The hammer deals terrible damage for how unsafe it is.

[Matticus]

This weapon easily has the lowest dps while putting you in danger with charge attacks. Whats the point of sucking in enemies? And I can get plenty CC effects from skills so the stun on my 3rd attack is useless most of the time. The damage is way to low and the charge time for their abilities need to be halved.

[Loathing]

Already tacked on exactly this opinion in the 'Rambling Feedback' thread. I tried it a few more times, and just adding here that I totally agree. It feels really bad to play for exactly the reason you suggest.

As I said in the other thread, almost every 'meta' build in this game is predicated on relics that provide procs, crits, or refreshing of skills with hits that require lots of attack speed. Plus, this game is very much about moving fast, because everything hits for a substantial portion of your health. This pretty much painted them into a corner for attack speed builds defining the game.

A slow but tanky weapon would need to provide significant damage bonus, or large defensive bonus, to be even remotely viable. The hammer adds 10 health. Nope.

I was thinking earlier, maybe they could add some new relics that add either to 'perfect hits', or specifically to 'charge attacks'. This would allow them to buff the hammer/staff/bow without buffing the sword.

For Hammer/Bow/Staff charge attacks
Relic 1: +1-2 base damage to charge attacks
Relic 2: +X% bonus damage to charge attacks

For Hammer/Bow perfect attacks at the end of their charge
Relic 3: +1-2 damage to perfect attacks
Relic 4: +X% bonus damage to perfect attacks

They would need to only spawn when using the particular weapon(s).

[Jay]

It took me a few runs to warm up to it, but I'm enjoying it. Being able to permanently stunlock things by slightly charging the 3rd hit feels really good. Even with most skills, no other weapon has such a reliable way to keep a group of enemies just permanently disabled while you drain their HP. It does feel pretty miserable against bosses since the CC in its kit doesn't work on them though, I'm unsure how they'd address that

[LancerSG]

Why bother with cc when you can just dps. A simple use of whirlwind does more cc than the weapon.

Whoever designed this hammer didn't play the game. That's for sure.

[Jay]

Originally posted by LancerSG:

Why bother with cc when you can just dps. A simple use of whirlwind does more cc than the weapon.

Whoever designed this hammer didn't play the game. That's for sure.

The enemy will recover before your next charge of Cyclone comes up, while the hammer's combo can stunlock a group of enemies infinitely. Only two skills can do that, Knight's Charge and Hailstone Armor. Having a reliable way to do this from the beginning of the run is really powerful.

[Toxi The Vagrant]

Originally posted by Jay Quetzal:

Originally posted by LancerSG:

Why bother with cc when you can just dps. A simple use of whirlwind does more cc than the weapon.

Whoever designed this hammer didn't play the game. That's for sure.

The enemy will recover before your next charge of Cyclone comes up, while the hammer's combo can stunlock a group of enemies infinitely. Only two skills can do that, Knight's Charge and Hailstone Armor. Having a reliable way to do this from the beginning of the run is really powerful.

The only trick about that is you functionally have to swing twice first, which is rough with enemies getting dragged in by hit 2 with zero hitstun applied to them

[Jay]

Using the roll between each hit, clumping enemies together with the 2nd hit and charging the last hit as needed if I'm too far away has been enough for me to close the distance and hit stuns consistently, but so far I've only played on the default difficulty. When I get home I intend to play with the sliders turned up to see how it'll feel then

[Corseth]

The couple issues I am finding are:
1) There's nothing in the game that supports the playstyle. Others hit this too, but the relics all favor a rapid hit playstyle. The only ones that support a slower weapon are the 'guaranteed crit' ones. So the hammer is heavily undersupported for possible builds. Like, what am I supposed to go for?

2) Having to charge for your damage sucks badly. This feels different than the staff. The staff's goal is to recharge skills. The charge attack is dangerous to use but recharges skills faster; however, the uncharged attack is still a fast, multi-target hit attack, and so recharges skills pretty decently fast when it's not safe to charge attack. Pulling off a full charge gets you a nice bit of damage and a TON of skill recharge, though. In contrast, I don't feel like the hammer is doing enough on uncharged hits, and the charged first and second hits don't do enough to justify their lack of safety.

3) That second hit feels a lot like a culprit underpinning the problems to me. Because the hammer is so slow, by the time you're swinging the second swing most enemies have started an attack; dragging them together in front of you with no stun is awkward because you will get hit before you can move into the third attack with the stun.

I've had the most luck with the hammer when I just repeat the first attack to boop things down, or when I use the first and second hits on empty air deliberately in safety, so I can use the hammer like some kind of very slow firing ranged weapon with the third attack. Obviously you can use a CC spell to help, but the hammer recharges spells very slowly, and these spells work better on every other weapon too. I feel a big problem is the third attack takes longer to get to than just stunning enemies with the sword, which inherently makes the weapon feel worse at what its supposed to be good at than the sword, and the lack of relics and stats to support a slow-hitting weapon.

[Toxi The Vagrant]

On paper, the hammer's a cool idea, especially in multiplayer for keeping specific high threat enemies locked down, but it's weaknesses are cumulatively devastating to the ability to enjoy this weapon because they ABSOLUTELY force your builds to homogenize on stat increases and guaranteed crit/thunder

[MetaK]

it seems that the pourpose of the hammer was to be the 4 weapon in 4 players games...
There is no optimal relic build for the hammer, for skills archer/staff, for crits archer/sword
I dont understand why someone would pick the hammer.
Basically, u do with every other weapon the same that u do with the hammer, but better.

