[1.3.0] 90% cold Glacial Hammer Duelist - with videos!

First with the goodies:

Piety run video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFb8XmKUEIs

Lv 72 Jungle Valley map:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFMjaebDlgE

Acton's Nightmare (just for funsies)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpyGCs0mHpw

1.1.4 Colonnade map (with player death!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkmYYjza5fo

1.3.0 section

Just like with the 1.2.0 section, I'm going to go over the major changes and give you a barebones tree to work with.

First off, here's the tree.


You have around 10-15 points to spend on whatever you want here (assuming level 80), so I'll go over possible options starting from the Deulist start:

2pts for Mana Flows, an obvious choice if you don't want to rely too heavily on Clarity

3pts for Ice Bite, a pretty efficient increased damage source at ~16% per point

3pts for Weathered Hunter. I used to use this cluster before, but there's a lot more accuracy nodes that are easily accessible in this tree so it might not be necessary. Elemental resistances is also a bonus.

4pts for Profane Chemistry, a rather inefficient life cluster but the flask bonus is really strong.

1-3pts for Scion resistances, really good resistance nodes that you can sort of season to taste.

3pts for Dynamo, probably the first choice you should work towards if you have mana issues.

6pts for Whispers of Doom, as I have said before this is a really strong notable that gives you a lot more options. 6pts is a bit steep though, perhaps the unique ring or boots would be a better choice at this point.

1-2pts for reduced mana reservation, I left these out because you might not need them. If you can hold all the reservation you need and still use your skill without these nodes then they're useless. If you don't have enough mana to use your skill if you don't take these nodes, they're obviously necessary.

1pt for Power Charge, not as useful as dedicated power charge crit builds, but it might help smooth out your crit rate a little bit for a small investment if you're using Romira's.

5pts for Celestial Punishment, Judgement. The additional freeze chance is really helpful, especially at freezelocking bosses using the single-target link. Penetration is kind of gravy when you already have the gem, but it does help against bosses, where you need the most help.

2-3pts for Amplify. Mostly for boosting your splash and proliferation radius. I never had issues but if you don't really need anything else it can be a fun thing to invest in.

3pts for Unyielding. Reduced crit damage is a really strong defensive ability that you might not notice all that much because there's not enough feedback telling you you took a crit. The armor is gravy.

+8pts if you drop Disembowling. It's really expensive for a boost to crit, so if you feel like you are freezing enough, you might be able to put the points somewhere else, there's certainly plenty of options available.


Other major changes

If you're playing in a new league, you probably don't want to bother with Ungil's Gauche anymore, as it only gives 2% more block than Prismatic Eclipse. The decision really comes down to 75% increased damage or 90% increased crit chance, and in my opinion the damage is much more compelling.

Block is also reduced a lot, particularly no more shield-like block rates just from taking Dervish and using Eclipse on the offhand. Dervish is still maybe worth it, but it's no longer an auto-pick on the tree anymore. Using a Prismatic Eclipse and the Dervish notable, this brings our block rate to 27%.

I'm not entirely certain, but it feels like Vaal orbs are much more expensive now than when I first made this build in Ambush. I still don't see any curse on hit corrupted gloves showing up in trade on Torment, and this is maybe three weeks in. Might make getting your corrupted Hrimsorrows a bit more difficult and expensive. Still, by far the largest investment in getting a pair is the time investment.

Other thoughts:

This time around in Torment I'm running Static Strike, and god it makes me wish I was running Glacial Hammer. The DPS is godly for sure, but every time I almost die from rushing into a pack of blues, the first thing I think of is "I never even have close calls at all with Glacial Hammer on packs". I truly believe GH is the safest melee build there is when it comes to just about all the content except for bosses.

I have my suspicions that the Doryani gravy train is going to come to an end in 1.4, and it'll get a nerf somehow. Not because it's too strong or OP, but rather because it kind of suffers from what brought Bringer of Rain down; the fact that it's way too accessible and for many builds represents the best-in-slot unless you start looking at mirror-worthy items. Or in the case of Soul Taker, it's got decent-strong stats and it's special ability basically frees up a gem slot, allowing it to actually surpass stronger rares (in the case of Doryani's, this is the ability to leech life without a lifeleech gem using pure elemental damage). Just speculation on my part, but I wouldn't be surprised if Doryani's was listed under item balance in the 1.4 patchnotes.


