Great Hammers vs Greataxes?

[Brids17]

Is there any significant difference besides move set for these weapons? They seem to use a lot of the same ashes of war, have similar attack speed and similar damage. I've been using the same weapon for most of my play through and I have been thinking of switching it up but I'm not sure which to go for before dumping my high level shards into them.

[Mikamus]

They are essentially the same except great hammers have better moveset. Both can be parried this time around.

[Quadsword]

They're extremely similar except great hammers do strike damage which most enemies have lower resistance to than standard damage.

Also, if you use great hammers, then you get to bonk a bunch of demi-gods to death with a big wooden stick which is hilarious to me.

[John Paprik]

Great Hammers deal more poise damage (stagger) and they deal mostly blunt physical damage. Otherwise I would say there are not any bigger differences.

[Brids17]

Hmm, so something like the omenkiller cleaver and great stars are going to be pretty much the same save for damage type and poise damage?

[♔V3RD1CT]

Originally posted by Grenoh:

Great Hammers deal more poise damage (stagger) and they deal mostly blunt physical damage. Otherwise I would say there are not any bigger differences.

This mostly. Hammer are for poise, and tend to have the highest poise break potential as do all more blunt esk weapons. They also can be good or even better in general because many things have some resistance to slash, stab, and poke where blunt often gets ignored, like poise break was a oversight in the game.

[Furin]

I used a spiked great hammer for my first playthrough, it was great. Got the job done every time.

[MULTIPASS]

I recommend the brick hammer and great stars if you go that route.

Great Stars has passive bleed and can be infused with ashes. Add another status buildup, or use grease, and give it the wild swings weapon art.

Brick hammer has excellent strength scaling and very high posture damage. It's fantastic for a str/int build, because it keeps A scaling for strength and gets B for intelligence when infused with cold.