I've grown very fond of archon while bringing my wiz up to 60. I'd love to really be nothing less than the same steam train into inferno. I realize the #1 limiting factor is gear.
has anyone reached the breakpoint to actually use archon to effectively farm act 1&2?
what stats do you tend to value?
what other skills do you use/ deem necessary?
For Act 1, just general gear improvements work. I know my mom (yes, she plays, is in Act 2 of Inferno with her Wizard) uses it still, she is around 20k DPS right now, average stats otherwise.
Things simply take longer to die, so don't expect everything to instantly melt before it until you are likely well over 30k DPS.
One piece of advice i have is make sure you have several items that increase the distance you pick up health and gold.
I have 3, 2x 7yards and 1x 6 yards and as my companion is an enchantress i don't have a meat shield.
So when i'm trapped in a stone wall, cornered and am using Archon (improved archon) on elites or big packs i can pick up health from those i kill at a distance, and theres a much better chance of survival.
23k damage, 39k health mostly using electrocute/surge of power, arcane orb/tap the source, diamond skin/crystal shell, blizzard/snowbound, energy armour/force armour, archon/improved archon, along with astral presence, glass conon and temporal flux.
Disclaimer: i'm no expert or elite gamer, use this to go through solo, doing act 1 for the 3rd time, farming for $ and items.
You don't need awesome gear to farm act 1 using archon. I'm currently progressing through act 4, and I farm act 1 with archon using half MF gear (around 25k dps, I'd say).
Dying every now and then when I'm too ambitious (or rather, too lazy to move), but usually not more than once or twice in a full run.
There's one great trick that helps, too : use arcane dynamo to get +75% damage on your archon
That's interesting, so if you used the boosted damage rune for archon, and then stacked dynamo on top of that you would have 400% disintigrate beams or whatever it is. That's crazy high.
I've been using Archon to farm ACT I as well and its fun. There are even some rare mobs that I can straight tank in it as well. It's super fast.
The only issue I run into is when I get a really long duration stacked up, and then run into an elite pack that I need my standard build to deal with properly, like reflects damage or something. But in ACT I at least I've found Archon to be a quick and easy solution to invulnerable minions packs, of course if you went venom blizzard build then they are pretty easy now anyway.
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That's interesting, so if you used the boosted damage rune for archon, and then stacked dynamo on top of that you would have 400% disintigrate beams or whatever it is. That's crazy high.
Not crazy high, but pretty decent
That's the build I used for Iskatu and Rakanoth Inferno, btw (obviously not with MF gear, though).
The only issue I run into is when I get a really long duration stacked up, and then run into an elite pack that I need my standard build to deal with properly, like reflects damage or something.
I've suicided myself on some reflect damage packs a couple times (note to self : check affixes before shooting). Otherwise, if you need to cancel the archon buff, just right-click on the buff icon
I'm guessing most of you are not in Act III and IV, Archon is useless in those acts because even with huge DPS you won't melt things, especially champ packs quick enough before they get to you. Then you are toast because Archon locks out all your 'Oh Shit' abilities like Wormhole and DS.
The Kiting wizard builds don't use archon because obviously it's a channelling spell requiring you to stand still, the opposite of kiting
Solo:
Archon also takes a stupidly long time to cooldown, 2 minutes, what are you guys doing, waiting 2 minutes to move further in the dungeon? Archon takes too long on CD, and requires you to stand still while lowering damage reduction. It just is not useful beyond act I/II, I haven't seen any effective archon builds yet for act III and IV, mainly because of the points I have mentioned.
Group:
It can be ok in group settings when you have a few good tanks, helps with elites & bosses, but again you have to sacrifice your survivability, one elite wanders over to you and bye bye, also typically you are better off without it because your main nuke doesn't take 2 minutes to reset. We have used it a couple times for elite farming, but honestly we find elites quicker then the CD time, so it was super inexpedient having to wait for it.
