As some of you know, I've been experimenting heavily with a Disintegrate build since December. While I didn't get into Beta to test it in RoS, it's very efficient at 60 and is working well and it is very possible it will be a tier 1 build in RoS, esp. with certain key legendaries.
Signature Skill: With the introduction of 2.0, builds are much more flexible then they were. I would venture to say Wizards went from one of the worst designed classes to one of the best designed classes. You can easily switch out Thrown Blade (if you hate it; it's in there because it's Arcane and this build focused heavily on +Arcane %) for Electrocute if you've come across a Velvet Camaral (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/velvet-camaral) for insistence, or Magic Missile if you found a Mirror Ball (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/mirrorball). You can basically use whatever you prefer; the goal of your signature skill is to generate as much AP as you can by hitting as many enemies as you can. Having it being Arcane damage is a plus for reasons I will explain later.
AP Spender: Disintegrate is the core of your build. It's one of the harder hitting AP spenders in the wizard arsenal. The rune you pick will depend a lot on personal preference. I normally go with Intensify, because Cannoneer is Arcane damage and benefits from the 15% damage rune. Chaos Nexus is a strong choice as well, hitting and slowing enemies that might have been missed by the line attack. Not to mention, Chaos Nexus is hell on any breakable objects that may be hiding legendaries inside.
First skill (1) This slot is one of the more flexible slots in the build. At 60, I went with Archon to burn down Elites in seconds. at 70, I will probably go with Black Hole - Event Horizon (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/class/wizard/active/black-hole) for more survivability. While channelling Disintegrate, I am standing in place and Event Horizon will go a long way to keep me out of trouble and burning things down with Disintegrate.
Second Skill (2) Normally, this is Magic Weapon - Force Weapon. Why? Because it adds a TON of DPS plus the knockback synergizes very well with Temporal Flux. If you need more survivability, you could easily change this to Deflection.
Third Skill (3) Ideally, this is Familiar - Cannoneer/ Sparkflint This also adds a ton of DPS, is Arcane(or Fire) based (so it benefits from +Arcane % damage on your gear) and really ramps up the hurt on your enemies. If you came across the Ess of Johan, ideally with +Arcane damage (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/the-ess-of-johan} suddenly cannoneer and Disintegrate are hitting every enemy in the line.
Fourth Skill (4) This spot I usually reserve for an Armor spell for Survivability. You have many choices here, Pinpoint Barrier to increase your critical hit chance to generate Arcane Power on Crit, Energy Tap to increase Disintegrate Channeling time, or Prismatic Armor for even more survivability. Alternatively, you could try Storm Armor Power of the Storm for - AP cost on Disintegrate, or Shocking Aspect to dramatically increase your damage at the cost of survivability.
Passives: Temporal Flux is a solid pick; This slows every enemy hit by Arcane damage by 80%, giving you time to mow them down before they can land a hit on you. Another likely mandatory passive is Unwavering Will, to increase your damage and defenses while using Disintegrate. The other two I leave to you; you can pick Audacity or Glass Cannon to further ramp up Disintegrate, or Astral Presence to increase time till OOM, or something for survivability like Blur or Arcane Anomaly. Passives depend completely on what you're doing and what aspect of your toon you need to improve.
