I started playing around with an Arcane Mines build yesterday when someone invited me to an Ubers run. It was rocking like 2.5 mil effective dps with only around 230k char sheet dps unbuffed, give or take, thanks to having an SNS wiz in the group so I could make use of Cold Blooded.
Today I looked over some old threads and modified it a little for solo play and was able to run MP9 pretty easily and MP10 reasonably well. My armor and resists could be higher, since I am mainly geared for Archon and geared just to the point of breaking even against RD. Otherwise the damage is pretty good, it also has utility and good synergy. It's much better for group play than solo play but it can work for both. It isn't as efficient as SNS or Archon, but you don't have to worry about archon timer with it and it has the potential to do more dps than either to elites, depending on the affixes.
Demo Video
My gear and the build used are shown at the end. It's just Leoric's Courtyard and KW, plus some trash mobs in Fields to show you how it works in general. I turned off normal attacks so you can see how big the crits are with my gear. MP10 is a little tough with my stats so I recommend extra armor and/or resists for solo play, or just stick to group play with it.
Arcane Mines (AM) - This is the staple dps spell in the build. It does 340% damage per mine, but you cast mines at about 1.5x your APS, so it effectively does 510% weapon damage per second when you spam it. It only costs 16 AP per attack turn. It does have a small aoe radius but it can go over walls and around obstacles .
Arcane Dynamo (AD) - This increases the damage of AM by 75% for as long as you channel the spell. It just requires a sig spell to build up 5 stacks, which is easily done with 1-2 LL casts with a couple mobs around you.
Living Lightning (LL) - The other staple spell in the build. You use this to build up dynamo stacks. It usually just takes 1-2 LLs with 1-3 elite mobs around to build up the stacks.
Magic Weapon - Blood Magic (BM) - Extra Life Steal is very useful, especially against RD mobs, since you do a tremendous amount of dps. The extra 10% damage is additive with the 75% from Dynamo.
Cold Blooded - 20% damage boost, multiplicative with AD and other damage buffs. The passive works on any frozen or chilled mob, regardless of how the mob got that way. You can have a follower with a cold weapon chilling your mobs, or a blizzard you cast, or your wizard friend spamming FN.
Teleport - Safe Passage - extra 30% damage reduction is great against all sorts of situations and teleport itself gets you away from Jailer, around Walls, away from Frozen or molten explosions, or just lets you get to safety if things are looking grim.
Illusionist - best way to refresh teleport for the build. It also helps you get out of sticky situations when needed. It doesn't proc very well on aoe effects like Plague and Desecrator. If you have a ton of HP and/or extremely high mitigation there might be some issues with having it refreshed.
Blur - optional skill to raise survivability, if needed.
Sparkflint - random dps buff, mainly for play with a freezing wiz when you won't need to apply cold debuff yourself.
Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor (PA) - Best EHP armor spell for me. Feel free to replace with your favorite armor spell if your mitigation permits.
Blizzard - I used Frozen Solid rune, but the other runes work well too. I like the FS rune because of the chance to freeze is great in solo play, and helps survivability. Drop this skill for Sparkflint if you already have someone providing freeze effect on mobs.
The first build is the MP10 version I used today, but you can swap Blur for Cold Blooded if you want more dps. For group play use the second build if you have an SNS wiz in group. Also feel free to use whatever armor you are comfortable with. Otherwise Ice Armor is a good option, with Frozen Storm, Crystalize or Ice Reflect. Wormhole can be swapped for Safe Passage if you have sufficient survivability.
Playing the Build
The basic idea of soloing is you cast safe passage, drop a blizzard between you and the mobs, and start spamming Arcane Mines on your current location. The mobs will move through the blizzard and be slowed long enough for your mines to arm. They'll blow up when the mobs get close and if there's still mobs left you can either keep spamming on your location or slowly move your curser away from your location. You can drop a LL before the mines if you want to power up your mines, or you can ignore that and just use it for Elites.
