So yea it's very similar to a normal melee wizard, but i so very rarely see shock pulse, and tbh i really like it, ESPECIALLY now that it is relatively accurate (and essentially always hit if you're decent close). In fact, that's something i just love and atm don't want to change (with explosive bolts).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bZXfhP!afh!aaaZYa
here's the build i'll say a few things. There already is a thread about melee wizards but it's better to make a specific one for a build from what i've seen and i want to go more off topic than that other thread. I'm really leaving this open-ended. Some stuff i won't have for ages, i'm just mixing and matching, and i'm sure i'll find some things more efficient than here.
Basically i love shock pulse (explosive bolts), and at least for normal its perfectly fine. I suspect for NM+ it will have problems because stuff won't die as fast. Maybe this isn't true maybe it is, but i'm building for fun, not for 100% best efficiency. If it doesn't work later i'll change it. For beta though, it's fun as shit to cast one and have it chain react off an entire pack of skeletons and obliterate them instantly.
Essentially my damage is just to be efficient. blast has a cooldown, so in that time i'll use ray of frost sleet storm (or could even start with that for the slow), while in times with low AP i can use shock pulse. It's a pretty straightforward thing, i think there are other choices but i think it'd work perfectly fine.
The tough stuff is the defensive things. Looking at it, if i'm using sleet storm he slow from ice armor is redundant, although the armor isn't. I could see energy armor but the rune choice? I'd just have to see what i'd want to use for the time. The other things are i could see frost nova shatter being really good, as well as slow time perpetuity or stretch time. Even wave of force could have its uses if damage seems to be lacking. Magic weapon blood magic could be good, and there are plenty of others that i havent looked at closely.
The final thing is chose mirror image simulacrum because it's essentially an extra x200% life. Im assuming strong monsters will kill the images, which means that damage is being dealt to something other than me, along with a nice distraction while i can spam or regenerate cooldowns as needed. This rune provides the most effective life for the skill.
For passives blur is the only one that seemed like it was too good not to have for this. It depends on how much max life we have but ward seemed useful if that life is actually significant. the extra time added is pointless, the spell lasts 2 minutes already, don't care if it lasts 4. I originally picked anomaly but while i was writing this i realized how good illusionist will be (i bet 90% of attacks can and will take >15%), so that's another great one. The other best choices i could see (or the only other usable ones) are power hungry, anomaly, paralysis (could be amazing if shit dies to shock pulse but that'll all depend on if i can kill stuff quickly with it so that i can get explosions decently in NM/hell/inferno).
A few things to try out:
* Energy Armor w/ Absorption rune. You'll be getting hit a lot so more AP generation = more sleet storm
* Black Ice Passive. Your main damage dealer will be Sleet Storm... Why not add 20% damage to it?
* Once things start having more HP, the lightning Affinity rune might be a better rune for Shock Pulse.
* I'm not sure how Explosive Blast is useful. It does less damage than sleet storm, so why cast it? I guess it has slightly bigger range... but it seems like you could have a better ability in it's place. There are a few support spells that might be nice to have:
Teleport - With only melee spells, ranged monsters/summoners will be difficult. Teleport would be really nice.
Archon - Archon has some really nice melee spells and increases your surviveability.
* In the current build i think Ice Armor is just horrible. Energy Armor gives you 65% armor bonus while ice armor gives you 45% after 3 hits. Sleet Storm already chill enemies, so Ice Armor looses even more utility. You can pick the +20 AP rune in case the -20 AP is getting annoying or the max resistances.
* Since you already plan on spending AP on Sleet Storm, i think you could use Wave of Force instead of Explosive Blast. It has a long cooldown but you make more out of your AP. Just an idea.
* I think power hungry will be an awesome passive for melee wizard. With some investment in pick up radius, you will kill enemies and instantly grab the health globe (due the close range) and instantly restore AP and HP. Each dropped health globe gives you 1.5 more time casting sleet storm, which might be enough to drop another health globe and so on. You may nit cast it forever but I think this idea might substatianly increase the channeling time of your sleet storm while providing HP recovery.
Thanks for the suggestions rupp. I figure i'll try torrent and archon out in the game and see from there. I'm a little hesitant for them though just because they aren't really melee, at least i think they arent. blossom might be but i explain efficiency a bit below, whereas archon has disintegrate, which i'll decide about later.
I was looking at unleashed for explosive blast as well. basically i reason, and i think i'm right, that sleet storm and shock together won't be doing enough damage to kill everything effectively. I wanted to put something that is fire and forget, and blast i thought would be great because i use it, have 6 seconds to wait and then another use. I figure i'm going to have to move within those 6 seconds (to readjust positioning which is the most important thing for this type of build), so it provides an extra way to do damage that doesn't require me to stand still.