Gearing:
Gearing will very greatly depending on which legendaries you find, and which states you've rolled. Our main stat is Intellect, so you want it on basically everything. Arcane % damage is VERY nice, because it increases the damage on ALL of your dps skills (Cannoneer, Disintegrate, Thrown Blade and Black Hole) Other stats you want to pick up at +Disintegrate damage on (Boots, Helm, and Source) +Arcane % damage (Bracers & Amulet) +% critical chance to fuel your items with Arcane Power on Critical hit, Increased Attack Speed (for Disintegrate Breakpoints; more on this later) +% critical damage (to make those critical hits REALLY hurt) but just can't pick pure offensive stats. You need to survive, so Vitality is also *very* useful, (your DPS is Zero while dead) + All Resistances (Because if anything is going to kill you, it's mostly elemental damage), Life % and esp. Life on Hit. (Keep in mind Life on Hit, Life % and All Resistance as available as Paragon Stats)
Disintegrate IAS Breakpoints: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8770117237#11
What you need to consider here is the faster you "attack" the more disintegrate ticks the game gives you. This is a bit tricky so I'll ask you to bear with me a bit. Disintegrate, being a channelled spell, has it's own special behavior. Disintegrates deals it's damage very quickly, in ticks.These ticks can crit (and generate ApoC) but the game only shows you one damage number; which is made up of these extremely small, extremely fast "ticks." The more ticks you have, the higher the number displayed, the more Life on Hit generated, the more ApoC earned. This is a very important thing to consider; I'd aim for at least 2.15 attack speed. More is better, but that might require some serious IAS and may not be obtainable with the IAS nerfs in RoS without heavy investment on IAS and a little bit of luck on Hellfire rings.
In closing, I really believe Disintegrate will be a viable build in RoS, and I hope you enjoy melting enemies as much I do. If you find a Slorak's Madness (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/sloraks-madness) you might consider keeping it, despite how much it laughs at you!
Thunderfury isn't restricted to any act. At least it wasn't in the last PTR build. Mine had dropped just before Belial there.
Anyhow, about APoC and what-not. If you are ready to sacrifice two active slots (familiar - arcanot and storm armor - power of the storm) and a passive slot (astral presence), then it is possible to use disintegrate for some very extended periods of time at 1.2 att/sec. If you get lucky to loot 3 pieces on new Tal Rasha / have 4 pieces of legacy Tal Rasha --- 1.42 attacks per second at 117 AP can last you for about 35 seconds. Most packs will die before you go OOM.
And as a hardcore hardcore player, I totally agree about blur. For channeling spells (not just disintegrate, but arcane torrent and frost ray too), it is all but a must.Also, Magic weapon - deflection is a nice way to buff your survivability if you are still lacking it --- that shield can absorb a lot of damage for you as it recovers very quickly and, unlike dominance, will be there when you need... It's kinda hard to keep dominance shield up in the boss / super-tough elite fights, after all. Also, once RoS is out, I suggest Unwavering will as the fourth passive -- it will boost not only survivability, but also damage, and since channeling spells require you to stand in one place, the passive will be buffing us pretty much always when we attack
I only have 9 APoC. Arcanot, Storm Armor and Astral Presence are making up for it though. I rarely run out of AP, every now and then on long single-target fights only. This is my armory.
You are running Orb and Disintegrate together, with no generator (and 9 apoc). That's a pretty big red flag to me. I see why you are running PotS, and Astral Presence, but your survivability is pretty low, esp. against Elites. Dominance isn't going to help much with that.
This disintegrate build is what I've been running the last couple of days. Works very well for doing full clears of the game on T5. If I do clears with my friend with much worse gear than I have on T3, the elites often die within seconds of Frost Nova dropping. On solo T3, they usually don't last beyond the Frost Nova.
I only have 9 APoC. Arcanot, Storm Armor and Astral Presence are making up for it though. I rarely run out of AP, every now and then on long single-target fights only. This is my armory.
Using Frost Nova to boost Disintegrate's damage.. interesting, I hadn't thought of that. Doesn't the Disintegrate beam almost instantly cancel the Frost Nova effect? I was experimenting with Slow Time/Time Warp, myself.
Frost Nova doesn't get cancelled by Disintegrate, I don't even know why it would. It works wonders, though. Much better than any other ability in that slot at least, in my opinion. Makes me able to do a lot of damage to elites in a short time span as well as allowing some form of defensive cooldown if there is a need.
I only have 9 APoC. Arcanot, Storm Armor and Astral Presence are making up for it though. I rarely run out of AP, every now and then on long single-target fights only. This is my armory.
You are running Orb and Disintegrate together, with no generator (and 9 apoc). That's a pretty big red flag to me. I see why you are running PotS, and Astral Presence, but your survivability is pretty low, esp. against Elites. Dominance isn't going to help much with that.
I wonder if you checked the rune on Arcane Orb, it's the Orbit rune. I
Edit: Oh, and as for the survivability, I'm running 1,1mil toughness in-game, and that combined with my reasonable DPS of 300k and the Frost Nova, survivability is actually not an issue at all.
You are indeed correct, my apologies! your toughness is 50% higher then my 700k or so.
Update: So I found a Midnight Ward. It was a pretty crappy one, rolling 21% Arcane Damage, 550 LoH, 5% IAS and 6% Crit chance, with the proc at 250% damage. I wasn't really impressed, but I thought I'd try it out and swap out my Stormcrow for a +15% Disintegrate helm with ApoC, Socket, and Intelligence because I didn't need the LoH on Stormcrow anymore.
And WOW, what a difference. My Effective Disintegrate DPS is about ~425k, minus the Moonlight Ward proc. The moonlight proc is ridiculously good; It's like casting a free Arcane orb. The really sad part is, my Moonlight is pretty much the worst Moonlight you could EVER roll, and it is still stupidly powerful.
With a Socketed Slorak's Madness, I figure I'll hit an effective DPS about about 500k for RoS and just melt everything.
If you're going for LoH returns, then yes, higher IAS will give more life returns. However, AP cost increases with IAS so most, including myself, prefer to run with lower APS for better sustainability. Further, with low APS and single target sustainability, you can add Arcane Orbit instead of a sig spell like you mention and as my build depicts.
Overall I really like Disintegrate and feel like it can play like the old Archon builds with a little gearing and with some skill selection choices. When you add in teleport you add a lot of extra survivability and utility, so I highly recommend running that if you play on higher torment levels.
If you're going for LoH returns, then yes, higher IAS will give more life returns. However, AP cost increases with IAS so most, including myself, prefer to run with lower APS for better sustainability. Further, with low APS and single target sustainability, you can add Arcane Orbit instead of a sig spell like you mention and as my build depicts.
Overall I really like Disintegrate and feel like it can play like the old Archon builds with a little gearing and with some skill selection choices. When you add in teleport you add a lot of extra survivability and utility, so I highly recommend running that if you play on higher torment levels.
Absolutely. More IAS makes you "tankier" and increases straight damage per second. Low IAS increases sustainability. But as far as I know the relationship is linear. You still do the same damage per AP spent; but just spend your AP faster and thus deal your damage and gain LoH faster. If this isn't so let me know.
I have yet to see your build; Would you post it so we may compare and contrast?
If you're going for LoH returns, then yes, higher IAS will give more life returns. However, AP cost increases with IAS so most, including myself, prefer to run with lower APS for better sustainability. Further, with low APS and single target sustainability, you can add Arcane Orbit instead of a sig spell like you mention and as my build depicts.
Overall I really like Disintegrate and feel like it can play like the old Archon builds with a little gearing and with some skill selection choices. When you add in teleport you add a lot of extra survivability and utility, so I highly recommend running that if you play on higher torment levels.
Absolutely. More IAS makes you "tankier" and increases straight damage per second. Low IAS increases sustainability. But as far as I know the relationship is linear. You still do the same damage per AP spent; but just spend your AP faster and thus deal your damage and gain LoH faster. If this isn't so let me know.
I have yet to see your build; Would you post it so we may compare and contrast?
You can see my build by clicking my profile in my sig. It's nothing spectacular and I do change between some various skills depending on group play or solo play and t3 vs t4, but generally it's Chaos Nexus with Force Weapon, Teleport - Safe Passage, Arcane Orbit, Sparkflint or cannoneer, and either Power of the Storm or Force Armor depending on torment level and what bosses I'm fighting. I think Force Armor is great for key wardens, but power of the storm is pretty wicked for sustainability. Passives are Illusionist and then I hover between some combination of Temporal flux (so great against treasure goblins) , Glass cannon (usually with force armor), Blur, and Astral Presence.
