Guild Wars 2

Are you speaking in PvE terms or PvP? Because the hammer and shield are rediculously good in PvP, to be honest i would never drop the shield for another offhand just because of the utility it brings.

As for the staff I wouldn’t use it anywhere but in pve or wvw, I will say this though channel 4 swap and use 2 on hammer in a fire field for 15 stacks of might is pretty amazing.

The problem with Hammer in PvP is its lack of mobility, it has huge issues when the 3rd strike of 1 takes so long to get off so if you want the protection buff you need to sacrifice too much time to get it off. Also not being able to move while casting 2 is devastating since in PvP nobody really stands still so you may or may not get the damage of it off, even if you do you are now way behind your target and have to run to the target. Also since the guardian is one of the slowest classes with no gap closer on hammer and having to stand still to cast 2 its almost better to just spam 1s while running and ignore 2.