Just two damage abilities - Magic Missile and Arcane Orb (might change to Disintegrate), however with Archon for boost of power whenneeded. And then the rest kinda focusing on survivability.
Frost Nova with crit boost. Diamond Skin extended to 8 seconds. Teleport with Reversal.
Passives: Temporal Flux - since my damage abilities are arcane based, all targets should be quite slow. Glass Cannon - having 3 oh shit buttons should help a lot. Blur - cause of Glass Cannon
Might change those last two passives to something else tho... Either Astral Presence, Illusionist or Arcane Dynamo.
Very confused over the Reversal rune. In Inferno I see teleport as solely an escape mechanism, why would you ever want to port back to where you needed to use it? I personally find it to be the worst of the Teleport runes and would take anything other than it for an Inferno build.
Diamond Skin is completely dependent on the numbers. Those 2 seconds are worth it if monsters aren't hitting so hard that they break the skin before it even matters. In that case you'd be much better off with Crystal Shell. A choice that has to be experienced to be made though.
Glass Cannon seems very very risky. Might work, might not. Blur does not really counteract it as Armor is no longer just physical damage reduction, but ALL damage reduction. Little surprised at the lack of Astral Presence since it's one of the strongest passives.
Ok well lets go down the list... penetrating magic missile is like Russian Disintegrate, it is free and could do the job but there is better.... real disintegrate. Obliteration seems like it might be pretty good more or less, but I really think Volatility could take the place of both of these spells and do a better job ....
I really don't think deep freeze will be worth it, personal preference is for shatter for me, and I don't like the idea of trying to get surrounded by inferno level monsters... I don't think it'll be worth the risk.
I've done a little soul searching on diamond skin and personally for inferno I think I will probably consider switching to crystal shell and using evocation passive with slow time at the least, the two together with that passive should be a great combo for defense. Also, if you had evocation it would help a lot on Archon cooldown since it is so large, 15% of 100 seconds, is 15 seconds off if your using Pure Power, with improved archon it is 18 seconds off, that means evocation and Archon should go together like smoking and cancer.
To Reverse or not to Reverse: Sometimes I don't want to go back to where I was, sometimes where I was was dangerous and that's why I didn't want to be there anymore..... It could happen to you ! Safe Passage seems like a far better choice, that with Blur and you got 50% damage reduction,, in addition to enduring skin (or CS) it is a smart match.
This modification sports up to a 95% reduction in melee damage, making teleport and volatility a more than viable attack strategy that has the explosive range of orb, and penetrates better than magic missile. For ranged do crystal shell, teleport into middle of them, shatter, then volatility, It is hard to make a build for Archon without knowing how long someone will easily be able to stay in it...
Critical Mass with volatility could be a gold mine for lowering the cool down of spells. add shatter, (especially if the frost novas caused by it can critical too) and you could watch your cooldowns plummet, maybe.
3 damage types: light, arcane, physical
2 def/utility skills: When situations get sticky D Skin it up and if you can't finish them off Teleport safely to other places.
I plan on using this in coop, so I want to maximize my damage while letting the other players (Barb and Monk) do most of the demon distracting (I'd say tank but probably get fried since it's a WoW term =P), so I don't have as many defensive skills as you guys.
Basic strategy: Arcane Orb for the slow, Explosive Blast, Another Arc Orb, and then Disintegrate to finish them off and make them go boom with Volatility!
OP build has disintegrate as dps source. No AP regenerators and no singature spells. Not worth debating that builds as it is.
Your build Ashtehn has way too many dmg sources doing the same thing. Why would you want to use Arcane Orb AND disintegrate? They're doing the EXACT same thing.
Aside from that, you only got slow from arcane spells and no other CC. How will your build manage mobs that charge, jump or dig? It doesn't even have armor. Your only defense against an arrow coming at you is Diamond Skin which has less than 50% up-time. When Diamond Skin is down, you'll take 110% of the arrow dmg (as you choose to play glass cannon too).
You should ditch Distintegrate or Arcane Orb as well as Time Bomb and replace them with armor and cc spell.
First off- Arcane Orb and Disintegrate do different things: Orb can be cast and will then pierce through targets til it explodes while Disintegrate can be used on single targets to finish up those injured by Orb and if it kills them it does even more dmg in a 3xx% (don't remember exact number) explosion from the rune.
Other than the slow, yes I have no other CC but there will also be more than just me playing...other players in coop will no doubt have some sort of CC which will help in that regard.
