Guild Wars 2

With the release of specializations two years ago, Glacial Heart was moved from Valor to Virtues, and as a result it currently competes with Absolute Resolution. Even with this change, hammer guard was still at least a somewhat viable build, but the removal of air/fire sigils in PvP utterly trashed it.

I have a couple proposals, any number of them would immensely help:

• Increase Glacial Heart’s damage in PvP by ~80%. This number is a rough approximation of how much damage the burst lost when air/fire were removed. Even 50% would be acceptable. (Though it’s understandable that buffing passive spikes is a very dangerous game.)

• Switch Glacial Heart with Unscathed Contender or put it back to Valor as a Major trait.

• Change the proc chance from 50% on crit to 100% on crit. This would make it feel much more consistent (removing RNG from passive effects is always good IMO).

• Optional: Allow glacial to proc with any 2h weapon, not just the hammer. The cooldown reduction would still remain hammer only (similar to Right-Hand Strength), but the trait wouldn’t feel so incredibly specialized and useless in every other build.

I really miss playing hammer guard in PvP and I wish the trait wasn’t utterly useless in PvE. It’s in a really awkward spot at the moment and could certainly use some love.

Every weapon, well.. Almost every weapon has it’s own specific buff trait.
Not sure I saw a reason above for this particular one to receive attention. Rather the weapon itself needing some love.

Imo they overdid sword so everything else seems a bit weak in comparison.

I disagree with the second, post hammer is amazing. Its not great in SPVP, but in other game modes (fractal or WVW for example) its awesome. You get a perma protection symbol that is heavily traitable. Or you get 4 skills of mobility and hard CC’s. Its a little slow on the auto attack, but hammer is a solid design.

OP is on point, glacial heart is a weak option and almost always over looked. In PVP, absolute resolution will always be prefered. And a chilling crit shouldn’t be resolutions competition. Glacial sould be moved

My suggestion is zeal, secod set. Hammer, sword, or condi damage. And this line buffs symbols on the passives

My suggestion:

Critical hits with hammers chill enemies. Hammer recharge is reduced.
Your Blast Finisher’s range and effects are doubled and heal affected allies

Chance on Critical Hit: 50%
Recharge Reduced: 20%

Glacial Heart (trait skill)

Unleash a blast of ice that chills foes.

Damage: 266 (1.0)
Chilled (3s): -66% Skill Recharge Rate, -66% Movement Speed
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 180
Combo Finisher: Blast
Unblockable

Tbh, it’s not overlooked because its weak, its overlooked because of the traits that it contends with. Infact outside of replacing it with a trait that’s useful for pve nothing will ever contend with absolute resolution especially in pvp/wvw where conditions are so prevalent. Moving it to a different trait line would make it a viable option but then you’re just putting another trait in its place to forever go unused because one of the other options in the trait line is so strong.

GrahamW.5397:

Tbh, it’s not overlooked because its weak, its overlooked because of the traits that it contends with. Infact outside of replacing it with a trait that’s useful for pve nothing will ever contend with absolute resolution especially in pvp/wvw where conditions are so prevalent. Moving it to a different trait line would make it a viable option but then you’re just putting another trait in its place to forever go unused because one of the other options in the trait line is so strong.

I definitely agree that it contending with absolute resolution is a problem, but I still think it’s weak after the removal of air/fire. Some burst builds survived because they still have enough damage built into them, but medi hammer took a big hit with the removal of the sigils. (There was/is a bug with glacial allowing it to proc on-crit effects twice, and a lot of the consistency of hammer burst was a result of it.)

Ah but, a hammer and its skills arn’t supposed to be a burst. Its control, sustained damaage, with strong mitigation. Glacial just traps targets in the AOE longer adding to the cc and sustain; it can also be a cover condi for a burning symbol. And keeping with the OP, it will never realy be used which is a shame for those of us who love hammer

Glacial heart is garbage because its the only source of chill guardian has and it has no synergy with nothing else. Its also located in a trait line that isn’t geared towards conditions. It shouldn’t even be a master trait, it should be a tier 1 one trait. Maybe combine it with something else like they did the warrior hammer trait.

Could always make it something like;

Hammer skills recharge 20% faster. Critical hits with a hammer reduce the cooldown the of your Virtues by 1s. Activating a virtue releases a burst of ice.

If they buff Glacial Heart in a good way it could lead to the resurrection of the old Hammer medi Guard. Don’t know about you but I’d love that.

YuiRS.8129:

If they buff Glacial Heart in a good way it could lead to the resurrection of the old Hammer medi Guard. Don’t know about you but I’d love that.

That’s exactly what I’m hoping for, with maybe an additional change that makes it viable for PvE as well :>

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Could always make it something like;

Hammer skills recharge 20% faster. Critical hits with a hammer reduce the cooldown the of your Virtues by 1s. Activating a virtue releases a burst of ice.

I really, REALLY like the spirit of this idea. I’m not sure about some of the numbers, which could always be tweaked, but I love that I can see obvious synergy with other traits that work on Virtue activation, and provides regular access to chill on-demand, instead of it being a random trait.

cat.8975:

YuiRS.8129:

If they buff Glacial Heart in a good way it could lead to the resurrection of the old Hammer medi Guard. Don’t know about you but I’d love that.

That’s exactly what I’m hoping for, with maybe an additional change that makes it viable for PvE as well :>

That would have to be an extremely strong effect besides the cooldown reduction, which is nearly worthless in PvE. I don’t see that happen in any way – there’s just no space for the virtues line in a PvE hammer build.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Could always make it something like;

Hammer skills recharge 20% faster. Critical hits with a hammer reduce the cooldown the of your Virtues by 1s. Activating a virtue releases a burst of ice.

That would make it the strongest tool in the shed by far. Other things would need nerfing to compensate

hammer need rework, no only glacial heart, mighty blow-bigger range 600+ -0 mobility, 25% speed trait, some stuns , block like scrapper hammer to playable pvp level