Hey guys, seriously thinking about selling all my wizard gear and invest on my monk simply because i find there is a lack of options to do higher mp as a wizard.
I simply cant seem to enjoy the cmww play style. Dont get me wrong im not even discussing how good it is (because its good) it just doesnt seem to fit my playstyle.
I love my wizard, i love archon , i used to play with blizzard / hydra back in the days and it was all good for me. but this button spam fest is something i really dont want to do.
Is really Cmww the only way to do higher mp?
Sorry if this post is kinda lame but its bothering me in such a point i just had to express myself.
CM/WW is probably the most reliably "safe" spec I have seen so far but it's possible with others. Technically, it's possible with virtually any build if you throw enough dps and mitigation in but in more realistic terms, there are other ways to do it without having 20 billion in gear on. The trick to the high MPs with the wizard is finding ways to keep the incoming damage down, which usually means locking mobs down with frost nova (although I have seen one wizard using timestop and the slow being enough to let him burn down the mobs before they get close enough) and to do that you do generally need CM to cut the cooldown down enough to keep them reasonably frozen enough to survive the incoming damage. WW is not the only way to do that but it does seem to be the fastest.
I have a build that I use in mp8-10 that doesn't use WW because, like you, I don't really like the WW setup (it annoys me to no end not having a decent "fire at will" spell for moving targets). It uses CM, Disintegrate (yes, it is viable in MP10), Living Lightning, Frost Nova and Comet. I also have Prismatic Armor and Diamond Skin in the mix for suvivability. I would not use it for ubers (it's about the only situation where I do run CM/WW) but for general farming I prefer it. It's much more flexible and gives me options for how I want to deal with any particular mob (2-3 options). It's not going to perma-freeze all the time like CM/WW (although it can), but generally it keeps them frozen enough that it's not a problem. Disintegrate does proc CM, often fast enough with multiple targets that I can keep white mobs pretty much permanently frozen locked (even elites in the right situation). When that's not enough proc'ing for nova (such as elites), then Living Lightning procs reasonably well, especially in combination with meteors tossed in periodically (LL+meteor pool can refresh nova cooldown in a second or two).
For this option to be viable, I'd say you need around 45% critical hit chance and around 2 APS and 20 APoC or so. With any build to be viable in high MP, you need at least a certain amount of dps output as well... I'd say 120k would start to open up MP8 and 150K might make MP10 doable. Obviously, higher is always going to be better. At 200K dps nova (bone chill) + cold blooded + disintegrate does about 700k-750k edps and will burn down white mobs reasonably fast. LL+comet is much harder to guage in edps, but I think it's safe to say that edps output is higher but also a lot more "burst-y". For reference, I'm running 5k armor, about 850 res all (with prismatic armor on) and 40k life. You are also going to want some lifesteal on your weapon (better with disintegrate and meteor than LOH, by far) and possibly some LOH gear to swap in for dealing with reflect damage packs (even if it drops your dps).
I think my emo wizard mode is a bit calm now, was a bit frustated about some runs that went wrong...
Anyway think ill start to gearing up a little bit more defensive in general and give some builds a try and see how it works.
Is not like i need super dps to the mindless mp0 farming i do all day .. and it will be helpfull to try something diferent on higher mp.
There's a hybrid Archon spec floating around that is pretty popular for high MP. There's also some meteor builds that people really seem to like. I don't know how they compare from an efficiency standpoint but they are perfectly viable with the right gear. I think the Archon build requires some pretty expensive gear to make MP8-10 efficient, but so does CMWW. With 300 mil worth of gear I think my CMWW is best farming MP5-6 in terms of efficiency.
This is mostly assuming you're talking about high MP loot farming. In terms of XP farming, none of the specs really compare to low MP xp farming, but that's probably the same for all classes. The next patch should change that. Right now it's like 50-80 mil xp/hour at low MP, 20-30 mil xp per hour at high MP. Next patch the higher MP will probably be more like 40-60 mil xp per hour, but that's just an example and your actual rates will depend on your stats, build, and MP level of course.
There's a hybrid Archon spec floating around that is pretty popular for high MP.
All you need is 10 APoC or run the slightly riskier Living Lightning in place of WW. Use WW to remove Archon cooldown. Use Frost Nova (Bone Chill or Deep Freeze are both good here) to keep things in place for WW. Archon comes off cooldown and proceed to melt. Archon wears off, rinse and repeat.
I used to run about 650K buffed DPS on MP10 and it was more than enough. I re-geared after a very short break and now run about 400K buffed DPS on MP10 and it's still more than enough to do the job. If you stack more EHP, you can get by with far less DPS as long as you have some kind of HP recovery stat like high LoH or life steal.
The hybrid build is far better than pure CM/WW on high MP solo runs. Lot easier on the fingers and lot more "fun" I would say.
