So I am looking for advice on a couple peices of gear.
First a link to my Dprogress page: http://www.diablopro...illith/32919609
Also including D3UP page: http://d3up.com/b/571887
(Niether of these sites seem to be updating the character properly. It's missing quite a few item changes)
Hopefully I get it up to date by the time people look at this.
So I am in the process of purchasing a few items:
1. A Witching Hour
2. A Ring with 9% IAS and 4.5+% CC
3. Possibly switching to a Tal's Chest with AR instead of the one with Armor I have.
Further future upgrades include.
1. A Nat's Ring with AR
2. Blackthornes Pants with AR
Ok now the purpose behind this build. I am building my CM kit with 2 objectives in mind.
1. To be a support CM Wiz in mid MP level multiplayer games MP4 - MP6 range. In other words, I am not intending to solo farm.
2. To farm Keys and eventually do Ubers
Please keep in mind when giving feedback, this is a hardcore character, so I am building as defensively as possible.
Now my question is regarding Armor vs. Resists. I know that ideally, it is best to maintain a 10:1 ratio of Armor to All Resist. So if I have 500 AllRes, I would want as close to 5000 Armor as possible. Does anything about the CM build change this guideline? Due to we don't take many direct melee hits, most the damage we incur is from elite affixes, desecrator, arcane, etc.?
With my current gear I am sitting at about 6000 Amor and 750 AllRes when buffed with Prismatic Energy Armor. So with the above mentioned gear upgrades in mind.
1. Should I be trying to add more armor instead of more AR?
2. Should I drop prismatic armor for pinpoint barrier (I'm at around 50% crit without pinpoint), and then add more AR instead of armor on my upgrades?
3. Should I try to add one more peice of gear with AR, and then armor on the other upgrades?
Regarding that whole armor to resist ratio thing, my stance is this: Ignore it.
Really what you are interested in is damage mitigation as far as armor and resists go. Whatever gives you more damage mitigation is the better choice. For wizards that usually means a high AR roll will give more mitigation than a high armor roll. The main exception is if you use pinpoint it tends to favor armor rolls more since you get 35% bonus armor and no resist bonus. With prismatic it favors armor a little but usually high AR rolls will be better as long as you have reasonably high values for each.
Basically, if you have to choose between max armor or max AR roll, pick the AR roll in most cases. What you should do is compare both in a ehp calculator or spreadsheet, and go with the one that gives you the most mitigation, but otherwise you won't go to wrong by just picking AR as the default. Chest and pants are the only possible exceptions I can think of since they can roll higher armor rolls, or you could just get both AR and armor for those pieces.
As for which rune to use, I'd go with either prismatic or Force Armor. At lower MP force armor probably isn't going to be very useful since you'll be stacking high armor, resists, and vit, so I'd use Prismatic for the extra EHP and survivability. 5% CC from pinpoint is nice, but the reason you use EA is survivability, otherwise you would use SA for dps.
Ok so now that my stat pages are up to date. I was hoping to get some gear suggestions.
Currently planned upgrades:
1. Witching Hour, likely with AllRes and either Armor, Vit, or Life%
2. A ring with 9% IAS, 4.5%+ CC, and AllRes
3. A Chantodo's Force with Either Vit or Life%
These 3 items should bring me to the 2.5 APS breakpoint, with pretty solid defensive stats.
I'm also planning to craft better gloves, shoulders and amulet.
Anyone have any other comments or gear suggestions?
Just one point that people tend to forget is that 1 Strength = 1 Armor, so if you get an item with decent armor and lots of strength, the cumulative effect is that of a very high armor roll.
Yeah, but even an item with 200 STR, which would equal 200 Armor is only as good as an item with 20 All Res. Thus an item with even just 50 All Res, would destroy that STR item in terms of EHP and Damage Reduction.
The idea of using str is that if you have extra affix rolls, you can look for str in those spots for a little extra armor. One example is zuni chest. It only rolls 2 affixes. If you're mainly looking for say high vit roll, then you can look for ones with str also and get a little extra armor, hopefully for no additional cost, whereas a version with an armor roll and high vit will tend to cost a small fortune. It's also part of the appeal behind SC and BT pants for CMWW wizards, since they come with that extra 90 armor or so. It really adds up.
First a link to my Dprogress page:
http://www.diablopro...illith/32919609
Also including D3UP page:
http://d3up.com/b/571887
(Niether of these sites seem to be updating the character properly. It's missing quite a few item changes)
Hopefully I get it up to date by the time people look at this.
So I am in the process of purchasing a few items:
1. A Witching Hour
2. A Ring with 9% IAS and 4.5+% CC
3. Possibly switching to a Tal's Chest with AR instead of the one with Armor I have.
Further future upgrades include.
1. A Nat's Ring with AR
2. Blackthornes Pants with AR
Ok now the purpose behind this build. I am building my CM kit with 2 objectives in mind.
1. To be a support CM Wiz in mid MP level multiplayer games MP4 - MP6 range. In other words, I am not intending to solo farm.
2. To farm Keys and eventually do Ubers
Please keep in mind when giving feedback, this is a hardcore character, so I am building as defensively as possible.
Now my question is regarding Armor vs. Resists. I know that ideally, it is best to maintain a 10:1 ratio of Armor to All Resist. So if I have 500 AllRes, I would want as close to 5000 Armor as possible. Does anything about the CM build change this guideline? Due to we don't take many direct melee hits, most the damage we incur is from elite affixes, desecrator, arcane, etc.?
With my current gear I am sitting at about 6000 Amor and 750 AllRes when buffed with Prismatic Energy Armor. So with the above mentioned gear upgrades in mind.
1. Should I be trying to add more armor instead of more AR?
2. Should I drop prismatic armor for pinpoint barrier (I'm at around 50% crit without pinpoint), and then add more AR instead of armor on my upgrades?
3. Should I try to add one more peice of gear with AR, and then armor on the other upgrades?
Really what you are interested in is damage mitigation as far as armor and resists go. Whatever gives you more damage mitigation is the better choice. For wizards that usually means a high AR roll will give more mitigation than a high armor roll. The main exception is if you use pinpoint it tends to favor armor rolls more since you get 35% bonus armor and no resist bonus. With prismatic it favors armor a little but usually high AR rolls will be better as long as you have reasonably high values for each.
Basically, if you have to choose between max armor or max AR roll, pick the AR roll in most cases. What you should do is compare both in a ehp calculator or spreadsheet, and go with the one that gives you the most mitigation, but otherwise you won't go to wrong by just picking AR as the default. Chest and pants are the only possible exceptions I can think of since they can roll higher armor rolls, or you could just get both AR and armor for those pieces.
As for which rune to use, I'd go with either prismatic or Force Armor. At lower MP force armor probably isn't going to be very useful since you'll be stacking high armor, resists, and vit, so I'd use Prismatic for the extra EHP and survivability. 5% CC from pinpoint is nice, but the reason you use EA is survivability, otherwise you would use SA for dps.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I am working on getting all my gear up to date on these EHP calculators so I can make some gear comparisons.
I wish armor was easier to get larger rolls, it's so much cheaper to buy gear with armor than it is with AR.
Currently planned upgrades:
1. Witching Hour, likely with AllRes and either Armor, Vit, or Life%
2. A ring with 9% IAS, 4.5%+ CC, and AllRes
3. A Chantodo's Force with Either Vit or Life%
These 3 items should bring me to the 2.5 APS breakpoint, with pretty solid defensive stats.
I'm also planning to craft better gloves, shoulders and amulet.
Anyone have any other comments or gear suggestions?
Depending a bit on diminishing returns of course.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard