FYI - I have 800ish resist, 800LOH, 8k armor, 32k dps, 51% crit (all buffed stats), 11 ap on crit, 34% block. I use a build without nova but better ranged capability due to teleport. (spectral blade-deep cuts/teleport (choice of rune)/diamond skin/explosive blast/twister-storm chaser, cm, arcane dynamo, prodigy).
I find difficulty with certain mixes of affixes and molten/arcane/freezing combos in naturally ranged mobs in late act3 (heart of sin and beyond). I plan on testing with safe passage on my TP to see if it helps with environmental damage deaths. I only die to arcane or invul minions with molten where the champion at the center also has descrate and frozen. I think increasing my defensive abilities will help.
Can you guys post the build you're using for this in A3? I haven't played my Wiz in a while but I do remember messing with a CM build a bit. Thanks. =)
The standard Melee Wizard build has shaped up to be: http://eu.battle.net...XYhO!gbW!YZaZcc
Change TP -Wormhole to whatever rune you like.
Evocate is optional and can be changed to nearly anything you like. Blur is common.
The standard Melee Wizard build needs 40% Crit and 15AP on crit to work.
That's the build I've been using with Blur instead of Evocate and Bone Chill rune on frost nova for extra damage. With 20 AP on crit and 43% crit or so I found I didn't need any reduction in the CD on frost nova. I haven't used it a lot though and I can see a lot of options to play with to suit your gear and preferences. I'm currently working on finding a good EHP balance with as much DPS as I can fit in since I have a 70k dps kiting set.
On a side note, I find Arcane mobs the most annoying, since I tend to not see them in time when they spawn next to me inside my tornados. Desecrator is an absolute joke at 400k EHP or higher with decent LoH since you can just stand in it all day. Fire chains on ranged is annoying and takes some creative placement (made much easier if you can bottleneck them, assuming they don't have teleport. Molten seems to hurt a bit but teleport makes repositioning super easy. Shielding is annoying when all the mobs shield as soon as you get into melee range, but if you can get a frost nova off that freezes most of them, they're pretty easy. I only fought one or two Invuln mobs and didn't have too much problem but I had 400k+EHP and opted to have them follow me to another elite group to give me more life return and make it easier to freeze lock the main guy.
Deepfreeze > bonechill imo unless you are fighting only 1 mob namely bosses or you just cant find more mobs for the champ pack
I like bonechill because I have enough crit to chain freeze a single mob and the extra damage is about the same as the extra damage from extra crit %. When I get champ packs, I tend to kill extra mobs too fast to really make much use of them so Deepfreeze tends to not be very effective against them for me. Basically trash mobs are so easy that I don't really care about them so whatever makes my life easier against elites is what I prefer.
Definitely want 35-40% crit and a minimum of 500 resist-all standing. The rest really depends on your specific build, and certain bits can slide around if you have something way over par (Vitality isn't as important if you have a crapload of Resist/Armor and 1500 LOH, for example).
I get asked this question a lot on my live-stream, so I think I have a pretty good response =)
Crit: It won't work at all unless you have at least 20%, but I would suggest waiting until you have at least 30% (That's when it starts working well)
All Resist:The more the better because it's going to keep your Diamon Skin from falling off. I would suggest having 400 for act 1, 700 for act 2 and 1000 for act 3 (with prismatic). You can do it with less than that, but some elite packs are going to be difficult
Armor: This is the MOST UNDER-VALUED STAT for CM Wizards. Armor does the EXACT same thing as AR, but for some reason no one talks about it. 10 points of armor gives the same reduction as 1 point of AR (keep that in mind when looking for gear). You could even argue that Armor is better than AR, since Energy Armor gives a bigger bonus to Armor than it does to AR. Try to have 8,000 for Act 3 (You'll want a shield)
LoH: You only need enough to fill up your health when Diamon Skin falls off: At least 500, but 1,000 is preferrable (Much more than 1000 is overkill IMO, unless you have a slow attack speed)
Arcane Power on Crit: This is mostly dependant on your Crit chance (for obvious reasons). You want at least 10, but if your Crit chance is low, you probably want more. A good goal would be to have your APoC multiplied by Crit chance equal about 500 (ex. 10 APoC and 50% Crit and you'll hardly ever run out of Arcane Power)
Vitality: Not that important for CM Wizards... at least 20k (If you have less than 25k you might try using Force Armor instead of Prismatic and see how it works for you)
Crit Hit Damage: Not necessary AT ALL for CM to work. However... this is usually the easiest way to add DPS once you have your defense in place
I have a YouTube video that explains it better... but I think it would be bad form to post it on here.