From experience in beta at least sleet storm really doesn't eat up AP very quickly. It will eat it up if you stand still for a while but between a little movement and 1-2 other free spells you can manage your ap relatively easily. I'm not really at full ever, but i'm not running dry. I'll have to see what it's like adding in blast, but essentially i'll only have 1 real AP spender, and that spender isn't going to be TOO different dps wise from bolts (if 2 hit).
To be most efficient i was aiming towards having skills be fire and forget. If i'm casting anything that time is not casting sleet storm, which makes 1 skill ineffective. I was leaning away from teleport because if i'm right in the middle the only time i'd want to use teleport would be to leave, meaning im losing time/dps. The benefit of cold armor would be the attack speed slow. It doesnt say on the skill but i'd be extremely surprised if it didnt slow attack speed (and it can freeze). If i didnt take cold armor though, what do you guys think would be best?
Patch 16 buffed Explosion so it might be viable with the time bomb rune.
Time Bomb : Explosive Blast detonates from the point it was originally cast after 2.5 seconds for 267293% weapon damage as Physical.
The reason I suggested teleport was because there will be situations this build really struggles with due to no ranged abilites. What will you do if there's 3 summoners far away and a horde of melee between you and the summoners? You start killing the melee, but the summoners just summon more in their place. You have no way of killing the summoners without either killing all of the melee first or trying to run directly through a Horde of monsters. Also, I'm sure there are other types of new monsters besides summoners that you'll need to kill quickly in the full game.
To answer your question about armor, I'd go with Energy Armor. It gives the most +armor and a few of the rune choices are really sweet.
if sleet storm stays at level 38 this build may be a LOT less fun. if i can't use sleet to start, what do you guys think i should use as primary AP burner?
edit: ...while keeping the 'melee/short range' aspect intact of course.
the ONLY skill i can see that comes earlish is orb - arcane orbit : /.
What's wrong with Arcane Orbit? It's pretty awesome. It likely won't hit as many targets as sleet storm but they orbit pretty fast.. you'll likely go through all 4 orbs in 1-2 seconds. That's 280% every 1-2 seconds... not too bad.
Arcane Torrent - Death Blossom @ lvl 25... not sure how "unpredictable" it will be but it might be decent at close range.
What's wrong with Arcane Orbit? It's pretty awesome. It likely won't hit as many targets as sleet storm but they orbit pretty fast.. you'll likely go through all 4 orbs in 1-2 seconds. That's 280% every 1-2 seconds... not too bad.
Arcane Torrent - Death Blossom @ lvl 25... not sure how "unpredictable" it will be but it might be decent at close range.
i didnt mean so much about whether it's good or not, it's just literally there's only 2 options total i could see as close range AP burners. i was hoping i missed some though and some other choices were available. i really dont think death blossom is going to be very viable with this, but i'll try it out in game.
Arcane Torrent - Arcane Mines (but it sounds crappy for damage)
Twister- Wicked Wind (but it's fairly late level)
Explosive Blast (but it has a cooldown)
Disintegrate - Entrophy (but it's fairly late level)
Disintegrate - Chaos Nexus (sounds a bit weak imo)
i def missed entropy thats for sure, that might be fun to use we'll see. its in one of the wizard videos and it has a much bigger range for sure than sleet storm. I was going to include explosive blast in my build anyway, and twister might be usable as well. some of these break a little of the 'melee wizard' style, but it'd keep some of it, might still work okay if it didnt mean i was now midranged wizard.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bZXfhP!afh!aaaZYa
here's the build i'll say a few things. There already is a thread about melee wizards but it's better to make a specific one for a build from what i've seen and i want to go more off topic than that other thread. I'm really leaving this open-ended. Some stuff i won't have for ages, i'm just mixing and matching, and i'm sure i'll find some things more efficient than here.
Basically i love shock pulse (explosive bolts), and at least for normal its perfectly fine. I suspect for NM+ it will have problems because stuff won't die as fast. Maybe this isn't true maybe it is, but i'm building for fun, not for 100% best efficiency. If it doesn't work later i'll change it. For beta though, it's fun as shit to cast one and have it chain react off an entire pack of skeletons and obliterate them instantly.
Essentially my damage is just to be efficient. blast has a cooldown, so in that time i'll use ray of frost sleet storm (or could even start with that for the slow), while in times with low AP i can use shock pulse. It's a pretty straightforward thing, i think there are other choices but i think it'd work perfectly fine.
The tough stuff is the defensive things. Looking at it, if i'm using sleet storm he slow from ice armor is redundant, although the armor isn't. I could see energy armor but the rune choice? I'd just have to see what i'd want to use for the time. The other things are i could see frost nova shatter being really good, as well as slow time perpetuity or stretch time. Even wave of force could have its uses if damage seems to be lacking. Magic weapon blood magic could be good, and there are plenty of others that i havent looked at closely.
