Guild Wars 2

As far as I know, both mace and hammer are used to increase sustain. But I can’t judge when I should use one over the other.

For what it’s worth, I usually run 4/5/0/0/5 and I’m quite lazy to switch trait. I know that hammer gives more CC, but if I don’t need the CC, which one would be superior to me?

Is hammer more popular than mace in the current PVE meta (from what I observe)?

I usually use mace only when I need an extra block over sword main over the blinds (particularly when it comes to Mai Trin) and hammer for trash mobs when my group does not have an elementalist in teamspeak (otherwise it interferes with might stacking coordination due to light fields).

Are you taking big hits ? Hammer. Are you taking condi damage? Mace.

That about sums it up. Your hammer will do far more for sustain through protection when you’re takling about failing to avoid hits. It won’t help you much against condis or general attrition based damage where you just need to either cleanse it or heal it… that’s where mace can be friendly.

Mace also comes in handy for personal protection with it’s additional block, great for something like Mai Trin.

As Johnny said though, don’t underestimate the power of blinds on GS/Sword, on say Ascalon or Cliffside you’ll avoid a lot more damage thanks to those than you could ever have hoped to mitigate with protection or healed with mace. Though that ring of warding is mighty powerful, I like to pull the adds, ring of warding so they fall right as they get to our stack, swap GS whirl/VoJ → GS4-3-5 and voj spam as needed. Moral of the story, don’t be too rigid and adjust your weapon choices for the content

If you can survive fine just run GS + mace/focus instead and do rotations. Running 45005 for everything should be fine. Mace is good for fractal over sword because cleaving is a pain for some of the content and the extra block is really nice to have for bosses. If you run hammer then mace should be on swap unless you need the pull from binding blades. Hammer and mace/rotations are top dps for hammer builds since they both benefit from writ. I’d only bother with hammer if your having a rough time or you’re in a bad group that is having a rough time and doesn’t like to stack might.

Hammer tends to be better because damage prevented > damage healed.

But as Obal said if you & your group is good enough just run greatsword.

greatsword – Sword/focus blind spam is also useful against multiple vets/regular mobs for preventing damage, but much less so against champs.

Hammer is used for protection. If you don’t need it just go with sword. Mace might be more theoretical dps but in the end you will be the guy blamed for yet another area retaliation.