Guild Wars 2

I wanted to get some opinions because ive been debating about what I want to use for my primary melee weapon on my zerker specced guard. Ive used both greatsword and hammer and while i LOVE the hammer and all it represents, I feel that the skills and rate of attack are just far to weak to be an effective melee weapon.

I was wondering what everyones opinion was on the hammer skills vs the greatsword skills. I find that the hammer being so slow is not well accommodated with its skillset. Skills 4 and 5 on the standard keybinds (banish and ring of warding) are completely useless i feel on this particular weapon. Banish tends to launch your foe into another group causing you to aggro in situations where you do not want to, and ring of warding….well it really serves no purpose on a melee weapon, because you need to be up close, ive really found no situation where it has been useful.

You would think that the hammer would have more AOE or heavy damage or crit based skills given what it represents like some sort of ground quake or cone type AOE explosive smash or something, but it doesnt have any of that.

Spawne.3128:

I wanted to get some opinions because ive been debating about what I want to use for my primary melee weapon on my zerker specced guard. Ive used both greatsword and hammer and while i LOVE the hammer and all it represents, I feel that the skills and rate of attack are just far to weak to be an effective melee weapon.

I was wondering what everyones opinion was on the hammer skills vs the greatsword skills. I find that the hammer being so slow is not well accommodated with its skillset. Skills 4 and 5 on the standard keybinds (banish and ring of warding) are completely useless i feel on this particular weapon. Banish tends to launch your foe into another group causing you to aggro in situations where you do not want to, and ring of warding….well it really serves no purpose on a melee weapon, because you need to be up close, ive really found no situation where it has been useful.

You would think that the hammer would have more AOE or heavy damage or crit based skills given what it represents like some sort of ground quake or cone type AOE explosive smash or something, but it doesnt have any of that.

I’m assuming you are talking about PvE right? Ring of warding’s function works well for enclosing mobs and keeping them close to you and away from other party members, or keeping mobs away from you if you need to recover.

Banish requires positioning and awareness of your surroundings but can be nice to interrupt attacks. And it’s also fun punting enemies around inside a Ring of Warding bubble with Banish

Hammer doesn’t lack in AoE. It’s auto-attack is a front cleaving attack chain that ends in an AoE symbol which does nice damage and dishes out protection. If you trait for it, that symbol can also stack vulnerabilities on the mob too so they get hurt more while you get hurt less through protection. Mighty Blow is completely AoE, is a blast finisher, and crits for very good damage.

After playing Warrior and their hammer, I found how Anet decided to balance the two.

Warrior hammers are more about stun and a little bit higher damage. A Guardian’s hammer is more about area control and providing protection. Since you get fields with a Guardian, the damage and casting are lower and longer. That’s not to say the damage is THAT low because you can put out great damage if you want to.

The Guardian hammer is just too slow. Its really fun to use but greatsword + staff is just too good for zerging or commanding. When I roam though, I drop the staff for sword + focus. I don’t ever really use a torch, shield, or scepter.

Hammer, for me, is for setting myself up. So things like Judge’s whilst activating Ring of Warding setting yourself up for Whirling Wrath and Symbol of Wrath or Banish into Zealot’s embrace to set yourself up for a Leap of Faith into Whirling Wrath or several other pieces of craziness.

I do wish the ring of warding was either slightly larger or able to be used while moving though.

Hammer is a beautiful weapon. Yes, the attack speed is slow, but it deals good damage and brings the utility of AoE protection. Having the bulk of the damage as well as a combo field linked to your auto attack makes you have to pay attention to it, which is a nice change from so many weapons where you just mindlessly let your auto attack run.

Having a short cd blast finisher is also tremendously useful, especially if you have a staff ele in your group.

Yes, Banish is really something best suited for PvP and Ring of Warding is pretty situational, but the mechanics of the auto attack and Mighty Blow alone require more thinking than the GS. The GS is a pretty straight forward weapon that mostly encourages you to spam your weapon cooldowns as soon as they come up (except maybe if you want some condi cleanse from a whirl in your light field).

Don’t get me wrong, the GS is a great weapon, but it’s a bit more 1-dimensional and is generally best as an offset swap weapon to swap to for burst. Once your GS skills are on CD, the auto attack is so weak, that there’s little reason to keep using it if you have another weapon to swap to.

Personally, unless I need a ranged attack, I generally use Hammer as my primary weapon and GS as a swap. The GS is nice for grouping mobs with the #5 ability as well as for some AoE burst, but in most situations, the steady damage of the hammer along with the AoE protection and blast finishers are more useful.

They both serve their purposes well enough when used correctly. There is great cc on both. Pulls, warding, immobilize, knockback. Really great stuff here.

Let me also add that Mighty Blow on guardian hammer more than makes up for the slow auto attacks and long cd cc skills. I mean, who doesn’t appreciate 4k-6k crits every 5 or 4 seconds. Truely a beast in the right hands.

For me without elaborating too much hammer is my most used weapon across the span of pve/pvp types of play, playing heavily 99% guardian since beta, however my vast majority of play is small group WvW, where I find it essential to my style.

Guardian hammer is by a good bit my favorite weapon in the game, all abilities it has, I think people struggling with it should be patient with its autoattack and dodge in it and use stability/well timed dodges to stay on an enemy, that’s when it really shines. In pvp its a must to get good at using the immobilize with focus fire.