Guild Wars 2

As a guardian using a hammer, I find this very annoying. Basically, when using the auto attack for the guardian hammer, if your guardian is in the middle of the overly-long-cast-time of the 3rd attack in the Hammer-1 chain and you try to execute a dodge roll, you end up “stuttering” and the dodge only lasts a fraction of the time it’s supposed to last, causing you to get hit with the big attack you were trying to avoid. Sometimes it gets so messed up you can do 2x dodges back to back and both will stutter and not execute.

This does not happen with great sword or staff, just the hammer from my experience. I tested it today in CoE against Alpha. First fight using hammer against alpha I stuttered constantly, getting hit by his AOE a lot, hits that otherwise would have missed. On 2nd fight I used Great-Sword and dodged 100% of his AOEs no problem. No stuttering. 3rd fight I used staff, again, dodging 100% of his AOEs and never stuttering.

The guardian hammer auto attack is causing problems with dodge-roll. Please fix this.

P.S. While we’re talking about guardian hammer, there is no reason the 3rd attack needs to take so long to activate. This imo needs to be adjusted or fixed, atm it’s the main thing holding the hammer back. Great weapon overall, love the blast finisher for group fights, but that 3rd auto attack skill is way too slow. No need for it at all.

Actually this happens with any weapon/class, it’s just that the guardian’s hammer attack is so long that it is more likely to happen there.

I what’s going on is that movement and dodging happens client side to be more responsive, while attacks are entirely server side. So if you try to dodge just before the next auto attack, your client will try to dodge (and play the animation/ reduce endurance accordingly) and the server will interrupt the dodge to make the attack.

PS – The hammer’s 3rd attack is that long because of the symbol, which does additional dps and reduces incoming damage by 33%, thus the longer wind up to balance this. I do agree it could be a little faster, but that’s an argument for another thread

I have extensive game play with GW2, and I’ve played with all weapon combinations for the guardian, and never see this issue with any other weapon. You could be correct in what you say, but due to the correct attack speed animations of all the other weapons, the chances of getting the “dodge stutter” on other weapons is near non-existent, where the hammer has a huge % of failed dodges due to auto attack. It needs to get fixed in one way or another.

2nd, I’m well aware of the “reason” behind the slow animation and I am fully aware of what my attacks do.

Break the hammer down.

Hammer 2. – Blast finisher and low cooldown make it the primary reason to use this weapon. However, even though it’s half the CD of the greatsword DPS attack (GS-2, AKA whirling wrath)….. the DPS of the hammer-2 is not on par with GS-2. You can execute 2x Hammer-2’s in the time you can do 1x GS-2. However, the combined total of doing 2x Hammer2’s is still less dps than a single GS-2.

Hammer-3 is simply a root for only 2 seconds. Near useless in PVE. PVP you can use it to hold a person for a second, but it’s overall usefulness even in pvp is not that great, especially with how easy the projectile it shoots is to dodge. Compared to GS-3 (Leap of Faith, which allows you to cover a huge distance very fast AND blind your opponent. THEN include the fact that it’s a combo-finisher Leap, which in a water field can give you a nice heal, or through fire give you a fire shield, etc. There is no comparison, GS-3 is superior to Hammer-3.

Hammer-4 is a blow back and is often useless in PVE. In PVE solo / DE’s, the dps of the GS is far superior to the hammer, so you’re not going to bother switching to hammer in these situations (where the blowback actually works well) and the blowback only takes the mob out of the fight for about 2-3 seconds, not enough time to justify it’s use in solo PVE. In dungeons the blowback is resisted by even the most mundane mobs very frequently and just about every boss is immune to it, or close to it. Dungeon mobs are where keeping them out of the fight for even 3 seconds could help the group a lot but exactly where the blowback almost never works. Compared to GS-4 which a light field, a damaging field that does about 75% of the damage that GS-2 does, and grants about ~5 seconds of retaliation, it’s clear to see that GS-4 is again superior.

Then we get to Ring of warding, Hammer-5. It’s a light field, ok. It stops SOME mobs any champion or boss mob walks right through it. And it’s only 5 seconds in duration. This can help on some pulls, and I enjoy using it, but it’s not an extremely useful PVE skill. In PVP rooting with Hammer-2 and trapping them in a ring of warding can help do a little damage to a person trying to kite you.

All this to consider, AND that’s not even mentioning that Hammer-4 and Hammer-5 have insanely long cooldowns.

Overall the hammer has a pretty nice PVP features, but is extremely lacking in PVE outside the Hammer-2 blast finisher. There is no reason why the Hammer-1 needs to be as slow as it is. If they feel it’s protection circle is “too powerful”, then I would recommend shorting the duration of the circle while speeding up the attack speed of hammer-1. This would make the hammer much more enjoyable to use in both PVP and PVE, it would go a long way in solving the dodge-stuttering, and wouldn’t be any more or less “powerful”.

Though imo, when comparing Hammer to GS, I feel that you could simply up the hammer-1 attack speed, and change nothing else, and the hammer would still be less-preferred then the greatsword.

Happens with Engineer as well. The Elixir Gun poison spray and Flamethrower flame are the biggest offenders. You get stuck in the animation until it completes, and the dodge is wasted inside the animation, and you take the hit.

Just like a heal going off, health is restored, but then a small hit takes you down as if the heal never went off. The heal was too close, so it was just not counted.

Frankly, WoW had the same type of lag, with 1 skill interfering with another, but they made it error in the player’s favor, not to the player’s disadvantage. For instance, a heal goes off, it was too close and you “die”, but then the server counts the heal going off, so your zero health instead becomes the healed amount. It is like a freebie, given during a close call. You never fall, you just notice your health yo-yo’ed in your favor.

I’m very annoyed with Orr, and how bugged the mobs can be, and the unreliability of skills.

I’m very interested in knowing if the dev team is:

1. Aware of this issue.
2. Working or not working on it

Thanks.