I wanted to write this up because of all the posts I see talking/crying about how this game is too hard for a wiz or just generally asking for advice on how to proceed into Act III Inferno. While in game I'm constantly asked how to get your DPS up as a wizard, what skills should I run, WHY CAN"T I FARM ACT III and the great age old question, Why do I die? Sorry that I can't message you all back while I'm trying to burn down champion packs of ponies, so here is my experience laid out bare for you to read and follow if you want.
The thing I find awesome about playing as a Wizard is just the visual amazingness of melting mobs with cool looking spells, but I will admit, it is a hard class to play after the IAS nerf. But give me a minute, don't jump on that bandwagon yet ok.
Long story short, my wiz build before 1.0.3 was a high attack speed AP regen, orb spammer, I was farming Act III easily.
After 1.0.3 hit I simply couldn't farm act III anymore, INV minions, shielding, fast, were all starting to destroy me, when before it had been a faceroll all the way to Azmo if you weren't falling asleep at your desk. I really didn't enjoy Act III after 1.0.3 and the day after the patch was the first time I rage quit in DIII, i threw off my headphones, yelled at the enraged INV minions standing over my body and went and got a beer. I just couldn't fathom enrage timers on Invulnerables, I wanted to write forum posts about it and tell Blizzard I hate them for ruining my character.
Post 1.0.3 with these stats == getting pwned
42k dps / 62k hp / 1.7 APS - One hander
But at this point something in my head clicked, my rage subsided and I thought hey, if I was rolling act III with 60k dps, theoretically all I have to do is get back to that stat and things will be fine. Funnily enough that proved true.
I dropped down, farmed act II for about 4 hrs, got lucky with an ilvl 63 axe 950 dps, 200 intel, socket. After that I ditched a lot of VIT gear and swapped to high Intel, cheap crap off AH. Once I hit 60k dps again, went back to act III face rolled it, Azmo = cakewalk. Cydea was a wipe, spiderlings are retarded, just skip it from now until fixed.
With my 60k dps wiz, found depth diggers and a nice IAS + crit damage ring, adding some serious hitting power to her crit dmg. So a 60k dps wiz, will hit hard enough to farm these acts and have fun in a group or solo.
My wizard advice if you are in act III
- 60k dps (honestly it isn't worth farming with anything less)
- Use force armour aim for (50k hp) again magic
- Stack intel, screw resists, vit
- Stack intel <-- this is important
- Don't want to die as much, use teleport/illusionist/fracture combo
Nothing in here is new, or revolutionary advice, it is simply just one nerfed wiz to another saying stick with it, the game is fun but it requires some dedication to farming to get there. I still die, especially to fat fast shielding mortar ponies, but the game is fun again.
TL;DR
Stop trying to 'farm' Act III with anything less then 60k dps, for me that is the magic number, act III and IV are pretty simple with that sort of dps, if you have it, that is where you should be, if you don't, stay in act I, II until you do. Save yourself the headache, but keep playing because.
I can farm act 3 with 38k DPS, dont even use force weapon or familiar. I barely ever die, 18k life , enough resists and armor to make force armor not bleed through and life regeneration(1k+) for super cheese, plus that makes diamond skin so much more effective, and also illusionist with teleport/mirror image, since I can get hit then cast one of those and then my life is back at full after 3 seconds.... so yeah you dont need "60K" dps to farm act 3, but the point is that the drops have been horrible after the patch, ilvl 63 drops were 20% ona ct 3 before patch, after it went to 8%.... seriously..... also the spider queen is now retarded flooding the screen with those spiderlings that will hit from anywhere on the screen.... yeah better to stick to either azmodan or siegebreaker.
Im 300 on resists, I'm not bothering to stack them but they are on a few pieces of gear as a bonus to the high intel.
With 50k hp, force armour seems to not get cap busted at all after 1.0.3.
50k hp, 300 resist, armour un-buffed is 2718 (4681 buffed)
See with force armour you can go about it 3 ways, stack vit, or armour, or resist, all of those help prevent the bleed through. The only things that get close to one shotting me now are the corrupt angels in act IV when they do their charge attack, but if you run around map obstructions effectively they can't target you with it. So I'm still not entirely sold on high resist for wizards, intel is far more effective, then I just look for IAS and vit. But as I said you can go about 3 ways, armour, vit or resists, good luck if you can do all three
I never said you couldn't, nor do I care to spend that much time farming, farming is about efficiency, and I'm sorry but with 38k dps, you are not as efficient as someone with 60. I'm not targeting your build, I just think you missed the point of my post, I'm impressed with the life regen actually, I thought about that for a while, but again went with high intel/
I can confirm that it does indeed get better. I took an alternate route than the OP did, stacking tons of resists and armor (1k res, 9k armor). I now can run around act 2 bypassing normal monsters as they tickle me, hunting down elite packs after gathering 5 stacks.
My new farming strategy involves lazily jogging while little monsters scurry around me, until I find an elite pack. I no longer have the dread feeling in my gut when I see invuln, arcane, jailer, frozen. I smash them, and all the monsters that followed me in a train, and move on to the next one. The changes in 1.03 make this strategy very profitable.
I no longer die (I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but I ran act 3 heart of sin today from the beginning to azmodan, including cydea, and died only once, and I had all kinds of horrible combos, none of which I skipped). I feel incredibly powerful now, when a few weeks ago, I was smashing my head against the keyboard like many of you are.
Once you get the gear, inferno can be quite a relaxing and enjoyable experience. Having suffered so much previously gives a real sense of progression when you finally get the stats that click with your spec and strategy, and you find what once seemed impossible to be easy.
I can confirm that it does indeed get better. I took an alternate route than the OP did, stacking tons of resists and armor (1k res, 9k armor). I now can run around act 2 bypassing normal monsters as they tickle me, hunting down elite packs after gathering 5 stacks.
My new farming strategy involves lazily jogging while little monsters scurry around me, until I find an elite pack. I no longer have the dread feeling in my gut when I see invuln, arcane, jailer, frozen. I smash them, and all the monsters that followed me in a train, and move on to the next one. The changes in 1.03 make this strategy very profitable.
I no longer die (I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but I ran act 3 heart of sin today from the beginning to azmodan, including cydea, and died only once, and I had all kinds of horrible combos, none of which I skipped). I feel incredibly powerful now, when a few weeks ago, I was smashing my head against the keyboard like many of you are.
Once you get the gear, inferno can be quite a relaxing and enjoyable experience. Having suffered so much previously gives a real sense of progression when you finally get the stats that click with your spec and strategy, and you find what once seemed impossible to be easy.
I'd be interested to know what your dps/aps is with that much armor and resist, seems rather hard to get really high intel gear with decent resists.
My build at the moment is heavily reliant on crits, so crit dmg, crit chance and aps, finding gear with, high crit affixes, high resist and high intel is nearly impossible, but that is a good thing else everyone would be godzilla'ing Inferno.
I'd be interested to know what your dps/aps is with that much armor and resist, seems rather hard to get really high intel gear with decent resists.
My build at the moment is heavily reliant on crits, so crit dmg, crit chance and aps, finding gear with, high crit affixes, high resist and high intel is nearly impossible, but that is a good thing else everyone would be godzilla'ing Inferno.
Ok so... My method is unconventional. I have 0 attack speed upgrades. 1.2 APS. I am a melee wizard tank with 42% crit with 250% crit damage and 20k dps. There are several things that turn that measly 20k dps much higher than you'd think though. I have alot of arcane on crit, giving me unending arcane power when fighting more than 3 enemies. I also use a critical mass build and abilities with high proc rate (meteor: star pact and spectral blade : deep cuts) that allows me to use my wave of force 260% dmg rune almost every few seconds when fighting packs (This does devastating damage to a huge area). I also remain relatively stationary (besides dodging sentries, etc) so I am able to DPS most of the time instead of running. In addition, I use the ice nova run that increases damage by 20% when frozen, and because of my crit rate and critical mass, I can perma-freeze normal enemies, and constantly keep elite packs stuttering so I can easily avoid damage and stuff on the ground.
So, ironically, the larger the group of enemies, the more damage and shielding I can do. I love illusion elites.
Its quite fun, but it requires very specialized gear.
I never said you couldn't, nor do I care to spend that much time farming, farming is about efficiency, and I'm sorry but with 38k dps, you are not as efficient as someone with 60. I'm not targeting your build, I just think you missed the point of my post, I'm impressed with the life regen actually, I thought about that for a while, but again went with high intel/
I have 2k intel and 180%mf without NV, I bet u die a lot more than me, so efficiency is debatable I can do runs on act 3 pretty quickly as I dont have to kite much anymore...