In addition, your recommendation of dropping 2 skills for more defense/utility is fairly foolish in a way that all the survivability in the world won't help you achieve your goal if you can't do enough damage to kill them in the first place.
Hope this post doesn't come off as asholeish but just wanted to further enlighten you into this play strategy of high damage output with defense to a point where I survive but it's not too excessive. I have a hard time seeing builds with 4 or even 3 defense skills being viable because that leaves that much less damage output.
My build for Inferno...
Just two damage abilities - Magic Missile and Arcane Orb (might change to Disintegrate), however with Archon for boost of power whenneeded.
And then the rest kinda focusing on survivability.
Frost Nova with crit boost.
Diamond Skin extended to 8 seconds.
Teleport with Reversal.
Passives:
Temporal Flux - since my damage abilities are arcane based, all targets should be quite slow.
Glass Cannon - having 3 oh shit buttons should help a lot.
Blur - cause of Glass Cannon
Might change those last two passives to something else tho... Either Astral Presence, Illusionist or Arcane Dynamo.
Looking for comments, tips etc.
Diamond Skin is completely dependent on the numbers. Those 2 seconds are worth it if monsters aren't hitting so hard that they break the skin before it even matters. In that case you'd be much better off with Crystal Shell. A choice that has to be experienced to be made though.
Glass Cannon seems very very risky. Might work, might not. Blur does not really counteract it as Armor is no longer just physical damage reduction, but ALL damage reduction. Little surprised at the lack of Astral Presence since it's one of the strongest passives.
I really don't think deep freeze will be worth it, personal preference is for shatter for me, and I don't like the idea of trying to get surrounded by inferno level monsters... I don't think it'll be worth the risk.
I've done a little soul searching on diamond skin and personally for inferno I think I will probably consider switching to crystal shell and using evocation passive with slow time at the least, the two together with that passive should be a great combo for defense. Also, if you had evocation it would help a lot on Archon cooldown since it is so large, 15% of 100 seconds, is 15 seconds off if your using Pure Power, with improved archon it is 18 seconds off, that means evocation and Archon should go together like smoking and cancer.
To Reverse or not to Reverse: Sometimes I don't want to go back to where I was, sometimes where I was was dangerous and that's why I didn't want to be there anymore..... It could happen to you ! Safe Passage seems like a far better choice, that with Blur and you got 50% damage reduction,, in addition to enduring skin (or CS) it is a smart match.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#iYmQXf!agb!bacaaZ
This modification sports up to a 95% reduction in melee damage, making teleport and volatility a more than viable attack strategy that has the explosive range of orb, and penetrates better than magic missile. For ranged do crystal shell, teleport into middle of them, shatter, then volatility, It is hard to make a build for Archon without knowing how long someone will easily be able to stay in it...
Critical Mass with volatility could be a gold mine for lowering the cool down of spells. add shatter, (especially if the frost novas caused by it can critical too) and you could watch your cooldowns plummet, maybe.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UihcXQ!YXU!abZcaZ
4 damaging skills
2 defensive/utility skills
3 damage types: light, arcane, physical
2 def/utility skills: When situations get sticky D Skin it up and if you can't finish them off Teleport safely to other places.
I plan on using this in coop, so I want to maximize my damage while letting the other players (Barb and Monk) do most of the demon distracting (I'd say tank but probably get fried since it's a WoW term =P), so I don't have as many defensive skills as you guys.
Basic strategy: Arcane Orb for the slow, Explosive Blast, Another Arc Orb, and then Disintegrate to finish them off and make them go boom with Volatility!
What do you guys think?
First off- Arcane Orb and Disintegrate do different things: Orb can be cast and will then pierce through targets til it explodes while Disintegrate can be used on single targets to finish up those injured by Orb and if it kills them it does even more dmg in a 3xx% (don't remember exact number) explosion from the rune.
Other than the slow, yes I have no other CC but there will also be more than just me playing...other players in coop will no doubt have some sort of CC which will help in that regard.
In addition, your recommendation of dropping 2 skills for more defense/utility is fairly foolish in a way that all the survivability in the world won't help you achieve your goal if you can't do enough damage to kill them in the first place.
Hope this post doesn't come off as asholeish but just wanted to further enlighten you into this play strategy of high damage output with defense to a point where I survive but it's not too excessive. I have a hard time seeing builds with 4 or even 3 defense skills being viable because that leaves that much less damage output.