I have made some new video's for you guys to watch. Our team is running TWO of these wizard specs and running under 4min rifts. Please watch as I think this highlights the potential of this build:
Hello, I found my WoW at lvl 70 and have been working on every variation of WoW build. I have finally come to a build that works for 4-5 min rift group play. If you are looking to keep up with the jade doctor and crusader in your group this guide is for you.
Idea behind my build: Since patch 2.05 wizard can now use archon in every spec, but it seems like WoW wizards have not adopted the archon yet. Most WoW wizard are going for the born/captains set to try to reduce the cdr on their chain reaction. I have tried this and it does not keep up with jade doctors very well.
Instead I have gone a different route, if you maximize your burst damage and give up cdr, you can burst down packs of mobs in very fast groups and keep up in DPS. So we are going to use the combustion from archon, short fuse, and molten impact to maximize our dmage in a very short period of time, and keep up our damage with fire archon.
Lets get into the skills:
Left click: Meteor (Molten Impact)
With 50% cdr and almost 100% fire damage this skill really hits hard. You can also cast this skill and turn to archon at the same time it hits dealing massive burst damage.
Right Click: Teleport (Wormhole)
Mobility is key in sub-5 min rifts and this is the only thing that will keep you with your group.
(1): Explosive Blast(short fuse)
Short fuse does 3636% weapon dmg in 2 sec, chain reaction does 3840% weapon damage in 3 seconds. When elites start to die under 3 seconds, then short fuse is a clear winner. Even if you have a 1 sec pause between short fuse it will give you more burst damage over chain reaction, and burst damage is what we are looking for.
(2): Archon (combustion)
Archon is a clear choice when it comes to wizard skills with patch 2.05. You get 3680% weapon damage every 30 seconds as burst damage, which means in a 5 min rift you will be able to burst down at least 10 elite packs with this skill.
(3) Energy Armor (pinpoint barrier)
I take pinpoint barrier over prismatic because of my passive, when mobs start to die very fast, defensive skills start to lose their value.
(4) Magic Weapon (Force Weapon)
Wizards are dps class, and we need as many self buffs as we can get. No other spell will give you more damage.
Passives:
(1) Dominance
When you start to run in faster and faster groups, dominance becomes a key skill. You should be able to keep up 10 stacks of dominance almost 100% of the time. Having a 123k shield that refreshes each time your team mates kill a monster is one of the reasons this build can run very low toughness and still survive t6. Please note that this skill refreshes when anyone on your team kills a monster
(2) Audacity
Explosive blast is a melee skill and we are going to get up front and personal. Free 15% damage is a no brainer.
(3) Evocation
50% cdr is required for this build and there is no other way to get it with out this passive.
(4) Glass Cannon
With Dominance as a passive we can take a free glass cannon with out worrying about our toughness too much. This skill can be changed if we get into faster or slower groups.
The gear is pretty self explanatory from here, but I will go over what you need and options to change out.
Full Vry's is required for this build.
It's going to be optimal to have Vrys:
Chest
With, Int/Vit/EB dmg/ 3 socket
Pants
With Int/Vit/Armor/2 socket
Boots
With Int/Vit/Armor/AR
You're going to need a Wand of Woh with CDR prefered. If you dont have cdr on your WoW you will need to move the cdr to you off hand.
Firebirds off hand is required, preferably with 15% explosive blast damage.
We will take Aughild's shoulders and bracers.
SoJ, and Ring of Royal Granduer for rings.
For the helmet I choose to take Firebirds for the 500int for the set bonus. You can trade this for a Fire andy's with a socket if you choose to live dangerous.
Neck you will need fire skills/int/crit/crit dmg.
Belt can either be Witching hour or Harrington what ever your preference is.
Gloves are tricky. You will need Mage fist with CDR instead of attack speed. These can be very hard to get. If you don't have them you can trade them for Vry's gloves, but you will have to trade your Vry's chest for a cindercoat. The cindercoast should not have EB damage and should have int/vit/3 socket.
