[3.0] Glacial Hammer Gladiator

"

Kriskras wrote:

I see you haven't picked Iron Reflexes. Many comparable builds do this. What is your reasoning for not taking Iron Reflexes?

I simply prefer the additional defence layer provided by evade over the addition to the armour (which has diminishing returns against big hits). I haven't calculated advantages/disadvantages of both solutions but already having something like 10-15k armour is enough to run uber-laby safely (especially as a life-based build). The evade conversion would provide something like 5% additional phys damage reduction, while evasion itself provides me a ~20% chance to not being hit. As I said, without doing any math, I simply have the feeling that the 20% is more useful.

Any unique armor for endgame? Or a rare is just better?

"

claydbp wrote:

Any unique armor for endgame? Or a rare is just better?

A 6L Lightning Coil is the best defensive option you probably can get, but the -60% lightning resistance combined with the low life (compared to other armors) is hard to mitigate. Since the number of uniques in this build is pretty high, you need some very good rares to cap (or slightly overcap) your resists.

Otherwise you can use pretty much every unique armor with high Armor or Evasion if you are able to cap your resists and still have a solid life pool. Belly of the beast for the high life pool, Daresso's Defiance for the endurance charge generation and even Hyrri's Ire might all be used if your item pool allows it.

I looked at your character and I only see 20 strength around this threshhold jewel?

"

captainhector wrote:

I looked at your character and I only see 20 strength around this threshhold jewel?

The nodes do not have to active for the jewel to work.

oh i thought they had to be allocated my bad

Why don't you put frostbite/curse on hit on shield charge??

Btw, currently doing this and I'M IN LOVE.

Also, ever think about using Ice Bite support?

Is the reason that you use 2 winter burial jewel because the cold conversion stacks and puts it to 100% or is it just for the cold damage?

"

Bluenickelz wrote:

Why don't you put frostbite/curse on hit on shield charge??

Btw, currently doing this and I'M IN LOVE.

Hmm... to be honest I simply didn't thought about that.

It will probably help you with the clear speed while mapping, but might make you a little bit slower while killing bosses, since you have to refresh the curse once in a while (which on the other hand you might have to do for fortify anyhow).

So... overall a very good idea, thanks!

I will modify the build description to reflect your recommendation soon.

"

Ironfigment wrote:

Is the reason that you use 2 winter burial jewel because the cold conversion stacks and puts it to 100% or is it just for the cold damage?

It's for the 100% conversion.

This brings a lot of advantages: the damage will scale full with elemental scaling (while still having big damage gains if you have high flat physical damage as well), the cold penetration applies to the entire damage, not only to one portion of the damage, the area damage will take the entire hit into account...

It only has one major disadvantage: you no longer can poison or cause bleed. But since these have been nerfed with 3.0 it's not that much of an issue.

"

Bluenickelz wrote:

Also, ever think about using Ice Bite support?

Yes, but since the build is already generating Frenzy charges with Outmatch and Outlast and the raw damage bonus from Ice Bite is lower than e.g. Hypothermia or Ruthless, I rather tend to use one of the other support gems. On the other hand - the 15% chance to freeze might be pretty useful sometimes. I might try it on Standard and provide an update later.