Guild Wars 2

ok Guys normally i am running with a GS /mace/shield in the last week i tried the hammer well good control and all But the Dmg ahhh..
IMO hammer needs a buff the auto dmg realy sucks eather the 2nd blast finisher….
sry but hammer are a 2hnd wep and mace auto attacks deal alot more damage, example:
mace auto attack last strike hits for 936 > hammer last strike hits for 736 huge differens on the battlefield mace crits for 3k hammer maximum 2k or even 1900 without any might buffs.
hammer are slow wep and totally needs a dmg buff same about the blast finisher on it
its x2 times less dmg then GS one warriors : got huge dmg on hammer if you are comparing to guardian also good control effects , so plz guys let me see what you think about it thanks

You know what’s addition right?

Hammer is actually one of our better dps weapons. I almost want to say it is better than sword auto attack, but I don’t have enough in depth numbers, and I’m sure someone would refute that.

Easily hitting 1-3k autos with the addition of 1k symbol ticks and a 5-7k mighty blow.

Trait down zeal (I know everyone says its bad) for 10% on burning, 10% with symbols and then you can go down radiance if you want and get 10% on targets with conditions…if you want to keep going you can get 20% from having aegis up. A lot of people run scholar in pve.

So that is 0.10*0.10+0.10+0.20+0.10=1.76%
extra damage on non-crits, then in zerkers you easily have 50% crit chance and 50% crit damage, giving you another 200% (150% base and 50% from gear) crit damage.

Then take it back a notch and you realize that hammer works really well with AH and you can taper back the traits for some survival and pick up 30% crit damage to have a minor trade off in damage for decent increase in group play survival.

The auto attack from hammer is consistent, puts a symbol down, buffs protection, and if you want AH it heals you frequently through the fight.

My fudge numbers I ran to figure this out was to time the auto attack animations and calculate how much damage over time, and hammer/scepter come out on top (if you count smite). This does not take into account additional abilities like whirling wrath or symbol of faith since those are fairly hard interrupts on auto attack with a decent pause between up time. Whirling wrath/zealot’s defense are more “burst” abilities and less dps I feel, but I have not done those numbers which is why I won’t say hammer is our “best” pve weapon.

Now then, in pvp…….it is highly predictable and hard to do damage fast enough with such a slow weapon…..so pvp you may want something else, like sword/focus or greatsword. Those are mobile and quick attacking.

edit:

Also take into consideration that might blow is on a 5 second cooldown versus whirling wrath is on a 10 second cooldown, so you can mighty blow twice in the time you get 1 whirling wrath cooldown. You end up doing more damage with mighty blow.

And again, hammer has multiple things going on on the final hit, so it is a large hit and then 3 pulses of a symbol (all 4 hits get modified by symbolic power for 10%). So once you get the auto chain going you pretty much have a symbol ticking for 1k the whole time.

You run Mace and think Hammer has low damage? I don’t even.

CMF.5461 now with the build you are running just replace hammer with mace i know the symbol ticks are great but if you just take mace you will do x2 more crits with that if you will hit for 3k auto with hammer with that build you will hit for 5k with mace

The hammer is just fine. Solide DPS and almost perma protection in pve (with a symbol that can also heal). Only issue IMO is it’s clumsiness in WvW, because of much harder use of it’s protection and an inferior blast compared to warrior’s hammer – but Arena balanced it with nerfing warrior’s hammer so I don’t think we have a reason to ask much more from our hammer. I would give my left testicle for a CC on skill 2, but I’m also just fine with having both so…

i am fine with that also but i think the only problems is that hammer=slow wep and somehow it deals less dmg then fast weps = GS,mace…
those heavy weps need to have more dmg on the auto attack mace does 50% more dmg without any traits or so i just cant understand how … mace 1h wep does more dmg then heavy 2h wep

the only attack that is higher than hammer on mace is faithful strike, IF you factor only the initial hit from symbol of protection.

Symbol of Protection has a base damage of 370 on hit and 555 for 3 ticks of symbol (185 a tick). A total of 925 in “3” seconds for symbol. A dps of 308 dmg a sec.

Faithful Strike has a base damage of 470, and if you want to add the symbol damage in as well it will do 840 over 5 ticks (165 a tick). A total of 1310 damage in a “5” seconds for symbol to tick fully. That is a dps of 262 dmg a sec.

That is with base stats and no modifiers, so the difference may be even greater fully geared.

Mace does hit well, no doubt. But it is more suited for burst response damage than persistent dps.

Mace also has identical autoattack timing to hammer. It’s basically the same rhythm.

Hammer is prob guardians most versatile wepons, but its accordingly clunky, i think the chain attack is fine, but not made for 1v1’s. the second the fight get more crowded you can easily chain. For pve, hammer definitely underused.