So lets do a little calculation on how much maximum weapon damage this build can do:
We can cast:
Meteor(Molten impact) for 1648%
Explosive blast for 3636%
Archon combustion for 3680%
This build can burst up to 8964% weapon damage in under 2 seconds.
The correct order of skills are:
Meteor from across the screen, teleport, explosive blast, and archon for maximum damage.
Here is a video of a 3 minute 19 second rift with conduit:
I don't like Wizards, just not my cup of tea, yet I read your whole post, not even knowing wtf a WoW was (I know now its Wand of Woe, or something) in hopes that I would come across an explanation for why in the world you would name the build "the lobster shuffle" alas there was no explanation. As far I can tell you would want ppl to play your build but the name of it is the opposite of enticing. Its like naming a ferrari "fluffy kitty farts" and hoping ppl will still drive it. I mean, if its a ferrari sure ill drive it, but I wouldn't be proud to own a 'fluffy kitty farts'.
I currently have 50% cdr in game, and I really dont think i need much more.
Quote fromiPeedInMySpacesuit
I don't like Wizards, just not my cup of tea, yet I read your whole post, not even knowing wtf a WoW was (I know now its Wand of Woe, or something) in hopes that I would come across an explanation for why in the world you would name the build "the lobster shuffle" alas there was no explanation. As far I can tell you would want ppl to play your build but the name of it is the opposite of enticing. Its like naming a ferrari "fluffy kitty farts" and hoping ppl will still drive it. I mean, if its a ferrari sure ill drive it, but I wouldn't be proud to own a 'fluffy kitty farts'.
just saying.
Hi, thanks for reading my guide. I call it the lobster shuffle because I'm silly and awkward. You know there are some really nice things out there that are named really silly stuff. I can't think of anything really cool right now, but I hope you see that my build plays like a boss. ^_*
u offer 0 support to your party while still having lacking dps compared to wd/crus
i rather loose some dps and offer:
30% dmg boost from strongarms
5-20% dmg from elemental exposure
6% crit from conflagration
CC from black hole
u do more dmg but since your build is very selfish overall efficeincy is lower
and plz dont use glass canon that skill is horrible in ROS 5%damage for price of 15% toughness and passive slot, cmon
Hi thank you for your comment. Since I'm in a group where everything dies very fast, and we have a monk the has cyclone strike I don't think black hole is useful at all. It is a very slow skill that deals very little damage. I'm only running 1 element so elemental exposure kind of sucks as well, if my WoW had elemental damage I would totally change. Glass cannon give 15% damage and I only lose 10% toughness. I run 7.5mil - 8.4mil toughness in game self buffed and rarely die. Also, conflagration is a bit too slow as things die entirely too fast in the group I run. My group would only get 1 hit to benefit from the passive. Also, I currently run 67.50% crit chance in game self buffed and my team has similar crit chance, so we wont benefit from it that much.If you run this group with a jade, you will find that you can out dps the jade. I run about 200-300mil dps on thud. In fact, in the videos we are running with a jade and you can see he can barley keep up. There are some changes to make to the build if you get into a faster group and cant land meteors to give the team a buff, but I think I'll leave those videos for later on.
Please let me know your thoughts, and sometimes if we get into 3:30 average groups I will takeillusionistover glass cannon for the speed buff.
Nice guide lobster, i just need to find a woh.. and lmfao at the comment above me. Obvious he didn't run speed runs.. crowd control is useless with monk. Don't need debuff for speed runs just kill what is palmed and dps is best stat overall.
I think if you guys get into groups where you are doing around 4min average runs in t6 you would change your mind. Meteor shower and MM are just too slow compared to the other classes. You need a ton of upfront damage in order to keep up. I might try the Aug helm + black hole + strongarm to see how it works though, thanks for the suggestion.
