This is a repost from the official forums; I feel like diablofans gets a lot of good traffic/posters though and am double-dipping in trying to get opinions from two different communities. With that said, here's what I posted lol:
Me: Since I can't post URLs yet, this is the extension for my profile after us battle net - /d3/en/profile/Kozu-1747/hero/688763
Over the past week or so I've been switching back and forth between key farming, MFing on low MP, and just screwing around and trying to get my paragon level up a bit. I've traditionally been a big mf fan (stemming from d2lod) and can't quite figure out what is the best way to go about things.
I currently have about 130m and recognize that I have a lot of gear shortcomings that need to be addressed. I don't know what I should seek to upgrade first or if I should just spend it all on one solid upgrade vs multiple. I've looked at the gear from a lot of extremely well geared cm/ww wizards and I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea as it sets presently unrealistic gear goals to achieve. Regardless, there are a few things I need to get settled.
1. What to upgrade first? I need more IAS / CC. I'm fine with playing a less tanky less forgiving style until I have better gear later on.
2. Chants or a rare weapon / echoing fury with triumvirate?
3. I've got MF on various pieces of gear. I don't know if I should abandon this and try to replace it with a better roll on that stat slot. I feel that any consistent mf I have may increase my chances of finding stuff valuable enough to sell to in the long run provide myself with enough income for better gear.
4. I don't know if I should try my hand at crafting amulets/gloves in hopes of getting a good enough roll that I don't have to buy anything from the AH or if that's not really a realistic thing to do at my point in the game.
Any and all responses to this will be welcomed and appreciated. I've made posts like this in the past and have always been appreciative of people sharing their knowledge and experience
1. If you do a lot of key farming, it's one of the rare cases where I agree with all that you should try to hit the 2.73 break point. You're at 2.68 APS currently, which is bad, because it's just a few % IAS away from the next break point, but overshooting the 2.51 break point by a lot. More on break points in the guide. You can get more IAS by getting a Chanto's weapon with IAS (can have up to 1.79 APS) and another amulet (which should also have some LoH and vit). You need a new Chanto's offhand with APoC. Try to aim for 45%+ CC, 18+ APoC, and 2.73 APS (or 2.51 APS if you can't get there, but for key farming I strongly suggest 2.73).
Besides that, you really need some more EHP; in particular about 10.000 more life. You should replace your Zuni ring and boots anyways as they're not the best items for CMWW, so there's a chance to get some more of that. Once your IAS is high enough you could also get rid of the Lacuni's and replace them with rare/crafted bracers; Lacuni's lack EHP and yours even don't have crit. To solve your HP problems you could even craft the vit bracers.
2. Chanto's, because of the huge attack speed buff. We had a discussion about this recently where I argued in some threads that for pure farming it's okay to aim for the 2.51 break point or even lower, which can be achieved with a rare weapon; but especially for key farming or similar activities where it's often a single monster fight there is no question that you should go with Chanto's.
3. My personal opinion is to get rid of MF gear and try to gain paragon levels faster. But obviously it's subjective. For example, right now you have 50% MF on gear. The question is, how much stats did you sacrifice for that? 50% MF are about 17 paragon levels, which at level 20 is not a lot, you can get these in a few hours (depending on how efficient you're playing). MF from paragon levels will stay with you for the rest of your life and doesn't occupy any affix slots. Just as an extreme example: if someone at paragon 0 has ~200 MF on gear, they will be significantly slower at leveling paragon, which gives you in the end up to 300 MF without sacrificing anything.
4. Gloves: not so much; you could get an EHP boost though, but you *need* high IAS+CC. Amulets the same, plus you want some LoH on them. Only craft these if you have a lot of money and patience. Bracers are probably a better way to start, because what you *need* is high CC, besides that just some EHP stats. For any of these, you could probably give it a try with the vit crafting recipe, because you lack a lot of EHP. I know, you said you're fine with being squishy, but you're just too squishy. I can't even imagine how this works out right now for you.
P.S.: You have 20% life bonus on items, which is essentially absolutely useless at 20k HP. Life% is useful if you have more than 35k HP, but as a CMWW wizard you should try to get between 30k and 35k and then only work on armor+allres, as it is better for Diamond Shards (mitigation counts here).
