Guild Wars 2

I find this to be pretty sad.

Warrior Hammer:
1st Attack
Dmg: 746
Range: 130

2nd Attack
Dmg: 746
Range: 130

3rd Attack
Dmg: 995
Range: 130
-Final attack does no special abilities / no combo finisher.

Ele Hammer:

1st Attack
Dmg: 820
Range: 150

2nd Attack
Dmg: 820
Range: 150

3rd Attack
Dmg: 1342
Range: 150
-Blinds enemies that are hit by the attack
-Is a combo finisher (blast)

TLDR:
Why is an Ele utility better than a primary Warrior weapon?
-Ele Deals more Damage.
-Ele brings more utility (AoE stun field?!, AoE lightning storm?!).
-Ele has a longer range.
-Ele has a combo finisher and special boon on the third swing.

I’m not saying Ele’s should even use this, I’m saying that the Warrior hammer is just worse.

Eles need to trait for 25 charges and are MUCH more squishy than Warriors.

They also lack Earthshaker, For Great Justice, Signet of Rage, and so on.

That’s true, but I’m just talking weapon to weapon.

And saying Ele’s are squishy is backwards in tPvP.

Because it stays for 25 hits and takes up both a utility slot and all weapon skills?

Consider that at 25 hits, for a slow weapon. Thats a decent amount of time. Also that there are two of them (one in your hand, one on the ground).

Then bring in the fact that Ele’s already get 25 skills, this adds another 5.

The point I’m trying to get across is that a weapon with similar attacks and animations, Warrior’s are out classed and it’s just a utility.

While I can accept the damage difference, I can’t accept the lack of a blast finisher or an ability attached to the end of the third swing. It’s inconsistent.

Yep Hammer does need a buff. If it didn’t get hard countered by blind it would be viable.

I’d say you’re comparing apples and oranges here.

That being said, the hammers auto1 is a bit bland. Sword bleeds, Gun bleeds, Greatsword stacks vulnerable, Mace adds weakness. Longbow is bland but a two-shot 20% finisher, and heck, even the Axe at least multi-attacks.

Some suggestions for the Hammer’s 3rd chain?
Blast finisher 20%, and maybe chill for 1 second? Or Weakness for 2 seconds?

Weakness makes the most sense to me.

I really like the idea in this thread about making the auto-attack of hammer a blast finisher. It would grant synergy with the longbow.

Hammer’s auto-attack is weak/boring compared to a warrior’s other weapons, that’s true. But an elementalist has to give up a lot to make a “Hammer Time” build, namely:

- Survivability by traiting to get those extra 10 swings
- Usefulness that would be gained by other traits when the hammer is down
- Stats of base weapon (Weapon power, stat boosts, sigil effects) are removed for mild boosts in precision and crit damage on a 969 (@lvl 80) base power weapon.
- Teammates run off with the conjured weapons.

On the other hand, all the other elementalist’s conjured weapons are really bad. Compare a longbow to a frost bow for a chuckle.

Kain Francois.4328:

I really like the idea in this thread about making the auto-attack of hammer a blast finisher. It would grant synergy with the longbow.

The thing is, putting blast as a finisher on the last attack just wouldn’t solve the major problems of being a Hammer. Trading blows and getting blind spammed is a big issue with Hammer.

Who can spam blind anyway? Thief with Cloaked in Shadows and Necro in his Plague form. I can’t think of anyone else who can dish out blinds regularly.

The first one is a kitten to deal with, the second one is a complete melee shutdown for any build.

Eles give up EVERYTHING to use any conjures. Our class mechanic is of Whole class, and we lose all our abilities when we get that hammer, we need it to at least be worth something, for us to lose everything.

Warriors damage is insane, and probably now the highest in the game, god forbid a class comes close by sacrificing everything. We have to trait to get the 25 charges other wise the conjures are not the best.

@Edel
Just shows, you never fight good players. But since you asked so nicely then Engi’s, Ele’s, Thieves can time blind 24/7 just so Hammer can’t do jack.