This doesn't need a very energized group to run well. In the 4min videos, I was not playing with my normal group. In the meta, all groups are pretty similar and this spec is made for that meta. You should try it out in a legit t6 group and let me know what you think. :-)
mirrorball? thats what i was saying. when i use my EB wand of woh build, i run it with mirrorball, got one with EB dmg. i preferr running it at t3/t4 for superfast clearspeeds, you basicly just run and trash dies. stop for elites, blackhole with my 30% strongarms, tele in, cast EB+MM boom dead in like 3 sec and ur on the move again. on t3 i run this with the speed bracers + frozen storm armor, superfast
If you have the gear try my build on t6, just check the videos and u can see how fast i can kill elite.
Yeh your Resist is far too low, with out monk to cc for you or even in pub, painful death awaits lol
Yes I can die really easy, but this build is actually made possible through the kill speed of my team. As long as my team is killing white mobs to keep up my dominance I will never die. I'll post some more videos when I got time to record and show you guys that this build is very good with very good team. That is what is gear for. It is a niche build for sub 5min t6 rift runs.
I have made so new video's for you guys to watch. Our team is running TWO of these wizard specs and running under 4min rifts. Please watch as I think this highlights the potential of this build:
Looks nice, but you play in group and we dont see your nuke. Make a video with solo T6 !
Hi, as I stated, this is not a solo build. This is a min/max group build for 4min t6 rifts. I do have a solo build using similar style but I think this guide is more important.
Not having elemental exposure and strongarm\ bracers is 40-50% less damage for your entire group. What do you think is better, taking glass cannon, or your entire group doing 50% more damage?
You should be able to average 300-400 mil dps with a standard MM/Archon build in group play. This build is nothing but a scumbag DPS build, and in actuality you're maybe gaining 5% additional personal DPS because of the burst, at the cost of 40-50% group damage and loads of survivability.
Not having elemental exposure and strongarm\ bracers is 40-50% less damage for your entire group. What do you think is better, taking glass cannon, or your entire group doing 50% more damage?
You should be able to average 300-400 mil dps with a standard MM/Archon build in group play. This build is nothing but a scumbag DPS build, and in actuality you're maybe gaining 5% additional personal DPS because of the burst, at the cost of 40-50% group damage and loads of survivability.
People are so blinded by group synergy and debuffs. Debuffs lose power when things die too fast.
About EE :
As he said, he doesn't deal 4 elements, so EE would be wasted, not to mention how fast they kill things. Have you seen the videos OP linked?
He would get 10% group damage at most (with a cold/lightning/arcane weapon). Debuffs don't work right away, unlike Glass Cannon. Sure he's not buffing his teammates with Glass Cannon, but as I said earlier, debuffs lose power when things die too fast. And as others are picking up group debuffs to help the group, he's picking up as much DPS as he can to take advantage of those debuffs/buffs. That's part of a group synergy. You bring the DPS.
About Black Hole + strongarm :
Blackhole + strongarm ticks only when the monsters land. (that's what the strongarm affix says, I don't know if it's true for Black Hole)
It doesn't work on all mobs, and generally the ones you'd like a strongarm debuff are immune to it (big monsters, Rift guardians, etc).
Molten Impact, Explosive Blast, and Archon are three powerful skills. Dropping one of them to put Black Hole + strongarm would be probably a big dps loss, for himself and for the team. Strongarm is so overrated for a fire wizard. If your group struggle to kill things, why not ; that's not the case here. Molten Impact is probably the least powerful skill out of the three. But don't underestimate it, it's still very useful.
Thank you for the comment, these are my thoughts exactly. I would EE if my WoW had elemental damage no it no doubt, but that's not the case. I'm currently looking into a build change that would buff my group and I am currently testing it.
Not having elemental exposure and strongarm\ bracers is 40-50% less damage for your entire group. What do you think is better, taking glass cannon, or your entire group doing 50% more damage?
You should be able to average 300-400 mil dps with a standard MM/Archon build in group play. This build is nothing but a scumbag DPS build, and in actuality you're maybe gaining 5% additional personal DPS because of the burst, at the cost of 40-50% group damage and loads of survivability.
Hello, I've played with the top MM/Archon players, and they are all less then 100mil in my group. While they may boast high numbers solo or in a slower team, in the teams I play they are not able to get ANY MM off before the monsters die. This is a build where you approach the point that monster's die almost instantly to your team mates. You need a way to be useful as a wizard. This is the only way I see possible.
