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On May 20 2012 19:53 Simberto wrote:
Why does everyone take blizzard? From my recent experience, Arcane Orb with the Celestial Orb Rune and the Arcane Slowing passive is similarly effective at slowing stuff, has a similar amount of damage per arcane power, and can be used in fast succession instead of only having one up at any place at a given time. Also, you always get your full damage even against faster enemies. Also, it usually hits a larger area then a blizzard
Positional casting > projectile based spells. The immediate effect is way better than waiting for the projectile to travel and then got blocked by a creep up front. Not even counting blizzard give you up to 6 seconds slow and you dont have to waste a passive.
The more you play into Hell/inferno, the more you will realize that the amount of damage you deal generally doesnt matter as much as keeping your self alive while doing that much dmg. Thats why the current Hydra + Seeker Magic Missle + stun/slow is trending.
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On May 20 2012 20:12 NB wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2012 19:53 Simberto wrote:
Why does everyone take blizzard? From my recent experience, Arcane Orb with the Celestial Orb Rune and the Arcane Slowing passive is similarly effective at slowing stuff, has a similar amount of damage per arcane power, and can be used in fast succession instead of only having one up at any place at a given time. Also, you always get your full damage even against faster enemies. Also, it usually hits a larger area then a blizzard Positional casting > projectile based spells. The immediate effect is way better than waiting for the projectile to travel and then got blocked by a creep up front. Not even counting blizzard give you up to 6 seconds slow and you dont have to waste a passive. The more you play into Hell/inferno, the more you will realize that the amount of damage you deal generally doesnt matter as much as keeping your self alive while doing that much dmg. Thats why the current Hydra + Seeker Magic Missle + stun/slow is trending.
There are trends now?
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I can't seem to crit with my beam attack such as Disintegrate. Is this normal?
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On May 20 2012 20:12 NB wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2012 19:53 Simberto wrote:
Why does everyone take blizzard? From my recent experience, Arcane Orb with the Celestial Orb Rune and the Arcane Slowing passive is similarly effective at slowing stuff, has a similar amount of damage per arcane power, and can be used in fast succession instead of only having one up at any place at a given time. Also, you always get your full damage even against faster enemies. Also, it usually hits a larger area then a blizzard Positional casting > projectile based spells. The immediate effect is way better than waiting for the projectile to travel and then got blocked by a creep up front. Not even counting blizzard give you up to 6 seconds slow and you dont have to waste a passive. The more you play into Hell/inferno, the more you will realize that the amount of damage you deal generally doesnt matter as much as keeping your self alive while doing that much dmg. Thats why the current Hydra + Seeker Magic Missle + stun/slow is trending.
lol? Where do you get this from? Seeker missile + hydra is just a boss build as it's the best when you are constantly on the run as you can do decent damage from over a screen away. It's hardly a trend for normal fights anyway.
Blizzard is not really great I think, 30% slow is very minimal and the damage is really lousy plus it does nothing against ranged creeps, warping creep or when they grab you etc. Plus it's a fairly expensive spell that takes up a slot. For creep control I think wave of force, frost nova or time warp are much better.
In the end I think primary spells will hardly be used, they simply suck imo. There are so many great spells for wizard that take up practically no AP (force armor, magic weapon, frost nova, diamond skin, familiar, mirror image and to a lesser extent hydra, wave of force etc.) Whenever I equip a primary it feels like a wasted slot as i'll hardly be using the spell and it does pathetic damage anyway. I don't feel there is a primary that does decent damage to a group, has some nice range and has ok single target damage too. Plus there are no good AP sink i'd want to use when I do have a primary equipped, blizzard isn't a spam spell as it doesn't stack and meteor and energy twister are pretty bad as it's just tough to hit consistently against the difficult mobs. The passivs for primaries simply suck too, arcane dynamo takes way too long too load (it doesn't always tick) and when you do get it up you get what? 75% extra damage on your blizzard? Prodigy sucks even more as you don't need the AP regeneration when you have a primary..
Just use arcane orb or disintegrate as 'main' for mobs. Both are really solid as far as Aoe, range and single target damage go. Both (with rune for orb) only cost 20 energy. If you make sure to have a slow weapon you can cast them nonstop for a long time. In practice you'll be kiting or occasionally casting a spell like wave of force, frost nova, diamond skin etc anyway so you can keep on going. There are a few ways to cast them even longer without needing a primary (make sure to have a slow weapon):
- there are items which reduce disintegrate cost up to 4 AP. 16-17 AP for disintegrate with a slow weapon you can cast for a long time.
