Curse

Hell Marauder · May 20, 2005, 12:15 PM // 12:15

I've been playing W/Mo using hammer since lvl 1, and I have found some changes needed to make a hammerer on equal footing with a swordman. Either knockdown needs to be one second longer or damage needs to go up a bit more, or adrenaline requirement should be reduced. As for now, you only get one free swing at a knockdown opponent before he/she gets up, even with knockdown lengthening gloves, it's still not long enough.

Epinephrine · May 20, 2005, 01:54 PM // 13:54

Hammers may well need adjusting. The hammer swings every 1.75 seconds, while the sword/axe both swing every 1.33 seconds. In most games, if you go to a 2 handed weapon, giving up energy or armour to do so you get a boost in damage, but not here really, and for a few reasons. The base weapon does do more - in 28 seconds you get 16 swings with a hammer, and 21 with a sword axe - at 27 average damage per hammer blow and 18.5 average for sword axe, that's 432 for a hammer vs 388.5 for the sword, or an 11.2% edge. This will hold with any overall boost to attack speed.

The sword wielder gets a shield let's say, for up to 16 AL; this reduces damage taken by enough (about 24%) that it is actually balanced towards swords at this point.

All the bonuses to attack damage in the game are linear. This is true of Strength of honour, the conjures as well as the strength based skills, order of pain/vampire etc... - they all add to the damage by adding a constant - as such, the frequency with which you use them determines how beneficial they are, so they all benefit swords and axes more. There are some boosts that are percentages, Judge's Insight for example, or using Weaken armour on the opponent - these boost the actual damage inflicted by a percentage, but that results in equal gains for all weapon types, again, no actual advantage for the hammer.

Add to this fact that one gains adrenaline for attacking and we have the case that even the skills for hammer take longer to charge up, as the hammer swings slower. Less adrenaline means fewer adrenaline based attacks, which also corresponds to less damage.

In summary, hammers do slightly more damage (11.2%) at the expense of 24% damage reduction, so without healing and all things equal, the hammer is in trouble. They then lose out on the majority of skills and damage buffs, as they don't benefit from them as much, they gain less adrenaline due to swing rate for their skill use and they suffer taking a secondary that requires energy, as they don't get a focus.

When do hammers have an edge? Well, versus skills like shielding hands, healing hands and so on, it is better to hit less frequently for more damage, and versus foes with absorption type effects it is also an edge, albeit a small one given that the absorption seems to be up to 3 damage or so. They also have knockdown - now, I have not gotten far with my warrior, but I'd like to know from those with the experience - are hammers weaker overall because of these deficiencies, or do they make up for it eventually?

kalaris · May 20, 2005, 02:13 PM // 14:13

And Epinephrine for teh Win.

Perfect post as to why hammer < Sword / Axe

Knockdowns are the only reason to go hammer, period.

The Red Knight · May 21, 2005, 01:28 AM // 01:28

What are you smoking? o.O

berserker stance with judges insite dev hammer crushing blow mighty blow heavy blow is like 300 ish dmg. Hammers are fine, first two sword skills can be stopped with purge conditions so its not as beastly as you all make it out to be.

Yukito Kunisaki · May 21, 2005, 07:49 AM // 07:49

You want adrenaline really badly?

Frenzy/Flurry + "For Great Justice!"

I used this combo with my axe user and he did exe strike like 3x as often... This IS the adrenaline engine... However, that leaves about 2 hammer skills to use so I'm guessing they'll be Hammer Bash + something else... Counter Blow?

It won't chain knockdowns, but if you're earth ele/Warrior, then u can use stoning + Staggering Blow for some hilarious consequences...

Dakor · May 21, 2005, 04:26 PM // 16:26

Your all on drugs! Why has no one mentioned belly smash ? the best, goddamn, frikken melee skill in the game!.
AoE Blind for 9 seconds!

