If you look at what spells don't give AP on crit, you notice that they are mostly Damage over time spells or "focus" spells (focus meaning you have to hold the button to cast them).
If this similarity remains true across all of the Wizard DoT/focus spells we can also assume that Energy Twister and Arcane Torrent also won't grant AP on crit.
Arcane Torrent can crit. Can you confirm it doesn't return AP when it crits?
I know it most likely works on Signature spells, but why would you need AP on crit from a sig spell when it's free to cast anyways? It could help regain lost AP, but honestly it seems most worth when you cast an Arcane Orb for 35 AP which crits while having 30 AP on crit.
I agree with you on this. But this is where build diversity comes into play. When you have 30 AP back on crit, and let's say you managed to get to 35-40% crit rating. Hitting more than 3 targets with 1 arcane orb is essentially guarantying a full AP refund per orb. At that point a signature spell is pointless and you can replace that skill slot with another defensive or offensive ability. Build diversity.
Why add a nice feature and benefit to a class and then make it nearly non-beneficial?
Why is this 'nearly non-beneficial'? If you prefer a channeled spell like disintegrate, choose other gear. One such gear choice would be reduced AP cost on disintegrate instead of AP on crit. AP Reduction on disintegrate gear would be a wasted stat if I wanted to use Meteor as my AP dump. Same thing goes for AP on crit being a wasted stat if I wanted to use disintegrate as my AP dump.
I'm not sure if the skills you've listed are truly "broken" as you say. I think in Blizzard's eyes they are OK with certain skills not being able to outright crit. Instead, these skills work off your "Damage" which takes crit into account.
AP on crit is just a perk that not all skills will benefit from. It's existence (imo) is to help promote spec/build diversity through gear.
There are a lot of builds being thrown around for soloing in Inferno, but I really was having a hard time finding any builds for strictly playing with others, particularly playing with and supporting melee. So I figured I would start a thread here to see if anyone has any builds they use for group play.
Notable Stat Breakdown:
- 15% Crit
- 15 AP Returned on crit (7 from source, 8 from helm)
- 2.0 atk speed
- 24k dps
- 27k hp
- 250 res all
- 4.8k armor
The 2 melee had around 45-50k hp. I don't know their specific stats as I did not ask.
Breakdown:
First off, my gear is obviously nothing amazing. I did buy a source with a reasonable damage range that has ap on crit / crit chance for this spec though. I think that single purchase made the build viable for a number of reasons.
That said, we had intended to start clearing A2. The general rare/champ packs we encountered started off with the melee engaging while I tried to position myself far away. This allowed me to throw out 1-3 blizzards for them to kite through, usually leading them in my direction. As they did this, I dropped meteors to AP dump. When the melee got close to me I would drop Slow Time, and electrocute to get AP back. The melee did their best to CC what they could inside ST and I would AP dump again on anything that got caught in ST. The process of me laying blizzards into ST continued until things died, or until we died and qq'd about act 2 mobs being way too fast and eventually gave up. =)
Other Thoughts:
This build was a refreshing change from the typical Arcane Orb / Magic Missile setups I am used to running while solo. The build has a lot of room for improvement / customization. One thing I wanted to try was get more crit gear and drop Prodigy for Paralysis and drop Surge of Power for Forked Lightning. Reminds me of the original mace spec in WoW..
Anyway, let me know what you think, and please please please post builds you guys have been using in groups!
I love Archon. I wish I could fit it into more Inferno builds. Unless you're in a group of 3-4 people, you'll likely have to do a lot more kiting which means there isn't a lot of time to channel spells.
You're a bit harsh on Blizzard I think. Archon is a great spell, but you have the fit it into a build / situation that's appropriate. If you're looking to solo, Archon doesn't really suit your needs as you'll be kiting much more often. If you're in a group setting where you're not running around kiting as often and can find 15-20s to stand still and pewpew even couple of minutes, THAT is where the ability will shine.
Eyeless, One question for you. I was looking for Int - fit - HP regen and all resist gear, but so hard to find everything, how do you prioritize items?
My gear choices came down to what was available really. When I first tried this build, I was getting 1-2 shot by rares/champs. To solve this issue, I switched in Energy Armor with Force rune and tried to treat my hp bar like I was playing Zelda with 3 hearts. With 27k hp 1 'heart' was around 9500 hp (1 hit with EA absorb = 35% of 27,000 = 9,500). Knowing that, I tried to get my regen to the point where I could passively regen 1 'heart' over the duration of my mirror images. Images last 7s and with my hp regen around 1,200/s I am pretty close to that goal. (1,200hp/s x 8s = 9,600hp). I also tried playing around with some hp on hit gear. This seemed to work as well, if not better with Magic Missle (Seeker) / Arcane Orb. I'd love to hear if anyone has had success using a mix of hp regen / hp on hit gear.
