The hunt for perfect Crowd Control continues. The Gesture of Orpheus wand (50-70% Slow Time cooldown reduction), when combined with Evocation passive, other cooldown reduction gear, Mirror Images, and Frost Nova, allows for a near constant lockdown of elites, bosses, and a total lockdown of regular monsters.
With better gear and proper spell rotations, I believe it's possible avoid damage almost entirely.
Most people simply cast Duplicates and deliberately trigger Illusionist though balancing EHP just enough to take the minimum 15% damage from most incoming attacks. No need to use up valuable paragon points or valuable primary stats on cooldown reduction. Instead, you end up building a more balanced character overall in terms of raw mitigation stats, and you get the same result with countless Point of No Return bubbles set up across the screen.
You can run around to wait for Slow Time to cool down or you can remain in combat to sustain your DPS output, only to cast Slow Time as soon as you get hit so you can resume putting out DPS.
Quote from MeatHeadMikhail» Duplicates casts bubbles, but they don't last as long, so can't have 100% uptime.
The Slow Time bubbles illusions cast last 15 seconds, just as long as your own. Time it for yourself.
And as a side note, do keep in mind elites (edit) enjoy a ramped up resistance to crowd control over consecutive successful casts. You can time this by recording gameplay and playing back the content frame by frame. I believe elites end up with around 60-70% resistance to crowd control. They will still get stunned, though, just not nearly as long as Point of No Return's 3 seconds.
And as another side note, the Illusionist combination works a lot better with Calamity Teleport, considering you can use the skill as both an offensive and defensive tool.
I think Jaetch summed it up pretty well. The whole premise of permanent CC is flawed at the core and I can't understand why you would want to lower your damage and toughness through items that have special procs without ever looking into how that could be done with the wizard skills themselves.
I also don't know where you got the idea that Mirror Image's bubbles last less time? Have you ever actually tried the spell out?
"Each individual monster has a "CC resistance" which starts at 0%, is increased by 10% for each second of CC it gains, and decreases by 10% per second while the monster is not CC'd."
Once upon a time a great man said "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing". But this insanity has to stop. You would have to have INSANE gear to make this build even partly logical on any difficulty. I cannot comprehend how you think it makes ANY sense whatsoever to equip a bunch of items you don't even need and drop your dps down to 70k.
I have another quote for you. "Think about what you're about to say before you do". Or in this case, post...
1) Permanent CC isn't flawed. Case in point: CM wizards. There will be some sort of equivalent in RoS, bet on it.
2) You must be quoting someone else. I never said anything about bubbles lasting less time or being increased by 10%, or anything of the sort. All I said was monsters (elites/bosses) have CC resistance, which they do. Again, you must be quoting someone else.
3) For some reason even when I say - MULTIPLE times - that I'm geared for high toughness/low damage FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY, it doesn't click. Not sure what's hard to understand about that.
3) Yeah, this is something that some people just seem to not understand. Some people are always like DAAAAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAGE and "wtf are you trying out new stuff and sacrifing 10% DPS you bloody noob". If everyone had that mindset we would've never discovered CMWW in the first place... I totally support gimping your DPS for testing purposes.
Quote from MeatHeadMikhail» Duplicates casts bubbles, but they don't last as long, so can't have 100% uptime.
The Slow Time bubbles illusions cast last 15 seconds, just as long as your own. Time it for yourself.
True, i've been using a variation of slow time + bubbles since 2.0 release and on PTR and after much testing i can say that the bubbles slow effect on mobs and projectiles ends as soon as the mirror images dissipate although the bubble stays 15 secs only the stun (point of no return) will work after the images despawn.
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Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
Never wanted, but never fixed either. Hmm. That journal entry is from over a year ago, yet CMWW still worked for AN ENTIRE YEAR. So ... does Blizzard REALLY want to get rid of it? I'm sure they'll nerf something, but not everything.
You're one of the (very) few who missed the multiple times I mentioned - in the video AND in this thread - that I dropped my damage for testing purposes. I won't repeat it again, you'll just have to live with your inability to read. So, your -200k dps statement is silly.
Second, the fact that you even discount stacking cooldown reduction shows how uneducated YOU are about the game. I won't ruin the surprise, but watch what happens when RoS launches. I'll say no more, but I will be making LOTS of videos about absolutely silly cooldown reduction builds. Stay tuned.
Third, your statement of having to take damage is incorrect. I'm actually working on an 'immortal build' right now which I will showcase when it's complete - in which you DO get hit, but NEVER die. Again, stay tuned.
^ It's still in progress, but I'm currently immune to death from elites on T5 unless I stack multiple elites. T6 I can stand for about 15-20 seconds in ground effects before getting popped. Still have to do some work, but it's a combination of damage reduction, a specific 'type' of toughness stacking, and passive regen. It's pretty interesting.
