Just curious - When you're in the midst of the 100-200k damage range are you past the point of minor upgrades going a long distance (i.e. 5 million or less on an item) or is that a little later?
I'm very conflicted when it comes to gear, fortunately the new recipes have allowed me to save a bit of gold with some decent rolls but now I have NO IDEA where to go next.
Part of this comes from my lack of "favorite" builds and find myself doing some kind of CM/WW (emphasis on dmg) build, Archon for quick alkaizers, or just goofing around with things like sleet storm, black ice, disintegrate/chaos nexus, hyper phat arcane destruction crits, or something else thats dumb and inefficient. In my struggles for pure damage I end up sacrificing really important wizard qualities like APoC or Crit and I'm often very low on Vit but I just GOTTA have that high damage number (cuz I'm dumb!).
Looking at my gear - am I in a good spot for a variety of builds or am I just completely off the mark? Is my gear passable for anything in particular? Is there a glaring problem in my setup that could be fixed easily or is it time to save up the tens or hundreds of millions?
TLDR - what the hell is wrong with my poor wizard?
Follow up question: Are Archon and CM/WW builds the tippy top of the best and most efficient things out there? I know they are excellent for farming efficiency and provide great utility but I just want to know if I'm missing anything? I know both of those types can be tweaked to a degree but it still feels pretty limited in here.
Thanks in advance!
-----------------------------
Edit:
Scroll down for updated question as I missed something.
I personally prefer making one big (or stat significant) upgrade at a time. This is because I prefer using one piece of gear for weeks or months before replacing it. Especially when you can't "flip" the old item back for big profits in the AH, it's not worth cycling through items or else you lose out on gold.
Follow up question: Are Archon and CM/WW builds the tippy top of the best and most efficient things out there? I know they are excellent for farming efficiency and provide great utility but I just want to know if I'm missing anything? I know both of those types can be tweaked to a degree but it still feels pretty limited in here.
In terms of balance and efficiency, yes. CM/WW is heavy on survivability and crowd control, and when played correctly, you're basically invincible. Archon focuses on speed and you can easily farm a ton of gold and items in a very short period of time. And at high MPs, you can run Hybrid Archon, which essentially combines CM/WW and Archon (Archon to deal heavy damage, CM/WW to lock enemies and removes cooldown when your Archon expires).
I do exactly what you do right now. I run CM/WW for high MPs in a team (at least until they tweak "on kill" effects in multiplayer so I can run more Hybrid Archon) and Hybrid Archon for any MP I feel like farming. In other times, I too play with random builds for fun. Not much else to do after you hit paragon 100 on your main character.
As for your gear, save up for a nice Witching Hour with at least high int and vitality (you can worry about resistance later). Otherwise, keep farming for drops and crafting for a pair of bracers with vitality and resistance (or high armor) to go with the high int and CC. Also, craft gloves or find a pair with a combination of at least two of the three trifecta stats (IAS, CC, CD) with the good int. Start there. If you want to use Archon, you want to stack int, IAS, CC and CD. I don't know what you use for CM/WW, but the types of available gear for CM/WW are limited, as long as you can stack as much IAS and CC on all your gear and get sufficient APoC.
Looking at my gear - am I in a good spot for a variety of builds or am I just completely off the mark? Is my gear passable for anything in particular? Is there a glaring problem in my setup that could be fixed easily or is it time to save up the tens or hundreds of millions?
Your gear is clearly oriented towards Archon right now - I guess there's some pieces that you replace when you switch to CMWW, right? With some more APoC, crit chance (your amulet, helm, right ring have zero crit!), LoH instead of LS?
One thing that I did after 1.07 hit was to get rid of my LS weapon and try one with Life after Kill for Archon. You can even get LaK on rings+amulets if you want to focus on even more damage on your weapon. This way I was able to get a ~1200 DPS weapon for decent money, which is a huge upgrade, and it works fine with Archon on low MPs. I touched upon that in my guide after I updated it recently.
Oh and about the question if you want to purchase one big item or small little upgrades: I concur with Jaetch that one big upgrade is better, but don't assume that this item will gain value over time. Only the top top top .0001% of items or so gain value, for example, Mempos with more than 5% crit and close to maximum values for the other stats might gain value over time, but these cost already more than many of us would ever spend in this game. It's still better to buy long-lasting upgrades that at least keep a bit of resell value after time; it's just that you need to be aware that these items still might lose value (depending on how much they are in the first place).