1.2.0 section

Passive tree changed a lot, but overall it was a huge buff for the build and gives us much more flexibility to improve damage, defense, or mana sustain depending on what you want or need. Rather than give you a level 85 tree like I did before, I'll do this a bit differently: I'm going to give you the very basic tree, and highlight clusters of interest and the cost to acquire them.

First, the basic tree:


This will give you around 23 or so passive points to put in areas you want. Let's go through all the points of interest going from the start, out:

Thick Skin and Fencing: 4 and 5 passive points respectively, or 8 total
-Thick Skin by its self is nothing special, giving the standard 5% increased health per passive point. The extra 8% chance to avoid status would be nice if we had access to diamond skin, but as it is you'll probably never notice it. If you're already there for Fencing, it's a bit more worthwhile (6.6% per point).
-Fencing is a decent offensive cluster, but certainly lower on the list, giving only 40% increased crit chance and 24% increased damage for the investment of five points. The 10% damage and 3% attack speed half of the cluster is certainly not worth it.

Studious Combatant: 3 passive points
Probably the weakest offensive clusters you have access to, only giving 10% increased crit chance. If you really want to throw everything you have at offensive clusters though, it is an option.

Scion Resistances: 1 to 3 passive points
These are some of the best resistance nodes left after the passive tree change. mix and match to meet your gearing needs!

Bravado Cluster: 3 passive points
This cluster will make up for the 4% lost block chance from the Dervish nerf and give a nice and even 43% (Prismatic Eclipse) or 53% (Gauche). Doesn't do a whole lot else though, so you might want to consider dropping it if you feel comfortable with your physical defense.

Berserking Cluster: 4 passive points
Berserking has kind of fallen over the past major updates. At 4.5% increased attack speed per point, it's barely more valuable than the other attack speed nodes you can grab throughout our path. Those nodes also have the advantage of not locking you into 4 passive points; you can grab the 6%, 6%, and 4% attack speed nodes near the Duelist start if you have three extra points, for example.

The full life wheel: 1 to 5 points
My character has around 4.2k life without touching the rest of the life wheel, so this is certainly an optional cluster. It also sets the benchmark for when a life node is not worth the travel distance.

Dynamo Cluster: 3 points
Possibly one of the best mana clusters you can grab, especially if you're trying to manage a six-linked GH setup. After taking this cluster, I was able to activate a low-level Arctic Armor and sustain my attacks on a 5-link.

Quick Recovery: 3 points
Very slightly below the life wheel standard of 5% per point, but you also get a lot more mana regen. This could be useful for pushing up the level of your arctic armor (though not by too much unfortunately), or pushing down the level of your Clarity, which could possibly allow you to spec out of some of those reduced reservation nodes. The life regen is a cool bonus, too.

Whispers of Doom: 5 points
A huge investment, but being able to double-curse gives so many more possibilities. For one thing, you can keep enfeeble and elemental weakness up on rogue exiles and other dangerous mini-bosses at the same time (exiles can be tough to fight otherwise; they'll hit you, triggering your efeeble, dropping your ele weakness, making your next hit much weaker while buffing their next attack). You can also run frostbite in tandem with ele weakness to absolutely murder enemies and try to push down boss resists by just a little bit more.

Galvanic Hammer: 4 points
A very tasty crit cluster, giving a little bit of crit multiplier to boot. I'd ignore the elemental damage nodes though.

Sovereignty: Up to 2 less points
Since mana is much easier to manage in 1.2, you also have the option of dropping two of the reservation nodes from the Sovereignty cluster. Remember: You only need the bare minimum amount of mana, excess points can be better spent on things like life and damage (or working your way to awesome clusters like Whispers of Doom).

To cut off the Templar Start or not:
Depends on how much you like that extra 1% life regen, really. Catalyze is a great cluster when it's right next to your path, but compared to some of the mace, 1h, and dual wield clusters we have access to it's really not all that worth it by its self. You can reclaim 8 passive points by cutting this off, leaving Athleticism intact (those 6% nodes are pretty neat, after all).

