Glacial Hammer

Hello everyone,

could someone prove me (either wrong or right, doesn't matter) if the Culling effect from Glacial Hammer also transfers to splashed attacks (GH + Melee Splash Gem)? It seems it doesn't work that way which is kinda sad, but I might be wrong (hopefully...). If it doesn't, I would like to know if this will be "fixed" in the future or if this is "working as intended".

Any answer would be nice.

E: After reading up pages over pages at the melee splash feedback forum and asking out other people, it seems that this indeed works. Yay!

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xevecx1 wrote:

The Problem

It could be just RNG but after having run 20+ high level maps with this skill with no map drops at all not even 66's in 78's i believe the skill breaks the map drop rates with its shatter/cull

After i figured out that it may have been glacial hammer that was causing our negative map pool, i switched to ground slam and immediately began to get maps again.

If this skill causes maps to not drop it is 100% not end game viable and is completely broken.

Also altho i could freeze bosses it did not cull them

Can anyone expand on this? I want to use Glacial Hammer in maps, but if this is the case then I'm definitely not going to.

Anyone wanna help me out my my GH 1hd build? What am I doing wrong, currently only at 7.5k dps at lvl 80 with it.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/764460/page/1/#p6639372
My thread with gear and links and tree.

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xevecx1 wrote:

Also altho i could freeze bosses it did not cull them

I wonder why GH can't shatter unique mobs if its not stated anywhere in tooltip? Is it intended or it is bug?

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nuxota wrote:

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xevecx1 wrote:

Also altho i could freeze bosses it did not cull them

I wonder why GH can't shatter unique mobs if its not stated anywhere in tooltip? Is it intended or it is bug?

I am guessing intended, would make some bosses very trivial.

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xevecx1 wrote:

The Problem

It could be just RNG but after having run 20+ high level maps with this skill with no map drops at all not even 66's in 78's i believe the skill breaks the map drop rates with its shatter/cull

After i figured out that it may have been glacial hammer that was causing our negative map pool, i switched to ground slam and immediately began to get maps again.

If this skill causes maps to not drop it is 100% not end game viable and is completely broken.

Also altho i could freeze bosses it did not cull them

Can anyone expand on this? I want to use Glacial Hammer in maps, but if this is the case then I'm definitely not going to.

Definately just a bad streak. Ive had maps dropping all the time and no issues so far.

The description of the shattering effect of GH looks a bit different to Culling Strike, and I wonder if it changes the mechanics.

If you hit a monster and the hit has Culling Strike, and the hit reduces them to below 10% life, the monster dies. So you can 1-shot mobs while only doing a little over 90% of their life in damage.

If you hit a frozen monster with Glacial Hammer, and it is below 1/3 life after the hit, does it shatter? Or does the monster have to be frozen and below 1/3 life *before* the hit in order for the shatter effect to trigger? If it's the latter, it seems the GH shattering bonus only matters on monsters that take 4 or more hits to kill. There was some discussion of this earlier in the thread, but it was mainly about whether the monster has to be frozen beforehand, which is a different question.

lvl72 now

build:


gear:


in short - very fun skill, very safe build even with my meh gear and sloppy playstyle

pros:
- ele prolif freeze entire SCREENS
- cull
- single element so cold pen works compared to multi-ele attacks
- as dmg is split more or less in half - reflect not so scary
- good interaction with Hatred
- temporal chains on hit gloves + chill/freeze == fun. sadly these have so low stats that i had to ditch them
- single target version is able to freeze map bosses. for a short while only - but still

cons:
- DESYNC. extreme, constant, on-demand desync. very very annoying
- cold-resist mobs and ele resist mobs in general == better skip these as it takes LONG to get them
- mana cost. manageable albeit still noticeable
- Breath of Rime notable very costly point-wise. I took it just because i always wanted to try it and it is noticeable while playing
- huge difficulty spikes. throngs of mobs are easy as you need exactly one to freeze them all. this makes one lazy and sloppy. sadly this can bite back
- frostbite mandatory

suggestions:
- move Breath of Rime passive closer to Templar. current position makes no sense whatsoever
- in general GH is missaligned. it is 'cold' skill but a 'red' gem. cold passives are around witch/shadow and some around templar. it is impossible to get to the cold passives while still maintaining life% at reasonable numbers. very complex build engineering required that has little to do with efficiency and as such dps and survivability are on the low side. bonus is the inherent safety of freeze+eleProlif builds

Working out a Glacial Hammer Build too. I went a little different direction. Ultimately I am trying to make a massive AoE MF culler out of it, but still very gear handicapped at this point. Level 74 and doing low level maps now and feeling way under geared, but still effective for the most part.

As soon as I can get a couple of upgrades I will be running Arctic Armor full time to mitigate phys damage and get around faster.

Ultimately the Sovreignty cluster, Inner Force and Influence clusters will be in the build. In retrospect I probably should have picked those up before some of the damage nodes, but I don't think it is worth the regrets to fix it now.

