92 replies to this topic

[stefanplc]

This is a hammer and sword with shield montage from WvWvW. The video shows examples of high mobility, damage, defense, control and quick escapes as a hammer warrior. You can find info on build and gear at the end of the video.



---------------------

UPDATE

Many of the people who enjoyed Matale 7 were very curious about how I play the build in different situations and how the build normally performs outside of a "montage" where I would obviously include just the best clips. The following is a raw, 12 minutes long continuous clip of action packed Hammer WvWvW, very similar to all the clips that I normally record and then extract the more spectacular fights out of. Enjoy!

Edited by stefanplc, 06 October 2012 - 10:22 PM.

[Red_Falcon]

Great display of a well played Warrior.
Efficient build, optimal gear selection, correct use of dodge/sblock, you know when to retreat and work cohesively with your friends and the situation at hand.

Hope you make more videos with other weaponry too.

[Fizzgig]

Nice job bro

I love the music too

[stefanplc]

Thanks! Glad you guys like it!

[songfire]

Nevermind.

Edited by songfire, 01 October 2012 - 09:50 AM.

[stefanplc]

songfire, on 01 October 2012 - 09:45 AM, said:

Nicely done.

Mind posting your spec and gear/stat focus?

Thanks

Thanks! Please check the end of the video! (last 10-15 seconds or so)

[songfire]

Yeah, should've watched the whole video.

I've got a question though: Why not opt for a full set of superior runes? Ie of the Soldier for the condition removal. What's you thought about spreading it across 3 different types of runes?

Thanks

[Minobu]

i would really luv to see tis vid. however it's blocked/banned in germany because of (music) copyright infringement here. could u plz post a link to the build here? tyvm.

[stefanplc]

songfire, on 01 October 2012 - 11:03 AM, said:

Yeah, should've watched the whole video.

I've got a question though: Why not opt for a full set of superior runes? Ie of the Soldier for the condition removal. What's you thought about spreading it across 3 different types of runes?

Thanks

Well the 3 different runes I picked give me 100% uptime on Swiftness from Signet of Rage. I found that to be really really important for catching people and to get away from tough situations. If you watch the video, you'll notice that many of those fights would have ended differently without the Swiftness boon.

[stefanplc]

Minobu, on 01 October 2012 - 11:27 AM, said:

i would really luv to see tis vid. however it's blocked/banned in germany because of (music) copyright infringement here. could u plz post a link to the build here? tyvm.

I'm sorry about that, for some reason all the videos I uploaded have that problem with Germany. Bellow you can see the build:
http://www.gw2db.com...|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

I'm using Runes of Water, Speed and Air for 100% up-time on Swiftness from Signet of Rage and Sigil of Rage (quickness for 3 secs) on my Hammer for occasional bursts.

[Minobu]

thx 4 the quick reply. Build looks quite solid. can't wait to give it a try. at work atm.

[stefanplc]

Minobu, on 01 October 2012 - 11:48 AM, said:

thx 4 the quick reply. Build looks quite solid. can't wait to give it a try. at work atm.

It's not easy to play and takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do, it's really strong. Just giving you the heads up.

[skuko]

damn man, you make it look so easy. i hate the hammer, because of the slowpoke speed of the attacks, also 3 and 4 are selfrooting  skills, which take some training to get used to.

i enjoy every single one of your videos man. i love the GS though and want to make it work with a non glass cannon build

[stefanplc]

skuko, on 01 October 2012 - 02:05 PM, said:

damn man, you make it look so easy. i hate the hammer, because of the slowpoke speed of the attacks, also 3 and 4 are selfrooting  skills, which take some training to get used to.

i enjoy every single one of your videos man. i love the GS though and want to make it work with a non glass cannon build

Thanks! I would suggest trying out GS with Skull Crack (mace burst). They're both roughly on the same CD and you can get almost a full 100B during it. So in other words, stun your opponent with Skull Crack and then quickly switch to GS and 100B. People do something similar with Bull's Charge which is the same stun duration. Your other option is throw Bolas, but that allows your opponent to interrupt you. While many new players don't know how to do that yet, the ones that have a little more experience quickly figure it out.
Perhaps something like 20/0/30/0/20 for WvWvW. As a melee you'll take a lot of damage so toughness is really important and so is double ignore pain. 20 points in strength for the 10% GS damage and 20 points in Discipline for breaking immobilize. The advantage to using Skull Crack to setup 100B is that you get 2 new utility skills since you wont need Bolas and Bull's Rush anymore. Might work!

