Hey Kams, what's up man, it's Lupita. I've been playing this build since before you were as you know and I just wanted to make a few comments about it.Here's my diabloprogress for reference: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/lupita-1542/Heylia/17671528
The only thing I'm really missing is a fire trifecta amulet, better RoRG, and Witching Hour instead of Harringtons, and I believe that the setup I'm using is the absolute most optimal one, and I'm fairly certain it's the same setup that you are using. I see some Wizards using Tals, or using Vyr's Gloves instead of magefists, and while if you need to do those things because you don't have the gear that's certainly fine, it's going to nerf your damage with this build considerably.
I also want to mention that I've been paying a lot of attention to Avoidlol, who is a twitch streamer, and the only twitch streamer other than yourself that really knows what's up on a Wizard. If you want to see a streamer that plays at the same level as Kams with this build I highly recommend checking him out.
You've pretty much nailed everything here, but I disagree with some of the paragon stat allocations, that being offense and defense. I firmly believe through extensive testing that these are the most optimal settings for those, taking into account a high end gear-set:
offense: critical hit damage > attack speed > crit hit chance > cooldown reduction
explanation: I firmly believe that attempting to stack cooldown reduction with this spec is a mistake. You want to get CDR on shoulders, Mirrorball, and the gem from your helm, and obviously Evocation. This gives you around 48-50% which gives you more than enough sustainability in T6. Attempting to get 60-70% CDR nerfs your damage too much. I believe that setting your gear up in this manner makes you just as powerful out of archon form (in terms of damage, not survivability) as you are in archon form. Additionally, there's some things you can do to help cheese CDR which I'll discuss in a second. On the topic of attack speed versus crit chance, it's pretty negligible to me, but the reason I like attack speed is because of Jade Witch Doctors in group play. They kill things so fast, you need to be attacking and stacking conflag as fast as you can if you want any chance of keeping up with them, and I truly believe the Jade set is overpowered in that regard. This is combined with the fact that we already should have 55%+ crit on gear, which should be more than enough.
defense: Armor > Life > Life Regen > All Resist
explanation: We don't need paragon points into all resist. I have zero points in it and I'm rocking 1600-1800 all resist, which should be pretty typical for this gear setup around paragon 400. Armor is the best stat for T6 as we are frequently in melee range trying to maximize damage from Audacity as well as meleeing in archon form, and life provides us with the buffer we really need when we get some of those awful act 5 mobs, triple packs, or bad affixes. The life regen is also very nice when combined with your templar when soloing.
This brings me to one last thing that I want to discuss, which is the follower that you want to use when soloing T6 with this build. You absolutely want to use a templar, nothing else. I had a pretty rough time getting the correct templar relic for it, but once I did, it was a complete game-changer in terms of solo play.
Gear for your templar:
Relic: The one that makes it so he cannot die, which synergizes with Unity.
Main hand: Strength Thunderfury (rolled to cold damage) or Strength Azurewrath
You wan't this to be as high damage as possible. If you use a Thunderfury on him, make sure you reroll the damage roll to cold damage, as it will proc elemental exposure.
Neck: The Ess of Johan
This is an absolute game changer for solo play. It essentially turns your templar into a pull monk, as the passive on Johan gives him a chance on hit to pull all enemies into him and slow them by 60%. Get one with Strength, and try to get as much damage on it as you possibly can.
Rings: Unity and Bul-Kathos Wedding Band
For solo play, you want to replace your SoJ with a Unity with crit and chd. The lost 15% elite damage and elemental damage is well worth it to be able to take 50% less damage on T6. Bul-Kathos makes him drain life from enemies, which is great since he is constantly pulling enemies in with The Ess of Johan. I'm not really sure how much damage Bul-Kathos is actually doing here, so you could replace this with a MF ring, Leorics, or a Puzzle ring if you wanted, it probably doesn't matter that much.
Shield: I'm open to suggestions for this. Currently I'm just using a level 60 stormshield because I just put my templar together and I don't have anything. I'm inclined to think that you just want any shield with giant strength + 10% crit chance + a socket, but if there's any shields out there with sweet passives I'm open to suggestions for sure.
Skills: Heal, Loyalty, Charge, Guardian.
I can't tell you how many times he has topped me off with a heal, or guardian has gone off and saved me on a bad pack. These are definitely the skills you want, the other skills are useless.
Before I end my little rant here, I also want to mention some items that you want to keep in your inventory to swap to in certain situations.
Trang-Ouls Coils: Has a passive that lowers the duration of your cooldowns by 50-60 seconds depending on the roll whenever you use a health shrine. You can frequently use these to reset your archon cooldown during rifts, allowing you to play much more aggressively.
Warzuchan (sp?) Armguards: The ones that give you a stacking speed buff when you destroy a breakable object. Pop these on when you hit a conduit shrine and have fun killing everything on the level.
Nemesis Bracers: everyone knows about these, but I thought I'd list them anyway.
Mara's, Talisman of Aranoch, Countess Julia's, etc: These things can be so good against rift guardians and shitty packs. For example, the tentacle rift boss that shoots out poison literally can't do damage to you if you put a Mara's on. Hold onto these, even if they are bad rolls. Ideally you want to get a fire trifecta Countess Julia's and use that as your main neck. It seems to me that Arcane is the most common monster affix, and when you stand on the ball of a arcane beam with countess julia's on, your health won't move. no matter how many mobs are on you.