As I have been trying to progress through A2+, the need for all resist has been pushing me to abandon some of my hp regen. This is mostly because it's hard to find good regen/all res/ int / vit gear. Mobs in A2 are generally faster / trickier to avoid than any other act (imo) making only having 3 lives not enough due to the speedyness of these mobs.
That said, I've also been experimenting with a new build (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#alRSOQ!YdT!cYbZYY) that I stole from another thread. The approach is the similar but I don't have mirror images anymore, instead I put a lot of stock into teleport/illusionist. This build focuses on less frequent AP use giving you more time to run around which I'm finding to be more and more useful as I make my way through A2. PS: With a fast 1h and some IAS gear, Arcane Dynamo + Venom Hydra is fantastic
I liked your reasoning behind the build. Being a fresh 60 and poorly geared, I liked the idea of just completely avoiding damage and ended up trying your build last night, with limited success. I tweaked your build a bit as the night progressed, but not much since it was a solid layout. To give you an idea of what gear I was using to start the night with this build I had roughly 30k hp, 50% dmg reduction from armor, ~100-200 res, 18k dps.
Elites and Champs felt pretty straight forward, as you show in your video. However as I got later into A1, I kept having issues with various affixes on elite packs and I kept dying to them as a result. Mostly anything with Teleport/Fast/Invincible Minions affix would 1-2 shot me and it wasn't like I couldn't survive a single hit by just teleporting away myself, it was the fact I couldn't recover fast enough before it would happen again.
With the addition of EA I lost a bit of damage from Magic Weapon, but it was offset by not getting 2 shot anymore (yay 3 shot). The addition of Temporal Flux also made things easier to kite, especially after I changed Venom Hydra to Arcane Hydra. I coupled this with finding/buying more hp regen gear. The end result was aprox 15k dps, 26k hp same res/armor but now I had 1200 hp/s (self buffed). Having the extra HP/S was enough to keep me in most fights for longer and gave me *a lot* more breathing room. All in all a very successful build for me, as I was able to down the butcher the same night I entered Inferno.
Cheers and thanks for posting!
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Gloves with crit/crit dmg + any high main stat (atk speed is always nice.. OMG NERFED LOL AUTHENTICATOR)
Helm with crit + any high main stat + socket
Or put "elective mode" on the skills screen.
I agree, it's a strange concept, but still promotes the same train of thought.
Most use the term 'channeled'. To each their own.
Arcane Torrent can crit. Can you confirm it doesn't return AP when it crits?
I agree with you on this. But this is where build diversity comes into play. When you have 30 AP back on crit, and let's say you managed to get to 35-40% crit rating. Hitting more than 3 targets with 1 arcane orb is essentially guarantying a full AP refund per orb. At that point a signature spell is pointless and you can replace that skill slot with another defensive or offensive ability. Build diversity.
Why is this 'nearly non-beneficial'? If you prefer a channeled spell like disintegrate, choose other gear. One such gear choice would be reduced AP cost on disintegrate instead of AP on crit. AP Reduction on disintegrate gear would be a wasted stat if I wanted to use Meteor as my AP dump. Same thing goes for AP on crit being a wasted stat if I wanted to use disintegrate as my AP dump.
Agreed. However Blizzard doesn't =(
Blizzard has commented many times that they want skill tooltips to be simple in-game.
AP on crit is just a perk that not all skills will benefit from. It's existence (imo) is to help promote spec/build diversity through gear.
I'm sure it works with blizzard, and I am almost 100% certain it works for Venom Hydra but I'd like to see someone else confirm this.
Build:
Members in group: Wizard (me), Barb, Monk
Notable Stat Breakdown:
- 15% Crit
- 15 AP Returned on crit (7 from source, 8 from helm)
- 2.0 atk speed
- 24k dps
- 27k hp
- 250 res all
- 4.8k armor
The 2 melee had around 45-50k hp. I don't know their specific stats as I did not ask.
Breakdown:
First off, my gear is obviously nothing amazing. I did buy a source with a reasonable damage range that has ap on crit / crit chance for this spec though. I think that single purchase made the build viable for a number of reasons.
