After taking a look on the recent inferno video, I thought it might be good to list the most deadly situations where Wizard might be vulnerable against, and the possible solutions based on skills.
Pure assumptions as I had not played inferno. Hope this will make people who are not very familar with casters as general or Diablo casters to gain some ideas on the possible death traps and prepare them.
Some skills I reckon are essential to have in inferno. I will try not mention them repeatly in specific death encounter. They are worthy to have in almost every way.
Very usual skills in almost every encounter:
Teleport, Wormhole rune, Cooldown: 16 seconds. Teleport through the ether to the selected location up to 35 yards away, there is a 1 second delay before the cooldown begins, allowing you to Teleport again.
Blur, Decreases melee damage taken by 20%.
Illusionist, Whenever you suffer more than 15% of your Life in a single hit, the cooldowns on Mirror Image and Teleport are automatically reset.
Familiar, Ancient Guardian rune, Summon a companion that will attack your targets for 20% weapon damage as Arcane. This companion cannot be targeted or damaged by enemies and lasts for 5 minutes. When you are below 35% Life the Familiar will fully absorb damage from 1 attack every 6 seconds.
Evocation, Reduces all cooldowns by 15%.
Energy Armor, Force Armor rune, Focus your energies, increasing your Armor by 65% but decreasing your maximum Arcane Power by 20, incoming attacks that would deal more than 35% of your maximum Life are reduced to deal 35% of your maximum Life instead. Lasts 120 seconds. (Many thanks, djxput)
High DPS Melee + Crowd Control - Fear / Hex
Lost control completely, I guess I'll have to bet on luck and armor to get through this while keep smashing on the healing pot...
Ice Armor, Crystallized rune, Surround yourself in a barrier of ice. Melee attackers are either Chilled or Frozen for 2 seconds. Lasts 120 seconds. Whenever you are struck by a melee attack, your Armor is increased by 15% for 30 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times.
Unstable Anomaly, When reduced below 20% Life, release a shockwave that knocks all enemies back. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.
Diamond Skin, Enduring Skin rune, Cooldown: 15 seconds. Transform your skin to diamond for 8 seconds, absorbing up to 10853 damage from incoming attacks.
High DPS Range + Slow
This will be painful when my slow time / teleport / diamond is on CD, I would probably never make it if these missles are tough to dodge and heavy on hit.
Slow Time, Perpetuity rune, Cooldown: 16 seconds, Invoke a bubble of warped time and space for 8 seconds, reducing enemy attack speed by 20% and movement speed by 30%. This bubble also slows the movement of enemy projectiles by 90%.
Ultra Fast Melee "Follower"
Always the most typical encounters in Diablo 2 in Act 3 / 4, I bet the legacy "lag" will carry.....
Frost Nova, Cold Snap rune, Cooldown: 9 seconds, Blast nearby enemies with an explosion of ice and freeze them for 3 seconds. Slow Time, Miasma rune, Slow Time effects cling to enemies for 3 seconds after they have left the bubble. Ice Armor, Crystallized rune Unstable Anomaly
Ultra Fast Range "Follower"
Should be fairly easy to get these off hook, as long as we have teleport without not lag.
Slow Time, Perpetuity rune
Explosions after killing blow
I hope "21707" is a safe number, delivering the final blow.
Diamond Skin, Crystal Shell rune, Increases the maximum amount of damage absorbed to 21707 damage. Frost Nova, Cold Snap rune Ice Armor, Crystallized rune Slow Time, Miasma rune
"Roomate's" Meteor strike
The key would be getting out of the room before Meteors land. If I ever have the courage to tank these however, I guess I would find the following useful beside Familiar, Ancient Guardian rune or slow time.
Energy Armor, Prismatic Armorrune, Focus your energies, increasing your Armor by 65% and all of your resistances by 40%, but decreasing your maximum Arcane Power by 20. Lasts 120 seconds.
Wall prison + High Melee DPS
If I can't teleport, I'll just wait for the wall to wear off with nova / diamond skin to help.
Should allow you to deal with most of these problems. Very high single target DPS with no cost and mirror image + teleport to keep you alive while still killing mobs relatively quick with a powered up disintegrate.
Should allow you to deal with most of these problems. Very high single target DPS with no cost and mirror image + teleport to keep you alive while still killing mobs relatively quick with a powered up disintegrate.
With no generators and only two dps skills which require being rooted on the spot to do damage? Leaving yourself open quite a bit there.
Magic Missile + Attunement and another high AP use skill would be better.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
And may the odds be ever in your favour. Emmo#2406
Should allow you to deal with most of these problems. Very high single target DPS with no cost and mirror image + teleport to keep you alive while still killing mobs relatively quick with a powered up disintegrate.
With no generators and only two dps skills which require being rooted on the spot to do damage? Leaving yourself open quite a bit there.
Magic Missile + Attunement and another high AP use skill would be better.
Magic Missile deals less then half the damage of Ray of Frost though. Makes me wonder if the additional AP gain will in any way be worth it.
Should allow you to deal with most of these problems. Very high single target DPS with no cost and mirror image + teleport to keep you alive while still killing mobs relatively quick with a powered up disintegrate.
With no generators and only two dps skills which require being rooted on the spot to do damage? Leaving yourself open quite a bit there.
Magic Missile + Attunement and another high AP use skill would be better.
Magic Missile deals less then half the damage of Ray of Frost though. Makes me wonder if the additional AP gain will in any way be worth it.
without any passives or signature spells to regain your AP back . . . ur gonna be a sitting duck shooting your ray of frost. and glass cannon might be ok early game, late game it seems like a death trap to me . . . just my 2c
Magic Missile deals less then half the damage of Ray of Frost though. Makes me wonder if the additional AP gain will in any way be worth it.
It's not about the damage done for that choice. Simply having Distinegrate and Ray of Frost as your only damage choice is bad because they both root you in place while you do damage. You can easily get swamped in such situations. You could do with at least one fire and forget skill.
Also not having an AP generator will harm your overall dps in the long-run.
This is why I would go MM with Attunement for AP generation. The second skill doesn't really matter and can be switched around depending on situation.
That's if you plan on going the 2 dps spells approach.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
And may the odds be ever in your favour. Emmo#2406
without any passives or signature spells to regain your AP back . . . ur gonna be a sitting duck shooting your ray of frost. and glass cannon might be ok early game, late game it seems like a death trap to me . . . just my 2c
Judging from beta this is incorrect. Signature spells don't actually be default help you regain AP anyhow. And AP regeneration is pretty good by default, AP cost of the spells I've chosen is low as well.
But seeing how the tooltip on cold blood is supposedly bugged. And the real cost is 10-12 AP / sec the build is unlikely to work.
Cold Blood is bugged as many people suggested on the forums. AP management is a interesting topic, but it is not the purpose of this thread.
I was trying to collecting idea from all possible deadly encounters for Wizzard. And from all these selecting the more / most useful skill(s) which handles the majority of these situations.
one of the reason why i picked wizard was because the have so options for escaping sticky situations, with diamond skin , teleport, mirrior image on relatively short cool downs you have the option of essentially chain the abilities together and have all the cool down reset by the time you cycle through all of them. combine that with the ability to mass crowd control with temporal flux and disintegrate you can be kiting an entire room full of monsters. xD
sorry for going off topic OP, but can you tell me what magic card your avatar is? i can seem to remember it xD
one of the reason why i picked wizard was because the have so options for escaping sticky situations, with diamond skin , teleport, mirrior image on relatively short cool downs you have the option of essentially chain the abilities together and have all the cool down reset by the time you cycle through all of them. combine that with the ability to mass crowd control with temporal flux and disintegrate you can be kiting an entire room full of monsters. xD
sorry for going off topic OP, but can you tell me what magic card your avatar is? i can seem to remember it xD
Wizzard is going to be so much fan to play with, I feel its just not the same as in D2, where we can still have so much nuking power without giving up too much on the survival. Now thanks for the 6 skill slots, we have to be careful and make sure to choose the most efficient ones, else we'll have to sacrifice a bit on the DPS.
Nice catch lol, it is from the 4th, cost 3BB, Abomination, "At end of combat,destroy all green or white creatures blocking or blocked by Abomination. Art - Mark Tedin." 2/6.
Nice write up on the skills - there are certain skills that I also feel are somewhat needed by a wizard. I tend to think energy armor is better then ice armor; but guess well see how it works in game.
Thanks man, I feel stupid not to include Energy Armor with Force Armor rune in the useful skill list. Fixed now.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Pure assumptions as I had not played inferno. Hope this will make people who are not very familar with casters as general or Diablo casters to gain some ideas on the possible death traps and prepare them.
Some skills I reckon are essential to have in inferno. I will try not mention them repeatly in specific death encounter. They are worthy to have in almost every way.
Very usual skills in almost every encounter:
Teleport, Wormhole rune, Cooldown: 16 seconds. Teleport through the ether to the selected location up to 35 yards away, there is a 1 second delay before the cooldown begins, allowing you to Teleport again.
Blur, Decreases melee damage taken by 20%.
Illusionist, Whenever you suffer more than 15% of your Life in a single hit, the cooldowns on Mirror Image and Teleport are automatically reset.
Familiar, Ancient Guardian rune, Summon a companion that will attack your targets for 20% weapon damage as Arcane. This companion cannot be targeted or damaged by enemies and lasts for 5 minutes. When you are below 35% Life the Familiar will fully absorb damage from 1 attack every 6 seconds.
Evocation, Reduces all cooldowns by 15%.
Energy Armor, Force Armor rune, Focus your energies, increasing your Armor by 65% but decreasing your maximum Arcane Power by 20, incoming attacks that would deal more than 35% of your maximum Life are reduced to deal 35% of your maximum Life instead. Lasts 120 seconds. (Many thanks, djxput)
High DPS Melee + Crowd Control - Fear / Hex
Lost control completely, I guess I'll have to bet on luck and armor to get through this while keep smashing on the healing pot...