Go all the way! Witch cold clusters!: 22 points (!!)
This may not be worth it for a Duelist, but if you do make the skillgrimage to all those cold clusters, you're going to have a massively increased chance to freeze, really long freezes (which makes it even easier to freeze bosses), and buckets of extra cold damage, not to mention the 2% cold penetration. I'd love to see someone's tree that manages to pull this off!

Now, let's talk about mana reservation.
At least for me, the extra resists from the Weathered Hunter cluster made it possible for me to drop Purity of Elements. I decided to try out Herald of Ice in its place. Herald grants a rather small damage boost (for my character, a level 20 gem will come out to around 11% more damage), and if I were swimming in regrets I would certainly be interested in seeing if that 11% more damage is better than, say, 6 passive points scavenged from mana nodes (with a higher-level Clarity to pick up the slack). Something to keep an eye on. I do feel that Herald would be a bit more awesome if you were to go for the Witch cold clusters.

Below is old 1.1 info. Most of it is still relevant, however.

Character sheet stats (outdated):


Theoretical DPS and the math behind it:


Note that the tooltip DPS isn't all that accurate, not only because of the damage boost from curses but also because it calculates as though I'm attacking with my offhand, which I'm not.

Intro

This is a build that utilizes Glacial Hammer as a primary and secondary attack skill (containing both crowd control and single-target links). The AOE link is designed to freeze half the screen for easy killings and can knock out otherwise dangerous groups pretty easily. The single-target link is aimed at being able to freeze high-health uniques regularly enough that you can handle content that is much stronger than you overall.

The high cold damage is attained by using the Hrimsorrow unique gloves, plus Hatred combined with a small number of aura and buff nodes to increase it's potency.

So Glacial Hammer has been around for a while. Why now when there's all sorts of interesting builds being made with new skills being introduced? What did SotV add to make this skill much more viable? Three things really:

1) A decent 1h weapon that deals really good damage for a relatively cheap price (that's still dropping!); Doryani's Catalyst. Previously you would have to use a 2h mace to get some good damage in, and that brings with it all sorts of survivability issues.

2) Curse on hit on gloves! Since we're dealing almost exclusively in cold damage, it's really great that we are able to curse enemies with elemental weakness without having to stop and cast a spell or to take up any cast when damage taken links.

3) Life leech on gear! A leech gem simply isn't an option with how tight the gem selection here is, now with SotV you can get up to 3% (4% if you really want it I guess) elemental leech, which is really helpful in situations where you cannot get a consistent freeze going.

Pros and Cons

+ Good crowd control. As long as there's mobs around, you can handle just about any encounter.
+ Never any corpses to worry about!
+ Immensely satisfying to see everything shatter
+ Makes use of a lot of new features from SotV, for those who are tired of the same stuff.
+ Can trivialize difficult rares and exiles if the map level is low enough or if your damage is high enough.
+ A lot of the unique gear can be used in other, very different builds.

- Act bosses are really tough; they have reduced curse effect, capped resists, and loads of health. No freezes on them from single-target.
- Farming Piety for the currency to upgrade gear can be really slow if your damage isn't high enough.
- Highly-resistant mobs can be really annoying if your damage isn't high enough
- When things aren't freezing, you don't really have any special defenses.
- Requires a lot of very niche corrupted gear you will have most likely have to craft yourself.
- Your tooltip will be even less accurate than it usually is. If you want to tell people your DPS, you'll have to calculate it yourself!


Passive Tree



The passive tree I have is really straightforward, with relatively few points being spent on reaching desirable clusters or keystones. Most of the points are spent on some pretty efficient clusters that are right there on the path.

For progression, you want to start by making a bee-line to Resolute Technique, then just fill out whatever nodes you need as you level up. If you need resists, there's plenty of them available on the path. RT and a 2h mace will tide you over throughout most of your leveling period.