[Alexander Dragonfang]

Nice display of skills, i really like to see Warrior begin to do different things than just blind GS 100B =)

[stefanplc]

Alexander Dragonfang, on 01 October 2012 - 05:54 PM, said:

Nice display of skills, i really like to see Warrior begin to do different things than just blind GS 100B =)

That's actually why I don't play GS anymore. People who don't really know much about PvP, going in and with the press of 2-3 buttons beating others into the ground made it so I just personally started disliking the weapon. Bull's Rush > Frenzy > 100Blades then lets upload that happening 100 times in a row on youtube killed it for me lol. The weapon feels like its just a 1 trick pony and gets boring pretty fast. It's always the same rotation and often the same utility skills over and over again.

[Mhell]

Yep, very nice vid. You brought me back to playing the warrior, after playing mesmer for the last weeks.

[Lilitu]

I see you took zerker 12% damage trait... Do you feel you get good usage of that? I see you use earthshaker almost every time you can.

Not convinced precision is a good investment in terms of return for your buck even with crit dmg boosts. 1000 power on top of an already decent 2000 will increase your damage by 50% for example,  and 1000 toughness on top of your base will reduce a 1000dmg hit to 680 (32% mitigation,  +47% effective hp).
1000 precision however gives just 47% crit, or 23.5% damage if you only have base crit damage. Do you see what i mean?

I like your video, you remain calm in many situations and know when to back off.

For a little more base damage i like axe with mace for the ranged knockdown, but you lose earthshaker..

[stefanplc]

Lilitu, on 03 October 2012 - 09:18 AM, said:

I see you took zerker 12% damage trait... Do you feel you get good usage of that? I see you use earthshaker almost every time you can.

Not convinced precision is a good investment in terms of return for your buck even with crit dmg boosts. 1000 power on top of an already decent 2000 will increase your damage by 50% for example,  and 1000 toughness on top of your base will reduce a 1000dmg hit to 680 (32% mitigation,  +47% effective hp).
1000 precision however gives just 47% crit, or 23.5% damage if you only have base crit damage. Do you see what i mean?

I like your video, you remain calm in many situations and know when to back off.

For a little more base damage i like axe with mace for the ranged knockdown, but you lose earthshaker..

Thanks!

Well the whole reason Hammer works so well is not because of damage but control. When you stun someone for 2 seconds, you just basically "healed" yourself for 2-4k damage depending on their profession. When you stun with Earthshaker 2-3 people, the return is even higher.

I'm using Signet of Fury not for its precision, but for the Adrenaline gain. Adrenaline not only boosts up my damage but it also heals me from the passive Adrenal Health trait so I try and keep my adrenaline up as much as possible. Signet of Fury also offers me that quick mobility when I needed for another Earthshaker. From my own personal experience they go really well together. There were often moments during fights when if only I had a little more adrenaline for an Earthshaker things would have went much better so that's why I picked it. There's also Berserker Stance but that gives you Adrenaline over time and with the Signet Mastery trait both have about the same CD.

Crit is very important for me because I'm trying to be bursty and crit also activates my Quickness Sigil. With Quickness up, as shown in one fight with a few lucky crits I can take someone down really fast which is essential when you're trying to do a 1v2 or 1v3.

The 10 points invested in Berserker's Power were my last 10 points left after I got all the important things. I didn't see another option that I felt like it was better. 10 points gives me 100 Power and roughly 7% damage increase which to me felt like the best choice.

I probably went through around 10 different variations of this build before finally sticking to this one. It fits my play style really well and it offers me all the tools to fight multiple opponents which is the whole point of the build.

[songfire]

Your spec is something I really want to try out - still working on my gear. A montage is good and all, but it never or rarely shows the fights that went haywire. So I'm wondering if your video is a representation of the norm or not? And please be honest.

I usually run with 3-4 guildies. So how does the build perform in small group situations?

Thanks bud.

P.S Oh - and I think what Lilitu was asking is if the whole investment in precision through gear is worth it - not just the Signet of Fury portion of it. And I was kind of wondering about that myself, although I'm not much in to the whole theorycrafting stuff.

Edited by songfire, 03 October 2012 - 11:52 AM.

[stefanplc]

songfire, on 03 October 2012 - 11:49 AM, said:

Your spec is something I really want to try out - still working on my gear. A montage is good and all, but it never or rarely shows the fights that went haywire. So I'm wondering if your video is a representation of the norm or not? And please be honest.

