Channeling could be great for team play. It would be fun watching zombies burn or titans getting frosted. Glad to see everyone has their personal style and opinion. I wouldn't mind using all the trash skills just for fun.
Channeling could be great for team play. It would be fun watching zombies burn or titans getting frosted. Glad to see everyone has their personal style and opinion. I wouldn't mind using all the trash skills just for fun.
The problem is the vast majority of them aren't trash.
I said Slow Time was better than temporal flux, though it was at the top of the list
I'm just glad nobody is trying to add up the sum of ap used by Disintegrate and compare it to another spell again... Some of you talk about glass cannon like it has no down side. Arcane Torrent with crimson rune or Frost nova with crimson would do way more damage, sure I'd like to stack them all together but there are only 3 slots for passives.
I could think of using Temporal Flux with magic missile, but, what about Ray of Frost with Obsidian rune, it slows for 8.5 seconds (I don't know how much in PVP) with 50% slow. Sure it hits only one target at a time but against a person it could be a good way to setup for even ...... Meteor, (though I wouldn't use it )
Every spell or passive I mentioned has another spell that is faster, slows better, slows longer, does more over the same time period without lowering energy armor, is better and more broad defense (Diamond Skin with Indigo Vs Ice Armor(does not work on ranged) and Mirror Images (shorter duration, not direct protection).
MI is 15 seconds long but Indigo gives 21 seconds of Diamond Skin which is why the only ones I would keep are Simulacrum and Extension of will which both last longer than Diamond Skin, but DS helps you directly.
You just don't seem to understand why people take offense your posts, do you ElectricEel? I honestly cannot tell if you are deliberately antagonistic or if your ego really is that inflated.
Part of the fun that many players find in Diablo is building and testing and creating viable builds. Each skill in D3 is meant to be viable. Its not about the BEST uber build ever in the world, or only using what you consider the best most damaging skill. If that were the case, Blizzard would simply release 6 skills per class and be done with it. Diablo 3 doesn't even have 1on1 PvP so please put away your need for D*CK Waving.
For example, you wrote:
Virtuoso: Recycle bin, could work ok for Energy armor but more often than not people will probably not use it.
You know what? I actually would love to use a build that doesn't rely on signature spells, and instead using Virtuoso. It would not be my first choice as a build but would be fun to test out. And if I find an awesome wand, even more incentive. Not to mention hardcore Wizards will probably use it for the 1% life regen.
Arcane Orb: Recycle bin. Disintegrate is better, hits everything in front of you, less mana use etc. etc.
Many many people want to use Arcane Orb as a main dmg spell. If for nothing else than it has great graphics and is a completely viable AoE spell.
Energy Twister: Why use this when Ray of Frost or Disintegrate will cost less with more damage. Trash.
Hmmm... how about I want to use it because I think the spell effect is awesome and I would love to see 10 Twisters in motion at once. Not to mention how large it could get if 2 twisters were to merge. Again a viable and possibly very FUN build. What if a person doesn't like Ray spells?
Each and everyone of us has preferences, bias towards certain spells, play styles, etc. You seem to be the only one that feels the need to shove his opinions on everyone and belittle their choices. Not every build need to have disintegrate or a ray spell. Yes we know you like ray spells, but there are other options.
Stop with the beam spells being the best ffs. You have to stand there and channel them. You are forgetting everything you are throwing into the trash is a FaF, and thus can be used in conjunction with each other. Energy twister trash? How about tossing like 3 of those puppies out to a mass aoe group then throwin a bunch of arcane orbs? this enables massive dmg and mobility.
I can GUARANTEE you that when you hit inferno and just stand there trying to dis or rof everything, those bone archers are gonna rape you.
OMG! I read the first post and stopped. I've built quite a few (I believe very viable) builds using Temporal Flux as a main consideration and you think it is completely useless?
Oh and having Evocation for only 1 spell that has a cooldown, plus having 3 different ray spells in one build? (I consider Arcane Torrent a Ray in theory). WOW. You have to stand in place a lot to cast don't you. Hope you don't run into several enhanced speed + cold based elites. Cos you don't even have a teleport to get out of trouble, and NO AP REGEN!!!
Short sighted build that only relies on brute force power with no imagination IMO and no AP regen abilities.
I wasn't going to, but since you're standing by this list of yours I'll point out some of your errors in judgement. (The fact so many people disagree with you should be cluing you in already).
NOTE: I came up with every example build in under 1 minute. I'm not claiming they're amazing or that I'd use them per-say, but I do feel they would work just fine.
Temporal Flux: Slow time with Miasma lasts longer, better slow, and you don't have to hit them, just form it around them.