You might notice I have a lot of points spent on mana, regeneration, and even a couple on reduced skill cost. If you haven't guessed by now, this is a VERY mana-intensive build. Not only is the attack speed to Doryani's Catalyst rather high, but with so much increased damage coming from your gear, the most effective way to boost damage on the passive tree is through attack speed. Since you'll be doing very little physical damage, mana leech from gear is almost pointless.

Gear

Here's my current gear:


Main weapon gear slot:

This thing is so good for this build it's unreal. A good 300 or more phdps combined with 80-95% increased elemental damage (of which we're almost entirely dealing), AND 1% elemental life leech. Oh, it's also a scepter so you can take advantage of it's decent base crit chance and get a ~30% crit rate without working too hard. I suppose a really well-rolled mace could do a better job, but you'd be hard pressed to find one that fills all these roles and does it so cheaply.

Offhand weapon:

-or-


To be honest, the Gauche is what I originally intended to use in this build. You can easily get a 49% block chance with just that and the Dervish cluster. 90% increased crit chance is nothing to sneeze at either, especially when you don't have all that many crit clusters filled in.

However, I got really, really lucky and managed to buy the above-listed Eclipse. The red sockets add buckets of damage, it still has a 10% increased block chance (39 isn't all that bad to be honest), and in this particular case, the extra 1% leech is like sweet ambrosia. I'm having a difficult time thinking of a better item to put in the offhand.

Of all the items that could be corrupted to get the elemental life leech, I'd say the Eclipse is the best contender. It's a pretty good offhand stat stick that I'm sure other builds use as well, so you could possibly find one with the mods you want, or you could possibly sell any failed-but-not-bad corrupts you attempt yourself. Of course, if you have a primarily blue/green link that needs an item to socket into, the Gauche isn't all that bad a choice either, but you do lose the 40% crit chance by corrupting it.

Gloves:

These. Full stop. It doesn't matter that they're basically an empty item when it comes to life, defense, and resists (okay so a little resist). I would be perfectly happy with these gloves even if they only had one socket and it was purple. First, the gloves themselves give more cold damage, meaning your freezes are going to be stronger and you can scale damage upward with things that reduce elemental resists. Then you add a free conveyance of negative resists, and yeah, things freeze up real good. Also, anything that boosts elemental damage (like passives or the Weapon Elemental Damage gem) are almost a straight buff to your damage directly.

Bottom line, you need these gloves for the build to really sing. So how hard is it to get them? I've seen people spend around 24 attempts at getting a particular corruption mod, and I in particular filled up a stash page and a half with failed results. If you want them to be four-linked with the colors you want, you're going to be spending a lot of currency to get that. I just corrupted each one I could buy for under a chaos however, which while expensive was still reasonable enough that I could afford it being fresh in the league with only a level 65 heavy strike marauder.

Belt:


This isn't all that necessary, and the life I lost from a rare belt could probably have gone a good way toward 4,500 or even 5,000 life total. It does have some pretty good bonuses however: more damage, bonus freeze chance (particularly good if you're killing a lone rare/unique), and the oh-so-awesome elemental life leech. The resists also go a long way toward letting me respec out of resist nodes on the tree.

Ring:


I'm not entirely certain if this is completely necessary, though the accuracy and mana are really helpful in addition to the crit chance rollercoaster. I probably would value it a bit lower if I were using a Gauche on my offhand, but as I am now my crit varies from 30% to 40% depending on my charges. I'd probably also be more behind it if it were't so damn expensive, so I'm just going to say it's a nice item if you can afford it or if you already have one, but don't break the bank just for it.

Doedre's Damning

If I had the gear space or the willingness to drop Romira's, I would probably try this out and see how it works. If I could, I would add a CwDT link that creates a totem that curses enemies with frostbite, either replacing my Weakness trigger or in tandem with it (depending on how the game decides which curse to cancel when three are placed). Double-cursed enemies should be taking a heck of a lot more damage, but the difference might not be all that pronounced against bosses with curse resistance (whom the build really has trouble with), so perhaps my energy would be better spent trying to boost crit damage so I can get at least some freezes on them.

Head:

Nothing in particular here, except you want to make sure you can get a good accuracy roll so you don't have to waste passive points getting an 85%+ hit rate.

