Guild Wars 2

Glacial Heart cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, chill duration reduced to 3 seconds.

Do you like the change?
Will you use it now?

No, it’s still random and now the chill is to short.

The day it has 5s cd, 3s duration and works with all weapons and is triggered by hitting, not critical, then I will find it to be a valid choice compared the traits it’s competing with.

I use it in a combination with sigils of hydromancy and intelligence and it hits like a truck, never really used it for the chill effect, but for the AoE dmg.

Glaciate.3901:

I use it in a combination with sigils of hydromancy and intelligence and it hits like a truck, never really used it for the chill effect, but for the AoE dmg.

Sigil of Intelligence is pretty clever. I must give that a try.

Apart from that, the main problem with that trait is the randomness. If we want to reliably keep someone near us, a random proc just won’t do.

In testing, it seems like Glacial Heart can proc off of any attack you land while you have a hammer equipped, and the chill is localized near your target. You can drop a ranged AoE like scepter 2 (or to a lesser extent staff 3), weapon swap to a hammer that has Sigil of Intelligence, and it has a semi acceptable chance of chilling on the next few hits of your ranged AoE.

Sadly, even that case doesn’t chill 100% of the time, but I guess that move can attempt to control Glacial Heart’s randomness and help chase people down from range. When it works, anyway.

If hammer #2 was the same as elementalist’s lightning hammer #2, I’d use hammer.

Been using it in WvW zerg fight, small fights and even 1 vs 1 situation. Sadly it is not strong or useful enough to replace retributive armor, strength in numbers, purity, meditation mastery, monk’s focus, or altruistic healing. The 15 second cooldown is way too long, damage is too little for any sacrifice, and condition duration is almost none even without condition cleanse or condition duration food.
In order to make this trait viable, the trait should apply at least 5 seconds of chill, proc at every 7~10 seconds (5 seconds could be too short for guardian’s role) and have its range increased from 180 to 240

Svarty.8019:

If hammer #2 was the same as elementalist’s lightning hammer #2, I’d use hammer.

This. Hammer is too slow. If they make it like that then it will have mobility and see more play. Also make banish cleave. Hammer needs a buff really badly on guard and i dont know why anet wont do anything for it.

Brutaly.6257:

No, it’s still random and now the chill is to short.

The day it has 5s cd, 3s duration and works with all weapons and is triggered by hitting, not critical, then I will find it to be a valid choice compared the traits it’s competing with.

Arharharharharh 5 sec cd with 3 sec chill? are you kidding right? xD No way.

@OP
Actually it is pretty good but only in some WvW and PvP builds…

I think its still a first tier talent and isnt worth a second tier slot. But like everyone ells i see the potential in it. Going to test it with hydromancer sigil.

teaming it with intell sigil is a good idea but for zerg fights i just cant let go of my stamina sigil.

Don’t forget about the nighttime food.

You can run Strength / Chilling sigils + Food for a Chill/Might/Burn build.

I still won’t use it because I find hammer too slow of a weapon to be effective for the intended primary purpose of the trait, which is to grant the ability to keep up with the enemy.

It’s an interesting idea, but very…“alone”, so to speak. It doesn’t seem to synergize well with guardian builds in general, since all the things that could help it stretch you out among other trees. Condition duration is up in Zeal. You’d presumably want high precision for an on-critical trait, but Radiance is half Condition Damage, which won’t do Chill any good…and now you’re focusing on criticals for the Guardian’s slowest weapon, and condition damage when their primary source of burning relies on attack speed! Meanwhile the trait for reduced two-handed weapon recharge, desirable for a hammer for obvious reasons, is down in Honor.

As it is, there aren’t many build options for which it would seem very vital, and so at best, it’s just a trait for if your build just happens to go there, and just happens to not really need any of the other available traits. And it’s okay in that case, but…that’s about all it is.

If it worked with any weapon I might consider using it.

As is hammer is just to slow, painfully slow in the case of the AA chain. (would love it if they would take 1 pulse off of protection symbol but lower the cast time to 1/2 second – 3/4 second)

And the fact it only has a 50% chance on crit makes it kind of random.
Unless your running an insanely high crit chance & or sigil of intelligence it just isn’t worth using.
Even then there are often better choices like meditations giving fury.

It’s kind of sad, they want guardians to be melee fighters yet they don’t give any of the weapons besides the hammer the tools needed to stay in melee (IE snares, cripples, chills etc…)

I do use hammer and it doesn’t worth still. Like the other guy said, Retrubitive Armor, Purity, Strenght in Numbers, medi cd reduction or AH is the way to go, even if u use hammer in your build. If it was 3secs on 10 sec CD, I would consider to use it.