Why are you even comparing tooltips of Autoattacks?

You can not compare these without comparing the full picture.

And the full picture is – Warrior has much better scaling with Power. Warrior hits harder with Hammer than Ele when both use Soldier’s Amulet.

Ele also has to give up on 20 weapon skills and 1 utility skill to access Conjured Weapon. This is why you do not see much Conjurer Eles around – Conjured weapons are just too weak for the price you pay for them. 2 out of 5 Conjured Weapons are not used EVER. One was used in very special case – Frostbow for Treb showering on Kyhlo. The other two were used rarely – Lightning Hammer for occasional knockback / daze and Conjured Greatsword for some mobility. All these were used only by support Eles who could afford giving up utility or elite slot for that option.

Look, even ANet agreed Conjures suck and handed them a small buff in recent patch. They still suck though and no amount of passive stat increases will improve it, short of truly extreme ones.

Because there is a major problem with conjures – they conflict with Attunements. You can’t access all your box of trick while you wield Conjured Weapon. Thus, they will have very niche and limited uses forever.

Umm, the ele that can use that weapon is so squishy, they wouldn’t last long enough to use it.

If they’re built as a “bunker” it doesn’t do that much damage.

IF you want to stop being squishy, quit putting all into power stats.
If every class spec to be tough, bunker elementalists wouldn’t do anything. Their damage is extremely weak.

did you seriously compare a different classes completely different weapon to a conjure? i don’t think you realize what elementalists give up to use that.

lightning hammer is:

- limited by 15 charges (or 25 if you want to waste a major trait slot)
- removes the ability to swap attunements
- removes utility, healing and elite skills
- conjured weapons can’t use sigil and have no base stats (which means you lose power/toughness/vitality for using it), but, the base stats they added recently.

you’re comparing apples and oranges. neither weapons are anywhere near similar.

I’m sorry, have a 3 second cast for your hammer every time you use it, that only lasts 25 charges and 60s if you don’t use those charges, and then need to recast it everytime that runs out. Then run around in cloth armor without the ability to switch out of that weapon unless you also want to recast it.
Are the conjure weapons powerful? Yes. On purpose. Because it’s a PAIN IN THE kitten to use them. But if you’re so miffed that their hammer’s strong, go run around with an ele and just pick up their spare when they summon it. See how that goes, if you can find a single ele that actually uses them. There’s a reason they don’t.

This is amazing.

An ele conjuring a hammer, with the intent to use it, locks themselves in multiple ways. First, they have to actually be traited and geared for survivability. Secondly, they can’t mist form or tornado (lol) without losing their hammer. Third, they completely lock themselves off from their current normal weapon skills. Fourth, as soon as they drop the hammer they’re holding in any way, it will disappear. Fifth, in order to have 25 attacks out of it, you have to sacrifice a major trait for it (otherwise its fifteen). Sixth, you have to use a utility slot for it, meaning you lose either a cantrip (of which multiple are pretty much always good to have so you don’t get squished unless you’re an aura build), or some other probably infinitely more useful utility.

This is coming from a player who started out wih an 80 warrior and used hammer for the longest time, before making an 80 thief, followed by an 80 ele. With all the things you have to do to make conjures useful, they kitten better well be at less somewhat powerful. The majority of the ele player base already considers conjures to be jokes for anything serious other than some really niche cases. I don’t see you talking about how hammer get great weakness uptime or cripple or AoE knockback or a leap/stun combo. Wow, look at what the warrior hammer can dO that ele hammers can’t!

i think its really stupid to compare damages f warrior from hammers to ele hammers…

of course they have do to more damage it compensates for their squishiness, next thing you know they’d be asking that warrior must use staff -_-"

You answered your own question: because it takes up a utility skill. Besides, if you look at the rest of the skills, they aren’t very strong damage wise. Also, one of the incentives for conjure weapons is supposed to be allies being able to use them. If regular hammers were stronger, there’d be no point in that.