I'm guessing most of you are not in Act III and IV, Archon is useless in those acts because even with huge DPS you won't melt things, especially champ packs quick enough before they get to you. Then you are toast because Archon locks out all your 'Oh Shit' abilities like Wormhole and DS.
I agree, archon is situational in act 3/4, meaning it doesn't have its place in a farming build (unless you got awesome dps, I guess).
It's still useful when you're progressing through the content for bosses like Iskatu and Rakanoth.
Archon also takes a stupidly long time to cooldown, 2 minutes, what are you guys doing, waiting 2 minutes to move further in the dungeon? Archon takes too long on CD, and requires you to stand still while lowering damage reduction. It just is not useful beyond act I/II, I haven't seen any effective archon builds yet for act III and IV, mainly because of the points I have mentioned.
Archon lasts 15 secs + 1 sec/killed mob. You should be able to kill at least 30, maybe 45 mobs. That's only 1 min of archon downtime, not 2 mins.
Of course, this means you need something else to kill mobs when archon's on CD.
Group:
It can be ok in group settings when you have a few good tanks, helps with elites & bosses, but again you have to sacrifice your survivability, one elite wanders over to you and bye bye, also typically you are better off without it because your main nuke doesn't take 2 minutes to reset. We have used it a couple times for elite farming, but honestly we find elites quicker then the CD time, so it was super inexpedient having to wait for it.
If find archon very lackluster in a group. You need to kill stuff fast to keep the skill running, and the mobs' increased HP pool doesn't help. I only take it when I wanna help friends rush contents I'm overgeared for.
I'm guessing most of you are not in Act III and IV, Archon is useless in those acts because even with huge DPS you won't melt things, especially champ packs quick enough before they get to you. Then you are toast because Archon locks out all your 'Oh Shit' abilities like Wormhole and DS.
The Kiting wizard builds don't use archon because obviously it's a channelling spell requiring you to stand still, the opposite of kiting
Solo:
Archon also takes a stupidly long time to cooldown, 2 minutes, what are you guys doing, waiting 2 minutes to move further in the dungeon? Archon takes too long on CD, and requires you to stand still while lowering damage reduction. It just is not useful beyond act I/II, I haven't seen any effective archon builds yet for act III and IV, mainly because of the points I have mentioned.
Group:
It can be ok in group settings when you have a few good tanks, helps with elites & bosses, but again you have to sacrifice your survivability, one elite wanders over to you and bye bye, also typically you are better off without it because your main nuke doesn't take 2 minutes to reset. We have used it a couple times for elite farming, but honestly we find elites quicker then the CD time, so it was super inexpedient having to wait for it.
I can do 15 minute cydea/azmodan runs purely because of my archon build, by far the best skill in our arsenal ( BTW did you know the duration is increased by 1 second per kill? this basically means you can clear an entire dungeon while in archon.)... POST NERF i have just shy of 93000 dps(about 147k prenerf), and i f@#ing melt act 3 elites, the only thing that ever hinders melting is reflects dmg, luckily my weapon has about 2000 life on kill... so i just kill the crawlers that climb up to the paths and just stand there if you don't let them agro... i am able to do this while kiting back(BTW you can kite with archon, just move away with 12% run speed and you will keep distance...also because of the instantaneous attack animation of disintegrate you can put out 150k hits nonstop while back pedaling away)... pretty sure you shouldn't knock on archon if you haven't really used it at a higher gear level.... the average tick of disintegrate for me is like 160k dmg.... and if elites get close you can melee them for upwards of 500k crits... considering most elites don't have more than 2.5 million hp... you can easily melt them in sub 10 seconds...(also archon increases your defensive stats as well if you read the tooltip~)
stack this with scoundrel for damn near endless snare and you are good to go.
i have absolutely no problem farming in ANY boss in this game with 5 stacks.... granted my gear is far above the level recommended for any boss, but i acquired all that gear using this spec.
hopefully this helps, just try it out.
oh and incase you were wondering how to kill the bosses i do on my runs,
spider queen...
