boons to other close range allies.

For the hammer skills, generally I use 4-3 combo to protect ranged allies. Give something a punt, then hold it in place for a short time to give people breathing room. The 3/4 skills are a pretty general all around help someone out when being chased/low health maneuver or as you said to catch fleeing enemies.

For the 5 skill it was dual use for me. Since I wasn’t running Pure of Voice it is also a light field. As long as your allies know what they are doing they can purge their own conditions quite easily so laying about as many light fields as possible was advantageous. As a warding ring controlling or containing enemies is far more useful than it is given credit for. However, those Anet kittenos make the PvE enemies where it would the most useful for, immune.

So 3/4/5 are situation dependent. I doubt you are playing it wrong or that there is some kind of maximal skill rotation usefulness you’ll find.

For shouts I was running what you were plus Stand Your Ground for giving out Stability and extra Retaliation when needed. I’m not sure if AH triggers for Save Yourselves since it should only work when granting boons to others.

All in all I think many people will make the case that GS > Hammer and they might very well be right. With my experience thus far with the GS I can really just dial it in while the Hammer I had to be a tad more aware. For me I like the Hammer because its a giant frickin’ hammer! Who doesn’t want to run around smashing skulls with one? Ever see the original Conan the Barbarian? Which character did you want to be, the guy with the really big hammer right? Right.

Haha very true, the hammer just looks beastly. Everyone uses GS, and I’m always in favor of the underdog. So I’m trying to get some advice on how to use hammer more effectively.

The biggest issue I’m having is often times I’m running into survivability issues, I’m just taking more hits with hammer than with GS, and with (what feels like to me anyway) less AoE range of the hammer I can’t kill multiple mobs as fast as I could with GS. On top of that, with the hammer I have to go chase down enemies and wait for mobs to aggro to me, and this is especially problematic if I’m dealing with multiple ranged mobs. Whereas with GS I could just pull them to me, drop the 4 skill and WW them to infinity and beyond.

So I’m having problems with having to take more hits (slow autoattack animation), and killing things slower. Outside of swapping to staff is there anyway I can deal with exclusively with dza hammer?

I find there isn’t much I miss if I go with a hammer for a long period of time. I will practice with other weapons to stay on top of things but hammer is my go to.

It’s weird you taking more hits with hammer than GS. AFAIK, there is no mechanic to being hit and the weapon you use. It’s likely a perception issue. Generally, the damage difference between GS and hammer given the same factors is very similar, even if the hammer auto attack is slower. This has been discussed and tested pretty extensively.

Its possible its perception, but I wasn’t complaining for lack of DPS output. I was pointing to more of the AoE, as in, with a wider cone of the GS I can (it seems to me at least, I’m not sure how I can prove this) hit more targets at once. With the hammer I’m hitting less targets at once, meaning the guys im not hitting are taking free shots at me while I can’t get to them until i finish off my current targets. This is what i mean by taking more hits, I have less means of avoiding the damage with the slow autoattack animation, and on top of that my AoE isn’t hitting as many things as I would be with GS, so things arent dying. Means things can still hit me until I can get to them.

This is also what gives me some trouble with ranged mobs. With GS I can pull in ranged mobs, I can charge at them with blinding blade, I can even WW on the move. With hammer I have to actually chase them down individually until they get in range of MB. And while I’m doing that, I’m being shot at.

I was wondering if there are ways to get around these problems

What kind of gear setup are you running with? Mobility with the Hammer is an issue. Again, just my experience, but I found the near constant Protection pretty much off sets that. Sometimes to close the gap I’ll start with the jump and use a shout to throw up Retaliation if I felt it was needed. But you are correct, there is no pull, only a brief stop so unless you are using utilities to make up for the shortfall. I did run a Consecration build in the beginning with Judge’s Intervention to teleport around the battlefield which was fun.

Silver.4798:

I was wondering if there are ways to get around these problems

The only way I can think of to use a hammer and get a good AoE coverage is traiting longer and larger symbols to do ‘bombing’. That’s a very effective method because you lay down symbols quite a bit with hammer.

The other way with hammer, (more questionable) is traiting AoE on burning in Virtue 30. I don’t recommend that but might be an interesting experiment to satisfy yourself.

As for mobility with hammer, the best I can think of Judge’s Intervention.

to be honest I run 0/10/0/30/30, I don’t have AH, the nice thing about hammers/mace/focus is you can facetank a champ pretty comfortably. It takes a bit of timing, but you can heal yourself back up given the right blind/block timing. I find that boon duration from virtues to be more beneficial to teammates vs AH. I can say with confidence you cannot have this synergy with GS. GS=good against mobs, not so much on bosses.

If you want to run hammers don’t use AH, it just doesn’t work. I recently wrote up a long guide with a few viable builds for hammer, pick one you like.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82449-guide-to-hammers-in-pve/

Thanks for the replies guys this has been quite helpful!

Perhaps the problem here is that I’m not using my boons properly or appreciating them. Thieves don’t get a lot of boons to work with… so the only things that are familiar to me are might and swiftness. I have a general idea of what they each do but not the specifics.

