Since it came up in a different thread, I'm creating this thread here, since some people seemed to be interested. This topic is about the item that makes you go "WoW, I'm having a blast". Now that the bad jokes are out of the way, let's take a look at it:
(Disclaimer - there's already a topic about the Wand of Woh on the official forums: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11987018694?page=1
Some of my impressions agree with what's being discussed in this topic, at some points my experience differs, so this might be somewhat redundant but also have some new stuff. Who knows. Just thought I'd point out that there's another source of information.)
Yeah, I'm really cheap, running an 80% gem This thing deserves better, but it has to wait for another week...
The wand adds three explosions of the same kind to every explosion of Explosive Blast. If you're using Time Bomb rune, you'll have 4 explosions of 1039% damage. If you're using Chain Reaction rune, you'll have 12 explosions of 320% damage. Note that for the chain reaction rune, it's difficult to see the 12 explosions; it will feel as if it's only 4 explosions, especially with higher APS (at about 2 APS they sync almost perfectly). But if you move you will still see 12 craters created by the 12 explosions, and if you pay close attention you'll see 12 numbers popping up from each enemy.
Despite EB dealing INSANE AMOUNTS OF DAMAGE to each target, it doesn't cost a lot, and even with lots of CDR gear you won't get it to become an AP spender. So you need an AP spender. You can use almost everything; I personally prefer Wave of Force since it's been my favorite wizard spell from day 1 in the beta (even without the WoW). But every other AP spender works. Here's my build that I use most of the time:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WhOSjd!Zbe!accZac
You buff up EA, MW, and Familiar as usual, and then just click the other three spells as you seem fit: EB whenever its cooldown is over, WoF whenever you have AP, and SB in all other cases (and when you need LoH procs). There is no need for APoC since your main DPS source has a cooldown anyways, and you can't combine it with life steal since your only weapon slot is already occupied by the very item that this build is built around. So this is an absolute post-D3V built that is 100% applicable to level 70 RoS gameplay. No special items needed, but there's plenty of stuff which can make this build shine:
- Magefists; I have a pair of those, but bad rolls (no crit), so I'm not using them.
- Cindercoat. Again, not superb rolls, but I'm using it since it makes the fire runes of EB shine and turns Heat Wave into a cheep AP spender that I can spam like crazy.
- Shoulders with EB bonus and CDR. Far from perfect, but it's hard to get high CDR and high EB at the same time without crafting millions of shoulders. I might wait until RoS to craft better ones @70; you get the idea.
- Stone of Jordan. Yeah, I'm using a legacy one, but really - only because I haven't found one since 2.0.1. I'm losing a shit ton of DPS and EHP with this thing, so I'm really eager to find a new one. The thing is - trash mobs die instantly with this build, so you really want some +elite damage bonus.
- A belt with Spectral Blades damage. I've said it in plenty of threads: this belt is OP, because you'll constantly be close to mobs, and you'll constantly be picking up gold. I played a while yesterday on T5 with my inventory open and I was constantly at almost double my toughness because I constantly picked up lots of gold. And of course I was lucky to get a max SB roll since you cast SB a lot (especially on bosses). On bosses I get up to 10-20 stacks of Flame Blades, on trash it goes up to 70-80% (again, that's why trash mobs just die instantly).
- Lots of CDR gear, including a diamond in your helmet. I'm currently at almost 40% CDR, which means I'm almost constantly releasing EB waves (to a point where some people in my group sometimes get annoyed of it :P)
- TOUGHNESS. If you're a glass canon and think running around with less than a million HP is fine, please give this wand to a friend. Really, you will be dead most of the time if you don't stack up toughness. As said in a different thread, I'm at 2m toughness when I play T5, with less I'd be dead too often and dead wizards don't deal damage. On T3 I switch to Pinpoint Barrier and Glass Canon and so on, but I never want to go below 1m toughness - otherwise there are certain elite packs that I just can't kill because you need to get fairly close to be able to kill stuff.
Some further thoughts:
-For boss fights, I switch to Arcane Orb - Scorch for more single damage.
-I really want to switch to an Arcane-based EB build, once I get Moonlight Ward. I'm thinking this: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WhOSjc!Zbc!bYcZaa - increased range with the Obliterate Rune, and high single damage with Obliteration Orb. All of these spells also have quite high proc coefficients which should increase LoH returns. And I could get rid of Cindercoat and equip a Goldskin, which would (in combination with Goldwrap) constantly increase my toughness. With that setup, it should be possible to be a really tanky Arcane boss killer wizard!