Right, first off you have a MASSIVE issue here. How do you even begin to compare an active skill to a passive? You don't equip them in the same slot, you get 6 actives vs 3 passives, if so many of our passives weren't mediocre they would be a lot more valuable.
Putting that aside your comparison of the two abilities is just flat out wrong. Slow Time is an AoE effect, fixed location spell, with a 30 second cooldown. Temporal Flux is applied to all spells that deal arcane damage, and is only used in builds that focus completely on arcane damage (kind of like your disintegrate obsession, so I don't understand why you wouldn't take this passive).
Now your claim: It lasts longer? How is that possible? With your own math you can channel disintegrate for 4 minutes. That's 4 minutes of slow from Flux. YOu don't even have to stop channeling your Crimson rune to get the slow effect. Seems more effective to me. Better slow? Yah sure. By 11%. Not to mention the fact that we don't know if Flux scales with gear. Even if it doesn't, 11% isn't that much and is a FREE effect, you don't have to use a spell cast to get it's effect like you would for Slow Time. You don't have to hit them? What? Do you even read what you write? How is hitting an enemy with Disintegrate + Flux harder than hitting with Slow Time? That doesn't even make sense!
In a build that only deals arcane damage (so you get maximum effect) flux allows you to take less defensive spells and focus on the damage output.
Glass Cannon: Marginal increase in damage, marginal decrease in AC and resistance. Familiar with Crimson rune is double the damage, who cares about just 20%. Throw in Arcane Torrent with Crimson Rune and you do 120% more damage with an arcane spell. Recycle Bin.
Again, you're comparing a Passive to an Active (Granted, Familiar is pretty damn passive, but still). I'll say it again, the spells take different slots, you cannot compare them.
Wow, look at that, Familiar, Crimson Arcane Torrent, AND Glass Cannon! All 3 in one build! With Crimson Slow Time!
Unstable Anomaly: If your planning to be below 20% life enough to make this a useful weapon then you need to change all your spells out! Trash it.
For a general wizard yes. For a melee wizard or a Hardcore wizard it could be useful. It's not a "weapon" as you call it, it's defense. When compared to other PASSIVES, yes, it's on the weaker side for sure, especially considering it's our top end one.
Power Hungry: Gain 30 power when healed by health. You gain 12 power just from standing still, in a pinch this could be useful but for most, trash it !
From what I've seen in Beta health globes are disgustingly common. Now I imagine that will peter off as you go along meaning that this could be the most OP passive for the first 3 Acts even if it's worthless in Inferno. Once you get to end game, yes, compared to other PASSIVES, it's weaker.
Prodigy: Marginal at best, you'll spend half the time firing off this saving up for meteor when you could use disintegrate crimson with storm armor and get more damage in less time.... Recycle bin. Good for a low level/melee wizard.
Again your Crimson Disintegrate with Storm Armor, it's like your only argument. Ever. -_-. Prodigy is pretty much required for builds that don't use a Golden Sig spell but still cast Sig spells often. Maybe Indigo Electrocute or Magic Missile. Long story short you need some form of regen other than base to fuel more expensive spells. These might not be the most competitive, top damage dealing builds, but they're going to be fun as hell: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZRVQOm!YXf!YaYYZa
Arcane Dynamo: Why do this spell when you can do Arcane Torrent with crimson rune and get 120% more damage with arcane spells for 6 seconds. Trash.
Yet again with comparing a passive to an active. Not going to go into this again. Just think of this though: Imagine you have 7 stacks of Dynamo. You hit the boss with Crimson Arcane Torrent to get the 120% damage boost, then you cast another sig spell to get your 8th charge. Now you cast Disintegrate and for it's entire channel it does 50% more damage. Lets see.... 40% from Familiar, 120% from Torrent, how about another 140% from Time Warp, and then the 50% from Dynamo. Thats +350% damage on your Disintegrate.
Side Note: I find it amusing you didn't say Crimson Familiar is better as well. A constant 40% boost is stronger than a 50% boost every 12 seconds. Obviously it doesn't work because of the passive vs active aspect, but you did it for Glass Cannon. I guess the math on that was more obvious.
Illusionist: A better illusion is Diamond skin and then kill the thing ! If your that worried about getting hit, probably by a melee thing, add Blur as passive with Diamond Skin and you don't have to worry. Even in Arena games Diamond skin seemed to work awesome and with Indigo rune you'll be up more often. Trash.
Passive vs Active AGAIN. (Starting to get why I was so disdainful of this post on first read and why so many others think it's a joke?)
Maybe you don't mind dying all the time, but in higher difficulties, especially before you're decked out in final gear, survivability is essential. Not to mention the fact you can use Mirror Image as a 140% damage boost.
