Build of the Week Season 2 Episode 11: Glacial Hammer/Elemental Proliferation Duelist

Just to mention - Freeze mine is still a viable option!
FM-> Inc Aoe-> Added Cold (Huge difference)->Ele Prolif (for 4l), ->cold pen (for 5l) and can add conc eff for bosses.
This said - this combo lets you set a mine and permafreeze things without getting into melee range. Also, if you are dedicated freezer you dont need any white trash mob to prolif freeze - the mine itself will do the work just fine! Ele weakness/frostbite are nice - but the best in terms of freeze duration is Temp chain for its 50% longer aligment status effect no matter what ;)
so go dual/tri permacurse and you are free to go
Done it in ambush and it trivializes all content freezing bosses etc, its downside is inability to solo - but who cares - iam a support freezer on that char. Whenever group needs to do extremely dangerous map with insane % IIQ - iam totally in!

amazing safe build

some ideas....

bereks grip so you leech mana (could be enough to drop clarity)
increase aoe on tree and armor
a 6l armor should have add lightning quality and maybe the shock nodes
with bereks you can replace the cold leech with culling strike corruption

Ha, a budget build! You've got to be kidding me...

Hi, I'd like to clarify a number of points:

On multiplayer: Freezes work off the base monster HP before being boosted by multiplayer. Though I will admit this build will probably make MF cullers less than happy.

On DPS: The build actually does quite a lot of damage in good circumstances, and okay-ish damage in the worst circumstances. The tooltip is absolutely not accurate at all as it appears to be unable to account for the fact that I'm only attacking with one weapon. The short of it is, if I use my single-target link, that's around 30k DPS against 0% resist non-boss mobs, and around 10k DPS against 75% resist curse-immune mobs.

On clear speed: What the video didn't show was that I have two ample quicksilvers of adrenaline that I make heavy use of when mapping. Check out my videos in the build guide to see how fast I move about (though they aren't full clears because I like to durdle a bit when I map).

On freezability of mobs: Almost all rares can be frozen. Generally they're perma-frozen with my AOE link, but in worst-case scenarios (like a cold-resist curse-immune stone titan), I can at least get off the minimum freeze duration to trigger Glacial Hammer's 33% culling effect. Bosses generally can't be frozen due to their stupid curse resistance. When I run into a mob I cannot freeze, I generally alternate between my AOE link (freezing/refreshing freeze duration) and my Single-target link (pure damage). Worst case scenario would be a high-health boss with no adds around, in which case I pop my vaal summon skeletons which does the trick.

On budget: I would call this a medium-budget build. I was able to nearly completely fund it almost entirely from my level 76 heavy-strike marauder early on in the season.

On whether this is the best damn build ever made: Purely subjective. There are a lot of different ways one could take this, and I'm sure many of them might be better in certain ways (I personally always wanted to find the skillpoints to make a trip up to the hexmaster cluster while grabbing increased freeze duration). I will say this build was pretty fun and aside from the more difficult bosses (bosses in general are the build's weak point), I can handle just about any content the game can throw at me.

Agree, this is not a budget build at all, atziri uniques, corruptions - where is the budget part?

Plus, Sidtherat is right about one bigger hit being better as a theme of the skill, why not use a different (read better suited skill) if your going aspd?

But the idea of using prismatic for it is nice, good to know that it kinda works - never got around to doing it (as probably many many others).

Good point in doryani+prismatic is that it gives a two-hander's damage, when you count the post conversion elemental increase on the scepter, while being safer.

Personally, wouldn't go crit though (even though scepter does lend itself for it). But if I did, I would still go templar, there are some good one-hand crit nodes there, of which the author of the build takes only 1 cluster.

"If you swap a few of the expensive uniques like Romira's Banquet or the two Atziri items for decent rares, then the entire character is quite affordable".

the entire character is quite affordable

quite affordable

affordable


That this word is used so freely, as the default, like 'well of course you will buy them', in an aRPG by the lead dev is sickening.

You couldn't use some good items you found?
No, because you'd have been expected to have off loaded then for gold as soon as they dropped.

That core aRPG element that makes you want to liquidate any drop rather than make a build out of it or keep it for a future build. lol

"

DirkAustin wrote:

Budget build or affordable build are relative terms.

Anu meant rather, that "budget" or "affordable" doesn't fit as build description in aRPG game. But here, we have eRPG, like "economy role playing game".

And even lead dev is using those descriptions, what is very, very sad and very, very disappointing for me.

cool vid. but seems really low dps
my second char was using staff-glacial hammer, with great increased aoe, was really fun. Also I could easily switch to infernal blow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NVX_fLW_8Y

That char failed but now I could make it better, i think with a good build, a good staff ,without crit it could be better than this one on the video...