I replaced frost nova with improved archon, less rsi, more fun and runs are faster ^^
Nova - is one of the most important key of the build
If you ok without it, so you can change another abilities to buff your archon and post in another thread. :)))
I use archon not to make this an "archon" build, but as a dps cooldown that it always up when you need it, on some packs you can't use it at all because you don't get enough healing, on others you can simply aoe them down without any problems and save a lot of time. It is also useful for killing trash and goblins.
That being said, nova is required for this build as long as you need it to survive and when you reach a point where you can't die against 99% of the elite combos, the extra damage from archon is a better addition in my opinion to your skillset.
I'd be interested in seeing how your build works, as I'm rather used to the perma-freeze approach. Would you mind frapsing a simple clip showcasing the playstyle, Aggnog?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnGU4PLX-GQ
Made this over 2 runs tonight but it didn't turn out very well, it still shows that its possible to play without nova at least ;p
The problem of not using frost nova is that elites will activate their skills a lot more, then things can get pretty ugly, like for example fire chains which is not that bad of an affix alone for melee wizard if u position urself properly, or fronze+ arcane like the guys u were fighting(skull cleavers are usually cake). Nice job there though, u prolly have shitloads of EHP so I guess u can run without frost nova, I woudl still try it instead of spectral blade since u already have archon for annoying ranged mobs.
I use spectral blade because of arcane dynamo, it increases my dps by a lot. I may eventually switch out archon for something else, but don't have any ideas currently. And yeah my EHP is around 1.5million ^^
I use spectral blade because of arcane dynamo, it increases my dps by a lot. I may eventually switch out archon for something else, but don't have any ideas currently. And yeah my EHP is around 1.5million ^^
Archon sweetness
holy crap, 16k armor, 2k physical res, never seen anything like that, have u tried using a source to pump ur damage? I honestly think that with the armor/resistances u have u wouldnt feel that much of a diference(if u do just use frost nova?) u would kill things a lot faster and I dont think u would die still....
I never got around to trying a source because of how hard it is to find a good one with the AH UI. But since you asked I looked around and here is what I found :
From a gameplay perspective you can definitely feel the loss of 2500armor, the resists and the block by not using a shield. For some packs like phase beasts I had to switch to it. On the other hand the extra dps from the source helps against ranged enemies when you use archon like succubi etc.
The actual dps gained for me was about 4000sheet dps since I can't afford the type of gear that has both insane dps and defensive stats so it doesn't scale as well as say a pure glass cannon wizard. With this much ap on crit archon also starts lagging behind on damage, i might replace it with hydra or magic weapon or something.
In terms of actually getting a source, what I found was that a good source with over 300max dmg, crit and ap on crit goes for minimum 5-6million. However you CAN get an incredibly cheap source if you are persistent since a majority of players who don't play wizard for example have no idea how much to sell them for. As an example while looking around just now and flipping 40pages of sources I ended up getting these 2 for 10k gold each
So as a conclusion you need to have a shield at least as a backup if you can handle it, and use a source for easier packs, trash or goblins.
u said u had problems with phasebeasts without a shield, you prolly already know this but with frost nova phasebeasts are more or less cake, as are pretty much all melee mobs as long as u have enough crit chance% and ap on crit. An yeah u can find very good deals on sources for like 4-5 mill if you are patient.
As you may not have noticed, i don't use frost nova anymore, i find it too tedious to spam it so often so I just do without. Since I don't really need archon when playing with a source I'm trying to decide on what to replace it with. I'm using magic weapon with venom rune because I read that it stacks on itself or something like that, but I'm not sure if i won't replace it with force weapon or maybe even another skill later.
With the amount of information I'm getting every day its as if that video is already outdated though..
I play with a source now, got my crit up to 33%, using force weapon instead of nova so at 27k dps. DPS scales insanely well with this build because of the infinite EB casts.
I love the guide, I literally hit a brick wall with my Wizard and benched him in favor of a Barb that can, quite frankly, do it cheaper and easier. I just love playing caster classes though, and the sound for Revenge grates on my ears. Seriously, it sounds like you're squishing a pig. It's awful to the point where I hate grouping with Barbs now.
I did have to change a few things, since I did start out with resist gear and armor. I run prismatic to get to the 8k armor/1k resists benchmark. I've only got 12k dps (before talents), 24.5% crit, and 10 AP/crit from my helm only. Crit damage is 50%, only 850 LoH. 22.5k health. Not stellar stats by any means, but I Just. Don't. Die.
I kept twister with wicked wind glyphed. I've tried every spell combo, but this spell is the most reliable when it comes to taking full advantage of critical mass.