I never said you couldn't, nor do I care to spend that much time farming, farming is about efficiency, and I'm sorry but with 38k dps, you are not as efficient as someone with 60. I'm not targeting your build, I just think you missed the point of my post, I'm impressed with the life regen actually, I thought about that for a while, but again went with high intel/
I have 2k intel and 180%mf without NV, I bet u die a lot more than me, so efficiency is debatable I can do runs on act 3 pretty quickly as I dont have to kite much anymore...
What do they say about assumptions? Something like 'they are the mother of all f%^& ups', thank you 'Undersiege 2'.
I don't die very often with my build, fast affix when it rolls combined with mortar and shielding is about the only time I find myself looking at a grave marker. If it can't catch me multiple times in a row, it can't hit me enough times to bleed through FA shield before melting it.
I think what you meant to say was, that you can take quite a few more hits than I can, which is fine, I don't want to just stand in one spot, then claim that technique requires skill.
Sadly you are still missing the point, you probably were not very good at pin the tail on the donkey at parties? <--- Assumption
You have a specific build that allows you to farm with a lower dps (claps)
Make your own thread detailing how to do it, don't just post in someone elses saying you can do it with lower DPS but then hide the fact the rest of your gear is epic. That is just retarded attention seeking behaviour, share or GTFO
I never said you couldn't, nor do I care to spend that much time farming, farming is about efficiency, and I'm sorry but with 38k dps, you are not as efficient as someone with 60. I'm not targeting your build, I just think you missed the point of my post, I'm impressed with the life regen actually, I thought about that for a while, but again went with high intel/
I have 2k intel and 180%mf without NV, I bet u die a lot more than me, so efficiency is debatable I can do runs on act 3 pretty quickly as I dont have to kite much anymore...
What do they say about assumptions? Something like 'they are the mother of all f%^& ups', thank you 'Undersiege 2'.
I don't die very often with my build, fast affix when it rolls combined with mortar and shielding is about the only time I find myself looking at a grave marker. If it can't catch me multiple times in a row, it can't hit me enough times to bleed through FA shield before melting it.
I think what you meant to say was, that you can take quite a few more hits than I can, which is fine, I don't want to just stand in one spot, then claim that technique requires skill.
Sadly you are still missing the point, you probably were not very good at pin the tail on the donkey at parties? <--- Assumption
You have a specific build that allows you to farm with a lower dps (claps)
Make your own thread detailing how to do it, don't just post in someone elses saying you can do it with lower DPS but then hide the fact the rest of your gear is epic. That is just retarded attention seeking behaviour, share or GTFO
I didnt make any assumptions. You were the one that quoted the first thing I said, disregarding the rest, claiming farming is all about efficiency like I wasnt being any efficient. Also I never said my build is better than yours, its simply different. Ill take longer to kill things but I can survive many hits in succession. My gear isnt godly by any means. I have no critical chance/damage, hence the low dps, wish I could afford that. There is a reason I dont use force weapon/familiar, its because I need those other utility skills more than a dps boost. In the end of the day many builds are viable, your build is nice, always good to just melt everything in the way I suppose, but I guess not everyone can get 60Kdps. IF I COULD I would just merge both builds for awesomeness.
I never said you couldn't, nor do I care to spend that much time farming, farming is about efficiency, and I'm sorry but with 38k dps, you are not as efficient as someone with 60. I'm not targeting your build, I just think you missed the point of my post, I'm impressed with the life regen actually, I thought about that for a while, but again went with high intel/
I have 2k intel and 180%mf without NV, I bet u die a lot more than me, so efficiency is debatable I can do runs on act 3 pretty quickly as I dont have to kite much anymore...
What do they say about assumptions? Something like 'they are the mother of all f%^& ups', thank you 'Undersiege 2'.
I don't die very often with my build, fast affix when it rolls combined with mortar and shielding is about the only time I find myself looking at a grave marker. If it can't catch me multiple times in a row, it can't hit me enough times to bleed through FA shield before melting it.
I think what you meant to say was, that you can take quite a few more hits than I can, which is fine, I don't want to just stand in one spot, then claim that technique requires skill.
