Introduction:
Blizzard buffed the Illusionist passive a few patches ago because it was an under used passive. Unfortunately, this passive is still an under used talent. However, I believe that this passive has enormous potential when properly understood. Its really good at generating massacre streaks. Thus, I would like to present the "Illusionary Engine" build.
How this works:
Illusionist has 2 parts, it will reset the cooldown of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport when you take more than 15% damage of your Max HP and when you cast any one of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport, it will give you 30% movement speed for 3 seconds. There is also a forth spell that isn't influenced by Illusionist, but gives the same benefit, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Under normal circumstances, you cannot maintain the 30% movement speed bonus through any clever chain casting of Mirror Image, Teleport, Slow time and Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell because the cooldown duration is too high. Therefore, we rely on sufficient cooldown reduction so that it is possible to chain cast in such a way to perpetually maintain the 30% movement speed bonus. At 40% cooldown reduction, you can perpetually chain cast 3 spells so that you always get the movement speed bonus. This is the core engine that makes this build possible.
Secondary considerations:
The next thing to consider is attacks. You actually have total freedom to choose which ever attacks you wish, but here is my opinion. To maximize the benefit of the bonus speed, it is best to use attacks that have no casting animation. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to choose from, there is Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit and Explosive Blast. These spells can be cast while you are on the move, but it requires you to be in close to melee range. Being in melee range means that survivability is necessary. Fortunately, the requirements on survivability isn't concrete and you do have some freedom.
On a side note, you could use other ranged attacks like Blizzard and Hydra and kite with your superior speed, but this is a preference thing, either will work well.
Skills:
Required:
Illusionist: The namesake of this build, this is a must. The movement speed increase it gives when you cast something is what makes this build possible, but don't discount the primary mechanic. Remember that what I propose is a melee build, so you will be able to utilize the primary mechanic to instantly refresh your Slow Time/Teleport/Mirror Image. This will be covered in detail in later sections.
Any 3 out of the 4 skills is required:
Slow Time: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus, however, it does serve the secondary function of helping you deal with ranged mobs. Remember that this is a melee build, thus being able to slow down projectiles goes a long way in helping you survive. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer Point of No Return for the stun to assist in surivability. Unfortunately, you do have to stand still to cast this. Fortunately, any time lost in standing still is made up with teleport.
Teleport: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus plus the teleport ability. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer the Calamity rune over the Wormhole rune because of the stun it provides. Remember that teleport gives you the ability to escape vitually everything. In fact, short of being carelessly Frozen, teleport ensures that there shouldn't be any one elite mod that will be the bane of your existance. Also remember, that being in melee means that Illusionist will most likely refresh it regularly, meaning that Teleport -> Calamity can also be used offensively. This is why I prefer the Calamity rune.
Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell: This is one of the skills I use. I think everyone would agree that there really is no reason why you wouldn't have Diamond Skin. I use this skill to free up a skill slot while meeting the 3 skills necessary to maintain perpetual movement speed bonus.
Mirror Image: This skill works with this build, but I personally don't use it because I don't like how you have to stand and cast it and how it moves you in a random direction. To me its counter productive for this build. But if you do want to use it, any rune does work with this build, Mocking Blow in particular would have some uses in this build.
At this point, given that you have sufficient survivability, you have full freedom to use which ever spells you choose. Here are my choices:
Attacks:
Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. Remember that you don't need to spam this spell because the orbs don't all go off at once, so this allows you to ration your Arcane Power easier, just cast it when there is roughly 1 orb left will make it very effective.
Explosive Blast: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. This spell isn't spamable, but the 40% cooldown reduction that is required with this build works on this spell too. Any rune works, but I prefer Chain Reaction because it provides extra hits to proc APOC.
Armour:
Storm Armour -> Scramble: I use this skill because this is a melee build, thus this will be triggering a lot. This isn't necessary, in fact you can really use any armour/rune you wish. I personally like the extra mobility that this rune gives.
Passives:
Blur: This is to help with survivability. Nothing more.
Dominance: This is to help with survivability. You will be killing mobs fairly quickly, thus getting a 10 stack is actually common.
Evocation: This is to assit with getting 40% cooldown reduction. Note that you really don't need this as 40% is achievable without having to make huge compromises, but my gear isn't there yet, so this is why I use this.
Items:
Your gear has to provide sufficient survivability so that you don't suddenly die when you run into melee range for Torment 1, I have roughly 5k armour, 1350 all resist and about 377k HP with no shield and I can run mindlessly into mobs without dying. There isn't a specific item that is a must in this build. The basic requirements are as follows:
1. At least 40% cooldown reduction for 3 spells with movement bonus.
2. Sufficient suvivability so that you can take some hits and enough life on hit/life regen to refill your HP as you take hits.
3. Sufficient Crit change and APOC so that you can refill your Arcane Power.
Number 1 and 2 are more important than number 3. This build isn't Arcane Power hungry, so you don't actually need to worry about Arcane Power too much. I have about 48% Crit Chance and 8 APOC and I don't run into problems. Also having 25% movement speed on your gear and or paragon attributes is a no brainer.
Notable mentions include Illusory Boots and Cosmic Strand. Illusory Boots gives you the ability run through mobs, meaning its a lot harder to get trapped, which is a definite plus when you are in compact maps. Cosmic Strand allows you to combine wormhole with Calamity, which is excellent.
Special Notes:
This is an aggressive build and it will let you zip quickly through maps and bounties. The sequence that you cast Slow Time, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell and Teleport is important because they also double as your survival spells. Because Diamond Skin is part of the casting sequence to maintain the perpetual speed bonus, you need to know when to engage mobs. Fortunately, your superior speed and mobility makes this a non-issue. Typically, my cast sequence is Slow Time -> Teleport -> Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Also, pay attention to when Illusionist trigger and refreshes your Teleport and Slow Time, it will allow you to use them again for defensive or offensive purposes, depending on what the need is. Finally, keep moving, you have speed for a reason, it will help with your survivability.
Please feel free to leave any comments. Flames will be laughed at if entertaining enough, but it will be ignored if they are too boring.
Here are my thoughts on clearing speed. This build requires no signature spell because its really light on Arcane Power consumption. Unless I am mistaken, every other ROS wizard build requires at least 1 signature to recover Arcane Power unless you're using something like Blizzard + Hydra. Thus, while Arcane Orbit and Explosive Blast -> Chain Reaction may not have the raw killing power of say Disintegrate or Frozen Orb, it isn't hindered by the use of signature spells to recover Arcane power either. I think it only looks slow due to the lack of spamming. In addition, you are moving 30% faster, so when you move from mob to mob, you can easily chain up massive massacre counts.
Cooldown reduction also reduces the cooldown on explosive blast. With over 40% CDR, you will get an explosion every second. In addition, I think the internal CD of arcane orbit is about 1 second. Thus, every second, you are getting off 2 explosions, thus you are never running around doing nothing unless you were careless with your Arcane Orbit castings and used up all your Arcane power. Finally, due to cooldown reduction, Explosive Blast will always be ready before your 4th orb goes off, so you will never be running around for no reason. Also, since you are in the thick of mobs, you are maximizing the AOE component of both spells as well.
With regards to plagued/molten/arcane enchanted/electrified/fire chains/etc, the danger lies in the elites surrounding themselves in pools of whatever. The AI isn't smart enough to realize that they are fighting a melee build and thus surround themselves with pools of whatever, they will be using it to try to kill you, thus the trick is to use strafing patterns or simply kite them to another area if the damage pools become too dense. Alternatively, you can simply run through a pool with Diamond Skin on, this will trigger Scamble, which will stack with Diamond Skin, thus allowing you to simply find another group of mobs to build Dominance stacks and return to fight the elites. Remember that you have extreme mobility, so you're not really losing much time by doing this.
Wand of Woh would be a very nice addition to this build, unfortunately, I haven't found one yet. As for the amulet, I thinking of either Moonlight ward or Ess of Johan. There are several other items I am looking at to assist in this area, but I have to find them first.