Glad to see you back in the game Jaetech. Never talked with you in game or on here before but I've been reading your posts in here for some time. Always interesting to read and it's kind of a sick pleasure watching your wiz's stats evolve as you progress.
Back to the topic at hand though... The 1.07 patch preview talks about buffs to the wizard. While buffs are always nice, with any luck they increase the proc coefficients on some of the other spells (electrocute would be nice, since forked lightings is awesome otherwise), particularly the signature spells. Living Lightning is the only signature spell that really procs CM worth a damn. Everything else either coefficient is too low or the hit speed isn't fast enough, or a combination of both. It would open up a lot more options for the higher MP game. I see Shock Pulse is mention specifically, a damage boost to Living Lightning at minimum would be nice.
There's a hybrid Archon spec floating around that is pretty popular for high MP.
All you need is 10 APoC or run the slightly riskier Living Lightning in place of WW. Use WW to remove Archon cooldown. Use Frost Nova (Bone Chill or Deep Freeze are both good here) to keep things in place for WW. Archon comes off cooldown and proceed to melt. Archon wears off, rinse and repeat.
I used to run about 650K buffed DPS on MP10 and it was more than enough. I re-geared after a very short break and now run about 400K buffed DPS on MP10 and it's still more than enough to do the job. If you stack more EHP, you can get by with far less DPS as long as you have some kind of HP recovery stat like high LoH or life steal.
The hybrid build is far better than pure CM/WW on high MP solo runs. Lot easier on the fingers and lot more "fun" I would say.
What sort of EHP are you using on MP10 with archon? And which armor spell? I'm still working on getting rid of my CMWW gear but thinking of using the proceeds (if they actually sell for gold) to raise my Archon gear. I never could stand farming with CMWW because the button mashing got very annoying after 20-30 min, and all the mobs that run away from you in Act 3 are just stupidly annoying as a melee type.
Regarding the APoC, I've been thinking Storm Crow in place of Andy's visage isn't a terrible option. One with 4.5+ crit and a black weapon can compare quite well with the visage, at the cost of a potential socket for more XP, MF, or life% (but with the change coming to xp the gem loses a lot of its usefulness at high MP). Pluse the SC has vit and higher base armor (thanks to the str on it), and the LoH is somewhat useful when refreshing Archon.
What sort of EHP are you using on MP10 with archon? And which armor spell? I'm still working on getting rid of my CMWW gear but thinking of using the proceeds (if they actually sell for gold) to raise my Archon gear. I never could stand farming with CMWW because the button mashing got very annoying after 20-30 min, and all the mobs that run away from you in Act 3 are just stupidly annoying as a melee type.
Archon is up quite often, even if it doesn't last two minutes. Elites without Extra Health typically go down in less then 30 seconds, unless I have to kite (Fire Chains, Frozen). I switch to a life steal sword when on MP10, so ignore the Echoing Fury.
Wow that's a lot of EHP. Do you have problems with less, like if you swap from Prismatic Armor to Storm Armor? It's crazy when you consider I was running under 400k BUFFED as CMWW, though that usually requires less because of the high crowd control and DS uptime.
Any chance I can talk you into reducing your EHP somehow to see a lower level of comfort? Like does 500k EHP still work with prismatic armor? Based on my experience in low MP I'd expect the lower limit to be around 500-550k EHP or so, below which survival becomes much harder. Then again, against RD mobs that take 20-30s to kill, the extra EHP might be essential.
Blizzard said they are buffing wizards in 1.0.7 as well, might want to wait a bit for more info on that. From what they said in the preview - it's rubbish, if they do add other things i might want to come back to wizard as well.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Datamined info is up on the front page and there's no mention of anything related to Archon or CMWW builds. Not even mention of mob kills from group working with Archon timer.
Update on my EHP. 800K is not enough. I keep getting schooled by combinations of Jailer, Frozen, Desolate, Molten, Vortex and Fire Chains. I believe I suffered 3-4 deaths while fighting two elite packs at once with Fire Chains, Desolate, Molten and Jailer. Reflect isn't really a concern here.
Datamined info is up on the front page and there's no mention of anything related to Archon or CMWW builds. Not even mention of mob kills from group working with Archon timer.
Yea, disappointing, but that's only the first iteration of the PTR, hell knows what else is going to change in the next couple of months of the PTR lol.
Increased damage of arcane orb... how's that's going to help anyone?
Out of curiosity, with blizzard damage, say it does 200% over 5 seconds, equipping an item that increases blizzard duration by 3 seconds - what happens to the blizzard damage? 200% over 8 seconds? Or does it increase at the rate of 200/5=40%?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Datamined info is up on the front page and there's no mention of anything related to Archon or CMWW builds. Not even mention of mob kills from group working with Archon timer.
