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

I just don't get why you go templar part of the tree, you don't take any serious nodes there, its just life, aura nodes and some damage.

I mostly went there for the aura cluster, then life nodes were nice and close by to grab.

Do you have any suggestions for better nodes to aim for? As I mentioned before, increased damage nodes are of limited value because the build already has buckets of increased damage.

Also, the new elemental equilibrium ring looks interesting! It might make resists a real bitch to balance, but dropping a flame totem for -50% cold res will really help against bosses with high resists and curse resistance!

Well, something like this one:

More life, more mana, more damage, 5% Freeze and even better aura nodes. Also I was thinking about the possibility of using Elritch Bettery - Mind over Matter - Arctic Armour combo and in my opinion it's totally real.

That's a very nice tree, I'll have to give it a shot when we all get our next respec.

Some differences:
-Your tree isn't anywhere near Resolute Technique, making leveling difficult (but do-able with, say, increased accuracy gem)
-Also, there are no nearby resistance nodes, so you have to blow some extra points to get some resists that your gear can't cover, and on some of the weaker resistance nodes (while my tree has access to five 18% resistance nodes right along the path)
-my tree has a little more life (16%)
-Combining physical and elemental damage, my tree has ever-so-slightly more damage (81 vs 75)
-I would probably spend three points on the Weathered Hunter cluster so I can get my 87% hit rate. The extra 100 dexterity is nice though, for both green gems and attack rating.
-Yours gives a nicer boost to mana and almost the same regen bonus
-Yours has a heck of a lot more attack speed, to the point where it may be difficult to feed mana to the main attack skill. More mana nodes are probably needed.
-Yours has a lot more crit, which is probably enough to drop Romira's Banquet for something else (maybe Ziggyd's Elemental Equilibrium ring that will be coming out soon?)
-Yours has a little less aura effect if you count my tree's buff effect (34 vs 52). Yours has better mana reservation, which might help pay for your faster attack speed.

WRT eldritch battery MOM, AA: I'd say it's possible but you're going to have one heck of a time gearing for that. Gearing is pretty tight with relatively low life on tree, low resists on tree, and a bunch of unique items taking up gear space. If you can get it to work, it would certainly prove a nice solution to feeding Glacial Hammer, though. I'm not all that confident you can get Arctic Armor to work however; high attack speed GH is VERY mana hungry.

There shouldn't be any low accuracity problems with such a high dexterity. Gonna try this build in a new upcoming HC league, hope for the best :)

Would this build be workable or viable as a cheap build or a race build?

Race build - not likely. It gets a lot of its damage from curse-on-hit with hrimsorrow, something you have to craft yourself.

As a cheap build, well I wouldn't recommend it as a first build because your damage is going to be really bad until you get a few of the important pieces (primarily the corrupted hrimsorrows). Its a great second build however, because once you get some of the pieces it can jump into maps at a really low level.

Edit--now that I think about it, you could possibly transition from a pseudo-buzzsaw build into this pretty easily. Especially if you can find a pair of garbage curse-on-hit gloves for really cheap.

So I have a funny story. I remember skimming through this thread a week or so ago when I searched for "glacial hammer builds" and recently found a pair of Hrimsorrow gloves collecting dust in my stash. I thought hey, why not throw a vaal at it. Not like anyone wants these outside of very, very, very niche builds like this anyway. I linked it up, just in case. Even though I knew vaaling can mess up links regardless.

And son of a RNG, I got this on the first try:



Now I wish I quality'd it and chrome it appropriately :\ But luckily it would seem that your build doesn't require additional links for skills in the glove slot, so I'm going to give it a try with the respec we get soon :D

Grats! I'm sure you could links some sort of vaal boss killer in there (spark or summon skeletons, either would work well).

I've been poring over the new passive tree (there's a thread in GD where you can download it), and here are some observations:

-Life nodes have been severely nerfed (again). Let's hope this change comes with other balance changes to make it a net-zero loss, otherwise we're going to be spending a LOT of passive points hunting for life nodes.

-We ended up grabbing a lot of flask life bonus. Might be an interesting survivability buff with a full line of instant-life flasks.

-Dervish got nerfed :( We'll lose 4% block chance unless we make up for it on the tree; Bravado is right next to the main path.

-A number of clusters have been moved to be much more conveniently located, like Twin Terrors

-There are a lot more crit clusters nearby that also boost damage. I counted around 105% increased crit chance, which also goes along with other side benefits like accuracy and damage.

-Holy Strength was either removed (or I can't find it) and the buff effect bonus was moved to Athleticism. In it's place is a lot more chaos resistance!

-Mana nodes have been messed up considerably, though I think a combination of speccing out of Berserking and trying out the new Dynamo cluster will probably keep things running smooth

-I'm not seeing many +max resistance nodes, it looks like there's only +1 for each element available, and they're each at different corners of the skilltree.

-Whispers of Doom is now really, really close. If it was almost worthwhile to make the trip for it before, it's certainly worth the trip now.


Now for other observations:
There are a LOT more chance to freeze nodes in the tree. It might be worthwhile to start as a scion, shadow, or even witch and reach for all those nodes. By my count it comes to around 25% total (20% if you don't want to reach too much in the Shadow area), and it comes with a massive buff to freeze duration (60%), and 2% penetration, which while not amazing, will certainly help against those bosses. Crit chance might be a bit tougher to find however, and it probably won't be as big as a focus as the Deulist-Marauder-Templar tree has it as.