Guild Wars 2

The aspect of playing with the hammer that most people seem least thrilled about is the slow casting time of the 3rd skill in the auto-attack chain. The hammer is essentially a very useful and powerful weapon in my opinion, but it’s use is marred by the clunky, awkward feel of this skill in it’s current position. The skill’s usefulness is undeniable, it is the placement of it in the auto-attack chain that is questionable.

I propose simply separating Symbol of Protection from the auto-attack chain and assigning it to the number 2 skill slot, and giving it a short (~5 second) cooldown. Mighty blow, the current number 2 skill, would become the final attack in the auto-attack chain. This would give us more strategic control over when we fire off the symbol of protection, in addition to smoothing out the hammer’s attacks. It might be necessary to remove the leap mechanic from mighty blow in order for this to function properly.

Change the third skill into a pull/root chain skill.

Change Circle of warding into ground targeting 1200 range like you did Line of Warding in beta for staff which suffered the same issue here!!!

And if you go with the OP’s idea to move #2 skill to the #1 chain, than make it so the AoE blast grants some kind of positive effect for defensive builds as well.

Also make symbol of protection more interesting. Something like both protection as well as endurance regen.

I propose simply separating Symbol of Protection from the auto-attack chain and assigning it to the number 2 skill slot, and giving it a short (~5 second) cooldown. Mighty blow, the current number 2 skill, would become the final attack in the auto-attack chain. This would give us more strategic control over when we fire off the symbol of protection, in addition to smoothing out the hammer’s attacks.

Currently Hammer skill #2 is a Blast finisher, if you remove this the Hammer will lose A LOT of it’s current attractiveness (at least for Dungeons, dunno about PvP).
If you add that Blast finisher to the final attack of skill #1 it cannot be used strategically at all anymore, and would properly be so strong that it needed an even longer attack animation than the current final attack.

Sorry, your suggestion is just horrible.

Our symbols don’t really need any more love than they already do; you can make them deal vulnerability, heal, and by lasting longer you can stack helpful boons. Giving the hammer symbol an additional boon wouldn’t help its overall situation, and might actually hurt balance by implying all the devs need to do to balance our class is to add more toys to symbols. That pigeon-holes builds, imo, like sword/torch.

Please don’t take away the leap from Mighty Blow, for all that is good and holy. It acts the same as our greatsword’s leap, which means if you jump from a field, you apply the boon when you land. You don’t need to jump into a field, as before. This makes us significantly more maneuverable than before, and even if it is a small radius jump, the hammer’s innate AoE makes for a slightly larger effective damage range. Reverting this back to norm would hamper hammer efficacy, and again, doesn’t nail down the root cause of people’s moaning.

Some people bemoan the speed on the first chain. This is the easiest fix, without applying anything fancy: raise the attack speed by x amount, and lower base damage by a sufficient amount to make overall dps the same. The hammer is not, imo, meant to go toe-to-toe with our swords with damage, but it can deal a good amount while tanking and handing out boons like candy on Halloween. It’s our frontline support weapon, so giving us slightly faster chain attack speed would allow us to do just that. Easy fix, no skills changed.

Others, like myself, don’t appreciate how niche the #3 and #5 skills are. #4 is fine as an interrupt and as a tool for limitless hilarity in WvW. So, it’s really buff one or the other, as buffing both would most likely make it imbalanced compared to the staff (which needs some loving as well, tho). Again, think of the hammer as a hybrid of the staff and greatsword, so it shouldn’t necessarily do both of their jobs as well. Which brings me to the #5 skill.

Glacial Heart is not very good, and I’m inclined to believe the devs tossed it in as a placeholder while they work on something else for a later patch. Instead of altering our hammer’s critical, why not have it alter Ring of Warding? Make it give the ring a passive freeze effect that is applied for 1-2s each second a person is inside of it. Furthermore, do it for wards and Sanctuary/Shield of Absorption. This means that, even if a person has stability and crosses the threshold, they are still at a disadvantage to those inside. It means that our skills are not suddenly rendered moot by another skill, and still serve a purpose. By constantly applying freeze, it counters a quick condition remover, and enhances the CC ability of these skills.