You're right about the mechanics. Basically you do 551% weapon damage every attack turn (based on Chaos Nexus damage, for example). Then the loh tics occur at a rate of 3 per attack turn. That means with 2 APS you get 6 loh tics, effectively, per second. With 1 APS you only get 3, so you doubled your life returns. The problem is you also doubled your AP cost, so with 1 APS you might be able to channel indefinitely but with 2 APS you can only channel for 15s against a boss, let's say. APoC returns are linear with APS, I think, but net AP usage is not, since you have that base 10 AP regen that doesn't scale with AP. That means there is an APS for a given APoC and CC that lets you sustain essentially indefinitely against a single target, but above that APS you have a net deficit in AP every second against singles (like Azmodean).
Part of that impact depends on how you play. If you're running through story mode, it might be an issue. If you're just farming, but farming high torment where it takes more than 10-15s to kill yellow elites, that might be a problem. If you mostly farm lower torment where elites die in 10s or less, then it's probably not much of an issue since you have fairly small amounts of times where you face a single mob for anywhere near 15s+.
If you're going for LoH returns, then yes, higher IAS will give more life returns. However, AP cost increases with IAS so most, including myself, prefer to run with lower APS for better sustainability. Further, with low APS and single target sustainability, you can add Arcane Orbit instead of a sig spell like you mention and as my build depicts.
Overall I really like Disintegrate and feel like it can play like the old Archon builds with a little gearing and with some skill selection choices. When you add in teleport you add a lot of extra survivability and utility, so I highly recommend running that if you play on higher torment levels.
Absolutely. More IAS makes you "tankier" and increases straight damage per second. Low IAS increases sustainability. But as far as I know the relationship is linear. You still do the same damage per AP spent; but just spend your AP faster and thus deal your damage and gain LoH faster. If this isn't so let me know.
I have yet to see your build; Would you post it so we may compare and contrast?
You can see my build by clicking my profile in my sig. It's nothing spectacular and I do change between some various skills depending on group play or solo play and t3 vs t4, but generally it's Chaos Nexus with Force Weapon, Teleport - Safe Passage, Arcane Orbit, Sparkflint or cannoneer, and either Power of the Storm or Force Armor depending on torment level and what bosses I'm fighting. I think Force Armor is great for key wardens, but power of the storm is pretty wicked for sustainability. Passives are Illusionist and then I hover between some combination of Temporal flux (so great against treasure goblins) , Glass cannon (usually with force armor), Blur, and Astral Presence.
You're right about the mechanics. Basically you do 551% weapon damage every attack turn (based on Chaos Nexus damage, for example). Then the loh tics occur at a rate of 3 per attack turn. That means with 2 APS you get 6 loh tics, effectively, per second. With 1 APS you only get 3, so you doubled your life returns. The problem is you also doubled your AP cost, so with 1 APS you might be able to channel indefinitely but with 2 APS you can only channel for 15s against a boss
What's the difference between doing 551%/ sec for 20 seconds and 1102%/sec for 10 seconds? As far as I know, none, except you did you damage faster and the stuff that would have taken 20 seconds to die was dead in 10. The only real difference would be if you ran without a signature spell OR you do like I do; Use Archon when I'm out of AP to refill AP while continuing to channel disintegrate.
In which case wouldn't the latter scenario be much better? I think it does and is. We'll see how RoS shakes things up when you have to shift from dps to better survivability.
Your comparison is with 1 person having just twice the APS as someone else. In that case, yes, they do twice the dps. The more logical comparison is having different APS but similar char sheet dps, in which case you can do the same amount of damage in 10s as the other person, but you still have half your AP filled to continue for another 10s against a boss if needed. As I said above, that might not matter if nothing lives longer than 10s, so it's somewhat a personal preference. I just prefer to trade as much IAS for CC+CD or other dps stats.
I tried Archon for elites and such and just prefer using Arcane Orbit since it's more consistent damage against trash mobs and pretty decent against elites, especially since I can gain AP against singles with my APS. For campaign mode play on t3-t4 Archon is just underwhelming with my gearset (since I'm looking more for cost reduction than CD reduction, and still haven't gotten a moonlight ward).