P.P.S.: CMWW is not really a good spec for farming paragon all the way to 100. If you can afford it to keep the items, I would keep the Zuni items and Lacuni's even if you replace them and build a second set for Archon farming (on low MPs). CMWW is keyboard smashing, but extremely useful for high MP farming and therefore keys/ubers. More on general specs/gear recommendations in my guide.
Thanks for the guide links - will make good reading tomorrow. I got a decent roll on crafting gloves about 30 minutes ago and I'm at 2.74 aps now.
A lot of the gear I have right now was gear I picked up when I just returned to the game. A lot of it I picked up without knowing too terribly much about what I was doing. I plan on going shopping tomorrow and I'll probably pick up a CC lacuni's.
I've had a love/hate relationship with mfing and will probably heed your advice and just go full fledged paragon leveling and hopefully climb a bit higher in mp level to get that added mf and experience.
Being squishy has been pretty frustrating at times, but I think it's just conditioned me to be more responsive to environmental effects and learn to kite better / learn mobs better. It would be pretty nice not to have to worry about any of that, though.
So I've reached 2.74 and will try to replace a lot of my life% gear with either mitigation or vit. I'll probably hold onto both chants until I have enough money to indulge more. With cm/ww, is it generally accepted that it's okay / not hugely inefficient to run with 12% run speed? I've wondered if I should keep my BT/lacunis or get better bracers and pick up innas. If I do that though, I'll lose 400+ LoH (which is my only source at the moment).
I spent some time looking at amulets this evening as well and I'm going to have to settle on it. I would assume that the mandatory stats are IAS, CC, and LoH. When I start adding anything else in like AR, int, CD, or armor, things start getting really pricey. Is there a "cheap" yet effective grouping I should be aiming for, as well as certain amounts (10% crit, 9% IAS?)?
10 APoC can be pretty annoying, but it seems manageable at the time being.
What would you recommend in regards to boots if I were to ditch Zunis?
Thanks again for the links and the long/thought out reply.
p.s. could you link your wizard? I'd like to stalk
@Movement speed: it's not important for CMWW. I like to take Teleport into my build sometimes, which can speed up things quite a lot, but MS is really not a necessary stat for CMWW wiz at all.
@Amulet: LoH is not *required* (as opposed to CC+IAS), but it was just a recommendation. You can also get LoH from rings, weapon, or a Storm Crow. It's just that it's easiest to get on amulet, in my opinion, and in particular for your current equipment. Getting it from a Storm Crow means to shuffle around a lot of gear (and getting the IAS from Andariel's back). Here's what you should look for:
-IAS as much as you need for your next breakpoint; but in general it's not a bad idea to get the maximum of 9%, at some point later on you might hate yourself if you think a mere 7% IAS on amulet are fine and you're really close to another breakpoint.
-CC as high as possible, but obviously 10% make every amulet pricey. I try to not drop below 8.5% on amulet, but it's a personal thing.
-LoH (if needed) is next, but if you're fine with it or want to get it on your ring or a Storm Crow you can skip that. Plan your character in advance if you decide to buy something expensive; use a spreadsheet.
-EHP stats are next (1. vit for your because you really lack vit, otherwise armor/allres depending on what you're lacking the most). Even though it can roll 16%, don't get life%, it just doesn't pay off with only ~30k HP (and you don't need much more as CMWW anyways).
-Obviously, this leaves no room for int/CD/average damage. It's not to say that these are useless, and many people have int/CD on their amulets because they take care of LoH/EHP on other slots. But really, int and especially CD are way less important than APoC/CC/IAS/LoH/vit/armor/allres. Once your survivability is ok and the stunlock is stable, you can start taking care of DPS.
@Boots: you could get rare boots for a decent EHP boost, or get Natalya boots+ring if you have quite some budget left to get the nice 7% CC set bonus (but some other stats will fall short, and a Nat ring with CC is extremely pricey).