Against elites you want to charge your 5 stacks with 1-2 LL casts, then hold the mines button as long as you can. Teleport out if needed but if you have a SNS wiz in group you can probably just spam til the mobs are dead. For solo play just spam as long as you can. If you have to move you can drop a blizzard and LL again to power your mines, or just skip the LL if the mob has annoying affixes and you have to go kite mode.
Keep in mind that blizzard, if you're using it, does about the same damage as 1 mine cast if you didn't power it with AD, so feel free to use a cast to refresh Blizzard as needed. It also adds to survivability if you use the rune that can freeze mobs. Also feel free to power blizzard with AD if you find yourself kiting elites.
One important note about dynamo and how the stacks work with a channeled spell. If you start channeling a skill without 5 stacks, then get to 5 stacks while channeling, the 5 stacks will be consumed but your damage will not increase. Instead you have to wait for 5 stacks to build, then start channeling to get the bonus damage.
Pros:
Very high dps potential (12x multiplier to unbuffed dps with just AD+MW+Sparkflint+CB)
Can seamlessly transfer from facetank mode to kiting mode thanks to blizzard and teleport
Awsome for Ubers with a CMWW wizard in group for freezing
Can use SoJ for even more damage against elites/Ubers
Doesn't use CM if you want a build that skips it
Cons:
AoE radius is small, though still large enough to hit a couple mobs at a time. Not an issue for Ubers
Total APS is limited to 1.904 or less, so at really high gear levels (trifecta everything), the build might not work.
2s delay before mines go off can take some getting used to
Gearing and Stats
For gearing I recommend around 50% CC and 20 APoC. A -5AP reduction SoJ helps too, and with that combo I can sustain against 2 targets. Life Steal is very useful, LoH less so, because the build does a lot of damage. You'll also want high armor and mitigation so you can face tank trash and elites, as well as not kill yourself against RD.
Theory crafting
Some math behind why the build can do so much damage...
Mines does 340% weapon damage per mine. You cast mines at about 1.5x your APS value, though it does use breakpoints, but that's not hugely important since you want to stay under 1.9 APS or so. That means it effectively does 510% weapon damage per second as long as you can spam it, but only costs 16 AP per attack turn. With no other buffs that's 5.1x multiplier, compared to the 6-8x for SNS wiz or 3.75 for unbuffed Archon multiplier.
Arcane Dynamo adds 75% to the damage, not 75% to the weapon damage but multiplies the damage by 1.75. Magic Weapon, Sparkflint, and Glass Cannon are both additive with that 75%, so with BM it does 85% extra damage. If you add Sparkflint it's 97% extra. Time Warp and Bone Chill also add with this bonus. Cold Blooded then multiples that by 1.2 since it is multiplicative. With the version I was using last night on Ubers I had Sparkflint, BM, and CB. That means my effective multiplier was 5.1*1.97*1.2 = 12x my unbuffed char sheet dps. With 230k unbuffed dps (before MW or sparkflint), that is an effective dps of around 2.78 million dps. For comparison, a 150k dps sns wiz can do as much as 1 mil dps, so I was doing about as much damage as a 350k SNS wiz. Plus I had a SoJ for an extra 30% that I didn't include there, which totally blows SNS damage out of the water. The only problem, again, is it basically requires an SNS wiz to work, since that relies on you not having to move much.
Disclaimer: I take no credit for creating the build since it was mostly pillaged from other threads I have seen in the past on the official forums. I did make it out of memory last night, and only today modified it to include blizzard for solo play.
Group Video http://youtu.be/GkNAZcjrH98
Warrior's Rest, CotA, and Leoric's Manor plus courtyard, running with turco2, who was using CMWW build. Gear and build are again shown at the end.
Spec and gear used is shown at the end of each video. Build was an Arcane Mines spec with Force Armor. I think the only build change between fights was a swap from fracture for Ghom and SK to Safe Passage for SB/Kulle. For the most part I used a highly defensive gear set with high hp and only around 240k dps buffed.SB+Kulle was the main hard fight. The others weren't too bad.
