Expanding Horizons

One of the things I enjoy most about Guild Wars, over World of Warcraft, is the ability to change skills and attribute points on the fly. I love the flexibility of it. I especially like being able to save builds, and access them at will. It makes it so much easier to change up between missions and quests.

However, for the longest time, whenever it came to a hammer build, I'd only use the elite Backbreaker. Frankly, Backbreak is brutal. Unconditional knockdown, pair with solid bonus damage, and the longest knockdown in the game. However, in order to put my warrior in line with some more effective builds, I brokedown and capped Devastation Hammer.

Damn.

What gets me is how cheap the skill is, only 7 adreneline. Backbreaker is 10, while Earth Shaker and Magehunters Smash are 8. Unconditional, and it applies weakness. I had been using Backbreak with Pulverizing Smash, for the same effect, giving me better energy management, as opposed to using Crushing Blow for my KD follow up. So now, I'm running the standard hammer bar, Devastation, Crushing, Hammer Bash, Bull's Strike, with four wild-card picks (self-heal, IAS, IMS, rez, etc).

Well, I can certainly see why it's so popular.

I ended up having to craft a new set of gauntlets with Stonefist insignia, which was a bitch, cause ever since the last patch, the material merchants have been out of Amber. Luckily, I found a guy who had been hording some, and I only had to pay 300g a pop.

Due to the fact that I had been using Backbreaker for so long, I never had to learn how to 1/4 lock an opponet. For those who don't play warriors much, this is when a hammer (or anyone with multiple KD skills) times a KD to strike the foe right as they stand, leaving them a window of less than 1/4 of a second to act. It requires me to be a bit more active when PvPing, but durring an AB today, I locked down a poor Wammo for 12 seconds, while the rest of his team was scrambling around (we ended up losing, 492-501, but it was damn fun). Normally, I'd have planted him down for 4 seconds, then had to build adren for a while before I was able to do it again.

Yes, I know, I'm a noob for getting all excited and worked up over something this stupid. Sorry. Late bloomer and what not.