Glacial Hammer

Have the shatter effect do AoE damage. It doesn't have to be large at all, just give it something.

This skill has needed love since the beta started. Never really changed much.

I think changing the 50% damage converted to something like 75% or 100% damage converted to cold would help the skill. The freezes will be longer, and the skill would get more benefit from increased elemental damage. It would then also work better with cold to fire.

Right now if cold to fire was used, the damage is just too poor on both the cold and the fire to do much burning damage or much freeze duration.

possibly increasing freeze chance more (with level) could also help


Adding AoE could work instead of this, but I don't think it's necessary. Infernal blow could be an elemental AoE skill, but Infernal blow needs to be fixed A skill that deals AoE damage on monster death really sucks in my opinion. Not only does that make it exclusively a PvE ability, but it makes it tedious to use which is not fun.

I think the GH needs to be more focused on single targets only, because it seems like everyone wants AoE for everything but also IB and LS already are AoE. I'd like to see GH get more freeze time or chance or perhaps have it do more damage to chilled or frozen targets.

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LoneDeltaWolf wrote:

I think the GH needs to be more focused on single targets only, because it seems like everyone wants AoE for everything but also IB and LS already are AoE. I'd like to see GH get more freeze time or chance or perhaps have it do more damage to chilled or frozen targets.

yeah my thoughts as well. I think that's why increasing the converted damage % would be helpful. that will indirectly increase freeze and chill duration, as well as increase damage (depending how many elemental/cold passives they have)

I made a templar with all of the +elemental damage bonuses and it was very good but there simply is no reason to use it over lightning strike. It needs to be about 10% more powerful than it currently is, and when you shatter something it needs to deal a decent(50% of the ability damage?) damage to nearby enemies, could have a cool ice shard spray effect too if you wanted. Without area of effect or some extra bonus to offset the strict item requirement and melee range, it is simply inferior to lightning strike and I'm sure some other skills too.

I agree with the above poster. With all the restrictions this gem carries it is does not stack up to the competition. The idea regarding flesh-tearing ice shards upon enemy shatter is a fun one.

Why not make Glacial Hammer a very slow, heavy hitting attack? This would encourage Templar and Marauders (the main users of this skill) to move south on Skilldrassil to pick up increased attack speed. I feel this would make it a unique ability and allow for more unique ways of building around it. high crit rate on such a heavy attack? Cool. Faster attacks? cool. Etc.

I find GH useful for the levels I have played (4-17 so far, so I know I have a while to go). But at those levels it seems solid, but mainly useful for the few enemies that like to run away from my melee. It isn't a skill I use every mob, or even every other. I have Heavy Strike and Infernal Blow for that.

It was handy before Infernal Blow to occasionally deal with respawning mobs, such as the Necromancers in the Prison. Not nearly as reliable, but useful for it on occasion. I would think turning it into a "big hit, slow attack" would hurt it, as it is... being in Melee my Marauder is focused on killing things before it kills him. A big, slow hit would be nice occasionally... stacking crit would be all good for it, but I would rather see consistent, moderate damage from Glacial Hammer, along with Heavy Strike (even if it is higher end) and Infernal Blow.

I say this because if that slow, heavy hit misses... you lose A LOT of damage output, if you get unlucky and miss twice? You're really hurting. That's my 2 cent, anyway.

I'd simply suggest, as others have, a higher cold damage conversion. I'd also suggest a higher freeze rate.

It's alright now, but other skills are better. Don't infringe on IB's or LS's niche by adding AoE and its damage doesn't need to match HS's. Just fill out its freeze and cold damage niche and it'll be a solid build skill.

I have learned that if you combine a quality glacial hammer with a quality temporal chains then your target will never get to finish a single attack animation.

The freeze duration is increased by the quality on GH as well as chains. The chill + chains makes the attack animation so slow that it will never finish before the next freeze.