Having unlocked dual hammers, I can say relatively comfortably say that they will not be utilized by players in their current state. The attack speed is slower than Dual Axes, the damage v.s. armor is null when light attacking, and less than Dual Axes when heavy attacking. That being said, what I recommend is to either greatly increase damage v.s. armor (especially on 3rd heavy attack overhead) in addition to a slight increase in fast attack damage, or increase attack speed to the same rate as axes, and essentially keep it the same as is. The first option seems better to me, because who would want to use what is essentially slower dual axes that are less effective and versatile?
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Similiar situation to 1h axe and 1h hammer - people take hammer for “crowd control” while IMO it simply sucks cause it feels like it has no stagger on light attacks and you can’t take out stormvermin just by spamming light attacks into the crowd.
Dual hammers and dual axes are more likely the same kind of choice, only doubled.
I wonder how they actually stack against 1h hammer.
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I agree, they need to attack faster. They’re really starting to stretch the limits of the arbitrary and nonsensical precedents with regards to weapon functions (1H Hammer has such high attack speed its heavies are better DPS than the 1h Axe, and why are hammers for cleaving while axes are for armor?).
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Yep. Dual hammers are pretty bad, and it’s flaws are apparent after playing just a single game. Really put a damper on the DLC for me.
Why does the first charged attack bounce back, like you hit armor, against most targets? Why does the push attack make your next light a downward swing, thereby making pushes dangerous in hordes? Why does it have zero damage on lights versus armor unless you headshot, but then has an attack pattern with an upward swipe (light 2)?
It’s got mobility, but I don’t know why you would take it ever take it over 1h hammer, 1h axe, or dual axes in it’s current state.
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To be fair, strictly speaking, I think it’s got higher DPS and burst-damage than the 1h Hammer by virtue of its having two hits per heavy. The tradeoff is in the speed of its light combo, which is further balanced back by having its light combo be entirely horizontal.
To me, right now, it’s sort of a neutered Dual Axe for non-Slayers (I still think Dual Axes should drop the career restriction) who want to do melee damage without sacrificing defense (dodge or stamina kind) or crowd-control. I’d still use the Dual Axes over them if given the chance, because they’re still better at everything except blocking than Dual Hammers.
And I haven’t gotten all the weapons unlocked yet, so I’ve yet to see the Excoriators or Hadraich, but I think Dual Hammers might be the best-balanced new weapon. Kruber’s Trusy Companions do 3 damage to armored targets on all attacks, Sienna’s Crowbill does 12 damage to armored targets every light attack, almost as quickly as her sword does 11 damage to infantry targets, Kerillian seems to have gotten a 1h Axe with higher cleave and attack speed and no tradeoffs because she’s lol so sassy and high skill ceiling, and folks here on forums seem to believe that Saltboy’s new weapon is too good. Point being, I wager Dual Hammers won’t get or need all that much balancing compared to the other new ones.
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Aren’t dual hammers available for all Bardin careers? Seems a bit strange to compare them just to dual axes if that’s the case.
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I was using the dual hammers on Slayer for a good number of runs last night and really liked them.
I cant comment on using them on the Ranger or Ironbreaker.
Just stack the attack speed buffs and away you go.
They are always going to be compared to the dual axes and in comparison they sacrifice speed and armour damage for lots more stagger and double the stamina shields. Seems fair.
Light swings stagger and kill hordes (can face tank Chaos Hordes), Heavy Swings stagger and kill Elites.
What else do people want?
Edit: While I was not getting top damage green circle with hammers (who cares), what I was noticing is that they really let you control the melee encounters.
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I unlocked them recently, and I’ve been playing Ironbreaker or Slayer mostly since the start of the game. Currently level 411 on Bardin. The dual hammers are not worth the dodge and mobility loss of simply having a one handed hammer instead. Its damage is simply too low, its push attack is subpar, and the rest of it is simply average. That, friends, is precisely the problem. It is “average”, which automatically makes it a subpar pick compared to current favourites. If it is going to shine anywhere, however, it’ll be on Slayer.
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Good to hear Kerilian has yet another best weapon in game.
Also 12 armor dmg on light attack for Sienna? that’s actually better than 1h axe of Bardin.
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TLDR: Dual hammers are for Ranger / Ironbreaker. The push stab feels so bad, they could use abit more speed or dmg for their heavy attack (specificaly vs armor) and give them and actual shield breaking attack / make them better vs shields.
I wouldn’t compare dual hammers to dual axes. Axes are just better and they should be, for the melee only career only unique weapon.
I’ve been using them on ranger for the past two days instead of 1h hammer. I do agree with they could use abit more dmg on their heavy attack, or give them abit more speed.
My only real complaint about them, is their supposed shield breaking. The best way I’ve found vs shields, is the push stab into light attack. It doesn’t feel great. The 1h hammer was better vs shields, if that is the attack they want us to use vs shields. You could just use 1 heavy attack vs shields and they were gone. Dual hammers doesn’t even do that, it just staggers or knocks them down.
They are really powerfull in hordes, and their pushes are really strong.
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You’re joking.
Right?
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To be fair, I haven’t done any of my typical analysis in the modded realm yet, so dual h could edge out 1h hammer’s performance generally speaking. I think 1h hammer is easily comparative when attack speed and breakpoints are brought into the picture though.