Every build can actually kill stuff, in the end; but when theorycrafting CC-heavy builds you start by maximizing the stunlock potential. Once you know which of the spells, runes, gear choices and so on make the build shine and which are unnecessary, you have the basics of the stunlock (or close to stunlock) build done and then you can stack up DPS. It's kinda like with CMWW: everyone could get to 100% permafreeze, and everyone could get to insane amounts of CMWW damage. But getting both (i.e., permafreezing mobs with 3.01 APS and killing elite packs on MP10 in reasonable time) was really difficult, expensive, and only for a few. Which didn't mean that the poor people couldn't contribute to the researching of the basic mechanics to figure out what works and what doesn't. And that's exactly what OP is doing. Once the knowledge about the CC abilities is there, you can copy it to your build and fill the gaps in gearing/skill choice with damage.
From the RoS beta forums and many discussions with other beta testers my personal impression was that there is no way you can completely stunlock all elites in RoS. It worked for some skills (e.g., Jaetch found a way to keep elites at distance with an insane perma-freeze build sometime earlier on in the beta), but most of the mechanics that allowed 100% CC were more an exploit than clever use of mechanics and got nerfed. Blizzard doesn't want 100% stunlock and will most certainly nerf it if people use it on a large scale, like CMWW in D3V.
That being said, I appreciate anyone trying to figure this out, like OP - even if it's just for the purpose of bringing a flaw in game design to Blizzard's attention.
^ It's still in progress, but I'm currently immune to death from elites on T5 unless I stack multiple elites. T6 I can stand for about 15-20 seconds in ground effects before getting popped. Still have to do some work, but it's a combination of damage reduction, a specific 'type' of toughness stacking, and passive regen. It's pretty interesting.
I do have to admit that sounds interesting. Can you dish out nice amounts of damage with it, too? Can I see a skill setup so I could do some of my own testing and think about how it could be improved?
You've definetely got my attention. I just hope it's something that can actually kill stuff, too.
You'll have to wait. I'm going to do this as a multi-part 'mini series'. First is going to be proof-of-concept, followed by higher DPS variants for faster kill speeds.
With better gear and proper spell rotations, I believe it's possible avoid damage almost entirely.
http://youtu.be/nYDLMWZRLXA
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
And btw, everybody hates them...the Bubbles, thats it
Mocking demise stuns, but again don't last very long and explosion radius is low.
This is a work in progress, but I talk about both runes in the video.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
There was a similar build around here few weeks ago.Thing is... will all that stunning you got no time left to kill
A Wave of Force Build would be interesting... works kinda like the old D2 static now.
You can run around to wait for Slow Time to cool down or you can remain in combat to sustain your DPS output, only to cast Slow Time as soon as you get hit so you can resume putting out DPS.
The Slow Time bubbles illusions cast last 15 seconds, just as long as your own. Time it for yourself.
And as a side note, do keep in mind elites (edit) enjoy a ramped up resistance to crowd control over consecutive successful casts. You can time this by recording gameplay and playing back the content frame by frame. I believe elites end up with around 60-70% resistance to crowd control. They will still get stunned, though, just not nearly as long as Point of No Return's 3 seconds.
And as another side note, the Illusionist combination works a lot better with Calamity Teleport, considering you can use the skill as both an offensive and defensive tool.
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2) You must be quoting someone else. I never said anything about bubbles lasting less time or being increased by 10%, or anything of the sort. All I said was monsters (elites/bosses) have CC resistance, which they do. Again, you must be quoting someone else.
3) For some reason even when I say - MULTIPLE times - that I'm geared for high toughness/low damage FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY, it doesn't click. Not sure what's hard to understand about that.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
2)
The second part he's referring to is a quote from here:
http://www.diablowiki.net/Crowd_Control
Although this is a bit out of date, the most recent information we have is this:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/game/guide/gameplay/game-difficulty#difficulty-scaling
3) Yeah, this is something that some people just seem to not understand. Some people are always like DAAAAAAAAAAAAMAAAAAAAAGE and "wtf are you trying out new stuff and sacrifing 10% DPS you bloody noob". If everyone had that mindset we would've never discovered CMWW in the first place... I totally support gimping your DPS for testing purposes.
Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
Second, the fact that you even discount stacking cooldown reduction shows how uneducated YOU are about the game. I won't ruin the surprise, but watch what happens when RoS launches. I'll say no more, but I will be making LOTS of videos about absolutely silly cooldown reduction builds. Stay tuned.
Third, your statement of having to take damage is incorrect. I'm actually working on an 'immortal build' right now which I will showcase when it's complete - in which you DO get hit, but NEVER die. Again, stay tuned.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
That being said, I appreciate anyone trying to figure this out, like OP - even if it's just for the purpose of bringing a flaw in game design to Blizzard's attention.
Hint: one of the passives is 'Relentless'.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web