I don't use Archon to face tank because I face tank with my current setup. I didn't try the teleport rune because it's too unreliable having a 120s CD on a spell to use teleport, when you ultimately should just want to nuke the entire time Archon is active. I tried with the aoe blast rune (Arcane Destruction, I think, but can't remember the name since I rarely used anything except improved before 2.0) and it was nice for killing elites, but with 120s CD it just wasn't useful when elites die in 10s and I frequently fight elites more often than 120s apart. If I had more +arcane damage items (still can't get a moonlight ward to drop), then maybe I could see more appeal to Archon. For now I'd rather gear to +dis where I can, which doesn't help Archon at all. Still, I see the merits in its use, and I was just saying it's not for me. Difference of opinion.
Legacy SoJ is great for elites, which is why I use it. It also allows good sustainability so I can gain the extra dps lost from a dps ring by using Arcane Orbit. Without sustainability I lose effective dps whenever I have to switch to a sig spell, which really adds up against bosses (again, been playing campaign mode). I haven't read through your guide but I just love teleport because of the huge utility and survival boost it gives, and itmakes itmuch easier to run with lower EHP, but that's a personal preference.
My hat still gives me more dps than a 300 int, 4.5CC wizard hat, so it's not too bad. If I can find one with int, CC, and +dis, I'd likely switch to it.
I don't really care about trying to run Torment 5-6, but if I wanted to, I'd likely change things around (more EHP at least) but I don't find it worthwhile because of the added time it takes to kill mobs compared to t3-4. I prefer to run where I can kill elites in about 10-15s, sometimes less, so I stick to t3-4 while hunting for some useful legendaries. For me higher torment is about DPS, not just higher toughness, and I just don't feel like I have sufficient effective dps to want to try the higher difficulty.
On a side note, if they ever get around to fixing Arcane Dynamo with channeled skills, I'll likely switch back to a sig spell and use that, though my preferred sig spell for that is Electrocute (usually lightning blast, but the AP return one works too).
I find myself being in agreement with both of you. A few points to add: im not certain moonlight ward stacks with orbit. They dont seem to proc together. They seem to share the same internal CD. legacy Sojs are one of thr best carry over items in the game. Archon is pretty great for crypt runs and refilling apology. I believe I have 1.30 million toughness ana plus frozen storm and t6 scares the crap out of me.
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The Build(s):
60 build http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WRmSjO!UYh!bccZcZ
70 Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WRNSjO!USZi!bcbZcZ
Signature Skill: With the introduction of 2.0, builds are much more flexible then they were. I would venture to say Wizards went from one of the worst designed classes to one of the best designed classes. You can easily switch out Thrown Blade (if you hate it; it's in there because it's Arcane and this build focused heavily on +Arcane %) for Electrocute if you've come across a Velvet Camaral (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/velvet-camaral) for insistence, or Magic Missile if you found a Mirror Ball (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/mirrorball). You can basically use whatever you prefer; the goal of your signature skill is to generate as much AP as you can by hitting as many enemies as you can. Having it being Arcane damage is a plus for reasons I will explain later.
AP Spender: Disintegrate is the core of your build. It's one of the harder hitting AP spenders in the wizard arsenal. The rune you pick will depend a lot on personal preference. I normally go with Intensify, because Cannoneer is Arcane damage and benefits from the 15% damage rune. Chaos Nexus is a strong choice as well, hitting and slowing enemies that might have been missed by the line attack. Not to mention, Chaos Nexus is hell on any breakable objects that may be hiding legendaries inside.
First skill (1) This slot is one of the more flexible slots in the build. At 60, I went with Archon to burn down Elites in seconds. at 70, I will probably go with Black Hole - Event Horizon (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/class/wizard/active/black-hole) for more survivability. While channelling Disintegrate, I am standing in place and Event Horizon will go a long way to keep me out of trouble and burning things down with Disintegrate.
Second Skill (2) Normally, this is Magic Weapon - Force Weapon. Why? Because it adds a TON of DPS plus the knockback synergizes very well with Temporal Flux. If you need more survivability, you could easily change this to Deflection.
