heroes Sgt. Hammer Build Guide Update: Nov 30

[Stan 5,240]

Sgt. Hammer received a rework yesterday and Oxy has updated our guide and moved it to the new format.

You can find the updated Sgt. Hammer build guide here.

TL;DR

• Her attacks have become more responsive.
• Her old trait was removed and replaced with an improved Siege Mode.
• Cast range of her Spider Mines (Q) has been increased by 100% while in Siege Mode.
• Cast range of her Concussive Blast has been increased by 50% while in Siege Mode and the cone narrowed from 60 degrees to 45 degrees.
• Neosteel Plating is her new (E) ability that can be activated to gain 25 Armor for 2 seconds (50 Armor in Siege Mode).

If you haven't been following the latest patch notes, you can find all the changes to Sgt. Hammer below.

Blizzard (Source)

Sgt. Hammer

• Sgt. Hammer’s Basic Attack is now more responsive.

Abilities

• Artillery (Trait)
  • Removed (including the +1 Basic Attack range)
• Siege Mode (D)
  • Moved to D (Trait)
  • Mana cost removed
  • Basic Attack range bonus increased from 5 to 6
  • Sgt. Hammer now deals 20% bonus damage to all enemies while in Siege Mode, instead of 30% bonus to Minions and Structures.
  • Sgt. Hammer can no longer cast abilities while entering Siege Mode.
• Spider Mines (Q)
  • While in Siege Mode, the cast range is increased by 100%
  • Mana cost reduced from 50 to 45
• Concussive Blast (W)
  • Cone narrowed from 60 degrees to 45 degrees
  • While in Siege Mode, the cast range is increased by 50%
  • Mana cost reduced from 75 to 60
• (New Ability) Neosteel Plating (E)
  • Activate to gain 25 Armor for 2 seconds.
  • While in Siege mode, increase this to 50 Armor.
  • 12 second cooldown, 30 Mana

Talents

• Level 1
  • Advanced Artillery (D)
    • New functionality:
      •  Now increases Siege Mode’s splash damage to 50% and its radius by 25%.
  • Resistant (D)
    • Removed
  • Ambush (D)
    • Adjusted functionality:
      • Sgt. Hammer now also enters Stealth after not dealing damage, taking damage, or using an Ability for 3 seconds while in Siege Mode.
  • Regeneration Master
    • Removed
  • (New Talent) Maelstrom Rounds
    • Activate to increase Sgt. Hammer’s Basic Attack damage by 40% for 5 seconds. Maximum 3 charges. 90 second charge cooldown. Basic Attacks in Siege Mode against enemy Structures reduce this cooldown by 5 seconds.
• Level 4
  • Vigorous Assault (Passive)
    • Removed
  • Focused Attack (Passive)
    • Removed
  • Excessive Force (W)
    • Removed
  • Barricade (W)
    • Moved from Level 13
  • (New Talent) Siege Tactics (E)
    • Sgt. Hammer becomes Unstoppable for 2 seconds when she uses Neosteel Plating in Siege Mode.
  • (New Talent) Regenerative Bio-Steel (D)
    • Sgt. Hammer heals for 15% of her damage dealt with Basic Attacks in Siege Mode.
• Level 7
  • Mine Field (Q)
    • Removed
  • First Aid (Active)
    • Removed
  • (New Talent) Pulse Detonation Core (Q)
    • Spider Mines explode 3 times over 3 seconds, instead of destroying themselves immediately.
  • Hover Siege (D)
    • Moved from Level 16
    • Movement Speed reduced from 50% to 25%.
  • Graduating Range (D)
    • Moved from Level 16
    • Maximum range bonus reduced from 5.5 to 3.3
• Level 13
  • First Strike (D)
    • Removed
  • Bullhead Mines (Q)
    • Removed
  • (New Talent) Tactical Mine Deployment (Q)
    • Increases Spider Mine’s slow from 25% to 40%. Casting Thrusters leaves behind a trail of up to 5 Spider Mines while Sgt. Hammer is moving.
  • (New Talent) Entrenched (W)
    • Increases Concussive Blast’s damage and knockback distance by 75% while in Siege Mode.
  • Hyper-Cooling Engines (Z)
    • Moved from Level 7
    • New functionality:
      • Each enemy Hero hit with a Basic Attack in Siege Mode reduces the cooldown of Thrusters by 5 seconds.
• Level 16
  • Stoneskin (Active)
    • Removed
  • Giant Killer (Passive)
    • Moved from Level 13
  • (New Talent) Mechanical Know-How (E)
    • Neosteel Plating grants a Shield equal to 5% of Sgt. Hammer’s maximum Health for 2 seconds. If this Shield is destroyed, she deals 50% more Basic Attack damage for 5 seconds.
• Level 20
  • Fury of the Storm (Passive)
    • Removed
  • Nexus Frenzy (Passive)
    • Removed
  • (New Talent) Shrapnel Mines (Q)
    • Each Spider Mine explosion reduces enemy Armor by 10 for 3 seconds.
  • (New Talent) Ultra Capacitors (D)
    • Every enemy Hero hit with a Basic Attack while in Siege Mode increases Sgt. Hammer’s Attack Speed by 5% for 5 seconds, up to 40%.

[Oxygen 446]

I suppose I should mention that this rework significantly weakens Sgt. Hammer. If she was barely playable before as a novelty item, this smothered her completely.

[SleepySheepy 41]

Oxygen, can you place Mechanical Know-how as a no-go or situational? It's a trap talent that wants you to use your only defensive ability as offensive without even securing bonus. Either it activates, which means you are getting focused so you should run away, or you just wasted your only defensive ability for nothing. ONLY place where I see it is if they have poke, something like Lunara and you aren't under threat of a dive.