Homing Pads: Slap them on whenever you need to get back to town and toy have stuff on you obviously.
The Burning Axe of Sankriss: Depending on the roll you get, this weapon is much better than Thunderfury on a single target (i.e. a Rift Guardian). Thunderfury is definitely the way to go for all aoe packs though.
I hope you guys found some of this information useful, and thanks for this thread Kams. I truly believe this is the best end-game spec for Wizards. I've stopped trying to explain to people why Wand of WoH is bad. Eventually they will get one and see for themselves how slow and un-survivable it is on higher torments compared to this build.
The bracers are by far the worst rolled of the two, Plantoide. Depends if you rely a lot on the bonus.
I have a question to all the people using Vyr's. After getting the full set tonight (decided to spend my Blood shards somewhere else than hunting a wand of woh, and apparantly they're either very effective now or I'm hilariously lucky), I can't help but feel... Underwhelmed by it.
First off, my character page for reference to gear: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Draco-2719/hero/35820468 (never had luck on a crit+critdmg+firedmg neck, so been stuck with this immunity one :().
I'm capable of clearing T6 rifts solo in 10-15 minutes depending on density and difficulty with this setup.
Now, the reason I'm underwhelmed is this:
In order to benefit from Vyrs, you have to use 4 pieces of gear focused on making the set bonus work. Boots and Pants are not overly important, so those two are obvious. The third piece will have to be either gloves or chest - both of these will loose you 20% fire damage.
This means that 50% of the benefit from Vyr's (activating all runes at once, so assuming you use the fire archon, it's 22% extra damage and 20 sec reduction) is already lost. You might gain 22% dmg while in Archon, but you lose out on 20% dmg *at all times*.
This might still be "worth it". After all, it's still -20 sec on Archon. Where I hit a screeching stop was when I realised that the fourth piece would either be a RoRG, removing either 29% elite and 19% fire damage (or basicly, 48% flat damage against anything that matters) or 50% damage reduction. Both of these are absolutely *huge*, and the benefit you gain compared is... 20 Seconds less on Archon's CD.
Some people might say "yea, but that means you can build around more set bonuses", but... Does it really? Consider the spots used:
Gloves/chest - Pants - Boots. That leaves Helm, Belt, Shoulders, Bracers to build up sets.
As you can see, I'm already rocking three set aughilds without a RoRG. And I literally can't think of any other set bonus I could build without hurting myself more than I'd gain -
Cpt crimson is legs+belt (can't, vyrs legs).
Borns is shoulders+chest (can't, cindercoat chest).
Cains is feet/legs/helm/gloves (shares with Vyrs, so can't).
In the end, it'd actually be most beneficial to drop cindercoat, rather than one of the two rings (20% fire dmg lost as opposed to 20%+30% elite dmg).
The final nail in the coffin was the realisation that "shit, cd reduction ain't free".
In order to effectively use Archon, you want max CD reduction, as stated in this guide. However, this obviously has a cost - for starters:
200 paragon points (or 50% crit dmg / 5% crit / 10% IAS).
A passive skill slot (usually one filled by Audacity or Elemental Exposure. Blur and Conflag are both pretty much a given. Personally, so is Glass Cannon).
And on gear:
20% AOE damage on shoulders (OR some defensive stat).
41 Magic find or 23% life in helm gemslot (dependant on preferance).
And this is just for 50%. Want to go further, you lose out on vitality or IAS on gloves, vitality on Source etc.
To add to all of the above, I can obviously get some quite heavy bonuses with just single legendaries in the slots. I have been trying to aquire a pair of Pox Faulds for my leg slot rather than my old cains, and I wear Ice Climbers boots which makes me immune to a ton of CC that'd probably kill you off oftenly on T6.
So my question is: Why is Vyr so appealing to a lot of people? Is it just the general idea that more archon = better? Or am I missing something that makes these extremely heavy losses worth it?
@Draco_Draco and Hilbs17 thank you for your wonderful posts, both of you answers some question of mine regard item combination, like you Draco i just got my 4th Vyr set (i don't have the ring) and i was really underwhelming by the set, guess it was my mistake thinking that Archon is like Gargantuan, after i got my 4th vyr i came to the conclusion that the set it not worth losing Cindercoat,Magefist the stats you sacrifice for CDR and the talent you lose with the CDR one.
Overall my plan is to go with Draco setup, seems to have big elemental dmg and dmg against elits.Now my question to you Draco, did you test Strongarm+HARRINGTON combo, i mean you only need to sacrifice your Unity and the way i see it you win quite a lot of dmg and you don't lose your Aughild bonus.
I would love to read a response from Op about Draco and Hibs posts, this build fell really good and every improvement regard item combination its a bonus
I've never tried harringtons+Strongarm, no. Usually, I don't even run black hole (not sure if I'm logged out with it - I joined a friends goblin rift last night and took black hole for the pull-back); I run with meteor shower. Having to use black hole for strongarms means giving up either Archon, energy armor, familiar or force weapon, or have no AOE-spender. It also has a *long* cooldown without CDR (better suited for a Vyrs setup).
As for Harringtons, the amount of chests you find during elite/boss fights are eeeh... Not a lot. Clearing trash is a non issue, but overall, I'd rather have my 50% crit dmg and IAS from Witching Hour.
