This got NERFED with the Nerf bat in the face - If the damage you recieve does more than 100% of your health - you die. I'll leave this the way I had it for posterity:
Hey Wizard Fans,
I'll pretty this up later, but I wanted to do my first attempt at a guide, now that I feel this build is working well enough to justify it.
I am currently Farming Act 3 - Start through Boss 1 and having really good success and getting some awesome loot! - As you may know, Act 3 is where you start finding the best, of the best (Archon) armor and weapons.
Many of you I'm sure know about the heart of this build, but I'll lay it out here just in case.
LMB Skill: Hydra: Venom Hydra
This skill is super powerfull and very cheap to cast. Its perfectly suited for your LMB as you nearly always have enough AP to cast it and you only need to cast it once if you plan on fighting in the same area. Its also your Primary DPS if you need to kite (often!)
RMB Skill: Disintegrate: Chaos Nexus
Your Primary Nuke - The Rune effect makes it more deadly when monsters get close to you, which is perfect for a glass cannon that doesn't want to take hits. With enough damage (About 20k to comfortably start act 1 Inferno) this melts normal mobs, and, combined with Diamond skin, gives you 6 seconds of Face Melting time on Rares and Champions.
1 Button Skill: Energy Armor: Force Armor
The heart of the build, and the reason we can farm inferno so quickly and with realitive ease and with out amazing gear. You only ever Take 35% Damage! What can kill you are: Standing in Fire, Poison or any other fast ticking damage, or getting hit by 3 monsters at one time. But, avoid that, and your golden. With this rune, you want to have as little health as possible. Right now I only have 8K health, and it would be less, but my weapon (679 dps, 170 int, 16% APS) also has 100 Vit on it, looking to replace it though. The reason you want low health is two fold - With small amounts of health, you only take 2.5-3.5K damage when you get hit, that amount gets taken from your Dimond Skin shield - so it makes your shield POWERFUL for inferno. Also, with enough Life Regen on gear, you will regen back your 35% so fast, you almost will not notice you got hit. More details in the gear section.
2 Button Skill: Blizzard: Grasping Chill
Costs ALOT of AP, but allows you to kill some champion packs you might otherwise not be able to by kiting. 60% slow and damage is very powerfull and can help set up perfect clumps of the minions to turn, pop diamond skin and Blast with Disintegrate! - Also, running and droping Blizzard/Hydra will net you some kills by just running to. When you reach the end of your kite area, cast Blizzard again, hit Diamond Skin and run back the other way. Of course, Fire Chain combined with Vortex is nearly immpossible
3 Button Skill: Magic Weapon: Force Weapon
You can almost not help yourself from taking this. I imagine with alot of gear (35-40k with out it damage) you could then take it away and add some more utility - but right now, with out Magic weapon I have 25-27K damage (at work dont see specifics) with Magic Weapon, that baloons to 32K damage. Yes please! It makes Disintegrate amazing and melting demons.
4 Button Skill: Diamond Skin: Crystal Shell
You have to have a skill that lets your stand and do damage - thats exactly when this does combined with a low health pool and Force Armor. This allows you to get out of tight spots and continue you kite (if necessary) or just an "OH CRAP" button if your about to get swarmed by ambushers.
Passive 1: Glass Cannon
You don't care about health here, or armor.. or anything like that. So this passive is a no brainer. Take it!
Passive 2: Galvanizing Ward
Your primary stat besides Intelect for this build (see gear section) is +Life Regen - This is a must!
Passive 3: Astral Presence
Counteracts the the debuff from Force Armor, and gives you more regen! You need regen badly, especialy since its not a stat! (Why Blizzard!!!)
Gear:
Rather than listing specific items, I'll list what I feel your primary stats should be and in order of importance:
Intelect > NO Vitality > + Life Regen > Dextarity (Dodge) > +Attack Speed (You usually don't have long to cast Disinegrate any way,may as well get the most of it!) Magic Find
After that - everything is gravy - Crit is good, Crit Damage is good - Stuff to avoid:
Vitality (Of course), +Armor, +Resists, +Health Globe Heals
What do you need to start?
To Begin Act 1, I would say you need a good 450-500 damage 1 hander and a solid off hand sphere (You can start sooner, but that is a good place to shoot for).
I'll pretty this up later, was just posting from work! (First day back from Diablocation!)
EDIT* THought of a quick tidbit - With such a low health pool you can go back to nightmare/hell to stock up on cheaper health potions (rather than the 610 gold ones) So this build saves you money also!
Just curious - why is it best to avoid +res gear? I know you get res with INT, just thought it would still help against fire, poison etc. Or is it that the effects are so great in inferno, it becomes moot?
Just curious - why is it best to avoid +res gear? I know you get res with INT, just thought it would still help against fire, poison etc. Or is it that the effects are so great in inferno, it becomes moot?
Hey Digital,
Its not so much you need to avoid it, it doesnt hurt you (like Vitality does) it just doesn't help AT ALL. Not with this build and not in inferno. I supose, if you got enough, you would slow down the ticking damage (from fire chains, poison pools, desecrator pools) a bit, but, if you your using this correctly, you will die so fast if your in those (with out diamond skin) it wouldn't matter.
As for big hits from spels, and explosions, you would need an INSANE amount of resitance to make it do less than 35% of your health, in fact I'm sure its not even possible to do it with a health pool of only 6-8k.
So, better wording is: AVOID vitality, the other stats I listed, you don't need to avoid, only know that they don't help - so don't go for them.
Was thinking about the same build once I start Inferno.
I have some concerns about the AP - do you ever get AP starved when melting packs of non-elites? Right now on Hell I have like 140 AP and some really tough non-elites die when I have 10 AP left after channeling disintegrate. I feel like with 100-110 AP it may become a problem.
Also, do you think this build is viable with no life regen on items (i.e. only templar's passive + galvanizing ward)?
Was thinking about the same build once I start Inferno.
I have some concerns about the AP - do you ever get AP starved when melting packs of non-elites? Right now on Hell I have like 140 AP and some really tough non-elites die when I have 10 AP left after channeling disintegrate. I feel like with 100-110 AP it may become a problem.
Also, do you think this build is viable with no life regen on items (i.e. only templar's passive + galvanizing ward)?
Hey,
I am using both Galv and the Temps passive (forgot to add a Follower section, will tonght) - its quite a bit - but with a few great pieces of Life regen gear (I have +200 on my chest and +150 on the belt, and several other small amounts) it really starts being amazing. You take a hit and go from 8K to 5.5K and with in 1-2 seconds your full again. So rather than being: Boom, Boom, Dead, its more like Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Dead. The more Life Regen you have the more Booms you can take and in shorter succession.
As for the AP question, I found Belial's Add phase very difficult because of AP starvation (in inferno) - Basically, normal mobs can start to die too slow inthe end of Act 2 and into act 3, but with well placed Hydras and Blizzard, then Disintegrate I havent had problems yet too much. More often than not, if you pour your entire AP into a super Attack Speed increasec (my APS is 2.05) you burn all your AP very fast but do INSANE damage. If anything is left (in a normal pack) I litteraly just Shift Click Mele them down - with Force Armor and Massive Regen, you can just stand and Mele 1-3 regular mobs most the time. They usually almost dead by that point any way.
The force armor/DS seems to be the most viable survivalcombo for mages as of now, but the most important skill for this combo is definately critical mass.
This is a must have skill for any mage 50+ IMO. Combined with a weapon that adds AP on critical hits and good crit gear this will give you almost constant DS, Frost nova and other cooldown skills. (With Frost nova - deep freeze activated you can easily hit 35% crit chance).
If you play your cards right you crit atleast once a sec on big packs, thus cooldowns melt away and your AP regen is greatly increased.
But the offensive spells can easily be swapped out, currently not running Force armor as it is not needed, but the 5% crit is not key either (can be replaced with diff. gear) so NP changing that around.
The 20% more dmg on Slow time REALLY helps I feel, same with the dot from spectral blades.
@Snowhammer - thank you so much for this! This is what I was looking to do in another thread and I'm glad to read some handy tips already. I too use Force Armor and it never occured to me that the more Vitality I have the more the hit can affect me. As is the case with a true glass cannon, I can't survive more than 3 melee hits and if a lob of mortar fire from Champion packs catches me on Diamond Skin cooldown, than I done for. My current attribute breakdown is Int/Vit/Str/Life steal - according to your build that I'm excited to try, I'm hitting the wrong ones. My first instinct was to look for higher strength to be able to absorb those unfortunate hits better - but I think I'll try the dex route. I started looking for a lot of life steal as I assumed that would be a constant life regen from all the dps you put out - but it sounds like regular life regen is better?
Question: What follower do you use?
Question: Thoughts on one-hander vs two hander and what off-hander you'd look for.
Also - talk a bit about if you can the choice of Disentigrate over another spell. I've read that DS doesn't crit and since its channeled, it can be tricky with kiting. My build: http://us.battle.net...RXOS!YXf!c.baYZ I prefer to be able to stop running, throw out 3 orbs and then continue to kite. I also love Spectral Blade with the reach, because as the mob is at their last 20% health, I can throw on DS and spam blades and take them down all most as fast.
Why do you say to go after crit gear and crit damage gear? Is it for Blizzard? Is it for Venom Hydra?
Disintegrate -cannot- crit. The only thing that can crit is the 40% side-lasers, because its a direct attack and no ta continuous beam.
Take a very slow 2hander and something like Diamond Prism and/or Lightning Armor with Reduced AP cost. It will allow you to beam for ridiculous amounts of time, and then start beaming stuff. You'll never see a crit as long as you arent runed for Chaos Nexus.
nice guide. If you have low life to make the build work ofc, how do you deal with plague/desecrator/fire? on bosses there are also times where u have plague all over the place like belial and that fire from the butcher I suppose would kill you with such lowlife? Im guessing you would have to avoid those at all costs, how do u manage?
nice guide. If you have low life to make the build work ofc, how do you deal with plague/desecrator/fire? on bosses there are also times where u have plague all over the place like belial and that fire from the butcher I suppose would kill you with such lowlife? Im guessing you would have to avoid those at all costs, how do u manage?
Belial's garbage on the ground can be avoided completely.
nice guide. If you have low life to make the build work ofc, how do you deal with plague/desecrator/fire? on bosses there are also times where u have plague all over the place like belial and that fire from the butcher I suppose would kill you with such lowlife? Im guessing you would have to avoid those at all costs, how do u manage?
There's no plague/desecrator/fire on Belial fight. Those green spots are marks where he'll hit soon. If you have enough regen/life on hit/life leech I think you can stand still and DPS for the whole phase 2.
In the Butcher fight and any other boss fight there's plenty of time to get out of the AOE.
Diamond skin has no cooldown plain and simple. There is no 'kiting things forever' you just cast wave of force when a mob reaches melee and repeat every single time that happens while running in a circle around the ranged mobs/mortar affix guys. Neither Wave nor Diamond is ever on cooldown. I have 25% crit, 1.9 aps, 17k listed damage and about 24k life. I steamroll everything except jailor/mortar. You can't even be killed when trapped with waller because you just alternate diamond skin and wave of force so you don't AP starve yourself with Wave spam. Living lightning also keeps you at a near perma 5 stack of Dynamo giving you +75% damage on Hydra and Wave basically every cast.
Swap out Wave of Force for Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction for a build that facetanks Hell Diablo and kills him in under 2 minutes. For group play swap your Rclick over to Archon and drop Dynamo for Glass Cannon. Trust me Archon has basically no CD either. Cast lightning a few times and watch your Archon button light up. I wish I could find better gear with less Vitality for better FA cheese because than I would literally be invulnerable. I assure you this build has 0 cd times because of the way Living Lightning and Venom Weapon deal dmg. All those lightning hits and the DoT left by Venom Weapon(on every mob your lit hits) count as crits for your Critical Mass.
To answer some of the questions about "How do you survive DoT's and fire?" with the 0 Vitality build. Well Inferno mode DoT's will tick for more than 35% of your life in a 0 Vitality build and tick at the same speed if not slower than life regen. You don't actually take any damage from DoT's cause every single tick is reduced to the 35% max.
Diamond skin has no cooldown plain and simple. There is no 'kiting things forever' you just cast wave of force when a mob reaches melee and repeat every single time that happens while running in a circle around the ranged mobs/mortar affix guys. Neither Wave nor Diamond is ever on cooldown. I have 25% crit, 1.9 aps, 17k listed damage and about 24k life. I steamroll everything except jailor/mortar. You can't even be killed when trapped with waller because you just alternate diamond skin and wave of force so you don't AP starve yourself with Wave spam. Living lightning also keeps you at a near perma 5 stack of Dynamo giving you +75% damage on Hydra and Wave basically every cast.
Swap out Wave of Force for Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction for a build that facetanks Hell Diablo and kills him in under 2 minutes. For group play swap your Rclick over to Archon and drop Dynamo for Glass Cannon. Trust me Archon has basically no CD either. Cast lightning a few times and watch your Archon button light up. I wish I could find better gear with less Vitality for better FA cheese because than I would literally be invulnerable. I assure you this build has 0 cd times because of the way Living Lightning and Venom Weapon deal dmg. All those lightning hits and the DoT left by Venom Weapon(on every mob your lit hits) count as crits for your Critical Mass.
To answer some of the questions about "How do you survive DoT's and fire?" with the 0 Vitality build. Well Inferno mode DoT's will tick for more than 35% of your life in a 0 Vitality build and tick at the same speed if not slower than life regen. You don't actually take any damage from DoT's cause every single tick is reduced to the 35% max.
Happy hunting.
I just started Inferno and I gave this a shot. So far it seems pretty nice! I'm still dropping all my vitality and my dps is only about 11k, so hopefully I can survive until I get some gear.
First, let me say, I am reading here at work that between last night when I logged off and this morning, Force Armor got Nerfed/Changed/Bugged or somthing - we aren't sure yet as there was no mention in the notes. I'll respond to this as though the build still works, but if they indeed took Force armor out of the game, we may have to go back to the drawing board.
@Snowhammer - thank you so much for this! This is what I was looking to do in another thread and I'm glad to read some handy tips already. I too use Force Armor and it never occured to me that the more Vitality I have the more the hit can affect me. As is the case with a true glass cannon, I can't survive more than 3 melee hits and if a lob of mortar fire from Champion packs catches me on Diamond Skin cooldown, than I done for. My current attribute breakdown is Int/Vit/Str/Life steal - according to your build that I'm excited to try, I'm hitting the wrong ones. My first instinct was to look for higher strength to be able to absorb those unfortunate hits better - but I think I'll try the dex route. I started looking for a lot of life steal as I assumed that would be a constant life regen from all the dps you put out - but it sounds like regular life regen is better?
Question: What follower do you use?
Question: Thoughts on one-hander vs two hander and what off-hander you'd look for.
Also - talk a bit about if you can the choice of Disentigrate over another spell. I've read that DS doesn't crit and since its channeled, it can be tricky with kiting. My build: http://us.battle.net...RXOS!YXf!c.baYZ I prefer to be able to stop running, throw out 3 orbs and then continue to kite. I also love Spectral Blade with the reach, because as the mob is at their last 20% health, I can throw on DS and spam blades and take them down all most as fast.
Thank you, thank you again!!!
Hey Polrayne,
Assuming the build still works, Life Regen is 100% the way to go - the lower your health and the highe ryour life regen, the faster you gain your 35% damage back. Now, Assuming this is nerfed, I'm going to guess they changed it to where Force Armor will reduce your damage to 35% IF it doesn't do enough damage to 1 shot you - that would drastically change the build and make stacking Vit important again.
I use the Templar, hes got 76K health right now and does a decent job at tanking - of course get the Life Regen talent - then I take the two heals and the stun.
Anything without Vit - I found a 1100 damage two hander last night and started using it over my 679 1 handed + off hand orbs. The two hander is more damage, but if I had to chose, I would go fast 1 hander + off hand that both had + APS. The reason APS is awesome is that the more your have the faster you can dump a full AP into Disintegrate. You usually dont have alot of time (even more soo if this nerf is true) - so to me, Ideal for this build is Fast 1 hander + good +60-250ish off hand both with APS.
When I wrote this guide, I hadnt yet noticed Disintegrate doesn't crit - however - I still think its the best spell (especially stacking APS). It hits EVERYthing in a line and as they get closer hits them even harder - it makes killing trash (which actually gets a bit hard later in the game) relatively easy. AND you can use yoru Diamond Skin (again prenerf - if there is a nerf) to stand and Beam all 3-4 Rares at once. My Strat is usualy run, kite, get my Temp to block them in a door / stairs / hole in the ground - then turn spam beam - when they notice me and come towards me - pop diamond skin and beam them some more - in act 3 - 5-6 cycles of that = dead rare pack.
Why do you say to go after crit gear and crit damage gear? Is it for Blizzard? Is it for Venom Hydra?
Disintegrate -cannot- crit. The only thing that can crit is the 40% side-lasers, because its a direct attack and no ta continuous beam.
Take a very slow 2hander and something like Diamond Prism and/or Lightning Armor with Reduced AP cost. It will allow you to beam for ridiculous amounts of time, and then start beaming stuff. You'll never see a crit as long as you arent runed for Chaos Nexus.
I now know it doesn't crit - but I still say (if this build isnt nerfed) that getting crit is better than alot of other stuff - you don't need surviveability - if you gear rolled Int Life Regen Dex MF APS - Crit is better than nothing - even if its only the 40% beams that can crit.
nice guide. If you have low life to make the build work ofc, how do you deal with plague/desecrator/fire? on bosses there are also times where u have plague all over the place like belial and that fire from the butcher I suppose would kill you with such lowlife? Im guessing you would have to avoid those at all costs, how do u manage?
Plagued is only a problem if they have Vortex - and less so - also if they have teleport. Desecrator gives you about 1.5 seconds to move, so no problem there unless they have Jailor - Molten isn't a problem unless they have vortex or SUPER fast and surround you.
The best way to kill packs that have the above is to use Line of sight. Lets say you are fighting a Poinson / Vortex rare pack. Find an obstacle - doesn't have to be a big one.. a Tiny hole on the floor of a cave works. Position your self on the oposite side of the hole from the monsters - once they Vortex - you know they won't do it again for about 12 seconds. So now you attack - then - find another hole and do the same. I usualy find 2 such holes / structures and kite in between them.
Again, this whole build may be broken if Force Armor got changed - so - likely time to start finding a new build that works
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Hey Wizard Fans,
I'll pretty this up later, but I wanted to do my first attempt at a guide, now that I feel this build is working well enough to justify it.
I am currently Farming Act 3 - Start through Boss 1 and having really good success and getting some awesome loot! - As you may know, Act 3 is where you start finding the best, of the best (Archon) armor and weapons.
heres the build: http://us.battle.net...OlSX!YfX!bZYaZa
Many of you I'm sure know about the heart of this build, but I'll lay it out here just in case.
LMB Skill: Hydra: Venom Hydra
This skill is super powerfull and very cheap to cast. Its perfectly suited for your LMB as you nearly always have enough AP to cast it and you only need to cast it once if you plan on fighting in the same area. Its also your Primary DPS if you need to kite (often!)
RMB Skill: Disintegrate: Chaos Nexus
Your Primary Nuke - The Rune effect makes it more deadly when monsters get close to you, which is perfect for a glass cannon that doesn't want to take hits. With enough damage (About 20k to comfortably start act 1 Inferno) this melts normal mobs, and, combined with Diamond skin, gives you 6 seconds of Face Melting time on Rares and Champions.
1 Button Skill: Energy Armor: Force Armor
The heart of the build, and the reason we can farm inferno so quickly and with realitive ease and with out amazing gear. You only ever Take 35% Damage! What can kill you are: Standing in Fire, Poison or any other fast ticking damage, or getting hit by 3 monsters at one time. But, avoid that, and your golden. With this rune, you want to have as little health as possible. Right now I only have 8K health, and it would be less, but my weapon (679 dps, 170 int, 16% APS) also has 100 Vit on it, looking to replace it though. The reason you want low health is two fold - With small amounts of health, you only take 2.5-3.5K damage when you get hit, that amount gets taken from your Dimond Skin shield - so it makes your shield POWERFUL for inferno. Also, with enough Life Regen on gear, you will regen back your 35% so fast, you almost will not notice you got hit. More details in the gear section.
2 Button Skill: Blizzard: Grasping Chill
Costs ALOT of AP, but allows you to kill some champion packs you might otherwise not be able to by kiting. 60% slow and damage is very powerfull and can help set up perfect clumps of the minions to turn, pop diamond skin and Blast with Disintegrate! - Also, running and droping Blizzard/Hydra will net you some kills by just running to. When you reach the end of your kite area, cast Blizzard again, hit Diamond Skin and run back the other way. Of course, Fire Chain combined with Vortex is nearly immpossible
3 Button Skill: Magic Weapon: Force Weapon
You can almost not help yourself from taking this. I imagine with alot of gear (35-40k with out it damage) you could then take it away and add some more utility - but right now, with out Magic weapon I have 25-27K damage (at work dont see specifics) with Magic Weapon, that baloons to 32K damage. Yes please! It makes Disintegrate amazing and melting demons.
4 Button Skill: Diamond Skin: Crystal Shell
You have to have a skill that lets your stand and do damage - thats exactly when this does combined with a low health pool and Force Armor. This allows you to get out of tight spots and continue you kite (if necessary) or just an "OH CRAP" button if your about to get swarmed by ambushers.
Passive 1: Glass Cannon
You don't care about health here, or armor.. or anything like that. So this passive is a no brainer. Take it!
Passive 2: Galvanizing Ward
Your primary stat besides Intelect for this build (see gear section) is +Life Regen - This is a must!
Passive 3: Astral Presence
Counteracts the the debuff from Force Armor, and gives you more regen! You need regen badly, especialy since its not a stat! (Why Blizzard!!!)
Gear:
Rather than listing specific items, I'll list what I feel your primary stats should be and in order of importance:
Intelect > NO Vitality > + Life Regen > Dextarity (Dodge) > +Attack Speed (You usually don't have long to cast Disinegrate any way,may as well get the most of it!) Magic Find
After that - everything is gravy - Crit is good, Crit Damage is good - Stuff to avoid:
Vitality (Of course), +Armor, +Resists, +Health Globe Heals
What do you need to start?
To Begin Act 1, I would say you need a good 450-500 damage 1 hander and a solid off hand sphere (You can start sooner, but that is a good place to shoot for).
I'll pretty this up later, was just posting from work! (First day back from Diablocation!)
EDIT* THought of a quick tidbit - With such a low health pool you can go back to nightmare/hell to stock up on cheaper health potions (rather than the 610 gold ones) So this build saves you money also!
Hey Digital,
Its not so much you need to avoid it, it doesnt hurt you (like Vitality does) it just doesn't help AT ALL. Not with this build and not in inferno. I supose, if you got enough, you would slow down the ticking damage (from fire chains, poison pools, desecrator pools) a bit, but, if you your using this correctly, you will die so fast if your in those (with out diamond skin) it wouldn't matter.
As for big hits from spels, and explosions, you would need an INSANE amount of resitance to make it do less than 35% of your health, in fact I'm sure its not even possible to do it with a health pool of only 6-8k.
So, better wording is: AVOID vitality, the other stats I listed, you don't need to avoid, only know that they don't help - so don't go for them.
I have some concerns about the AP - do you ever get AP starved when melting packs of non-elites? Right now on Hell I have like 140 AP and some really tough non-elites die when I have 10 AP left after channeling disintegrate. I feel like with 100-110 AP it may become a problem.
Also, do you think this build is viable with no life regen on items (i.e. only templar's passive + galvanizing ward)?
Hey,
I am using both Galv and the Temps passive (forgot to add a Follower section, will tonght) - its quite a bit - but with a few great pieces of Life regen gear (I have +200 on my chest and +150 on the belt, and several other small amounts) it really starts being amazing. You take a hit and go from 8K to 5.5K and with in 1-2 seconds your full again. So rather than being: Boom, Boom, Dead, its more like Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Dead. The more Life Regen you have the more Booms you can take and in shorter succession.
As for the AP question, I found Belial's Add phase very difficult because of AP starvation (in inferno) - Basically, normal mobs can start to die too slow inthe end of Act 2 and into act 3, but with well placed Hydras and Blizzard, then Disintegrate I havent had problems yet too much. More often than not, if you pour your entire AP into a super Attack Speed increasec (my APS is 2.05) you burn all your AP very fast but do INSANE damage. If anything is left (in a normal pack) I litteraly just Shift Click Mele them down - with Force Armor and Massive Regen, you can just stand and Mele 1-3 regular mobs most the time. They usually almost dead by that point any way.
This is a must have skill for any mage 50+ IMO. Combined with a weapon that adds AP on critical hits and good crit gear this will give you almost constant DS, Frost nova and other cooldown skills. (With Frost nova - deep freeze activated you can easily hit 35% crit chance).
If you play your cards right you crit atleast once a sec on big packs, thus cooldowns melt away and your AP regen is greatly increased.
I am currently running the combo that has suited me best: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WRgYOX!gaf!abZYZa
But the offensive spells can easily be swapped out, currently not running Force armor as it is not needed, but the 5% crit is not key either (can be replaced with diff. gear) so NP changing that around.
The 20% more dmg on Slow time REALLY helps I feel, same with the dot from spectral blades.
Question: What follower do you use?
Question: Thoughts on one-hander vs two hander and what off-hander you'd look for.
Also - talk a bit about if you can the choice of Disentigrate over another spell. I've read that DS doesn't crit and since its channeled, it can be tricky with kiting. My build: http://us.battle.net...RXOS!YXf!c.baYZ I prefer to be able to stop running, throw out 3 orbs and then continue to kite. I also love Spectral Blade with the reach, because as the mob is at their last 20% health, I can throw on DS and spam blades and take them down all most as fast.
Thank you, thank you again!!!
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
Disintegrate -cannot- crit. The only thing that can crit is the 40% side-lasers, because its a direct attack and no ta continuous beam.
Take a very slow 2hander and something like Diamond Prism and/or Lightning Armor with Reduced AP cost. It will allow you to beam for ridiculous amounts of time, and then start beaming stuff. You'll never see a crit as long as you arent runed for Chaos Nexus.
Belial's garbage on the ground can be avoided completely.
In the Butcher fight and any other boss fight there's plenty of time to get out of the AOE.
It's the only one. Too bad the only real viable Inferno build is such a cheesy one.
I use FA and DS with no vita, but my skills are completly different than those proposed here.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bdSROX!Tfg!caYbYa
Diamond skin has no cooldown plain and simple. There is no 'kiting things forever' you just cast wave of force when a mob reaches melee and repeat every single time that happens while running in a circle around the ranged mobs/mortar affix guys. Neither Wave nor Diamond is ever on cooldown. I have 25% crit, 1.9 aps, 17k listed damage and about 24k life. I steamroll everything except jailor/mortar. You can't even be killed when trapped with waller because you just alternate diamond skin and wave of force so you don't AP starve yourself with Wave spam. Living lightning also keeps you at a near perma 5 stack of Dynamo giving you +75% damage on Hydra and Wave basically every cast.
Swap out Wave of Force for Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction for a build that facetanks Hell Diablo and kills him in under 2 minutes. For group play swap your Rclick over to Archon and drop Dynamo for Glass Cannon. Trust me Archon has basically no CD either. Cast lightning a few times and watch your Archon button light up. I wish I could find better gear with less Vitality for better FA cheese because than I would literally be invulnerable. I assure you this build has 0 cd times because of the way Living Lightning and Venom Weapon deal dmg. All those lightning hits and the DoT left by Venom Weapon(on every mob your lit hits) count as crits for your Critical Mass.
To answer some of the questions about "How do you survive DoT's and fire?" with the 0 Vitality build. Well Inferno mode DoT's will tick for more than 35% of your life in a 0 Vitality build and tick at the same speed if not slower than life regen. You don't actually take any damage from DoT's cause every single tick is reduced to the 35% max.
Happy hunting.
Hey Polrayne,
Assuming the build still works, Life Regen is 100% the way to go - the lower your health and the highe ryour life regen, the faster you gain your 35% damage back. Now, Assuming this is nerfed, I'm going to guess they changed it to where Force Armor will reduce your damage to 35% IF it doesn't do enough damage to 1 shot you - that would drastically change the build and make stacking Vit important again.
I use the Templar, hes got 76K health right now and does a decent job at tanking - of course get the Life Regen talent - then I take the two heals and the stun.
Anything without Vit - I found a 1100 damage two hander last night and started using it over my 679 1 handed + off hand orbs. The two hander is more damage, but if I had to chose, I would go fast 1 hander + off hand that both had + APS. The reason APS is awesome is that the more your have the faster you can dump a full AP into Disintegrate. You usually dont have alot of time (even more soo if this nerf is true) - so to me, Ideal for this build is Fast 1 hander + good +60-250ish off hand both with APS.
When I wrote this guide, I hadnt yet noticed Disintegrate doesn't crit - however - I still think its the best spell (especially stacking APS). It hits EVERYthing in a line and as they get closer hits them even harder - it makes killing trash (which actually gets a bit hard later in the game) relatively easy. AND you can use yoru Diamond Skin (again prenerf - if there is a nerf) to stand and Beam all 3-4 Rares at once. My Strat is usualy run, kite, get my Temp to block them in a door / stairs / hole in the ground - then turn spam beam - when they notice me and come towards me - pop diamond skin and beam them some more - in act 3 - 5-6 cycles of that = dead rare pack.
I now know it doesn't crit - but I still say (if this build isnt nerfed) that getting crit is better than alot of other stuff - you don't need surviveability - if you gear rolled Int Life Regen Dex MF APS - Crit is better than nothing - even if its only the 40% beams that can crit.
Plagued is only a problem if they have Vortex - and less so - also if they have teleport. Desecrator gives you about 1.5 seconds to move, so no problem there unless they have Jailor - Molten isn't a problem unless they have vortex or SUPER fast and surround you.
The best way to kill packs that have the above is to use Line of sight. Lets say you are fighting a Poinson / Vortex rare pack. Find an obstacle - doesn't have to be a big one.. a Tiny hole on the floor of a cave works. Position your self on the oposite side of the hole from the monsters - once they Vortex - you know they won't do it again for about 12 seconds. So now you attack - then - find another hole and do the same. I usualy find 2 such holes / structures and kite in between them.
Again, this whole build may be broken if Force Armor got changed - so - likely time to start finding a new build that works