Wizard - Builds/Discussion - Page 147

On June 23 2012 01:26 lorkac wrote:


I went from 2.5 to 1.6 in the patch....

lost 30% of my DPS (30k to 20k)

It hurt...

On June 23 2012 02:36 trinxified wrote:


Unless you were using a signature spell as your main damage dealer, I'm sure you haven't really lost that much TRUE damage...

Those numbers you're seeing were inflated, and having a 2.5 attack speed with Wizard is an extreme waste, even for spamming signature spells. Why not just hit harder each time you cast one Magic Missile instead of hitting twice for the same damage right?

As far as I know attack speed does not affect your damage for Arcane Orb or Blizzard. I think only Venom Hydra, and not by much. But same argument still stands about hitting harder each time, instead of hitting more times for the same damage...

Am I wrong here?

On June 23 2012 02:59 Kickboxer wrote:
All this talk about "sub-optimal" and "farming" makes no sense.

You can solo pre-nerf inferno with 30k dps. What's the point of one-button builds when you get nothing out of the game? Once Diablo is down it's time to relax. I spent all my money on a fast 2-hander with sick str and vitality on top of a wand / source combo with max +ap and double ap on crit.

Now I get to spam meteor in team games or tank asshole elites solo with channeled spells and a host of shenanigans. Best fun I ever had. Aren't you guys tired of AO and the mickey mouse hydra/blizzard combo? Fuck me, if I have to cast one more arcane orb I'm quitting the game.

Phael stated some intelligent facts from a chinese theorycrafting perspective but playing with 0.9 animation speed sounds about as exciting as celibacy. Good luck developing any kind of pvp mechanics with that kind of playstyle. I highly suggest you relax and have some fun with spells outside of the holy farming trinity, the game is far too easy and random to be played like a science project.

On June 23 2012 02:59 Kickboxer wrote:
All this talk about "sub-optimal" and "farming" makes no sense.

You can solo pre-nerf inferno with 30k dps. What's the point of one-button builds when you get nothing out of the game? Once Diablo is down it's time to relax. I spent all my money on a fast 2-hander with sick str and vitality on top of a wand / source combo with max +ap and double ap on crit.

Now I get to spam meteor in team games or tank asshole elites solo with channeled spells and a host of shenanigans. Best fun I ever had. Aren't you guys tired of AO and the mickey mouse hydra/blizzard combo? Fuck me, if I have to cast one more arcane orb I'm quitting the game.

Phael stated some intelligent facts from a chinese theorycrafting perspective but playing with 0.9 animation speed sounds about as exciting as celibacy. Good luck developing any kind of pvp mechanics with that kind of playstyle. I highly suggest you relax and have some fun with spells outside of the holy farming trinity, the game is far too easy and random to be played like a science project.

On June 23 2012 02:59 Kickboxer wrote:
All this talk about "sub-optimal" and "farming" makes no sense.

You can solo pre-nerf inferno with 30k dps. What's the point of one-button builds when you get nothing out of the game? Once Diablo is down it's time to relax. I spent all my money on a fast 2-hander with sick str and vitality on top of a wand / source combo with max +ap and double ap on crit.

Now I get to spam meteor in team games or tank asshole elites solo with channeled spells and a host of shenanigans. Best fun I ever had. Aren't you guys tired of AO and the mickey mouse hydra/blizzard combo? Fuck me, if I have to cast one more arcane orb I'm quitting the game.

Phael stated some intelligent facts from a chinese theorycrafting perspective but playing with 0.9 animation speed sounds about as exciting as celibacy. Good luck developing any kind of pvp mechanics with that kind of playstyle. I highly suggest you relax and have some fun with spells outside of the holy farming trinity, the game is far too easy and random to be played like a science project.

On June 23 2012 04:22 worldsnap wrote:

Meteor is an extremely fun spell because you get to play the game of "where will the enemy be in 1.5 seconds?!?!?". I love it.

Which rune are you using?

On June 23 2012 05:26 Kickboxer wrote:


Mostly star pact as it's readily spammable with 140+ ap and 30ish ap on crit. Sometimes I swap it out for liquefy or comet for the lulz but then you need a melee ready to help you out or it's repair town in no time ^_^

On June 23 2012 04:02 Phael wrote:
Yes, I absolutely love min/maxing because that is the way I enjoy a game - to beat content with the least amount of gear. For the record, I killed inferno diablo within the first week it was out, just a day or two behind the first dude.

Once I beat it, I still go for the best, most efficient spec. The game is still a challenge, I still die. It's good fun. That's why I enjoy the shit out of Blizzard games like Diablo & WoW, so much theorycrafting, min/maxing to get the most out of your character. I also high-end raid in WoW, and hold multiple top parses on wol if you know what that means.

I'm not bothered by people who are playing this game for fun using whatever spec they want. If I had to correct every person who was playing a game in an unefficient manner, I wouldn't have anything else to do.

BUT, it bugs the shit out of me when those same people give straight up wrong advice and information to others who are obviously asking for help in advancing in the most efficient way possible. If you play your 1h spec/build and enjoy it over 2h, fine, it's your $60 and I'm not going to lecture, but why shove that down someone else's throat?