Kill Times
Ghom+Rak took 3 min, 11s
Mag+SK took 3 min 58s
SB+Kulle took 7 min 38s. Took about 5 min 14s to kill Kulle.
Do you feel the mines work better than the Disruption rune or even Death Blossom for ubers?
I haven't used Death Blossom but yes, I think it's better. The damage is 75% of that of DB but it hits 100% of the time. If DB hits less than 75% of the time you'll do more dps with mines. Disruption isn't even close in damage. The 15% bonus from that rune is additive with AD and MW, so it's already diminished.
It's a fun build, but you'll really see it shine if you can run with a CMWW wiz and/or Ubers. For solo play it's otherwise somewhat tricky and probably not as efficient as Archon. If I have time in the next few days I'll try recording a fields run, since that area is somewhat annoying.
Yeah, I'll try to get one later today, but I can't vouch for how good the quality will be. My computer is a bit old and Bandicam drops my FPS kind of low.
Yeah, I'll try to get one later today, but I can't vouch for how good the quality will be. My computer is a bit old and Bandicam drops my FPS kind of low.
Yeah, I'll try to get one later today, but I can't vouch for how good the quality will be. My computer is a bit old and Bandicam drops my FPS kind of low.
You can run with me and I'll record it, haha.
I'd be fine with that.
I was running earlier today and recording some, but I need to switch to some higher EHP gear because I keep dying, heh. My gloves and bracers are somewhat lacking in that department so far. I have some lower DPS pieces I'll try out here in a bit since I have a few minutes before dinner.
I did find out why I die to berzerkers though. They have a big windup that one shots me if I don't avoid it. That's on MP10 with Blur and ~400k EHP.
I did find out why I die to berzerkers though. They have a big windup that one shots me if I don't avoid it. That's on MP10 with Blur and ~400k EHP.
Just to let you know, the Berserker smash is pretty much the equivalent of a Fallen Maniac exploding on me. A few of those at once and I'm also dead. Good thing is the left click for Archon (Arcane Strike) interrupts them with the tiny knockback. Not sure what an Arcane Mines build can do to counter besides side-stepping.
I added a video link to the first post. It finished uploading so should be ready to watch. It's probably boring though since I have no video editing software or talents.
I managed to not die in the vid, but I do die on my MP10 runs. I recommend a higher armor and/or resists to make it easier. I also mainly recommend it for group play, so solo at your own risk. If you do want to play solo with it, you can try chantress with Maximus. I haven't tried it yet but hear the demon can tank pretty well, and the extra armor doesn't hurt, as long as the +APS doesn't put you over 1.904 APS.
I agree it's not very ideal for a solo build. It does work for solo play but then it ends up being more like a kiting build with facetank potential against easy elites. The problem is Frozen, Knockback, and Vortex are all a pain, as are fast and ranged elites, and bat elites can be troublesome. The Keywarden is kind of annoying too, which you can probably see from the vid. I think I'd prefer my disintegrate build for solo play if I had to use something besides Archon, otherwise it's Archon for solo, Mines for group play for me.
If you play with 1 other person it works well if they are a monk with that skill that drags mobs to their location. You just drop some mines where the other person is, mobs get dragged there, and they all blow up. I don't know what ability that is though, since I know almost nothing about most other classes.
Or I suppose you could run away from him and drop mines in your wake. I just try to be lazy and stand in one spot as much as possible to make use of my dynamo powered mines.
I agree it's not very ideal for a solo build. It does work for solo play but then it ends up being more like a kiting build with facetank potential against easy elites. The problem is Frozen, Knockback, and Vortex are all a pain, as are fast and ranged elites, and bat elites can be troublesome. The Keywarden is kind of annoying too, which you can probably see from the vid. I think I'd prefer my disintegrate build for solo play if I had to use something besides Archon, otherwise it's Archon for solo, Mines for group play for me.
If you play with 1 other person it works well if they are a monk with that skill that drags mobs to their location. You just drop some mines where the other person is, mobs get dragged there, and they all blow up. I don't know what ability that is though, since I know almost nothing about most other classes.