Flasks:
Nothing special here, though if you're using Doryani's belt, you're going to want to have at least two utility flasks for those situations when you run into a rogue exile with no trash mobs to proliferate-freeze with. I prefer quicksilver flasks because pressing 4 and 5 on my keyboard between packs has become muscle memory by now, though jade and quartz flasks are also good choices, thanks to their rather nice base duration. I would ideally want an Ample or Surgeon's Quicksilver Flask of Warding/Staunching/whatever, but whenever I try and craft one I get an Ample flask of Adrenaline, so I guess the game's trying to tell me something.

Everything Else:
No other special needs, just get whatever you need to cap your resists and push your health up there.

Links

Four-link AOE:
Glacial Hammer - Cold Penetration - Melee Splash - Elemental Proliferation

Five-link AOE:
+ Multistrike
Six-link AOE:
+ Melee Physical Damage (or Weapon Elemental Damage, depending on how well your mana is doing)

Four-link single-target:
Glacial Hammer - Cold Penetration - Faster Attacks - Melee Physical Damage

Now, having a five-link single-target might not be all that likely, but it IS possible. It just requires insane luck with corrupting or a lot of currency.

You can take Doryani's Catalyst and corrupt it so that it either gives Splash or Multistrike for free. From there you just link Splash or Multistrike, Hammer, and Penetration. Now your chest is available for up to six links of single-target goodness (probably the best setup anyway, since single-target situations is the trouble anyway):

Glacial Hammer - Cold Penetration - Faster Attacks - Melee Physical - Weapon Elemental Damage - Added Fire Damage

Auras

We've got those Sovereignty and Inner Force clusters, might as well use them!

Hatred is an obvious first choice, it adds more damage in the type that's most useful to us. If I remember correctly, having a max level Hatred with 54% increased effect on a character dealing 75% cold damage brings it all the way up to around 90% cold damage - hence the title.

I chose to go with Clarity because I can't really think of any other way to pay for all this mana when mana leech isn't an option. It's possible I suppose to maybe make due with flasks, but I don't like using mana flasks so there. If you really wanted something unique, I guess you could use Soul Taker as an offhand stat stick and have a 60 60 40 aura setup.

Purity was added toward the end, mostly because at that point I had enough mana that I could support it, and switching ti Purity practically gives out free passive points. IIRC when it's fully leveled, it should be giving me around 41% resists.

Leveling

Passive tree progression is pretty straightforward - Just go for Resolute Technique and a 2h mace to start with, then fill out the tree as you see fit. There aren't any major path corrections to be made so your quest-supplied respec points should be sufficient for the most part.

For merciless and early piety farming, you're probably going to need a pretty good mace, I pulled this from my heavy-strike marauder:


Another good option, especially if you don't want to bother with Resolute Technique, is Kongor's Undying Rage. This frees up your passive tree considerably, letting you say sayonara to the Templar area and build more around the Shadow/Ranger area if you want.

Mana management is problematic, I used an Atziri's Foible for a long time (before I rarerolled it trying to get the curse mod), which helped a lot. I also used a really high-level Clarity gem for for a long time before I went ahead and blew some passive points on mana regen. Leveling up a new gem was pretty painless however.


------


Anyway, that's my build. So I'm not leaving anything out, the idea to drop the 2h mace and dual wield originally came from this thread. I shortly hopped on to XYZ to nab that awesome Eclipse I am now using.

Build looks very satisfying with freezing all the enemies. And the video is just a pleasure to watch.

I'm wondering about your crit chance... if my math's correct you get in total 380% increased crit chance off nodes and gear... so, 6.68 x 380% = 32%. Is it really worth it? Another thing that bugs me a bit is the lack of physical nodes, only 35% inchreased physical damage while the cold damage is scaled off your physical damage. Also, you have only 49% block chance. So, could you please post your stats? Life, armor, block etc? I love Glacial Hammer and I'm wondering how good it is.