Third Skill (3) Ideally, this is Familiar - Cannoneer/ Sparkflint This also adds a ton of DPS, is Arcane(or Fire) based (so it benefits from +Arcane % damage on your gear) and really ramps up the hurt on your enemies. If you came across the Ess of Johan, ideally with +Arcane damage (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/the-ess-of-johan} suddenly cannoneer and Disintegrate are hitting every enemy in the line.
Fourth Skill (4) This spot I usually reserve for an Armor spell for Survivability. You have many choices here, Pinpoint Barrier to increase your critical hit chance to generate Arcane Power on Crit, Energy Tap to increase Disintegrate Channeling time, or Prismatic Armor for even more survivability. Alternatively, you could try Storm Armor Power of the Storm for - AP cost on Disintegrate, or Shocking Aspect to dramatically increase your damage at the cost of survivability.
Passives: Temporal Flux is a solid pick; This slows every enemy hit by Arcane damage by 80%, giving you time to mow them down before they can land a hit on you. Another likely mandatory passive is Unwavering Will, to increase your damage and defenses while using Disintegrate. The other two I leave to you; you can pick Audacity or Glass Cannon to further ramp up Disintegrate, or Astral Presence to increase time till OOM, or something for survivability like Blur or Arcane Anomaly. Passives depend completely on what you're doing and what aspect of your toon you need to improve.
Gearing:
Gearing will very greatly depending on which legendaries you find, and which states you've rolled. Our main stat is Intellect, so you want it on basically everything. Arcane % damage is VERY nice, because it increases the damage on ALL of your dps skills (Cannoneer, Disintegrate, Thrown Blade and Black Hole) Other stats you want to pick up at +Disintegrate damage on (Boots, Helm, and Source) +Arcane % damage (Bracers & Amulet) +% critical chance to fuel your items with Arcane Power on Critical hit, Increased Attack Speed (for Disintegrate Breakpoints; more on this later) +% critical damage (to make those critical hits REALLY hurt) but just can't pick pure offensive stats. You need to survive, so Vitality is also *very* useful, (your DPS is Zero while dead) + All Resistances (Because if anything is going to kill you, it's mostly elemental damage), Life % and esp. Life on Hit. (Keep in mind Life on Hit, Life % and All Resistance as available as Paragon Stats)
Disintegrate IAS Breakpoints: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8770117237#11
What you need to consider here is the faster you "attack" the more disintegrate ticks the game gives you. This is a bit tricky so I'll ask you to bear with me a bit. Disintegrate, being a channelled spell, has it's own special behavior. Disintegrates deals it's damage very quickly, in ticks.These ticks can crit (and generate ApoC) but the game only shows you one damage number; which is made up of these extremely small, extremely fast "ticks." The more ticks you have, the higher the number displayed, the more Life on Hit generated, the more ApoC earned. This is a very important thing to consider; I'd aim for at least 2.15 attack speed. More is better, but that might require some serious IAS and may not be obtainable with the IAS nerfs in RoS without heavy investment on IAS and a little bit of luck on Hellfire rings.
In closing, I really believe Disintegrate will be a viable build in RoS, and I hope you enjoy melting enemies as much I do. If you find a Slorak's Madness (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/sloraks-madness) you might consider keeping it, despite how much it laughs at you!
I went the mana regen route (power of the storm + astral presence) and switched out the thrown blades for the diamond shards skin.
Going to try the intensify rune
Anyhow, about APoC and what-not. If you are ready to sacrifice two active slots (familiar - arcanot and storm armor - power of the storm) and a passive slot (astral presence), then it is possible to use disintegrate for some very extended periods of time at 1.2 att/sec. If you get lucky to loot 3 pieces on new Tal Rasha / have 4 pieces of legacy Tal Rasha --- 1.42 attacks per second at 117 AP can last you for about 35 seconds. Most packs will die before you go OOM.
