Glacial Hammer Marauder ( * Shatter your enemies * ) - "permafreeze" Cheap & very tanky

Hi.

This is my 1st guide ever, so go easy on me :-)

Introduction :
I play since august 2012 and I'm a casual player. Had many toons and many have failed endgame. There was always something wrong, low dmg, low rezistances, not the best gear etc. We all know these problems we encountered during our gameplay in the past. Some of us are still having problems to progress in the game. I had a few months break from PoE and decided to come back when the new 4 month leagues started. I wanted to play something tanky, something durable but something not so usual not so popular. Something I never played before. I came up with the idea of playing a Glacial Hammer character. The idea was to get enough attack speed and damage to stun and freeze your enemies. ( Yes, we are going to use maces. ) and who is the best tanky dude in the game ? The Marauder of course.

The character
I'm level 76, going to hit 80 soon. Boss fighting and maps were never easier before. Trust me, you are going to love this. This character just cant die. We are going to use a one handed mace and a shield.

The Main skills we are going to use Glacial Hammer :-)
Support skills - Heavy Strike ( for leveling, it comes handy often at low levels and also against single target rare monsters with Cold Rezist - up to Cruel )
Gap closers - Shield charge and Leap Slam. Either to close the gap between bosses and you, or to get away if you feel like you are in danger. Please note that these two skills tends to cause desynchronization sometime.
Auras - Hatred, Tempest Shield, Vitality.
Cast when damage taken - Here I picked Frostbite, an additional 10 % to freeze your enemies 35 % now with Glacial Hammer and it lowers the monsters cold rezistances by a lot ! I linked this to a Rejuvenation totem for more hp regeneration ( we dont need decoy totem we can tank very well ) and Enduring charges for more dmg reduction and rezistances. Molten shell is also an option but I dont feel like I need that skill here. Consider using Warlords Mark instead of Frostbite if you have mana issues and still cant afford to use Blood Magic gem.

Notable stats :
+226 % increased life ( which is 5.7k life with mediocre gear at lvl 76 )
+116 life ( flat 76 life from the passive skill tree and 40hp from Oak as a quest reward )
+5,5 % life regeneration ( 400 life per second with Vitality aura )
+31 % shield block ( 40 % shield + 4 % tempest shield = 75 % max block )
+4 to max elemental rezistances ( 79 % all rezist )
+10 - 52 % all rezist ( depends on your gear )
+40 % elemental damage with weapons
+112 % - 160 % icreased armor
+36 % attack speed
+174 % increased melee physical damage
49 % spell block

My current gear


Quest rewards
Normal : Help Oak for 40 hp, you want to be tanky. The % icreased life nods will pay off.
Ruthless : umm....
Cruel : Help Oak for 18 % icreased pshysical damage. Your mace is doing pshysical damage and with the glacial hammer you convert a % amount of that physical damage to cold damage.
Merciless : I killed all the bandits, but If you feel like you need to be more tanky feel free to help Oak again to pick up one extra endurance charge. It will grant you additional damage reduction and elemental rezistances. But I feel like 3 is enough. This build isnt oriented at getting endurance charges, it is only a little help for free.

The progress and gameplay.

If you dont have a Glacial Hammer or if you want to save some currecny, I recommend to create a templar and pick this skill gem from the 1st zombie you encounter, kill Hillock and put the skill into your stash then log out, delete your templar and start playing with your Marauder. The Glacial Hammer will wait for you in the stash :)

Normal difficulty is self explanatory.
You cant do nothing wrong if you follow the passive skill order.
- You pick up Life and Armour, followed by Warrior's blood and Diamond skin. ( you can skip the critical strike reduction now, and pick it up later or skip it completely it is up to you, but i find this skill very strong and useful )
- Now we are going to aim for the duelist starting area for more defensive stats a little bit of attack speed and more all rezist.
At the time you finish normal around level 30 - 40 ( depens how fast you rush ) your passive skill should look like this

I recommend you pick up a 2 handed mace and start leveling with ground slam. It is the fastest way to level up for a Marauder especially, if you start from scratch like I did. No items, nothing. Pick Ground Slam as a quest reward and then Heavy Strike and start leveling both gems along with Glacial Hammer in a red socket aswell but you wont use it now because it is very mana hungry.
Once you are in act 2, pick up a Brightbreak
I bought mine for like 1 chaos or something. If you feel like you are dealing more damage with ground slam and your 2 handed weapon, dont use it yet. This weapon served me well until lvl 61 :-) No kidding.

