Hammer of the Ancients

Hammer of the Ancients is a Barbarian skill enabled at level 2, which causes a big 2-handed hammer to appear in the Barbarian's hands, with which he smacks an enemy for increased % of weapon damage.

Background

The Barbarian calls for aid from his ancestors, and they respond by lending him this huge hammer.

Skill Effects

The following is a very quick list. See the Hammer of the Ancients runed page for a more thorough summary of rune effects, or any of the individual rune pages for numbers, screenshots, blue quotes, and much more.

Skill		Effect
Hammer of the Ancients 2		Call forth a massive hammer to smash enemies around the target for 180% weapon damage and increases critical hit change by 15%. Cost: 20 Fury.
	Smash	Strike a smaller area for X% weapon damage.
	Rolling Thunder	Modifies the strike to create a shockwave that deals X% weapon damage to all enemies in front of you.
	The Devil's Anvil	Create a tremor at the point of impact to rattle enemies for an additional X% weapon damage over X seconds.
	Birthright	Critical hits have a X% chance to cause enemies to drop loot or health globes.
	Thunderstrike	Whenever you kill an enemy with Hammer of the Ancients every other nearby enemy has a X% chance to be stunned for X seconds.

Say hello to my little friend...

Skill Design

This is a really fun skill to use, and is very powerful. The increased chance to critically hit is assumed to increase the Hammer of the Ancients critical chance, instead of normal melee hits. It's a huge attack, and hits quickly, but the Barbarian takes a second to recover after the strike, leaving him vulnerable to nearby enemies. This looks like a skill that's best used against single large targets, rather than while swarmed. It's not clear if the strike will hit multiple enemies, or just the targeted enemy.

Synergies

• No synergies with any of the passive skills are yet known.

Development

Hammer of the Ancients was first seen when Diablo III debuted at WWI 2008. At the time, the skill was at Tier II on the Battlemaster Skill Tree; it dealt 100% weapon damage, an additional 2 physical damage and increased the damage of critical hits by 20% at rank one.

By BlizzCon 2009, this skill had gotten a small boost to all of its stats, and had been bumped up to Tier III. Aside from the removal of skill trees, this skill hasn't noticeably changed since then. Flux described using it at BlizzCon 2010 (or maybe BlizzCon 2009) as:[1]

The impact zone seemed very small, like a single monster in radius, which felt weird. Like it should be called Snow Shovel of the Ancients, with a narrow, blade-thin hitting end. As big as the hammer was, it should have had a crushing impact, capable of hitting multiple enemies in the area. Even basic Rank One Cleave did that, and with a much faster, more accurate, and less Fury-costly attack.

Skill tiers were removed for the July 2011 Press Event, and Hammer of the Ancients became a level 2 skill.

Previous Versions

See the Barbarian skill archive for more details on previous versions of Hammer of the Ancients and other Barbarian skills.

Media

Hammer of the Ancients can be seen in action on video here:

• Gameplay: WWI 2008
• Diablo 3 Barbarian Skill Animations

You can find pictures in the Diablo III screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo III screenshots and pictures
• Hammer of the Ancients specific gallery contents

References

• BlizzCon 2009 Full Barbarian Skill Trees and Stats
• BlizzCon 2010 Barbarian Hands-on Report
• Zediono's translation of JudgeHype's pre-beta report -- IncGamers 1st Aug 2011

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