Yeah the crit chance drifts from 30% to 40% (thanks to Romira's). The crit isn't really there for damage though, it's more useful as an additional chance to freeze when I'm pounding on high-health single targets. Think of it this way, with the belt's freeze chance buff I would normally have a 35% chance to freeze. With a 30% chance to crit that goes up to a 55% chance (65% chance to not freeze * 70% chance to not freeze = 45% chance to not freeze).

As for damage nodes, they're not really all that efficient considering how much damage I get from gear. Prismatic Eclipse gives me 75% increased damage, Doryani's Catalyst gives me around 75-80 (reduced a bit because of that 15% or so physical component), and the belt gives another 18% or so. On the other hand, the only increased attack speed I have that doesn't come from gear is the IAS gem on my single-target link. So if I were to spend 5-10 passive points on DPS, I would much rather spend them on getting my attack speed from 12% to 32% (2.6x damage multiplier) than improve my increased damage from 200% to 300% (1.5x damage increase).

That being said, Crusader IS on my shortlist of nodes to fill in. It's just hard to pass up those crunchy 8% life nodes that are within arm's reach.

As for block, the opportunity cost for getting 40% or 50% (depending on the offhand) is pretty low, but that's all I really need to be more or less confident against attack-based enemies (remember, even rogue exiles are getting chilled and momentarily frozen here or there, enough to really make it easier to handle them), if anything the biggest issue I have is against spells.

As for my stats, I went through all my gear and stats on the end of the second video, but I'll upload a few pictures as well.

Well, I agree about the defensive aspect of the skill, but still, with that little block, armor and life you're taking a huge gamble. Could you post a video of you soloing the Colonnade map? I'm really wondering how do you handle mobs that deal tons of physical damage.

Great build.

You can get +1 to curses on amulets. I saw an anvil corrupted with added curse, the mana on block would be useful on your char

I updated the OP with tooltip and character sheet screenshots. I'll up a video of Colonnade when I gain my next level - what can I say, Carnage (along with the Torture Chamber boss) is a sort of SPECIAL case and the build isn't tanky enough that I'm confident I won't lose XP :)

As for the amulets - yeah, If you notice, my current amulet is corrupted and I lost an Atziri's Foible to corruption rarerolling. That curse mod would be very helpful, but I'm also not ready to buy up 24 decent amulets and go down that road just yet. Maybe later.

Sorry for the delayed update, I've been on a bit of a Dark Souls break.

Anyway, I fired up the build again to see just how awesome the dual wielding changes were in the 1.1.4 update, and yeah, that's a LOT of extra damage and mobs just melt and shatter so fast now.

I finally did that Colonnade map, and I got a bit too greedy with the map mods and played a little too lazily so yeah, I died. There were three major mistakes I made:

1. Didn't reroll the map. Extra lightning damage and lightning patches is probably enough to allow Carnage to one-shot all but the best-geared builds. The elemental reflect meant I wouldn't ever be at full health either.

2. Didn't try to maneuver around him. He spent around three or four seconds locked in his attack animation, which would have been plenty of time if I were paying attention to get out of the way while still keeping him freezelocked.

3. Didn't use Vaal Summon Skeletons when I initiated. In addition to reducing the chances of him targeting me, it would have made the area around him easier to maneuver around because the space would be occupied by allies that I can pass through, as opposed to the crowd of mobs that were blocking my access. I was planning on saving it for when I ended up killing all the adds around him (meaning no more five-second freezes, a problem I occasionally run into with some bosses), but it turns out I never really needed to do that so I probably should have just started with VSS.


Anyway, the question of "can this build survive a hit from Carnage" still remains unanswered because of my suicidal choice of map mods, so I'll go ahead and roll a sane colonnade map and give it another try.

Hi there!
I've used a similar build after Melee Splash patch. Really safe and fun to play.
I've tried DW and 2h. Both work fine.
Tried it in end game maps, as lvl85 Duelist, around 6.5k HP, 10k armor, all resist cap and around 11k dps on GH. Auras Grace/Hatred/Purity.

PS: I guess you just need to fix the armor, its really low. Or at least get more Endurance charges for Immortal Call.

Keep with the good work!

Nice build mate, I'll try it

Also: BIG PROPS to the jungle valley video song: One must fall menu song <3