Curse

Winterclaw · Dec 18, 2009, 04:51 AM // 04:51

Regina said that the devs are looking into tweaking hammer mastery for PvE here so if you have any thoughts or comments on how hammer changes should be handled, please share them in this thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regina

* Hammer Mastery – Hammer suffers from a number of issues that make it difficult to take over other Warrior weapons in PvE. For example, the combination of high adrenaline costs, slow attack rate, and battles ending relatively quickly in PvE mean that it can be hard to use skills before a battle is over and mean that being blocked feels much harsher. We’re looking at a number of approaches to address these and other issues.

madriel222 · Dec 18, 2009, 05:32 AM // 05:32

Our guild's balanced-way FoW and DoA clears use hammer warriors fairly often, a buff would just be icing on the cake

Ninja Ninja · Dec 18, 2009, 05:40 AM // 05:40

I look forward to hammer changes.

Eragon Zarroc · Dec 18, 2009, 05:48 AM // 05:48

buffing hammer should be fun

definitely because of the things stated by regina + the fact that ur armor is lessened without the shield. buffing hammer would help to make up for these downsides ;-)

Del · Dec 18, 2009, 06:07 AM // 06:07

i can haz 4 adrenaline earth shaker?

Bob Slydell · Dec 18, 2009, 06:30 AM // 06:30

Hammer is supposed to be slow..its a heavy ass hammer... never mind.

EDIT: Let's not creatively avoid the word filter shall we?

subarucar · Dec 18, 2009, 06:36 AM // 06:36

I love hammers already. This looks like a reason to love them even more.

tuna-fish_sushi · Dec 18, 2009, 06:43 AM // 06:43

Yes, hammers buff please. I love chaining 100dmg bulls strike with 80dmg deveastating hammer with 80dmg crushing blow + deep wound finished up with a 80 damage mighty blow all while they are KD'd.

FoxBat · Dec 18, 2009, 06:53 AM // 06:53

Counter blow -> affect adjacent attacking targets.

Enraging Smash -> KD moving or attacking foe

Mokole Smash -> PvE version buff, way more adren

Belly Smash -> 10s recharge

Not that earth shaker wasn't already ridiculous or anything.

a joyful noise · Dec 18, 2009, 07:50 AM // 07:50

Infinite earthshaker easy to acquire using a sword to help with the adrenaline gain.
Attributes needed
14 sword, 9 hammer, and 11 strength must have the +1 kd rune
first slot zealious sword, second slot hammer, and third slot spear
skills required
1. barbed spear
2. flail
3. earth shaker
4. sun and moon slash
5. steelfang slash
6. protector's strike
7. pulverizing smash
8. spear of fury (requirement of 5 adrenaline or more)
Run up to enemy, hit twice with spear, use barbed spear, and then spear of fury for 8 adrenaline. After this is required the combo is 2 3 4 5 6 3 4 7 8 repeat repeat repeat...

This build is hard to pull off if you don't know how to switch weps well ;therefore, you must practice alot to be effective. When enemy is dead just use barbed spear and spear of fury another enemy and you're back to full adrenaline again. When running the spike foe stays on ground for 6 out of 8 seconds and you can keep this up easily with any enemy I personally run this on bosses with alot of hitpoints. This makes them useless since they are on the ground majority of the time.

End · Dec 18, 2009, 08:14 AM // 08:14

Theres already skills that make hammers hit multiple targets...why not just make them have a chance to hit multiple targets...I think it would be fine like that... Granted hammers are decent right now I think they've just gotten a bad name over the years...

draxynnic · Dec 18, 2009, 08:41 AM // 08:41

As long as they don't see the need to rework Earthshaker...

Removing the 'lose all adrenaline' clause from the nonelite unconditional knockdowns (in PvE only, of course!) would probably be a good start, as might reverting Mokele to 1..3. Other adrenal skills apart from Earthshaker can probably all do with a small reduction to their costs, although simply buffing the hammer adranline engines may be sufficient...apart from Backbreaker and the other adrenal elites.

Olle · Dec 18, 2009, 11:21 AM // 11:21

I'm just going to say Warrior's Endurance+Asuran scan
already making 100's of damage, and adding +75% damage..just...lovely!
but srs, Hammers are good in PvE imo, they deal alot damage, they look cool,
if u think they are slow, take flail, Drunken master, etc!

upier · Dec 18, 2009, 11:46 AM // 11:46

I appreciate their approach.
Buffing everything to ungodly levels to match the ungodly things in the game already instead of trashing the ungodly options to a more decent level seems like a winning choice! Especially when we are dealing with the warrior!

Xsiriss · Dec 18, 2009, 12:12 PM // 12:12

Lower a-costs (lower the +dmg accordingly),make the higher a-costing ones unblockable or knock down the foe if they're blocked. Making hammer mastery give addition armour penetration (say 1.5% for every 2 levels) would also be a good idea.

qvtkc · Dec 18, 2009, 01:05 PM // 13:05

People on this forum are already jizzing all over Earth Shaker for some inexplicable reason, I expect them to do it even more after the update.

Hugh Manatee · Dec 18, 2009, 01:27 PM // 13:27

The only non-weak hammer skills in PvE is really the standard earth shaker and crude swing, with maybe pulverizing and crushing pretty balanced for what they are. Enraged Smash is useful in hard mode places with healers that run and to charge the non elite stuff, like the grawl in ascalon or the centaurs. The rest are either expensive or weak in comparison.