I usually run with 3-4 guildies. So how does the build perform in small group situations?

Thanks bud.

P.S Oh - and I think what Lilitu was asking is if the whole investment in precision through gear is worth it - not just the Signet of Fury portion of it. And I was kind of wondering about that myself, although I'm not much in to the whole theorycrafting stuff.

Well, what could I be replacing precision with? I'm currently using Knight's Gear which is Toughness, Power and Precision. I don't think there is another option that's better that would include Toughness and Power. Crit is also really nice because it makes you bursty and it helps you activate the quickness sigil from your weapon. When fighting multiple opponents you don't want to drag the fights because you won't be able to win them that way, you need to try and kill them as fast as possible. Once you run out of the 2 Ignore Pains it's downhill from that point on in a 1v2/3/4 situation. I also like big numbers lol.

My build is focused on solo play vs multiple opponents, it's self sufficient and offers all the tools you need. You can escape rough situations pretty easily with 100% up-time on swiftness and Savage Leap, you're hard to kill, you control fights really well, you can catch people pretty easily and at the same time you're hard to catch, you do pretty decent damage and occasionally you're also very bursty. It does the job pretty well once you get the hang of it.

With that being said, since it works really well solo, I see no reason why it shouldn't work even better in group fights because you bring a huge advantage through controlling the fight with stuns and soaking up damage. I just transferred to Far Shiverpeaks right before recording the clips and all the fights occurred mostly over one weekend so I didn't really play with a group all that much, mostly randoms or solo. I probably had enough solid footage for about 30 minutes but I decided to pick the more entertaining ones and make it shorter.

If you play it right, this is what normal looks like. I didn't include many clips because they were ruined by people either running through a portal in their keep, some randoms coming to help me making the fight not a 1vx anymore and so forth. You really are very slippery and I wouldn't be surprised if in your group of friends you're always the one that gets away. Shake it Off is really great when running away to remove cripples and I generally also keep an eye on the people that are following me and use Shield Stance if I see them throwing ranged attacks at me, probably to immobile me or slow me down and I reflect it at them that way, making my getaway even more effective.

Hope this answers your questions.

[Lilitu]

What would you think to power, toughness and vitality over precision?

[stefanplc]

Lilitu, on 03 October 2012 - 01:10 PM, said:

What would you think to power, toughness and vitality over precision?

Well, I don't think I'd be too far from the truth when saying that you will probably kill people half as fast. With a low crit chance the quickness sigil wouldn't be worth it or any other crit based sigils and that alone can sometimes score a victory for you. If the quickness sigil procs when you're hitting someone and you're able to land every hit during those 3 seconds, that's a kill right there, and a fast one! I think vitality would work better in a group environment, with a shouts healing build where you just control people, soak up damage, revive etc.. while your teammates do the killing. Solo however with my current build I don't think that would work, you wouldn't be able to kill people fast enough.

In larger groups of PvP you also can't really tank, no matter how much vitality or toughness you have. If you go into a "zerg" of 10-15 people and they start focusing you, you'll only survive as long as shield stance + the 2 Ignore Pains last. Even 10k extra HP will only keep you alive 1-2 extra seconds because the damage coming your way is just that big.

This is just thereocrafting so the best way is to actually try it out yourself. While coming up with my build I used several green gear sets to see what I liked best and also the mists and sPvP.

A thing to keep in mind is that as far as direct damage goes, toughness is your best defensive stat and as far as condition damage goes vitality is your best stat. Logically speaking, if you're in a good spot as far as condition removal goes then you don't need to worry about extra vitality.

Edited by stefanplc, 03 October 2012 - 02:24 PM.

[Lilitu]

stefanplc, on 03 October 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

Well the whole reason Hammer works so well is not because of damage but control. When you stun someone for 2 seconds, you just basically "healed" yourself for 2-4k damage depending on their profession. When you stun with Earthshaker 2-3 people, the return is even higher.

Thanks for your replies today.