In short, it takes utility skill, only lasts 15 charges or 60sec and replaces your primary weapon skills. So of course it should be stronger than the primary weapon skills it’s replacing.

The post was supposed to be more focused on the utility the hammer brings for Ele vs. Warrior despite having basically the same attacks and comparable damage.

In a 1 to 1 comparison, the Ele Hammer brings more to the table.

Now how a person builds / traits etc. themselves ofcourse will alter a persons perception of a weapon. If I trait for Defense/Vit then even a GS will only tickle someone.

Defektive.7283:

The post was supposed to be more focused on the utility the hammer brings for Ele vs. Warrior despite having basically the same attacks and comparable damage.

In a 1 to 1 comparison, the Ele Hammer brings more to the table.

Now how a person builds / traits etc. themselves ofcourse will alter a persons perception of a weapon. If I trait for Defense/Vit then even a GS will only tickle someone.

Once again, ele hammer is a utility skill. You’re asking why your auto attack isn’t as strong/useful as a utility skill…

What I got from the post is a very simple premise:
Warrior hammer attack should have a combo blast finisher on the 3rd attack of the chain. It makes sense, especially since the 3rd hit is supposed to be a small aoe.

Navzar.2938:

Once again, ele hammer is a utility skill. You’re asking why your auto attack isn’t as strong/useful as a utility skill…

See above. His post’s point is valid when you consider the inconsistency of the hammer primary attack lacking an “effect” while every other weapon has one, including a summoned weapon from an ele utility.

Braxxus.2904:

What I got from the post is a very simple premise:
Warrior hammer attack should have a combo blast finisher on the 3rd attack of the chain. It makes sense, especially since the 3rd hit is supposed to be a small aoe.

Thank you for understanding what I’m trying to point out.

Primary lackluster attack is outdone by a utility weapon that ele’s don’t even consider good, since it provides more while doing the same.

Lightning hammer is actually considered one of the best conjures (excluding elite of course). The reason it isn’t considered overly strong by eles is because they can’t really use it well themselves since they’re inherently kind of squishy and it takes away their attunements. Another profession could use their conjures better than they could (perhaps not any more thanks to the buff though).

I think I understand your point of hammer auto not having any secondary effect like most other weapons, but comparing it to an ele utility isn’t really the best example. A utility weapon is supposed to outdo a primary weapon, or else it wouldn’t have any purpose.

edit: Oh and lightning storm isn’t really much utility, though its an aoe, its really weak so its not worth using.

God forbid that there’s even a possibility that someone has anything better than a warrior, am I right? =P

Seriously though, I see what you’re trying to get at Defektive so for the sake of argument, lets pretend that ele hammer was a base weapon skill set and do a 1 to 1 comparison.

With Warrior hammer you have:

• An AoE stun and blast finisher on a 10 second CD (You can easily use this on CD or close to)
• A Heavy single target w/weakness on 12 second CD
• An AoE moderate damage w/ cripple on 12 sec CD
• An AoE Knockback whirl finisher with good damage on 20 sec CD
• And a single target heavy hit with 2sec knockdown on 30sec CD

Ele hammer gets:

• A slightly more damaging attack chain with a blast and blind on third hit.
• A leap attack with moderate damage on 6 second CD
• A low damage single target launch on 18 seconds CD
• A self centric AoE Storm with low damage and the potential not not even hit anything in it’s range on a 20 second CD
• An AoE stun field with 2 sec stun on 25 sec CD

