I've been lurking for a while and never really posted, but I've gotten plenty of knowledge from these forums, so I figured I'd give back. I was running into a few problems with dying a lot when running with my DH friend, as we both tended to prioritize damage a little too much. Then, I had a Gesture of Orpheus drop for me , with the legendary passive of reducing Slow Time's cooldown by a large amount (58% for me). The one that dropped was a pretty decent dps upgrade for me regardless of build, but I got to thinking how I could use the utility on the wand on top of making myself more durable for my 2 man runs. Of course, Gesture also increases Arcane Damage, so I decided I would try to craft an Arcane Tanky build, that could also be used for soloing with a passable speed.
Spectral Blades: This build is an up close and personal build. Spectral is the obvious choice. The rune, however, is entirely dependent on what you want out of the build. If you're looking for more damage, siphoning blades or thrown blades are the optimal choices (I use thrown blades). If you want to make the shielding levels absurd (more on this later), run barrier blades.
Wave of Force: Reliable, spammable arcane spender which works in AoE and comes with a rune that reduces enemy damage (Deblitating Force rune)? No brainer.
Magic Weapon- Deflection: Core. The constantly refreshing shield, combined with resistances, Dominance, and the armor from EArmor, provides the core mitigation of the build. Of course, if you want to use Force Weapon, you can run barrier blades instead, but I find the increased range from thrown blades to be too useful.
Energy Armor: The armor buff from this ability is simply too useful for this build to pass up. What rune you choose is, of course, preference. I use pinpoint barrier when I'm soloing or doing farmable content, but when pushing the limit, prismatic barrier gives an absurd amount of extra toughness that is significantly more useful considering the constant shields we have for this build.
Slow Time: Getting into our utility here. This spell has so many uses it's absurd. Zone control, missile dampening, enemy attack speed reduction... the works. With my lovely wand, this spell is constantly up, and provides a centralized location to work around and to corral elite/champ packs into. For this reason, I use the Time Warp rune, to buff up my ally's damage and allow us to spike down enemies even faster. However, most of the runes for this spell work here.
Black Hole- Spellsteal: More utility here. Reduced enemy damage to go along with Wave of Force, stacking enemies into the Time Warp for extra damage, and buffing our own damage in turn. Extremely useful in my opinion, but the use of this rune is probably not 100% necessary for this build. If you have your heart set on Supermassive or Event Horizon, go for it. Supermassive would probably work despite it not being our chosen damage type simply because of it's enhanced utility.
PASSIVES:
Blur: No brainer.
Audacity: No brainer.
Dominance: Where the build starts to get awesome. The build does reliable area damage, and thus facilitates burning down normal packs easily. Getting absurd dominance stacks during or before fighting elite packs makes it so i literally can stand in whatever I want and take no damage. Combined with the goal of high resistances/armor, these shields combined with our 1 or 2 other sources of shielding give us an insane amount of survivability.
Unwavering Will: Nothing not to like here. Buffed up defenses and damage while standing in the midst of our bubble throwing out Spectrals and Waves. I'd say this build uses this passive much more than the typical glass cannon-y type builds, even.
GEARING:
If going for the hyper-tank route, you're going to want AR on as many pieces as you can reasonably get, and high armor values are also a must. Gesture of Orpheus allows us to constantly maintain Slow Time, sometimes having 2 up at once. I also highly recommend Illusory Boots, as they prevent you from getting circle-banged which, while certainly less of a threat in this build, is never fun.
Building for some damage becomes a tad more interesting. I find that going for balance is far more useful; this build does not work well with a heavily damage-focused gear set. All resist and armor are still amazing to have, but getting CC/CHD/IAS are all perfectly doable while still retaining a good level of toughness.
I'd love to hear what you guys think after trying it out. I love that Blizz decided to add the Legendary passives to items, as they get people to think outside the box and can pretty much change way you think about the game by themselves, such as here.
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I've been lurking for a while and never really posted, but I've gotten plenty of knowledge from these forums, so I figured I'd give back. I was running into a few problems with dying a lot when running with my DH friend, as we both tended to prioritize damage a little too much. Then, I had a Gesture of Orpheus drop for me , with the legendary passive of reducing Slow Time's cooldown by a large amount (58% for me). The one that dropped was a pretty decent dps upgrade for me regardless of build, but I got to thinking how I could use the utility on the wand on top of making myself more durable for my 2 man runs. Of course, Gesture also increases Arcane Damage, so I decided I would try to craft an Arcane Tanky build, that could also be used for soloing with a passable speed.
THE BUILD:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WdSOgN!iZgS!bZcZbc
My Wiz:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/justaerin-1205/hero/5943018
Skills:
Spectral Blades: This build is an up close and personal build. Spectral is the obvious choice. The rune, however, is entirely dependent on what you want out of the build. If you're looking for more damage, siphoning blades or thrown blades are the optimal choices (I use thrown blades). If you want to make the shielding levels absurd (more on this later), run barrier blades.
Wave of Force: Reliable, spammable arcane spender which works in AoE and comes with a rune that reduces enemy damage (Deblitating Force rune)? No brainer.
Magic Weapon- Deflection: Core. The constantly refreshing shield, combined with resistances, Dominance, and the armor from EArmor, provides the core mitigation of the build. Of course, if you want to use Force Weapon, you can run barrier blades instead, but I find the increased range from thrown blades to be too useful.
Energy Armor: The armor buff from this ability is simply too useful for this build to pass up. What rune you choose is, of course, preference. I use pinpoint barrier when I'm soloing or doing farmable content, but when pushing the limit, prismatic barrier gives an absurd amount of extra toughness that is significantly more useful considering the constant shields we have for this build.
Slow Time: Getting into our utility here. This spell has so many uses it's absurd. Zone control, missile dampening, enemy attack speed reduction... the works. With my lovely wand, this spell is constantly up, and provides a centralized location to work around and to corral elite/champ packs into. For this reason, I use the Time Warp rune, to buff up my ally's damage and allow us to spike down enemies even faster. However, most of the runes for this spell work here.
Black Hole- Spellsteal: More utility here. Reduced enemy damage to go along with Wave of Force, stacking enemies into the Time Warp for extra damage, and buffing our own damage in turn. Extremely useful in my opinion, but the use of this rune is probably not 100% necessary for this build. If you have your heart set on Supermassive or Event Horizon, go for it. Supermassive would probably work despite it not being our chosen damage type simply because of it's enhanced utility.
PASSIVES:
Blur: No brainer.
Audacity: No brainer.
Dominance: Where the build starts to get awesome. The build does reliable area damage, and thus facilitates burning down normal packs easily. Getting absurd dominance stacks during or before fighting elite packs makes it so i literally can stand in whatever I want and take no damage. Combined with the goal of high resistances/armor, these shields combined with our 1 or 2 other sources of shielding give us an insane amount of survivability.
Unwavering Will: Nothing not to like here. Buffed up defenses and damage while standing in the midst of our bubble throwing out Spectrals and Waves. I'd say this build uses this passive much more than the typical glass cannon-y type builds, even.
GEARING:
If going for the hyper-tank route, you're going to want AR on as many pieces as you can reasonably get, and high armor values are also a must. Gesture of Orpheus allows us to constantly maintain Slow Time, sometimes having 2 up at once. I also highly recommend Illusory Boots, as they prevent you from getting circle-banged which, while certainly less of a threat in this build, is never fun.
Building for some damage becomes a tad more interesting. I find that going for balance is far more useful; this build does not work well with a heavily damage-focused gear set. All resist and armor are still amazing to have, but getting CC/CHD/IAS are all perfectly doable while still retaining a good level of toughness.
I'd love to hear what you guys think after trying it out. I love that Blizz decided to add the Legendary passives to items, as they get people to think outside the box and can pretty much change way you think about the game by themselves, such as here.