I completely forgot I had that butcher's main hand (I had recently found it and was testing it because it gave me a significant damage boost and was black), but NORMALLY I use an unspectacular Chantodo's set with 18 APoC between them (and if need be a Storm Crow).
I'm fed up with my small buys because I have a wide array of pieces I can switch between to achieve really lame versions of quality builds. Like I was trying to see what I could do with more EHP in a non-CMWW setting so I switched out one of my crit rings with a Zuni's Pox for the massive AR boost... one of those with crit would have been no less than 25m at the time and that's only for +3%.
Bagstone, I'll definitely check out the guide- I never once considered Life on Kill for Archon but that makes a lot of sense and would probably be substantially cheaper, I'm actually excited to see what I can find!
Jaetch your response gives me a good bit of confidence because a Witching Hour is what I was going to save up the big chunk for next if I had to, I already know the DPS boost would be HUGE (over 10k on the ones I'm looking at) but my current belt is one of the last bastions of good EHP so even if my WH has vit on it, I'll probably need to also gem for vit instead of int because I'd lose so much.
Checking on some EHP calcs, I'm at around 230-260k which I hear is pretty poop.
I guess I'll be looking into Hybrid Archon builds for higher MPs but I have yet to figure out how to survive long with my current gear (or my chantodos') on MP7+... I have an amulet that gets my crit and LoH up to 44 and 1370 respectively but it kills my damage so I can't find a good compromise. There I go again, spreading myself too thin lol.
The Chanto set is really just good for CMWW, because of its massive attack speed boost, but not one of the best choices otherwise (it's not a black weapon, it has limited offense stats, and it's relatively expensive compared to other items when you're looking for an Archon build; Archon doesn't care about attack speed much). That's why with lower valued gear you need to specialize and it's almost impossible to have one set for multiple specs. I have three sets (Archon, CMWW, Blizzard). By the way, if you're not running CMWW forget about LoH and go LS/LaK - especially considering your DPS. So this is a stat you can easily drop from your amulet if you're looking for compromise.
By the way, if you're not running CMWW forget about LoH and go LS/LaK - especially considering your DPS. So this is a stat you can easily drop from your amulet if you're looking for compromise.
Oh definitely, that's why I have been toying around with this Butcher's with decent LS+Blood Weapon... definitely a lot of fun.
Looking for builds that can make good use of hooking people is fun too (Besides CMWW), so far Sleet Storm is the best candidate but it doesn't always feel the most efficient.
Looking at your guide, I didn't realize I've had it in an open tab for weeks and referring to it when buying items (I didn't realize the guy that wrote it was responding to my thread) so thanks very much for an insanely useful resource for Wizards!
Lol Resilga I created a post asking for gearing advice too and mentioned that I'd read the guides posted the following day. When I went to go read them, it was that same gearing guide by Bagstone.
And a follow up question that slipped my mind before -
currently I have a Chantodo's Will with no cd or as, just life on hit because I thought life on hit was super essential on high MP CM wizards...
What I didn't realize is that most wizards got it somewhere else...
I feel like I am jam packed with sub par items. Should I sell this 1040dps/650loh/10apoc chants for one with Crit Dam or AS or just deal with it?
If I remove lifesteal on my weapon do I have to go blackthorne's? I just feel that the small adjustment will require a complete rotation of most of my gear! I really like my Zuni stuff and depth diggers...
EHP is still a concern for CMWW. I also do not recommend using Energy Armor as farming with SA is much much faster, so it's worth lowering the MP or swapping from SNS to SNshell (with crystal shell instead of shards) if needed.
As for your weapon, there's a lot of talk on the official forums that an IAS chanto is the best way to go until you reach the multi-billion gold budget, and sometimes past, because it makes it far easier to reach 2.73 APS and gives more flexibility on gear. They're also supposed to be cheaper. I don't 100% agree and feel it's more of a personal choice, since it's harder to make up that 100% CD lost as opposed to the extra IAS to pick up on gear. Ultimately, it's your choice.