Interesting train of thought, I like it. Fits in well with anet's prevention rather than recuperation strategy.
Random procs aside, I'm just not a fan of precision or crit damage as an efficient usage of precious stats. But once you have power and toughness... as you pointed out, the question becomes what else is actually useful. I believe your choices boil down to precision, vitality or healing. http://www.gw2db.com...um-Toughness=50

Of the 3 stats on the armor pieces, one is always higher. If you want toughness to be the high stat, you're stuck with precision. If you want power to be the high stat, you're stuck with vitality.
I did quite a bit of maths around knight vs soldier amulet for spvp (where soldier is pwr/vit/tough and knight is vit/pwr/prec instead of tough/pwr/prec like pve) and essentially the extra power in soldier more than made up for the crit chance in knight even though the power difference was only in the hundreds because power scales so much better. What I would assume would be the outcome of the comparison in pve would be that the pwr/vit/tough gear outdamages the tough/pwr/prec gear and swaps a small amount of toughness for a large amount of vitality. I suppose the deciding factor there will, as you said, be crit procs.


Two things which strike me as odd though. Defy pain (both the utility and the trait) on a build which already has massive amounts of physical damage mitigation. That's not as effective as it would be on a glass cannon. And without surefooted? I think the traited one only lasts 3 seconds as well.

The other thing which I find odd is the lack of merciless hammer. Whenever you're doing the most damage in your video it's when the target is knocked down or stunned, do you really want the shield cooldowns that bad?

[stefanplc]

Lilitu, on 03 October 2012 - 10:33 PM, said:

Thanks for your replies today.

My pleasure. I haven't played all that much sPvP so I wouldn't be able to give you any proper advice there. All I did during the beta events was non stop sPvP and after the game came out I lvled and farmed my gear so WvWvW is fresh and exciting for me right now. I also don't get to play that much due to work so I don't think it'll get boring too soon.

Regular Ignore Pain is 5 seconds and the traited one is 3. When fighting multiple opponents, although a high amount of toughness is noticeable, you still go down fast. I use my first Ignore Pain when enemies try to burst me. In the first fight of the video you can see me popping Ignore Pain the moment the warrior started spinning and it helped me out quite a bit because during it he also used Eviscerate. The second Ignore Pain is kind of like my last safety net, I'm already aware that I'm going to die shortly so it buys me a few more seconds for a heal, a stun, a dodge etc... to keep me in the game. They're both really important. If you have 2 people hitting on you for 3 seconds that could amount to 5-6k or more which is equivalent to a full heal. You can often get caught in a random dumb bursts so that trait saves you again. I use the utility Ignore Pain very often in the beginning in order to score a kill. Scoring a kill early vs a 1v3 without me loosing too much HP is a big advantage. People always try and get their harder hitting abilities in first so I become immune to all that damage. With Ignore Pain I can chase my target putting myself in vulnerable positions and use Ignore Pain when I feel like I'm going to get bursted. It helps me score a kill safely really often and then I'm able to continue the fight or get out.

It makes sense if you think about it. 3 friends see you come at them, chase one of them down, beating him into the ground, they'll use their hard hitting abilities pretty fast trying to save their friend and kill you. At that point you use Ignore Pain and become immune to their harder hitting abilities. After you kill their friend, not only you're still doing pretty well on HP, but they just wasted their major CDs. What do you see in scrub warrior videos? Bull's Rush > Frenzy > 100 Blades. That's a 1 minute CD combo right there. The large majority of people use cheesy builds like that.

As I mentioned in the video at the end I'm not 100% set on the 20 pts Defense trait. I'm constantly switching between the shield one and the stability one but not the hammer one as much. The damage boost is not that big, its 25% increase for one hit every stun so I have Earthshaker that happens more often maybe every 15 seconds and every 24/30 seconds Backbreaker. That's like adding half a hit every 20 seconds or so. It also reduces the CD for the hammer abilities but the large majority aren't spamable or super important. The knock back you don't get to use it all the time. That #2 skill is kind of important because of the effect it adds but many people take that off pretty fast anyways and then there's cripple that's important, but you also have the sword cripple.

Now the shield one gives you 90 toughness which is 2-3 pieces of high end exotic gear, quite a bit I'd say. Because it reduces the CD on the shield abilities you often get to use them a 2nd and even a 3rd time meaning you get a 2nd and 3rd heal if you think about how much damage you're preventing. I also reflect projectiles so in other words I'm doing damage while being defensive. You also get to stun more often which I use to apply cripple right afterwards so I don't miss it.

I also like the stability trait but I don't get knocked around all that much and I do have 2 stun breakers. Not that many professions stun you a second time after that first one. If I have a warrior Bull's Charge me into 100 Blades I just use Ignore Pain and take advantage that he's rooted and beat him up and stun him at the end of his 100 Blades to continue my damage chain. A GS warrior for example doesn't have a second stun and if he did, I also have Shake it Off.