Indigo Diamond Skin (and Obsidian) is certainly a powerful defensive tool. It's near impossible to compare it to Teleport however. If you're stuck surrounded by a massive group of enemies being pounded on in melee and shot at from range which would you prefer, Diamond Skin to take a bit of a beating or Teleport to just get the hell out of there?
Virtuoso: Recycle bin, could work ok for Energy armor but more often than not people will probably not use it.
The fact you so easily discard this skill when it has the potential to be amazing is alarming. This passive is one of two ways wizards have to regen health and this is a %, not even a flat number!! Assuming Galvanizing Ward's HP/sec scales with gear then this would as well. How fast do wands attack? There's so much information we don't have that makes it so you can't just throw this away.
Mirror Images (except Simulacrum and Extension of Will)- All other mirror images are probably useless or not as useful. The one that creates 6 images could be good, but, they only have 25% health which means they go bye bye fast if your taking a lot of damage. A neat trick at low levels but higher it'll probably just be laughed at as they disappear in a second. maybe good for Arena. Recycle bin. Why do mocking demise, when you could put the same rune in Wave of Force and definitely stun for 5.0 seconds and knock them back from you.
So, how often do Images cast spells? Cause see, I imagine this would be used in Arena, meaning they probably cast fairly often, maybe even at max speed, other wise it would be preeeeeety easy to figure out which one was real. Until we know that it's hard to say with this spell. Crimson runed it gives 140% damage increase for 15 seconds. Thats better than your Crimson Arcane Torrent you always bring up both in duration AND the fact that it boost all damage not just arcane AND that it provides a bit of defense at the same time! AND the two spells are both actives!!! OMG!!!! A logical comparison!?
I've used Crimson MI in a few other builds, not going to bother making another.
Meteor cost too high, good for one hit wonder if you can hit and if it does the max damage but Arcane torrent with Disintegrate will do more damage in the same amount of time, throw in the supposed cast time of 3 seconds for meteor and ease of missing and lower chance of critical compared to disintegrate. Trash.
Meteor is iconic. I get the feeling you haven't played Diablo 2. I can't tell you how many Meteor sorcs I made in that game. I know that it was easily one of the top damage builds (THE top damage for a period of time) and that I spent hours upon hours raining fiery death and it was awesome. Rumors are the 3 sec delay on it falling was removed for this game, even with it I can tell you that I don't miss with Meteor. With delay it takes skill to land, the reward for that skill is massive damage. Indigo runed Meteor is still the highest damage spell the wizard has assuming you can land all 14. How hard it is to do that is the real question.
You say "lower chance of critical than disintegrate" I don;t understand that, where are you even getting that from?
Arcane Orb: Recycle bin. Disintegrate is better, hits everything in front of you, less mana use etc. etc.
Energy Twister: Why use this when Ray of Frost or Disintegrate will cost less with more damage. Trash.
Explosive blast: Almost as bad as Energy twister, the only reason I would use it is if something is immune to arcane, that is it. Recycle Bin.
Not even going to do these three as this is already taking too long and I have a feeling I'm wasting my time with this whole thing regardless.
P.S. There are no immunities.
Ice Armor is great but slow with miasma is better. There is nothing Ice Armor can do that Slow time with Miasma can't do better, longer, or more reliably. Trash.
Alright. At least here we're comparing two actives. First off I don't like Ice Armor at all, but I'm still going to defend it. Lets start with your claim. "There is nothing Ice Armor can do that Slow time with Miasma can't do better, longer, or more reliably." Yah? What about increase your armor by 50%? I wasn't aware Miasma did that.
Now, the huge issue with this spell is that there's SO much unexplained. "...chilling them for 2 seconds." Okay.... what's chilling do? Is that an attack speed reduction? Movement speed? How much?
Does the Frost Nova from the Alabaster rune use the rune you have in Frost Nova if it's among your actives? (could be an awesome way to multi proc that if so). The Indigo Rune makes it so the chill effect is an AoE and doesn't require that you get hit which is awesome, but it doesn't give the numbers for the speed reductions. Then with Golden, if you have enough armor that effect could end up making you ridiculously resistant to physical damage! Math time!
Lets say you have 1000 armor (no idea how realistic that is, not terribly relevant since we're interested in the end % increase)
Ice Armor gives you a bonus 50% armor so 500.
First hit increases that by 85% so 925 armor now.
2nd hit is 1,711 armor
and finally 3rd hit is 3165.