Sadly you are still missing the point, you probably were not very good at pin the tail on the donkey at parties? <--- Assumption
You have a specific build that allows you to farm with a lower dps (claps)
Make your own thread detailing how to do it, don't just post in someone elses saying you can do it with lower DPS but then hide the fact the rest of your gear is epic. That is just retarded attention seeking behaviour, share or GTFO
I didnt make any assumptions. You were the one that quoted the first thing I said, disregarding the rest, claiming farming is all about efficiency like I wasnt being any efficient. Also I never said my build is better than yours, its simply different. Ill take longer to kill things but I can survive many hits in succession. My gear isnt godly by any means. I have no critical chance/damage, hence the low dps, wish I could afford that. There is a reason I dont use force weapon/familiar, its because I need those other utility skills more than a dps boost. In the end of the day many builds are viable, your build is nice, always good to just melt everything in the way I suppose, but I guess not everyone can get 60Kdps. IF I COULD I would just merge both builds for awesomeness.
I agree merging those builds would be nice, but it would be crazy hard to merge a crit build, high dps build, high damage reduction build. I'm sure someone has done it or will, but it is out of most peoples league, including mine so far
What I was getting at was one of the cheapest ways to get to farming act III is simply a higher dps build
60k for me was magic, twice over cause of nerf. I run it with low resist, fairly low armor and no life regen, though I am a crit build. So crits and orb are hitting for about 140k with 33% chance.
What I notice with the wiz class is a distinct 3 pronged build choice for effective farming wizards
A lot of the wizards I I run with are picking bits and pieces of the above, so they are high intel, half regen, half crit, and struggling. I honestly think you have to pick a sub modifier and just run with it. But at no point can you sacrifice your intel, stack it, stack it and stack it some more.
I tried the intel regen approach early on, but found I couldn't down monsters quick enough, switched it to Intel + crit, far happier. Have not tried a build like yours with 1k regen though and resists think i was 650 regen max at one point, but struggling to get my intel up high. But if it works it works and you gear can't be too bad, I'd just like you to detail the build a bit more so we can see how it works.
I am pretty much at the same amount of ASP (1,3), crit chance and event bigger crit dmg (319)... would love to give a try melee wizz after nerf, so I am curious how much resist I need for act 3/4 farm.
Self-buffed, I have 1k resistances, 9k armor, 42k hp. However, in the interest of transparency, I should point out that while I can clear act 3/4 without dieing, I would rather farm act 2 with this build because it is much more efficient because I can bypass normal monsters and focus on just hunting elites. I need to up my DPS to farm act 3 efficiently.
As the OP has pointed out, there is a difference between being able to complete an act and being able to farm it effectively.
With such high crit, I guarantee you'll love critical mass if you use meteor, diamond skin, ice nova, force wave, spectral blade:deep cuts, and energy armor.
Edit: Forgot to mention current act. I have cleared all the way to inferno Diablo with this build. Haven't beat him yet.
The short of it boils down to gear. If you have top tier gear you can pretty much roll any act with any decent build, and of course the higher the dmg the better and more effective you will be. Unfortunately, if you don't get the OP's luck, the road to getting to the face roll level is much longer and more expensive.
But the overall intent of the post I think is very good because it touches on what a lot of players do, and that's trying to "farm" area's that they really aren't geared for. This patch took me from 65k all the way down to 42k dmg. I can no longer "farm" act 3 because I too view the degree of efficiency like the OP. Act 3 now just takes much longer to get through than before. So I'm dropping back to Act 2, and have been considering going back to act 1 simply because I'll be able to fly through.
I'm trying to re-gear now, trying to move away from IAS and go towards the crit build, probably like every other wizard. Before the patch I was trying to achieve a balance of Intel and Vitality. I was at 65k dmg and 32k Hp. I could have reached more dmg but the more Int I could stack, I seemed to find the less Vitality I ended up with.
For Phrensta, you're sitting at 60k+ dmg and 60k+ Hp now? Maybe I need to learn and shop the AH better if so because those stats seem very expensive in what I've been looking at. I'm slowly putting together a crit and AP crit gear set, but it seems like it's going to be expensive, but I'll get there.
And I also use the exact same build. I'm really liking it!
Well sure you can use force armor, but this is a build for people without gold. resists are amazing, especially with prismatic armor and an archon build. if you push your resists to around 600-700 you can faceroll the game.
how are you dealing with reflect damage in your builds?