- there are items that give more max AP or even give AP on critical hits. You can get 8-10 AP on a critical hit on lvl 60, if you add that with some increased critical hit chance you can basically cast orb/disintegrate indefinately. There are even items which specifically increase arcane orb critical hit chance. (off hand though which i dislike)
- you can take astral presence, high AP pool plus good regen lets you cast more then enough but you might find it a waste of passive
If you really want slow you can just get temporal flux but personally I think slows of 30% are not really worth it. I rather slow them with wave of force and stun with frost nova. If you really want the slow just take blizzard with cost reduction in addition to your arcane orb/disintegrate.
For reference this is what i'm using for solo:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#idYjXO!YfX!ZZZbaY
You have really solid damage output with arcane orbs and good control with wave of force and frost nova.
With a party i suggest this:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#igYjXO!YfX!ZZZbaY
Disintegrate is best damage output if you have a tank (and easy to keep up nearly nonstop with a cost reducing hat), time warp is great with tanks as it reduces the damage output for everyone in the group plus provides some decent protection to others. Blizzard doesn't do much if you have some melee characters in your party anyway.
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On May 20 2012 20:47 coolzombie wrote:Thought I could contribute  . I Completed ACT 1 in Inferno 2 nights ago with this build http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#QXRSac!XYh!ZaZZcaI am thinking about mixing it up though, my arcane orb is really inefficient against bosses but works well against champions and other monsters
How much HP?
And did you skip much champion packs?
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On May 20 2012 20:36 Dronk wrote:
I can't seem to crit with my beam attack such as Disintegrate. Is this normal?
bump.. anyone? 
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On May 20 2012 21:07 hkf wrote:How much HP? And did you skip much champion packs?
I have about 32k hp, I skipped nothing but I played with 2 demons hunters. I like to believe I could solo it aswell since we kited all the champions. I had 5 stacks of valor until butcher. Butcher took like 10-12 tries so we lost our stacks on him and the demonhunters optimized their build for single target dps while I kept my specc and we got him down .
Or we skipped like 1 or 2 champions but they were messed up, like invun minions teleport and jailor etc.. shit is impossible
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Most recent layout as of today is http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WeYkOm!bXf!cccYYc
I'm mid Inferno Act I right now, and it's going pretty smoothly. I mean sure, of course die a lot to certain Rares/Champion packs, but who the hell doesn't lol.
Thought process:
Spectral Blade - Thrown Blade
Honestly, I don't like any of the other primary skills. It just feels as if every primary is a weaker version of the secondaries, and even though I'm aware that there probably are more reasonable choices for primaries when you're oom, I have to run around anyway, so I regen my arcane power sufficiently, so I rarely even use my primary. Reason for picking Spectral is it's pretty good AoE, and even though it's close range, that's pretty hard to avoid quite often anyway. Thrown Blade helps a lot though, since I can "melee" from behind my Templar without being in melee range from the mobs themselves.
Arcane Torrent - Cascade
I've been going with Disintegrate with Chaos Nexus forever now, but I tried this today and found out that it's seriously ridiculous how powerful this is. The damage is higher, the range is higher, the rune causes a chain reaction of death, the AoE is good and you can even abuse the unusual design of the spell to get some pretty imba momentum among them. Easily the best secondary spell I've tried.
Frost Nova - Bone Chill
Pretty self-explanatory, it's good for a multitude of reasons: retreating, stunning or dps'ing, it's just an all-round good spell. Picked the rune since Frost Nova is generally the first spell you're going to pop in a battle, so you might as well get some extra dps with your next attacks.
Meteor - Comet
Been using Meteor Shower forever due to its ridiculous AoE, but on Inferno the damage just didn't feel good enough anymore, so I decided to go back to the single meteor approach, and throw in a Comet rune to make it freeze upon impact as well. Good damage, good crowd control.
Energy Armor - Force Armor
+65% Armor is always nice, not much to say about that. Force Armor feels pretty obligatory on Inferno to me, as it is pretty much your anti-one-shot perk.
