Wanna start off and say this game is looking great so far! Love everything its got going on!
However, I found this alpha strangely difficult... which i found out was because the character I started with was running hammer because i thought it would be the big damage weapon with a slow swing.

 Makes sense, like a dark souls ultragreatsword or something like it- but when i was curious as to how things would be with another weapon when I was getting stuck on a seemingly innocuous enemy like the mini geists, I found that the other weapons do the same damage as the hammer, just faster! What's more is that the lack of knockback on other weapons means you can keep hitting enemies for big stunlocks and tons of hits. The hammer's knockback seems strong, until I saw it just gave enemies a range advantage on me! Minigeists and slimeks have way more range than the hammer has, and the sword for that matter, but the sword for example can just jump in and slice them up no problem while the hammer has to either do a dance of moving back and forth that opens you to enemies behind your back, or you have to use the jumping attack to jump in and out more quickly to dodge getting attacked- but that's still dealing the same damage as a normal swing, and it's slower to do that by a longshot. 

I'm aware the magic and bow are their own things, and currently have advantage just because of the lack of ranged enemies, but I'm not too worried about that right now. What I wanted to do with this post was bring up the inherent disadvantage with no upside hammers have which I think is important to bring up now that playtesting with the public is available to this game.  I love this game! I think it deserves this kind of feedback on the gameplay.

Does anyone else have trouble with any strategies or builds that you thought were going to be good? Anyone else attest to hammer being currently the weakest option in the game? Thanks!

i also add to this considering that even with the jump and attack with the hammer is faster. it still doesn't have beat the sheer quick damage the swords do in comparison. while they do feel good to use with that Thunk. they do they simply don't do the damage that should be doing compared to the drawbacks and while like the wide hit is nice for farming, the sword is simply better in all other ways which makes em quite sad as a hammer lover.

I think it depends on the enemy. Higher damage per hit seems to factor into your ability to stagger and knock back enemies, and hammer obviously does the most per hit (the jumping attack doing slightly more). It completely trivializes the higher level slimes in the demo, for example. And farming multiple enemies faster is no joke, especially if ATLYSS is as inspired by MapleStory as it seems!

I tend to find the hammer works best either when you repeatedly jump attack your enemy, OR when you let your enemy approach and then use grounded attacks to bat them away. Mix and matching the approaches gets messy. For the Geists I'm pretty sure I just jumped at 'em, blocked, and jumped at 'em a couple more times.

Classes are also a feature we barely get to play with in this demo, but there will be "Tier 2" classes that may greatly exaggerate the strengths of given weapons... And the multiplayer portion of the game may also lend extra value to properties like AoE, burst damage, and CC, depending on what's needed.

I did switch to Bow or Sword occasionally, but I didn't find it very disheartening to do so. I mostly just smacked things around with the Hammer.

For melee, the Diva for sure was easiest with the hammer imo, as you can go in and hit once and twice and take a good chunk of her health, before getting away and let her do another attack

Funniest side effect of hammers is that the knockback actively makes it worse for anything but defensive use. Combat goes HIT - MISS - MISS - HIT - MISS - MISS because they get knocked out of your attack's range. Haven't tried them after the damage buff, but they really were only good for a little niche, especially since they're the only melee weapon that has a strict hardlimit on attack speed as far as I saw.

My mouse has a built-in autoclicker, and the other melee weapons get a solid speed boost out of it, but hammers seem to ignore the autoclicker entirely and continue at the normal attack speed.

Oh, but it's not.

Hammer is so damn good, just use the jump attack.

Once you get the Fighter class, you can upgrade it making it even better.

I didn't start with one but the hammers that drop from the slimek and mekboars pull their weight very, VERY well

To be fair, hammers did get a buff, which was needed.

Dunno, kinda feels like some more skills need to be pushed down into the novice tree, maybe one for each weapon? Novice in general is super dull and you don't hit level 10 until the end of the demo's content unless you grind. Staves kinda fall into that same issue because they're dull to fight with until you've got the charged shot from the magic class.

Just got the hammer that drops from the slime diva, it's stuipid good too.

Agreed on the novice skills. Healing is really good but leg up and especially rock throw are pretty boring and don't have too much effect. I get the skills there shouldn't be as cool or impactful as the class skills, but there could be something a little more substantial maybe.

Charged/special moves in general could use an overhaul too, only the hammer's feel good or useful to use right now. Like the swords charge attack is worse than just attacking all the time.