Glacial Hammer + the new Herald skills
|
Glacial hammer is apparently getting a small buff (125% -> 130% damage effectiveness) and it seems like it will have good interaction with the new Herald of Ice skill and possibly the Herald of Ash skill. Herald of Ice adds cold damage and also does AoE damage when you shatter enemies, which has obvious synergy with Glacial Hammer's shatter mechanic. Herald of Ash adds fire damage and ignites enemies when you kill an enemy dependent on the overkill damage, which could have good synergy depending on how that interacts with Glacial Hammer's shatter at 33% life mechanic.
If anyone has used Glacial Hammer much, I'm wondering if Glacial Hammer with Resolute Technique freezes enemies reliably enough to get a lot of shatter kills. I'd like to try a GH build but I don't want to have to invest in a bunch of crit nodes in order for it to work. This information is based on this thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/997660. | |
|
Hey I'm interested too.
I feel like playing a melee (or very close range templar) with elemental mana based attacks is the proper way to play it. I got 76 points to spend since the skill reset so I could skip the early game necessities. |
|
|
Had somewhat of the same idea. Speccing into + cold damage gives another 20% chance to freeze, so that's 40% + total. Could work much like a stunlock build.
The only glaring fault is an absolute dearth of + attack speed and a lack of ranged options.
Spoiler
(Didn't worry too much about life since I'd probably drop it for ES at some point)
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUAhMQFW0Ryi4yKdJ_f4XMPVDwF7SCpaO98RtcUTQSzogDwHzKJd-VX4uw4OtgaOE3Yp4SMdpBVwBoZ6WaeWfPLQ2dY-tKsqg4U5K0dFDbpcqlR5ift3sGPRiSq42p82fcytC_8S5uhFm-BK2DEbBb319-yITSHGayYlIeexTpYEQ90VVg9VcZMLV8qQT-D2xSwF1Tr5IIenwGOPIhC0eRWSsHFjYKeoewYU9QigY_6N4Hw1VKy5OtJUZUu41YHHg== Last edited by TheGrixxitt on Aug 21, 2014, 3:40:42 PM
|
|
" How would you compensate for the low attack speed? Is that a deal breaker in your opinion? I see you got for mace, how about the staff? You keep a shield for survivability or go dual wield? |
|
|
Very interested in making a GH build. I want to know more about its potential.
| |
|
I just got Herald of Ice and at least right now it's pretty disappointing. It adds flat damage rather than %, which isn't ideal since you can't just stack phys damage and convert and also makes attack speed a higher priority. The shatter AoE is also pretty weak, at least at low levels, and the AoE range is pretty small.
I may pick up some Cold/Elemental damage nodes and probably some of the AoE nodes as well. I'm already in the Witch area so I'll probably take the AoE nodes there and also the ones at the Templar start. I haven't had the chance to check but it may be possible that Spell Damage may add to Herald of Ice, at least the shatter damage, so Iron Will may be a good choice for a link. | |
" Did you try using melee splash on top of that? Elemental proliferation and increased AOE would also help I guess. |
|
|
More thoughts on this combo:
I've been using GH + WED + Melee Splash with a lvl 7 Herald of Ice. Not having any trouble; damage is a bit low but I haven't found a very good weapon yet. The freeze chance of GH (22%) combined with the freeze chance from Frostbite (+11% now) and the passive tree (+10%) means that enemies are consistently frozen. The increased freeze duration is also very helpful. High life enemies aren't frozen for very long so I need to improve my Cold damage, but the culling effect of GH can make those durable enemies much easier to deal with. According to the tooltip for Herald of Ice (which seems to be really messed up), the AoE shatter is dealing about 45-80 damage, which isn't much. I think it actually may be higher because of Iron Will but I have no real way of knowing. My goal is for the AoE to be another possible source of freeze (~20% chance) and a source of good damage, but I don't know how possible that will be. I think I'll need to devote a lot of skill points to elemental/cold damage nodes to get the most out of it. Another thought is linking Herald of Ice to Added Damage supports. It has less than 100% damage effectiveness, but it could potentially add significant damage. The mana reserved is pretty low so that won't be an issue. | |
" DW doesn't really do anything for most Templar builds so either 1-Hand/Shield or 2-Hand. I would prefer 2-hand since we are relying on freeze to incapacitate but to each their own. Speed could be an issue but between Multistrike and Faster Attacks we could probably make that up. Playing around with it makes me really wish I could use Glacial Hammer as a single target skill with something along the line of an ice version of Molten Strike for AE. We could spec 2 versions of GH but even with Splash and Increased AE you're not going to have the room clearing potential that you could have by using another spec. But then other specs don't cull at 33% health or break your enemies into half :D I'll probably get around to starting this character once I grab some support gems and/or currency this weekend. Staff is kind of cool but adds 10+ points to the build Last edited by TheGrixxitt on Aug 22, 2014, 10:50:45 AM
|
|
|
What about using Lightning Strike as a mass area attack (with Chain ofc) and GH itself as a more "precise" tool? If enemies is spread and far away - LS with Chain, as they come closer - GH with splash. It's a bit step off from the pure GH path but might be effective, no?
|
