I really do enjoy these new Firebrand changes but...

[Fipmip.7219]

> @Ghotistyx.6942 said:

> > @Fipmip.7219 said:

> > That's true, but as it stands hammer is kind of left in the dust when it comes to damage or utility. I'd like to see burn stacks on the hammer autos like with axe, to bring it up to par. GS users are usually power anyway and gain minimal benefit from the virtue, whereas a hammer with burning autos would synergize well, especially with firebrands. It would definitely be helpful when out of ToJ pages

>

> It doesn't matter what usually happens. Hammer and Mace (class wide weapons) were both usually power until HoT which brought the option to run condi if you were warrior or revenant. Putting burn on an auto attack doesn't create any synergy, it just adds more burn stacks. However, Guardian's GS does synergize with with VoJ because of its multi strike nature. WW can hit 42 times, which can get you 14 stacks from VoJ. With GS, you're looking at max 10.6 stacks per second between aa, WW, and traited symbol. Hammer is looking at 9.19 per second (I averaged stacks granted by each skill and divided it by chain completion time for aa, or skill recharge otherwise). Symbolic Power is where Hammer synergizes with burning, getting an additional 1.8 (11 total) stacks while GS gets 0.58 (11.2). However, in order to maximize burning you'll need Zeal, Radiance, and Virtues which leaves no room for Honor to get Writ of Persistence, and that significantly affects Hammer (-1.79) more than GS (-0.58) because you're losing stacks from both the symbol and Symbolic Power. Quickness from Firebrand would change things in favor of Hammer when solo, but you have to invest both in the Firebrand traitline (dropping yet another traitline) and boon duration. GS isn't nearly as affected by quickness uptime. Against a single target you're looking at 1.89 for Hammer vs 1.47-1.72 for GS depending on WW projectiles (yes Symb pow, no Writ).

 

It seems to me that via your calculations, there isn't too wide a gap between gs and hammer, which means putting some burning on hammer autos (or some other method) would put it far and above gs. just because gs currently works better with VoJ doesn't make it a prime candidate. I'd say that by choosing hammer you open up more options for a "play the way you want" design philosophy by leaving gs open as a potentially still relatively decent condi weapon.

[Ghotistyx.6942]

Those are significant differences though. For every second the fight lasts, you're widening the gap by (burn tick * difference in stacks per second). For anything other than single target, GS is the far better choice in realistic scenarios. Hammer naturally gets the most benefit out of Symbol traits and only one of those has anything to do with conditions. Hammer also gets the most out of quickness, but by taking Firebrand to supply yourself or your team with quickness, you're sacrificing needed lines for dealing condition damage. Hammer already has a good thing going with its supportive and CC nature of skills. Maybe Hammer could use some tweaks to its coefficients, but it doesn't need more damage in the form of burning. The only exception to this would be if they tied it into the Glacial Heart trait.

[Fipmip.7219]

Alright so i decided the best way to get to the logical conclusion here was to go in the game and test it myself. I found that while using firebrand, the most optimal traitlines were radiance (radiant fire) and virtues (permeating wrath). using symbol traits In this build there was no crit chance except for that applied from the fury given by inner fire. I tried to maintain as many stacks as i could on the target golem, and what found was:

 

hammer can only auto attack and can maintain on average 6 stacks, with a high of 9 and a low of 3.

 

greasword, by using whirling wrath and symbol of wrath as much as possible in combination with autoattacking, can maintain an average of 8 stacks with a high of 11 and a low of 3.

 

What's my takeaway from all this? Well the difference is about two stacks. however I realized that in the end, none of it really matters. In your own words, it doesn't really matter what happens. we're talking about a hypothetical situation here. In my mind, I see that hammer and greatsword are like brothers, both heavy hitters in their own way. I feel that the best change to hammer would be to make it the option you want to take when making a build that uses its weapon as condi damage output, as opposed the greatsword when you want to take a power build that uses its weapon as power damage output. It's as simple as that.