Wait for templar heals and kite.. kite, kite. Simple.
Anyway OP you have just been lucky finding 950% dps 200 int weapon with SOCKET, wich let you to increase critical. Nobody is able to farm a weapon like that, it's just about lucky.. or 20 mln wich nobody deserve for a weapon like that.
Well yeah I got lucky, but what I was trying to get across was farming an act where you are efficient. In four hrs of act III farming I was probably losing money after the nerf, and not being able to MF hot swap because I'd die and have to do it all again.
Drop down to the acts you can faceroll, farm there, you will get lucky because of the amount of things you can kill in MF gear. That was my point, I got lucky cause I was running around act II which was relatively easy, even had decent MF. But No, a good weapon helps but it doesn't make your character OP, you still need some skill and other gear. I actually find my gameplay to be less enjoyable with this axe as its base APS is 1.3 and the sword i had previously was 1.55, I miss the fast & phrenetic casting rate, but the trade of is a socket with 90% crit Emerald
For Phrensta, you're sitting at 60k+ dmg and 60k+ Hp now? Maybe I need to learn and shop the AH better if so because those stats seem very expensive in what I've been looking at. I'm slowly putting together a crit and AP crit gear set, but it seems like it's going to be expensive, but I'll get there.
And I also use the exact same build. I'm really liking it!
heya, before patch I was 60/60, most of my gear was high vit, like 150+ and mid intel like 70 - 100, I was actually a tank wizard, I had more HP then most barbs or monks I was running with, it was just what dropped TBH. Most of my DPS number was APS based. My main weapon was 1.72 APS, gloves 17%, a ring with APS, I was 2.5 overall, and loved it.
So yeah my dps was actually prettty bad I didn't hit very hard because 20k of that dps is from the APS. After 1.0.3 I think i went from 62k dps to 41, so yeah ouch.
My wiz is now 80/50/1.5, resist 450, armour 5k, still get pwned by ranged
The thing I find awesome about playing as a Wizard is just the visual amazingness of melting mobs with cool looking spells, but I will admit, it is a hard class to play after the IAS nerf. But give me a minute, don't jump on that bandwagon yet ok.
Long story short, my wiz build before 1.0.3 was a high attack speed AP regen, orb spammer, I was farming Act III easily.
Build here pre 1.0.3
60k dps / 62k hp / 2.4 APS - One hander
http://us.battle.net...QROS!YdU!YYYaYZ
After 1.0.3 hit I simply couldn't farm act III anymore, INV minions, shielding, fast, were all starting to destroy me, when before it had been a faceroll all the way to Azmo if you weren't falling asleep at your desk. I really didn't enjoy Act III after 1.0.3 and the day after the patch was the first time I rage quit in DIII, i threw off my headphones, yelled at the enraged INV minions standing over my body and went and got a beer. I just couldn't fathom enrage timers on Invulnerables, I wanted to write forum posts about it and tell Blizzard I hate them for ruining my character.
Post 1.0.3 with these stats == getting pwned
42k dps / 62k hp / 1.7 APS - One hander
But at this point something in my head clicked, my rage subsided and I thought hey, if I was rolling act III with 60k dps, theoretically all I have to do is get back to that stat and things will be fine. Funnily enough that proved true.
Build here post 1.0.3 (No changes except gear)
60k dps / 50k hp / 1.4 APS - One hander
http://us.battle.net...QROS!YdU!YYYaYZ
I dropped down, farmed act II for about 4 hrs, got lucky with an ilvl 63 axe 950 dps, 200 intel, socket. After that I ditched a lot of VIT gear and swapped to high Intel, cheap crap off AH. Once I hit 60k dps again, went back to act III face rolled it, Azmo = cakewalk. Cydea was a wipe, spiderlings are retarded, just skip it from now until fixed.
With my 60k dps wiz, found depth diggers and a nice IAS + crit damage ring, adding some serious hitting power to her crit dmg. So a 60k dps wiz, will hit hard enough to farm these acts and have fun in a group or solo.
My wizard advice if you are in act III
- 60k dps (honestly it isn't worth farming with anything less)
- Use force armour aim for (50k hp) again magic
- Stack intel, screw resists, vit
- Stack intel <-- this is important
- Don't want to die as much, use teleport/illusionist/fracture combo
Nothing in here is new, or revolutionary advice, it is simply just one nerfed wiz to another saying stick with it, the game is fun but it requires some dedication to farming to get there. I still die, especially to fat fast shielding mortar ponies, but the game is fun again.