I put diamond skin on Right Mouse because I was getting random lag spikes that would only activate one number hotkey at a time. Putting this ability on Right Mouse fixed that, as well as when I pop out of archon, I immediately cast my skin, so I don't have to stare at timers and can focus more on positioning. More on Archon later.
Frost Nova on number one, the spamming key. It's incredibly important when you're out of Archon for your survivability, and syngergizes so insanely well with wicked wind spam it's sickening.
Improved Archon for number 2. My DPS is low and I was having a stupidly hard time killing goblins with the standard build, and goblins give great loot. Improved Archon gives a great deal of burst that is difficult to outrun, and with Temporal Flux, gives you a wide stream of death that quickly and easily tears through large packs of minions, and with LoH, any illusionist pack melts while you stay nearly topped off. The extra 40% bump in defensive stats mitigates the loss of Nova and DS to give you plenty of survivability, and Archon can fire through walls, so wallers become an immediate joke. This ability becomes even more useful when you run into those pesky ranged or kiting packs that just refuse to stand still long enough for you to get a few winds going so you can keep them locked down with frost nova. Those packs are generally fairly weak and Archon melts them rather quickly, even with my lower DPS build. The major disadvantage is that with single targets, Archon doesn't get much from LoH.
3 is Magic weapon with Force weapon because, like I said, I need to get more DPS out. I hit that survivability threshold, so any DPS I can force into the build until I can afford better gear is a welcomed change.
4 is Energy armor with Prismatic, because I find steady damage easier to control than the 35% max hit spikes that occasionally drop me in a few hits. If I had under 18k health, I'd probably be using Force, since that's an easier spike to regen from.
Glass cannon for my first passive. I still have a lot of survivability with these resistances, so the extra 15% damage seemed like a no-brainer. Temporal Flux for the arcane slow for those instances where I get too much at once and just absolutely have to run away to regroup a bit, since it works with Wind and in Archon. And lastly, Critical Mass, which is essential for this build.
This build goes any combination of tank, dps, melee, or ranged with great survivability across the board. Some packs are easiest sitting in a corner spamming novas and keeping DS from allowing you to actually get hit, and other packs demand you just sit back and nuke from afar. As my DPS slowly increases, I tend to find myself more and more in Archon, which lends itself naturally to the high DPS Archon build transition as you gear up piece by piece.
For group play, I'll often drop Nova and replace it with Sparkflint Familiar if I have a tank, or drop critical mass in favor of Blur and swap Archon with Venom Hydra to tank. Small gear swaps when necessary, also depending on the group dynamic. I really don't have to switch around a lot with this build. I'm having a great deal of fun switching between damage and survivability, and it's helped me breeze through A3 and A4 where before I couldn't even start A2.
I am interested in any other suggestion any of you may have too. This build takes a bit of farming/money from the OP's build, but it's still not incredibly expensive. It helps bridge the gap I had trouble with when I started with the initial build from the OP, namely, kiting mobs and goblins. This build gave me a bit more flexibility, but has a bit of a higher item requirement.
I built a MF set into my gear and managed to get halfway decent stats:
26K Health
24K DPS
550 average resists all range from 500-600
25.5% crit chance
550 life per second
786 LoH
19 AP return on crit
325 MF with 5 stacks
I feel I should be able to do Act 2 easily with those stats but Im having trouble. Might have to do with Electrified mobs being bugged all to hell because they eat through 2 Diamond skins and 26k health in around 5 seconds and thats with 650 lightening resists. Also I might need to get my resists to 700 and 30k Health but Im getting into the 6 mil a piece category for upgrades that would have 60+ AR along with Int, Vit, and at least 18 MF. I will probably stick to Act 1 for a little while longer. If I get another 1350 DPS Helion with 80% crit to drop I will get some upgrades and try Act 2 again.
Also does attack speed matter at all with this type build? Im using a slow 1.2 speed mace because it was only 3 mil and had 740 DPS, 215 int, 220 vit, and 786 LoH. Was like a 3k DPS upgrade over my wand.
19 ap on crit for a source build (might due to your mace).
well 20 AP on crit would be the max with a helm and source so 19 is only 1 shy of that. Also I had to drop the crit down to 25 was at 32% when I went to a better weapon as I had to move the AP on crit which was on my weapon to my source. Sources with crit hit, AP on crit, and 14 max arcane power are off the charts for a 325+ damage one.