To be fair, I don't really know how much more effective it is verses other builds, so I will make a video to compare theclearing speeds. Are there any particular builds any of you would like to me use specifically in the comparison?
ChunLi
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
If you can't see the video, please go the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd5rdGxCT0s
Introduction:
Blizzard buffed the Illusionist passive a few patches ago because it was an under used passive. Unfortunately, this passive is still an under used talent. However, I believe that this passive has enormous potential when properly understood. Its really good at generating massacre streaks. Thus, I would like to present the "Illusionary Engine" build.
How this works:
Illusionist has 2 parts, it will reset the cooldown of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport when you take more than 15% damage of your Max HP and when you cast any one of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport, it will give you 30% movement speed for 3 seconds. There is also a forth spell that isn't influenced by Illusionist, but gives the same benefit, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Under normal circumstances, you cannot maintain the 30% movement speed bonus through any clever chain casting of Mirror Image, Teleport, Slow time and Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell because the cooldown duration is too high. Therefore, we rely on sufficient cooldown reduction so that it is possible to chain cast in such a way to perpetually maintain the 30% movement speed bonus. At 40% cooldown reduction, you can perpetually chain cast 3 spells so that you always get the movement speed bonus. This is the core engine that makes this build possible.
Secondary considerations:
The next thing to consider is attacks. You actually have total freedom to choose which ever attacks you wish, but here is my opinion. To maximize the benefit of the bonus speed, it is best to use attacks that have no casting animation. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to choose from, there is Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit and Explosive Blast. These spells can be cast while you are on the move, but it requires you to be in close to melee range. Being in melee range means that survivability is necessary. Fortunately, the requirements on survivability isn't concrete and you do have some freedom.
On a side note, you could use other ranged attacks like Blizzard and Hydra and kite with your superior speed, but this is a preference thing, either will work well.
Skills:
Required:
Illusionist: The namesake of this build, this is a must. The movement speed increase it gives when you cast something is what makes this build possible, but don't discount the primary mechanic. Remember that what I propose is a melee build, so you will be able to utilize the primary mechanic to instantly refresh your Slow Time/Teleport/Mirror Image. This will be covered in detail in later sections.
Any 3 out of the 4 skills is required:
Slow Time: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus, however, it does serve the secondary function of helping you deal with ranged mobs. Remember that this is a melee build, thus being able to slow down projectiles goes a long way in helping you survive. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer Point of No Return for the stun to assist in surivability. Unfortunately, you do have to stand still to cast this. Fortunately, any time lost in standing still is made up with teleport.
Teleport: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus plus the teleport ability. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer the Calamity rune over the Wormhole rune because of the stun it provides. Remember that teleport gives you the ability to escape vitually everything. In fact, short of being carelessly Frozen, teleport ensures that there shouldn't be any one elite mod that will be the bane of your existance. Also remember, that being in melee means that Illusionist will most likely refresh it regularly, meaning that Teleport -> Calamity can also be used offensively. This is why I prefer the Calamity rune.
Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell: This is one of the skills I use. I think everyone would agree that there really is no reason why you wouldn't have Diamond Skin. I use this skill to free up a skill slot while meeting the 3 skills necessary to maintain perpetual movement speed bonus.
Mirror Image: This skill works with this build, but I personally don't use it because I don't like how you have to stand and cast it and how it moves you in a random direction. To me its counter productive for this build. But if you do want to use it, any rune does work with this build, Mocking Blow in particular would have some uses in this build.
At this point, given that you have sufficient survivability, you have full freedom to use which ever spells you choose. Here are my choices:
Attacks:
Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. Remember that you don't need to spam this spell because the orbs don't all go off at once, so this allows you to ration your Arcane Power easier, just cast it when there is roughly 1 orb left will make it very effective.
Explosive Blast: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. This spell isn't spamable, but the 40% cooldown reduction that is required with this build works on this spell too. Any rune works, but I prefer Chain Reaction because it provides extra hits to proc APOC.