TL;DR
Stop trying to 'farm' Act III with anything less then 60k dps, for me that is the magic number, act III and IV are pretty simple with that sort of dps, if you have it, that is where you should be, if you don't, stay in act I, II until you do. Save yourself the headache, but keep playing because.
It gets better
.....
With 50k hp, force armour seems to not get cap busted at all after 1.0.3.
50k hp, 300 resist, armour un-buffed is 2718 (4681 buffed)
See with force armour you can go about it 3 ways, stack vit, or armour, or resist, all of those help prevent the bleed through. The only things that get close to one shotting me now are the corrupt angels in act IV when they do their charge attack, but if you run around map obstructions effectively they can't target you with it. So I'm still not entirely sold on high resist for wizards, intel is far more effective, then I just look for IAS and vit. But as I said you can go about 3 ways, armour, vit or resists, good luck if you can do all three
I never said you couldn't, nor do I care to spend that much time farming, farming is about efficiency, and I'm sorry but with 38k dps, you are not as efficient as someone with 60. I'm not targeting your build, I just think you missed the point of my post, I'm impressed with the life regen actually, I thought about that for a while, but again went with high intel/
My new farming strategy involves lazily jogging while little monsters scurry around me, until I find an elite pack. I no longer have the dread feeling in my gut when I see invuln, arcane, jailer, frozen. I smash them, and all the monsters that followed me in a train, and move on to the next one. The changes in 1.03 make this strategy very profitable.
I no longer die (I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but I ran act 3 heart of sin today from the beginning to azmodan, including cydea, and died only once, and I had all kinds of horrible combos, none of which I skipped). I feel incredibly powerful now, when a few weeks ago, I was smashing my head against the keyboard like many of you are.
Once you get the gear, inferno can be quite a relaxing and enjoyable experience. Having suffered so much previously gives a real sense of progression when you finally get the stats that click with your spec and strategy, and you find what once seemed impossible to be easy.
I'd be interested to know what your dps/aps is with that much armor and resist, seems rather hard to get really high intel gear with decent resists.
My build at the moment is heavily reliant on crits, so crit dmg, crit chance and aps, finding gear with, high crit affixes, high resist and high intel is nearly impossible, but that is a good thing else everyone would be godzilla'ing Inferno.
Ok so... My method is unconventional. I have 0 attack speed upgrades. 1.2 APS. I am a melee wizard tank with 42% crit with 250% crit damage and 20k dps. There are several things that turn that measly 20k dps much higher than you'd think though. I have alot of arcane on crit, giving me unending arcane power when fighting more than 3 enemies. I also use a critical mass build and abilities with high proc rate (meteor: star pact and spectral blade : deep cuts) that allows me to use my wave of force 260% dmg rune almost every few seconds when fighting packs (This does devastating damage to a huge area). I also remain relatively stationary (besides dodging sentries, etc) so I am able to DPS most of the time instead of running. In addition, I use the ice nova run that increases damage by 20% when frozen, and because of my crit rate and critical mass, I can perma-freeze normal enemies, and constantly keep elite packs stuttering so I can easily avoid damage and stuff on the ground.
So, ironically, the larger the group of enemies, the more damage and shielding I can do. I love illusion elites.
Its quite fun, but it requires very specialized gear.
What do they say about assumptions? Something like 'they are the mother of all f%^& ups', thank you 'Undersiege 2'.
I don't die very often with my build, fast affix when it rolls combined with mortar and shielding is about the only time I find myself looking at a grave marker. If it can't catch me multiple times in a row, it can't hit me enough times to bleed through FA shield before melting it.
I think what you meant to say was, that you can take quite a few more hits than I can, which is fine, I don't want to just stand in one spot, then claim that technique requires skill.