I built a MF set into my gear and managed to get halfway decent stats:
26K Health
24K DPS
550 average resists all range from 500-600
25.5% crit chance
550 life per second
786 LoH
19 AP return on crit
325 MF with 5 stacks
I feel I should be able to do Act 2 easily with those stats but Im having trouble. Might have to do with Electrified mobs being bugged all to hell because they eat through 2 Diamond skins and 26k health in around 5 seconds and thats with 650 lightening resists. Also I might need to get my resists to 700 and 30k Health but Im getting into the 6 mil a piece category for upgrades that would have 60+ AR along with Int, Vit, and at least 18 MF. I will probably stick to Act 1 for a little while longer. If I get another 1350 DPS Helion with 80% crit to drop I will get some upgrades and try Act 2 again.
Also does attack speed matter at all with this type build? Im using a slow 1.2 speed mace because it was only 3 mil and had 740 DPS, 215 int, 220 vit, and 786 LoH. Was like a 3k DPS upgrade over my wand.
Quite honestly, you shouldn't have a problem farming A2 at all. The constructs, as far as I'm aware, are all bugged to ignore resists, which was the catalyst of why I started playing around with an archon build in the first place. They also have trouble crossing smaller bridges, so you can bottleneck them there. It takes a bit of practice, but as you keep at it, they'll become less and less of a problem.
I'm at 30k HP, 17.5k dps, and 17 APoC since I posted last, and breeze through A2 to farm. With your stats, you shouldn't be hitting too many brick walls. Arcane sentries are always bad news if you drop yourself into a corner to nova spam, and if you do the same against frozen packs, you need to have your winds up and going to refresh diamond skin after each explosion, but the rest should be cake for you. It sounds like you just need to practice the build itself.
I would also love to just farm with you. I can't afford MF gear, and I can't find anything that sells on the AH, so I'm in this grind limbo right now. I've got no problem tanking for you to help you get used to it. Maybe I could help you identify what's giving you so many problems when you should really be doing much better than I am. Higher DPS gives you such a larger margin for error it's incredible.
Attack speed is a "fake" DPS upgrade. It doesn't do well with most of our spells, but it does help Archon out quite a bit. It'll inflate your paper doll (character sheet) DPS value, but most of the time you won't notice any application benefit.
whats up guys. i'm loving the build. i use a pretty standard variant with nova, d.skin, eb - chain reaction, and teleport -rune varies from safe passage to wormhole for farming or whatever i think i can handle.
I made it to act 4 last night then had to quit, but only with a barb in the group and we still had to skip some elite packs. I have around 6K armor and, buffed, i have between 702-800+ resists. EHP is something like 316K i think, have 40K Hp cause i found a nice hat although it has no APoC, but 20% life. I got no LoH on my wand. cant really afford a new one with LOH, crit dmg and apoc. pretty high for me. so i've been searching for Ammy's and rings with them. but my ammy has 215 vit, not sure if i wanna lose that because its nice to have the 40K
The build is pretty fun, probly gonna try to implement Archon somehow soon, because not killing the troll is annoying, and i'm tired of skipping elites because i cant keep them still long enough. Other than that, need to figure out how to survive fire chains, molten, desecrators, and/or arcane enchanted elites. Reflects damage sucks, but i can mitigate it most of the time.
And dude with the MF....holy snikes man! Congratulations. I think i have just over 100% haha
well, been upgrading gear for the last few days. got 43% crit, still only 157% critdmg, upped my resists to the 900-1000 range. got 1400+life regen and 460LOH with possibility of another 440 LOH if auction goes my way. already failed at one amulet and a weapon. damn superfarmers and they're billions of gold raising the max bid at the last minute to an unthinkable amount. either way, gonna try again tonight to see if i handle elites better.
ok, so i got my 2nd choice ammy today. so now i have 902LOH. I also made it to Diablo, but have yet to beat her. Actually, its my shadow self thats killing...It seems i am more badass than i have figured out yet. lmao. I just permafreeze Diablo as much as possible.
Also blasted thru Izual with permafreeze. was pretty awesome. The life regen just happens to be on the gear i pickup. I'm not actively searching for it. Havent been for awhile. Just so happens the chest piece had 500 regen on it. I picked it up for the 78 all resist and the armor upgrade.
well, back to fighting the good fight. and then hopefully farming
ok, so i got my 2nd choice ammy today. so now i have 902LOH. I also made it to Diablo, but have yet to beat her. Actually, its my shadow self thats killing...It seems i am more badass than i have figured out yet. lmao. I just permafreeze Diablo as much as possible.
Also blasted thru Izual with permafreeze. was pretty awesome. The life regen just happens to be on the gear i pickup. I'm not actively searching for it. Havent been for awhile. Just so happens the chest piece had 500 regen on it. I picked it up for the 78 all resist and the armor upgrade.
well, back to fighting the good fight. and then hopefully farming
you dont have to actually kill your shadow, you can just run away and avoid attacks, and it will disappear after a while.