You've gone from a 50% increase (500) to a 316% increase of your armor (3165) bringing you to a total of 4165 armor. Wow, I'm a little surprised by this. Can Wizards have the highest armor in the game??? We don't know reasonable armor numbers, and how the percentage of physical damage reduced works and scales, but a 316% boost to your armor (assuming I did the math correctly and I triple checked it) seems amazing.
Hopefully this will help you realize some of the mistakes you've made. Even if it doesn't at least it will help people who read it after reading your first post.
I didn't carelessly disregard Virtuoso I put it in a recycle bin
Ice Armor only works for melee attacks with gold rune and yes it does 50% increase in armor but if your not a melee wizard do you really need it? Just do diamond skin and get that over with! Also Slow time with miasma clings to them and you don't have to get hit ! It is easy to say oh lets go take damage in normal, for what is in Hell and Inferno you might not want to get too close. Ice armor chills for 2 seconds, slow time slows for 14 seconds it is more reliable than an armor class increase because I don't have to get hit.... It stays in the Trash bin.
Temporal flux is good but Slow time with miasma and evocation is round the clock slow (the cooldown is = to time that it takes you to recast.) Also, Slow Time is a higher slow... it is.
I don't care if your comparing an active to a passive... if there is something better I'm going to use it, no wizard will count on using unstable anomaly to stay alive, if your health is below 20% it means your dieing, you don't plan for that to happen !
Diamond skin is more defense than mirror image, I don't have to rely on the enemy whether monster or person being tricked, just D up and do something. I still wouldn't rush to get indigo rune for mirror images, for PvP, eventually people will know that 6 images mean they do no damage... I like simulacrum and Extension because they produce the same amount as Mirror Mimic, so if your doing PvP the person won't know which one your doing until they sit there and say, "hey it is longer than 15 seconds, or these don't do damage", as long as there are people doing mirror mimic, nobody will ever know which one I've got at least the first cast.... On monsters in high level difficulty these two will stay alive longer. I refuse to look at something that has 25% my hp as a reliable damage increase, sorry.
Nobody is going to use Energy twister any longer than they have to, the damage is lower than disintegrate, doesn't look like it can be controlled very well without a rune but still it is low damage, and the mana cost is higher than disintegrate, higher than Ray of Frost, higher than Arcane torrent, higher than Wave of Force, higher than Archon, why are we talking about this.... and all the above on arcane power use vs damage and ability to control apply for arcane orb as well, it is better controlled, but slower than everything that I just mentioned, AO does damage, but costs more arcane power than all the spells I just mentioned. They are still in my TRASH Bin. Sorry.
Illusionist could be interesting, but diamond skin would be better. Just drop it, how did you end up behind that line of monsters in the first place ? it is massively situational... Diamond Skin, Diamond Skin, Diamond Skin... walk more and go with friends !
Blah blah blah blah if people retrain I doubt they will keep illusionist...
Well at least I got one question answered, he's all ego. Didn't take into consideration anyone's opinion or even try to understand anything other than what he believes to be the absolute truth.
Nuff said. No more time will be spent on this egotistical child.
You don't seem to know too much about Diablo eh.... Everything stacks so to make an Ace of trades jack of none build you will need everything Diablo 3 has to offer the Wizard.
Temporal flux mixed with ST n RoF will have people CRAWWWWLING away from you! meaning you could hit them with anything!
Arcane dyn mixed with Prodigy would be good for a high AP using build... Get your AP back with signature spells while getting a 50% dmg bonus by the end of it. DUAL PURPOSE (SMART)!!!
Everything is there for a reason. I think Blizz has some pretty good programmers so let's leave it up to them!
Depending on how Diamond Skin scales with gear, and how much damage enemies do (particularly on higher difficulties), it may or may not be a very good ability. Assuming that we even take the obsidian runed form for higher damage block rather than duration (on the assumption that the lower damage would be extinguished before the end of its duration anyway), we start with ~7k hp blocked. Without accounting for gear, that sounds to me like 1-3 hits on a high difficulty, which I do not deem sufficient on an active ability for reliable survival. Realistically, this may scale exactly like damage and climb by a factor of 5-10(?) making it much more reasonable, but I, at least, have no confirmation on its scaling nature. I suspect it is geared more towards arena than PvE, where knowing that 1 or 2 big hits are coming (and then nothing for some time, *if* you survive) may be perfect for it.
