This is a short guide on how to get the most out of your everyday hammer warrior build (Devastating Hammer or Magehunter's Smash) by using a technique called quarterknocking.

What is this quarterknock? you might ask. A quarterknock is basically a knockdown followed by another knockdown with less than 1/4 second in between for the target to stand up and cast spells. This makes for a deadly lockdown of a monk or other important target.

How do you quarterknock people then? Thought you'd never ask. To begin with, what you need to be able to quarterknock:

a)A warrior and a build with 2 or more knockdowns (devastating hammer, heavy blow or bull's strike, shock works just as well)
b)Stonefist Insignia on any part of you armor
c)A somewhat good connection

Now that you have what you need let's see how you actually do it, this is for a Devastating hammer build but it works the same way with any build.

1. Build up adrenaline for all your skills.

2. Open with either Devastating Hammer or Bull's Strike.

3. If you opened with Devastating Hammer use Flail, if you opened with Bull's strike perform a quarterknock with Devastating Hammer now using the technique described here (from now on I'm assuming you've opened with devastating hammer or performed a quarterknock already).

4. Hit your target once or use Crushing blow to get the adrenaline used for Flail back.

IMPORTANT : 5. Cancel your attack in any way you please, walk to side or press the cancel action button (Esc by default) just make sure your character isn't attacking your target

6. When your target is just about to get up use Heavy blow, don't wait too long though or he'll have time to cast before the heavy blow knockdown hits him. This is the part that takes quite some practice to get perfectly timed, there's no way to really tell someone when to use the second knockdown you just have to learn to time it by trying it for yourself.

To hopefully clarify things a bit I've uploaded a short clip of me doing this: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=zM5087SV9ao
Notice how early you interrupt casts if you get it perfectly timed.

When you get the timing right you can start adapting this to other things, one I can think of right now is timing for example Disrupting chop to interrupt a spell after knocking someone down

Feel free to ask questions if something is unclear, I suck at explaining stuff .

// Matt

the 5th point confuses me. Care to elaborate why I'm supposed to cancel attacking?

Cause with guild wars' combat system you can't start a new swing before the previous one has finished. In other words, if you keep attacking him you're gonna be in the middle of a swing when he gets up and you have to wait until the swing finishes before you can use a skill which leaves time for him to cast.

Fair enough. =]

someone showed me this when i used to play gvg, its pretty useful although i dont usually do it cause im lazy and played hammo (stolen from Jocke) in RA most of the time where the monks are 95% bad anyway.

on a random note i swear i remember someone talking about the reaction times needed to be a good interupt ranger in gvg once, cant remember what it was though (im a bad ranger, i interupt by guessing )

on a random note i swear i remember someone talking about the reaction times needed to be a good interupt ranger in gvg once

A good ranger with a decent connection should be able to interrupt 3/4-1sec casts from recurve range pretty consistently by reacting. 1/2sec (not very common) are also pretty doable when you're standing next to the person casting.

Hmm i think im going to try that sometime.... seems to be pretty annoying

When you knock a player down, specially in a hard push (when the opponent is on the run) it is vital that you position yourself in front of your target. You can do this by clicking your way around your target while he's knocked down, and using skills/spacebar to keep up your attack rate.

When not retreating, it is still nice to re-position yourself, to force your target to kite into your team, instead of away from it.

As a final note "quarterstepping" or "chiizu-dancing" as it is called (since Chiizu was pretty much the best at doing this) only realy makes a difference in top play. You can do it constantly but it is a very intensive technique (since you have to click/spacebar between every attack). However, when playing hammer warrior, dancing around your target is pretty easy (your target is not moving) and generally worth it.

If you want more info on this, just ask.