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I use archon not to make this an "archon" build, but as a dps cooldown that it always up when you need it, on some packs you can't use it at all because you don't get enough healing, on others you can simply aoe them down without any problems and save a lot of time. It is also useful for killing trash and goblins.
That being said, nova is required for this build as long as you need it to survive and when you reach a point where you can't die against 99% of the elite combos, the extra damage from archon is a better addition in my opinion to your skillset.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnGU4PLX-GQ
Made this over 2 runs tonight but it didn't turn out very well, it still shows that its possible to play without nova at least ;p
Archon sweetness
From a gameplay perspective you can definitely feel the loss of 2500armor, the resists and the block by not using a shield. For some packs like phase beasts I had to switch to it. On the other hand the extra dps from the source helps against ranged enemies when you use archon like succubi etc.
The actual dps gained for me was about 4000sheet dps since I can't afford the type of gear that has both insane dps and defensive stats so it doesn't scale as well as say a pure glass cannon wizard. With this much ap on crit archon also starts lagging behind on damage, i might replace it with hydra or magic weapon or something.
In terms of actually getting a source, what I found was that a good source with over 300max dmg, crit and ap on crit goes for minimum 5-6million. However you CAN get an incredibly cheap source if you are persistent since a majority of players who don't play wizard for example have no idea how much to sell them for. As an example while looking around just now and flipping 40pages of sources I ended up getting these 2 for 10k gold each
So as a conclusion you need to have a shield at least as a backup if you can handle it, and use a source for easier packs, trash or goblins.
I play with a source now, got my crit up to 33%, using force weapon instead of nova so at 27k dps. DPS scales insanely well with this build because of the infinite EB casts.
Decided to try ghom, first time i kill him since they buffed him and it was surprisingly easy even with a source :/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1_4_UUc5x0
I did have to change a few things, since I did start out with resist gear and armor. I run prismatic to get to the 8k armor/1k resists benchmark. I've only got 12k dps (before talents), 24.5% crit, and 10 AP/crit from my helm only. Crit damage is 50%, only 850 LoH. 22.5k health. Not stellar stats by any means, but I Just. Don't. Die.
I kept twister with wicked wind glyphed. I've tried every spell combo, but this spell is the most reliable when it comes to taking full advantage of critical mass.
I put diamond skin on Right Mouse because I was getting random lag spikes that would only activate one number hotkey at a time. Putting this ability on Right Mouse fixed that, as well as when I pop out of archon, I immediately cast my skin, so I don't have to stare at timers and can focus more on positioning. More on Archon later.
Frost Nova on number one, the spamming key. It's incredibly important when you're out of Archon for your survivability, and syngergizes so insanely well with wicked wind spam it's sickening.
Improved Archon for number 2. My DPS is low and I was having a stupidly hard time killing goblins with the standard build, and goblins give great loot. Improved Archon gives a great deal of burst that is difficult to outrun, and with Temporal Flux, gives you a wide stream of death that quickly and easily tears through large packs of minions, and with LoH, any illusionist pack melts while you stay nearly topped off. The extra 40% bump in defensive stats mitigates the loss of Nova and DS to give you plenty of survivability, and Archon can fire through walls, so wallers become an immediate joke. This ability becomes even more useful when you run into those pesky ranged or kiting packs that just refuse to stand still long enough for you to get a few winds going so you can keep them locked down with frost nova. Those packs are generally fairly weak and Archon melts them rather quickly, even with my lower DPS build. The major disadvantage is that with single targets, Archon doesn't get much from LoH.
3 is Magic weapon with Force weapon because, like I said, I need to get more DPS out. I hit that survivability threshold, so any DPS I can force into the build until I can afford better gear is a welcomed change.
4 is Energy armor with Prismatic, because I find steady damage easier to control than the 35% max hit spikes that occasionally drop me in a few hits. If I had under 18k health, I'd probably be using Force, since that's an easier spike to regen from.
Glass cannon for my first passive. I still have a lot of survivability with these resistances, so the extra 15% damage seemed like a no-brainer. Temporal Flux for the arcane slow for those instances where I get too much at once and just absolutely have to run away to regroup a bit, since it works with Wind and in Archon. And lastly, Critical Mass, which is essential for this build.
This build goes any combination of tank, dps, melee, or ranged with great survivability across the board. Some packs are easiest sitting in a corner spamming novas and keeping DS from allowing you to actually get hit, and other packs demand you just sit back and nuke from afar. As my DPS slowly increases, I tend to find myself more and more in Archon, which lends itself naturally to the high DPS Archon build transition as you gear up piece by piece.