I feel that sometimes I kill so quickly that enemies aren't really close to me but a bit further away, like 8-10 yards, and I recast the Arcane Orbits before the old ones exploded. Kinda wasting AP. Prefer all the other runes of Orb (except for Lob).
Just a heads-up - I'm aware of Melkor's thread and mentioned it in my post ;-) Did not have the intention to duplicate that thread over here.
The sole reason for this thread that in another thread someone asked me to post this... let's be honest, the amount of threads on the official wizard forums is veeeeeery high so unless you spend hours every day over there it's very easy to miss something. I tried to frequent it but it was just too much. Plus, there's a lot of shenanigans going on between you US players that, thanks to the non-existence of global play, sometimes makes one feel like an outsider (you might not feel that way but whenever I'm over there I feel that way ;-)). So... my home is the DFans wiz forum, although I try to keep track of the official wiz forums every now and then.
Edit: I crafted ~7 Seven Sins yesterday (oh, how ironic)... and got absolute perfect ones for this build: http://i.imgur.com/ylOyPTm.png
Edit2: For those who don't know, the reason why Wand of Woh was totally broken in F&F beta as Jaetch said, is because back in the F&F beta the Wand of Woh did not do 3 additional explosions, but it would remove the cooldown of EB entirely.
Well, I guess everyone has something to be envious about. You've got Moonlight Ward? I envy you just as much. I also envy Jaetch for Moonlight Ward, full Tal's set, full Blackthorne's set, and Thunderfury.
Could you do me a favor and try out this build and let me know what you think? I'm looking for a Wand of Woh but havn't gotten one. Once I do, I plan on using this build for T6;
@Jaetch: I was told it was arcane juice, but it might actually have been poisoned ;-)
@PKHustle: Your build has two AP spenders (AT and Orb), it doesn't really work ;-) Read my comment about Arcane Orbit above. Deflection, imho, is useless on high Torment levels. Teleport is something that works well in theory, but in practice... I realized I never used it, so I took it out. If you re-design your build to use only one AP spender it could work though, but it's arcane-based, I wouldn't go there before I have Moonlight Ward.
Actually, PKHustle's build can work considering both Arcane Orbit and EB do not take up attack turns, so he can simultaneously cast the spells. Issue is resource management. If a fire based EB was part of the equation, a Cindercoat, high resource reduction and APoC can see sustained EB casts and longer AT channels with Orbit acting as supplementary damage. It will be very tricky to pull off, especially if you want to effectively build a hybrid arcane/fire set with corresponding bonuses.
And regarding Deflection. Shielding has been fixed in the latest patch so high mitigation with Deflection can actually save many butts on high Torment levels. One of my clan members is actually immune to trash damage now on T6 because his APS generates shields high enough to nullify every single trash attack. Different for elites, but that's still a lot of absorbed damage.
(Disclaimer - there's already a topic about the Wand of Woh on the official forums:
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11987018694?page=1
Some of my impressions agree with what's being discussed in this topic, at some points my experience differs, so this might be somewhat redundant but also have some new stuff. Who knows. Just thought I'd point out that there's another source of information.)
Yeah, I'm really cheap, running an 80% gem This thing deserves better, but it has to wait for another week...
The wand adds three explosions of the same kind to every explosion of Explosive Blast. If you're using Time Bomb rune, you'll have 4 explosions of 1039% damage. If you're using Chain Reaction rune, you'll have 12 explosions of 320% damage. Note that for the chain reaction rune, it's difficult to see the 12 explosions; it will feel as if it's only 4 explosions, especially with higher APS (at about 2 APS they sync almost perfectly). But if you move you will still see 12 craters created by the 12 explosions, and if you pay close attention you'll see 12 numbers popping up from each enemy.
Despite EB dealing INSANE AMOUNTS OF DAMAGE to each target, it doesn't cost a lot, and even with lots of CDR gear you won't get it to become an AP spender. So you need an AP spender. You can use almost everything; I personally prefer Wave of Force since it's been my favorite wizard spell from day 1 in the beta (even without the WoW). But every other AP spender works. Here's my build that I use most of the time:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WhOSjd!Zbe!accZac
You buff up EA, MW, and Familiar as usual, and then just click the other three spells as you seem fit: EB whenever its cooldown is over, WoF whenever you have AP, and SB in all other cases (and when you need LoH procs). There is no need for APoC since your main DPS source has a cooldown anyways, and you can't combine it with life steal since your only weapon slot is already occupied by the very item that this build is built around. So this is an absolute post-D3V built that is 100% applicable to level 70 RoS gameplay. No special items needed, but there's plenty of stuff which can make this build shine:
- Magefists; I have a pair of those, but bad rolls (no crit), so I'm not using them.