Sadly you are still missing the point, you probably were not very good at pin the tail on the donkey at parties? <--- Assumption
You have a specific build that allows you to farm with a lower dps (claps)
Make your own thread detailing how to do it, don't just post in someone elses saying you can do it with lower DPS but then hide the fact the rest of your gear is epic. That is just retarded attention seeking behaviour, share or GTFO
I agree merging those builds would be nice, but it would be crazy hard to merge a crit build, high dps build, high damage reduction build. I'm sure someone has done it or will, but it is out of most peoples league, including mine so far
What I was getting at was one of the cheapest ways to get to farming act III is simply a higher dps build
60k for me was magic, twice over cause of nerf. I run it with low resist, fairly low armor and no life regen, though I am a crit build. So crits and orb are hitting for about 140k with 33% chance.
What I notice with the wiz class is a distinct 3 pronged build choice for effective farming wizards
Build 1: Intel + crit
Build 2: Intel + resist
Build 3: Intel + regen
A lot of the wizards I I run with are picking bits and pieces of the above, so they are high intel, half regen, half crit, and struggling. I honestly think you have to pick a sub modifier and just run with it. But at no point can you sacrifice your intel, stack it, stack it and stack it some more.
I tried the intel regen approach early on, but found I couldn't down monsters quick enough, switched it to Intel + crit, far happier. Have not tried a build like yours with 1k regen though and resists think i was 650 regen max at one point, but struggling to get my intel up high. But if it works it works and you gear can't be too bad, I'd just like you to detail the build a bit more so we can see how it works.
Self-buffed, I have 1k resistances, 9k armor, 42k hp. However, in the interest of transparency, I should point out that while I can clear act 3/4 without dieing, I would rather farm act 2 with this build because it is much more efficient because I can bypass normal monsters and focus on just hunting elites. I need to up my DPS to farm act 3 efficiently.
As the OP has pointed out, there is a difference between being able to complete an act and being able to farm it effectively.
With such high crit, I guarantee you'll love critical mass if you use meteor, diamond skin, ice nova, force wave, spectral blade:deep cuts, and energy armor.
Edit: Forgot to mention current act. I have cleared all the way to inferno Diablo with this build. Haven't beat him yet.
But the overall intent of the post I think is very good because it touches on what a lot of players do, and that's trying to "farm" area's that they really aren't geared for. This patch took me from 65k all the way down to 42k dmg. I can no longer "farm" act 3 because I too view the degree of efficiency like the OP. Act 3 now just takes much longer to get through than before. So I'm dropping back to Act 2, and have been considering going back to act 1 simply because I'll be able to fly through.
I'm trying to re-gear now, trying to move away from IAS and go towards the crit build, probably like every other wizard. Before the patch I was trying to achieve a balance of Intel and Vitality. I was at 65k dmg and 32k Hp. I could have reached more dmg but the more Int I could stack, I seemed to find the less Vitality I ended up with.
For Phrensta, you're sitting at 60k+ dmg and 60k+ Hp now? Maybe I need to learn and shop the AH better if so because those stats seem very expensive in what I've been looking at. I'm slowly putting together a crit and AP crit gear set, but it seems like it's going to be expensive, but I'll get there.
And I also use the exact same build. I'm really liking it!
Well yeah I got lucky, but what I was trying to get across was farming an act where you are efficient. In four hrs of act III farming I was probably losing money after the nerf, and not being able to MF hot swap because I'd die and have to do it all again.
Drop down to the acts you can faceroll, farm there, you will get lucky because of the amount of things you can kill in MF gear. That was my point, I got lucky cause I was running around act II which was relatively easy, even had decent MF. But No, a good weapon helps but it doesn't make your character OP, you still need some skill and other gear. I actually find my gameplay to be less enjoyable with this axe as its base APS is 1.3 and the sword i had previously was 1.55, I miss the fast & phrenetic casting rate, but the trade of is a socket with 90% crit Emerald
heya, before patch I was 60/60, most of my gear was high vit, like 150+ and mid intel like 70 - 100, I was actually a tank wizard, I had more HP then most barbs or monks I was running with, it was just what dropped TBH. Most of my DPS number was APS based. My main weapon was 1.72 APS, gloves 17%, a ring with APS, I was 2.5 overall, and loved it.
So yeah my dps was actually prettty bad I didn't hit very hard because 20k of that dps is from the APS. After 1.0.3 I think i went from 62k dps to 41, so yeah ouch.
My wiz is now 80/50/1.5, resist 450, armour 5k, still get pwned by ranged
Depends,
with no NV 46
with 5 stacks, 46 + 75 = 131
with a hot gear swap before a kill = 313