@My wizard: actually, I can't link her, because she's naked (well still wearing underwear, so no NSFW). I have literally two and a half stashes full of wizard gear (all mediocre stuff, nothing expensive/fancy) and I like to play around with different gear. But lately I decided to try out the WD class, that's why my wizard is sitting in the Slaughtered Calf Inn (almost naked) and having some drinks with Leah. I don't have much time to play right now and plan to sell all my stuff in ~April/May to gear her up from scratch. After giving a lot of people hints about their wizards she turned at me and some point and said: "why am I wearing all this crap?". She deserves better... I'm still hoping that by this time there are more crafting recipes (or more diversity in items/builds for wizards).
If you're going for CM/WW then you will want to prioritize CC and IAS (or IAS to the point where you hit your desired breakpoint, 2.74 is generally there recommended. Lower works pretty well but doesn't hold a solid freeze as well). After that, you're going to want about 400k eHP (life after mitigation) or more. You will achieve that through a combination of raw life, armor and res all (actual mitigation) and sometimes some dex for dodge. I personally think that hitting your eHP with less life and more mitigation is the better way; it makes your LoH/LS more powerful if you have higher mitigation but in the end the total eHP pool is about staying alive and whatever way you get it is fine. From there on out, it's mostly about improving overall and dps.
I will dissagree about the Zuni gear not being good for CM/WW. It is actually very, very good... but usually in end-game builds. Zuni's set makes it harder to hit your aps breakpoint as it lacks IAS like Tal's set (dps is usually a bit lower too because of that) but gives you far better mitigation. Unfortunately, this means a trifecta Pox usually, and those are very, very expensive - which is why it's an end game gear spec for CM/WW mainly. If you feel you are not lacking in CC right now (I'd shoot for 50% or so), then you can stick with your ias/CD zuni ring. It's decent eHP because of the res all and zuni boots can be pretty solid to combine with them, giving you the 130 int bonus for dps. Once again though, this is a call you will make depending on how your other gear tallies up.
You profile lists no belt. Witching Hour is generally what you want for a wiz. I could say CM/WW, but really... it's just about BiS for all wizards. They get really expensive too for the top ones but I would look for one with two of the three possible eHP stats (vit, RA and +armor, whichever you need most) and let high int be secondary to keep the cost down. If you don't need the ias, then you can save money by looking at the 8% ias ones because they are cheaper. As much crit damage as possible would be good though as CM/WW usually lack that and Witching Hour is one of the few places they rely on to get some. If you just can't afford it, then look for a decent rare (int+vit+ra+armor) but don't spend a lot on it because eventually you'll want to move to a Witching Hour.
Lacunis are nice for the MS and the ias but are generally pretty crappy for eHP. Even if you get 6CC+armor+RA for max mitigation, they still are light on vit/life. If you're not hurting for aps, then a rare would be the best option I think. A lot cheaper too usually. With a rare you will definitely want the standard int+vit+RA+armor+CC combo (6CC+150int+100vit+70RA+450 armor total is the ideal but is tough to find).
Lastly, a Stormcrow is a very good option for CM/WW. APoC+LoH with int, vit and str for armor all included by default, plus it comes with a solid % elemental buff. The damage suffers a bit with a Chant's wand vs a black weapon, but it's still significant. They are also fairly reasonably priced. The ideal here is 400+ LoH, 10 APoC and 6CC but those do get a little pricey. You can pick up a 5CC or lower for a fraction of the price and not miss out on much. A CC Mempo does do more damage but also costs a lot more and depending on your other gear, is not necessarily better. There are also some good rare hats out there, especially if you want eHP+APoC+CC without spending a fortune but ultimately they can't catch the crow or mempo for total dps.
I'm late to the party so I'll just second what everyone already said.
And do read the guides. But aside from the information and tips other wizard players can give you, it's up to you to explore your options and figure out how exactly you want to gear your character to suit your playstyle (and budget, if that qualifies).
@My wizard: actually, I can't link her, because she's naked (well still wearing underwear, so no NSFW). I have literally two and a half stashes full of wizard gear (all mediocre stuff, nothing expensive/fancy) and I like to play around with different gear. But lately I decided to try out the WD class, that's why my wizard is sitting in the Slaughtered Calf Inn (almost naked) and having some drinks with Leah. I don't have much time to play right now and plan to sell all my stuff in ~April/May to gear her up from scratch. After giving a lot of people hints about their wizards she turned at me and some point and said: "why am I wearing all this crap?". She deserves better... I'm still hoping that by this time there are more crafting recipes (or more diversity in items/builds for wizards).