Archon - Improved Archon
It always feels nice to have some sort of ulti-spell for tough situations, as in most Rare/Champion packs on Inferno. Essentially, I pop everything I have in normal mode, including freezing everyone around me with Comet/Nova, and then proceed to go into Archon mode and start murdering stuff. The dps is beyond ridiculous, especially with the improvement rune.
Passives - Evocation, Astral Presence, Galvanizing Ward
Evocation and Astral Presence are just good general mage perks to have. I've been using them from the level I've gotten them and never changed. My third selection has switched around somewhat though, and I ended up with Galvanizing Ward upon jumping over to Inferno, simply because my biggest problem right now was my lack of life steal/life regeneration.
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Any opinions on Hardcore builds? Right now im gearing almost only vitality, and then trying to do a balanced survival/dmg build, and solo it is still pretty fast. Still think I need Blur and cant get Glass Cannon for instance, but im really unsure about the armors, especially storm seems sooooo risky.
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On May 20 2012 20:47 coolzombie wrote:Thought I could contribute . I Completed ACT 1 in Inferno 2 nights ago with this build http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#QXRSac!XYh!ZaZZcaI am thinking about mixing it up though, my arcane orb is really inefficient against bosses but works well against champions and other monsters
Why Lightning Hydra over Venom?
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- there are items that give more max AP or even give AP on critical hits. You can get 8-10 AP on a critical hit on lvl 60, if you add that with some increased critical hit chance you can basically cast orb/disintegrate indefinately.
Does someone know how exactly these work? I once had one, and when i have ~15-20% crit, and a celestial orb flying through a large group of mobs, that should surely proc at least once for every orb, thus making me able to spam it pretty hard. I assume it can not proc multiple times of the same cast? Anyways, you should still be pretty much able to spam orbs nonstop with such an item and a moderate critchance even without the 20 AP Orb rune, but that is not the case. Anyone can shed a light on this?
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On May 20 2012 22:24 ZAiNs wrote:Why Lightning Hydra over Venom?
Also why swap around 3/4 with left/right mouse lol, that'd drive me crazy 
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On May 20 2012 21:03 Markwerf wrote:
The passivs for primaries simply suck too, arcane dynamo takes way too long too load (it doesn't always tick) and when you do get it up you get what? 75% extra damage on your blizzard?
Arcane dynamo is great for hydra though, when kiting packs hydra will be most of your damage. Also the "may tick" thingy is just for skills that attacks faster than your weapon speed or things that hits more than one target and such, it always procs on magic missile. With arcane dynamo the arcane hydra gets up to 147% weapon damage as arcane in an aoe per second for free, that is really good imo since it almost deals the same dps as your entire build.
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http://eu.battle.net/d3/de/calculator/wizard#acOXPS!UYc!ZaYaZ
This is my build. Im currently 55 in act 2 hell soloing and doing reasonly fine. I sit at 16k HP and around 7k DPS.
I didnt find Frost Nova useful. You tear through trash anyways and vs Champion and Bosses the stun is really short. Mirror Image is superior in my opinion for tanking.
Split Arcane Missile for Arcane Power regeneration and AOE slow with the 2 passives. Try to get some faster attack speed, as it synergizes with the mana reg from Arcane Missile really great. Glass Cannon and Magic Weapon for damage obv.
I would love to work Arcane Dynamo in, as it synergizes great with my very fast attack speed. I may try without the slow.