Maybe buff the atack and def ?
I would make the charged atack a shield so u can be usefull in teamplay being the focus of all the enemies
Its obvious that i will not pick it, just dodging all the game without damage is not fun, if in teamgames i would be usefull somehow... but no...

As mana said, the longer run i did, being the shortest one with the sword. (big difference between cac weapons)

If the devs dont know what to do with this weapon... it would be funny to heal in area for every charged atack.
U go from hammer useless to healer.
Just saying, it could be funny, since u will do 0 damage, do some ally healing.

[Toxi The Vagrant]

I think the things that could help hammer the most:
1) Relics that activate when you do over X amount of damage in a hit, ideally, this number would be around 30, which is something technically any weapon can deal under SOME circumstance, but Hammer and Sword both have the easiest time doing this thanks to their chonker damage stat
2) reduce the startup for each move by 1/3
3) have slow status affect enemy frame data, slowing their movement alone doesn't mean much, especially in area 3 where enemies have attacks that move them directly to you or teleport them, these moves in particular NOT being affected by slow is kinda bs
4) The suction on hit 2 is pointless if enemies aren't staggered by it, it just gets you hit, add stagger or remove the suction

[I>U]

Would be great to see some tweaking on the thing, I agree.

For example, stationary glacial heads on stage two can sustain 3 hits from the hammer on 100% health. And you need 2 damage upgrades to rise it to 2 hits. That put hammer-wielders into a massive disadvantage.

And you don't have enought of attack speed to hit Spider boss twice on his regular melee pattern.

I got puzzled with how Hex Staff worked at first, too, but, I'm afraid, that is not the case with this one.

[Krova Steel]

Originally posted by Mana:

I was able to clear a solo run on doom difficulty with the hammer.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2825206856

Got any tips or guides ?

[Toxi The Vagrant]

Originally posted by Krova Steel:

Originally posted by Mana:

I was able to clear a solo run on doom difficulty with the hammer.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2825206856

Got any tips or guides ?

For most engagements
Use the first attack, dodge, wait for the internal timer to reset you back to first attack, this is a blunt force shotgunning approach, using attack 2 in most situations is a bad idea right now, enemies don't take hitstun, so they just clap you for trying. If you CAN get to attack 3 for any reason, ALWAYS use the charged version even if you're only charging for like two frames, the shockwaves guarantee that you can infinite the enemies caught in it thanks to the stun, so long as you use the charged version of 3 to loop the stun.

For bosses:
Skrixxa: This is mainly hit and run, you can swing up to twice before she can respond, it takes three to four shots to her abdomen to stun her in phases 2 and 3.
General Cold Storage: vulnerable for all three attacks so long as he's not using attacks with follow ups
Phantom: war of attrition in every sense of the word.

Favored skills:
Knight's charge: free stun
Snowballs: free freeze
Balista: buys time to set up a 3, and allows you to do damage while positioning

Favored Relics:
Anything that guarantees crit: Hammer's crits are nothing to sneeze at, and are the only field that can keep it within binocular stare distance of Sword's dps.
Crit lightning relic: only if you have a guaranteed crit, it gives an extra surge of damage.
Things that benefit lighting: only if you have crit lightning relic, prioritize the legendary multilightning relic and stun puddle relic over all other relics if you have crit lightning and a guaranteed crit.
Freeze skill relic: a freeze allows you to start the infinite loop on non-bosses, especially if you catch a whole room's list of enemies in it.

[XIII - The Death]

This weapon needs a hitstun trigger on all charged attacks and an interrupt on the vacuum for stage 2.

To be honest, this weapon should have innate damage reduction period with an increase during charging animations and while doing a charged attack.

Slap on a barrier during charge windows that when broken, has a cooldown before coming back up, and boom, you have a class that is our "bruiser" with defensive mechanics.

Give them a passive that increases all damage versus enemies immobilized by any means, with a larger increase for charged hits, and you can feel rewarded for taking the risks, rather than watching every other class out-dps you by spamming.

Base damage for everything needs to go way up, charged attacks need to be way more powerful and thematic. This class needs to have mechanics for defense that scale with HP and stuff, so heals feel more effective and tankiness is a potential theme for build paths.

Let them build up stun on bosses over time outside of weakpoint hits. Like a hammer stun ALA monster hunter. Give it a feedback loop that plays into why you'd pick this weapon.

Currently, this is the most crap weapon in the entire game, all the stuff it offers in the concept fails to deliver anything meaningful or viable in the ACTUAL game. It's just trolling yourself. Can't even stun mini-bosses or interrupt them when you spend the entire fight landing charged hits to test it out, and does pitiful damage.

Can't express how disappointed I am in the clear missed opportunities on basically every layer of gameplay this weapon COULD offer. You see something well thought out like the staff being super powerful that can only get stronger as the game adds more skills, and then you get this bare bones, completely irrelevant weapon like this. All you do is lean on level 3 charge by racing to it asap versus normal mobs and be less effective than every other class for anything else.