Glacial Jackhammer [Video Demo] [Revised]

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nebunelux wrote:

What auras will you be using?
I am considering no-BM build:

The only aura that boosts cold damage is Hatred and it only scales of physical damage.
Since this build will stack cold/elemental damage I dunno how effective will Hatred be.

Other than that probably Grace + Determination could be a good idea.

Glacial Hammer
+Melee Splash
+Faster Attacks
+Weapon Elemental Damage
+Blood Magic
+Multistrike

Dunno if Life Leech would be necessary if you have 5.4% Life regen.
Cold Penetration would be nice but I don't see how can I fit it in :D

If you take Blood Magic Keystone, the only auras you will be using are the default BM auras:
Grace+Wrath+Anger

The build I'm suggesting is this one: link

Any comments on this?

If I dropped the BM passive I would use Determination, Purity and probably Haste off my mana, a max level Reduced Mana would make those 3 take up 85-86% of my mana I believe. I'd probably also run Grace off my HP using a Blood Magic gem.


I would really consider life leech or life on hit a requirement when using a Blood Magic support due to your mana cost ending up at around 150 with a fully leveled BM gem.

Add to that the fact that enemies are attacking you - mostly from range though, and that you are attacking 3-4 times a second before accounting for Multistrike, and you end up with a situation where you'd beat yourself to death in mere seconds.


With regards to your build, you take mana and mana regen nodes despite intending to use a BM gem - I'd change that. And you went for Iron Reflexes, but didn't invest in an easy 100% increased armor. You also skipped/missed Elemental Adaptation.

I'd suggest something like this as an alternative variation of your build:

It adds Static Blows and Inner Force along with more armor and a bit more int to cope with skill requirements.

I was thinking of making this build with mana in mind.
Then I made some mana calculations and GH will cost about 95 mana per attack.
3-4 attacks per second = ~400 mana per second.

Not even Blood Magic will cope with that. Maybe only with Life Leech.
So BM gem will not work, as it will double that cost (from above). Mana will not work either.

Still I am having trouble figuring out how this build will handle large groups in Merciless since its AoE is still small. So it would mean you will have to dive in the middle of the mobs, just like with Sweep.
So in order for this to work we have a few prerequisites:
- high armor (IR and at least 100% Armour pasives)
- Unwavering stance and max resists 80% at all times (with EA)
- High movement speed (always 30% + Leather&Steel for the movement)

All this will allow the character to reposition himself very quickly(as teh situation demands) without risking being disabled (stunned/frozen).

Conclusion: it will be very challenging (read: very hard) in end-game.

@Offtopic

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nebunelux wrote:

I was thinking of making this build with mana in mind.
Then I made some mana calculations and GH will cost about 95 mana per attack.
3-4 attacks per second = ~400 mana per second.

Not even Blood Magic will cope with that. Maybe only with Life Leech.
So BM gem will not work, as it will double that cost (from above). Mana will not work either.

Still I am having trouble figuring out how this build will handle large groups in Merciless since its AoE is still small. So it would mean you will have to dive in the middle of the mobs, just like with Sweep.
So in order for this to work we have a few prerequisites:
- high armor (IR and at least 100% Armour pasives)
- Unwavering stance and max resists 80% at all times (with EA)
- High movement speed (always 30% + Leather&Steel for the movement)

All this will allow the character to reposition himself very quickly(as teh situation demands) without risking being disabled (stunned/frozen).

Conclusion: it will be very challenging (read: very hard) in end-game.

Are you talking about your own build or mine? The build in the original post already covers these things.

Anyway, I've added a video of a Cruel Fellshrine Ruins run at 46 if you're interested in seeing the playstyle. You can find it near the top of the original post.

Note: I've still only got about 1800hp, but next on my list is the 3 clusters of 2x8% 1x12% life nodes, that should sort things out!

Glacial Hammer build is very similar to LS build and Infernal Blow build.
All 3 skills convert 50% of physical damage to elemental damage.
You got a 40% less damage multiplier on Multistrike and 20%/50% less melee damage on Melee Splash.
Both reductions apply both to physical and cold damage part of Glacial Hammer.

So that means that the damage will scale much better with elemental damage rather than physical damage.
I saw you weren't able to freeze the mobs. With elemental gear you will surely will.

I am still concerned about the AoE size not being sufficient to kill stuff before it kills you. Maybe Ele Proliferation will help.

Generally cold damage builds are safe because of the freeze, but if one cannot trigger freeze to a large area, will not be safe enough and thus prone to deaths.

Imagine 10+ cobras shooting you for chaos damage. How do you freeze them? 1 by 1?

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nebunelux wrote:

Glacial Hammer build is very similar to LS build and Infernal Blow build.
All 3 skills convert 50% of physical damage to elemental damage.
You got a 40% less damage multiplier on Multistrike and 20%/50% less melee damage on Melee Splash.
Both reductions apply both to physical and cold damage part of Glacial Hammer.

So that means that the damage will scale much better with elemental damage rather than physical damage.
I saw you weren't able to freeze the mobs. With elemental gear you will surely will.

I am still concerned about the AoE size not being sufficient to kill stuff before it kills you. Maybe Ele Proliferation will help.

Generally cold damage builds are safe because of the freeze, but if one cannot trigger freeze to a large area, will not be safe enough and thus prone to deaths.

Imagine 10+ cobras shooting you for chaos damage. How do you freeze them? 1 by 1?

