Arcane Power cost reduced from 20 to 16 per period
Skill Rune – Sleet Storm
Weapon damage increased from 215% to 333%
Proc scalar reduced from 0.25 to 0.1875
333% Weapon damage
add in 20% extra damage from cold blooded which will proc from the sleet storm itself
add in 30% extra damage from cold skills from Frostburn
following multiplicative damage formula we have:
333*1.2*1.3 = 519.48% weapon damage per tick. This is insane!
Surely the area of effect of sleet storm is relatively small, however the raw damage output of this is going to tear thru anything.
I do foresee some issues with having to chase ranged mobs that tend to run away from you, quilbeasts, spearman, etc
It might be useful to combine this with at least 1 ranged skill to be able to handle those or a frost nova to ease the chasing around.
Life steal definitely works on Sleet Storm even on live, and they might fix the blood magic rune for the force weapon to actually work with DoT based attacks.
consider that the loss of the glove slot represents a loss of a signficant amount of potentail crit chance, crit damage, and attack speed to use frosties, and not everyone is going to have a perfect pair.
Archon (Improved Archon) lasers at 375% weapon damage and doesn't stack Cold Blooded on top of Glass Cannon, Force Weapon and Sparkflint. This compares favorably to that in terms of damage output so it should have similar results with respect to life steal without having a large buff to manage. I'd also consider that a 1.875 proc coefficient on a DoT is stronger than wicked wind which is still used to pretty strong effect at high crit chance with Shocking Aspect, which could add considerably more damage to your channel, though that would favor a high attack speed setup which will make for more arcane power consumption.
If this triggers shocking aspect well on the PTR with a high attack speed and crit setup, I'd consider swapping Frost Nova (Bone Chill) for Diamond Skin (Prism) and Astral Presence for Critical Mass. You can cast Diamond Skin mid channel which you can't do with Frost Nova which seems like it would make this more useful.
Edit: With respect to ranged mobs, you are going to have to chase them but you have a 60%, 4 second slow as your primary attack and teleport (potentially with critical mass), so I don't think getting them with sleet will be a problem if you melt them as fast as I think you will, I'd try the following:
I'm actually starting to lookout for a 1 hander with probably trium with APoC as OH, it does have high proc chance which as you mentioned will play out nicely for a CM based set of skills as well. In fact using this there's a good probability of completely replacing the current CM build to use sleet storm instead. Going down that path - add in chain reaction, which will as well benefit from cold blooded and you will have really stupid damage output, however sustaining AP for that is going to be pretty tough.
The build i proposed in the initial post - i added in astral presence because without APoC on my gear and a slow skorn i should be able to sustain channeling it long enough to kill anything. However to make it completely sustainable - there has to be APoC on gear, given that - astral presence can be dropped for sure.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
though that would favor a high attack speed setup which will make for more arcane power consumption.
On the second thought - how exactly does AIS come into the picture? Channeled spells do not tick faster based on attack speed - they have a fixed tick rate, shocking aspect should be 'passively' shocking attackers independently of attack speed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I do foresee some issues with having to chase ranged mobs that tend to run away from you, quilbeasts, spearman, etc
It might be useful to combine this with at least 1 ranged skill to be able to handle those or a frost nova to ease the chasing around.
I plan to replace Shocking Aspect with Scramble us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ynir-1828/hero/24693237 on the PTR and see how it goes. I do a lot of kiting, I want to kill elites as safely as possible.
I use Blizzard for ranged attack because it's cheap, instacast, and slows fast elites. I could definitely see Teleport/Fracture-ing into elites slowed with Blizzard. I've tried meteoring at range but fast mobs are gone by the time meteors arrive.
I will also try Ray of Frost/Sleet Storm instead of Energy Twister/Whirlwind. So, Teleport/Fracture into a Blizzarded elite pack with Ray of Frost. May not be quick enough for ultrafast killing but might work for me.
though that would favor a high attack speed setup which will make for more arcane power consumption.
On the second thought - how exactly does AIS come into the picture? Channeled spells do not tick faster based on attack speed - they have a fixed tick rate, shocking aspect should be 'passively' shocking attackers independently of attack speed.
Channeled Spells and DoTs do tick faster. They have an unknown pulse rate baseline that scales with attack speed, however their damage is almalgamated into 0.5 second chunks that appear on screen. That rate of damage being output to the screen is a fixed rate, but the pulse rate under the hood is affected by attack speed. For reference:
I beleive its been confirmed that the arcane power cost is equal to the base AP cost multiplied by your tooltip attacks per second. More IAS means faster AP drain but it also causes a faster return from APoC for a given crit rate, so there is some combination of crit chance and APoC that will reach an equilibrium. If you're going for a CM based build, I think most of your AP sustainability concerns can be removed by running Diamond Skin (Prism).
A channeled spell is inferior to a cast and forget ticking spell for CM, so I would not plan for CM to be the center of the build, and make it more about life steal and insane face melting (or freezing in this case) DPS, however, CM + DS(Prism) will give you the largest boost in channel sustainability available to a wizard without changing your stat priority.
Ray of Frost has a tick coefficient of 3, meaning it produces thrice your attack speed in ticks per second, and ticks 3 times before it drains its arcane power cost again.
I'm going to take some pie in the sky stats and model this quickly. A theoretical wizard with 18 Arcane Power on Crit, 40% Crit Chance, and 1.7 attacks per second.
Sleet Storm will tick 5.1 times per second, and cost 27.2 arcane power per second. The baseline regeneration of a wizard is 10 arcane power per second, netting us a deficit of 17.2 arcane power per second of combat. Each second of combat against a single target in which we channel we strike 5.1 times, generating on average 2.04 critical hits. Our 18 APoC and the coefficient of 0.185 causes us to generate 3.33 arcane power return per critical hit, or 6.79 arcane power per second, reducing our deficit to 10.41 AP per second.
This gives us just over 10 seconds of continuous channel time against a single target. We also generate 0.3774 critical mass procs per second, making our cooldown spells cool 1.3774 seconds per second, adjusting the cooldown of diamond skin to 10.89 seconds.
If we use Diamond Skin (Prism) we get 55% uptime (6 second duration, 10.89 second effective cooldown). This effectively reduces the cost of Ray of Frost by 3.85 arcane power. This reduces our mana deficit by 6.56 arcane power per second bringing it down to 3.85 per second, which means 26 seconds of unterrupted channel time.
Against two targets, we start to see the right thresholds:
Two targets produces 4.08 critical hits per second, resulting in 13.58 arcane power per second, reducing of deficit to 3.62 arcane power per second, giving us a channel time of 27.6 seconds. If we add in the astral presence passive this time instead of the slightly more effective but higher opportunity cost Prism skin, our arcane power deficit shrinks to 1.62 arcane power per second, and we get a channel time of 74 seconds, which should be plenty.
If I redo the calculations for slightly better gear, 2 attacks per second, 45% crit chance, 20 APoC (sticking with 2 soruces), we find the following numbers:
Single Target
6 ticks per second, 32 AP per second, 22 AP per second deficit, 12.01 AP per second after APoC. This results in less sustainable channel time than the lesser geared wizard, so we want to stay away somewhat from attack speed gear and optimize crit first.
0.4995 crit mass procs per second, 10 second effective cooldown on diamond skin
4.667 AP cost reduction from Prism, resulting a 9.333 AP deficit reduction, leaving 2.67 AP/second, or 37 second channel time
Two targets
12 ticks per second, 32 AP per second, 22 AP per second deficit, 4.02 AP per second after APoC, 2.02 with Astral Presence, 60 seconds with astral presence, and with prism we would be generating net AP letting us add in explosive blast spam.
In terms of AP sustainability, Prism > Power of the Storm > Astral presence > Conduit. Sustainability for 3 or more targets can be attained at virtually any gear level. Sustainability at 2 targets can be done with 2 APoC sources and Prism/Critical mass and 40-45% crit chance. Sustainability at 3 targets can be done at very low gear level, which is a solid plus for farming elite packs.
How you build it will depend on what you intend to farm.
I'm not sold on shocking aspect being big for this anymore, this produces around a third of a proc per second per target for critical mass and shocking aspect which is substantially lower than the 3-5 procs per second against a single target wicked wind can generate at similar gear levels, so this is really going to be a melt face DPS build like archon more than a critical mass build and is probably going to bank on high DPS and life steal to survive more so than refreshing diamond skin (and its not going to nova lock because you drop the channel when you cast nova, while twisters and meteors still tick.