Do what I did with my monk, DH and barb. I gave my DH a mixture of items that look aesthetically pleasing, I gave my monk all blue items (and aesthetically pleasing), and gave my barb all white items (mostly from the Archon armor set).
And I gave my WD troll items. Literally. See here.
Lol yeah I had sold off some of the gear I had and tried selling the MF WH but ended up just keeping it for now. I've changed around a lot of my gear and have done so at not much cost at all while maintaining my dps and getting over 2.73.
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Me: Since I can't post URLs yet, this is the extension for my profile after us battle net - /d3/en/profile/Kozu-1747/hero/688763
Over the past week or so I've been switching back and forth between key farming, MFing on low MP, and just screwing around and trying to get my paragon level up a bit. I've traditionally been a big mf fan (stemming from d2lod) and can't quite figure out what is the best way to go about things.
I currently have about 130m and recognize that I have a lot of gear shortcomings that need to be addressed. I don't know what I should seek to upgrade first or if I should just spend it all on one solid upgrade vs multiple. I've looked at the gear from a lot of extremely well geared cm/ww wizards and I'm pretty sure that's a bad idea as it sets presently unrealistic gear goals to achieve. Regardless, there are a few things I need to get settled.
1. What to upgrade first? I need more IAS / CC. I'm fine with playing a less tanky less forgiving style until I have better gear later on.
2. Chants or a rare weapon / echoing fury with triumvirate?
3. I've got MF on various pieces of gear. I don't know if I should abandon this and try to replace it with a better roll on that stat slot. I feel that any consistent mf I have may increase my chances of finding stuff valuable enough to sell to in the long run provide myself with enough income for better gear.
4. I don't know if I should try my hand at crafting amulets/gloves in hopes of getting a good enough roll that I don't have to buy anything from the AH or if that's not really a realistic thing to do at my point in the game.
Any and all responses to this will be welcomed and appreciated. I've made posts like this in the past and have always been appreciative of people sharing their knowledge and experience
1. If you do a lot of key farming, it's one of the rare cases where I agree with all that you should try to hit the 2.73 break point. You're at 2.68 APS currently, which is bad, because it's just a few % IAS away from the next break point, but overshooting the 2.51 break point by a lot. More on break points in the guide. You can get more IAS by getting a Chanto's weapon with IAS (can have up to 1.79 APS) and another amulet (which should also have some LoH and vit). You need a new Chanto's offhand with APoC. Try to aim for 45%+ CC, 18+ APoC, and 2.73 APS (or 2.51 APS if you can't get there, but for key farming I strongly suggest 2.73).
Besides that, you really need some more EHP; in particular about 10.000 more life. You should replace your Zuni ring and boots anyways as they're not the best items for CMWW, so there's a chance to get some more of that. Once your IAS is high enough you could also get rid of the Lacuni's and replace them with rare/crafted bracers; Lacuni's lack EHP and yours even don't have crit. To solve your HP problems you could even craft the vit bracers.
2. Chanto's, because of the huge attack speed buff. We had a discussion about this recently where I argued in some threads that for pure farming it's okay to aim for the 2.51 break point or even lower, which can be achieved with a rare weapon; but especially for key farming or similar activities where it's often a single monster fight there is no question that you should go with Chanto's.
3. My personal opinion is to get rid of MF gear and try to gain paragon levels faster. But obviously it's subjective. For example, right now you have 50% MF on gear. The question is, how much stats did you sacrifice for that? 50% MF are about 17 paragon levels, which at level 20 is not a lot, you can get these in a few hours (depending on how efficient you're playing). MF from paragon levels will stay with you for the rest of your life and doesn't occupy any affix slots. Just as an extreme example: if someone at paragon 0 has ~200 MF on gear, they will be significantly slower at leveling paragon, which gives you in the end up to 300 MF without sacrificing anything.
4. Gloves: not so much; you could get an EHP boost though, but you *need* high IAS+CC. Amulets the same, plus you want some LoH on them. Only craft these if you have a lot of money and patience. Bracers are probably a better way to start, because what you *need* is high CC, besides that just some EHP stats. For any of these, you could probably give it a try with the vit crafting recipe, because you lack a lot of EHP. I know, you said you're fine with being squishy, but you're just too squishy. I can't even imagine how this works out right now for you.
P.S.: You have 20% life bonus on items, which is essentially absolutely useless at 20k HP. Life% is useful if you have more than 35k HP, but as a CMWW wizard you should try to get between 30k and 35k and then only work on armor+allres, as it is better for Diamond Shards (mitigation counts here).
P.P.S.: CMWW is not really a good spec for farming paragon all the way to 100. If you can afford it to keep the items, I would keep the Zuni items and Lacuni's even if you replace them and build a second set for Archon farming (on low MPs). CMWW is keyboard smashing, but extremely useful for high MP farming and therefore keys/ubers. More on general specs/gear recommendations in my guide.
A lot of the gear I have right now was gear I picked up when I just returned to the game. A lot of it I picked up without knowing too terribly much about what I was doing. I plan on going shopping tomorrow and I'll probably pick up a CC lacuni's.
I've had a love/hate relationship with mfing and will probably heed your advice and just go full fledged paragon leveling and hopefully climb a bit higher in mp level to get that added mf and experience.
Being squishy has been pretty frustrating at times, but I think it's just conditioned me to be more responsive to environmental effects and learn to kite better / learn mobs better. It would be pretty nice not to have to worry about any of that, though.
So I've reached 2.74 and will try to replace a lot of my life% gear with either mitigation or vit. I'll probably hold onto both chants until I have enough money to indulge more. With cm/ww, is it generally accepted that it's okay / not hugely inefficient to run with 12% run speed? I've wondered if I should keep my BT/lacunis or get better bracers and pick up innas. If I do that though, I'll lose 400+ LoH (which is my only source at the moment).
I spent some time looking at amulets this evening as well and I'm going to have to settle on it. I would assume that the mandatory stats are IAS, CC, and LoH. When I start adding anything else in like AR, int, CD, or armor, things start getting really pricey. Is there a "cheap" yet effective grouping I should be aiming for, as well as certain amounts (10% crit, 9% IAS?)?
10 APoC can be pretty annoying, but it seems manageable at the time being.
What would you recommend in regards to boots if I were to ditch Zunis?
Thanks again for the links and the long/thought out reply.
p.s. could you link your wizard? I'd like to stalk
@Amulet: LoH is not *required* (as opposed to CC+IAS), but it was just a recommendation. You can also get LoH from rings, weapon, or a Storm Crow. It's just that it's easiest to get on amulet, in my opinion, and in particular for your current equipment. Getting it from a Storm Crow means to shuffle around a lot of gear (and getting the IAS from Andariel's back). Here's what you should look for:
-IAS as much as you need for your next breakpoint; but in general it's not a bad idea to get the maximum of 9%, at some point later on you might hate yourself if you think a mere 7% IAS on amulet are fine and you're really close to another breakpoint.
-CC as high as possible, but obviously 10% make every amulet pricey. I try to not drop below 8.5% on amulet, but it's a personal thing.
-LoH (if needed) is next, but if you're fine with it or want to get it on your ring or a Storm Crow you can skip that. Plan your character in advance if you decide to buy something expensive; use a spreadsheet.
-EHP stats are next (1. vit for your because you really lack vit, otherwise armor/allres depending on what you're lacking the most). Even though it can roll 16%, don't get life%, it just doesn't pay off with only ~30k HP (and you don't need much more as CMWW anyways).
-Obviously, this leaves no room for int/CD/average damage. It's not to say that these are useless, and many people have int/CD on their amulets because they take care of LoH/EHP on other slots. But really, int and especially CD are way less important than APoC/CC/IAS/LoH/vit/armor/allres. Once your survivability is ok and the stunlock is stable, you can start taking care of DPS.
@Boots: you could get rare boots for a decent EHP boost, or get Natalya boots+ring if you have quite some budget left to get the nice 7% CC set bonus (but some other stats will fall short, and a Nat ring with CC is extremely pricey).
@My wizard: actually, I can't link her, because she's naked (well still wearing underwear, so no NSFW). I have literally two and a half stashes full of wizard gear (all mediocre stuff, nothing expensive/fancy) and I like to play around with different gear. But lately I decided to try out the WD class, that's why my wizard is sitting in the Slaughtered Calf Inn (almost naked) and having some drinks with Leah. I don't have much time to play right now and plan to sell all my stuff in ~April/May to gear her up from scratch. After giving a lot of people hints about their wizards she turned at me and some point and said: "why am I wearing all this crap?". She deserves better... I'm still hoping that by this time there are more crafting recipes (or more diversity in items/builds for wizards).
If you're going for CM/WW then you will want to prioritize CC and IAS (or IAS to the point where you hit your desired breakpoint, 2.74 is generally there recommended. Lower works pretty well but doesn't hold a solid freeze as well). After that, you're going to want about 400k eHP (life after mitigation) or more. You will achieve that through a combination of raw life, armor and res all (actual mitigation) and sometimes some dex for dodge. I personally think that hitting your eHP with less life and more mitigation is the better way; it makes your LoH/LS more powerful if you have higher mitigation but in the end the total eHP pool is about staying alive and whatever way you get it is fine. From there on out, it's mostly about improving overall and dps.
I will dissagree about the Zuni gear not being good for CM/WW. It is actually very, very good... but usually in end-game builds. Zuni's set makes it harder to hit your aps breakpoint as it lacks IAS like Tal's set (dps is usually a bit lower too because of that) but gives you far better mitigation. Unfortunately, this means a trifecta Pox usually, and those are very, very expensive - which is why it's an end game gear spec for CM/WW mainly. If you feel you are not lacking in CC right now (I'd shoot for 50% or so), then you can stick with your ias/CD zuni ring. It's decent eHP because of the res all and zuni boots can be pretty solid to combine with them, giving you the 130 int bonus for dps. Once again though, this is a call you will make depending on how your other gear tallies up.
You profile lists no belt. Witching Hour is generally what you want for a wiz. I could say CM/WW, but really... it's just about BiS for all wizards. They get really expensive too for the top ones but I would look for one with two of the three possible eHP stats (vit, RA and +armor, whichever you need most) and let high int be secondary to keep the cost down. If you don't need the ias, then you can save money by looking at the 8% ias ones because they are cheaper. As much crit damage as possible would be good though as CM/WW usually lack that and Witching Hour is one of the few places they rely on to get some. If you just can't afford it, then look for a decent rare (int+vit+ra+armor) but don't spend a lot on it because eventually you'll want to move to a Witching Hour.
Lacunis are nice for the MS and the ias but are generally pretty crappy for eHP. Even if you get 6CC+armor+RA for max mitigation, they still are light on vit/life. If you're not hurting for aps, then a rare would be the best option I think. A lot cheaper too usually. With a rare you will definitely want the standard int+vit+RA+armor+CC combo (6CC+150int+100vit+70RA+450 armor total is the ideal but is tough to find).
Lastly, a Stormcrow is a very good option for CM/WW. APoC+LoH with int, vit and str for armor all included by default, plus it comes with a solid % elemental buff. The damage suffers a bit with a Chant's wand vs a black weapon, but it's still significant. They are also fairly reasonably priced. The ideal here is 400+ LoH, 10 APoC and 6CC but those do get a little pricey. You can pick up a 5CC or lower for a fraction of the price and not miss out on much. A CC Mempo does do more damage but also costs a lot more and depending on your other gear, is not necessarily better. There are also some good rare hats out there, especially if you want eHP+APoC+CC without spending a fortune but ultimately they can't catch the crow or mempo for total dps.
-dolynick
And do read the guides. But aside from the information and tips other wizard players can give you, it's up to you to explore your options and figure out how exactly you want to gear your character to suit your playstyle (and budget, if that qualifies).
And as for this:
Do what I did with my monk, DH and barb. I gave my DH a mixture of items that look aesthetically pleasing, I gave my monk all blue items (and aesthetically pleasing), and gave my barb all white items (mostly from the Archon armor set).
And I gave my WD troll items. Literally. See here.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Oh yes. Aquatic dye, Ranger's dye, Elegant dye, Autumn dye, and Lovely dye.
And a frog, of course.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site