So with hammer im constantly applying protection on the 3rd auto chain, and retalliation when i activate this chain from mighty blow.

Correct me if I am wrong, and I probably am, but the protection is just damage mitigation right? -33% I think from both ranged and melee? How is this being applied “near constant,” just from the autoattack? Does -33% really make a big difference? (Any damage mitigation is better than none obv, but how effective is this?)

Also, how effective is retaliation? How much damage do I reflect back and is it only vs melee or also vs ranged mobs? Once I activate the combo field, and I have to activate it rather quickly the symbol disappears fairly quickly, I don’t think retaliation lasts very long.

How do you guys go about dealing with mixed melee and ranged mobs? I’m running into a lot of situations with the dredge where I have 3 guys in front of me occasionally dazing me, 2 on the corners shooting things and 1 more guy about to get into position to start shooting me. My hammer AoE hits 2/3 melee-ing, and getting dazed every so often is annoying (but I can deal with that with hold the line). While this is happening I’m tanking damage from 3rd melee guy and the 2 guys ranging from the back, so I kill the 2 guys in my AoE, run to the first guy shooting, kill him (still taking damage the entire time), and then work my way around.

I can get away with this at level 43, I highly doubt I can get away with this in orr or the tougher fractals/dungeons. How do hammer guards deal in these situations?

Silver.4798:

Thanks for the replies guys this has been quite helpful!

Perhaps the problem here is that I’m not using my boons properly or appreciating them. Thieves don’t get a lot of boons to work with… so the only things that are familiar to me are might and swiftness. I have a general idea of what they each do but not the specifics.

So with hammer im constantly applying protection on the 3rd auto chain, and retalliation when i activate this chain from mighty blow.

Correct me if I am wrong, and I probably am, but the protection is just damage mitigation right? -33% I think from both ranged and melee? How is this being applied “near constant,” just from the autoattack? Does -33% really make a big difference? (Any damage mitigation is better than none obv, but how effective is this?)

Also, how effective is retaliation? How much damage do I reflect back and is it only vs melee or also vs ranged mobs? Once I activate the combo field, and I have to activate it rather quickly the symbol disappears fairly quickly, I don’t think retaliation lasts very long.

How do you guys go about dealing with mixed melee and ranged mobs? I’m running into a lot of situations with the dredge where I have 3 guys in front of me occasionally dazing me, 2 on the corners shooting things and 1 more guy about to get into position to start shooting me. My hammer AoE hits 2/3 melee-ing, and getting dazed every so often is annoying (but I can deal with that with hold the line). While this is happening I’m tanking damage from 3rd melee guy and the 2 guys ranging from the back, so I kill the 2 guys in my AoE, run to the first guy shooting, kill him (still taking damage the entire time), and then work my way around.

I can get away with this at level 43, I highly doubt I can get away with this in orr or the tougher fractals/dungeons. How do hammer guards deal in these situations?

aah the dredge is my least favorite enemy to fight as a guardian… You can throw your blinds out the window. The trick with symbols is you kinda let the symbols do its thing, don’t worry about dealing damage from your hits. This is why I trait longer symbols. And swap between 2 weapons that deal symbols. stack 2 active symbols together and laugh even as they try to daze you, you are still dealing damage. That’s how I do it at least…..( I play pre-dominantly PvE)

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you want to run hammers don’t use AH, it just doesn’t work.

I run AH build with hammers, all the time, with success. Please elaborate why you think we should not use AH if running hammer.

About the problem you get hit much when using the hammer because you find it slow:

the chain on your auto-attack has a “fast” first and second attack. The third attack takes some time. You can dodge between the the second and the third attack, wich on your build will heal you (and teammates if close) for a bit and you evade some attacks.

The third symbol is also “ranged”. If the targetted enemy is somewhat further away, the symbol will be put down in the direction of that enemy. The distance isen’t that great but it helps. So skill 1 chain 1, chain 2, dodge, chain 3, blast,

And what i mostly do during blast (during jump animation) is pressing f1 —> it’ll burn the enemies for a longer period and if you are in 0/0/30/30/10 it will also give you might.
(You could also go 0/5/30/30/5 wich will give you a blind on pressing f1 too)

The blasting combo will give you retaliation but when paired with “stand your ground” you can extend the retaliation and do damage to anyone who is damaging you.

The tip on traiting your symbols larger is really good. I’ve added the “all symbols heal” in my build.

Another good thing to do is to change target just before you’re going to make your second skill. You’ll jump away from one enemy, blastfinishing the symbol and damaging another mob. I like to dance around a bit in big blobs and like to thing that i “evade” some ranged and melee attacks with that dancing.

Yramrag.3026:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you want to run hammers don’t use AH, it just doesn’t work.

I run AH build with hammers, all the time, with success. Please elaborate why you think we should not use AH if running hammer.