The final thing is chose mirror image simulacrum because it's essentially an extra x200% life. Im assuming strong monsters will kill the images, which means that damage is being dealt to something other than me, along with a nice distraction while i can spam or regenerate cooldowns as needed. This rune provides the most effective life for the skill.
For passives blur is the only one that seemed like it was too good not to have for this. It depends on how much max life we have but ward seemed useful if that life is actually significant. the extra time added is pointless, the spell lasts 2 minutes already, don't care if it lasts 4. I originally picked anomaly but while i was writing this i realized how good illusionist will be (i bet 90% of attacks can and will take >15%), so that's another great one. The other best choices i could see (or the only other usable ones) are power hungry, anomaly, paralysis (could be amazing if shit dies to shock pulse but that'll all depend on if i can kill stuff quickly with it so that i can get explosions decently in NM/hell/inferno).
A few things to try out:
* Energy Armor w/ Absorption rune. You'll be getting hit a lot so more AP generation = more sleet storm
* Black Ice Passive. Your main damage dealer will be Sleet Storm... Why not add 20% damage to it?
* Once things start having more HP, the lightning Affinity rune might be a better rune for Shock Pulse.
* I'm not sure how Explosive Blast is useful. It does less damage than sleet storm, so why cast it? I guess it has slightly bigger range... but it seems like you could have a better ability in it's place. There are a few support spells that might be nice to have:
* Since you already plan on spending AP on Sleet Storm, i think you could use Wave of Force instead of Explosive Blast. It has a long cooldown but you make more out of your AP. Just an idea.
* I think power hungry will be an awesome passive for melee wizard. With some investment in pick up radius, you will kill enemies and instantly grab the health globe (due the close range) and instantly restore AP and HP. Each dropped health globe gives you 1.5 more time casting sleet storm, which might be enough to drop another health globe and so on. You may nit cast it forever but I think this idea might substatianly increase the channeling time of your sleet storm while providing HP recovery.
I was looking at unleashed for explosive blast as well. basically i reason, and i think i'm right, that sleet storm and shock together won't be doing enough damage to kill everything effectively. I wanted to put something that is fire and forget, and blast i thought would be great because i use it, have 6 seconds to wait and then another use. I figure i'm going to have to move within those 6 seconds (to readjust positioning which is the most important thing for this type of build), so it provides an extra way to do damage that doesn't require me to stand still.
From experience in beta at least sleet storm really doesn't eat up AP very quickly. It will eat it up if you stand still for a while but between a little movement and 1-2 other free spells you can manage your ap relatively easily. I'm not really at full ever, but i'm not running dry. I'll have to see what it's like adding in blast, but essentially i'll only have 1 real AP spender, and that spender isn't going to be TOO different dps wise from bolts (if 2 hit).
To be most efficient i was aiming towards having skills be fire and forget. If i'm casting anything that time is not casting sleet storm, which makes 1 skill ineffective. I was leaning away from teleport because if i'm right in the middle the only time i'd want to use teleport would be to leave, meaning im losing time/dps. The benefit of cold armor would be the attack speed slow. It doesnt say on the skill but i'd be extremely surprised if it didnt slow attack speed (and it can freeze). If i didnt take cold armor though, what do you guys think would be best?
The reason I suggested teleport was because there will be situations this build really struggles with due to no ranged abilites. What will you do if there's 3 summoners far away and a horde of melee between you and the summoners? You start killing the melee, but the summoners just summon more in their place. You have no way of killing the summoners without either killing all of the melee first or trying to run directly through a Horde of monsters. Also, I'm sure there are other types of new monsters besides summoners that you'll need to kill quickly in the full game.
To answer your question about armor, I'd go with Energy Armor. It gives the most +armor and a few of the rune choices are really sweet.
edit: ...while keeping the 'melee/short range' aspect intact of course.
the ONLY skill i can see that comes earlish is orb - arcane orbit : /.
Arcane Torrent - Death Blossom @ lvl 25... not sure how "unpredictable" it will be but it might be decent at close range.
i didnt mean so much about whether it's good or not, it's just literally there's only 2 options total i could see as close range AP burners. i was hoping i missed some though and some other choices were available. i really dont think death blossom is going to be very viable with this, but i'll try it out in game.
Arcane Torrent - Arcane Mines (but it sounds crappy for damage)
Twister- Wicked Wind (but it's fairly late level)
Explosive Blast (but it has a cooldown)
Disintegrate - Entrophy (but it's fairly late level)
Disintegrate - Chaos Nexus (sounds a bit weak imo)