And here is how its used every time i pvp to devistating effect:
1) I run up to the called terget Monk
2) Frenzy on him to get my adrenalin up.
3) By now i have attracted all his warriors into bashing me in the back of the head...
4) Knockdown monk.
5) Bellsmash .... every single person round me in blind! ... sword and Axe have feck all DPS when they miss 95% of the time.
6) Switch to sword & Chakram
7) Illusionary Weapon
8) Flurry into "the dance of swiftest death"

Knockdown into belly smash is THE reason to pick hammer i can tank 2 tanks like this and another if i take the mesmer defence stance: distortion i think its called (which i tend not to as PvP IS a team game and if im taking on 3 guys my teams not worth playing with)

MasterDinadan · May 21, 2005, 04:30 PM // 16:30

More "traditional" warrior builds don't involve hammers because hit for hit, they simply don't seem to be as good as swords and axes. However, there are some strategies that involve the use of hammer skills that work quite well. Hammers are not a very popular weapon choice, but they are not useless either.

Dakor · May 21, 2005, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Hammer is becomming a lot more popular on european servers though so many playeres have not caught on to the awesome power of belly-smash... landing it on a gorup chasing down your healer is damage mitigation you can bank on.

Hammers only weaknessis no snare... but so any secondaries (all??) have some form of snare so that is easily dealt with.

Blow for blow you will not match Sword or Axe... manily because hammers best moves dont all have +dmg on them.

But there is a con to each weapons pro, and GW is never about 1V1 or one spec in direct copetition of another... sword might do potential more damage but bleeds and deep wounds dont stack so a cluster of sword warriors are made quite redundant by the first warrior in the group to Sever + Gash combo.
Axe has its wildly varying damage leading to a very mixed bag of damage out put.

Pick and choose what works for you out of each wepons pro's... like my build for example I spec in hammer and use it for its knockdows and blind and when i need storming DPS i pull out a sword and cast illusionary weopon to get the best of both worlds.

The Red Knight · May 22, 2005, 09:53 PM // 21:53

Theres a reason hammer skills dont as high damage as axe and sword, its because hammer has HIGHER DAMAGE THEN AXE OR SWORD. Even though you will be swinging slower you will be dealing more damage blow for blow then they will to you. Has nobody ever seen berserker stance with a hammer and then unleashing your full hammer combo on 1 target?

Not to mention the possiblites of W/E with hammer stoning,aftershock and earthquake

god im tired if people whining how hammer sucks :/

might just have to make a hammer warrior for pvp -.-

I did this build in a bwe on a PVP char
Mighty blow
berserker stance
devestating hammer
crushing blow
heavy blow
sprint
Judges insite
Banish

Destroyed warriors monks anything that i could land the 4 hit wonder on with judges died. Unless they got healing off that I failed to interupt. You could also go w/e with dev hammer and stoning for perm knockdown for 5 energy =/.

crazy coyote · May 23, 2005, 03:55 AM // 03:55

so what is the final outcome of this? from what I can tell, most people think swords are better but in PvP the hammer knockdown is more effective, sometimes at least. Should we have a poll or something, or can someone sum this up?

Dakor · May 23, 2005, 04:09 AM // 04:09

Nope in PvP hammer is always better Vs other tanks. Knockdowns and blind = tank cant do anything.
And swords vs soft targets that are easily hamstrung (conditions are harder then hexes to purge) and can be Final thrusted as their health yo-yo's... dependig on healers to bring them back from the brink.. which final thrust can so easily pursh them over.

kalaris · May 23, 2005, 01:24 PM // 13:24

I think the main problem with hammer is hit-for hit, it needs to generate more Adrenaline then Axe/Sword do...

Someone mentioned using Flurry/Frenzy + For Great justice, you realize thats 2 slots off your bar just to cure the inherit problem with hammer...

The AoE Blind is pretty awesome, when there are people in range...

I wasn't saying that hammer was terrible, its just it needs some more energy based skills, like axe and sword have... If all you're doing is knocking down people, yeah its great, Knockdown lock for the win...