Curse

anti_z3r0 · Jul 07, 2005, 11:00 PM // 23:00

What is everyone's viewpoints about hammer warriors running Aftershock?

I personally think that the attribute points needed to put into Earth Magic to make Aftershock actually do more damage than, say, Mighty Blow, or Crushing Blow is just way too much.

Another factor of why I think it's not that good is the insane aftercast attatched to it. 1.75 seconds is a rediculous aftercast for a warrior whos damage is based on him swinging his hammer. This gives the enemy a whole lot of time to get up and run away out of range of your attacks. They could also heal up pretty well also.

The 10 energy is not as much of an issue, but it still is a hefty amount of energy for a warrior.

Obviously Aftershock would be smart to run on specific team builds, but I mean on a normal team that doesn't do anything specific.

What are your guys' thoughts on Aftershock being ran by a hammer warrior?

Zeru · Jul 07, 2005, 11:41 PM // 23:41

It's spike and team setup like you mentioned.

When I run a hammer warrior he is generally the target caller of my team and therefore the backbreaker/crushing blow/aftershock combo is the starting off combo to the spike. This especially comes true if you have 2 others with some way of knockdown (i,e gale), which lets you incapacitate every monk on the standard 3 monk setup for several seconds while you spike the target.

On the other hand, if the hammer warrior is not the target caller and his kds aren't the start of combos, but in general just to keep monks down and disrupted, it might be better to use all 3 knockdown skills and just keep cycling through them for max disruption/interruption.

Though really, what secondary use is good for a hammer warrior? SoH/JI are better on sword/axe due to faster attacking, same with conjures. Earth is an excellent compliment for hammer (you're generally using less energy based skills than sword/axe): ward against foes is very underrated in screwing up retreats/organization and ward against melee will keep your team alive vs a warrior heavy team. Frankly with the current state of wards imo every smart team should be using them as much as possible and it never hurts to have multiple wards to evade/limit aoe. And if you're already dabbling in earth for wards, why not throw in aftershock as well?

As for random pug builds, why are you hammer in the first place? Hammer is by far more of a niche setup than sword/axe dps boosted builds. If I had to play hammer I'd rather just play an interrupter/mesmer style play in a pug than use the aftershock spike combo.