I agree with what that guy up there said, remove the adrenal loss from the hammer KD skills in pve(bash and heavy), if that happened, suddenly other hammer elites, like forceful, dwarven stance, E-Smash get a lot more viable for use in KD chains, and the elite hammer KDs get less special(you need them to lead into a KD chain).

Maybe reduce the cost of Dwarven Battle Stance to like 5e 15r and make it "while weilding a hammer you attack 33% faster and interrupt foes for 5-10-11, ends if you use a non-attack skill". Maybe even consider an IAS buff that goes past 33% on the condition you're wielding a hammer or actually increasing the hammer mastery skill?

Also, Back Breaker is a bit expensive for what it does, it could be 8a and not broke if magehunter and dev were also reduced a couple tick each. Neither does + damage so reducing the cost won't affect their damage, just how much stuff they KD which is what makes earthshaker so powerful(it KDs everything). Why not have a dev hammer at 5a and magehunter at 6a.

Also, wacky idea, make all the hammer KD elites except earthshaker and e-smash KD for 4+ seconds at a similar scale that back breaker does(except make it so they reach the +4 sec breakpoint at 13 mastery), and make backbreaker do a **** tone of +damage with it's KD(like +40, make it a combo of mighty blow and hammer bash with a +4 sec KD time), as it's the only one that does + damage on a KD other then heavy blow(heavy actually hits harder for less juice and on the condition the target is weakened, it's KD isn't as long and it costs you your juice, which as said, should be fixed). This way it's worthwile to charge back breaker for the opening salvo, or use the other elite KDs where cost and speed is an issue while getting better, longer KDs then the rest of the weapons and non-elite skills(why should a sword get constant KD?). As said, remove the adrenal loss on the current non-elite hammer KD stuff and they get really good, give the elite +4 sec KD to compensate. Hell maybe even put 5 second KD on the table with back breaker without consumables/blessings, but at or over 14 so you need runes to get there.

Also, what's the deal with belly smash? 30sec recharge on a short blind skill? I like it's activation time, so you can get a swing in right after crude before they get up, but prot strike, eremites, mystic sweep or holy strike is way better for that sort of thing. You can flourish it with club of a 1000 bears and crude for something kinda interesting but still... I dunno what you do to belly smash, but this is the one you buff. Keep it's 1 second activation time, keep the interaction with a KD'd target, but make it hurt things a lot more.

Mokele smash should have it's recharge halved and have the effect "this adrenaline gain is doubled if target foe is knocked down", and cut renewing smash's cost and recharge by 5 in each category and add "you gain +3, 7, 8 energy if target foe is knocked down".

Bobby2 · Dec 18, 2009, 05:53 PM // 17:53

Despite buffs I doubt it'd be more efficient than running.... say.... Scythe. More fun is good too.

Chthon · Dec 18, 2009, 09:28 PM // 21:28

1. I don't agree with the notion that hammer is particularly weak in PvE. Earthshaker is a formidable bar... at least it is up until top-end PvE where GDW spam obviates attack-skill-based KD.

2. I would even go so far as to say that axe is quite a bit weaker than hammer for PvE.

3. I would agree that hammer is pretty lacking outside of earthshaker. Folks seem to have already zeroed in on a big part of the problem the problem: poor adrenaline management.

Suggestion: Adrenaline-gain skills need to be better.
Suggestion:Adrenaline costs need to go down a bit.
Suggestion:The lose-all-adrenaline skills need to not do that.

In addition to that, damage is another issue. We should all know the story by now: Armor-respecting damage has been killed by monster-level-creep. The best offense is to stack armor-ignoring buffs on physicals that can generate a lot of packets. Bad news for hammers, 'cuz they're sloooow and Crude Swing is all they've got for generating packets.

Suggestion: Let's get some attacks that can generate decent packets/time.

4. I'm not terribly bothered by the fact that hammer is inevitably going to be worse than other options at the top end. Not everyone runs GDW all the time. Moreover, things are going to get squeezed out at the top end no matter what you do. You can't have 5 melee weapon types and not have some be better than others. The best you can manage is to make the weaker ones "good enough."

Gennadios · Dec 18, 2009, 10:14 PM // 22:14

Well, I made a nice, in-depth post, and the GWG server overload GOREDENGINE'd me, no way I'm retyping verything. He's the quick and dirty:

1)Hammers are heavily over-reliant on chaining (Staggering->Heavy->Crushing Blows), and to be viable in PvE they require heavy investment in damage buffs, IAS, and Adrenal gain.

This screws them when compared to scythe warrs b/c Scythes have Aura of Holy Might, and don't rely on adrenaline gain, giving them more free skill slots to bring defensive/toolbox skills.

Not only to do scythes deal more damage to multiple targets, but they also have far better survivability.

Solutions would be to:

Delink the chain skills: If you don't have to worry about the target having pre-existing conditions, the pool of viable skills one can bring increases considerably.

Lower the cost of Staggering Blow: It's pretty much the only reliable weakness spreader in the hammer mastery tree, which makes it synergize with roughly 40% of the other skills in the family, so why is it as expensive as the rest of them? Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be cheaper so that a well placed rupt or a dead target doesn't completely shut down the chain until it's refilled? Maybe give it some +damage as well.

Greater bonus damage for individual skills: As I already said. Scythes do more damage to multiple targets than hammers do to a single one.

Add a PvE skill that increases hammer damage: Should be pretty obvious.