Your damage ends up being very, very low if you invest 30 points into Valor just for AH. It is massively overkilling on defense with a weapon that already gives you permanent protection on the tankiest class in the game. Your ability to spread protection and other boons is also not affected by your investment in AH, so you’re not contributing anything to the party either.

In general, AH is a very selfish option because it significantly reduces your group contribution (DPS, support, etc.) in exchange for a little bit of self-healing. It is suitable for beginners who are still learning the game but if you can survive with it you absolutely should. And there really isn’t any reason why you wouldn’t be able to survive without it when you’re using a hammer.

Your damage will be far too low to ever hold aggro. In my experience, aggro is determined by the following factors, in order of priority:

1) Order of acquisition: Whoever goes in first tends to take most of the aggro, and it’s pretty hard to shake it off for a while regardless of what you do.
2) Proximity: Closer players almost always get targeted first.
3) DPS: Players who deal more damage become high priority targets.
4) Armor: Players with high defense ratings will get targeted more than players without.

As you can see, toughness is very low on that list. It will only really make a difference if you are putting out enough damage to roughly compete with the “pure DPS” members of your party, as it serves as a tiebreaker of sorts. If, on the other hand, you are hitting for 2k/s with your hammer and the warriors in your party are hitting for 7k/s, you won’t pull any aggro even if your armor rating is through the roof.

As such, if you want to tank, you need to maximize DPS first, then look at what tradeoffs you can make for survivability in order to survive actually being targeted, without losing too much of aforementioned DPS. A DPS-specced hammer build is good for this, because you get permanent protection as well as other potential boons, on top of hefty damage reduction from Signet of Judgment, which makes you very hard to kill, but you retain relatively high DPS (about 3.2k solo, 5.5k with all buffs).

So yes, taking AH will make you live longer, because mobs will never target you due to your low DPS, and you’re basically doing nothing but healing yourself. That’s when you’re already running a super defensive weapon on a class that already never dies, even without any defensive stats at all.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Yramrag.3026:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

If you want to run hammers don’t use AH, it just doesn’t work.

I run AH build with hammers, all the time, with success. Please elaborate why you think we should not use AH if running hammer.

Your damage ends up being very, very low if you invest 30 points into Valor just for AH. It is massively overkilling on defense with a weapon that already gives you permanent protection on the tankiest class in the game. Your ability to spread protection and other boons is also not affected by your investment in AH, so you’re not contributing anything to the party either.

^This all the way. Hammer + AH + Knights is just plain overkill in most situations. There was a time that I reveled in the ability at full health while the rest of my party was at 20%. Now I run a 10/25/0/30/5 build with Hammer n Zerker gear and I feel I’m in a much better place, full health all the time is just wasted potential DPS.

Hammer FTW!

AH + Hammer is training wheels. Eventually they should come off, though there are times when training wheels are still appreciated by the most experienced players as well. I question this combo’s impact relative to other heals we get and the things you give up to get them. With my growing experience, I find myself moving away from AH.

@ Silver

I don’t see anyone answered you question about the protection. Percentage damage reductions (protection and one of the signets) are gold for damage mitigation because they are percent reductions based from incoming damage. If you simply run #1 on Hammer, you get 3 stacks in duration (3 full seconds of -33% damage) and since #1 rotation is a little over 3 seconds, it’s almost permanent. Duration increase makes it up during the full #1 duration.

It’s my opinion that this particular application of protection alone makes Hammer our best weapon in any circumstance where you will take damage you can’t outheal or avoid with your array of healing and dodges. Much endgame content would fall in that category.

Thanks Obtena! That does answer my question!

After messing around a bit I think I finally found the sweet spot for the hammer for my play style for the guard! (And its funny because several people were telling me this already in this thread but it didn’t click until I started getting some experience).

I was basically playing the guard like my thief, trying to avoid contact as much as possible and kiting, as I read several guides that were advising to do this. Then I realized, you know what, screw that. Facetank time!!!

Facetanking hammer guard apparently can facetank like nobody’s business. So long as I don’t get CC-ed and I dodge the heavy hits I overall take less damage than I would with the GS. In fact when facing bosses and vets my play with the hammer is >>> GS.

The only issue is with multiple mobs, hammer just isn’t cutting it when its like 5+ mobs, so for that I guess I have no choice but to switch to staff.

With a pack try to hit your Save Yourself to start, this will give protection for 10s before you get your hammer protection rolling. Also, make sure you save Might Blast to hit at the end of every other autochain, this will give you retaliation and help kill stuff faster. Lifesteal on Crit food is still quite good, Omnomberry Pie and its relatives.

While leveling I did tend to work with GSword on packs of mobs, its burst is better and you can take down your standard mob more quickly if you have 5,4,3 n 2 available. At 80 and in dungeons I like Hammer, as I said damage output looks similar, what you lose with Hammer is most likely lost by dodging with GSword so I feel its a matter of preference between the two.

I run 2x Sup Rune of Earth and Writ of Persistence trait to lengthen the protection buff. I find on long fights my Protection can build to 20+ seconds with just Hammer Auto and Mighty Blast.

Blood~