Yea, disappointing, but that's only the first iteration of the PTR, hell knows what else is going to change in the next couple of months of the PTR lol.
Increased damage of arcane orb... how's that's going to help anyone?
Out of curiosity, with blizzard damage, say it does 200% over 5 seconds, equipping an item that increases blizzard duration by 3 seconds - what happens to the blizzard damage? 200% over 8 seconds? Or does it increase at the rate of 200/5=40%?
I assume it keeps the damage per tic the same and just increases the duration, so if it is normally 200% over 5s, it'll do 200% for the first 5s, then 40% per second after, for the remainder of the duration. If you look at the rune that increases the duration, I expect it to work the same.
Many people miss the point what this game is about: gearing up for higher challenges. Initially, Blizzard thought that all of Inferno would be super hard and require players to gear up for months. Turned out, you can roflstomp through Inferno after a few hours of gameplay and equipping your character for less than a million on the AH.
Then monster power was introduced, and MP10 was thought to be the ultimate challenge for people with high gear, both offensive and defensive. Turns out, the wizard class has a glitch where you can do MP10 even for less than a million gold, with CMWW spec. In my personal opinion, they should just nerf CMWW, but as the patch notes show, it's not what is gonna happen, they rather try to buff all other stuff. Sigh.
Well, anyways; like someone said, there are thousands of builds (actually, there are billions of possible builds if you calculate all combinations). Most of them will give you a hard time on MP10, but it's definitely *possible* to do MP10 with builds other than CMWW. It might just be a bit harder or require better gear.
I simply cant seem to enjoy the cmww play style. Dont get me wrong im not even discussing how good it is (because its good) it just doesnt seem to fit my playstyle.
I love my wizard, i love archon , i used to play with blizzard / hydra back in the days and it was all good for me. but this button spam fest is something i really dont want to do.
Is really Cmww the only way to do higher mp?
Sorry if this post is kinda lame but its bothering me in such a point i just had to express myself.
Opinions please..
CM/WW is probably the most reliably "safe" spec I have seen so far but it's possible with others. Technically, it's possible with virtually any build if you throw enough dps and mitigation in but in more realistic terms, there are other ways to do it without having 20 billion in gear on. The trick to the high MPs with the wizard is finding ways to keep the incoming damage down, which usually means locking mobs down with frost nova (although I have seen one wizard using timestop and the slow being enough to let him burn down the mobs before they get close enough) and to do that you do generally need CM to cut the cooldown down enough to keep them reasonably frozen enough to survive the incoming damage. WW is not the only way to do that but it does seem to be the fastest.
I have a build that I use in mp8-10 that doesn't use WW because, like you, I don't really like the WW setup (it annoys me to no end not having a decent "fire at will" spell for moving targets). It uses CM, Disintegrate (yes, it is viable in MP10), Living Lightning, Frost Nova and Comet. I also have Prismatic Armor and Diamond Skin in the mix for suvivability. I would not use it for ubers (it's about the only situation where I do run CM/WW) but for general farming I prefer it. It's much more flexible and gives me options for how I want to deal with any particular mob (2-3 options). It's not going to perma-freeze all the time like CM/WW (although it can), but generally it keeps them frozen enough that it's not a problem. Disintegrate does proc CM, often fast enough with multiple targets that I can keep white mobs pretty much permanently frozen locked (even elites in the right situation). When that's not enough proc'ing for nova (such as elites), then Living Lightning procs reasonably well, especially in combination with meteors tossed in periodically (LL+meteor pool can refresh nova cooldown in a second or two).
For this option to be viable, I'd say you need around 45% critical hit chance and around 2 APS and 20 APoC or so. With any build to be viable in high MP, you need at least a certain amount of dps output as well... I'd say 120k would start to open up MP8 and 150K might make MP10 doable. Obviously, higher is always going to be better. At 200K dps nova (bone chill) + cold blooded + disintegrate does about 700k-750k edps and will burn down white mobs reasonably fast. LL+comet is much harder to guage in edps, but I think it's safe to say that edps output is higher but also a lot more "burst-y". For reference, I'm running 5k armor, about 850 res all (with prismatic armor on) and 40k life. You are also going to want some lifesteal on your weapon (better with disintegrate and meteor than LOH, by far) and possibly some LOH gear to swap in for dealing with reflect damage packs (even if it drops your dps).
-dolynick
I think my emo wizard mode is a bit calm now, was a bit frustated about some runs that went wrong...
Anyway think ill start to gearing up a little bit more defensive in general and give some builds a try and see how it works.
Is not like i need super dps to the mindless mp0 farming i do all day .. and it will be helpfull to try something diferent on higher mp.