While this has been done to death, I guess it is worth revisiting.

Past discussions on this have said sword was the best dps, then greatsword with the correct rotation. Scepter is theoretical best but its hits are inconsistent with smite, providing less damage done than on paper.

I’m positing that hammer, with a focus on zeal/symbol damage would provide a higher dps in a pve scenario. pvp is a different story!!!

http://tinyurl.com/meypka8

googledoc showing my napkin math, numbers were based on just full zerkering it in a build calculator

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQFASEChTIZFKQrHAAAAAVPiHAAAA-jwxAYfAqAQyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER127ioVLFQELjA-e

Timing of attacks was me sitting there with stopwatch on my phone and timing single attacks/attack chains, and then calculating total attacks in 10 seconds and then auto attacking for 10 seconds to see if it would match (since it is prone to human error pushing “start/stop” at the right time).

Feel free to point out mistakes or things I didn’t account for so we have better math.

edit: oh yeah and this is in a magical world where every single attack crits, just theorycrafting after all.

second edit, updated the spreadsheet to include more combination autoattack/cooldown attacks and automated a lot of cell reference so the whole sheet will change based on base numbers input.

foofad.5162:

Mace also has identical autoattack timing to hammer. It’s basically the same rhythm.

noticed it before and didn’t think too much about it, but looked at it again just now and it is kind of interesting.

mace/hammer have the same auto attack time

sword/greatsword have the same auto attack time

…staff/scepter differ slightly but are close to the 1s timer.

the 1h and 2h counterparts are similar to each other, which I’m sure was intended, but you would think they would emphasize speed for 1h and damage for 2h. Or is that just me?

CMF.5461:

foofad.5162:

Mace also has identical autoattack timing to hammer. It’s basically the same rhythm.

noticed it before and didn’t think too much about it, but looked at it again just now and it is kind of interesting.

mace/hammer have the same auto attack time

sword/greatsword have the same auto attack time

…staff/scepter differ slightly but are close to the 1s timer.

the 1h and 2h counterparts are similar to each other, which I’m sure was intended, but you would think they would emphasize speed for 1h and damage for 2h. Or is that just me?

Interesting about the mace auto attack time, I never paid attention. I mainly use hammer but why does mace feel so slow and sluggish? Is it because of skill #2 having a 1s casting time?

Because the rotation takes about half a second longer than sword/greatsword. I guess. It never bothered me.

anyway i still think MB(mighty blow) should have atleast dmg as Rangers have with GS Maul skill its around X2 more dmg .
then hammer will be realy heavy wep that does normal Dmg

That would be beyond op, i burst regularly för over 10k with mb and skill 5 on focus.

MB is one of the hardest hitting skills we have and it scales extremely well with power.

Stack power, modifiers and crit damage and fter that tell me if it hits poorly.

My personal record in wvw versus an exotic level 80 is atm 8k with mighty blow. In a dps build i crit on a regular basis for 5-6k. With my tank/frontline build i hit for 3-4k. And its instant aoe.

The bad stuff regarding the hammer isnt concerning damage but:
2h mastery doenst boost dps
you only need to spam the chain for max dps and skill 3-5 is mostly unused in pve.
Banish should be an aoe and not single target
Glacial heart should have lower icd and boost damage with 5-10%. Icd should be around 8s and duration should be aroun 2s.

Don’t forget to pack Writ of Persistence. It adds one tick to your Symbol of Protection, giving you another tick of damage, more protection, and if you traited further into zeal, an extra tick of vulnerability. If you use a mace, it gives Symbol of Faith TWO extra ticks. Unlike 2h mastery, Writ of Persistence is an unquestionable gain to DPS. An extra 10% with symbols can’t really touch the damage gain you get from having an extra 1-2 ticks (1 for hammer, 2 for everything else).

In happy fantasy land,
-hammer 2 has like 600 range
-hammer 5 can be cast while moving
-hammer 4 is AoE

styx.7294:

In happy fantasy land,
-hammer 2 has like 600 range
-hammer 5 can be cast while moving
-hammer 4 is AoE

That sounds so awesome. In fact so awesome iam going to dream about that tonight.

Mmmmm happy fantasy land. Where classes in games are balanced and with great diversity.

So just a quick question. How do the weapons work in WvW?

I have been trying to use sword/focus primary with mace/shield backup to push out in the field. Shield 5/bubble is useful. I’ve also at times swapped out sword/focus for hammer.