I hope this helps... PM me if you have any specific questions =)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Come hang out with us on Twitch (I Live-Stream on there from 8am - 3pm PST Every day): http://www.twitch.tv/archonthewizard We play a lot of different games, and I give away ALL the item drops =)
There is no numbers that anyone can give you that will prove accurate.
What you need to efficiently farm A3 is not going to be the same as anyone else. This is something that people do not understand, gear in this game is extremely important, but not as important as skill.
On my DH I farm Act 3 really well in 300% MF gear (including NV) and I have much less health, damage, and resists than my friends trying to get through Act 3 for his DHs progress.
The best answer anyone can give you is to grab some upgrades and go try it, if you don;t think you can do it efficiently enough then go get some more gear and try again.
As to LOH and stuff like that, it depends on how you play. On my Wizard (Inf Diablo kill) I just go straight damage and blow shit up as quickly as possible. I do pretty good in all the acts but I have yet to put together a MF set. I use a slow as hell 2 hander with life steal and gear for crit damage as much as possible. I do so much damage that my health is almost always topped off. Add energy armor/force armor to that and I am damn near unkillable so long as I don't over extend.
I will say this. I thank you all for this info. I'm new-"ish" to D3 and my first champ is a wizard. He's already lvl 60 but I had now clue what to do with him since then. Can barley do anything in inferno but my gear is crap also. Now I know "kinda" which direction to go in..angain thank you all.
I am now running archon build, but it feels i dont have enough dps yet... so I would like to invest some gold into CM. What should I change in my gear to make it work?
I am now running archon build, but it feels i dont have enough dps yet... so I would like to invest some gold into CM. What should I change in my gear to make it work?
Although your head has 250+ INT, i'd change it out for one with crit chance and APoC. Another option is your weapon. Although its badass for your current build, if you had some APoC on it, it would better suit this build. However, this is an invalid point if you change out the helmet as i said. Then your weapon would provide more dps.
Other than that, you need more crit chance to make CM effective, so, i'd swap out those rings for some with crit chance on them. You can find a lot of great options if you start at 3.5 chance instead of 4.0. Just take your time so you find something comparable to what you have/what you can afford. You will most likely loose some crit dmg % but as stated in previous posts, it isnt entirely necessary for the build. I beat the game with only 24K dps myself and about 40% crit chance, with 35K or so HP. Cant farm act 3 efficiently all the time, but i can always build for higher dps now.
I find difficulty with certain mixes of affixes and molten/arcane/freezing combos in naturally ranged mobs in late act3 (heart of sin and beyond). I plan on testing with safe passage on my TP to see if it helps with environmental damage deaths. I only die to arcane or invul minions with molten where the champion at the center also has descrate and frozen. I think increasing my defensive abilities will help.
Hope this helps
The standard Melee Wizard build has shaped up to be:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#VQXYhO!gbW!YZaZcc
Change TP -Wormhole to whatever rune you like.
Evocate is optional and can be changed to nearly anything you like. Blur is common.
The standard Melee Wizard build needs 40% Crit and 15AP on crit to work.
That's the build I've been using with Blur instead of Evocate and Bone Chill rune on frost nova for extra damage. With 20 AP on crit and 43% crit or so I found I didn't need any reduction in the CD on frost nova. I haven't used it a lot though and I can see a lot of options to play with to suit your gear and preferences. I'm currently working on finding a good EHP balance with as much DPS as I can fit in since I have a 70k dps kiting set.
On a side note, I find Arcane mobs the most annoying, since I tend to not see them in time when they spawn next to me inside my tornados. Desecrator is an absolute joke at 400k EHP or higher with decent LoH since you can just stand in it all day. Fire chains on ranged is annoying and takes some creative placement (made much easier if you can bottleneck them, assuming they don't have teleport. Molten seems to hurt a bit but teleport makes repositioning super easy. Shielding is annoying when all the mobs shield as soon as you get into melee range, but if you can get a frost nova off that freezes most of them, they're pretty easy. I only fought one or two Invuln mobs and didn't have too much problem but I had 400k+EHP and opted to have them follow me to another elite group to give me more life return and make it easier to freeze lock the main guy.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I like bonechill because I have enough crit to chain freeze a single mob and the extra damage is about the same as the extra damage from extra crit %. When I get champ packs, I tend to kill extra mobs too fast to really make much use of them so Deepfreeze tends to not be very effective against them for me. Basically trash mobs are so easy that I don't really care about them so whatever makes my life easier against elites is what I prefer.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
is that before Prismatic armor or after?