For group play, I'll often drop Nova and replace it with Sparkflint Familiar if I have a tank, or drop critical mass in favor of Blur and swap Archon with Venom Hydra to tank. Small gear swaps when necessary, also depending on the group dynamic. I really don't have to switch around a lot with this build. I'm having a great deal of fun switching between damage and survivability, and it's helped me breeze through A3 and A4 where before I couldn't even start A2.
I am interested in any other suggestion any of you may have too. This build takes a bit of farming/money from the OP's build, but it's still not incredibly expensive. It helps bridge the gap I had trouble with when I started with the initial build from the OP, namely, kiting mobs and goblins. This build gave me a bit more flexibility, but has a bit of a higher item requirement.
26K Health
24K DPS
550 average resists all range from 500-600
25.5% crit chance
550 life per second
786 LoH
19 AP return on crit
325 MF with 5 stacks
I feel I should be able to do Act 2 easily with those stats but Im having trouble. Might have to do with Electrified mobs being bugged all to hell because they eat through 2 Diamond skins and 26k health in around 5 seconds and thats with 650 lightening resists. Also I might need to get my resists to 700 and 30k Health but Im getting into the 6 mil a piece category for upgrades that would have 60+ AR along with Int, Vit, and at least 18 MF. I will probably stick to Act 1 for a little while longer. If I get another 1350 DPS Helion with 80% crit to drop I will get some upgrades and try Act 2 again.
Also does attack speed matter at all with this type build? Im using a slow 1.2 speed mace because it was only 3 mil and had 740 DPS, 215 int, 220 vit, and 786 LoH. Was like a 3k DPS upgrade over my wand.
well 20 AP on crit would be the max with a helm and source so 19 is only 1 shy of that. Also I had to drop the crit down to 25 was at 32% when I went to a better weapon as I had to move the AP on crit which was on my weapon to my source. Sources with crit hit, AP on crit, and 14 max arcane power are off the charts for a 325+ damage one.
Quite honestly, you shouldn't have a problem farming A2 at all. The constructs, as far as I'm aware, are all bugged to ignore resists, which was the catalyst of why I started playing around with an archon build in the first place. They also have trouble crossing smaller bridges, so you can bottleneck them there. It takes a bit of practice, but as you keep at it, they'll become less and less of a problem.
I'm at 30k HP, 17.5k dps, and 17 APoC since I posted last, and breeze through A2 to farm. With your stats, you shouldn't be hitting too many brick walls. Arcane sentries are always bad news if you drop yourself into a corner to nova spam, and if you do the same against frozen packs, you need to have your winds up and going to refresh diamond skin after each explosion, but the rest should be cake for you. It sounds like you just need to practice the build itself.
I would also love to just farm with you. I can't afford MF gear, and I can't find anything that sells on the AH, so I'm in this grind limbo right now. I've got no problem tanking for you to help you get used to it. Maybe I could help you identify what's giving you so many problems when you should really be doing much better than I am. Higher DPS gives you such a larger margin for error it's incredible.
Attack speed is a "fake" DPS upgrade. It doesn't do well with most of our spells, but it does help Archon out quite a bit. It'll inflate your paper doll (character sheet) DPS value, but most of the time you won't notice any application benefit.
Medieve#1336
I made it to act 4 last night then had to quit, but only with a barb in the group and we still had to skip some elite packs. I have around 6K armor and, buffed, i have between 702-800+ resists. EHP is something like 316K i think, have 40K Hp cause i found a nice hat although it has no APoC, but 20% life. I got no LoH on my wand. cant really afford a new one with LOH, crit dmg and apoc. pretty high for me. so i've been searching for Ammy's and rings with them. but my ammy has 215 vit, not sure if i wanna lose that because its nice to have the 40K
The build is pretty fun, probly gonna try to implement Archon somehow soon, because not killing the troll is annoying, and i'm tired of skipping elites because i cant keep them still long enough. Other than that, need to figure out how to survive fire chains, molten, desecrators, and/or arcane enchanted elites. Reflects damage sucks, but i can mitigate it most of the time.
And dude with the MF....holy snikes man! Congratulations. I think i have just over 100% haha
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
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
Also blasted thru Izual with permafreeze. was pretty awesome. The life regen just happens to be on the gear i pickup. I'm not actively searching for it. Havent been for awhile. Just so happens the chest piece had 500 regen on it. I picked it up for the 78 all resist and the armor upgrade.
well, back to fighting the good fight. and then hopefully farming
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