See, this is why ascended weapons is a bad idea The amount of time necessary to craft all these stupid things if you use them all or don’t have a favorite

Brutaly.6257 in fact to hit for 10k with hammer you should have squishy burst build ..
while other classes can be hard to kill and do same damage in same time (wars,rangers,thiefs)
i am running zerker gear (cleric: wep,2 rings.FOTM back with toughness) with 0/0/30/30/10 spec a 1850 power 79% crit damage 28% crit chance without food.
now i can get more power and crit chance but ill get 80% squishier and wont have heals from the traits + dodge rolls.
i hit for 4k crits sometimes without might (6k-8k with 25 might with i wont get from myself so that doesn’t counts) rangers GS without might hits those numbers even while going for surviving build, anyway what i am saying is that we cant mach the DMG that others can do while staying tanky to do that or they give us abit more dmg for the hammer or some offensive traits that includes hammer, example (sword=15% crit chance on radience line ) as valor and honor got some 2h wep traits 20% recharge rate and in valor hammers chill effect with is once in 30sec thats pretty useless the CD are kittening high.
i think we should get trait in those lines or valor or honor to make hammer more Dmg somehow , exaple : hammer deals 15% more dmg… or each hammer attacks inflicts durability to the target … hammer symbol now gives also might bonus to the protection or something in that style

Bunch of misconceptions, its absolutely possible to hit hard and if people want to do that there are a number of ways, personally i prefer might stacking and having 15 stacks non stop on self and the team is rather easy.

The fact is that my best hammer hit ever is made in full celestial armor, >18k health and >700 healing power.

if you go glass canon, which isnt neccessary, a hammer guardian can produce one of the highest aoe burst in the game, if not the highest. Just dress in valkyrie and boon duration and you are half way there and with close to perma protection to fully compensate for the lack of toughness.

regarding that there should be useful hammer traits i do agree, but the weapopn dont need more damage. Just get to 2150 power and 95% crit damage with one modifier running and you will understand what im talking about. And you dont have to be a glass canon to do that.

guardians in general do lack the ability to trait in full offense and have decent survivability, but that is nothing exclusive for the hammer.

Where is your crit coming from with that setup? Having 95 crit damage is great, until you realize you almost never take advantage of it. Intelligence sigils are really janky, though that can work for MB crits.

foofad.5162:

Intelligence sigils are really janky, though that can work for MB crits.

And they work well for setting up huge hits with mb or #5 on focus. And even with 95% and 18k hp you can have pretty decent base crit chance and especially if you have access to fury thru meditations.

just to clarify, this is my might stacker with food running. Ofc i can add in guard leech and Applied fortitude as well.

with this one i have at least 11 stacks of might (no staff) running 11 seconds after i enter a clash and i can have as much as 16 stacks and also access to 12 s of fury, stability and close to perma protection if i play it well. So i have about 2200 power when i set up the burst.

Ofc with 20% modifiers

this is infact a very tanky setup and can also be used as frontline pusher with staff and hammer by just altering food really..

It cant burst on demand like other professions but its surviability makes it a monster in prolonged figths, the longer the fight the more powerful it becomes.

Edit: i just noticed i had the wrong back on. It was pvt and i can swap in my berserker instead for 100% crit damage and still be above 18k health.

Hammer is like the easy mode weapon. Because of the consistent protection you can pretty much trait anything and get away with it, as long as your traits are in multiples of 5, but preferably on the damage side.

It’s of course also incredibly useful for keeping yourself alive in wvw with the power of AH. So honestly, I don’t care if the damage isn’t top tier— it hits hard enough and I can just 111111211111 without looking most of the time. Also, in wvw you may use the last 2 skills; they’re pretty nice actually.

styx.7294:

In happy fantasy land,
-hammer 2 has like 600 range
-hammer 5 can be cast while moving
-hammer 4 is AoE

^THIS

mistt.3698:

anyway i still think MB(mighty blow) should have atleast dmg as Rangers have with GS Maul skill its around X2 more dmg .
then hammer will be realy heavy wep that does normal Dmg

Maul is not a blast finisher…
Maul is not a blast finisher….
Maul is not a blast finisher….

You are underestimating the importance of a hammer being kitten CD blast finisher…. This basically means if you throw a field up you can immediately blast it if you see your ranger friend throws a water field up you can immediately blast it you can blast your light fields for retal, poison fields for weakness.

Hammer is a very TEAM friendly weapon just like guardian is a very TEAM friendly profession. Anything a group does they generally do better with a guardian in the mix.

If you want high single target deeps and nothing else you are playing the wrong class.. Go thief…
If you want a weapon that while clunky and slow has several different applications and is useful almost anywhere (esp in pvp Idk what people are smoking saying hammer sucks in pvp). Then you want a hammer guard.

Five second blast finisher is essentially on demand given that most fields will be up at least long enough for you to blast once.

