What determines Hammer's base damage?

[chinesefollower]

I made Void Knight using Hammer and the Void spec of Hammer is very powerful because the DoT stacks with several Hammers and I only need to rank up void damage.

Then I made a Sentinel thinking that he has several Throwing passives. Well, so far the base damage is very poor. I tried using a weapon with Melee Physical 14 and 21. I don’t notice any difference. Doesn’t Throwing weapon scales with weapon’s base damage in general? I mean that’s what makes Throwing different from Bow/Spell is that Throwing gets melee weapon’s bonus like chance to bleed/stun, etc?

How do I increase Throwing’s base damage?

[smets]

Hammer throw is a throwing skill, not a melee skill. It inherits no modifiers that apply to melee skills, including added melee damage on weapons. Flat damage additions such as from “Void Bolts” in the passive tree add to Hammer Throw’s base hit damage, but not the aura.

Increases to void damage and throwing attack damage scale both the initial hit and the aura. (note that increases to void damage only affect hammer’s initial hit if it has added void damage as stated above)

[chinesefollower]

I know it’s not a “melee” skill. It’s just that other games treat “throwing weapon” as a melee skill.

There’s not a lot of things that add “base” damage of Hammer. I am trying out Sentinel and it is definitely a lot worse than Void Knight’s version and mainly because Sentinel has worse survival than Void Knight (because Void damage can leech very well) and Hammer’s base damage is pretty bad. It’s even worse if I take extra 2 Hammers. ugh.

I find Sentinel is just not very good. He is tankier with melee health leeching and his block/armor. He has two higher ranking passives (Hammer Head and Javelineer) that increase Throwing +critical and +critical damage. Both of them are quite weak IMO. It’s better off just taking Retaliation for +damage when I get hit.

[Macknum]

Even over 200% throw dmg hammer dmg is lackluster to be used as a primary skill. Sure orbiting hammers are fine to wear down enemys but It would be bonkers if that skill has that much power to work as a stand alone.
So buffing it up with difefrent nodes for differnt dmg sources makes sence. On the other hand maybe enough phs dmg stacking might help.

[chinesefollower]

That’s why I asked what increases Hammer’s base damage because just the Nodes/passives alone are not enough. I haven’t tried to stack as much +Throwing damage as possible but I can’t see it being that high.

Void Knight’s version is good because the void dot damage stacks with each hammer and Void damage can be increased pretty easily and void damage leeches health.

[chinesefollower]

One good way to make high-end Sentinel Hammer build good is to give Add Physical damage to Throwing passives

Hammer Head - +2 Physical damage and +10% critical
Javelineer - +2 Physical damage and +10% critical dmg

[DirePenguin]

@chinesefollower

One good way to make high-end Sentinel Hammer build good is to give Add Physical damage to Throwing passives

Hammer Head - +2 Physical damage and +10% critical
Javelineer - +2 Physical damage and +10% critical dmg

And make the Void Knight lvl 5 leech passive work on all physical dmg, not just melee.

[smets]

I got a hammerboi up to wave 1000 in the arena, so I don’t think that damage is too bad. Then again, the main reason I was able to survive that long was because of some crazy ward interactions.

[chinesefollower]

I built another Sentinel Hammer this time and I am impressed! This time I am not going with the Hammer No Return route. That route reduces Hammer’s damage too much.

This time I go with Proc build! I got this awesome Legendary belt called Vipertail which gives me 50% chance to Poison and Slow on hit. And my Axe has chance to Bleed and Ignite. I got whole bunch of Throwing Speed so I am doing good DoT damage. Very fun!!!

I also put more +Physical damage in my items. I didn’t know +Physical damage increases Hammer damage. I thought it was only for Melee physical.

Overall, Hammer build is much better if it returns to me. lol One thing I am worried is that they nerfed Stun chance this patch. I wonder if it would affect Overwhelm node too much. I honestly can’t tell if it’s worth taking Overwhelm because the stun duration on enemy is so short. I am much better off getting +attack speed!

I’ve also found that both higher tier passives Javelineer and Hammer Head are pretty bad. I barely notice any difference. Too bad that Retaliation passive is bugged now. It is not increasing damage at all. If it works, I believe Retaliation improves damage more than Javelineer and Hammer Head.