Tree

Gear

I went 1-H shield with crit rather than 2 hand RT because I think it will wind up with better sustain when properly geared and still be able to freeze/shatter large packs without much difficulty due to the efficiency of the crits while cursing with Frostbite and Crit Weakness.

It is a fun playstyle, but I still need to do a lot of work optimizing gem combinations and especially improving my gear. I got lucky and 6-l'd my Sadists Garb in about 30 fuse, but I am poor so I am currently limping by with sub-optimal colors until I have enough chromes to make it nice.

Pros:
-Very Active playstyle which is unusual for an MF'er (I consider it more fun)
-Not really unique dependent
-When geared appropriately for content the clear speed is good for a culler due to the shatter mechanics (even when solo)
-Nice support characteristics in party play due to freezing/chilling massive packs permanently
-Potential for ridiculous AoE
-Extremely efficient culling of large packs and rares. A 10% cull can miss a lot in higher DPS groups, but at 30% not much gets by you if you are positioning well.
-If you need flasks they are always full because you get a huge percentage of the kill shots when you are trying to.

Cons:
-Susceptible to caster spikes and somewhat difficult to resist cap
-Need to level as a FP or something other than the intended final build because G-Hammer isn't really functional until you can at least 5L
-Very Gear Dependent. You need a 5 or 6L and high MF before the build can really do what it is supposed to and at level 74 I am still nowhere close to having acceptable gear. The only plus on the gear side is that Ev/ES gear seems to be relatively easy to get at a decent price.
-Stun lock prone in its current state. Really need the physical mitigation from a high level arctic armor because I chose to go evade based
-Takes a long time to finish the tree because you need to cover a lot of ground for life.
-Desynch can be miserable. I need to keybind /oos and should probably just spam it.

If I eventually get this good enough, then I will probably make a guide for it, but right now it is just fun to fool around with and see if I can make it work.

i STRONGLY recommend elemental proliferation. freezes can be proliferated and with some AOE passives it means ABSURD level of aoe-cull

also - cold penetration. if you find your dmg lackluster, try it. it makes HUGE difference. curses are nice, but curse immunity + 25% curse effectiveness for bosses makes these 'occasional' instead of 'always-on' bonuses

if i had a 1h mace like this. ive never found one that good in 1000+ hours..

ive experimented with my build before finalizing it - that Galvanic cluster (phys/ele mace dmg) turned out to be VERY point inefficient. i do not know your accuracy, but if it is not that great that 18% phys dmg a and accuracy/dex node by templar offers nice bonuses.

in general ive selected templar because of its starting nodes. ability to take Celestial Walker (40ele dmg + resists + mana regen) AND melee nodes below trumped all other options. witch start is a 'single line' start so it is easy to get into it from outside, templar isnt. but it is too late for that now.

finalizing my babble - try ele proliferation.. just give it a chance

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sidtherat wrote:

i STRONGLY recommend elemental proliferation. freezes can be proliferated and with some AOE passives it means ABSURD level of aoe-cull

also - cold penetration. if you find your dmg lackluster, try it. it makes HUGE difference. curses are nice, but curse immunity + 25% curse effectiveness for bosses makes these 'occasional' instead of 'always-on' bonuses

if i had a 1h mace like this. ive never found one that good in 1000+ hours..

ive experimented with my build before finalizing it - that Galvanic cluster (phys/ele mace dmg) turned out to be VERY point inefficient. i do not know your accuracy, but if it is not that great that 18% phys dmg a and accuracy/dex node by templar offers nice bonuses.

in general ive selected templar because of its starting nodes. ability to take Celestial Walker (40ele dmg + resists + mana regen) AND melee nodes below trumped all other options. witch start is a 'single line' start so it is easy to get into it from outside, templar isnt. but it is too late for that now.

finalizing my babble - try ele proliferation.. just give it a chance

Yeah, I was planning proliferation all along, but put off doing Cruel Fixture (can't remember why now). Anyway, I did it now and am using prolif.

Also re-chromed to get in WED and Cold Pen (tough to roll an Ev/Es chest to RRRGBB). Regarding curses, my plan is to stack all of the benefits. With Penetration + Frostbite + Crit Weakness the freze rate is awesome and the damage is vastly improved.

My accuracy is suspect at the moment, because you are right I am hostage to picking some up on gear (and my gear is poop).

Interesting that you found the Galvanic cluster to be inefficient. I went with it because the % phys and the % ele BOTH mutliply on the cold portion of G Hammer and it seems like a solid damage boost, not to mention that since I didn't go RT the Crit mult in the cluster is a nice throw in.

I started witch because I am going E-Battery and ultimately planning to run Grace-Discipline-Hatred-Clarity. Probably could/should have started Templar anyway, but I liked the look of a frail little girl whipping around a club killing shit. /shrug