Once again Ty a lot
This is mostly assuming you're talking about high MP loot farming. In terms of XP farming, none of the specs really compare to low MP xp farming, but that's probably the same for all classes. The next patch should change that. Right now it's like 50-80 mil xp/hour at low MP, 20-30 mil xp per hour at high MP. Next patch the higher MP will probably be more like 40-60 mil xp per hour, but that's just an example and your actual rates will depend on your stats, build, and MP level of course.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
All you need is 10 APoC or run the slightly riskier Living Lightning in place of WW. Use WW to remove Archon cooldown. Use Frost Nova (Bone Chill or Deep Freeze are both good here) to keep things in place for WW. Archon comes off cooldown and proceed to melt. Archon wears off, rinse and repeat.
I used to run about 650K buffed DPS on MP10 and it was more than enough. I re-geared after a very short break and now run about 400K buffed DPS on MP10 and it's still more than enough to do the job. If you stack more EHP, you can get by with far less DPS as long as you have some kind of HP recovery stat like high LoH or life steal.
The hybrid build is far better than pure CM/WW on high MP solo runs. Lot easier on the fingers and lot more "fun" I would say.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Glad to see you back in the game Jaetech. Never talked with you in game or on here before but I've been reading your posts in here for some time. Always interesting to read and it's kind of a sick pleasure watching your wiz's stats evolve as you progress.
Back to the topic at hand though... The 1.07 patch preview talks about buffs to the wizard. While buffs are always nice, with any luck they increase the proc coefficients on some of the other spells (electrocute would be nice, since forked lightings is awesome otherwise), particularly the signature spells. Living Lightning is the only signature spell that really procs CM worth a damn. Everything else either coefficient is too low or the hit speed isn't fast enough, or a combination of both. It would open up a lot more options for the higher MP game. I see Shock Pulse is mention specifically, a damage boost to Living Lightning at minimum would be nice.
-dolynick
What sort of EHP are you using on MP10 with archon? And which armor spell? I'm still working on getting rid of my CMWW gear but thinking of using the proceeds (if they actually sell for gold) to raise my Archon gear. I never could stand farming with CMWW because the button mashing got very annoying after 20-30 min, and all the mobs that run away from you in Act 3 are just stupidly annoying as a melee type.
Regarding the APoC, I've been thinking Storm Crow in place of Andy's visage isn't a terrible option. One with 4.5+ crit and a black weapon can compare quite well with the visage, at the cost of a potential socket for more XP, MF, or life% (but with the change coming to xp the gem loses a lot of its usefulness at high MP). Pluse the SC has vit and higher base armor (thanks to the str on it), and the LoH is somewhat useful when refreshing Archon.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I run 800K unbuffed EHP using http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#VmYjSO!Wbg!Yccacc
Archon is up quite often, even if it doesn't last two minutes. Elites without Extra Health typically go down in less then 30 seconds, unless I have to kite (Fire Chains, Frozen). I switch to a life steal sword when on MP10, so ignore the Echoing Fury.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Click --> Now streaming for anyone wants to watch a hybrid Archon CM/WW build in action on MP10.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Any chance I can talk you into reducing your EHP somehow to see a lower level of comfort? Like does 500k EHP still work with prismatic armor? Based on my experience in low MP I'd expect the lower limit to be around 500-550k EHP or so, below which survival becomes much harder. Then again, against RD mobs that take 20-30s to kill, the extra EHP might be essential.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I don't have the gold for those two pieces right now, unfortunately.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Was not fun.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Yea, disappointing, but that's only the first iteration of the PTR, hell knows what else is going to change in the next couple of months of the PTR lol.
Increased damage of arcane orb... how's that's going to help anyone?
Out of curiosity, with blizzard damage, say it does 200% over 5 seconds, equipping an item that increases blizzard duration by 3 seconds - what happens to the blizzard damage? 200% over 8 seconds? Or does it increase at the rate of 200/5=40%?
I assume it keeps the damage per tic the same and just increases the duration, so if it is normally 200% over 5s, it'll do 200% for the first 5s, then 40% per second after, for the remainder of the duration. If you look at the rune that increases the duration, I expect it to work the same.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Building up more defensive stats atm!
Hopefully will help me on higher mp and on pvp
Then monster power was introduced, and MP10 was thought to be the ultimate challenge for people with high gear, both offensive and defensive. Turns out, the wizard class has a glitch where you can do MP10 even for less than a million gold, with CMWW spec. In my personal opinion, they should just nerf CMWW, but as the patch notes show, it's not what is gonna happen, they rather try to buff all other stuff. Sigh.
Well, anyways; like someone said, there are thousands of builds (actually, there are billions of possible builds if you calculate all combinations). Most of them will give you a hard time on MP10, but it's definitely *possible* to do MP10 with builds other than CMWW. It might just be a bit harder or require better gear.