Guild Wars 2

Hi all,
I’m trying to make a zerker hammer build for pve, the idea being that I’ll survive much longer if everything is cc’d (also taking advantage of depleting a break bar causing a long stun). I’m having trouble narrowing it down to just 3 trait lines though. So far I’m choosing between Stength, arms, dicipline and Berserker. They all seem to offer a lot:

Strength: burst mastery and weakness and bleed on cc

Arms: adrenaline generation, +50% crit v stunned and +5%dmg against bleeding foes

Dicipline: +20%hammer damage against ccd foes and fast hands

Zerker: Sundering leap and Head Butt. Two ways to fill the adrenaline bar completely, and head butt is just amazing. Not to mention quickness and fury in zerk mode.

My weapons would be Hammer/axe-shield. Which traitline should I drop?

Also- for the purposes of Merciless Hammer, does the knockdown on skill 5 happen before or after the damage?

You’ll need something for those critters whose breakbars are either locked or already staggered (the orange build-up bar). Both Hammer and Mace are tremendously slow for actually doing damage, and the bonuses versus stunned/CC’d targets has a very small window except for the stun that comes off a breakbar.

If you keep Discipline, I’d actually recommend the quickness-on-50% trait instead of Merciless Hammer. The boosts are less conditional, and it’s more useful during boss encounters, where you’ll see the Quickness proc consistently.

Fast Hands and Warrior’s Sprint are lovely, but not necessarily enough to keep Discipline. (Others would certainly disagree. :P)

Strength is useful if you intend to go condi-heavy, something possible with good timing and Berserker to back it up. I’ve heard that the Primal Burst for hammer isn’t so hot, though. The daze pulse could be useful for extra triggers of Distracting Strikes, since it will still tag Interrupts even if the enemy doesn’t lose its action.

It also looks like you’re going very confidently full-bore damage. The Defense line’s Cleansing Ire is standard faire for condi recovery and Adrenaline gain.

Arms feels the weakest out of the set you have listed, so consider dropping it. Lots of boss critters in PvE don’t take stun at all, so you wouldn’t be getting crit rate bonuses, and you can fetch adrenaline gain from just about anywhere else.

Hammer does some massive damage when combined correctly. Earth shaker+icebreaker for example. Head but is be only the best thing for breakfast. Also there’s a sweet little combo. Earth shaker>backbreaker > headbutt >berserk>primal burst>swap>shield bash>mace primal burst>wild blow>loop. Back to hammer. And start again

Yeah I dropped arms and it seems to work very well. Just testing in VB, it seems to work best either on bosses or regular or veteran mobs (I singlehandedly broke the Wivern Matriarch’s break bar and then was getting 17k crits on Hammer 2).

@emkelly, would you mind clarifying what you mean by icebreaker and breakfast? I’m guessing auto correct played some foul tricks on you