—Comparing 1 to 1—

• Attack Chains: Yeah the elementalist’s is better. Does a bit more damage and blinds every 3rd hit with a blast finisher.
  Advantage : Elementalist.
• The warrior can stun everything in a target area every 10 seconds for at least 1 second, more for a stronger effect. The the ele can only do it every 25 and for 2 seconds and that’s self centered and requires the enemy to cross of field boarders. Ele does half the warrior’s damage neither is stellar.
  Advantage: Warrior
• The warrior can knock everything back every 20 seconds and do a whirl finisher on top of it, the ele can knock 1 thing back every 18 seconds for about a quarter of the warrior’s damage.
  Advantage: Warrior
• The warrior can cripple everything in front of it every 12 seconds… the ele can MAYBE damage something around it IF (big if) something actually gets hit, it does half the damage to each target (maybe) hit compared to anything hit within the warriors large attack cone. (giggity)
  Advantage: HAH! Warrior no question
• The warrior can inflict weakness and good damage on a single target ever 12 seconds, an elementalist can leap and hit something for a bit more than half the warrior’s damage every 6 seconds.
  Advantage: Close, but I’m giving it to the elementalist because it’s an extra finisher to be used rapidly.
• And finally the warrior gets a solid hit every 30 seconds w/ 2 second knockdown, to which the elementalist has nothing really to compare it to because warrior gets an extra skill since their class mechanic isn’t invalidated by holding a hammer.

So, Yeah the ele’s hammer has the potential for some rapid fire blasts but I don’t think that even comes close to overshadowing what the warrior’s hammer can bring into a fight with it’s sheer ability to shut down and knock around an opponent. (Seriously this was fun enough to make me go hammer on my warrior, it’s like playing whack-a-mole with someone’s face!)

BUT NOW, lets remember that the elementalist’s hammer is NOT actually a base weapon set, but a utility skill on a 1 minute CD owned by a class without weapon swaps, or melee supporting utilities, and the survivability of an anemic swimming in razor blades without the right traits and skills they won’t have access to while holding the hammer. Add in the lost utility slot, stats, sigils, and pile on the limited uses which combined with cooldowns imposes a hard limit on how many times you’ll actually see the longer CD moves used. Realistically the hammer will only be in the eles hand for between 10 and 16 seconds of combat depending on traits. After which it MAY be repeated if someone hasn’t run off with the other hammer (fat bloody chance) but the longer cooldowns are still shared.

In the end, during the hammer period, yes, The elementalist can blast rapidly but it’s in a very short and limiting window, and then must sit and wait for the cooldown on the utility to repeat, whereas thanks to the hammer being a base weapon, warrior can do a blast every 10 seconds with a whirl every 20, on top of their already superior ability to shut an enemy down, and further ability to weapon swap and gain access to further skills and finishers, something the elementalist cannot do for the duration of the conjure without losing it.

EDIT: added bullet points.

While I appreciate your in-depth analysis it seems that you have overlooked some fundamental issues with a number of the Warrior Hammer skills. There’s simply not enough functionality behind the brute force approach that is currently in the game.

The post was directed at showing how comparable weapons/skills that fill the same void, one can have far more interesting passive abilities that I as a PvPer would take anytime over the current Warrior ones.

An AoE Blind on the third attack is a huge+.

The AoE stun field is amazing, it forces a player to pop stability, or stay inside the circle, or to avoid the circle all together – where as the Warrior one can just be dodged.

Maybe it’s different strokes for different folks but I see the utility that the Ele Hammer brings to the table as something far more impressive than the Warriors.

A lot of people see warriors as these untouched awesome machines of doom that can burst down players in moments.

As a Warrior play from day 1 I can tell you, the fact that we really don’t have any other build available to us to compete with at the same level as the standard GC is extremely disheartening.

It’s like your forced into a style only for the sake of being relevant without anywhere else to really go. A lot of fellow Warriors are looking to the devs for a comprise – reduce our damage but give us more interesting mechanics that will diversify our gameplay.

I am only going to say this once, and once only.

have you tried playing an ele, and if you have you would know that the utility skill has charges, bugs, wrong tooltips etc.

and on-top of that, Conjuring a weapon decreases our stats thus decreasing our DPS.

What your basically asking for is to get eles nerfed yet again, and warriors buffed.

Warriors have nothing to complain about IMO, we “Lower” Classes seem to get overlooked and nerfed for easy kills in PvP…..

It makes no sense to me.

