Guild Wars 2

i have heard ppl talk about them… “they are op” and bla bla..

so i went to mists to try one…
and OMG.. so fecking useless.
they have a little jump attack every 4 second (if traited).
and their 3:d attack takes YEARS to land on their autoatacking.
i could even go and make dinner.. eat some.. then come back just in time for my 3:d attack to land…

they have nothing on the traits that realy buff them. as compared to Greatswords wich have traits all over the place that increase its alrdy higher dmg and control.

So… what am i missing ??
i dont see why hammer guardians are so dangerous…

Hammer Guardian in WvW is so fun… Loads of control. (Ring Of Warding, Immobilize, Knockback)

Personally a favorite of mine is waiting for a guildie to try and stomp someone, using Banish and then stealing the stomp ;P

eldain stenlund.4306:

i have heard ppl talk about them… “they are op” and bla bla..

so i went to mists to try one…
and OMG.. so fecking useless.
they have a little jump attack every 4 second (if traited).
and their 3:d attack takes YEARS to land on their autoatacking.
i could even go and make dinner.. eat some.. then come back just in time for my 3:d attack to land…

they have nothing on the traits that realy buff them. as compared to Greatswords wich have traits all over the place that increase its alrdy higher dmg and control.

So… what am i missing ??
i dont see why hammer guardians are so dangerous…

Tbh its a l2p issue and i dont mean that in a condescending way, it is a l2p issue, the game play differs from the other weapons and some get it and some dont.

Other than that:
Out of the box you have 75% uptime on retal and protection
A weapon that is really strong without investing one single point, this you find bad, i dont.
The only true aoe weapon we have with 100% uptime on aoe
Its not dependant on cds for doing damage.

And a couple of other things but i think that is why some perform really well with hammers, like that the hammer untraited actually has higher dps the gs

Well for one: Hammers mighty blow is alot easier to land than greatsword whirling wrath. Also the cool-down is twice as short.

You can animation skip the 3rd attack if you think it’s too slow

So much wrong in this thread. Hammers do not deal more DPS than greatswords, traited or not. Animation skipping has never sped up the hammer’s auto attack chain, and since they fixed dodge cancelling in a recent update, animation skipping is no longer possible anyway.

The hammer is still useful. It’s an extremely defensive weapon with its control skills and high protection uptime.

In short. It is easy to lang the damage output of a hammer due to better CC skills then it is to land high damage out put from GS as it lacks the C skills the hammer does.

Your 10k dmage isn’t worth much if only 2k of it actually hits anyone.

It’s not a numbers game when you are actually fightingin WvW or PvP. It’s skill based. damage isn’t worth anything if you can’t land a good hit.

if you think skipping can’t be done still or has any uses, then you have nothing to worry about

Quarktastic.1027:

So much wrong in this thread. Hammers do not deal more DPS than greatswords, traited or not.

May i suggest that you go to the mist.

And:

1 take off your gear
2 reset your traits
3 Equip a purple hammer
4 turn off melee assist
5 target a medium golem
6 Start the stopwatch
7 Trigger active voj on the medium one while hitting the heavy (this eliminates VoJ which triggers a lot more on the hammer due to 6 hits in the chain.
8 Move so you wont hit the medium
9 Continuously hit the heavy
10 When VoJ is coming off cd strafe and get the medium one in range
11 Repeat 7-9
12 stop the clock on kill
13 write down the killtime
14 Switch to purple GS
15 Repeat

On Hammer you use 2 chains+MB
On sword you use all skills that you find be worth it for having the lowest possible killtime.

I literally done this hundreds of times with all our weapons and the result is always the same, hammer kills the golem faster. GS with traited 2h mastery do have faster killtimes, approx 5%.

It might be that the method is flawed but i dont know of any other test that is more reliable and accurate. Am i missing something?

Animation skipping is still possible, you can cut the last part of the animation in both the second step and the third. The fact is that you can also still abort the dodge roll so you roll in place. And no i wont tell you how, i will practice a bit more so i get a head start.