That said, if you're using a Chanto, I recommend dropping LoH and either getting socket, CD, or IAS depending on preference and budget (CD over socket if low on budget if you don't want to go IAS route). You can get LoH from other pieces like SC helm and amulet if you want to use something besides BT pants. BT pants just happen to be extremely well itemized for CMWW which is why nearly all of us use them, and they get 2 random rolls so you can get armor+resist, or resist+int/vit, or various other combinations. The LoH is great and they have a very good base HP to them (90-100 vit plus 10-12% life). If you don't need the LoH then others work just fine though, so building a set without them is possible.
So only split LoH between amulet and Pants if you can get enough LoH while having other desired stats? I'm told stormcrow is a lower mp farming crutch for those with less money... I'd rather pull away from that stigma. Ideally I'd want 900-1100 between pants and amulet and leave helm and main hand slots for pure damage stats, right?
I can never find a good enough dagger for a price I can manage (under 40m) so I'm pretty pidgeonholed into perfecting a chantodo oriented build.
I agree Stormcrow has helped me a lot but I feel like I've hit a ceiling of performance from revolving around it and I am frustrated with my options. I feel like I should just sell all my gear and allocate my finances better next time (flipping the game board in rage).
I'm not going to do that but it just feels like my only option.
That said, I'm probably just going to pick an ideal wiz player and copy their gear layout and stat allocation exactly piece-by-piece and see how that goes. I wish I had the time and intelligence to be one of the few pioneering, reputable, top tier wizards out there; always ahead of the curve with new ideas and great predictions.
For the record,I prefer the chantodo's method. You can look at my gear if you'd like, I just switch to chantodo's set and a intel/vit/loh/ias/cc amulet for CM. I use stretch time to hit 3aps.
Storm Crow is very useful, because you can actually nab a high DPS source without APoC for a significantly lower price. At high APS/CC, you don't really need that much APoC. I run 17 and it's more than enough for me.
For observation I have now switched to my ideal high MP spec (although sometimes I switch Crystal Shell/Prismatic Armor/Chain Explosion thing/Crit +15% nova/and teleport-fracture when i'm really scared).
If I could stay in the build I'm currently using and do High MP that would be stellar. I love meteors. Has that been deemed lame or less effective yet? I know chain explosions procs CM more but I like the LoH proc from liquefy and the burst from meteor itself...
Also Please note my gear and see what I could lose and in favor of what... I just realized I haven't shown my CM spec/gear even once.
http://us.battle.net...20/hero/1379008
Edit: Sometimes I switch from Liquefy to Meteor Shower because it procs many crits, does good LoH regen and looks awesome.
By the way you guys are amazing. I can't thank you enough for helping even if it doesn't mean much to you to do so. I'm a concept artist for small games companies so if any of you would like drawings I'd gladly give ya a discount
RasAlgethi and Jaetch are two examples of cm wizards with huge ehp, great damage but no lifesteal/loh/apoc... I always found these to be very useful things on most wizards in general, how do you guys get by without those sustaining things? Is your ehp just so high that you are never threatened by anything?
I'm assuming you guys are farming mp10 with those setups/builds. What are your attack speeds also? I see so many debates between the right attack speed be it 2.5, 2.7 or even 3.0aps but some of the higher end wizards could seriously give a fuck cm/ww or not.
I feel like I'm missing something in terms of what a "good" build is... is that type of archon build with that gear setup for mid-mp speed runs or for uber bosses or high mp? Is that the best applicable method with that level of gear?
I'm very conflicted when it comes to gear, fortunately the new recipes have allowed me to save a bit of gold with some decent rolls but now I have NO IDEA where to go next.
Part of this comes from my lack of "favorite" builds and find myself doing some kind of CM/WW (emphasis on dmg) build, Archon for quick alkaizers, or just goofing around with things like sleet storm, black ice, disintegrate/chaos nexus, hyper phat arcane destruction crits, or something else thats dumb and inefficient. In my struggles for pure damage I end up sacrificing really important wizard qualities like APoC or Crit and I'm often very low on Vit but I just GOTTA have that high damage number (cuz I'm dumb!).
Looking at my gear - am I in a good spot for a variety of builds or am I just completely off the mark? Is my gear passable for anything in particular? Is there a glaring problem in my setup that could be fixed easily or is it time to save up the tens or hundreds of millions?
TLDR - what the hell is wrong with my poor wizard?