And as a hardcore hardcore player, I totally agree about blur. For channeling spells (not just disintegrate, but arcane torrent and frost ray too), it is all but a must.Also, Magic weapon - deflection is a nice way to buff your survivability if you are still lacking it --- that shield can absorb a lot of damage for you as it recovers very quickly and, unlike dominance, will be there when you need... It's kinda hard to keep dominance shield up in the boss / super-tough elite fights, after all. Also, once RoS is out, I suggest Unwavering will as the fourth passive -- it will boost not only survivability, but also damage, and since channeling spells require you to stand in one place, the passive will be buffing us pretty much always when we attack
And WOW, what a difference. My Effective Disintegrate DPS is about ~425k, minus the Moonlight Ward proc. The moonlight proc is ridiculously good; It's like casting a free Arcane orb. The really sad part is, my Moonlight is pretty much the worst Moonlight you could EVER roll, and it is still stupidly powerful.
With a Socketed Slorak's Madness, I figure I'll hit an effective DPS about about 500k for RoS and just melt everything.
Armory: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Venaliter-1813/hero/54964
Overall I really like Disintegrate and feel like it can play like the old Archon builds with a little gearing and with some skill selection choices. When you add in teleport you add a lot of extra survivability and utility, so I highly recommend running that if you play on higher torment levels.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I have yet to see your build; Would you post it so we may compare and contrast?
You're right about the mechanics. Basically you do 551% weapon damage every attack turn (based on Chaos Nexus damage, for example). Then the loh tics occur at a rate of 3 per attack turn. That means with 2 APS you get 6 loh tics, effectively, per second. With 1 APS you only get 3, so you doubled your life returns. The problem is you also doubled your AP cost, so with 1 APS you might be able to channel indefinitely but with 2 APS you can only channel for 15s against a boss, let's say. APoC returns are linear with APS, I think, but net AP usage is not, since you have that base 10 AP regen that doesn't scale with AP. That means there is an APS for a given APoC and CC that lets you sustain essentially indefinitely against a single target, but above that APS you have a net deficit in AP every second against singles (like Azmodean).
Part of that impact depends on how you play. If you're running through story mode, it might be an issue. If you're just farming, but farming high torment where it takes more than 10-15s to kill yellow elites, that might be a problem. If you mostly farm lower torment where elites die in 10s or less, then it's probably not much of an issue since you have fairly small amounts of times where you face a single mob for anywhere near 15s+.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
In which case wouldn't the latter scenario be much better? I think it does and is. We'll see how RoS shakes things up when you have to shift from dps to better survivability.
I tried Archon for elites and such and just prefer using Arcane Orbit since it's more consistent damage against trash mobs and pretty decent against elites, especially since I can gain AP against singles with my APS. For campaign mode play on t3-t4 Archon is just underwhelming with my gearset (since I'm looking more for cost reduction than CD reduction, and still haven't gotten a moonlight ward).
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Legacy SoJ is great for elites, which is why I use it. It also allows good sustainability so I can gain the extra dps lost from a dps ring by using Arcane Orbit. Without sustainability I lose effective dps whenever I have to switch to a sig spell, which really adds up against bosses (again, been playing campaign mode). I haven't read through your guide but I just love teleport because of the huge utility and survival boost it gives, and itmakes itmuch easier to run with lower EHP, but that's a personal preference.
My hat still gives me more dps than a 300 int, 4.5CC wizard hat, so it's not too bad. If I can find one with int, CC, and +dis, I'd likely switch to it.
I don't really care about trying to run Torment 5-6, but if I wanted to, I'd likely change things around (more EHP at least) but I don't find it worthwhile because of the added time it takes to kill mobs compared to t3-4. I prefer to run where I can kill elites in about 10-15s, sometimes less, so I stick to t3-4 while hunting for some useful legendaries. For me higher torment is about DPS, not just higher toughness, and I just don't feel like I have sufficient effective dps to want to try the higher difficulty.
On a side note, if they ever get around to fixing Arcane Dynamo with channeled skills, I'll likely switch back to a sig spell and use that, though my preferred sig spell for that is Electrocute (usually lightning blast, but the AP return one works too).
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard