Hey all, I'm posting to ask a few questions about my current build, gear, and play-style in hopes of pushing into higher torment levels. I'm comfortable farming T2, but some T3 monster packs can pin me down and insta-gib me.
At my current buffed damage/toughness of 913k/9.1mil, I feel as though I should be able to do much better than T2.
In my attempts to change around my build or reforge my gear, I seem to be stuck. I don't have a lot of pieces with Vit, and when I reforge one or two pieces away from Vit, I can definitely feel the burn more.
Any advice on my build, gear I should be striving for (such as slots to gamble on) or reforges would be greatly appreciated!
Your defensive stats look fine. I have similar AR and armor in my magic find setup with significantly less life and I’m able to comfortably do T3. Your DPS seems a bit low though and I think sacrificing some of your vitality to boost your kill speed will help a lot. I’ll limit my commentary on gear since for the most part you don’t find items in D3, the items find you, but at first glance:
Shoulders and bracers are good spots for the Aughild’s crafted set since there isn’t a lot of great wizard specific gear for these slots, and Aughild’s will help a lot with taking down elites. Since it doesn’t look like you have a Ring of Royal Grandeur, you can also use the Aughild’s chest piece to get the 3 piece set bonus. Make sure that your chest piece has 3 sockets though as that’s generally much better than any other stats that can roll for a chest. I would at the very least try to enchant Tyrael’s Might to have 3 sockets and sticking the highest topazes I could find in there.
Triumvirate doesn’t help you that much since it doesn’t add to cold damage. Your off hand would be my first priority in upgrading through gambling since there are a lot of viable options here and it’s a cheap gamble through Kadala at only 5 shards. Winter’s Flurry, Mirrorball, and Light of Grace would all be upgrades I would think.
Anything that allows you to stack additional cold damage would obviously be an upgrade including an appropriate Stone of Jordan or Andariel’s Visage. Frostburns could also be an upgrade but it would be hard to tell since your Talons are boss and you would break up your 2-piece bonus.
Skill choices boil down to personal preference but I would switch Deflection to Force Weapon and Pinpoint Barrier to Prismatic Armor. I think you would need to stack more IAS to take advantage of Deflection and the extra 10% boost from Force Weapon should be better than the 5% critical hit chance you get from Pinpoint Barrier (Diabloprogress.com shows it would be about a 10,000 DPS increase).
Is gambling for sources smart right now? I know there is a bug with legendary sources dropping with bad damage, and my Tri dropped before the bug started.
I'm still concerned about sacrificing vit for damage. I rerolled my Thunderfury's Vit to IAS, and I could really feel the difference, so I switched it back. In T2 it didn't matter, but when I was in T3 I felt pretty squishy.
The switch to Prismatic may change the feel though, so I will try it out.
As an aside, I have enough gear for about +80% fire damage in my stash, but the damage on it (especially the poorly rolled axe) is lackluster. Are there any good fire builds I could take advantage of?
If your cold gear is anything like your fire gear, just stick with torment 1, and you will get more loot faster. Trying to push higher torments is a great way to make yourself get a lot less loot because you kill a lot slower. Clearing a rift taking 30-50% longer for 15% more loot is just not worth it. Even if you never ever die and can just stand there laughing at the monsters - If it's just 15% slower it's already not really helping you get loot any faster.
Your fire build seems pretty useless to me. Conflagrate is a joke without the 2 extra missiles from a mirrorball, and meteor shower is just not as strong as frozen orb.
Also, on andariel's, unless your 4th stat was really terrible, it is better to remove the attack speed. Skill bonus, int, crit chance, socket and vit (int that order, though socket and vit can interchange depending on your current vit and life%) are all preferable over a measly 6% attack speed, especially if you don't have a mirrorball.
Once you have the gold for imperial gems and up, only socket int in your items, and only use items with max number of sockets (enchant it if you must). Sockets and int are pretty much a must-have on every item that can roll more than 1 socket.
If you can craft any legendary boots easily (preferably Ahsera's, which has good set bonuses and is very easy to farm), try craft ones with int, vit, arcane orb damage and either all resist or armor with a single resist secondary. Keep in mind that enchanting arcane orb damage on boots that have all other 3 stats is more difficult than enchanting any of the other 3 (well, 4, but you will only end up with 3) stats on an item that already has the other 2 and arcane orb damage, simply because there are multiple skills that can get rolled but are blocked if the boots already have arcane orb damage. So only spend a lot enchanting arcane orb onto your boots if they are already very good, and otherwise keep trying to craft ones with arcane orb damage. This actually works for meteor too, I just don't recommend using meteor...
At my current buffed damage/toughness of 913k/9.1mil, I feel as though I should be able to do much better than T2.
In my attempts to change around my build or reforge my gear, I seem to be stuck. I don't have a lot of pieces with Vit, and when I reforge one or two pieces away from Vit, I can definitely feel the burn more.
Any advice on my build, gear I should be striving for (such as slots to gamble on) or reforges would be greatly appreciated!
My builds:
FO (currently my best one):http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bcSONj!ZcWR!YccZZa
Cold Melee: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UZSONj!ZiWS!cYcZZa
My gear:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Chain-1847/hero/774476
Skill choices boil down to personal preference but I would switch Deflection to Force Weapon and Pinpoint Barrier to Prismatic Armor. I think you would need to stack more IAS to take advantage of Deflection and the extra 10% boost from Force Weapon should be better than the 5% critical hit chance you get from Pinpoint Barrier (Diabloprogress.com shows it would be about a 10,000 DPS increase).
Is gambling for sources smart right now? I know there is a bug with legendary sources dropping with bad damage, and my Tri dropped before the bug started.
I'm still concerned about sacrificing vit for damage. I rerolled my Thunderfury's Vit to IAS, and I could really feel the difference, so I switched it back. In T2 it didn't matter, but when I was in T3 I felt pretty squishy.
The switch to Prismatic may change the feel though, so I will try it out.
As an aside, I have enough gear for about +80% fire damage in my stash, but the damage on it (especially the poorly rolled axe) is lackluster. Are there any good fire builds I could take advantage of?
Your fire build seems pretty useless to me. Conflagrate is a joke without the 2 extra missiles from a mirrorball, and meteor shower is just not as strong as frozen orb.
Also, on andariel's, unless your 4th stat was really terrible, it is better to remove the attack speed. Skill bonus, int, crit chance, socket and vit (int that order, though socket and vit can interchange depending on your current vit and life%) are all preferable over a measly 6% attack speed, especially if you don't have a mirrorball.
Once you have the gold for imperial gems and up, only socket int in your items, and only use items with max number of sockets (enchant it if you must). Sockets and int are pretty much a must-have on every item that can roll more than 1 socket.
If you can craft any legendary boots easily (preferably Ahsera's, which has good set bonuses and is very easy to farm), try craft ones with int, vit, arcane orb damage and either all resist or armor with a single resist secondary. Keep in mind that enchanting arcane orb damage on boots that have all other 3 stats is more difficult than enchanting any of the other 3 (well, 4, but you will only end up with 3) stats on an item that already has the other 2 and arcane orb damage, simply because there are multiple skills that can get rolled but are blocked if the boots already have arcane orb damage. So only spend a lot enchanting arcane orb onto your boots if they are already very good, and otherwise keep trying to craft ones with arcane orb damage. This actually works for meteor too, I just don't recommend using meteor...
I got a pretty good SoJ, switched up to my Thunderfury, and 2 piece Aughlid's. Hunting for my RRoG now.
I'm starting to climb out of my T2 rut, but I'm not quite there yet. Any other suggestions?