- Cindercoat. Again, not superb rolls, but I'm using it since it makes the fire runes of EB shine and turns Heat Wave into a cheep AP spender that I can spam like crazy.
- Shoulders with EB bonus and CDR. Far from perfect, but it's hard to get high CDR and high EB at the same time without crafting millions of shoulders. I might wait until RoS to craft better ones @70; you get the idea.
- Stone of Jordan. Yeah, I'm using a legacy one, but really - only because I haven't found one since 2.0.1. I'm losing a shit ton of DPS and EHP with this thing, so I'm really eager to find a new one. The thing is - trash mobs die instantly with this build, so you really want some +elite damage bonus.
- A belt with Spectral Blades damage. I've said it in plenty of threads: this belt is OP, because you'll constantly be close to mobs, and you'll constantly be picking up gold. I played a while yesterday on T5 with my inventory open and I was constantly at almost double my toughness because I constantly picked up lots of gold. And of course I was lucky to get a max SB roll since you cast SB a lot (especially on bosses). On bosses I get up to 10-20 stacks of Flame Blades, on trash it goes up to 70-80% (again, that's why trash mobs just die instantly).
- Lots of CDR gear, including a diamond in your helmet. I'm currently at almost 40% CDR, which means I'm almost constantly releasing EB waves (to a point where some people in my group sometimes get annoyed of it :P)
- TOUGHNESS. If you're a glass canon and think running around with less than a million HP is fine, please give this wand to a friend. Really, you will be dead most of the time if you don't stack up toughness. As said in a different thread, I'm at 2m toughness when I play T5, with less I'd be dead too often and dead wizards don't deal damage. On T3 I switch to Pinpoint Barrier and Glass Canon and so on, but I never want to go below 1m toughness - otherwise there are certain elite packs that I just can't kill because you need to get fairly close to be able to kill stuff.
Some further thoughts:
-For boss fights, I switch to Arcane Orb - Scorch for more single damage.
-I really want to switch to an Arcane-based EB build, once I get Moonlight Ward. I'm thinking this: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WhOSjc!Zbc!bYcZaa - increased range with the Obliterate Rune, and high single damage with Obliteration Orb. All of these spells also have quite high proc coefficients which should increase LoH returns. And I could get rid of Cindercoat and equip a Goldskin, which would (in combination with Goldwrap) constantly increase my toughness. With that setup, it should be possible to be a really tanky Arcane boss killer wizard!
I feel that sometimes I kill so quickly that enemies aren't really close to me but a bit further away, like 8-10 yards, and I recast the Arcane Orbits before the old ones exploded. Kinda wasting AP. Prefer all the other runes of Orb (except for Lob).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11987018694#1
I think the going name for a Cindercoat + Wand of Woh + Chain Reaction build is "Chainpocalypse."
I have not found a Wand of Woh nor a Cindercoat since the Friends & Family Beta when combining both items was BROKEN AS HELL.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
The sole reason for this thread that in another thread someone asked me to post this... let's be honest, the amount of threads on the official wizard forums is veeeeeery high so unless you spend hours every day over there it's very easy to miss something. I tried to frequent it but it was just too much. Plus, there's a lot of shenanigans going on between you US players that, thanks to the non-existence of global play, sometimes makes one feel like an outsider (you might not feel that way but whenever I'm over there I feel that way ;-)). So... my home is the DFans wiz forum, although I try to keep track of the official wiz forums every now and then.
Edit: I crafted ~7 Seven Sins yesterday (oh, how ironic)... and got absolute perfect ones for this build: http://i.imgur.com/ylOyPTm.png
Edit2: For those who don't know, the reason why Wand of Woh was totally broken in F&F beta as Jaetch said, is because back in the F&F beta the Wand of Woh did not do 3 additional explosions, but it would remove the cooldown of EB entirely.
Drank too much arcane juice?
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#cehQSj!Xdh!Zcaccc
@PKHustle: Your build has two AP spenders (AT and Orb), it doesn't really work ;-) Read my comment about Arcane Orbit above. Deflection, imho, is useless on high Torment levels. Teleport is something that works well in theory, but in practice... I realized I never used it, so I took it out. If you re-design your build to use only one AP spender it could work though, but it's arcane-based, I wouldn't go there before I have Moonlight Ward.
And regarding Deflection. Shielding has been fixed in the latest patch so high mitigation with Deflection can actually save many butts on high Torment levels. One of my clan members is actually immune to trash damage now on T6 because his APS generates shields high enough to nullify every single trash attack. Different for elites, but that's still a lot of absorbed damage.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Anyways, I'll try this out when I get the chance, which might not be before tomorrow (long day at work today).