My Archon wizard dinged 60 last night and I am enjoying Archon but I am very squishy. What changes can I do in my build to give me more survivability. Also what recommendations do you have for me to change my gear around? I do have a Zuni Ring in stash but it is less sheat dps and life from the 2 rare rings I have. The Zuni ring has the following stats (9 max dmg, 95str, 84 dex, 88 int, 66 AR, 33 CD). I am also have a bid on a Zuni Boots or I was thinking of buying one if I do not win the current one i am bidding on.
I realize I have very little life and I am working on getting more purple gems and tomes to make better gems. My profile can be found at http://d3up.com/b/807630/hcguessidied. Currently I have a star emerald in the Echoing fury but I was going to change that out to a Star Ruby.
Any suggestions on gear and build would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer not to take gear from my WD that is my main cash cow for farming mp1 and 2. Her link is at http://d3up.com/b/775361
Oh currently have about 8 Million gold if I do not win the Zuni boots.
Thank you.
**Edit I won the Zuni boots and have them equiped.
I'd swap out that EF for the best Lifesteal weapon you can afford, and swap storm armor to energy-prismatic firstly.
As you are playing a hardcore wizard, I'd worry more about survival (ehp) than sheat dps.
Inna's pants and Tal's chest can both be replaced with cheaper high ehp rare items, (or BT pants+high vit/int zuni robe)
I'm no where near a guru. In fact not sure who the HC gurus are around here..
I reckon your EHP is pretty low even for mp1. I can only say from my experience that getting +armour on my gear has noticeably helped me out with having decent vit and AR using Prismatic Armour. (Really nice boost from barbs WC also when playing public games). I heard a rule about "if you take hits that get you to half health then your taking too much dmg and should boost your EHP".
I play MP1-2 and glad I have decent EHP. Just last night ran into a nasty pack in public game in the lost mines "frozen fast waller", As you prob know you just don't know when your going to get stuck in situation where you are just watching your toon getting smashed and there nothing you can do about it. hardcore reddit is a good place to pick some extra ideas also in case you don't know of it http://www.reddit.com/r/d3hardcore
Good luck ;0
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
May the heroes rise from the pit of despair and the bards sing of the day of death renewed to everlasting immortality....awaiting your return to the lands of Sanctuary may peace be with you on this day...your day of birth.
i may not be called a HC guru but ive played archon for quite a while , and managed not to die that much on mp10 softcore. the main skill you might wanna have is
-energy armor-force armor so you won't die in 1hit. It absorbs up to 100% of your hp and reduce incoming damage to 35%, you can absorb a couple of hits to fallen maniacs there as long as you got enough mitigation. One good example is to try and get a single hit on fallen maniacs, have unstable anomaly of course, if it triggers then you need more ehp, if it only hit you for 35% of your hp then ur good to go.
-unstable anomaly - nuf said , it's like having a second life. For starters, if you trigger unstable anomaly it is suggested you reset or play it safe.
-illusionist + archon teleport : use it to save ur a-ss on tough situations such as walled+desecrate
-lastly, get a f*cking lifesteal on a weapon and add bloodmagic along with it
If after one hit his close to death or dead, he shouldn't be doing that content. We are not playing softcore, force armor is not that good here. Desecrate doesn't do spike dmg as far as i know, but it's a steady dot like dmg so it shouldn't be affected by ilusionist.
In my haste i forgot the passive skills you should get: blur, galvanazing ward and unstable anomaly
in my experience as archon, as long as you keep channeling and hitting something with the beam you won't die,if your hp won't get back up to full that means you're not leeching enough so better teleport to safety and kite for a bit. DOT spells would really hit hard but that is if you keep standing on it. What really kills us are burst damages like molten explosions(getting vortex'd) or fallen maniacs coming out from nowhere.
I'd probably use something like this: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#VmYXSO!dgh!YZZacc
Sub DS for sparkflint if you don't have issues with keeping Archon up at all. DS is mainly just for added security in case it falls off. Also use LL over WW if you prefer to either run without APoC or don't feel like quick swapping to an APoC piece if you need to refresh Archon.
I'd be super paranoid about survival so I'd use teleport rune with illusionist. That should give you tons of added survivability and you can overcome the lower dps by running lower MP. In general I'd keep at lower MP anyway. With that respect, I think Prismatic Armor >> Force Armor since PA gives added protection against everything while force armor only really helps against burst damage which can mostly be avoided with teleport. You should also try to stack a lot of EHP which further makes Force Armor obsolete for HC.
