Guild Wars 2

Good Afternoon,

I was lucky and got an Entropy as a drop and would really like to find a viable PVE hammer build for it. The goal is to maximize the dps potential of the hammer. i mostly run dungeons with my warrior and some fractals. With fractals I would change my build and weapons for the situation, so let’s focus on dungeons. Now I know the bosses will have defiant and hammer is good to strip defiant, but I still think the vulnerability and stuns it offers is nice.

Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAS8XjcOJvxO2OMRCAkCt4y84HiK6UQpUhyA

Armor:
Berserker’s or Valkyrie

Runes:
Ruby Orbs (cheaper) or Strength/Scholar (more expensive)

Thoughts? (Please be kind)

http://www.rottenecards.com/ecards/Rottenecards_54812838_x9ft23rrhp.png

I love this build’s name XD

So it seems like you wanna be the guy that locks the enemy down with CC. This is a solid path, but you’ve made a couple of weird choices for this kind of build. The first one that I think is odd is the trait Unsuspecting Foe. With your setup you only have a Stun on the Hammer’s F1 so that trait won’t be doing any work for you a lot of the time. If your second weapon set were Mace/Shield this trait would make more sense because they both have stuns.

You mention Vulnerability, but the hammer doesn’t actually have any Vulnerability skills. Did you mean Weakness? Because Weakness is a pretty good condition that you could have even more access to if you took the Mace (this would synergize with Cull the Weak as well). Alternately, if you do want to run Vulnerability I’d suggest using main hand Axe for your secondary weapon and using Rending Strikes (assuming you can achieve at least 50% crit chance).

If you’re going Berserker’s you’ll be a bit squishy, but with enough interrupts and proper maneuvering you should be alright.

Oh god, I just looked at the pic you linked at the bottom! XD

So yeah, I dunno. Play around with some stuff, see what suits you.

My apologies, Weakness.

I run with Valk armor so I don’t have to worry about being hit. I also didn’t know where to put those last 10 points so I dumped them in Arms to gain some precision. You are correct with the alternative weapon set, and I should have at least shield equipped (first time using a calculator).

Edited Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAS8XjcOJvxO2OMxBAkCt4y84HiKKpoMyA

Ken DeBoer.9268:

Now I know the bosses will have defiant and hammer is good to strip defiant, but I still think the vulnerability and stuns it offers is nice.

Why would anybody even consider a Hammer warrior to do this. An X/P Thief would do this and practically everything much better than a Warrior.

There’s a reason Hammers are not, and should not, be used in a PvE situation.

Because not everyone wants to be a Thief and there is, theoretically, no single ‘best’ anything in this game.

I would look at changing a couple of things in that build to get a bit better synergy.

I disagree with Faranox. Unsuspecting Foe is pretty much stapled to a hammer warriors build. The reason for this is that with this trait you can get very close to a 100% crit chance on your Earthshaker, which is why you can stack up on Valkyrie & Cavalier gear, for the % crit bonus damage.

Berserker’s Power is a bit of a waste of a trait line to shoot for because your main hammer damage is going to come from popping that earthshaker as often as possible meaning you are not going to be at max adrenaline for long.

Following on from this I would move the trait points into Discipline for Burst Mastery so you can Earthshaker as much as possible. If you want to run axe/sword in your other set you can take Sharpened Axes. This will mean your main damage rotation will be, Eathshaker, Weapon Swap, Whirling Axe (refil adrenaline), Weapon Swap, Earth Shaker.

Full Berserker’s gear is not necessary in the least. Cavaliers / Valkyrie and maybe one or two Berserkers armour pieces will do the job fine. The reason for this is that FGJ and Signet of Rage will give you perma fury. You can easily get away with running 20-30% crit chance with a couple of berserker items and be a ton more survivable.

Remember that quite a lot of elite mobs in PvE will be immune to your knockdowns and stuns, so you might be relying on your swords / axe as your main weapon set vs these enemies.

I’m currently running the below which is fairing me pretty well in the current PvE events, Earthshaker the stuff you can and swap to Greatsword to build might with 100 blades. Might be something to think about.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJASRjkOJvFPuQMxBAkiv46oQJmUPezu4A-j0CBYLAYMQ0yAUGQJPRM9ZIrVXBp8KatBhVbDTFjIqGA-w

I think Hammer is weak for high-end PvE.

Most of the CC is really weak. The only really useful one is pulling enemies together which you can’t do with Hammer (knockback is counterproductive). Also one single-target skill. Bosses have Defiant which means little to no reason to use CC. Even if you interrupt something they will just repeat it within few seconds (which you can’t get interrupt again because of Defiant). There are some exceptions but then simple Tremor from Mace off-hand is sufficient.

Defensive options are also bit lackluster because Weakness is unreliable. Dangerous enemies are still dangerous because they will either hit like a truck or a like a half-truck. Evading/blocking allows to mitigate much more damage (Greatsword has built-in evade and Axe main-hand can get defensive off-hand).

And your damage will be lacking.

I have used it few times when soloing elite groups on dungeons to keep them CCed. But with a full group they aren’t that dangerous.