Give them the cold, hard, facts and let them decide which way to progress. 2H is simply optimal in this iteration of the game, and there is zero truth to the fact that a faster weapon favors signature spells. If you choose to ignore that, as I have said over and over again, that's your perogative.

Never in my arguments have I said something similar to "play 2h or get out." They have always sounded something like "2h is simply more optimal - you get more bang for your buck and here is why: [insert math.]" And if everyone looked at that, nodded their heads, and continued with what they were doing, we wouldn't have an issue, but apparently it took me 3-4 pages to clarify and consolidate my claims and (hopefully) convince many naysayers.

As for pvp ... who knows what's happening. Personally, if it's anything like WoW pvp (which stands to reason it should, its' a blizz game), where I've hit glad on multiple classes in multiple seasons, we'll need to totally regear and play like it was hardcore ie 30k dps/60k hp/10k armor/1200 resist would be ideal vs 150k dps/30k hp/6k armor/600 resist for pve, so the chances of you keeping your current gear/spec for pvp is slim to none so no need to fuss about that

On June 23 2012 07:42 Phael wrote:
Lets assume for the sake of argument that venom hydra takes weapon speed into account. So for all wizard offensive spells, only signatures, hydra, and archon disintegrate will do similar amounts of damage regardless of weaponspeed.

That still leaves a whole slew of other abilities that almost every build uses in some way or another - disintegrate, orb, blizzard, torrent, meteor, etc. For all these spells, with the same dps number, the 2h user will simply do more damage over a non-trivial time frame. And if all fights end within that trivial time frame, then you're approaching the 2 billion onehander barrier of entry I theorized earlier.

In addition, for the same monetary cost, you are able to obtain a higher dps number buying a 2h compared to a 1h/oh combo. Due to supply and demand, since more people are using 1h melee weapons compared to 2h melee weapons (I'm estimating at a roughly 2-2.5:1 ratio), and a similar supply (there are 5 useable ilvl 63 weapons for each type - 1h or 2h), the 2h weapons of similar quality are going to be cheaper.

You can easily verify this with 10 seconds of AH browsing and a bit of math (as I have done in one of my earlier posts with pictures to illustrate.)

So combining the two - that many spells scale better with slower weapon speed, and that for the same cost, you can obtain better dps with a 2h than 1h/oh, it's not terribly hard to see that in general, 2h is superior to 1h for all but the most extreme ends of gear.

As for pvp, the best strategy at the moment is to ignore it. If you are going to hardcore PvP, then you are going to need a complete new set of gear depending on how things work out. What we do know is that in PvE, our gear is constructed to optimally defeat slow and stupid opponents with retarded amounts of damage and health. That's obviously not going to be true for PvP, so gearing up right now with future PvP in mind is most likely a bad idea.

Edit: This really brings back memories of vanilla WoW. So many mages running around in their tier gear (magister, arcanist, netherwind ... ugh), stacking crit ... barely able to pump out 600 frostbolts and thinking they're kicking so much ass with their tier2 8piece bonus when patchwerk comes around and all of them figure out they're worse than useless with their 300 dps compared to the 600+ dps mages using non-set pieces. We really need combat logs and damage meters in this game ... ah well.

On June 23 2012 07:42 Phael wrote:
Lets assume for the sake of argument that venom hydra takes weapon speed into account. So for all wizard offensive spells, only signatures, hydra, and archon disintegrate will do similar amounts of damage regardless of weaponspeed.

That still leaves a whole slew of other abilities that almost every build uses in some way or another - disintegrate, orb, blizzard, torrent, meteor, etc. For all these spells, with the same dps number, the 2h user will simply do more damage over a non-trivial time frame. And if all fights end within that trivial time frame, or you have enough crit and AP on crit to marginalize your AP consumption while keeping similarly high dps, then you're approaching the 2 billion onehander barrier of entry I theorized earlier.

In addition, for the same monetary cost, you are able to obtain a higher dps number buying a 2h compared to a 1h/oh combo. Due to supply and demand, since more people are using 1h melee weapons compared to 2h melee weapons (I'm estimating at a roughly 2-2.5:1 ratio), and a similar supply (there are 5 useable ilvl 63 weapons for each type - 1h or 2h), the 2h weapons of similar quality are going to be cheaper.

You can easily verify this with 10 seconds of AH browsing and a bit of math (as I have done in one of my earlier posts with pictures to illustrate.)

So combining the two - that many spells scale better with slower weapon speed, and that for the same cost, you can obtain better dps with a 2h than 1h/oh, it's not terribly hard to see that in general, 2h is superior to 1h for all but the most extreme ends of gear.

As for pvp, the best strategy at the moment is to ignore it. If you are going to hardcore PvP, then you are going to need a complete new set of gear depending on how things work out. What we do know is that in PvE, our gear is constructed to optimally defeat slow and stupid opponents with retarded amounts of damage and health. That's obviously not going to be true for PvP, so gearing up right now with future PvP in mind is most likely a bad idea.

Edit: This really brings back memories of vanilla WoW. So many mages running around in their tier gear (magister, arcanist, netherwind ... ugh), stacking crit ... barely able to pump out 600 frostbolts and thinking they're kicking so much ass with their tier2 8piece bonus when patchwerk comes around and all of them figure out they're worse than useless with their 300 dps compared to the 600+ dps mages using non-set pieces. We really need combat logs and damage meters in this game ... ah well.