It had not occurred to me that people may be unfamiliar w/ DI/II, so I should point out since I haven't seen it mentioned that in both previous games, melee and many missile hits causes *momentary* "interrupt," which basically meant momentary stun. As a result, a barrage of hits could kill you even if they were small because you could get locked and unable to run. In my experience, TP was a good way out of this since you only needed 1 cast time of uninterrupted time, not the ability to outrun things. Hence Illusionist may have value; I took it in the HC build I made for fun (I would *never* actually play hardcore.) http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZkcihO!ZVd!aZacZa
I will have to agree that Virtuoso is actually fairly bad; since it requires that you have a Sig spell anyway, I would much-prefer to use that spell's rune slot for regen which is at least ~3x, if not more times as effective (~4, potentially, for Shock Pulse, possibly(?) more for Spectral Blade depending on base range/play style) though it may take some skill/effort to gain those benefits, esp, as ArcWeap said, since it takes a (much-coveted) passive slot. I would expect Sig spells' main purpose in *most* builds (excluding melee wiz, arena [alabaster homing MM], and whatever builds may include the other Sig spells), they will be used primarily for regen, even if only passively as they cost 0 AP to cast at high level. I can't see the boost from Virtuoso being worthwhile as compared to the golden rune effects and as compared to the other non-regen effects available in that slot.
We also do not know how Mirror Images will behave, but I assume they will either spam spells, or cast reasonably quickly. Depending on the intelligence of their AI, they may pick very effective spells, and may be quite capable of surviving for their duration, esp if you have crimson runed them and are thus making an effort to keep them alive (as I intend to do!) I *presume* their spells will carry the effects of your runes, so consider: crimson (or other-runed) Slow Time from your images, meaning up to 3 Slow Times active at once, images casting Hydra (of whatever rune form), crimson Arcane Torrent from your images, keeping the debuff up allowing you to spam a much-longer Disintegrate without loosing the debuff!
We (I) also do not know yet how slows will stack; whether the highest-value slow will simply override others, whether they will stack additively (virtually out-of-the-question), multiplicatively (most-likely, if at all), or through some other formula. If they do stack additively, then multiple slows (such as Slow Time + Temporal Flux will be quite awesome), but otherwise, I intend to run Temporal Flux on any Disintegrate, Arc Torrent, or Arc Orb-based builds (I don't expect to have an Arc Orb build though), since Slow Time has a cooldown (and you better believe I'm hittin up either Time Warp (crimson) or Stretch Time (alabaster) for +140% damage!) and an area; slowing everything in my Disintegrate path or whatever creature(s) my Arc Torrent are hitting is well-worth the passive slot imo.
The truth about many, if not most, of these abilities is that their descriptions are often vague enough that we really don't know exactly how they will work, how good they will be (even relative to each other), and so we will have to actually wait until release (and our opportunity for testing) to rule anything in or out categorically.
The problem is the vast majority of them aren't trash.
I'm just glad nobody is trying to add up the sum of ap used by Disintegrate and compare it to another spell again... Some of you talk about glass cannon like it has no down side. Arcane Torrent with crimson rune or Frost nova with crimson would do way more damage, sure I'd like to stack them all together but there are only 3 slots for passives.
I could think of using Temporal Flux with magic missile, but, what about Ray of Frost with Obsidian rune, it slows for 8.5 seconds (I don't know how much in PVP) with 50% slow. Sure it hits only one target at a time but against a person it could be a good way to setup for even ...... Meteor, (though I wouldn't use it )
MI is 15 seconds long but Indigo gives 21 seconds of Diamond Skin which is why the only ones I would keep are Simulacrum and Extension of will which both last longer than Diamond Skin, but DS helps you directly.
Part of the fun that many players find in Diablo is building and testing and creating viable builds. Each skill in D3 is meant to be viable. Its not about the BEST uber build ever in the world, or only using what you consider the best most damaging skill. If that were the case, Blizzard would simply release 6 skills per class and be done with it. Diablo 3 doesn't even have 1on1 PvP so please put away your need for D*CK Waving.
For example, you wrote: You know what? I actually would love to use a build that doesn't rely on signature spells, and instead using Virtuoso. It would not be my first choice as a build but would be fun to test out. And if I find an awesome wand, even more incentive. Not to mention hardcore Wizards will probably use it for the 1% life regen.
Many many people want to use Arcane Orb as a main dmg spell. If for nothing else than it has great graphics and is a completely viable AoE spell.
Hmmm... how about I want to use it because I think the spell effect is awesome and I would love to see 10 Twisters in motion at once. Not to mention how large it could get if 2 twisters were to merge. Again a viable and possibly very FUN build. What if a person doesn't like Ray spells?
Each and everyone of us has preferences, bias towards certain spells, play styles, etc. You seem to be the only one that feels the need to shove his opinions on everyone and belittle their choices. Not every build need to have disintegrate or a ray spell. Yes we know you like ray spells, but there are other options.
I can GUARANTEE you that when you hit inferno and just stand there trying to dis or rof everything, those bone archers are gonna rape you.