Once you get Multistrike and Melee splash, you can start using Glacial Hammer. Also use 2 mana flasks because this skill is very mana hungry. We will link Blood magic later when you get more sockets in your armor, and get more life. Use Heavy strike on single target Rare monsters if necessery or packs of monsters with high cold rezistance.

Cruel
Things starting to get different here. Your accuracy will suck hard, and your first thing on the "to do" list should be to pick up Resolute Technique as soon as possible. The next thing should be to pick up Aegis and Born to fight in the Marauder starting area, followed by Baptism by Light for more damage and then the hp nods at the Templar starting area.

By now, you should be somewhere near the end of Cruel getting ready for the hardest difficulty Merciless.

Merciless
From now on, it is time to switch to a much higher dps weapon ( if you already didnt ) so your number one priority should be buying a good weapon. You can still use Brightbreak up to lvl 60, but it is not recommended. I was fine with it, but the progress wasnt so fast because my damage was low. Remember that the more pshysical damage you do, the more is converted to cold damage from glacial hammer.

The progress here is pretty straight forward. Merciless is all about surviving and to be able to deal enough damage and kill stuff. So now your goals should be maxing out your rezistances immedietly and maxing out your shield block. Once you reach a high shield block start using Stone of Lazhwar amulet and Crest of Perandus shield.
Use any shield until this, it really doesnt matter. Get any shield with high armor, hp and some minor rezistances. I used this cheap shield ( 2 chaos ) until i switched to Perandus.


Here you are also want to start using the Blood Magic support gem.
4 LINK - Glacial Hammer, Melee Splash, Multistrike, Blood Magic.
5 LINK - Glacial Hammer, Melee Splash, Multistrike, Blood Magic, Melee pshysical damage
6 LINK - Glacial Hammer, Melee Splash, Multistrike, Blood Magic, Melee pshysical damage, Faster attacks ( added cold damage and weapon elemental damage works aswell ) but the faster you attack the higher chance of monsters being frozen and thats our goal.

My dps is 6k with the 5 link setup which may see a bit low but in fact it isnt. You attack very fast and monsters shatters like never before.

End game passive skill tree should look like this. This is actually mine at the moment lvl 76


For even higher level consider distributing your skill points like this.


quick notes :
This build dont require enourmous investments, the stone of lazhwar amulet is like 1 alchemy, Crest of Perandus 1 - 2 chaos. You can get a decent mace like i did for like 10 - 20 chaos which may sound a lot for someone, but at the time you will need it you will have that amount of currency dont worry. The only real thing is to get a cheap 5 link armor if you cant afford a 6 link like myself. These goes from 15 chaos up to 1 exalt.

With this build you can kill Piety without any scratch and also facetank Dominus Lightning and Touch of God. The only real threat ( also applies to rare bosses ) is the Corrupted blood debuff. Get atleast one flask with "remove bleeding".

This character starts to shine at lvl 60 and above. Early progress can be a bit slower than with other characters but it pays off later if you are patient enough.
Late game this toon just cant die, you either have to run into 1000 mobs or die afk to corrupted blood.

If a monster hits you, you either block the attack or it gets trought but you have so much hp that nothing can kill you. If the monster hits you, it triggers the Frostbite Curse to all monsters around which means if you hit one with Glacial Hammer ( multistrike and splash damage applies ) there is no chance that monsters around you will be not chilled or frozen completely. Chilled monsters attack much slower which means it increases your effective hp by a million and frozen monsters dont do anything at all. + dont forget that your mace can also stun enemies and with this build you have the potentional to apply stun quite often.

Tuning your passive skill or how to solve problems
- If you have overcapped rezistances refund the Diamond Flesh and the +10 dexterity nod in the Duelist starting area, you save 2 points here.
- If you have problems with rezistances pick up the Elemental rezistances with shield nods in the top left corner near the Templar starting area. Each point gives you 10 % all rezist while holding a shield or consider picking up rezistance nods around Diamond skin ( Marauder starting area ) Sentinel is also an option ( Near the Scion starting area ) it gives armor and 10 % all rezist.
- Blood Drinker, 2 % physical attack damage leeched as life can be useful if you have high damage. However, I refunded it and planning to pick it up later.
- You can refund two hp regeneration nods ( one right at the beginning of the Duelist area and the 2nd one near the Templar starting area, in the middle of hp nods you picked up ) 2 % are a lot in my opinion, but these points can go also to somewhere else.
- Leather and Steel ( Duelist area ) can be useful, it will increase your movespeed overall and also your armor at the cost of 2 skill points. However, I dont recommend this one.