Attack Speed works against you a little bit in terms of arcane power sustainability but it works for you in terms of delivering DPS, so its a neutral stat, you'd weight your stats towards crit, but you wouldn't avoid IAS, and if you were less worried about the critical mass aspect, using a two hander is distinctly possible here.
Having 1.0 attacks per second means you start with only an AP deficit of 6 AP/second, which with just astral presence is sustainable for 30 seconds of channeling. If we're talking 100K DPS at 333% per second before modifiers and over 500% after them, then you're talking 15 million hp enemies before you have to stop and take a breather single target.
Thanks a lot, that clears up a fair bit of sustainability questions. I think adding in slow time / time warp could drastically increase the speed at which elites would die as well with an extra 20% damage added, it has nice synergy as well in sense that it's in the near vicinity of the character same as sleet storm and it would add to survival a little bit as well with slowed missiles and slowed attack speed of enemies. The cooldown of slow time is reduced to 15 seconds in the patch, with some CM procs it would be possible to have a near 100% uptime on it as well.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Specifically:
Ray of Frost
add in 20% extra damage from cold blooded which will proc from the sleet storm itself
add in 30% extra damage from cold skills from Frostburn
following multiplicative damage formula we have:
333*1.2*1.3 = 519.48% weapon damage per tick. This is insane!
Surely the area of effect of sleet storm is relatively small, however the raw damage output of this is going to tear thru anything.
I do foresee some issues with having to chase ranged mobs that tend to run away from you, quilbeasts, spearman, etc
It might be useful to combine this with at least 1 ranged skill to be able to handle those or a frost nova to ease the chasing around.
Life steal definitely works on Sleet Storm even on live, and they might fix the blood magic rune for the force weapon to actually work with DoT based attacks.
Perhaps something along the lines of THIS BUILD
Archon (Improved Archon) lasers at 375% weapon damage and doesn't stack Cold Blooded on top of Glass Cannon, Force Weapon and Sparkflint. This compares favorably to that in terms of damage output so it should have similar results with respect to life steal without having a large buff to manage. I'd also consider that a 1.875 proc coefficient on a DoT is stronger than wicked wind which is still used to pretty strong effect at high crit chance with Shocking Aspect, which could add considerably more damage to your channel, though that would favor a high attack speed setup which will make for more arcane power consumption.
If this triggers shocking aspect well on the PTR with a high attack speed and crit setup, I'd consider swapping Frost Nova (Bone Chill) for Diamond Skin (Prism) and Astral Presence for Critical Mass. You can cast Diamond Skin mid channel which you can't do with Frost Nova which seems like it would make this more useful.
Edit: With respect to ranged mobs, you are going to have to chase them but you have a 60%, 4 second slow as your primary attack and teleport (potentially with critical mass), so I don't think getting them with sleet will be a problem if you melt them as fast as I think you will, I'd try the following:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZQXTjS!WYX!YYZcac
The build i proposed in the initial post - i added in astral presence because without APoC on my gear and a slow skorn i should be able to sustain channeling it long enough to kill anything. However to make it completely sustainable - there has to be APoC on gear, given that - astral presence can be dropped for sure.
On the second thought - how exactly does AIS come into the picture? Channeled spells do not tick faster based on attack speed - they have a fixed tick rate, shocking aspect should be 'passively' shocking attackers independently of attack speed.
I plan to replace Shocking Aspect with Scramble us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ynir-1828/hero/24693237 on the PTR and see how it goes. I do a lot of kiting, I want to kill elites as safely as possible.
I use Blizzard for ranged attack because it's cheap, instacast, and slows fast elites. I could definitely see Teleport/Fracture-ing into elites slowed with Blizzard. I've tried meteoring at range but fast mobs are gone by the time meteors arrive.
I will also try Ray of Frost/Sleet Storm instead of Energy Twister/Whirlwind. So, Teleport/Fracture into a Blizzarded elite pack with Ray of Frost. May not be quick enough for ultrafast killing but might work for me.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3595370796#10
I beleive its been confirmed that the arcane power cost is equal to the base AP cost multiplied by your tooltip attacks per second. More IAS means faster AP drain but it also causes a faster return from APoC for a given crit rate, so there is some combination of crit chance and APoC that will reach an equilibrium. If you're going for a CM based build, I think most of your AP sustainability concerns can be removed by running Diamond Skin (Prism).