No, I’m not asking for Eles to be nerfed. I’m saying nerf Warrior damage but give us interesting attacks like Ele’s.

Warriors need more complexity – looking at how comparable attacks get benefits is the first step to seeing the gap in weapon attack complexity.

Well the whole thing with the blind is that’s the only thing keeping the ele alive in melee since elementalists are made of tissue paper and faberge eggs, and rely on the skills the conjure locks out to live. If it wasn’t there conjuring the hammer would be guarenteed suicide. It’s there to compensate for the imposed weakness.

As for the stun field, it’s not bad, but I find the hammer burst to be more effective. Yeah you can dodge it, but it’s quick enough that most people won’t. The static field is just as easily avoidable, most folks walk around it and if you trap someone in it they’re probably smart enough to pin you inside it with them or just eat the stun, break it and run you down like a fat kid on a souped up rascal scooter after the ice cream truck.

Edit: Typos… god I hate writing on a tablet.

I’d like to add, I’m also a proponent of giving banners a 5ish second combo field so that attacks can be used in conjunction with it. Then you can pick up the banner and ‘banner #5’ it to slam it back down for the combo field again.

Complexity like this is the primary point of the thread and how comparable weapons simply do more.

Well I think the biggest point of contention here is that the conjure is a not-weapon. So comparing the warrior hammer, a weapon, to the not-weapon to emphasize that the hammer should have a bit of shiney to it is causing some disconnects. Like as as a utility skill the whole point of the conjure’s existance is added functionality over the currently equiped weapon set. If it didn’t have the added functionality there’d be nothing to gain and no point to eat a utility slot on it. So figuring that a utility that completely replaces your weapon set would be Weapon Set + Shiney, so it just seems like an odd thing to compare a base weapon to to make the point that hammer needs some sweet sweet Barry White style luvin.

That said, I’d be delighted if the third hit on warrior hammer dropped a stack of confusion on those hit. I mean come on, I just bashed the guy in the dome with a sledge hammer… seriously.

wait so u want a buff because a warrior with hammer feels weaker than an ele with lightning hammer conjure. does this mean i can ask for a a 2x damage buff to dagger/dagger ele because thief dagger/dagger have basically twice the dmg for the same burst duration time as ele? and hell its not even utility compare to base wpn. its base wpn compared to base wpn.

while we are at it, mesmer staff does about 1/5 dmg compared elementalist staff. i demand a triple dmg buff since mesmer staff does have some conditions base addons.

i can go on and on if u want to compare based on the simple fact of its the same “type” of weapon. so i expect u to help promote buffing eles to have the same burst dmg as a thief on dagger/dagger because we are using the same type of weapon and in the mean time ill help support ur hammer buff, shoulds reasonable?

Hyena.2037:

Well I think the biggest point of contention here is that the conjure is a not-weapon.

This.

Most people will agree Hammer could use a little love. You just went preaching it the wrong way.

Secro.5039:

Hyena.2037:

Well I think the biggest point of contention here is that the conjure is a not-weapon.

This.

Most people will agree Hammer could use a little love. You just went preaching it the wrong way.

More than likely true, was just trying to draw upon a comparison.

If you really must compare them, then you’ll have to compare your hammer skills+ a utility slot, and try to take the difference between class survivability into account as well.
Edit: Oh and using conjures, you also don’t get your weapon’s stat boosts anymore, only the +180prec and +5 crit damage.

Lets end this garbage conjures tend to be kitten. Let me repeat since for some reason someone felt the need to point this out on our forums also ELE CONJURES ARE kitten! Most decent eles don’t use them because beside 1 massive aoe skill on frost bow their kitten. Let me say it again no really good eles use them because despite the buff their still kitten.

QQ all you like no one uses them. There is nothing to compare here. Any eles using conjures has just kittened themselves. Hammers for warrior are still one of the best cc weapons in the game. Useless vs Useful there really is nothing to compare here.

Did bunker elementalists eat the big one in the “Big Patch”? Trying to figure out why so many angry elementalists are in here heh.