I think its really important to actually play it yourself and see what you like better. Thereocrafting is often pretty different from the actual fights because things don't always go your way. I came up with this build after experimenting a bunch and if you actually look on the first page of the warrior forums (on this website) you'll see that there's a thread where I'm bitching because I just couldn't get melee warrior working in WvWvW. I tried out a bunch of weapons and a bunch of different melee builds. Obviously after a bit of experimenting and figuring things out, I finally got it to work. While I also enjoy playing a ranged warrior, I really really like the thrill of being in the middle of a battle where you constantly have to be careful and I think the Hammer is by far my favorite weapon in terms of abilities, animations and sounds.

10 years from now I'll probably finish farming my legendary Juggernaut so I want to practice and be pretty nice at playing with it by then.

[stefanplc]

--------
This is from the official forums where I was replying to someone else but I felt like it would be relevant:

"One night I had like 5-10 people chase me in WvWvW all over the map for literally something like 10 minutes and at some point, one of them, a GS warrior was actually starting to get pretty close to me. While I’m running away I see him trying to throw his GS at me in order to cripple me so I Shield Stance and reflected that at him, but because I had the 10 points in Tactics not only did I cripple him but I also imobilized him for 1 second. I laughed pretty hard and shortly after they just gave up.

Seeing people hitting themselves really hard with their ranged attacks during my Shield Stance is also very rewarding."

[songfire]

Thanks for all the replies Stefan. It sure helps me planning my warrior.

Have you contemplated mixing in some crit %-dmg gear instead of the tougness gear?

[Cryptshadow]

songfire, on 04 October 2012 - 07:05 AM, said:

Thanks for all the replies Stefan. It sure helps me planning my warrior.

Have you contemplated mixing in some crit %-dmg gear instead of the tougness gear?

ya i also wondered this, since im running something like your build butg with a rifle, i was thinking for adding more dmg i might use bersker jewelery for more power, and maybe a Valkyrie amulet for the power and vit since  i'd like to have more than 19 hp

[stefanplc]

Cryptshadow, on 04 October 2012 - 07:42 AM, said:

ya i also wondered this

Like I said, I haven't done any sPvP so I wouldn't be able to advise you there, I'm just talking from my WvWvW experience.
Toughness for Melee and % crit damage for ranged in my opinion. You need a big amount of either of them to notice a huge difference so you either go one or the other. That's what I would do at least.

For a rifle build I also tried it out playing with my current gear, didn't change anything, but instead went full glass cannon in traits. Obviously I wasn't exactly full glass cannon since I had around 1900 toughness or so. I don't remember the exact numbers but I think it was something like 20-30-0-10-10 and with Signet of Fury to quickly get a full bar of Adrenaline. Every 24 seconds I would kill someone really really fast by using Signet of Fury, crippling them (imobilize with the 10 pts in Tactics) and making sure I got 1 bleed on them for the increased damage, I also had Berserker's Power in Strength and I would start with Brutal Shot > Kill Shot > Volley and they would be dead. Often I would even skip Brutal Shot if they weren't full HP. It was really strong and it worked best when I was being sneaky. Basically 2 zergs would be fighting each other and I could come from the side, locate a weak target, take them out really fast and then get away for a few seconds, then come back and so forth. I just kind of got bored of it pretty fast and if people notice and avoid your opener it's pretty difficult from that point on. In general if you avoid Kill Shot and Volley from a rifle warrior you'll have a really easy time with them.

I was initially worried too about the 19.5k HP but as you can see, as melee at least the build performs pretty well. Like I mentioned earlier, toughness is your best stat vs direct damage and vitality is your best stat vs condition damage however if you have a pretty decent condition removal you don't need to worry about that much vitality.

[Cryptshadow]

Well its not for spvp ( dont know where you got that from)
I am trying to see if i can make a hammer/rifle build work for wvw, since my friends wanted me to use one while we roam around in a small group of like 4 or 5. And im trying to find a balance between the two.

At the moment im not seeing dmg like your with the hammer im thinking its because im using a rare one since i haven't crafted any of my exotic weapons yet  at least i think thats why. If that wasnt the case i thought about using Berserker or Valkyrie jewelery to increase my power and crit dmg for bigger hits and criticals.  And im also wondering would doing that with you current build would it increase your dmg by a significant amount? or would you rather have that toughness?
And thanks for the response

Edited by Cryptshadow, 04 October 2012 - 08:01 PM.