-pop hydra,
-pop archon...
-melt her until she dies, if she spawns the 4 adds or w.e during normal down phase, kill those to get 4 more seconds.
-with around 50k dps you can easily melt her before she flies away. but, incase you don't have enough dps... just save archon for the add phase and have like a 70 second duration with it to melt her to death right after.
toad face,
-use hydra/shock to burn down to first 80% marker, kill tower.. leave health orb in case,
-burn down just shy of the next marker indicating poolphase, at this point wait a couple seconds and he will collapse roof with bodies or w.e, move out of it immediately
-burn him to the next phase with shock, as soon as he starts the chitter chatter pop a new hydra, and archon. you will melt him before 4th pool(the one that spawns on you)
i have absolutely no problem farming in ANY boss in this game with 5 stacks.... granted my gear is far above the level recommended for any boss, but i acquired all that gear using this spec.
hopefully this helps, just try it out.
Funny, after clicking on your link to see the build I noticed for the first time that the pushable gem under the skill calculator spits out random builds.
And btw, I'm pretty sure archon is in for a nerf. Getting over 100k dps just makes this the way to go. Granted, right now 100k dps is surely not the majority, but there will be enough reaching high numbers pretty soon to make archon an overpowered skill, which was obvious for some time already.
Also, why dont you use temporal flux for archon? Doesnt the slow work with the laser beam? Should save you a little bit of kiting.
with blur/archon i can take upwards of 7-8 melee hits, so if they do get to me, i doubt they will not die before they kill me... (also having the scoundrel pretty much give you perma aoe snare.)
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has anyone reached the breakpoint to actually use archon to effectively farm act 1&2?
what stats do you tend to value?
what other skills do you use/ deem necessary?
thanks in adv.
Things simply take longer to die, so don't expect everything to instantly melt before it until you are likely well over 30k DPS.
I have 3, 2x 7yards and 1x 6 yards and as my companion is an enchantress i don't have a meat shield.
So when i'm trapped in a stone wall, cornered and am using Archon (improved archon) on elites or big packs i can pick up health from those i kill at a distance, and theres a much better chance of survival.
23k damage, 39k health mostly using electrocute/surge of power, arcane orb/tap the source, diamond skin/crystal shell, blizzard/snowbound, energy armour/force armour, archon/improved archon, along with astral presence, glass conon and temporal flux.
Disclaimer: i'm no expert or elite gamer, use this to go through solo, doing act 1 for the 3rd time, farming for $ and items.
Dying every now and then when I'm too ambitious (or rather, too lazy to move), but usually not more than once or twice in a full run.
There's one great trick that helps, too : use arcane dynamo to get +75% damage on your archon
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Taliesyn-2517/hero/66020932
I've been using Archon to farm ACT I as well and its fun. There are even some rare mobs that I can straight tank in it as well. It's super fast.
The only issue I run into is when I get a really long duration stacked up, and then run into an elite pack that I need my standard build to deal with properly, like reflects damage or something. But in ACT I at least I've found Archon to be a quick and easy solution to invulnerable minions packs, of course if you went venom blizzard build then they are pretty easy now anyway.
Tired of the same regurgitated blue posts? Want more in depth coverage of
the aspects of the game you want to know about? Check us out!
That's the build I used for Iskatu and Rakanoth Inferno, btw (obviously not with MF gear, though).
I've suicided myself on some reflect damage packs a couple times (note to self : check affixes before shooting). Otherwise, if you need to cancel the archon buff, just right-click on the buff icon
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Taliesyn-2517/hero/66020932
I'm not sure that arcane dynamo actually works, but it does consume the buff. So does venom hydra though, to no benefit, so its not really clear.
edit: typed "doesn't", instead of "does." And I think the poster below is correct, it only works on the first ability.
As a side note, I'm using the RMB to change into archon and never release the button until everything's dead, maybe that makes a difference?