No Brutaly that sounds like the way you should test raw damage. And in that case, yes hammer should win based on how it’s set up.

Of course having traits that impact greatsword only will change how much damage they do, but then all weapons and traits weren’t created equally anyway as there’s stuff you can do with the hammer that you can’t with the greatsword.

They’re both very good weapons and I wish people would stop trying to make a case for one being objectively better than the other.

i went from hammer to gs build and its more usefull…AH shout gs build + staff works great now

Brutaly.6257:

May i suggest that you go to the mist.

I did. Here’s what I found.

Using the same trait build for both weapons. No traits used were specific to either weapon, virtue of justice was not activated, (which in your mind puts the hammer at an advantage) and no sigils were used.

Over an average of 4 kills per weapon:
*Hammer: 41.78 seconds
*Greatsword: 22.58 seconds

Care to explain?

Edit: I used to think the hammer dealt more damage too. But ever since I picked up a greatsword, I’m killing things far faster. And in my experience with using animation skipping, the animation does get sped up, but the skill itself takes the same amount of time to activate. I believe it to be a graphical glitch.

Damage aside, I love having a blast finisher on a 4 sec CD. In coordinated team play, especially WvW, where a combo field is available, hammer is absolutely amazing.

Sempiternal.2359:

Damage aside, I love having a blast finisher on a 4 sec CD. In coordinated team play, especially WvW, where a combo field is available, hammer is absolutely amazing.

I don’t know about WvW, but I do like blast finishers. I don’t find it very necessary in dungeons though. Especially when there aren’t many allies near me to benefit from the AoE goodness. That said, the greatsword has both a leap and two whirl finishers, which both have their own uses. For instance, the new fire aura is extremely awesome. The hammer’s AoE frost aura would be even more awesome, but I notice people rarely use frost fields.

eldain stenlund.4306:

i have heard ppl talk about them… “they are op” and bla bla..

so i went to mists to try one…
and OMG.. so fecking useless.
they have a little jump attack every 4 second (if traited).
and their 3:d attack takes YEARS to land on their autoatacking.
i could even go and make dinner.. eat some.. then come back just in time for my 3:d attack to land…

they have nothing on the traits that realy buff them. as compared to Greatswords wich have traits all over the place that increase its alrdy higher dmg and control.

So… what am i missing ??
i dont see why hammer guardians are so dangerous…

This is byfar the worst sh+t8 i’ve heard in a while. just because u prefer the gs doesnt mean the hammer isn’t a good weapon as any. I use scepter and Hammer. best combo i’ve ever used. they both have weaknesses, all weapons have weaknesses thats why u have the option of having secondaries. to compersate. that grab and pull with gs is awsome, that throwback with Hammer makes me kitten (feel like a boss).

Lets get back to gaming rather than listen to nonsense from attention seekers.

I don’t know how you get those results because autoattack with hammers has better dps than gs. Though, in real situation there are other factors influencing dps.

autoattack with hammer have best dps (with static target like dungeons….) but vs players gs>>hammer(>> means OWN bigtime)
staff>>scepter/focus

so best combo gs/staff (best mobility if you wanna escape zergs plus best dps vs players)

Quarktastic.1027:

Brutaly.6257:

May i suggest that you go to the mist.

I did. Here’s what I found.

Using the same trait build for both weapons. No traits used were specific to either weapon, virtue of justice was not activated, (which in your mind puts the hammer at an advantage) and no sigils were used.

Over an average of 4 kills per weapon:
*Hammer: 41.78 seconds
*Greatsword: 22.58 seconds

Care to explain?

Edit: I used to think the hammer dealt more damage too. But ever since I picked up a greatsword, I’m killing things far faster. And in my experience with using animation skipping, the animation does get sped up, but the skill itself takes the same amount of time to activate. I believe it to be a graphical glitch.

Considering it takes approx two minutes to kill a golem naked in the mist, with purple weapons, i can just say that you aint doing the same test.

Clear the traits, you cant use the same traits for those weapons, they benefit very different from different traits. My argument was btw untraited.

