Glacial Hammer

I'm currently using this skill as my primary attack on my Staff wielding Avatar of Fire Templar, with a focus of +Weapon Elemental Damage passives, and I have to say, the damage is beautiful. I keep hearing how others use Infernal Blow instead of this skill, and I can see some reasoning behind that, but the chilling/freezing effects, combined with the burning chance leaves me with a very good feeling afterward.

The chill especially helps with stronger enemies, though very brief at times it's still enough to make me prefer it over Infernal Blow.

I'm currently level 40 in Ruthless, with roughly 1700 DPS on this skill due to a nice 'Wicked' Staff I found. Though a major of the damage on this skill is Fire Element due to my gem setup.

As an AoF Temp I use this skill over Infernal Blow if just for the animation. Even with one handed weapons it's in good shape.

I've tried using this skill over and over, but without an increasing AoE per level, this gem is a throw-away gem compared to Ground Slam or any other AoE based attacks. To make it viable, have it freeze your target for an increasing amount of time based on skill level (as it does now), *and* give it a nice AoE that slows nearby enemies.

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Using this attack as my primary on my tanking templar.

It's ok, but here's my biggest "problem".

As a tank life leech is very useful, so turning half your physical damage into frost is meh. I don't really want to heavy strike because the knockback is annoying as hell. That doesn't really leave me a mostly physical strength based attack with tanking benefits.

I can use glacial and not bother with leech, or I can use heavy strike and constantly chase crap across the screen and make my witch miss with spells.

The only other real option is infernal blow, but that is awfully meh too.

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Zaanus wrote:

Using this attack as my primary on my tanking templar.

It's ok, but here's my biggest "problem".

As a tank life leech is very useful, so turning half your physical damage into frost is meh. I don't really want to heavy strike because the knockback is annoying as hell. That doesn't really leave me a mostly physical strength based attack with tanking benefits.

I can use glacial and not bother with leech, or I can use heavy strike and constantly chase crap across the screen and make my witch miss with spells.

The only other real option is infernal blow, but that is awfully meh too.

Infernal Blow(IB) is great for a tank. My templar lies at 8k~ dps with no more than an average warlock's arm/shield. 3.2k with ground slam(GS). And 7.6k dps with Glacial Hammer(GH).

GH has no AoE effect, which makes it far worse as a main attack, compared to IB/GS.

I usually play in a party with a witch and a ranger. Using GS to soften mobs, and IB to finish them off. Often, I give my two partymembers mana trouble, and have to slow down killing speed so they can refill from the next group of mobs.

What I am trying to say without going totally off topic is this:

GH just has too little singletarget dps to make up for the lack of AoE. And thus is pretty useless at the moment.

The reason I am lugging it around is because I thought I'd use it for bosses. I read something on these forums somewhere that it would be good for that, but it is not.

Shield charge is a lot better for boss/special character takedowns. As that skill limits their ability to return damage with stuns and constant knockback. Even though it does half the DPS.

Considering that Infernal has AoE, Glacial needs either more damage or its own special effect to compete. I'm running Glacial on my templar (Beefy + Weapon Elemental Damage), but it's really just for show, Infernal would be more effective.

Damage too low for single target skill to be considered useful.