It's the same reason why I don't run EE in my group specs. At most, I'd get 10% (arcane from my spells and cold from Frost Nova, and since FN has a cooldown and lasts 2 seconds, it's usually just a mere 5%). Unfortunately my Wand of Woh rolled holy damage, else I would spec EE in place of Audacity.
What OP talks about is correct for group games. It's all about burst and frontloading as much damage as possible, which is why you'll mostly see sustained fire specs revolving around Mirrorball and Conflag for solo. In group games where elites die in 5 seconds or less, there is no way Conflagrate does anything other than apply the Conflagration passive buff. I prefer my arcane spec because—by the way, I changed Time Bomb to Unleashed for party play, self-explanatory—it's all burst. If you can't get a constant 10% or more debuff with EE during every instance of combat, it might not be worth it. Depends on the group setup.
If you're soloing, you can go the bursty route or tanky for sustained fights. Not quite the greatest idea for my build because of resource management. But for fire, where you won't be spamming high AP-cost spells (Molten Impact doesn't count because of CD), resource management isn't an issue. But in the end, especially with a speed-running party, it's burst over anything else.
And I guess I should add that having a great support monk in any group pretty much makes any remotely decently geared character capable of holding up on T6.
Cool build man, seems like it works well for you. I personally run 65% cdr with bh, fn, and calamity with cosmic strand as this provides perma crowd control and still nice dps. I lack the godly magefists and hexing pants tho.
I think you may find that when greater rifts come out and things just wont die as fast that you will be looking to change your build up. Since there will be no rez at corpse or teleporting, dying will not be an option. I feel really confident in my build that I will not die as I rarely even take meaningful damage while providing the rest of my group tons of utility.
It's the same reason why I don't run EE in my group specs. At most, I'd get 10% (arcane from my spells and cold from Frost Nova, and since FN has a cooldown and lasts 2 seconds, it's usually just a mere 5%). Unfortunately my Wand of Woh rolled holy damage, else I would spec EE in place of Audacity.
What OP talks about is correct for group games. It's all about burst and frontloading as much damage as possible, which is why you'll mostly see sustained fire specs revolving around Mirrorball and Conflag for solo. In group games where elites die in 5 seconds or less, there is no way Conflagrate does anything other than apply the Conflagration passive buff. I prefer my arcane spec because—by the way, I changed Time Bomb to Unleashed for party play, self-explanatory—it's all burst. If you can't get a constant 10% or more debuff with EE during every instance of combat, it might not be worth it. Depends on the group setup.
If you're soloing, you can go the bursty route or tanky for sustained fights. Not quite the greatest idea for my build because of resource management. But for fire, where you won't be spamming high AP-cost spells (Molten Impact doesn't count because of CD), resource management isn't an issue. But in the end, especially with a speed-running party, it's burst over anything else.
And I guess I should add that having a great support monk in any group pretty much makes any remotely decently geared character capable of holding up on T6.
Thanks for the nice comments. I'm currently testing frost nova and its seem like an ok at best replacement for molten. You are right it when it comes to frontloading damage. I've tried ever variant of MM/Conflag I can think of and it just can't hold up to other builds. With this build I was finally able to out dps my dps counter parts and hold my own in the group. Arcane with Time bomb sounds really cool, but I think you are going to need a ton of mobility because you cant be waiting 2.5 sec for you bomb to go off. The elite will die before then. You may be able to get off 1-2 time bombs at most.
I'm currently working on the solo portion of this build and hope to update it with some cool videos!
In the mean time, some other people have tried this build and contact me. I have uploaded a video of 3 wizards using this build and a monk! xD
http://youtu.be/lKI08iG8l8A
I have made some new video's for you guys to watch. Our team is running TWO of these wizard specs and running under 4min rifts. Please watch as I think this highlights the potential of this build:
3:20 with conduit:
http://youtu.be/7_CQ4esJiVA
3:55 no conduit:
http://youtu.be/uhksKwiCITw
.3:57 no conduit
http://youtu.be/5g_kZGd4WOs
Please let me know what you think.