Sounds exactly like the problem a WD firebats build has.
I added a group video to the second post. It was a quick clear of warrior's rest, CotA, and leoric's manor plus courtyard. I ran with a CMWW wiz who provided freezing.
One important note about dynamo and how the stacks work with a channeled spell. If you start channeling a skill without 5 stacks, then get to 5 stacks while channeling, the 5 stacks will be consumed but your damage will not increase. Instead you have to wait for 5 stacks to build, then start channeling to get the bonus damage.
I tested that today using a low damage weapon with +min damage so all my mines hit for the same amount and the difference in damage was very clear. I also added that to the guide in the section about how to play the build.
There was a semi-challenge on the official forums yesterday about soloing Ubers on MP10 without CM, so I thought I'd give it a try with my mines build. I posted the vids in the second post. I really don't recommend anyone trying it unless you have a few hours to kill and really like an annoying challenge. SB+Kulle are horribly annoying, though the others aren't too bad.
Build is extremly Power Hungry, you gonna need lot of APoC....and its nothing special
I mean, you got a CM Wizard standing in Front of you perma freezing everything...you can roll ANY build with that.
Replace Mines with Meteors, max out APoC and drool over the Numbers... way more effective imho
I really hope they make other stuff viable soon for the Wizard...
CM / Archon etc... getting boring
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Today I looked over some old threads and modified it a little for solo play and was able to run MP9 pretty easily and MP10 reasonably well. My armor and resists could be higher, since I am mainly geared for Archon and geared just to the point of breaking even against RD. Otherwise the damage is pretty good, it also has utility and good synergy. It's much better for group play than solo play but it can work for both. It isn't as efficient as SNS or Archon, but you don't have to worry about archon timer with it and it has the potential to do more dps than either to elites, depending on the affixes.
Demo Video
My gear and the build used are shown at the end. It's just Leoric's Courtyard and KW, plus some trash mobs in Fields to show you how it works in general. I turned off normal attacks so you can see how big the crits are with my gear. MP10 is a little tough with my stats so I recommend extra armor and/or resists for solo play, or just stick to group play with it.
Build
Solo play or group play without freezing wizard
http://us.battle.net...QlSO!TdZ!cbaZcc
Group play with freezing wiz
http://us.battle.net...QjSO!TdW!cbaacc
Skill Breakdown
Arcane Mines (AM) - This is the staple dps spell in the build. It does 340% damage per mine, but you cast mines at about 1.5x your APS, so it effectively does 510% weapon damage per second when you spam it. It only costs 16 AP per attack turn. It does have a small aoe radius but it can go over walls and around obstacles .
Arcane Dynamo (AD) - This increases the damage of AM by 75% for as long as you channel the spell. It just requires a sig spell to build up 5 stacks, which is easily done with 1-2 LL casts with a couple mobs around you.
Living Lightning (LL) - The other staple spell in the build. You use this to build up dynamo stacks. It usually just takes 1-2 LLs with 1-3 elite mobs around to build up the stacks.
Magic Weapon - Blood Magic (BM) - Extra Life Steal is very useful, especially against RD mobs, since you do a tremendous amount of dps. The extra 10% damage is additive with the 75% from Dynamo.
Cold Blooded - 20% damage boost, multiplicative with AD and other damage buffs. The passive works on any frozen or chilled mob, regardless of how the mob got that way. You can have a follower with a cold weapon chilling your mobs, or a blizzard you cast, or your wizard friend spamming FN.
Teleport - Safe Passage - extra 30% damage reduction is great against all sorts of situations and teleport itself gets you away from Jailer, around Walls, away from Frozen or molten explosions, or just lets you get to safety if things are looking grim.
Illusionist - best way to refresh teleport for the build. It also helps you get out of sticky situations when needed. It doesn't proc very well on aoe effects like Plague and Desecrator. If you have a ton of HP and/or extremely high mitigation there might be some issues with having it refreshed.
Blur - optional skill to raise survivability, if needed.