I'm not really sure where you're going with all this - if you actually watched the video you'd know that I'm currently using a level 17 weapon with pretty crappy damage. I didn't have Elemental Proliferation, and I don't have the majority of my elemental damage nodes yet, nor a weapon elemental damage support.

Weren't able to freeze the mobs? Most of the enemies in the video were resistant to cold and died to being shattered. I'm aware that it's not 100% reliable yet though - especially not versus rares, but that's a matter of not having proper gear and a high enough level yet.


As for the reductions, you've got them mixed up, it's the other way around - not that it should matter seeing as they reduce both elemental and physical damage equally.

Moving on, the only reason that these reductions scale better with elemental damage is that a lower physical damage output results in more and more damage reduction by armor, versus resists being the same regardless of how hard you hit.

The reason that I'm interested in physical damage at all is that you get far higher values from converting physical than you could possibly get from a cold damage roll on your weapon. I'm also contemplating getting the gloves that convert an additional 25% of my physical damage into cold - if I can spare the loss of other stats that is.

Ideally I would want both a high physical and cold roll on the weapon, of course - but that's wishful thinking at this stage.


The AoE size is enough to keep everything surrounding me frozen as well as a couple of enemies outside the immediate range, but yeah - I have to say it could do with some improvements. I will eventually get a quality gem and the largest of the area nodes near Templar, it's not much - but it should help. From what I've read, Elemental Proliferation appears to have a much higher radius than Splash, so even if I can't hurt enemies further away I could still freeze them.

My strategy for dealing with cobras is pretty simple - Leap Slam and catch 4-5 of them at a time with freeze, alternatively moving away from them slightly to make them re-group tighter before doing the above. Also, I'll be stacking chaos resistance.


Edit: I apologize if I came across as annoyed, but I feel like I'm repeating myself a bit too often regarding damage.

I torn about starting as a Marauder/Templar or Duelist about this build.

Duelist gains more Attack Speed Passives.
Templar gains more AoE passives. (40% area radius and 20 area damage).

This is my idea: link
Of course it still needs tweaking. But what do you think about these trade-offs?
Wouldn't, something like this, turn out better?

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nebunelux wrote:

I torn about starting as a Marauder/Templar or Duelist about this build.

Duelist gains more Attack Speed Passives.
Templar gains more AoE passives. (40% area radius and 20 area damage).

This is my idea: link
Of course it still needs tweaking. But what do you think about these trade-offs?
Wouldn't, something like this, turn out better?

Looks pretty good actually - my only concern would be that you've only picked up 50% elemental damage and skipped Elemental Adaptation for +5% max resists. I can't say for sure if the investment in area damage/effect would pay off though - as the base Splash radius is, as you mentioned in a previous post, quite low.

Assuming that you're intending to use a BM gem as mentioned in earlier posts I would exclude templar and make it a choice between Marauder and Duelist.

If you do attempt the build - let me know how it turns out!

Following the latest BM gem variation that nebunelux suggested I started thinking about something along those lines as well. I came up with a build that's capable of running 7 auras (or 8 if you want a small ES buffer at the cost of a bit of life) and 7 endurance charges.

Glacial Hammer
*Multistrike
*Melee Splash
*Elemental Proliferation (OR Weapon Elemental Damage if you'd rather have more damage than more control)
*Life on Hit
*Blood Magic


Mana:

Determination 40%
Purity 40%
Vitality OR Haste 40%
Hatred 30%

150%*0.9(Reduced Reservation Passives)*0.71(L20 Reduced Mana Gem) = 95.85% mana reserved


Life:

Grace
Wrath
Anger


Build:117pt Glacial Jackhammer - 7 Aura Version

Most of the losses are countered- or surpassed by the utility the auras provide. I'd probably still suggest my original build path until you reach the point at which you have a 6-linked armor - having played the build to 48 so far, I've come to see splash/multistrike and life on hit as invaluable - I'm sure I'll think the same of proliferation as well.

I have to admit that this version is starting resemble other builds I've come across, which is not necessarily a bad thing I suppose - the goal of my build remains intact though; Freeze & Shatter everything - but with better survivability.

Edit: Using a 6-linked The Covenant as my chest would make me able to add Weapon Elemental Damage into the mix. I'd also get level 15 added chaos. The drawbacks would be quite severe in terms of armor and maximum life (Although I would end up reserving less life with the auras I intended to run off HP), but I think it might be something to put into consideration. (% Auras would be cast with the chest unequipped, of course).

The armor would effectively serve as an 8-linked chest-piece if I were to go with this approach, granted it might take an endless amount of chromatics to reach 5 red 1 blue sockets.

Hey,

I also started leveling a marauder on similar build. Only lvl 27 atm.

Regarding the Covenant, it seems nice to get bm and added chaos to the build but it's not worth the drawback IMO. The chest piece has the highest contribution to Armor, and you also lose the HP (not as important as the armor loss).

If you want a unique armor, Carcass Jack seems really nice and it would benefit the build. It has life, ele resists, area radius and damage, the armor is ok(about 600 with IR).
I would also like to try Hrimsorrow on this build.

How's your build going?
Any progress? How effective is it so far?

The build is fun, honestly. Got to 63, now using
Potentially with higher phys dmg mace it is possible to wipe blue packs rapidly, but as for now it is a problem. Especially cold res. It takes too long to down them.

Regarding build path i use arrow dodging instead of IR. Mostly personal preference, but with AD those nasty snakes are harmless along with other rangers.

On the side note, which stats are viable with this build? What to aim for?