Hello, I found my WoW at lvl 70 and have been working on every variation of WoW build. I have finally come to a build that works for 4-5 min rift group play. If you are looking to keep up with the jade doctor and crusader in your group this guide is for you.
Idea behind my build: Since patch 2.05 wizard can now use archon in every spec, but it seems like WoW wizards have not adopted the archon yet. Most WoW wizard are going for the born/captains set to try to reduce the cdr on their chain reaction. I have tried this and it does not keep up with jade doctors very well.
Instead I have gone a different route, if you maximize your burst damage and give up cdr, you can burst down packs of mobs in very fast groups and keep up in DPS. So we are going to use the combustion from archon, short fuse, and molten impact to maximize our dmage in a very short period of time, and keep up our damage with fire archon.
Link to my armory:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/kpoplobster-1914/hero/42769730
So I present to you "The Lobster Shuffle":
Lets get into the skills:
Left click: Meteor (Molten Impact)
With 50% cdr and almost 100% fire damage this skill really hits hard. You can also cast this skill and turn to archon at the same time it hits dealing massive burst damage.
Right Click: Teleport (Wormhole)
Mobility is key in sub-5 min rifts and this is the only thing that will keep you with your group.
(1): Explosive Blast(short fuse)
Short fuse does 3636% weapon dmg in 2 sec, chain reaction does 3840% weapon damage in 3 seconds. When elites start to die under 3 seconds, then short fuse is a clear winner. Even if you have a 1 sec pause between short fuse it will give you more burst damage over chain reaction, and burst damage is what we are looking for.
(2): Archon (combustion)
Archon is a clear choice when it comes to wizard skills with patch 2.05. You get 3680% weapon damage every 30 seconds as burst damage, which means in a 5 min rift you will be able to burst down at least 10 elite packs with this skill.
(3) Energy Armor (pinpoint barrier)
I take pinpoint barrier over prismatic because of my passive, when mobs start to die very fast, defensive skills start to lose their value.
(4) Magic Weapon (Force Weapon)
Wizards are dps class, and we need as many self buffs as we can get. No other spell will give you more damage.
Passives:
(1) Dominance
When you start to run in faster and faster groups, dominance becomes a key skill. You should be able to keep up 10 stacks of dominance almost 100% of the time. Having a 123k shield that refreshes each time your team mates kill a monster is one of the reasons this build can run very low toughness and still survive t6. Please note that this skill refreshes when anyone on your team kills a monster
(2) Audacity
Explosive blast is a melee skill and we are going to get up front and personal. Free 15% damage is a no brainer.
(3) Evocation
50% cdr is required for this build and there is no other way to get it with out this passive.
(4) Glass Cannon
With Dominance as a passive we can take a free glass cannon with out worrying about our toughness too much. This skill can be changed if we get into faster or slower groups.
The gear is pretty self explanatory from here, but I will go over what you need and options to change out.
Full Vry's is required for this build.
It's going to be optimal to have Vrys:
Chest
With, Int/Vit/EB dmg/ 3 socket
Pants
With Int/Vit/Armor/2 socket
Boots
With Int/Vit/Armor/AR
You're going to need a Wand of Woh with CDR prefered. If you dont have cdr on your WoW you will need to move the cdr to you off hand.
Firebirds off hand is required, preferably with 15% explosive blast damage.
We will take Aughild's shoulders and bracers.
SoJ, and Ring of Royal Granduer for rings.
For the helmet I choose to take Firebirds for the 500int for the set bonus. You can trade this for a Fire andy's with a socket if you choose to live dangerous.
Neck you will need fire skills/int/crit/crit dmg.
Belt can either be Witching hour or Harrington what ever your preference is.
Gloves are tricky. You will need Mage fist with CDR instead of attack speed. These can be very hard to get. If you don't have them you can trade them for Vry's gloves, but you will have to trade your Vry's chest for a cindercoat. The cindercoast should not have EB damage and should have int/vit/3 socket.
