Tap the source is very strong also and quite possibly better than obliteration orb. They are both completely viable though.
MasterFischer - I've never said this is the best build ever or that other builds aren't viable or that they aren't as good. This is just a build that I'm using that can tell you works completely fine for farming siegebreaker/azmo/ponies, and I thought other people might be interested in seeing it. If you like your build better, that's great, do your thing. This one does work though, and 2h are definitely a viable alternative to 1h+source for people who don't want to go that route for whatever reason, whether that's lack of money or just boredom with it.
I've been playing with this build lately and I really like it. Whimsy seemed much easier to me after going with this and I'm running act 3 now more comfortably then before. Right now I still don't have the gear to truly get the most from the orb crit build, but when I finally get there it'll be sweet.
I picked up a 1200'ish 2H the other day for cheap to play around with the 2H play and it worked fine. Right now my 1H combo gives me more Dmg and the source an additional 8.5 crit chance, so until I find a top end 2H and get the appropriate gear, I'm using the 1H combo with tap the source instead. I like the idea of building AP on crit, so I might try to put gear together for that and stick with a combo over a 1H but we'll see.
In any event, I'm glad I came across this thread, appreciate you Morphos for posting and taking the screens, and this has been a lot of fun. Piercing Orbs and Blizzard was really getting boring for me and I never liked the animation of orbs.
Thanks for sharing your build with us. I've started using a similar build exlusively now, coming from a blizzard/hydra build.
I bought a pretty good 2h to try with this but I ended up putting it back on the AH. Since I don't have quite the damage to 1-shot stuff I find it way easier to play with a faster 1h weapon. It just takes way too long to cast with a 1s 2hander, I get hit a lot while kiting.
I'm also becoming a fan of tap the source over obliteration for my case. I have minimal ias and okayish crit/crit-damage with a touch of AP on crit. I'm spamming orbs like mad and not having much low AP issues, I hope to get more AP on crit items as well though, so I can spam even more, good offhands are so expensive.
Regarding Hydras - I've come to prefer Arcane Hydra for mob clearing. It seems to have more up-front damage which makes more sense if the mobs are dying quicky and it adds the slowing effect. I find that most mobs just don't spend enough time in the venom pools for venom hydra to be better. Bosses on the other hand sit around enough for Venom to be worth it, I did end up switching back to Venom for my first Azmodan kill tonight.
Above all, the arcane orb build has been a refreshing and fun change from blizzard/hydra. It's nice doing direct damage blasts again! I hope this was coherent.. it's late here, I was up late trying to complete some progress before the nerf.
Prices on crit gear have gone up over the last week or so, probably due to people learning about the IAS nerf. When I bought that amulet a little over a week ago it was only like 2-3mil gold. Prices on the gold AH are also sort of inflated right now I think, probably due to a lot of items being listed on the RMAH. Hopefully all of that will settle down after the patch and the gear will become more attainable.
I'm happy that people are enjoying the build. As far as tap the source vs obliteration, I think tap the source is clearly better if you are using a 1h+orb and even with a 2h it might be better. With the 2 hand it also lets you drop astral presence, which is nice.
One thing I have been trying lately is replacing hydra altogether with archon. I find for regular white mobs I don't need hydra, arcane orb gets the job done by itself just fine. So on champ packs/bosses would I rather have hydra or archon? Archon can be hard to pull off because you are very vulnerable while in it, but if you are able to get into a good position and pop it and unload you can basically just melt a champ pack in a few seconds. It also trivializes certain boss fights, like Cydaea/Azmodan. So its kind of a gamble but when it works, it works great. When I run the archon build I also switch my teleport rune to fracture, so that I'll teleport to get the mimics right before popping archon, which makes it a little safer. So the archon build looks like this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#cmjOQS!YbU!YcaYYZ
Not sure whether evocation or critical mass is better for the 3rd passive.
Well, with 1.03, I have switched main from dh to wizard, and I have slowly replacing some of my ias gears with crit, will try this build today for sure.
How does it work without signature spell? I was gonna try this a while ago, just skeptical about not having enough ap to spam orb.
I have 1207 2H with socket and int, 0.9 speed, around 1700 int, 20% crit? and 110% crit dmg from socket + base, seems like this build is perfect for my gears as I will ditch all ias with crit/crit dmg.
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MasterFischer - I've never said this is the best build ever or that other builds aren't viable or that they aren't as good. This is just a build that I'm using that can tell you works completely fine for farming siegebreaker/azmo/ponies, and I thought other people might be interested in seeing it. If you like your build better, that's great, do your thing. This one does work though, and 2h are definitely a viable alternative to 1h+source for people who don't want to go that route for whatever reason, whether that's lack of money or just boredom with it.
said the other day I'd post a pic of the crits, here is one with my new weapon. 346k
I picked up a 1200'ish 2H the other day for cheap to play around with the 2H play and it worked fine. Right now my 1H combo gives me more Dmg and the source an additional 8.5 crit chance, so until I find a top end 2H and get the appropriate gear, I'm using the 1H combo with tap the source instead. I like the idea of building AP on crit, so I might try to put gear together for that and stick with a combo over a 1H but we'll see.
In any event, I'm glad I came across this thread, appreciate you Morphos for posting and taking the screens, and this has been a lot of fun. Piercing Orbs and Blizzard was really getting boring for me and I never liked the animation of orbs.
I bought a pretty good 2h to try with this but I ended up putting it back on the AH. Since I don't have quite the damage to 1-shot stuff I find it way easier to play with a faster 1h weapon. It just takes way too long to cast with a 1s 2hander, I get hit a lot while kiting.
I'm also becoming a fan of tap the source over obliteration for my case. I have minimal ias and okayish crit/crit-damage with a touch of AP on crit. I'm spamming orbs like mad and not having much low AP issues, I hope to get more AP on crit items as well though, so I can spam even more, good offhands are so expensive.
Regarding Hydras - I've come to prefer Arcane Hydra for mob clearing. It seems to have more up-front damage which makes more sense if the mobs are dying quicky and it adds the slowing effect. I find that most mobs just don't spend enough time in the venom pools for venom hydra to be better. Bosses on the other hand sit around enough for Venom to be worth it, I did end up switching back to Venom for my first Azmodan kill tonight.
Above all, the arcane orb build has been a refreshing and fun change from blizzard/hydra. It's nice doing direct damage blasts again! I hope this was coherent.. it's late here, I was up late trying to complete some progress before the nerf.
I'm happy that people are enjoying the build. As far as tap the source vs obliteration, I think tap the source is clearly better if you are using a 1h+orb and even with a 2h it might be better. With the 2 hand it also lets you drop astral presence, which is nice.
One thing I have been trying lately is replacing hydra altogether with archon. I find for regular white mobs I don't need hydra, arcane orb gets the job done by itself just fine. So on champ packs/bosses would I rather have hydra or archon? Archon can be hard to pull off because you are very vulnerable while in it, but if you are able to get into a good position and pop it and unload you can basically just melt a champ pack in a few seconds. It also trivializes certain boss fights, like Cydaea/Azmodan. So its kind of a gamble but when it works, it works great. When I run the archon build I also switch my teleport rune to fracture, so that I'll teleport to get the mimics right before popping archon, which makes it a little safer. So the archon build looks like this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#cmjOQS!YbU!YcaYYZ
Not sure whether evocation or critical mass is better for the 3rd passive.
How does it work without signature spell? I was gonna try this a while ago, just skeptical about not having enough ap to spam orb.
I have 1207 2H with socket and int, 0.9 speed, around 1700 int, 20% crit? and 110% crit dmg from socket + base, seems like this build is perfect for my gears as I will ditch all ias with crit/crit dmg.