Anyone using a combination of Vyrs and Tals set? Can you do T6 comfortably? I have both sets now but I find the meteors from Tal Rasha very very underwhelming.
tals is only good for the 3 piece bonus for more toughness....the meteors are very weak.
i run t6 pretty comfortably as solo and just recently joined the t6 legit community...going to start trying to get in some groups since i finally found an soj with fire %
If you're in group, you shouldn't need more toughness to survive. There's four targets for mobs to hit instead of one, and their damage doesn't scale. If you're dying, you're standing in shit.
There's four targets for mobs to hit instead of one, and their damage doesn't scale.
This is such an important bonus of multiplayer mode that gets easily forgotten. Now that you reminded me of this, I think that the Unity "glitch" is very much tolerable. Solo play is in a rather bad spot anyway.
Hey Kams, what's up man, it's Lupita. I've been playing this build since before you were as you know and I just wanted to make a few comments about it.Here's my diabloprogress for reference: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/lupita-1542/Heylia/17671528
The only thing I'm really missing is a fire trifecta amulet, better RoRG, and Witching Hour instead of Harringtons, and I believe that the setup I'm using is the absolute most optimal one, and I'm fairly certain it's the same setup that you are using. I see some Wizards using Tals, or using Vyr's Gloves instead of magefists, and while if you need to do those things because you don't have the gear that's certainly fine, it's going to nerf your damage with this build considerably.
I also want to mention that I've been paying a lot of attention to Avoidlol, who is a twitch streamer, and the only twitch streamer other than yourself that really knows what's up on a Wizard. If you want to see a streamer that plays at the same level as Kams with this build I highly recommend checking him out.
You've pretty much nailed everything here, but I disagree with some of the paragon stat allocations, that being offense and defense. I firmly believe through extensive testing that these are the most optimal settings for those, taking into account a high end gear-set:
offense: critical hit damage > attack speed > crit hit chance > cooldown reduction
explanation: I firmly believe that attempting to stack cooldown reduction with this spec is a mistake. You want to get CDR on shoulders, Mirrorball, and the gem from your helm, and obviously Evocation. This gives you around 48-50% which gives you more than enough sustainability in T6. Attempting to get 60-70% CDR nerfs your damage too much. I believe that setting your gear up in this manner makes you just as powerful out of archon form (in terms of damage, not survivability) as you are in archon form. Additionally, there's some things you can do to help cheese CDR which I'll discuss in a second. On the topic of attack speed versus crit chance, it's pretty negligible to me, but the reason I like attack speed is because of Jade Witch Doctors in group play. They kill things so fast, you need to be attacking and stacking conflag as fast as you can if you want any chance of keeping up with them, and I truly believe the Jade set is overpowered in that regard. This is combined with the fact that we already should have 55%+ crit on gear, which should be more than enough.
defense: Armor > Life > Life Regen > All Resist
explanation: We don't need paragon points into all resist. I have zero points in it and I'm rocking 1600-1800 all resist, which should be pretty typical for this gear setup around paragon 400. Armor is the best stat for T6 as we are frequently in melee range trying to maximize damage from Audacity as well as meleeing in archon form, and life provides us with the buffer we really need when we get some of those awful act 5 mobs, triple packs, or bad affixes. The life regen is also very nice when combined with your templar when soloing.
This brings me to one last thing that I want to discuss, which is the follower that you want to use when soloing T6 with this build. You absolutely want to use a templar, nothing else. I had a pretty rough time getting the correct templar relic for it, but once I did, it was a complete game-changer in terms of solo play.
Gear for your templar:
Relic: The one that makes it so he cannot die, which synergizes with Unity.
Main hand: Strength Thunderfury (rolled to cold damage) or Strength Azurewrath
You wan't this to be as high damage as possible. If you use a Thunderfury on him, make sure you reroll the damage roll to cold damage, as it will proc elemental exposure.
Neck: The Ess of Johan
This is an absolute game changer for solo play. It essentially turns your templar into a pull monk, as the passive on Johan gives him a chance on hit to pull all enemies into him and slow them by 60%. Get one with Strength, and try to get as much damage on it as you possibly can.
Rings: Unity and Bul-Kathos Wedding Band
For solo play, you want to replace your SoJ with a Unity with crit and chd. The lost 15% elite damage and elemental damage is well worth it to be able to take 50% less damage on T6. Bul-Kathos makes him drain life from enemies, which is great since he is constantly pulling enemies in with The Ess of Johan. I'm not really sure how much damage Bul-Kathos is actually doing here, so you could replace this with a MF ring, Leorics, or a Puzzle ring if you wanted, it probably doesn't matter that much.
Shield: I'm open to suggestions for this. Currently I'm just using a level 60 stormshield because I just put my templar together and I don't have anything. I'm inclined to think that you just want any shield with giant strength + 10% crit chance + a socket, but if there's any shields out there with sweet passives I'm open to suggestions for sure.
Skills: Heal, Loyalty, Charge, Guardian.
I can't tell you how many times he has topped me off with a heal, or guardian has gone off and saved me on a bad pack. These are definitely the skills you want, the other skills are useless.
Before I end my little rant here, I also want to mention some items that you want to keep in your inventory to swap to in certain situations.
Trang-Ouls Coils: Has a passive that lowers the duration of your cooldowns by 50-60 seconds depending on the roll whenever you use a health shrine. You can frequently use these to reset your archon cooldown during rifts, allowing you to play much more aggressively.
Warzuchan (sp?) Armguards: The ones that give you a stacking speed buff when you destroy a breakable object. Pop these on when you hit a conduit shrine and have fun killing everything on the level.
Nemesis Bracers: everyone knows about these, but I thought I'd list them anyway.
Mara's, Talisman of Aranoch, Countess Julia's, etc: These things can be so good against rift guardians and shitty packs. For example, the tentacle rift boss that shoots out poison literally can't do damage to you if you put a Mara's on. Hold onto these, even if they are bad rolls. Ideally you want to get a fire trifecta Countess Julia's and use that as your main neck. It seems to me that Arcane is the most common monster affix, and when you stand on the ball of a arcane beam with countess julia's on, your health won't move. no matter how many mobs are on you.
Homing Pads: Slap them on whenever you need to get back to town and toy have stuff on you obviously.
The Burning Axe of Sankriss: Depending on the roll you get, this weapon is much better than Thunderfury on a single target (i.e. a Rift Guardian). Thunderfury is definitely the way to go for all aoe packs though.
I hope you guys found some of this information useful, and thanks for this thread Kams. I truly believe this is the best end-game spec for Wizards. I've stopped trying to explain to people why Wand of WoH is bad. Eventually they will get one and see for themselves how slow and un-survivable it is on higher torments compared to this build.
Thank for you all the info Lupita. I didn't give much thought to the follower and those fun items like the Ess of Johan. I have been using the enchantress because the mass chicken thing is really nice but you are selling me on thsi Templar. You make a good point about CDR paragon points for this build and I swapped mine and will update the front post. Thank you again this post is really thorough!
I love this build,i can do solo play t6 no problem BUT at the moment i have a farm group with 2 friends of mine, Jade WD and pet WD, i will not lie i fell so useless compare with them, yes its nice when your Archon explode for 150mill or your doing 40-60 mill crit in archon but damn the numbers don't even compare with 300-500 mill my friends are doing, do we still use the same build in group play or we change something, at the moment im using meteor over black hole and honestly i don't see any different, the moment i get my harington im going for Harington+Strongarm+blackhole combo.
I keep reading from WD forums how wizards are so strong they don't even have time to put the dots on mobs, is that overexaggerate from them or just they play with super gear wizards, because the moment im out of my archon my dmg drop a lot, hell even in archon i still behind dmg compare with my jade WD friend
Those witching doctors saying they barely have time to put dots up are just doing it wrong. Witch Doctors are OP, you won't out DPS a Jade Witch Doctor in t6, and you will probably match the Pet WD. You have to remember that a Wizard brings a lot utility to the group. Blackhole on a very low cooldown brings crowd control and about 15% more damage to the group, and procs Strongarm Bracers which add another 20-30% damage to the group. You then have elemental exposure adding 20% damage for the entire group. That's 65% more damage for the entire group, plus you can do very competitive damage at high gear levels. People don't don't normally think this way in diablo though (critically), they just want to see huge numbers, and seldom understand where those huge numbers are coming from.
I love this build,i can do solo play t6 no problem BUT at the moment i have a farm group with 2 friends of mine, Jade WD and pet WD, i will not lie i fell so useless compare with them, yes its nice when your Archon explode for 150mill or your doing 40-60 mill crit in archon but damn the numbers don't even compare with 300-500 mill my friends are doing, do we still use the same build in group play or we change something, at the moment im using meteor over black hole and honestly i don't see any different, the moment i get my harington im going for Harington+Strongarm+blackhole combo.
I keep reading from WD forums how wizards are so strong they don't even have time to put the dots on mobs, is that overexaggerate from them or just they play with super gear wizards, because the moment im out of my archon my dmg drop a lot, hell even in archon i still behind dmg compare with my jade WD friend
Those witching doctors saying they barely have time to put dots up are just doing it wrong. Witch Doctors are OP, you won't out DPS a Jade Witch Doctor in t6, and you will probably match the Pet WD. You have to remember that a Wizard brings a lot utility to the group. Blackhole on a very low cooldown brings crowd control and about 15% more damage to the group, and procs Strongarm Bracers which add another 20-30% damage to the group. You then have elemental exposure adding 20% damage for the entire group. That's 65% more damage for the entire group, plus you can do very competitive damage at high gear levels. People don't don't normally think this way in diablo though (critically), they just want to see huge numbers, and seldom understand where those huge numbers are coming from.
witch doctors are extremely annoying to play with especially the ones that hit shit and quit it...making the entire rift a royal pain in the ass for the rest of the group... i don't care if you are in full jade, run with 1mil dps and 1 shot every elite boss on the level. i seriously hope they get the nerf bat in the next patch.
strongarm bracers does not apply a buff for the entire group, it's just a 5 sec buff for yourself... i could be wrong but i've been reading a lot of conflicting reports about it. i have them but i prefer aughilds because rolling a perfect aughilds helm sucks with the 90 veiled crystal requirement in the mats
blackhole doesn't either, read the tool tip more carefully...only the damage reduction helps the party
Build:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#aPQjNS!iYeZ!ccZaYZ You could replace Teleport with something else but I like moving around fast when I play and I feel so slow with out it.
If you have a lot of damage and want to make the build more tanky you can drop Magic Weapon/Familiar for an Armor, Diamond Skin, or what ever your favorite defensive is right now. 2.0.5 Update:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#mjaONS!SYbZ!aacccZ With the changes in 2.0.5 you can now have an Archon that does fire damage and it goes really well with this build. Replacing Meteor with Archon and using the Spellsteal rune for Black Hole buff this builds damage a lot! I am running ElementalExposurebecause with my gear I am able to get all the elements on to the mobs and I save my self some toughness from not having Glass Cannon. My Thunderfury does Cold and Lightning, Black Hole does Arcane, and everything else does Fire. You can also try out Audacity if you cannot do Elemental Exposure or don't want to lose the toughness by using Glass Cannon.
Gear: If you hadn't gathered from the title this build is based around having a Mirrorball off hand(how do I make fancy links to gear on these forums!). I was going to wait and do this build when I got more +% fire damage gear but I messed with it for a while and it was very strong. Try and grab as much + damage to Magic Missile and fire as you can. 2.0.5Update: Because you can how use Archon getting the Vyr's 4 pc is a huge bonus. With Archon also comes the need for CDR so try and get that anywhere you can. Black Hole makes enemies take increased damage from Strong Arm Bracers so try and find a pair of those. Not having a lot of CDR doesn't break this build because of how good the spells you are using outside of Archon are. If i get the Tal Rasha's helm I would put on the belt and chest, use Vyr's gloves instead of Magefist to see how that Tal Rahsa's 4 pc works out. Hopefully I get a really nice Fire damage Tal Rasha's neck too then I can keep the Magefist or use Shrine gloves if I get a good pair.
Playstyle:The basics of this build are to spam Magic Missile and use Black Hole to group elites and large amounts of mobs together followed by a Meteor. In T2 it only takes a few seconds for an elite pack to blow up. The only reason I am doing T2 to farm and not T1 is because in my gear the Meteor was overkilling most elite packs and I felt like I was wasting it's damage. 2.0.5Update: Same as before but now you pop in to Archon for elite packs or on CD. The Spellsteal rune from Black Hole helps a lot with incoming damage on higher torments. If you are able to get a lot of CDR you can keep the Spellsteal buff/debuff up almost all the time. I am able to kill a T6 elite pack in seconds by dropping Black Hole and popping Archon near them for the explosion and I have not gotten a good pair of Strong Arm Bracers.
Watch:If you wanted to watch the build I stream most every night and I might start making YouTube videos soon! www.twitch.tv/kamswowCome by and say hello if you would like 2.0.5Update: I recorded a few rifts, my average is about 10-12 minutes but I'm getting faster as I get used to what the spec can handle. Here is a link to one that was pretty quickhttp://youtu.be/4P_Z5-Mnw1E
Paragon Points for Magic Missile no ArchonCore:Movement Speed to 25% > Intelligence Offense:Critical Hit Damage > Critical HitChance = Attack Speed > Cooldown Reduction Defense:Resist All > Armor > Life > Life Regeneration Utility:Area Damage > Life on Hit > Gold Find > Resource Cost Reduction
2.0.5 Update Paragon Points for Magic Missile with Archon
Core:Movement Speed to 25% > Intelligence
Offense:Critical Hit Damage > Critical HitChance = Attack Speed > Cooldown Reduction
Defense:Resist All > Armor > Life > Life Regeneration
Utility:Area Damage > Life on Hit > Gold Find > Resource Cost Reduction
It's a very simple build and does a lot more damage than the other builds I've tried. I always wanted to be a fire Wizard so it has been fun! The hardest part is getting that Mirrorball.
Let me know if you guys can think!
Edit: Lupita made a greatresponseon some gearing, paragon, and follower choices on page 8 if you wanted to check that out!
I don't agree with your build. When you start getting into higher Torments Black Hole starts becoming more of a CC than an offensive damaging CD. When you hit that breakpoint, TP becomes far more valuable. It will get you out of more sticky situations, and will do so more reliably. Additionally in passives I would take Conflagration over Evocation. The only thing which is effectively benefiting from the CDR is Archon. Black Hole, Teleport, w/e you use will very rarely be on CD when you need it. 24s off of Archon is significant, to be sure, but it's not going to be worth the overall DPS increase of the Conflag passive.
Now, as for the Paragon points...I rate CHC above IAS, but that could be strictly due to my gear. Can't say for sure whether or not this is the case for everyone, but you may want to look into it. Lastly, in the Defensive tree Life% is vastly superior in raising your EHP to All Res. We get a shit load of All Res just from being an Int main. The diminishing returns on All Res makes Life% give you a better overall defensive standpoint. Maxing All Res second is definitely the way to go. Better than Armor and Regen, so long as you're above 8k armor.
-Source: Been playing a Fire MM Wiz since I got my Mirrorball on day 3 of RoS.
So, I found a Mirrorball as well, and I'm thinking of doing tests for all the several elements. Here's an interesting TL;DR:
Don't use Arcane Orb - Scorch with Mirrorball!
I went ahead and did Ghom edps tests with Magic Missile - Conflag and one AP spender/fire support spell. Here's the breakdown (all tests on Ghom Torment 3, facetanking with 1.1m sheet DPS, 73% +fire damage, no resource cost reduction, 25% cooldown reduction, always Magic Missile - Conflagerate + the spell in the list):
Explosive Blast - Chain Reaction: 24s
Explosive Blast - Short Fuse: 24s
Meteor - Meteor Shower: 25s
Meteor - Molten Impact: 26s
(no AP spender but MM only): 26.5s
Wave of Force - Heat Wave: 30s
Energy Twister - Gale Force: 31s
Arcane Orb - Scorch: 34s (yes, it was really that much slower).
Conclusion: WoF, ET, and AO actually decrease your DPS as they are less AP efficient (on single target testing like Ghom) than the triple MM. Especially Arcane Orb is a total waste; Gale Force and Heat Wave might of course be useful if you always run through full-packed areas, like act 5 cemetery rift, but of those two I would prefer Heat Wave because of the much better proc coefficient and less random factor. I was surprised that even on single target Ghom Meteor Shower performed that good, but since I'm doing T1 speed running right now that skill would be pointless (everything's dead before the Meteor lands). So right now I'm running EB - Short Fuse (got some more CDR) and MM only, which means I need no AP at all and have four utility spells.
If anyone wants to repeat these tests be my guest - I did only one round of testing so some of it might be crit RNG or so, especially since everything is so close together - but for Arcane Orb the results are pretty obvious. Which is sad, it's one of my two favorite spells (together with Wave of Force).
I might do the same tests for the other elements later, still waiting for an Azurewrath or Frostburn's ;-)
If you haven't already, try running AO-Scorch with Arcane Dynamo. Then ONLY use AO when you have 5 stacks of Arcane Dynamo and ONLY for the DoT component of the Scorch rune. I think you'll be impressed with the results. ^.^
I didn't get the best Thunderfury roll so I've started using my Serpent's Sparker with this build. Then replace EE with Conflaguration. I must say I have noticed an improvement in damage output. I have not run any DPS tests but for me at least, until I get a better TF I will be sticking with the SS.So I am gaining additional AoE fire DoT damage but sacrifice Lightning (and possibly cold) damage for EE and the CC effect from the lighting proc.
I'm curious to know if anyone else has tried this and what their thoughts are? Or if you have a stronger TF then it may not be worth it.
I love this build,i can do solo play t6 no problem BUT at the moment i have a farm group with 2 friends of mine, Jade WD and pet WD, i will not lie i fell so useless compare with them, yes its nice when your Archon explode for 150mill or your doing 40-60 mill crit in archon but damn the numbers don't even compare with 300-500 mill my friends are doing, do we still use the same build in group play or we change something, at the moment im using meteor over black hole and honestly i don't see any different, the moment i get my harington im going for Harington+Strongarm+blackhole combo.
I keep reading from WD forums how wizards are so strong they don't even have time to put the dots on mobs, is that overexaggerate from them or just they play with super gear wizards, because the moment im out of my archon my dmg drop a lot, hell even in archon i still behind dmg compare with my jade WD friend
Those witching doctors saying they barely have time to put dots up are just doing it wrong. Witch Doctors are OP, you won't out DPS a Jade Witch Doctor in t6, and you will probably match the Pet WD. You have to remember that a Wizard brings a lot utility to the group. Blackhole on a very low cooldown brings crowd control and about 15% more damage to the group, and procs Strongarm Bracers which add another 20-30% damage to the group. You then have elemental exposure adding 20% damage for the entire group. That's 65% more damage for the entire group, plus you can do very competitive damage at high gear levels. People don't don't normally think this way in diablo though (critically), they just want to see huge numbers, and seldom understand where those huge numbers are coming from.
witch doctors are extremely annoying to play with especially the ones that hit shit and quit it...making the entire rift a royal pain in the ass for the rest of the group... i don't care if you are in full jade, run with 1mil dps and 1 shot every elite boss on the level. i seriously hope they get the nerf bat in the next patch.
strongarm bracers does not apply a buff for the entire group, it's just a 5 sec buff for yourself... i could be wrong but i've been reading a lot of conflicting reports about it. i have them but i prefer aughilds because rolling a perfect aughilds helm sucks with the 90 veiled crystal requirement in the mats
blackhole doesn't either, read the tool tip more carefully...only the damage reduction helps the party
Strongarm Bracers most certainly apply the damage bonus to the entire group, you're misinformed, they also stack so you want everyone to have them.
This build is far from the best, it's LACKING a LOT of CoolDown Reduction. No Borns. No Crimson. No CDR on SoJ, No CDR on weapon or even his gloves.
If what he advertised was a "perma-archon"-build, then sure. You'd be right. Considering the main focus on the build is still MM, with Archon as a cooldown to speed stuff up/rip through harder elites, it's not true though. Getting CDR for the sacrifice of Crit dmg (rings), losing vyrs if he wants both crimsons and borns (or his weapon, I guess, to keep vyrs), 10% damage (his weapon) - it's simply too much, and it'd completly gut the spec and make it just another "perma archon"-build. You have to understand that there's a difference, and both are perfectly viable :3.
The only thing he could possibly do with CDR on is his gloves of the ones you mentioned, as it can have int+crit+crit dmg+CDR, but then he'd lose the vit, and that might set him back a torment level defensive wise.
You are completely wrong about the bracers, Witch Doctors, and everything else in your post. I think you meant to say "misinformation" but you're probably thinking we're wrong about that too.
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The only thing I'm really missing is a fire trifecta amulet, better RoRG, and Witching Hour instead of Harringtons, and I believe that the setup I'm using is the absolute most optimal one, and I'm fairly certain it's the same setup that you are using. I see some Wizards using Tals, or using Vyr's Gloves instead of magefists, and while if you need to do those things because you don't have the gear that's certainly fine, it's going to nerf your damage with this build considerably.
I also want to mention that I've been paying a lot of attention to Avoidlol, who is a twitch streamer, and the only twitch streamer other than yourself that really knows what's up on a Wizard. If you want to see a streamer that plays at the same level as Kams with this build I highly recommend checking him out.
You've pretty much nailed everything here, but I disagree with some of the paragon stat allocations, that being offense and defense. I firmly believe through extensive testing that these are the most optimal settings for those, taking into account a high end gear-set:
offense: critical hit damage > attack speed > crit hit chance > cooldown reduction
explanation: I firmly believe that attempting to stack cooldown reduction with this spec is a mistake. You want to get CDR on shoulders, Mirrorball, and the gem from your helm, and obviously Evocation. This gives you around 48-50% which gives you more than enough sustainability in T6. Attempting to get 60-70% CDR nerfs your damage too much. I believe that setting your gear up in this manner makes you just as powerful out of archon form (in terms of damage, not survivability) as you are in archon form. Additionally, there's some things you can do to help cheese CDR which I'll discuss in a second. On the topic of attack speed versus crit chance, it's pretty negligible to me, but the reason I like attack speed is because of Jade Witch Doctors in group play. They kill things so fast, you need to be attacking and stacking conflag as fast as you can if you want any chance of keeping up with them, and I truly believe the Jade set is overpowered in that regard. This is combined with the fact that we already should have 55%+ crit on gear, which should be more than enough.
defense: Armor > Life > Life Regen > All Resist
explanation: We don't need paragon points into all resist. I have zero points in it and I'm rocking 1600-1800 all resist, which should be pretty typical for this gear setup around paragon 400. Armor is the best stat for T6 as we are frequently in melee range trying to maximize damage from Audacity as well as meleeing in archon form, and life provides us with the buffer we really need when we get some of those awful act 5 mobs, triple packs, or bad affixes. The life regen is also very nice when combined with your templar when soloing.
This brings me to one last thing that I want to discuss, which is the follower that you want to use when soloing T6 with this build. You absolutely want to use a templar, nothing else. I had a pretty rough time getting the correct templar relic for it, but once I did, it was a complete game-changer in terms of solo play.
Gear for your templar:
Relic: The one that makes it so he cannot die, which synergizes with Unity.
Main hand: Strength Thunderfury (rolled to cold damage) or Strength Azurewrath
You wan't this to be as high damage as possible. If you use a Thunderfury on him, make sure you reroll the damage roll to cold damage, as it will proc elemental exposure.
Neck: The Ess of Johan
This is an absolute game changer for solo play. It essentially turns your templar into a pull monk, as the passive on Johan gives him a chance on hit to pull all enemies into him and slow them by 60%. Get one with Strength, and try to get as much damage on it as you possibly can.
Rings: Unity and Bul-Kathos Wedding Band
For solo play, you want to replace your SoJ with a Unity with crit and chd. The lost 15% elite damage and elemental damage is well worth it to be able to take 50% less damage on T6. Bul-Kathos makes him drain life from enemies, which is great since he is constantly pulling enemies in with The Ess of Johan. I'm not really sure how much damage Bul-Kathos is actually doing here, so you could replace this with a MF ring, Leorics, or a Puzzle ring if you wanted, it probably doesn't matter that much.
Shield: I'm open to suggestions for this. Currently I'm just using a level 60 stormshield because I just put my templar together and I don't have anything. I'm inclined to think that you just want any shield with giant strength + 10% crit chance + a socket, but if there's any shields out there with sweet passives I'm open to suggestions for sure.
Skills: Heal, Loyalty, Charge, Guardian.
I can't tell you how many times he has topped me off with a heal, or guardian has gone off and saved me on a bad pack. These are definitely the skills you want, the other skills are useless.
Before I end my little rant here, I also want to mention some items that you want to keep in your inventory to swap to in certain situations.
Trang-Ouls Coils: Has a passive that lowers the duration of your cooldowns by 50-60 seconds depending on the roll whenever you use a health shrine. You can frequently use these to reset your archon cooldown during rifts, allowing you to play much more aggressively.
Warzuchan (sp?) Armguards: The ones that give you a stacking speed buff when you destroy a breakable object. Pop these on when you hit a conduit shrine and have fun killing everything on the level.
Nemesis Bracers: everyone knows about these, but I thought I'd list them anyway.
Mara's, Talisman of Aranoch, Countess Julia's, etc: These things can be so good against rift guardians and shitty packs. For example, the tentacle rift boss that shoots out poison literally can't do damage to you if you put a Mara's on. Hold onto these, even if they are bad rolls. Ideally you want to get a fire trifecta Countess Julia's and use that as your main neck. It seems to me that Arcane is the most common monster affix, and when you stand on the ball of a arcane beam with countess julia's on, your health won't move. no matter how many mobs are on you.
Homing Pads: Slap them on whenever you need to get back to town and toy have stuff on you obviously.
The Burning Axe of Sankriss: Depending on the roll you get, this weapon is much better than Thunderfury on a single target (i.e. a Rift Guardian). Thunderfury is definitely the way to go for all aoe packs though.
I hope you guys found some of this information useful, and thanks for this thread Kams. I truly believe this is the best end-game spec for Wizards. I've stopped trying to explain to people why Wand of WoH is bad. Eventually they will get one and see for themselves how slow and un-survivable it is on higher torments compared to this build.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/peidinho-1453/hero/46859919
I have a question to all the people using Vyr's. After getting the full set tonight (decided to spend my Blood shards somewhere else than hunting a wand of woh, and apparantly they're either very effective now or I'm hilariously lucky), I can't help but feel... Underwhelmed by it.
First off, my character page for reference to gear:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Draco-2719/hero/35820468 (never had luck on a crit+critdmg+firedmg neck, so been stuck with this immunity one :().
I'm capable of clearing T6 rifts solo in 10-15 minutes depending on density and difficulty with this setup.
Now, the reason I'm underwhelmed is this:
In order to benefit from Vyrs, you have to use 4 pieces of gear focused on making the set bonus work. Boots and Pants are not overly important, so those two are obvious. The third piece will have to be either gloves or chest - both of these will loose you 20% fire damage.
This means that 50% of the benefit from Vyr's (activating all runes at once, so assuming you use the fire archon, it's 22% extra damage and 20 sec reduction) is already lost. You might gain 22% dmg while in Archon, but you lose out on 20% dmg *at all times*.
This might still be "worth it". After all, it's still -20 sec on Archon. Where I hit a screeching stop was when I realised that the fourth piece would either be a RoRG, removing either 29% elite and 19% fire damage (or basicly, 48% flat damage against anything that matters) or 50% damage reduction. Both of these are absolutely *huge*, and the benefit you gain compared is... 20 Seconds less on Archon's CD.
Some people might say "yea, but that means you can build around more set bonuses", but... Does it really? Consider the spots used:
Gloves/chest - Pants - Boots. That leaves Helm, Belt, Shoulders, Bracers to build up sets.
As you can see, I'm already rocking three set aughilds without a RoRG. And I literally can't think of any other set bonus I could build without hurting myself more than I'd gain -
Cpt crimson is legs+belt (can't, vyrs legs).
Borns is shoulders+chest (can't, cindercoat chest).
Cains is feet/legs/helm/gloves (shares with Vyrs, so can't).
In the end, it'd actually be most beneficial to drop cindercoat, rather than one of the two rings (20% fire dmg lost as opposed to 20%+30% elite dmg).
The final nail in the coffin was the realisation that "shit, cd reduction ain't free".
In order to effectively use Archon, you want max CD reduction, as stated in this guide. However, this obviously has a cost - for starters:
200 paragon points (or 50% crit dmg / 5% crit / 10% IAS).
A passive skill slot (usually one filled by Audacity or Elemental Exposure. Blur and Conflag are both pretty much a given. Personally, so is Glass Cannon).
And on gear:
20% AOE damage on shoulders (OR some defensive stat).
41 Magic find or 23% life in helm gemslot (dependant on preferance).
And this is just for 50%. Want to go further, you lose out on vitality or IAS on gloves, vitality on Source etc.
To add to all of the above, I can obviously get some quite heavy bonuses with just single legendaries in the slots. I have been trying to aquire a pair of Pox Faulds for my leg slot rather than my old cains, and I wear Ice Climbers boots which makes me immune to a ton of CC that'd probably kill you off oftenly on T6.
So my question is: Why is Vyr so appealing to a lot of people? Is it just the general idea that more archon = better? Or am I missing something that makes these extremely heavy losses worth it?
As for Harringtons, the amount of chests you find during elite/boss fights are eeeh... Not a lot. Clearing trash is a non issue, but overall, I'd rather have my 50% crit dmg and IAS from Witching Hour.
i run t6 pretty comfortably as solo and just recently joined the t6 legit community...going to start trying to get in some groups since i finally found an soj with fire %
you can check out my wiz linked in my sig...
*edit...for some reason the forum ain't showing it
http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/sifting-1350/sifting/11935612
just don't stand still and try to facetank anything, move out of things on the ground asap, and so on...
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
this goes for everyone, damn...
Thank for you all the info Lupita. I didn't give much thought to the follower and those fun items like the Ess of Johan. I have been using the enchantress because the mass chicken thing is really nice but you are selling me on thsi Templar. You make a good point about CDR paragon points for this build and I swapped mine and will update the front post. Thank you again this post is really thorough!
Diablo 3 Characters: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Kams-1962/hero/763380
Stream: www.twitch.tv/kamswow
Twitter: twitter.com/Kamswow
Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/squigglemuguffin
strongarm bracers does not apply a buff for the entire group, it's just a 5 sec buff for yourself... i could be wrong but i've been reading a lot of conflicting reports about it. i have them but i prefer aughilds because rolling a perfect aughilds helm sucks with the 90 veiled crystal requirement in the mats
blackhole doesn't either, read the tool tip more carefully...only the damage reduction helps the party
Now, as for the Paragon points...I rate CHC above IAS, but that could be strictly due to my gear. Can't say for sure whether or not this is the case for everyone, but you may want to look into it. Lastly, in the Defensive tree Life% is vastly superior in raising your EHP to All Res. We get a shit load of All Res just from being an Int main. The diminishing returns on All Res makes Life% give you a better overall defensive standpoint. Maxing All Res second is definitely the way to go. Better than Armor and Regen, so long as you're above 8k armor.
-Source: Been playing a Fire MM Wiz since I got my Mirrorball on day 3 of RoS.
If you haven't already, try running AO-Scorch with Arcane Dynamo. Then ONLY use AO when you have 5 stacks of Arcane Dynamo and ONLY for the DoT component of the Scorch rune. I think you'll be impressed with the results. ^.^
I'm curious to know if anyone else has tried this and what their thoughts are? Or if you have a stronger TF then it may not be worth it.
whatever
The only thing he could possibly do with CDR on is his gloves of the ones you mentioned, as it can have int+crit+crit dmg+CDR, but then he'd lose the vit, and that might set him back a torment level defensive wise.