So lets do a little calculation on how much maximum weapon damage this build can do:
We can cast:
Meteor(Molten impact) for 1648%
Explosive blast for 3636%
Archon combustion for 3680%
This build can burst up to 8964% weapon damage in under 2 seconds.
The correct order of skills are:
Meteor from across the screen, teleport, explosive blast, and archon for maximum damage.
Here is a video of a 3 minute 19 second rift with conduit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LMIwzQDN1o
(Skip to 1:50 to see what the build can really do)
Here's some videos of me in a slower group so you can really see me put in work:
4:45 no conduit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krtWTPlMhXc&feature=youtu.be
4:40 no conduit (watch me 1 shot the elites at the end to kill the RG)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUdqItC3hsc&feature=youtu.be
Added in game screen shot of my char details:
http://imgur.com/pAzJXY2
I will be updating this guide with more video's as I make them. I hope you all enjoy and please let me know your feed back on this build.
just saying.
I currently have 50% cdr in game, and I really dont think i need much more.
Hi, thanks for reading my guide. I call it the lobster shuffle because I'm silly and awkward. You know there are some really nice things out there that are named really silly stuff. I can't think of anything really cool right now, but I hope you see that my build plays like a boss. ^_*
Please let me know your thoughts, and sometimes if we get into 3:30 average groups I will takeillusionistover glass cannon for the speed buff.
This doesn't need a very energized group to run well. In the 4min videos, I was not playing with my normal group. In the meta, all groups are pretty similar and this spec is made for that meta. You should try it out in a legit t6 group and let me know what you think. :-)
http://imgur.com/pAzJXY2
3:20 with conduit:
http://youtu.be/7_CQ4esJiVA
3:55 no conduit:
http://youtu.be/uhksKwiCITw
.3:57 no conduit
http://youtu.be/5g_kZGd4WOs
Please let me know what you think.
You should be able to average 300-400 mil dps with a standard MM/Archon build in group play. This build is nothing but a scumbag DPS build, and in actuality you're maybe gaining 5% additional personal DPS because of the burst, at the cost of 40-50% group damage and loads of survivability.
Hello, I've played with the top MM/Archon players, and they are all less then 100mil in my group. While they may boast high numbers solo or in a slower team, in the teams I play they are not able to get ANY MM off before the monsters die. This is a build where you approach the point that monster's die almost instantly to your team mates. You need a way to be useful as a wizard. This is the only way I see possible.
What OP talks about is correct for group games. It's all about burst and frontloading as much damage as possible, which is why you'll mostly see sustained fire specs revolving around Mirrorball and Conflag for solo. In group games where elites die in 5 seconds or less, there is no way Conflagrate does anything other than apply the Conflagration passive buff. I prefer my arcane spec because—by the way, I changed Time Bomb to Unleashed for party play, self-explanatory—it's all burst. If you can't get a constant 10% or more debuff with EE during every instance of combat, it might not be worth it. Depends on the group setup.
If you're soloing, you can go the bursty route or tanky for sustained fights. Not quite the greatest idea for my build because of resource management. But for fire, where you won't be spamming high AP-cost spells (Molten Impact doesn't count because of CD), resource management isn't an issue. But in the end, especially with a speed-running party, it's burst over anything else.
And I guess I should add that having a great support monk in any group pretty much makes any remotely decently geared character capable of holding up on T6.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
I think you may find that when greater rifts come out and things just wont die as fast that you will be looking to change your build up. Since there will be no rez at corpse or teleporting, dying will not be an option. I feel really confident in my build that I will not die as I rarely even take meaningful damage while providing the rest of my group tons of utility.
I'm currently working on the solo portion of this build and hope to update it with some cool videos!
In the mean time, some other people have tried this build and contact me. I have uploaded a video of 3 wizards using this build and a monk! xD
Check it out really cool stuff:
3:57 no conduit:
http://youtu.be/JbLRhB0Qzis
4:30 no conduit
http://youtu.be/baQkeI1wx8M