Ice Armor, Crystallized rune, Surround yourself in a barrier of ice. Melee attackers are either Chilled or Frozen for 2 seconds. Lasts 120 seconds. Whenever you are struck by a melee attack, your Armor is increased by 15% for 30 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times.
Unstable Anomaly, When reduced below 20% Life, release a shockwave that knocks all enemies back. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.
Diamond Skin, Enduring Skin rune, Cooldown: 15 seconds. Transform your skin to diamond for 8 seconds, absorbing up to 10853 damage from incoming attacks.
High DPS Range + Slow
This will be painful when my slow time / teleport / diamond is on CD, I would probably never make it if these missles are tough to dodge and heavy on hit.
Slow Time, Perpetuity rune, Cooldown: 16 seconds, Invoke a bubble of warped time and space for 8 seconds, reducing enemy attack speed by 20% and movement speed by 30%. This bubble also slows the movement of enemy projectiles by 90%.
Ultra Fast Melee "Follower"
Always the most typical encounters in Diablo 2 in Act 3 / 4, I bet the legacy "lag" will carry.....
Frost Nova, Cold Snap rune, Cooldown: 9 seconds, Blast nearby enemies with an explosion of ice and freeze them for 3 seconds.
Slow Time, Miasma rune, Slow Time effects cling to enemies for 3 seconds after they have left the bubble.
Ice Armor, Crystallized rune
Unstable Anomaly
Ultra Fast Range "Follower"
Should be fairly easy to get these off hook, as long as we have teleport without not lag.
Slow Time, Perpetuity rune
Explosions after killing blow
I hope "21707" is a safe number, delivering the final blow.
Diamond Skin, Crystal Shell rune, Increases the maximum amount of damage absorbed to 21707 damage.
Frost Nova, Cold Snap rune
Ice Armor, Crystallized rune
Slow Time, Miasma rune
"Roomate's" Meteor strike
The key would be getting out of the room before Meteors land. If I ever have the courage to tank these however, I guess I would find the following useful beside Familiar, Ancient Guardian rune or slow time.
Energy Armor, Prismatic Armorrune, Focus your energies, increasing your Armor by 65% and all of your resistances by 40%, but decreasing your maximum Arcane Power by 20. Lasts 120 seconds.
Wall prison + High Melee DPS
If I can't teleport, I'll just wait for the wall to wear off with nova / diamond skin to help.
Frost Nova, Cold Snap rune
Diamond Skin, Crystal Shell rune
Any ideas welcome.
Can't wait to get the game and die trying inferno
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZiQPSO!WYd!bbaZcc
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZiQPSO!WYd!bbYZcc
Should allow you to deal with most of these problems. Very high single target DPS with no cost and mirror image + teleport to keep you alive while still killing mobs relatively quick with a powered up disintegrate.
With no generators and only two dps skills which require being rooted on the spot to do damage? Leaving yourself open quite a bit there.
Magic Missile + Attunement and another high AP use skill would be better.
And may the odds be ever in your favour.
Emmo#2406
Magic Missile deals less then half the damage of Ray of Frost though. Makes me wonder if the additional AP gain will in any way be worth it.
without any passives or signature spells to regain your AP back . . . ur gonna be a sitting duck shooting your ray of frost. and glass cannon might be ok early game, late game it seems like a death trap to me . . . just my 2c
It's not about the damage done for that choice. Simply having Distinegrate and Ray of Frost as your only damage choice is bad because they both root you in place while you do damage. You can easily get swamped in such situations. You could do with at least one fire and forget skill.
Also not having an AP generator will harm your overall dps in the long-run.
This is why I would go MM with Attunement for AP generation. The second skill doesn't really matter and can be switched around depending on situation.
That's if you plan on going the 2 dps spells approach.
And may the odds be ever in your favour.
Emmo#2406
Judging from beta this is incorrect. Signature spells don't actually be default help you regain AP anyhow. And AP regeneration is pretty good by default, AP cost of the spells I've chosen is low as well.
But seeing how the tooltip on cold blood is supposedly bugged. And the real cost is 10-12 AP / sec the build is unlikely to work.
Cold Blood is bugged as many people suggested on the forums. AP management is a interesting topic, but it is not the purpose of this thread.
I was trying to collecting idea from all possible deadly encounters for Wizzard. And from all these selecting the more / most useful skill(s) which handles the majority of these situations.
sorry for going off topic OP, but can you tell me what magic card your avatar is? i can seem to remember it xD
Wizzard is going to be so much fan to play with, I feel its just not the same as in D2, where we can still have so much nuking power without giving up too much on the survival. Now thanks for the 6 skill slots, we have to be careful and make sure to choose the most efficient ones, else we'll have to sacrifice a bit on the DPS.
Nice catch lol, it is from the 4th, cost 3BB, Abomination, "At end of combat,destroy all green or white creatures blocking or blocked by Abomination. Art - Mark Tedin." 2/6.
Thanks man, I feel stupid not to include Energy Armor with Force Armor rune in the useful skill list. Fixed now.