TheMerc.4850:

Did bunker elementalists eat the big one in the “Big Patch”? Trying to figure out why so many angry elementalists are in here heh.

Mainly because there’s a thread in the ele forum linking to this one. But yeah, we got hit pretty hard. Evasive arcana now gives no blast finishers whatsoever, which is a huge blow to all the staff builds as well as /d might stacking, and destroying the mentioned staff bunker builds.

I think a comparison the guadian’s hammer would make for a better shot, since I’ve seen some crit hammers taking names and dishing out heapings of blunt force face rearrangement. The third hit in their chain is a longer swing but because of the symbol it creates they can self-combo almost every time it’s down with skill 2 and the right traits, regularly giving themselves and nearbys retalliation and protection. Doesn’t do as much damage but there’s more you can do with it, so their hammer feel a bit more thought out than warrior hammer. (Plus I hate getting trapped in that darn ring of warding and beaten like a pinata)

Out of the hammer and mace skills between guardian and warrior, the war’s hammer is the only one where all three swings are quick. Do you think it would be worth it to have the third swing significantly longer for more function? Because I get the feeling the lack of added effects with the Hammer chain is because they made it quick to keep the damage output at a pace.

The OP blatantly fails to mention his nice +50% damage on knocked down targets that triggers all the time on hammer build.

The OP in addition fails to mention that he has around 1000 more base survival stats, meaning that he can put 1000 more points worth of Power/Crit Damage/Precision on his gear and still be as survivable as an elementalist.

The Op further fails to mention that his attacks adds adrenaline.

The OP last but not leastly fails to mention the four other skills on his hammer (five with adrenaline) that have far better synergy and power.

Wildclaw.6073:

still be as survivable as an elementalist

I freaking wish we were.
Dude, d/d ele is beast mode. Yes even after the patch. Quite possibly the only class that can consistantly solo groups of people in wvw (other than thieves abusing the culling issues).

I swear all these eles must run with like 30/30/10/0/0 builds in berserker gear or some crap.

Complaining about ele survivability… that’s like thieves complaining about escape tools. My god.

making Hammer and Mace speeds = 0.25 / 0.25 / 1 rather than 0.50 / 0.50 / 0.50(1 in mace case)

Would mean Blind can still mitigate a large amount of them, and the more skilled ones would make sure they blind the final one, also being the easiest to blind with its longer than usual cast.

In the case of the mace, reduce weakness by 0.5s to make up for the reduced swing time. Would make these weapons feel much more fluid.

Ele hammer = best hammer skin in game.

That alone is OP!

Warriors complaining about elementalist melee weapons and survivability.

…

Have I landed in some kind of GW2 bizarro universe subforum or something?

Ok, i know how to fix this problem.
Give warrior a conjure lightning hammer and ele gets a weapon hammer, problem solved.

Scribbles.7493:

Warriors complaining about elementalist melee weapons and survivability.

…

Have I landed in some kind of GW2 bizarro universe subforum or something?

Welcome.

Defektive.7283:

No, I’m not asking for Eles to be nerfed. I’m saying nerf Warrior damage but give us interesting attacks like Ele’s.

Warriors need more complexity – looking at how comparable attacks get benefits is the first step to seeing the gap in weapon attack complexity.

This I can agree with. Given that they completely removed Evasive Arcana’s blast finishers with this last thread, which was one of the things that actually made ele’s fun and a little more complex to use rather than actually compromising and balancing it, I wouldn’t have too much hope of that, honestly.

The whole reason I chose to roll an Ele to 80 after my Warrior and Thief was that I wanted a more complex and fun character. In the end, they gutted the one thing that made Ele really fun for me, crazy zig zag rolling into fields for nifty effects. Rather than nerf a playstyle, they actually completely destroyed it (not saying that Ele’s are ruined – but they literally removed a playstyle from the game that was arguably the most fun way to play for many).

I’d say most of the classes are exceedingly simple, and the game as a whole could really use more complexity.