In maps avoid :
Temporal chains mod - you attack and run slow. Slow attack, less freeze.
Patches of freezing ground - same as temp chains ( it is 100 % doable but not recommended, I am lazy to avoid frozen ground :D and you also attack a lot slower )
50 % less hp and mana regeneration & Players have no hp and mana regenration maps are not doable - you rely on high life and a lot of hp regeneration.
Elemental Weakness - Yes and No. It is up to you if you feel confortable with this character. These maps can be dangerous and also a breeze at the same time. It really all depends on spell block which should be around 50 % ast this point which is fait enough, and your elemental rezistances. Purity of Elements can help here if you replace Vitality.


Sadly my computer isnt strong enough to record a video, but I can post some screenshots later :-)
Thank you for reading this guide and I hope some of you will try it and leave a feedback.

can i have a look at your stats?

My gear



in solo i'm can manage very well, but in party my dps is too much low with 6 ppl(but depends on monster lvl).

I have 4745dps in glacial hammer(without aura), 5.00 aps and 4620 life

"

bodohspam wrote:

can i have a look at your stats?

Sorry I wasn't around for a while. Too many things to do in real life :-) I will post a screenshot here with my stats soon.

"

Bash wrote:

in solo i'm can manage very well, but in party my dps is too much low with 6 ppl(but depends on monster lvl).

I have 4745dps in glacial hammer(without aura), 5.00 aps and 4620 life

Yes around 6k dps is pretty much what you can get with glacial hammer which is enough for solo. Your aps and life looks fine to me. Sorry I forgot to mention in my OP that this build is suited for solo play. Since I have a slower and older computer I never party because my computer would explode :-)
Anyway I think that party members could appreciate your high aps with permafreeze, so they can beat all the monsters without getting into trouble.
How do you like it so far ?

"

Yes around 6k dps is pretty much what you can get with glacial hammer which is enough for solo.

You could obviously get more than that by simply swapping your mace for a better one.

You could focus more on WED, iE with the new unique sceptre (100% increased WED on a 270DPS mace seems pretty useful for this build).

You could run GH on mana and add the faster attacks gem, which alone would make 6k DpS -> 8-9k.

A 6k DpS setup is ok for soloing early maps, but I think you are underestimating the power of your own build with better gear.

This can easily be improved. Get damage on your jewelry and belt, get ~30% WED on every piece, get extra flat physical Damage, get a better mace... and your damage numbers will be more fitting to an endgame character.

Without any other mobs around are you still able to permastun invasion bosses? Also wondering why you dont use elemental proliferation, i've tried with and without and definitely prefer with, its less damage but you freeze entire screens if all the mobs are bunched up. Potentially you can get around this with quality melee splash but you would still need to freeze each mob individually.

"

"

bodohspam wrote:

can i have a look at your stats?

Sorry I wasn't around for a while. Too many things to do in real life :-) I will post a screenshot here with my stats soon.

"

Bash wrote:

in solo i'm can manage very well, but in party my dps is too much low with 6 ppl(but depends on monster lvl).

I have 4745dps in glacial hammer(without aura), 5.00 aps and 4620 life

Yes around 6k dps is pretty much what you can get with glacial hammer which is enough for solo. Your aps and life looks fine to me. Sorry I forgot to mention in my OP that this build is suited for solo play. Since I have a slower and older computer I never party because my computer would explode :-)
Anyway I think that party members could appreciate your high aps with permafreeze, so they can beat all the monsters without getting into trouble.
How do you like it so far ?

im using BoR now, and my GH dps is now 6524 without aura, life 4620 and aps 5.43.
i decide use BoR because im respec some shield node and took berserking node.
Im doing wrong? some tip?

DpS of weapon, gem level, gem quality, what support gems?

How can you get help without giving information?

Here, my old post, some blind info:

"

You could obviously get more than that by simply swapping your mace for a better one.

You could focus more on WED, iE with the new unique sceptre (100% increased WED on a 270DPS mace seems pretty useful for this build).

You could run GH on mana and add the faster attacks gem, which alone would make 6k DpS -> 8-9k.

A 6k DpS setup is ok for soloing early maps, but I think you are underestimating the power of your own build with better gear.

This can easily be improved. Get damage on your jewelry and belt, get ~30% WED on every piece, get extra flat physical Damage, get a better mace... and your damage numbers will be more fitting to an endgame character.

Gear Update



I don't know if that glove is good.

What you think?



is possible frozen boss?

would this synergize well if this build is mixed with this one? So we add stun along with the freeze!
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/493891

also I don't know if it could be good to go up to Hex master and breath of rime?