Armour:
Storm Armour -> Scramble: I use this skill because this is a melee build, thus this will be triggering a lot. This isn't necessary, in fact you can really use any armour/rune you wish. I personally like the extra mobility that this rune gives.
Passives:
Blur: This is to help with survivability. Nothing more.
Dominance: This is to help with survivability. You will be killing mobs fairly quickly, thus getting a 10 stack is actually common.
Evocation: This is to assit with getting 40% cooldown reduction. Note that you really don't need this as 40% is achievable without having to make huge compromises, but my gear isn't there yet, so this is why I use this.
Items:
Your gear has to provide sufficient survivability so that you don't suddenly die when you run into melee range for Torment 1, I have roughly 5k armour, 1350 all resist and about 377k HP with no shield and I can run mindlessly into mobs without dying. There isn't a specific item that is a must in this build. The basic requirements are as follows:
1. At least 40% cooldown reduction for 3 spells with movement bonus.
2. Sufficient suvivability so that you can take some hits and enough life on hit/life regen to refill your HP as you take hits.
3. Sufficient Crit change and APOC so that you can refill your Arcane Power.
Number 1 and 2 are more important than number 3. This build isn't Arcane Power hungry, so you don't actually need to worry about Arcane Power too much. I have about 48% Crit Chance and 8 APOC and I don't run into problems. Also having 25% movement speed on your gear and or paragon attributes is a no brainer.
Notable mentions include Illusory Boots and Cosmic Strand. Illusory Boots gives you the ability run through mobs, meaning its a lot harder to get trapped, which is a definite plus when you are in compact maps. Cosmic Strand allows you to combine wormhole with Calamity, which is excellent.
Special Notes:
This is an aggressive build and it will let you zip quickly through maps and bounties. The sequence that you cast Slow Time, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell and Teleport is important because they also double as your survival spells. Because Diamond Skin is part of the casting sequence to maintain the perpetual speed bonus, you need to know when to engage mobs. Fortunately, your superior speed and mobility makes this a non-issue. Typically, my cast sequence is Slow Time -> Teleport -> Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Also, pay attention to when Illusionist trigger and refreshes your Teleport and Slow Time, it will allow you to use them again for defensive or offensive purposes, depending on what the need is. Finally, keep moving, you have speed for a reason, it will help with your survivability.
Please feel free to leave any comments. Flames will be laughed at if entertaining enough, but it will be ignored if they are too boring.
ChunLi
Cooldown reduction also reduces the cooldown on explosive blast. With over 40% CDR, you will get an explosion every second. In addition, I think the internal CD of arcane orbit is about 1 second. Thus, every second, you are getting off 2 explosions, thus you are never running around doing nothing unless you were careless with your Arcane Orbit castings and used up all your Arcane power. Finally, due to cooldown reduction, Explosive Blast will always be ready before your 4th orb goes off, so you will never be running around for no reason. Also, since you are in the thick of mobs, you are maximizing the AOE component of both spells as well.
With regards to plagued/molten/arcane enchanted/electrified/fire chains/etc, the danger lies in the elites surrounding themselves in pools of whatever. The AI isn't smart enough to realize that they are fighting a melee build and thus surround themselves with pools of whatever, they will be using it to try to kill you, thus the trick is to use strafing patterns or simply kite them to another area if the damage pools become too dense. Alternatively, you can simply run through a pool with Diamond Skin on, this will trigger Scamble, which will stack with Diamond Skin, thus allowing you to simply find another group of mobs to build Dominance stacks and return to fight the elites. Remember that you have extreme mobility, so you're not really losing much time by doing this.
Wand of Woh would be a very nice addition to this build, unfortunately, I haven't found one yet. As for the amulet, I thinking of either Moonlight ward or Ess of Johan. There are several other items I am looking at to assist in this area, but I have to find them first.
To be fair, I don't really know how much more effective it is verses other builds, so I will make a video to compare theclearing speeds. Are there any particular builds any of you would like to me use specifically in the comparison?
ChunLi