Fuckin plus 1 right here.
NOTE: I came up with every example build in under 1 minute. I'm not claiming they're amazing or that I'd use them per-say, but I do feel they would work just fine.
INCOMING WALL OF TEXT!
Right, first off you have a MASSIVE issue here. How do you even begin to compare an active skill to a passive? You don't equip them in the same slot, you get 6 actives vs 3 passives, if so many of our passives weren't mediocre they would be a lot more valuable.
Putting that aside your comparison of the two abilities is just flat out wrong. Slow Time is an AoE effect, fixed location spell, with a 30 second cooldown. Temporal Flux is applied to all spells that deal arcane damage, and is only used in builds that focus completely on arcane damage (kind of like your disintegrate obsession, so I don't understand why you wouldn't take this passive).
Now your claim: It lasts longer? How is that possible? With your own math you can channel disintegrate for 4 minutes. That's 4 minutes of slow from Flux. YOu don't even have to stop channeling your Crimson rune to get the slow effect. Seems more effective to me. Better slow? Yah sure. By 11%. Not to mention the fact that we don't know if Flux scales with gear. Even if it doesn't, 11% isn't that much and is a FREE effect, you don't have to use a spell cast to get it's effect like you would for Slow Time. You don't have to hit them? What? Do you even read what you write? How is hitting an enemy with Disintegrate + Flux harder than hitting with Slow Time? That doesn't even make sense!
Here, a flux build with your almighty channeled spells: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#dUkQOm!ZXb!baZYZZ
In a build that only deals arcane damage (so you get maximum effect) flux allows you to take less defensive spells and focus on the damage output.
Again, you're comparing a Passive to an Active (Granted, Familiar is pretty damn passive, but still). I'll say it again, the spells take different slots, you cannot compare them.
Glass Cannon is for sitting in the back, behind your party members, and unleashing hell. Kinda like this build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#dUhOkS!bXV!bZZZZZ
Wow, look at that, Familiar, Crimson Arcane Torrent, AND Glass Cannon! All 3 in one build! With Crimson Slow Time!
For a general wizard yes. For a melee wizard or a Hardcore wizard it could be useful. It's not a "weapon" as you call it, it's defense. When compared to other PASSIVES, yes, it's on the weaker side for sure, especially considering it's our top end one.
From what I've seen in Beta health globes are disgustingly common. Now I imagine that will peter off as you go along meaning that this could be the most OP passive for the first 3 Acts even if it's worthless in Inferno. Once you get to end game, yes, compared to other PASSIVES, it's weaker.
Again your Crimson Disintegrate with Storm Armor, it's like your only argument. Ever. -_-. Prodigy is pretty much required for builds that don't use a Golden Sig spell but still cast Sig spells often. Maybe Indigo Electrocute or Magic Missile. Long story short you need some form of regen other than base to fuel more expensive spells. These might not be the most competitive, top damage dealing builds, but they're going to be fun as hell:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZRVQOm!YXf!YaYYZa
Yet again with comparing a passive to an active. Not going to go into this again. Just think of this though: Imagine you have 7 stacks of Dynamo. You hit the boss with Crimson Arcane Torrent to get the 120% damage boost, then you cast another sig spell to get your 8th charge. Now you cast Disintegrate and for it's entire channel it does 50% more damage. Lets see.... 40% from Familiar, 120% from Torrent, how about another 140% from Time Warp, and then the 50% from Dynamo. Thats +350% damage on your Disintegrate.
Side Note: I find it amusing you didn't say Crimson Familiar is better as well. A constant 40% boost is stronger than a 50% boost every 12 seconds. Obviously it doesn't work because of the passive vs active aspect, but you did it for Glass Cannon. I guess the math on that was more obvious.
Passive vs Active AGAIN. (Starting to get why I was so disdainful of this post on first read and why so many others think it's a joke?)
Maybe you don't mind dying all the time, but in higher difficulties, especially before you're decked out in final gear, survivability is essential. Not to mention the fact you can use Mirror Image as a 140% damage boost.
Indigo Diamond Skin (and Obsidian) is certainly a powerful defensive tool. It's near impossible to compare it to Teleport however. If you're stuck surrounded by a massive group of enemies being pounded on in melee and shot at from range which would you prefer, Diamond Skin to take a bit of a beating or Teleport to just get the hell out of there?
Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ihdQRl!dXV!cZbYaa
The fact you so easily discard this skill when it has the potential to be amazing is alarming. This passive is one of two ways wizards have to regen health and this is a %, not even a flat number!! Assuming Galvanizing Ward's HP/sec scales with gear then this would as well. How fast do wands attack? There's so much information we don't have that makes it so you can't just throw this away.
Tentative build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ahOQRl!cXV!ZZZYaa
So, how often do Images cast spells? Cause see, I imagine this would be used in Arena, meaning they probably cast fairly often, maybe even at max speed, other wise it would be preeeeeety easy to figure out which one was real. Until we know that it's hard to say with this spell. Crimson runed it gives 140% damage increase for 15 seconds. Thats better than your Crimson Arcane Torrent you always bring up both in duration AND the fact that it boost all damage not just arcane AND that it provides a bit of defense at the same time! AND the two spells are both actives!!! OMG!!!! A logical comparison!?
I've used Crimson MI in a few other builds, not going to bother making another.
Meteor is iconic. I get the feeling you haven't played Diablo 2. I can't tell you how many Meteor sorcs I made in that game. I know that it was easily one of the top damage builds (THE top damage for a period of time) and that I spent hours upon hours raining fiery death and it was awesome. Rumors are the 3 sec delay on it falling was removed for this game, even with it I can tell you that I don't miss with Meteor. With delay it takes skill to land, the reward for that skill is massive damage. Indigo runed Meteor is still the highest damage spell the wizard has assuming you can land all 14. How hard it is to do that is the real question.
You say "lower chance of critical than disintegrate" I don;t understand that, where are you even getting that from?
This build is heavily influenced from juba's awesome "look's like it's going to rain" thread: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#PldaQO!bYX!YabZYZ
Not even going to do these three as this is already taking too long and I have a feeling I'm wasting my time with this whole thing regardless.
P.S. There are no immunities.
Alright. At least here we're comparing two actives. First off I don't like Ice Armor at all, but I'm still going to defend it. Lets start with your claim. "There is nothing Ice Armor can do that Slow time with Miasma can't do better, longer, or more reliably." Yah? What about increase your armor by 50%? I wasn't aware Miasma did that.
Now, the huge issue with this spell is that there's SO much unexplained. "...chilling them for 2 seconds." Okay.... what's chilling do? Is that an attack speed reduction? Movement speed? How much?
Does the Frost Nova from the Alabaster rune use the rune you have in Frost Nova if it's among your actives? (could be an awesome way to multi proc that if so). The Indigo Rune makes it so the chill effect is an AoE and doesn't require that you get hit which is awesome, but it doesn't give the numbers for the speed reductions. Then with Golden, if you have enough armor that effect could end up making you ridiculously resistant to physical damage! Math time!
Lets say you have 1000 armor (no idea how realistic that is, not terribly relevant since we're interested in the end % increase)
Ice Armor gives you a bonus 50% armor so 500.
First hit increases that by 85% so 925 armor now.
2nd hit is 1,711 armor
and finally 3rd hit is 3165.
You've gone from a 50% increase (500) to a 316% increase of your armor (3165) bringing you to a total of 4165 armor. Wow, I'm a little surprised by this. Can Wizards have the highest armor in the game??? We don't know reasonable armor numbers, and how the percentage of physical damage reduced works and scales, but a 316% boost to your armor (assuming I did the math correctly and I triple checked it) seems amazing.
Well.... that was quite interesting and kinda made this whole thing worth it.... Here's my new Melee Wizard build!
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bWXVPS!XUe!babYYZ
Hopefully this will help you realize some of the mistakes you've made. Even if it doesn't at least it will help people who read it after reading your first post.
Ice Armor only works for melee attacks with gold rune and yes it does 50% increase in armor but if your not a melee wizard do you really need it? Just do diamond skin and get that over with! Also Slow time with miasma clings to them and you don't have to get hit ! It is easy to say oh lets go take damage in normal, for what is in Hell and Inferno you might not want to get too close. Ice armor chills for 2 seconds, slow time slows for 14 seconds it is more reliable than an armor class increase because I don't have to get hit.... It stays in the Trash bin.
Temporal flux is good but Slow time with miasma and evocation is round the clock slow (the cooldown is = to time that it takes you to recast.) Also, Slow Time is a higher slow... it is.
I don't care if your comparing an active to a passive... if there is something better I'm going to use it, no wizard will count on using unstable anomaly to stay alive, if your health is below 20% it means your dieing, you don't plan for that to happen !
Diamond skin is more defense than mirror image, I don't have to rely on the enemy whether monster or person being tricked, just D up and do something. I still wouldn't rush to get indigo rune for mirror images, for PvP, eventually people will know that 6 images mean they do no damage... I like simulacrum and Extension because they produce the same amount as Mirror Mimic, so if your doing PvP the person won't know which one your doing until they sit there and say, "hey it is longer than 15 seconds, or these don't do damage", as long as there are people doing mirror mimic, nobody will ever know which one I've got at least the first cast.... On monsters in high level difficulty these two will stay alive longer. I refuse to look at something that has 25% my hp as a reliable damage increase, sorry.
Nobody is going to use Energy twister any longer than they have to, the damage is lower than disintegrate, doesn't look like it can be controlled very well without a rune but still it is low damage, and the mana cost is higher than disintegrate, higher than Ray of Frost, higher than Arcane torrent, higher than Wave of Force, higher than Archon, why are we talking about this.... and all the above on arcane power use vs damage and ability to control apply for arcane orb as well, it is better controlled, but slower than everything that I just mentioned, AO does damage, but costs more arcane power than all the spells I just mentioned. They are still in my TRASH Bin. Sorry.
Illusionist could be interesting, but diamond skin would be better. Just drop it, how did you end up behind that line of monsters in the first place ? it is massively situational... Diamond Skin, Diamond Skin, Diamond Skin... walk more and go with friends !
Blah blah blah blah if people retrain I doubt they will keep illusionist...
Nuff said. No more time will be spent on this egotistical child.
Temporal flux mixed with ST n RoF will have people CRAWWWWLING away from you! meaning you could hit them with anything!
Arcane dyn mixed with Prodigy would be good for a high AP using build... Get your AP back with signature spells while getting a 50% dmg bonus by the end of it. DUAL PURPOSE (SMART)!!!
Everything is there for a reason. I think Blizz has some pretty good programmers so let's leave it up to them!
That is all! PEACE
It had not occurred to me that people may be unfamiliar w/ DI/II, so I should point out since I haven't seen it mentioned that in both previous games, melee and many missile hits causes *momentary* "interrupt," which basically meant momentary stun. As a result, a barrage of hits could kill you even if they were small because you could get locked and unable to run. In my experience, TP was a good way out of this since you only needed 1 cast time of uninterrupted time, not the ability to outrun things. Hence Illusionist may have value; I took it in the HC build I made for fun (I would *never* actually play hardcore.) http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZkcihO!ZVd!aZacZa
I will have to agree that Virtuoso is actually fairly bad; since it requires that you have a Sig spell anyway, I would much-prefer to use that spell's rune slot for regen which is at least ~3x, if not more times as effective (~4, potentially, for Shock Pulse, possibly(?) more for Spectral Blade depending on base range/play style) though it may take some skill/effort to gain those benefits, esp, as ArcWeap said, since it takes a (much-coveted) passive slot. I would expect Sig spells' main purpose in *most* builds (excluding melee wiz, arena [alabaster homing MM], and whatever builds may include the other Sig spells), they will be used primarily for regen, even if only passively as they cost 0 AP to cast at high level. I can't see the boost from Virtuoso being worthwhile as compared to the golden rune effects and as compared to the other non-regen effects available in that slot.
We also do not know how Mirror Images will behave, but I assume they will either spam spells, or cast reasonably quickly. Depending on the intelligence of their AI, they may pick very effective spells, and may be quite capable of surviving for their duration, esp if you have crimson runed them and are thus making an effort to keep them alive (as I intend to do!) I *presume* their spells will carry the effects of your runes, so consider: crimson (or other-runed) Slow Time from your images, meaning up to 3 Slow Times active at once, images casting Hydra (of whatever rune form), crimson Arcane Torrent from your images, keeping the debuff up allowing you to spam a much-longer Disintegrate without loosing the debuff!
We (I) also do not know yet how slows will stack; whether the highest-value slow will simply override others, whether they will stack additively (virtually out-of-the-question), multiplicatively (most-likely, if at all), or through some other formula. If they do stack additively, then multiple slows (such as Slow Time + Temporal Flux will be quite awesome), but otherwise, I intend to run Temporal Flux on any Disintegrate, Arc Torrent, or Arc Orb-based builds (I don't expect to have an Arc Orb build though), since Slow Time has a cooldown (and you better believe I'm hittin up either Time Warp (crimson) or Stretch Time (alabaster) for +140% damage!) and an area; slowing everything in my Disintegrate path or whatever creature(s) my Arc Torrent are hitting is well-worth the passive slot imo.
The truth about many, if not most, of these abilities is that their descriptions are often vague enough that we really don't know exactly how they will work, how good they will be (even relative to each other), and so we will have to actually wait until release (and our opportunity for testing) to rule anything in or out categorically.
VERY much so. Especially after looking at other class's passives. It's okay though, they can't drop massive flaming balls from the heavens.
Really? Looks like they're all still there to me.
What? English please.