Crit: It won't work at all unless you have at least 20%, but I would suggest waiting until you have at least 30% (That's when it starts working well)
All Resist: The more the better because it's going to keep your Diamon Skin from falling off. I would suggest having 400 for act 1, 700 for act 2 and 1000 for act 3 (with prismatic). You can do it with less than that, but some elite packs are going to be difficult
Armor: This is the MOST UNDER-VALUED STAT for CM Wizards. Armor does the EXACT same thing as AR, but for some reason no one talks about it. 10 points of armor gives the same reduction as 1 point of AR (keep that in mind when looking for gear). You could even argue that Armor is better than AR, since Energy Armor gives a bigger bonus to Armor than it does to AR. Try to have 8,000 for Act 3 (You'll want a shield)
LoH: You only need enough to fill up your health when Diamon Skin falls off: At least 500, but 1,000 is preferrable (Much more than 1000 is overkill IMO, unless you have a slow attack speed)
Arcane Power on Crit: This is mostly dependant on your Crit chance (for obvious reasons). You want at least 10, but if your Crit chance is low, you probably want more. A good goal would be to have your APoC multiplied by Crit chance equal about 500 (ex. 10 APoC and 50% Crit and you'll hardly ever run out of Arcane Power)
Vitality: Not that important for CM Wizards... at least 20k (If you have less than 25k you might try using Force Armor instead of Prismatic and see how it works for you)
Crit Hit Damage: Not necessary AT ALL for CM to work. However... this is usually the easiest way to add DPS once you have your defense in place
I have a YouTube video that explains it better... but I think it would be bad form to post it on here.
I hope this helps... PM me if you have any specific questions =)
There is no numbers that anyone can give you that will prove accurate.
What you need to efficiently farm A3 is not going to be the same as anyone else. This is something that people do not understand, gear in this game is extremely important, but not as important as skill.
On my DH I farm Act 3 really well in 300% MF gear (including NV) and I have much less health, damage, and resists than my friends trying to get through Act 3 for his DHs progress.
The best answer anyone can give you is to grab some upgrades and go try it, if you don;t think you can do it efficiently enough then go get some more gear and try again.
As to LOH and stuff like that, it depends on how you play. On my Wizard (Inf Diablo kill) I just go straight damage and blow shit up as quickly as possible. I do pretty good in all the acts but I have yet to put together a MF set. I use a slow as hell 2 hander with life steal and gear for crit damage as much as possible. I do so much damage that my health is almost always topped off. Add energy armor/force armor to that and I am damn near unkillable so long as I don't over extend.
here is mine, has good dps, 19 apoc, but i cant farm act 2 efficiently :/
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Paiveio-1339/hero/21698045
I am now running archon build, but it feels i dont have enough dps yet... so I would like to invest some gold into CM. What should I change in my gear to make it work?
Although your head has 250+ INT, i'd change it out for one with crit chance and APoC. Another option is your weapon. Although its badass for your current build, if you had some APoC on it, it would better suit this build. However, this is an invalid point if you change out the helmet as i said. Then your weapon would provide more dps.
Other than that, you need more crit chance to make CM effective, so, i'd swap out those rings for some with crit chance on them. You can find a lot of great options if you start at 3.5 chance instead of 4.0. Just take your time so you find something comparable to what you have/what you can afford. You will most likely loose some crit dmg % but as stated in previous posts, it isnt entirely necessary for the build. I beat the game with only 24K dps myself and about 40% crit chance, with 35K or so HP. Cant farm act 3 efficiently all the time, but i can always build for higher dps now.
http://us.battle.net...22/hero/3153312 (wiz)
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/heavymetal-1322/hero/8654665 (monk)
my twitch feed (just messing around, no super player or anything)
http://www.justin.tv/heavymetalmak