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Lalalaland34491 Posts
On May 20 2012 21:03 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2012 20:12 NB wrote:On May 20 2012 19:53 Simberto wrote:
Why does everyone take blizzard? From my recent experience, Arcane Orb with the Celestial Orb Rune and the Arcane Slowing passive is similarly effective at slowing stuff, has a similar amount of damage per arcane power, and can be used in fast succession instead of only having one up at any place at a given time. Also, you always get your full damage even against faster enemies. Also, it usually hits a larger area then a blizzard Positional casting > projectile based spells. The immediate effect is way better than waiting for the projectile to travel and then got blocked by a creep up front. Not even counting blizzard give you up to 6 seconds slow and you dont have to waste a passive. The more you play into Hell/inferno, the more you will realize that the amount of damage you deal generally doesnt matter as much as keeping your self alive while doing that much dmg. Thats why the current Hydra + Seeker Magic Missle + stun/slow is trending. lol? Where do you get this from? Seeker missile + hydra is just a boss build as it's the best when you are constantly on the run as you can do decent damage from over a screen away. It's hardly a trend for normal fights anyway. Blizzard is not really great I think, 30% slow is very minimal and the damage is really lousy plus it does nothing against ranged creeps, warping creep or when they grab you etc. Plus it's a fairly expensive spell that takes up a slot. For creep control I think wave of force, frost nova or time warp are much better. In the end I think primary spells will hardly be used, they simply suck imo. There are so many great spells for wizard that take up practically no AP (force armor, magic weapon, frost nova, diamond skin, familiar, mirror image and to a lesser extent hydra, wave of force etc.) Whenever I equip a primary it feels like a wasted slot as i'll hardly be using the spell and it does pathetic damage anyway. I don't feel there is a primary that does decent damage to a group, has some nice range and has ok single target damage too. Plus there are no good AP sink i'd want to use when I do have a primary equipped, blizzard isn't a spam spell as it doesn't stack and meteor and energy twister are pretty bad as it's just tough to hit consistently against the difficult mobs. The passivs for primaries simply suck too, arcane dynamo takes way too long too load (it doesn't always tick) and when you do get it up you get what? 75% extra damage on your blizzard? Prodigy sucks even more as you don't need the AP regeneration when you have a primary.. Just use arcane orb or disintegrate as 'main' for mobs. Both are really solid as far as Aoe, range and single target damage go. Both (with rune for orb) only cost 20 energy. If you make sure to have a slow weapon you can cast them nonstop for a long time. In practice you'll be kiting or occasionally casting a spell like wave of force, frost nova, diamond skin etc anyway so you can keep on going. There are a few ways to cast them even longer without needing a primary (make sure to have a slow weapon): - there are items which reduce disintegrate cost up to 4 AP. 16-17 AP for disintegrate with a slow weapon you can cast for a long time. - there are items that give more max AP or even give AP on critical hits. You can get 8-10 AP on a critical hit on lvl 60, if you add that with some increased critical hit chance you can basically cast orb/disintegrate indefinately. There are even items which specifically increase arcane orb critical hit chance. (off hand though which i dislike) - you can take astral presence, high AP pool plus good regen lets you cast more then enough but you might find it a waste of passive If you really want slow you can just get temporal flux but personally I think slows of 30% are not really worth it. I rather slow them with wave of force and stun with frost nova. If you really want the slow just take blizzard with cost reduction in addition to your arcane orb/disintegrate. For reference this is what i'm using for solo: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#idYjXO!YfX!ZZZbaYYou have really solid damage output with arcane orbs and good control with wave of force and frost nova. With a party i suggest this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#igYjXO!YfX!ZZZbaYDisintegrate is best damage output if you have a tank (and easy to keep up nearly nonstop with a cost reducing hat), time warp is great with tanks as it reduces the damage output for everyone in the group plus provides some decent protection to others. Blizzard doesn't do much if you have some melee characters in your party anyway.
Your solo build has disintegrate, is that supposed to be arcane orb?
First impressions are that while your group build looks great with huge damage output and all, I don't feel safe with your solo build. I guess the idea is to juggle cooldowns (frost nova, wave of force and diamond skin) and cast arcane orb/disintegrate in between, but it simply doesn't feel as safe as the blizzard/venom hydra/kite4eva based build. Gonna give it a try anyway and see if I like it.
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Does someone know how exactly these work? I once had one, and when i have ~15-20% crit, and a celestial orb flying through a large group of mobs, that should surely proc at least once for every orb, thus making me able to spam it pretty hard. I assume it can not proc multiple times of the same cast? Anyways, you should still be pretty much able to spam orbs nonstop with such an item and a moderate critchance even without the 20 AP Orb rune, but that is not the case. Anyone can shed a light on this?
In the beta somebody tested it and it seemed that AP per crit only works with signature spells. Can sb confirm this ?
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On May 20 2012 22:24 ZAiNs wrote:Why Lightning Hydra over Venom?
Could be that he prefers the higher damage of lightning. Venom obviously does amazing damage, but only when enemies stay in the venom pools. With lightning, the actual attacks do way more damage, so it's better for a build where you move a lot.
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EPT