Sparkflint - random dps buff, mainly for play with a freezing wiz when you won't need to apply cold debuff yourself.
Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor (PA) - Best EHP armor spell for me. Feel free to replace with your favorite armor spell if your mitigation permits.
Blizzard - I used Frozen Solid rune, but the other runes work well too. I like the FS rune because of the chance to freeze is great in solo play, and helps survivability. Drop this skill for Sparkflint if you already have someone providing freeze effect on mobs.
The first build is the MP10 version I used today, but you can swap Blur for Cold Blooded if you want more dps. For group play use the second build if you have an SNS wiz in group. Also feel free to use whatever armor you are comfortable with. Otherwise Ice Armor is a good option, with Frozen Storm, Crystalize or Ice Reflect. Wormhole can be swapped for Safe Passage if you have sufficient survivability.
Playing the Build
The basic idea of soloing is you cast safe passage, drop a blizzard between you and the mobs, and start spamming Arcane Mines on your current location. The mobs will move through the blizzard and be slowed long enough for your mines to arm. They'll blow up when the mobs get close and if there's still mobs left you can either keep spamming on your location or slowly move your curser away from your location. You can drop a LL before the mines if you want to power up your mines, or you can ignore that and just use it for Elites.
Against elites you want to charge your 5 stacks with 1-2 LL casts, then hold the mines button as long as you can. Teleport out if needed but if you have a SNS wiz in group you can probably just spam til the mobs are dead. For solo play just spam as long as you can. If you have to move you can drop a blizzard and LL again to power your mines, or just skip the LL if the mob has annoying affixes and you have to go kite mode.
Keep in mind that blizzard, if you're using it, does about the same damage as 1 mine cast if you didn't power it with AD, so feel free to use a cast to refresh Blizzard as needed. It also adds to survivability if you use the rune that can freeze mobs. Also feel free to power blizzard with AD if you find yourself kiting elites.
One important note about dynamo and how the stacks work with a channeled spell. If you start channeling a skill without 5 stacks, then get to 5 stacks while channeling, the 5 stacks will be consumed but your damage will not increase. Instead you have to wait for 5 stacks to build, then start channeling to get the bonus damage.
Pros:
Very high dps potential (12x multiplier to unbuffed dps with just AD+MW+Sparkflint+CB)
Can seamlessly transfer from facetank mode to kiting mode thanks to blizzard and teleport
Awsome for Ubers with a CMWW wizard in group for freezing
Can use SoJ for even more damage against elites/Ubers
Doesn't use CM if you want a build that skips it
Cons:
AoE radius is small, though still large enough to hit a couple mobs at a time. Not an issue for Ubers
Total APS is limited to 1.904 or less, so at really high gear levels (trifecta everything), the build might not work.
2s delay before mines go off can take some getting used to
Gearing and Stats
For gearing I recommend around 50% CC and 20 APoC. A -5AP reduction SoJ helps too, and with that combo I can sustain against 2 targets. Life Steal is very useful, LoH less so, because the build does a lot of damage. You'll also want high armor and mitigation so you can face tank trash and elites, as well as not kill yourself against RD.
Theory crafting
Some math behind why the build can do so much damage...
Mines does 340% weapon damage per mine. You cast mines at about 1.5x your APS value, though it does use breakpoints, but that's not hugely important since you want to stay under 1.9 APS or so. That means it effectively does 510% weapon damage per second as long as you can spam it, but only costs 16 AP per attack turn. With no other buffs that's 5.1x multiplier, compared to the 6-8x for SNS wiz or 3.75 for unbuffed Archon multiplier.