Hammer is Amazing…. AA could use some speeding up but other than that… its fine.

ArchonWing.9480:

Hammer is like the easy mode weapon. Because of the consistent protection you can pretty much trait anything and get away with it, as long as your traits are in multiples of 5, but preferably on the damage side.

It’s of course also incredibly useful for keeping yourself alive in wvw with the power of AH. So honestly, I don’t care if the damage isn’t top tier— it hits hard enough and I can just 111111211111 without looking most of the time. Also, in wvw you may use the last 2 skills; they’re pretty nice actually.

First part is spot on, hammer is easy mode in pve and they should alter 3-5 so they contribute i all types of content and what comes to mind is secondary conditions attached to them or that you increase the dps so they have a place in a dps rotations.

Banish hitting for as much as MB would be really nice
Burning on RoW and making it a fire field would also be nice
Aoe cone root and weakness on ZE would do nice

In pvp/wvw hammer isnt easy mode at all and its here i think people gets confused when stating that hammer is weak. The main reason for the hammer to be so slow is imo that its so powerful when played right. and i agree totally, i dont understand why people think its not a duel weapon or great in pvp. I kill almsot everything in wvw/tpvp with my hammer and i dont go bunker/retal.

The main issue with the hammer in wvw and tpvp isnt the weapon, its the player.

So ofc some stuff needs adjusting but its not the damage output considering it is 24/7, 360 degrees, aoe damage

I just cant get used to the very limited range of hammer 2. It’s like I have some very heavy boots because jumping 1 inch is not really doing it for me. Give me earthshaker range please.

hammer does tonnes of aoe damage, stacks consistent vulnerability and grants permanent protection, not to mention the 2nd skill can smash 5k+ all day on crits. It is actually a very good and versatile dps weapon perfect for most group play

@OP – what build were you running when testing hammer vs mace numbers?

hammer can be very strong and a lot of the damage from yoru AA comes from the symbol as well. in PvP/WvW against an agile or “good” player, sometimes it can be hard to land the full chain in a 1v1 situation.. so use any one of your hammer 3, 4 (into a wall or sth), 5 to help land those hits, then use what’s left of your hammer 3, 4, 5 to make sure they eat the most ticks from your symbol. and mighty blow does MASSIVE damage. on extremely low CD. and is a blast finisher.

its not A MASSIVE Damage omfg stop saying that its medium damage ……
comparing to other classes the dmg of it are nothing only if you run burst build and you are squishy as kitten that no one wants that it will hit for good numbers, when others can stay tanky and do that damage its not permanent protection so shut up about that to you get 3 sec protection + only if you stand on it its1 sec each tick you wont spam all the time the stupid chain so its not perma protect.
only in PVE it can be perma protect in WVW it won’t happen

This is from my personal solo testing on the indestructible golem in the mists. Torch4 was used on the tests to help with burning. Focus or Shield would be better in a group if others applied burning as well. Performed over 240k HP @ 2600 Armor.

25/25/0/20/0 Hammer Symbols w/Sword of Justice, 3000 DPS
20/30/0/10/10 Scepter/Torch w/UC, 4000 DPS (only with 100% Aegis)
10/30/0/5/25 Sword/Torch w/UC, 3438 DPS (only with 100% Aegis, only had 2 boons)
10/30/30/0/0 Sword/Torch Meditations, 3157 DPS
10/30/30/0/0 Mace/Torch Med 3132 DPS (Protectors Strike would add 277DPS)
20/25/0/25/0 GSword 3037 DPS (Think this deserves some retesting)
0/0/30/30/10 AH Hammer w/SoJ 2376 DPS

*These are simply comparison tests on what different builds output solo, numbers will change in a PvE group environment. All tested with Scholar, Force/Accuracy and Zerker Amulet. Builds were tested with only DPS in mind, I’m making no claims that any of these are viable

All that being said, Hammer showed a bit low but it has great AoE and you get a puddle of Protection and Blast finisher. It’s not too far off from other weapons but I did have to supplement its damage with SoJ which added DPS and helped with Burning. A 10% increase would bring it close in line with other weapons.

Most other classes and builds I’ve tested sit between 3K and 3.5K DPS. A few situational builds can push 4K+. Subtracting Vulnerability stacks brings most right around 3.1K DPS.

I’m honestly not a fan of spreadsheets, haven’t met any I fully trust yet.

Don’t take my word for it though, go test and draw your own conclusions.

Blood~

There is obviously a personal agenda here. If the OP is denying it’s a high damage weapon and the damage potential of this weapon has been established and confirmed by the community for about … 1 year now?

I’m interested in hearing the REAL complaint.