A channeled spell is inferior to a cast and forget ticking spell for CM, so I would not plan for CM to be the center of the build, and make it more about life steal and insane face melting (or freezing in this case) DPS, however, CM + DS(Prism) will give you the largest boost in channel sustainability available to a wizard without changing your stat priority.
Ray of Frost has a tick coefficient of 3, meaning it produces thrice your attack speed in ticks per second, and ticks 3 times before it drains its arcane power cost again.
I'm going to take some pie in the sky stats and model this quickly. A theoretical wizard with 18 Arcane Power on Crit, 40% Crit Chance, and 1.7 attacks per second.
Sleet Storm will tick 5.1 times per second, and cost 27.2 arcane power per second. The baseline regeneration of a wizard is 10 arcane power per second, netting us a deficit of 17.2 arcane power per second of combat. Each second of combat against a single target in which we channel we strike 5.1 times, generating on average 2.04 critical hits. Our 18 APoC and the coefficient of 0.185 causes us to generate 3.33 arcane power return per critical hit, or 6.79 arcane power per second, reducing our deficit to 10.41 AP per second.
This gives us just over 10 seconds of continuous channel time against a single target. We also generate 0.3774 critical mass procs per second, making our cooldown spells cool 1.3774 seconds per second, adjusting the cooldown of diamond skin to 10.89 seconds.
If we use Diamond Skin (Prism) we get 55% uptime (6 second duration, 10.89 second effective cooldown). This effectively reduces the cost of Ray of Frost by 3.85 arcane power. This reduces our mana deficit by 6.56 arcane power per second bringing it down to 3.85 per second, which means 26 seconds of unterrupted channel time.
Against two targets, we start to see the right thresholds:
Two targets produces 4.08 critical hits per second, resulting in 13.58 arcane power per second, reducing of deficit to 3.62 arcane power per second, giving us a channel time of 27.6 seconds. If we add in the astral presence passive this time instead of the slightly more effective but higher opportunity cost Prism skin, our arcane power deficit shrinks to 1.62 arcane power per second, and we get a channel time of 74 seconds, which should be plenty.
If I redo the calculations for slightly better gear, 2 attacks per second, 45% crit chance, 20 APoC (sticking with 2 soruces), we find the following numbers:
Single Target
6 ticks per second, 32 AP per second, 22 AP per second deficit, 12.01 AP per second after APoC. This results in less sustainable channel time than the lesser geared wizard, so we want to stay away somewhat from attack speed gear and optimize crit first.
0.4995 crit mass procs per second, 10 second effective cooldown on diamond skin
4.667 AP cost reduction from Prism, resulting a 9.333 AP deficit reduction, leaving 2.67 AP/second, or 37 second channel time
Two targets
12 ticks per second, 32 AP per second, 22 AP per second deficit, 4.02 AP per second after APoC, 2.02 with Astral Presence, 60 seconds with astral presence, and with prism we would be generating net AP letting us add in explosive blast spam.
In terms of AP sustainability, Prism > Power of the Storm > Astral presence > Conduit. Sustainability for 3 or more targets can be attained at virtually any gear level. Sustainability at 2 targets can be done with 2 APoC sources and Prism/Critical mass and 40-45% crit chance. Sustainability at 3 targets can be done at very low gear level, which is a solid plus for farming elite packs.
How you build it will depend on what you intend to farm.
I'm not sold on shocking aspect being big for this anymore, this produces around a third of a proc per second per target for critical mass and shocking aspect which is substantially lower than the 3-5 procs per second against a single target wicked wind can generate at similar gear levels, so this is really going to be a melt face DPS build like archon more than a critical mass build and is probably going to bank on high DPS and life steal to survive more so than refreshing diamond skin (and its not going to nova lock because you drop the channel when you cast nova, while twisters and meteors still tick.
Attack Speed works against you a little bit in terms of arcane power sustainability but it works for you in terms of delivering DPS, so its a neutral stat, you'd weight your stats towards crit, but you wouldn't avoid IAS, and if you were less worried about the critical mass aspect, using a two hander is distinctly possible here.
Having 1.0 attacks per second means you start with only an AP deficit of 6 AP/second, which with just astral presence is sustainable for 30 seconds of channeling. If we're talking 100K DPS at 333% per second before modifiers and over 500% after them, then you're talking 15 million hp enemies before you have to stop and take a breather single target.