And yes, Hammer was gutted, now even Raynor is better than her. 

F

Edited November 30, 2017 by SleepySheepy

[Godeyes 25]

14 minutes ago, Oxygen said:

I suppose I should mention that this rework significantly weakens Sgt. Hammer. If she was barely playable before as a novelty item, this smothered her completely.

Can you explain ?
Some good known players are quite pleased with her changes and say that at least she has a specific role now and that she looks viable. And you say that update " significantly weakens" her which makes her completely unviable...

 

[SleepySheepy 41]

47 minutes ago, Godeyes said:

Can you explain ?
Some good known players are quite pleased with her changes and say that at least she has a specific role now and that she looks viable. And you say that update " significantly weakens" her which makes her completely unviable...

 

I'll try to explain, of course, you don't have to agree.

When she was picked at higher levels of play, Diamond and similar, she was used as Raynor, ranged AA hero that dealt significant damage. You never used siege mode, because, well, it's effectively self-rooting... I hope I don't need to explain why it's bad.

Now her AA in tank mode loses 30% (+10% from level 1 talent) + 1 range trait, Focused Attack talent, Nexus Frenzy, and Giant Killer was moved to 16, where are as every good Hammer player you would choose Executioner if your team featured CC, Nexus Frenzy for even more range and more RoF which solved now fixed stutter stepping issue. All those combined, made her AA fearsome. Now tank mode does bugger all.

So you would think that forcing siege mode through talents and trait (I hate this move), they would make it better for TF... Except it's worse.
Range was decreased by 0.1, you are still immobile as ever, loss of both regenerating talent and Z CDR, makes it even more unforgiving to enter siege. While 50 Armor might seem like much, it's only for 2s, which does nothing when you are getting poked all the time because you are sitting still. Nexus Frenzy counterpart is just plain bad. Not only it doesn't give you range, it's worthless where enemy isn't there, but also when you first enter siege, you still need to hit enemy hero 4 times to actually gain value of Nexus Frenzy... So you need to root yourself and waste time to still don't have what you had before?

So overall, tank mode does bugger all, siege mode is worse and is forced as only way to play. 
As Hammer main before, I hate it.

To not forgot to add, every other hero that had Giant Killer, now has it as better variant with condition. You effectively lost level 13 talent beucase it was moved to more impactful talent tier.

Edited December 1, 2017 by SleepySheepy

[Oxygen 446]

1 hour ago, SleepySheepy said:

Oxygen, can you place Mechanical Know-how as a no-go or situational? It's a trap talent that wants you to use your only defensive ability as offensive without even securing bonus. Either it activates, which means you are getting focused so you should run away, or you just wasted your only defensive ability for nothing. ONLY place where I see it is if they have poke, something like Lunara and you aren't under threat of a dive.

And yes, Hammer was gutted, now even Raynor is better than her. 

F

Know-how's shield is more important that its situational damage increase aspect. The idea is to use it to further resist poke damage, and not to activate it to gain a damage bonus. That's just gravy.

To be completely honest, though, I'm still experimenting with some stuff myself, so I might very well change my stance.

 

50 minutes ago, Godeyes said:

Can you explain ?
Some good known players are quite pleased with her changes and say that at least she has a specific role now and that she looks viable. And you say that update " significantly weakens" her which makes her completely unviable...

 

She deals less damage than before and is more reliant on sieging than ever. Graduating range was gutted. First aid is gone. The positives of the rework are Neosteel and the Siege Tactics talent.

Edit: Sleepy wins the posting race, and does so more eloquently than I.

[MZLICH 43]

So just pick D talents? Idk how they're balancing. ..

by the way I don't like that new E talent she doesn't need something like that specially if it's duration is 2secs!  Maybe something about heal or shield was better...looks like they had no idea about fixing her but they wanted to add a new useable ability (D) to her.. so they just fill that E with something... 

[ReaperChief 2]

Personally I go with this build and it works more than the others:

1 - Maelstrom Rounds

4 - Regenerative Biosteel (which is amped by Maelstrom)

7 - Hover Siegemode (so you can continously push waves, enemies and forts/keeps)

10 - BFG (just burst damage to finish enemies out of range of siege)

13 - Hyper Cooling Engines (to get out of siege as fast as possible and reposition)

16 - Giant Killer (safest pick as it just increases damage no matter what)

20 - Ultra Capacitors (just increases damage against heroes)

 

I just feel that siege mode is a beast if you can stay safe. You just melt enemies much faster, but it comes with a lot of weakness on the mobility side. It's still Hammer and I like playing her.

Edited December 1, 2017 by ReaperChief

[SleepySheepy 41]

Judging from HotsLogs, her pick rate is still mighty low, surpassing Abathur, while winrate plummeted.

Funny for a rework.
http://prntscr.com/hi3rie

Edited December 2, 2017 by SleepySheepy

[SenatorBinks27 16]

I'll have to play around with her more, as I was distracted by things the first time and didn't play optimally (not that I have the processing power - both in my laptop and in my brain - to play the standard definition of "optimally" anyway).

I will say I subscribe to the notion that every talent (and hero and team comp) in the game is viable with the right player(s) behind it. 

[ArtVandelay 24]

Have not played the remake.  I personally hate the main function of a hero being on the D key.  It can be missed when dropping your fingers off qwer.  It is much more natural to shift to T than D or F or Z or B.  I have never understood their hotkey usage.  I bought a gaming mouse and programmed them, so it is not an issue for me.  Regardless, they keep talking about making the game easier to learn for noobs.  Then why put a vital skill on a key your fingers are not resting on constantly?