That said, we had intended to start clearing A2. The general rare/champ packs we encountered started off with the melee engaging while I tried to position myself far away. This allowed me to throw out 1-3 blizzards for them to kite through, usually leading them in my direction. As they did this, I dropped meteors to AP dump. When the melee got close to me I would drop Slow Time, and electrocute to get AP back. The melee did their best to CC what they could inside ST and I would AP dump again on anything that got caught in ST. The process of me laying blizzards into ST continued until things died, or until we died and qq'd about act 2 mobs being way too fast and eventually gave up. =)
Other Thoughts:
This build was a refreshing change from the typical Arcane Orb / Magic Missile setups I am used to running while solo. The build has a lot of room for improvement / customization. One thing I wanted to try was get more crit gear and drop Prodigy for Paralysis and drop Surge of Power for Forked Lightning. Reminds me of the original mace spec in WoW..
Anyway, let me know what you think, and please please please post builds you guys have been using in groups!
You're a bit harsh on Blizzard I think. Archon is a great spell, but you have the fit it into a build / situation that's appropriate. If you're looking to solo, Archon doesn't really suit your needs as you'll be kiting much more often. If you're in a group setting where you're not running around kiting as often and can find 15-20s to stand still and pewpew even couple of minutes, THAT is where the ability will shine.
Archon has it's time and place.
My gear choices came down to what was available really. When I first tried this build, I was getting 1-2 shot by rares/champs. To solve this issue, I switched in Energy Armor with Force rune and tried to treat my hp bar like I was playing Zelda with 3 hearts. With 27k hp 1 'heart' was around 9500 hp (1 hit with EA absorb = 35% of 27,000 = 9,500). Knowing that, I tried to get my regen to the point where I could passively regen 1 'heart' over the duration of my mirror images. Images last 7s and with my hp regen around 1,200/s I am pretty close to that goal. (1,200hp/s x 8s = 9,600hp). I also tried playing around with some hp on hit gear. This seemed to work as well, if not better with Magic Missle (Seeker) / Arcane Orb. I'd love to hear if anyone has had success using a mix of hp regen / hp on hit gear.
You can read more on Energy Armor with Force Armor and it's potential for later acts here: http://www.diablofans.com/topic/47483-gearing-for-the-most-efficient-use-of-force-armor-in-late-inferno/ He makes it very simple to understand how to gear around EA's max potential in Acts 3&4. With this, you can then treat your hp pool like you have 3 lives (3 hits) and choose how you recover from a hit.
As I have been trying to progress through A2+, the need for all resist has been pushing me to abandon some of my hp regen. This is mostly because it's hard to find good regen/all res/ int / vit gear. Mobs in A2 are generally faster / trickier to avoid than any other act (imo) making only having 3 lives not enough due to the speedyness of these mobs.
That said, I've also been experimenting with a new build (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#alRSOQ!YdT!cYbZYY) that I stole from another thread. The approach is the similar but I don't have mirror images anymore, instead I put a lot of stock into teleport/illusionist. This build focuses on less frequent AP use giving you more time to run around which I'm finding to be more and more useful as I make my way through A2. PS: With a fast 1h and some IAS gear, Arcane Dynamo + Venom Hydra is fantastic
I liked your reasoning behind the build. Being a fresh 60 and poorly geared, I liked the idea of just completely avoiding damage and ended up trying your build last night, with limited success. I tweaked your build a bit as the night progressed, but not much since it was a solid layout. To give you an idea of what gear I was using to start the night with this build I had roughly 30k hp, 50% dmg reduction from armor, ~100-200 res, 18k dps.
Elites and Champs felt pretty straight forward, as you show in your video. However as I got later into A1, I kept having issues with various affixes on elite packs and I kept dying to them as a result. Mostly anything with Teleport/Fast/Invincible Minions affix would 1-2 shot me and it wasn't like I couldn't survive a single hit by just teleporting away myself, it was the fact I couldn't recover fast enough before it would happen again.
I then changed the build to this: http://us.battle.net...POQR!fUd!cYZYYa
With the addition of EA I lost a bit of damage from Magic Weapon, but it was offset by not getting 2 shot anymore (yay 3 shot). The addition of Temporal Flux also made things easier to kite, especially after I changed Venom Hydra to Arcane Hydra. I coupled this with finding/buying more hp regen gear. The end result was aprox 15k dps, 26k hp same res/armor but now I had 1200 hp/s (self buffed). Having the extra HP/S was enough to keep me in most fights for longer and gave me *a lot* more breathing room. All in all a very successful build for me, as I was able to down the butcher the same night I entered Inferno.
Cheers and thanks for posting!