Also dual h does not have an entirely horizontal light combo. IIRC, it’s horizontal right-hand, upward left-hand, downward left-hand. Are you block canceling the light rotation or something?
Except dual h have one major design flaw. It competes in the exact same space as 1h hammer. Both weapons are effectively: lights for horde, charges for single target/armor/elites/bosses, high mobility, high stamina. Their performance even feels very similar from what I’ve played so far.
But maybe that’s intentional? Attempting to provide similar performance but with a different feel? If that’s the case, I think it’s disappointing in practice. Everyone else got all these new interesting weapons for their careers, Bardin got an alternate 1h hammer. Cool.
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I unlocked it on Slayer, and had made the incorrect assumption it was reserved for that class. That being said, it could be a very nice alternative to making dual axes for all Bardin classes available, as some have expressed a desire for in this thread. I still believe I would chose a 1h axe over the dual hammers, but that’s because hammers (unless 2 handed) are less versatile than their axe counterparts in my opinion.
You should speak for yourself.
I think they are amazing and i plan on using them a lot. They are great for hordes and the armor damage is okayish.
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There are weapons that do a better job at both hoard clearing and armor damage, but you do you =]
Did some testing of dual hammers vs 1h hammer on IB:
- dual hammers better vs an AI off rat ogre. (1m07s vs 1m28s). 1h axe was 55s for reference.
- No difference in kill time of 10 fanatics, about the same at ~10s killtime.
- 1h hammer needs full 30% power vs infantry/chaos to one-shot headshot marauders. With dual hammers, 30% will let you one-shot with one full charged body hit.
- CW kill speed was slower on dual hammer: 6-7s vs ~9-10s.
- 20 slaves was identical, about 12s.
- SV killtime is basically identical, 2 charged attacks.
- Mauler killtime seems to be close, sub 4 seconds.
Other observations about the dual hammers and 1h hammer:
- The push stab is detrimental during hordes due to the push stab itself being bad, and the push stab adding a downward light swing afterward.
- You can two-shot a SV by stacking +30% power and hitting headshots on both the pushstab and downward light followup, but that seems hard to pull off consistently.
- dual h opens up a shield stormvermin in a single charged attack, whereas 1h hammer needs to do a charge attack plus a push.
- dual h charged doesn’t break marauder shields, it just knocks them down. (so that tooltip is kinda wrong).
- The bad light attacks of 1h hammer can be avoiding by doing light 1, light 2, and then a push-stab.
- Dual hammers has a bad light 2, an upward swing. You can block cancel out of the light combo to do only horizontal swings, but it’ll be lower DPS (slower than using followups).
- Both weapons seem to have the same dodge range and distance.
- The dual h followup side-to-side charged attacks are more difficult to land headshots with.
- 1h hammer’s charged attacks seem to be a little faster, (i.e. 10 attacks in ~10s vs ~12s).
- Dual h didn’t seem to have anymore stagger than 1h hammer.
- 1h hammer has 0.5 more stamina shields.
So as near as I can tell, the trade-off is in boss killing power, anti shielded SV utility, and a more accessible marauder breakpoint vs CW damage and attack speed?
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strongly disagree. I think it makes ironbreaker a viable class finally. with 10 percent attack speed and 20 percent chaos dmg, swiftt slayin, these things make IB strong, fun, and able to dodge overheads but not dodge dance hordes. I love em. the push attack, normal overhead followup, then charged overhead combo is very strong against armor in a horde.
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I was hoping this was were they would get their uniqeness from. They should be able to just dmg SV with shields with heavy attacks. Like the flail for zealot.
Like above, it’s attacks should just ignore shields and you should be able to attack them through it with any of it’s attack vs unarmored.
The fact that it says shieldbreaking and it doesn’t do that is what my only complaint.
I agree with the rest of your statements, just a cooler 1h hammer.
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I’ve been dodge-dancing hordes with IB and 1h axe ever since 1.3. I IBs horde clearing weapon are drakefire pistols anyway. Melee weapon is for armor removal and sustained horde hackin, when things get bad, ypu shoot a few times in shotgun mode, then back to hacking.
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After unlocking the Dual Hammers I was excited, I’d finally found something to use other than my typical 2h hammer and dual axes combo for slayer. Using them on Ranger was really fun too. However, after a few games I’ve noticed a few problems with them. They aren’t all that great. They look neat as hell and I really want to use them, however they seem to be a slightly worse 1h hammer. The attack pattern is nice at first glance, but good lord that upward strike on attack 2 is awful. I was planning on using these for hordes, and they work pretty well, but I’m not doing my job at nearly the level I would be with the 2h hammer. If the attacks had more cleave and more stagger, specifically armor, I’ll be mashing hordes and a couple SV come through and it stops my whole pace, usually getting me killed by the horde still coming at me and I can’t use the axes because the horde then starts bleeding through and I’m hitting flesh with 2 target damage, causing the horde to overrun me. In game I am dodging like a madman, parrying and pushing, trying to get a good flow going, but I just can’t. The 2h hammer is light years ahead of the dual hammers imo. If FatShark adds more cleave, more overall stagger, and more armor stagger, straightens out the pattern and speeds up the attacks, all in little bits, I’ll use the hammers any day of the week. But until then, once I get my reds, I’m going straight back to the 2h hammer.
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