EDIT:
Here's me wiz http://us.battle.net...20/hero/1379008
Follow up question: Are Archon and CM/WW builds the tippy top of the best and most efficient things out there? I know they are excellent for farming efficiency and provide great utility but I just want to know if I'm missing anything? I know both of those types can be tweaked to a degree but it still feels pretty limited in here.
Thanks in advance!
-----------------------------
Edit:
Scroll down for updated question as I missed something.
In terms of balance and efficiency, yes. CM/WW is heavy on survivability and crowd control, and when played correctly, you're basically invincible. Archon focuses on speed and you can easily farm a ton of gold and items in a very short period of time. And at high MPs, you can run Hybrid Archon, which essentially combines CM/WW and Archon (Archon to deal heavy damage, CM/WW to lock enemies and removes cooldown when your Archon expires).
I do exactly what you do right now. I run CM/WW for high MPs in a team (at least until they tweak "on kill" effects in multiplayer so I can run more Hybrid Archon) and Hybrid Archon for any MP I feel like farming. In other times, I too play with random builds for fun. Not much else to do after you hit paragon 100 on your main character.
As for your gear, save up for a nice Witching Hour with at least high int and vitality (you can worry about resistance later). Otherwise, keep farming for drops and crafting for a pair of bracers with vitality and resistance (or high armor) to go with the high int and CC. Also, craft gloves or find a pair with a combination of at least two of the three trifecta stats (IAS, CC, CD) with the good int. Start there. If you want to use Archon, you want to stack int, IAS, CC and CD. I don't know what you use for CM/WW, but the types of available gear for CM/WW are limited, as long as you can stack as much IAS and CC on all your gear and get sufficient APoC.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Your gear is clearly oriented towards Archon right now - I guess there's some pieces that you replace when you switch to CMWW, right? With some more APoC, crit chance (your amulet, helm, right ring have zero crit!), LoH instead of LS?
One thing that I did after 1.07 hit was to get rid of my LS weapon and try one with Life after Kill for Archon. You can even get LaK on rings+amulets if you want to focus on even more damage on your weapon. This way I was able to get a ~1200 DPS weapon for decent money, which is a huge upgrade, and it works fine with Archon on low MPs. I touched upon that in my guide after I updated it recently.
Oh and about the question if you want to purchase one big item or small little upgrades: I concur with Jaetch that one big upgrade is better, but don't assume that this item will gain value over time. Only the top top top .0001% of items or so gain value, for example, Mempos with more than 5% crit and close to maximum values for the other stats might gain value over time, but these cost already more than many of us would ever spend in this game. It's still better to buy long-lasting upgrades that at least keep a bit of resell value after time; it's just that you need to be aware that these items still might lose value (depending on how much they are in the first place).
I completely forgot I had that butcher's main hand (I had recently found it and was testing it because it gave me a significant damage boost and was black), but NORMALLY I use an unspectacular Chantodo's set with 18 APoC between them (and if need be a Storm Crow).
I'm fed up with my small buys because I have a wide array of pieces I can switch between to achieve really lame versions of quality builds. Like I was trying to see what I could do with more EHP in a non-CMWW setting so I switched out one of my crit rings with a Zuni's Pox for the massive AR boost... one of those with crit would have been no less than 25m at the time and that's only for +3%.
Bagstone, I'll definitely check out the guide- I never once considered Life on Kill for Archon but that makes a lot of sense and would probably be substantially cheaper, I'm actually excited to see what I can find!
Jaetch your response gives me a good bit of confidence because a Witching Hour is what I was going to save up the big chunk for next if I had to, I already know the DPS boost would be HUGE (over 10k on the ones I'm looking at) but my current belt is one of the last bastions of good EHP so even if my WH has vit on it, I'll probably need to also gem for vit instead of int because I'd lose so much.
Checking on some EHP calcs, I'm at around 230-260k which I hear is pretty poop.
I guess I'll be looking into Hybrid Archon builds for higher MPs but I have yet to figure out how to survive long with my current gear (or my chantodos') on MP7+... I have an amulet that gets my crit and LoH up to 44 and 1370 respectively but it kills my damage so I can't find a good compromise. There I go again, spreading myself too thin lol.
Oh definitely, that's why I have been toying around with this Butcher's with decent LS+Blood Weapon... definitely a lot of fun.