Changing how our wards, and other CCs, work through passives is a key way to get people to try weapons and combinations they would otherwise shun. Hence, why I’m more concerned with getting the rest of hammer, and skills of other weapons, up to par with the efficacy of the greatsword’s skills. I think we can all agree that the greatsword skills work in pretty much every situation…I think its time to ensure that very trait to all of our weapons.

It’s basically asking for a MASSIVE change for everyone currently using the weapon, just to make it more appealing for people who don’t.

“The skill’s usefulness is undeniable” don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Currently Hammer skill #2 is a Blast finisher, if you remove this the Hammer will lose A LOT of it’s current attractiveness (at least for Dungeons, dunno about PvP).
If you add that Blast finisher to the final attack of skill #1 it cannot be used strategically at all anymore, and would properly be so strong that it needed an even longer attack animation than the current final attack.
Sorry, your suggestion is just horrible.

I see your point regarding mighty blow, but do you agree that the auto-attack needs work? Do you have any suggestions?

i actually love the change they made for might blow.
though with most people, the third auto-attack could use some polishing. right now as it stands (only lvl 50+-ish) i am okay with how it works but would love to see some changes to it.

i love having the symbol though! and i’m using larger symbols and working towards symbols lasting longer as well. one or a few things can be done:

- keep current speed/timing, but maybe grant higher dmg, or higher crit chance on the last blow or have the symbol dropped have an added effect? but careful to not make this op. the slow attack (and chance of being interupted) sort of balances this out

- shorten the time between 2nd and 3rd attack, but like someone mentioned, have a lower dmg output on the last hit of some sort.

if that’s the case though, i’d rather them just upgrade dmg or make a change to the symbol on the last hit…

Knighthonor.4061:

Change the third skill into a pull/root chain skill.

Change Circle of warding into ground targeting 1200 range like you did Line of Warding in beta for staff which suffered the same issue here!!!

And if you go with the OP’s idea to move #2 skill to the #1 chain, than make it so the AoE blast grants some kind of positive effect for defensive builds as well.

Also make symbol of protection more interesting. Something like both protection as well as endurance regen.

This ^
except;

1# skill shouldn’t be moved to #2, and #2 shouldn’t be moved to #1, instead;

1# skill 3rd swing should have a faster cast time, and the symbol it generates should have a shorter duration to reflect how fast you will be applying a new symbol ( so that you wont have the symbol overlapping itself )

2# skill should stay as it is right now, the short leap is a good enough utility, with out making it have everything better then the greatsword.

3# this should immobilize and then pull your target to you, this is what makes the hammer different then the greatsword, GS has a leap, we have a pull.

4# this ability is awesome, don’t touch it.

5# this ability needs to be made ground targeted like the staff line of warding to be more useful, other then that don’t touch it.

What the hell is it with these “simple” hammer suggests that keep popping up. The hammer doesn’t need any kitten changes. The weapons is extremely fun since they’ve added a leap to Smite. It’s supposed to be slow and powerful. Leave it be already.

Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that they remove the hammer’s ability to perform one of it’s 2 Area Retaliation combos? The only thing that makes retaliation builds viable? Have you given this ANY thought before starting your thread? 0/10 apply yourself

I see your point regarding mighty blow, but do you agree that the auto-attack needs work? Do you have any suggestions?

Changing the auto attack isn’t easy because you have to keep the synergy with itself, Writ of Persistence (longer Symbols) and skill #2 in mind.
If I’m informed correctly the first two attacks take 0.7 seconds to execute and the last one 1.4 seconds, so it takes 2.8 seconds to execute the entire chain. Symbol of Protection lasts 2 seconds without and 3 seconds with the trait, so it’s active a little more than 70% respectively 100%.
If you reduce the length of the chain you would also have to reduce the length of the symbol; afaik effects like a symbol are always rounded to the nearest integer, so the only options are to last it 1 respectively 2 seconds. If we now reduce the time of the chain to 2.1 seconds (which is afaik the length of each other chain) the Symbol of Protection would be active for less than 50% respectively 100%, making it overall weaker.
Another thing to keep in mind is the timing with skill #2; you don’t want to have skill #2 ready when you’re just swinging your hammer the second time or so.

Until now I haven’t seen or think up a solution for all above mentioned synergies and restrains that is better than the current solution.