I havent said you do things faster with animationskipping. What i say is that you can cut some of the animation in the third or second step and stay stationary for a shorter period of time and thus reducing exposure to incoming damage.

Ragnarox.9601:

autoattack with hammer have best dps (with static target like dungeons….) but vs players gs>>hammer(>> means OWN bigtime)
staff>>scepter/focus

so best combo gs/staff (best mobility if you wanna escape zergs plus best dps vs players)

Hammer’s main strength is in keeping people pinned to a specific area. Land the immobilize 1st, hammer jump on them, spin the #5 ward circle, and just wail away on them. If you trait so that immobilizes give 3 stacks of vulnerability you’ll be mowing down everything in your path. The weapon may not feel as fast as greatsword, but at the end of the day when you’re hitting for 1-4k per swing on the hammer you’ll think differently. Also the symbol of protection it drops at the chain finisher is stupid handy to stay in long term melee fights.

Fun fact: highest hit using hammer #2 alone has been 8k in a single hit during wvw. I’ll take that any day of the week.

Hammer has more cc means more chances of actually hitting your target. In PVE yes gs is good because it’s fast and mobile but ever try WW in wvw? You are hitting crap.

this discussion as seemingly been in place since release or i don’t know but maybe even before that with bwe’s.. regardless.. i find both weapons to be great. i personally prefer 2hers over 1hers in this game (though i love sword scepter mace and the offhands as well). and i personally run with hammer AND gs. just because liek so many have mentioned hammer has a lot of CC, mb is too awesome and AoE triggers every 4 – 5 seconds is to die for if you play with people who know to drop fields when they see a hammer guard. GS is great for control, mobility and fast damage as well. each weapon works well against certain situations and enemies. no point picking one over the other. if OP doesn’t like hammer, that’s fine with them. why they had to come here to cry about it, i am impartial towards. just play with what you enjoy the most.

akamon.2769:

this discussion as seemingly been in place since release or i don’t know but maybe even before that with bwe’s.. regardless.. i find both weapons to be great. i personally prefer 2hers over 1hers in this game (though i love sword scepter mace and the offhands as well). and i personally run with hammer AND gs. just because liek so many have mentioned hammer has a lot of CC, mb is too awesome and AoE triggers every 4 – 5 seconds is to die for if you play with people who know to drop fields when they see a hammer guard. GS is great for control, mobility and fast damage as well. each weapon works well against certain situations and enemies. no point picking one over the other. if OP doesn’t like hammer, that’s fine with them. why they had to come here to cry about it, i am impartial towards. just play with what you enjoy the most.

This here^ x1000.

Each weapon is better than the other in certain situations, and everyone has their view on things. If you don’t like it don’t use it, if you can’t decide then use them all. I carry mace/shield & hammer with GS and staff in the bag to switch out when out of combat, depending on what is going on.

Brutaly.6257:

Considering it takes approx two minutes to kill a golem naked in the mist, with purple weapons, i can just say that you aint doing the same test.

Clear the traits, you cant use the same traits for those weapons, they benefit very different from different traits. My argument was btw untraited.

I used the same trait and gear setup that I use in pve. Why didn’t I do it naked with no traits? Because I don’t play pve naked with no traits. And yes, the same traits can be used with both weapons. I use both weapons with the same build, often swapping between them for the same content.

Brutaly.6257:

I havent said you do things faster with animationskipping. What i say is that you can cut some of the animation in the third or second step and stay stationary for a shorter period of time and thus reducing exposure to incoming damage.

Every hit of the hammer’s auto attack chain can be cast while moving, so I’m not sure what you mean by this.

@Quark – re: the hammer chain #2 and #3 hits, i think he meant between the 2nd and 3rd hammer hit, you’re exposed to being hit and thus taking damage, even though you’re moving. with the animation skipping, you’re effectively shortening the time you’re being exposed to damage while connecting the last hit. key is the time being exposed to damage.

so you’re still doing the same hits in more or less the same amount of time (as opposed to a full dodge in between 2nd and 3rd hit?) while being exposed less. and if you have 25 in honor, i guess you get extra dmg in as well.