Not having Galv ward means you'll likely have to manually cancel the Archon buff every 2 min but I think that's a better option than dropping UA for it and Illusionist with teleport is just too good. If you opt to skip illusionist then you can pick up Galv ward if you want. The other option would be blur, which helps against those burst damage skills (molten explosions, maniac explosions, and I think savage beast charges, plus others).
As I usually say in response to HC threads, I have never played HC and I likely never will, so feel free to use as little or as much of the suggestions as you agree with.
I realize I have very little life and I am working on getting more purple gems and tomes to make better gems. My profile can be found at http://d3up.com/b/807630/hcguessidied. Currently I have a star emerald in the Echoing fury but I was going to change that out to a Star Ruby.
Any suggestions on gear and build would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer not to take gear from my WD that is my main cash cow for farming mp1 and 2. Her link is at http://d3up.com/b/775361
Oh currently have about 8 Million gold if I do not win the Zuni boots.
Thank you.
**Edit I won the Zuni boots and have them equiped.
As you are playing a hardcore wizard, I'd worry more about survival (ehp) than sheat dps.
Inna's pants and Tal's chest can both be replaced with cheaper high ehp rare items, (or BT pants+high vit/int zuni robe)
I reckon your EHP is pretty low even for mp1. I can only say from my experience that getting +armour on my gear has noticeably helped me out with having decent vit and AR using Prismatic Armour. (Really nice boost from barbs WC also when playing public games). I heard a rule about "if you take hits that get you to half health then your taking too much dmg and should boost your EHP".
I play MP1-2 and glad I have decent EHP. Just last night ran into a nasty pack in public game in the lost mines "frozen fast waller", As you prob know you just don't know when your going to get stuck in situation where you are just watching your toon getting smashed and there nothing you can do about it. hardcore reddit is a good place to pick some extra ideas also in case you don't know of it http://www.reddit.com/r/d3hardcore
Good luck ;0
immortality....awaiting your return to the lands of Sanctuary may peace be with you on this day...your day of birth.
The Crew
-energy armor-force armor so you won't die in 1hit. It absorbs up to 100% of your hp and reduce incoming damage to 35%, you can absorb a couple of hits to fallen maniacs there as long as you got enough mitigation. One good example is to try and get a single hit on fallen maniacs, have unstable anomaly of course, if it triggers then you need more ehp, if it only hit you for 35% of your hp then ur good to go.
-unstable anomaly - nuf said , it's like having a second life. For starters, if you trigger unstable anomaly it is suggested you reset or play it safe.
-illusionist + archon teleport : use it to save ur a-ss on tough situations such as walled+desecrate
-lastly, get a f*cking lifesteal on a weapon and add bloodmagic along with it
in my experience as archon, as long as you keep channeling and hitting something with the beam you won't die,if your hp won't get back up to full that means you're not leeching enough so better teleport to safety and kite for a bit. DOT spells would really hit hard but that is if you keep standing on it. What really kills us are burst damages like molten explosions(getting vortex'd) or fallen maniacs coming out from nowhere.
Sub DS for sparkflint if you don't have issues with keeping Archon up at all. DS is mainly just for added security in case it falls off. Also use LL over WW if you prefer to either run without APoC or don't feel like quick swapping to an APoC piece if you need to refresh Archon.
I'd be super paranoid about survival so I'd use teleport rune with illusionist. That should give you tons of added survivability and you can overcome the lower dps by running lower MP. In general I'd keep at lower MP anyway. With that respect, I think Prismatic Armor >> Force Armor since PA gives added protection against everything while force armor only really helps against burst damage which can mostly be avoided with teleport. You should also try to stack a lot of EHP which further makes Force Armor obsolete for HC.
Not having Galv ward means you'll likely have to manually cancel the Archon buff every 2 min but I think that's a better option than dropping UA for it and Illusionist with teleport is just too good. If you opt to skip illusionist then you can pick up Galv ward if you want. The other option would be blur, which helps against those burst damage skills (molten explosions, maniac explosions, and I think savage beast charges, plus others).
As I usually say in response to HC threads, I have never played HC and I likely never will, so feel free to use as little or as much of the suggestions as you agree with.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard