Are hammers nerfed?

Have hammers been nerfed in the past?

I was trying to put together a hammer build using dwarven battle stance as the elite but found it left me with a serious lack of knockdowns in between my stance. DBS maxes at 8 secs with a 30 sec recharge so i have 22 secs to fill in and without an elite knockdown i have very limited knockdown abilites. This is because Heavy blow and Hammer bash both cost u all adrenline. Making them impossible to be used together. I dont think hammers would be better than than axes and swords if one of these skills let you keep your adrenline. As Disrupting chop disables skill for 20 secs making it as good if not better than a knockdown.

I believe the lesson here is: don't use Dwarven Battle Stance.

Look in the Warrior section for a hammer build and you'll find some good ideas of the skills to chain together.