Arcane Dynamo adds 75% to the damage, not 75% to the weapon damage but multiplies the damage by 1.75. Magic Weapon, Sparkflint, and Glass Cannon are both additive with that 75%, so with BM it does 85% extra damage. If you add Sparkflint it's 97% extra. Time Warp and Bone Chill also add with this bonus. Cold Blooded then multiples that by 1.2 since it is multiplicative. With the version I was using last night on Ubers I had Sparkflint, BM, and CB. That means my effective multiplier was 5.1*1.97*1.2 = 12x my unbuffed char sheet dps. With 230k unbuffed dps (before MW or sparkflint), that is an effective dps of around 2.78 million dps. For comparison, a 150k dps sns wiz can do as much as 1 mil dps, so I was doing about as much damage as a 350k SNS wiz. Plus I had a SoJ for an extra 30% that I didn't include there, which totally blows SNS damage out of the water. The only problem, again, is it basically requires an SNS wiz to work, since that relies on you not having to move much.
Disclaimer: I take no credit for creating the build since it was mostly pillaged from other threads I have seen in the past on the official forums. I did make it out of memory last night, and only today modified it to include blizzard for solo play.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
http://youtu.be/GkNAZcjrH98
Warrior's Rest, CotA, and Leoric's Manor plus courtyard, running with turco2, who was using CMWW build. Gear and build are again shown at the end.
Ubers Vids
Ghom and Rak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs5iShJsTwk
SB and Kulle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSLZrQKSPiY
SK and Mag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2SdJFZJ9tU
Spec and gear used is shown at the end of each video. Build was an Arcane Mines spec with Force Armor. I think the only build change between fights was a swap from fracture for Ghom and SK to Safe Passage for SB/Kulle. For the most part I used a highly defensive gear set with high hp and only around 240k dps buffed.SB+Kulle was the main hard fight. The others weren't too bad.
Kill Times
Ghom+Rak took 3 min, 11s
Mag+SK took 3 min 58s
SB+Kulle took 7 min 38s. Took about 5 min 14s to kill Kulle.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I haven't used Death Blossom but yes, I think it's better. The damage is 75% of that of DB but it hits 100% of the time. If DB hits less than 75% of the time you'll do more dps with mines. Disruption isn't even close in damage. The 15% bonus from that rune is additive with AD and MW, so it's already diminished.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I saw a "Death Blossom" build a week or so ago, and I thought it was interesting. It should be good to see both in comparison.
EDIT: This one: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/92964-guide-chun-lis-starfighter-death-blossom-build/
Wizard | Demon Hunter
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
You can run with me and I'll record it, haha.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
I'd be fine with that.
I was running earlier today and recording some, but I need to switch to some higher EHP gear because I keep dying, heh. My gloves and bracers are somewhat lacking in that department so far. I have some lower DPS pieces I'll try out here in a bit since I have a few minutes before dinner.
I did find out why I die to berzerkers though. They have a big windup that one shots me if I don't avoid it. That's on MP10 with Blur and ~400k EHP.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Just to let you know, the Berserker smash is pretty much the equivalent of a Fallen Maniac exploding on me. A few of those at once and I'm also dead. Good thing is the left click for Archon (Arcane Strike) interrupts them with the tiny knockback. Not sure what an Arcane Mines build can do to counter besides side-stepping.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
I managed to not die in the vid, but I do die on my MP10 runs. I recommend a higher armor and/or resists to make it easier. I also mainly recommend it for group play, so solo at your own risk. If you do want to play solo with it, you can try chantress with Maximus. I haven't tried it yet but hear the demon can tank pretty well, and the extra armor doesn't hurt, as long as the +APS doesn't put you over 1.904 APS.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Wizard | Demon Hunter
If you play with 1 other person it works well if they are a monk with that skill that drags mobs to their location. You just drop some mines where the other person is, mobs get dragged there, and they all blow up. I don't know what ability that is though, since I know almost nothing about most other classes.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Sounds exactly like the problem a WD firebats build has.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I tested that today using a low damage weapon with +min damage so all my mines hit for the same amount and the difference in damage was very clear. I also added that to the guide in the section about how to play the build.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I mean, you got a CM Wizard standing in Front of you perma freezing everything...you can roll ANY build with that.
Replace Mines with Meteors, max out APoC and drool over the Numbers... way more effective imho
I really hope they make other stuff viable soon for the Wizard...
CM / Archon etc... getting boring