Not a single guide i’ve read suggests using it. Is it really that bad?
What makes you think it’s going to be bad??? 
Like i said literally none of the guides ive read suggested it
You have to think of the scenario in which it would be used and then see if there’s a better option for the point you would have put there.
Basically, once you took all the better talents in the first 2 sections, you’re left with 1 point to go past to the third and that’s where you make the decision.
What we can see is that it’s pretty much a choice between Empyrean Legacy, Empyrean power and Divine Hammers.
I didn’t follow all the changes for Divine Hammer but the new mechanics sound way better.
HOWEVER, the tooltip says it cost 3 holy power to use, and it doesn’t do that much damage.
Like say we hit 5 targets, it would take the full duration to deal barely more damage than ONE divine Storm.
So best case scenario you get it going for 16sec and get 2 DS worth, worst case you barely get 1.
You know what other talent that gives you divine storm damage but instant instead of over 8 sec?
Empyrean Power and it deals 15% more damage to boot and it profits from Tempest of the lightbringer.
For a 1 min CD it’s still profoundly lackluster.
Why would you want to use 3hp to deal a DS over 8 sec instead of immediately?
It might pull ahead on 8 targets but if its the only moment where it takes priority in a dungeon, you’re most likely much better taking empyrean power which is always going to be useful vs only being an increase on specifically 8 targets.
EDIT:
So I went and checked and the guide now DO recommend it.
And they drop Jurisdiction for it, so they keep empyrean power.
Still haven’t read all the patch notes so still don’t know the full changes to DH.
I honestly think Divine Hammer is going to be an extremely important part of our toolkit. Why? A few things…
Blizz re-designed it, so the upkeep is far better now by just using Holy Power.
It’s another source of damage we now have that we previously didn’t use because of the bad design.
It’s synergy with other Talents and Abilities is ridiculously good such as: Sanctify, to get a 20% damage increase. It also works with Burning Crusade and since it’s Radiant Damage, it’s an additional source to activate Searing Light.
Even more important, because of Hammerfall in the Templar Hero tree, we now have an additional source for Empyrean Hammers. So we’re now going to do additional damage despite the 30% nerf we received for EH.
And guess what? More EH falling out of the sky means more stacks of Light’s Deliverance which translates to more damage, healing and defense from Hammer of Light, Sacrosanct Crusade and Wrathful Decent.
To back up the napkin math in my head (I’m no Reed Richards, I freely admit), I encourage people to look at 2 YouTube videos, one from a guy named Zucco Wow and another guy named LvLaden. They highlighted Divine Hammer in their respective videos and the damage and quickness of Light’s Deliverance was insane.
Because of the interactions Divine Hammer has with the other abilities and talents, I could be wrong but I honestly think not taking Divine Hammer next season will be a serious dps and hps loss.
Time will tell…
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divine hammer in its current state is bad and clunky, thats why its not suggested
its been reworked in ptr and its now mandatory for all content
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Agreed. On live, it sucks. No one uses it.
Again, agreed. And for the better.
“Mandatory”? Not that I’m arguing the point, but…
i mean if you dont care about min maxing damage. then tis not mandatory, at that point you can play whatever you want 
but if you want to do the most damage you can then frankly DH is mandatory because its competition are damage nodes that do less damage than dh overal
ngl i can write an entire essay why dh is kinda cringe but frankly theres no point. so ill just ask. are you guys ready to stack 4 cds again?
Well said.
I don’t want or need another source of damage
1 Like
Not to mention another breath of sindagrosa mechanic…
Just on another class.
Sounds good, don’t use it.
Problem solved. 
its not a breath mechanic. its a no thinky passive damage cd
you press the button, do your rotation as normal and pray you get dp and tier set procs and thats it. if it drops it drops
The procs count as HP spent?
Dp/EL counts, EP don’t.
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yep, dp/el/ tier set/hol proc all count as spenders.
ep doesnt
yay more rng
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Obviously dude. Don’t be dense. The problem is it’s in the game now. And it’s not like our dps is going to go up. It’s going to be the same since it’s going to be balanced around another ability. We’ve gained nothing but another hotkey . Congrats you played yourself.
Says the man who’s going to play it despite complaining about it.
Whether I play it or not has nothing to do with what I said
Yes and no.
They didn’t add something on top of what we already had.
They fixed something that was never used because it was broken.
Essentially becoming a choice between this and other talents.
Now in ST, the problem is that once you picked all the usual suspect for maximizing your single target before the 3rd section, you were left with a choice between a bunch of either low impact talents, broken talents, AoE talents and… Vanguard Momentum.
Divine Wrath is still useless with Radiant Glory, flat out trap talent.
There’s 3 AoE talent and 1 weird ST/AoE in ire.
Hearth of the crusader is not meant to be played with CSAA.
Judgement of Justice is piss poor.
So the only thing Divine hammer needed to beat was Vanguard, which is still a low bar…
In AoE there’s a bit more choices but if you’re going for maximizing AoE then you might not need Jurisdiction.
It adds 17% AP to FV and 13% to BoJ but DH is 36%AP every 2 second without using GCD’s, if you can keep it going with all those proc, it becomes a no brainer.
I wasn’t aware of the interaction with the set and other HP “free” spenders but now it makes more sense to me that it is in the guides.