[EDIT] That seems to actually be the case : only first spell cast as Archon getting the +75%. TL;DR : keep firing.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Taliesyn-2517/hero/66020932
The Kiting wizard builds don't use archon because obviously it's a channelling spell requiring you to stand still, the opposite of kiting
Solo:
Archon also takes a stupidly long time to cooldown, 2 minutes, what are you guys doing, waiting 2 minutes to move further in the dungeon? Archon takes too long on CD, and requires you to stand still while lowering damage reduction. It just is not useful beyond act I/II, I haven't seen any effective archon builds yet for act III and IV, mainly because of the points I have mentioned.
Group:
It can be ok in group settings when you have a few good tanks, helps with elites & bosses, but again you have to sacrifice your survivability, one elite wanders over to you and bye bye, also typically you are better off without it because your main nuke doesn't take 2 minutes to reset. We have used it a couple times for elite farming, but honestly we find elites quicker then the CD time, so it was super inexpedient having to wait for it.
It's still useful when you're progressing through the content for bosses like Iskatu and Rakanoth.
Archon lasts 15 secs + 1 sec/killed mob. You should be able to kill at least 30, maybe 45 mobs. That's only 1 min of archon downtime, not 2 mins.
Of course, this means you need something else to kill mobs when archon's on CD.
If find archon very lackluster in a group. You need to kill stuff fast to keep the skill running, and the mobs' increased HP pool doesn't help. I only take it when I wanna help friends rush contents I'm overgeared for.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Taliesyn-2517/hero/66020932
I can do 15 minute cydea/azmodan runs purely because of my archon build, by far the best skill in our arsenal ( BTW did you know the duration is increased by 1 second per kill? this basically means you can clear an entire dungeon while in archon.)... POST NERF i have just shy of 93000 dps(about 147k prenerf), and i f@#ing melt act 3 elites, the only thing that ever hinders melting is reflects dmg, luckily my weapon has about 2000 life on kill... so i just kill the crawlers that climb up to the paths and just stand there if you don't let them agro... i am able to do this while kiting back(BTW you can kite with archon, just move away with 12% run speed and you will keep distance...also because of the instantaneous attack animation of disintegrate you can put out 150k hits nonstop while back pedaling away)... pretty sure you shouldn't knock on archon if you haven't really used it at a higher gear level.... the average tick of disintegrate for me is like 160k dmg.... and if elites get close you can melee them for upwards of 500k crits... considering most elites don't have more than 2.5 million hp... you can easily melt them in sub 10 seconds...(also archon increases your defensive stats as well if you read the tooltip~)
stack this with scoundrel for damn near endless snare and you are good to go.
my build for Act 3/4 is as follows
http://us.battle.net...mOjS!aYf!bbcYaZ
i have absolutely no problem farming in ANY boss in this game with 5 stacks.... granted my gear is far above the level recommended for any boss, but i acquired all that gear using this spec.
hopefully this helps, just try it out.
oh and incase you were wondering how to kill the bosses i do on my runs,
spider queen...
-pop hydra,
-pop archon...
-melt her until she dies, if she spawns the 4 adds or w.e during normal down phase, kill those to get 4 more seconds.
-with around 50k dps you can easily melt her before she flies away. but, incase you don't have enough dps... just save archon for the add phase and have like a 70 second duration with it to melt her to death right after.
toad face,
-use hydra/shock to burn down to first 80% marker, kill tower.. leave health orb in case,
-burn down just shy of the next marker indicating poolphase, at this point wait a couple seconds and he will collapse roof with bodies or w.e, move out of it immediately
-burn him to the next phase with shock, as soon as he starts the chitter chatter pop a new hydra, and archon. you will melt him before 4th pool(the one that spawns on you)
with blur/archon i can take upwards of 7-8 melee hits, so if they do get to me, i doubt they will not die before they kill me... (also having the scoundrel pretty much give you perma aoe snare.)