Devastating Hammer

How does this skill compare to Backbreaker? Backbreaker knocks down for longer, so you can get a combo away without worrying about your target kiting, but Devastating Hammer inflicts weakness, which you can then take advantage of with Fierce Blow and stuff like that.

(I'm talking about PvP here).

Dev is also quicker to spike and re-spike

With stoneskins you can time your KD chain perfectly

Quote: Originally Posted by jummeth

I like and dislike Heavy and fierce blow...my worry is always that a good monk who knows the drill will jump the spike and remove the weakness. Sometimes this doesn't happen, but it sucks not being able to reliably get your combo off. What are peoples thoughts on those 2?

Then KD the monk =P

In TA at most you will have 1 monk or 1 monk + 1 smiter
In GvG too much is happening for a monk to baby sit you.
Samely for HA.

If you have a monk babysitting you tbh you should never be able to kill the target. But the rest of the team should be doing other stuff, Dev is 7 adren and charges up reasonably fast so its quite a bit of pressure.

Change round your targets a bit and you might catch the monk off guard.

I just love the devastating blow/crushing blow/fierce blow combo. It makes my mouth water. If you can get all that off before the monk gets up and he isn't supported by another monk, he's almost certainly gonna be dead, but if not I usually take hammer bash or shock to KD after that lil combo to guarentee the job is done or at least so he/she can't heal themselves.

That is hammering at its best imo

in pvp the 4 second knockdown from backbreaker is priceless imho. the 10 adrenaline is nasty, but the skill just makes up for that high cost. i tried devastating hammer/ fierce blow/ auspicious blow in pvp but never really got to like it.

for pve devastating hammer is my favoite hammer elite.

I should have specified gvg. In TA or RA where there is generally 1 monk its a moot point. I agree that Dev/Crushing/Fierce is very nice, but with at least 2 monks as well as condition control coming from elsewhere if the spike target calls that they are the target of a spike, and the team knows they are facing a dev ham user, the it seems to me that the chances of that condition being there aren't great. Fierce is still nice since it gives u a damage bonus regardless albiet its halved. I guess my question was on the use of hammer bash vs heavy blow as a 2ndary kd in the chain. I assume you prefer bash .

Cheers

Its very situational, and just go for what you are comfortable with.

Idealy when my guild runs its adreno spike, the target should be dead by the time the guy gets up (2seconds)

Still improvements can be made. The 'lose all adren' for a 2nd KD is a bit nasty, however dev i think would still be just as quick to recharge as Backbreaker.

And you have your 2nd KD there.