Looking for builds that can make good use of hooking people is fun too (Besides CMWW), so far Sleet Storm is the best candidate but it doesn't always feel the most efficient.
Looking at your guide, I didn't realize I've had it in an open tab for weeks and referring to it when buying items (I didn't realize the guy that wrote it was responding to my thread) so thanks very much for an insanely useful resource for Wizards!
currently I have a Chantodo's Will with no cd or as, just life on hit because I thought life on hit was super essential on high MP CM wizards...
What I didn't realize is that most wizards got it somewhere else...
I feel like I am jam packed with sub par items. Should I sell this 1040dps/650loh/10apoc chants for one with Crit Dam or AS or just deal with it?
If I remove lifesteal on my weapon do I have to go blackthorne's? I just feel that the small adjustment will require a complete rotation of most of my gear! I really like my Zuni stuff and depth diggers...
Am I doomed?
Thanks for the feedback, it's a relief to know that ehp is a lesser concern these days.
So as SNS CM I could not have ANY life on hit? That feels implausible.
As for your weapon, there's a lot of talk on the official forums that an IAS chanto is the best way to go until you reach the multi-billion gold budget, and sometimes past, because it makes it far easier to reach 2.73 APS and gives more flexibility on gear. They're also supposed to be cheaper. I don't 100% agree and feel it's more of a personal choice, since it's harder to make up that 100% CD lost as opposed to the extra IAS to pick up on gear. Ultimately, it's your choice.
That said, if you're using a Chanto, I recommend dropping LoH and either getting socket, CD, or IAS depending on preference and budget (CD over socket if low on budget if you don't want to go IAS route). You can get LoH from other pieces like SC helm and amulet if you want to use something besides BT pants. BT pants just happen to be extremely well itemized for CMWW which is why nearly all of us use them, and they get 2 random rolls so you can get armor+resist, or resist+int/vit, or various other combinations. The LoH is great and they have a very good base HP to them (90-100 vit plus 10-12% life). If you don't need the LoH then others work just fine though, so building a set without them is possible.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Spent a lot on those Depth Diggers
I agree Stormcrow has helped me a lot but I feel like I've hit a ceiling of performance from revolving around it and I am frustrated with my options. I feel like I should just sell all my gear and allocate my finances better next time (flipping the game board in rage).
I'm not going to do that but it just feels like my only option.
That said, I'm probably just going to pick an ideal wiz player and copy their gear layout and stat allocation exactly piece-by-piece and see how that goes. I wish I had the time and intelligence to be one of the few pioneering, reputable, top tier wizards out there; always ahead of the curve with new ideas and great predictions.
If you want CM, this is what I use when I'm running it: http://d3up.com/b/386329
Storm Crow is very useful, because you can actually nab a high DPS source without APoC for a significantly lower price. At high APS/CC, you don't really need that much APoC. I run 17 and it's more than enough for me.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
If I could stay in the build I'm currently using and do High MP that would be stellar. I love meteors. Has that been deemed lame or less effective yet? I know chain explosions procs CM more but I like the LoH proc from liquefy and the burst from meteor itself...
Also Please note my gear and see what I could lose and in favor of what... I just realized I haven't shown my CM spec/gear even once.
http://us.battle.net...20/hero/1379008
Edit: Sometimes I switch from Liquefy to Meteor Shower because it procs many crits, does good LoH regen and looks awesome.
By the way you guys are amazing. I can't thank you enough for helping even if it doesn't mean much to you to do so. I'm a concept artist for small games companies so if any of you would like drawings I'd gladly give ya a discount
No, and they only apply to skills that use the appropriate skill types.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I'm assuming you guys are farming mp10 with those setups/builds. What are your attack speeds also? I see so many debates between the right attack speed be it 2.5, 2.7 or even 3.0aps but some of the higher end wizards could seriously give a fuck cm/ww or not.
I feel like I'm missing something in terms of what a "good" build is... is that type of archon build with that gear setup for mid-mp speed runs or for uber bosses or high mp? Is that the best applicable method with that level of gear?
As far as the specifics, I hit 3.04 aps, 18apoc, 439loh+1.5ls from blood magic (which according to the calc gives is the equivalent of about 650loh).
I only run Archon for mp6 and lower. That was primarily just to paragon run and farm. Anything above mp6 I run CM.