Glacial Hammer

"

Minorith wrote:

Glacial Hammer is now useless, because it's outclassed by Ice Crash on all fronts. Almost equal weapon damage, a free AoE, just generally better DPS than Glacial and it doesn't need gems like Melee Splash to perform.

Do something for Glacial Hammer or nerf Ice Crash.

Dont forget that the nerf to AOE, Splash and Prolif did a number on this ability to.

Vall Gh: Please address the random piercing issue with non piercing abilities

Okay so if I have on Herald of Ash and I shatter an enemy on 1/3(glacial hammer) life does the damage dealt via the Shatter make HoA overkill effect proc the overkill damage(The 1/3 overkill damage, not normal overkill damage)? Thanks

If I have Herald of Ice Activated though will the shatter procs caused by Glacial Hammer also trigger Herald of Ice's?

I think the lack of the ability to shatter unique enemies is what makes me never want to use this skill. I understand triggering at 35% would be ridiculously OP, but wouldn't triggering at say 5% be okay? Especially since GGG are trying to set this up for MF with the new jewel, but that won't even affect any unique mobs, which give the best loot.

Glacial Hammer should shatter frozen whites and blues outright, rares at 50%, and bosses at 35%.

Let's be real here. If you're dealing enough damage to freeze anything, they are likely permanently frozen or going to die in a few hits anyways. Might as well make the flavor mechanic of the skill more pronounced since it'll have non real impact on balance.

I feel like Glacial Hammer could be up to a skill rework. Change it to work similarly to how Chatters/Champion of Frost where after the initial hit the skill creates a delayed Ice Blast on targeted location. The Conversion would still be the same 50% Physical or alternatively rework how Shattered Chains works to grant that Ice Blast.

Looks like everyone can agree the change that glacial hammer needs is the ability for the "super-culling on frozen enemies" (1/3) to work on unique monsters.

If this change was implemented, I could definitely see it being used as a single-target ability on a sort of freeze-based Inquisitor wielding a crit Staff, using both Ice Crash and Glacial Hammer.

It's pretty clear from the fact that GGG are willing to give Duelist super-culling (20%) that works on uniques - even super difficult endgame bosses like Shaper and Uber Atziri - that this skill's exception for Unique monsters is a relic of a long-forgotten era of this game.

I understand that part of the reason why this rule was implemented in the first place is because Unique monsters can't be shattered. I simply ask: why is that necessary? Just change it to "Kill Frozen Enemies that have 1/3 or lower Life when Hit by this Skill" rather than "Shatter Frozen Enemies that have 1/3 or lower Life when Hit by this Skill".

In any case, it seems like it would be rather easy to make an improvement to this skill that would inspire many new and interesting builds.

Allowing Glacial to kill uniques at 35% is bonkers. Everybody would just have it on weapon swap. That's not in any way comparable to playing a certain Ascendancy to get 20% culling.

With the new Lethargy Threshold Jewel that grants GH a Cold only Splash, can that stack with Melee Splash from other sources like the Slayer's Impact node or the Melee Splash gem?
Considering Mark's answer in this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/44dzjb/does_slayers_impact_stack_with_melee_splash/?st=izlczoe6&sh=7806de4b it might of course just be another way to set the splashing boolean to true for the skill but since it works a bit differently with the Cold only, I have a faint glimmer of hope that taking Impact not just straight gimps the skill.

And does Cold only mean that only the cold portion of the hit is getting splashed or that all damage from the hit is getting converted to cold anyway? I guess the first to reward using two of the jewels and other cold damage boosting. If it's the first, that would probably also mean that there is no damage penalty on the splash damage per se, since it already only takes the cold portion of a hit into account. That would be wonderfull as that means 100% damage on all targets with the two jewels. Still no Ice Crash but might feel not totally gimped now.

I'm still holding out hope for Single Target skills actually dealing more damage than the ones with the most aoe by a significant amount. Since Splash radius and Proliferation radius are so small, it would be similar to using a conc effect wide aoe skill, so the conc effect damage bonus should be nearly (since conc takes a gem slot) added to single target skills.

I might play GH as a Berserker with Kongor's Undying Rage in one of the next two leagues.