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I haven't reached over grift 41 on my (seasonal) wizard either, so don't feel too bad! [link to my wiz]. I'm doing a hybrid build as well, but I'm including the seasonal bracers Ranslor's Folly which I really like for the CC, it's better than Black Hole but it doesn't work on elites, so I'm using both just for fun I started with the same hybrid build from rebjorn but dropped the duplicates and added energy twister, but this was for T6 speed farming and wouldn't be great in greater rifts. I don't even have the option of using Unity on my seasonal character right now (only one Unity, no Templar relic). I don't really have a great weapon yet either.

I noticed that your Templar is wearing a nearly perfect Unity, you could roll the INT off of that into a socket so you'll have CHC, CHD, elite dmg, and a socket. I expect you'll gain more DPS but you'll loose some toughness from the INT and physical resist.

Are you sure you have a fire spell ? Unless I missed sthg, you don't, so you never reach the 4th TR stack. And your fire% affix on your bracers is useless

The fire %dmg on the bracers is making Slow Time proc the fire damage stack, so this isn't an issue.

Then I think Force Armor will serve you well, it seems to be a "go-to" for damage reduction. You can also roll reduced elite damage on the chest, but then you sacrifice other more valuable stats like hydra dmg. Additional armor may help, but you probably wouldn't want to sacrifice a good damage stat in order to get armor. However, armor should be more valuable on INT classes though because they have high resistances from their high intelligence numbers, while conversely STR/DEX classes have high armor and benefit from all resist.

I must be wrong about Slow Time damage... I found a post on reddit that states it uses your highest % elemental damage type, so in your case you have % fire damage while I had % cold damage. That's pretty interesting and good to know!

While it's hard to get "perfect" gear, you can be on the lookout for useful secondary stats like reduced melee or ranged damage, which can roll as secondaries from 6% to 7% on certain slots (some elite affix damage types count as either melee or ranged), and also secondary resistances (FYI in case you don't know, if your piece has All Resist it cannot roll a secondary single resist).

Something I've learned with wizards (and demon hunters for that matter) is in higher greater rifts, you basically have to avoid incoming damage as much as possible because you cannot get your toughness high enough to absorb all the damage. This requires learning how to dance around the screen so you don't get hit by anything. The "glass cannon" metaphor is very appropriate

You can also gear your Templar to be more helpful. He doesn't do a lot of damage but you can use him for CC. There's guides for this on the forums here, but essentially you can give him a weapon that has a useful stun, slow, or freeze effect and then stack attack speed so it proc's often. It doesn't matter if they are ancient since those stats are not affected by being ancient. Eun Jang Do freezes when the mobs HP is below ~20% which is good for rift guardians. Thunderfury has a reduced movement speed proc. Azurewrath has a chance to freeze the target. For a shield, the Freeze-of-deflection is commonly used since it has a chance to freeze the mob on block. You can roll % block chance bonus on the shield and on the Templar Relic. You could use the ring Justice Lantern for additional % block, but more commonly you see Wyrdward used in combination with a weapon with a Lightning damage roll on it (the main damage range should be lightning) to proc the stun effect. For the amulet, you can use Dovu-energy-trap to increase the stun duration from Wyrdward, or The-ess-of-johan for some CC. The main stats that matter will be % attack speed and % block, as well as the lightning damage weapon. Cooldown reduction is also good so the Templar can use more abilities. Damage stats like CHC and CHD don't really matter on the Templar since his damage is so minimal compared to your own, and he doesn't need VIT or resistances.

FYI all this info I acquired from reading the forums and other sites, I can't take credit for it myself at all! Hopefully it is helpful.

Hi,

It depends on what your issue is, are you dying too much in high grifts or is your damage too low and you are failing to clear in time?

If you need more survivability, using Energy Armor - Force Armor gives great damage reduction.

You could try using Shock Pulse - Piercing Orb instead of electrocute because the orbs hit a large number of mobs and spread damage through Elemental Exposure, etc. to more enemies. Thus, the +dmg to electrocute on your belt and pants could be changed to something else, like %life or Armor if you need toughness, I'm not sure how good the plus spell damage is on those armor pieces because your primary spells aren't contributing a lot to your overall damage, afaik.

Black Hole is good to use if you need some crowd control, as it groups up the mobs... although you are already getting some CC from Blizzard.

Also note that Slow Time will give you a stack of Cold Damage from Elemental Exposure... I don't know why it's cold because the tool tip says it's an arcane spell, but I've tested it and it seems to be cold.

Boosting your Attack Speed should give more damage output from Hydra, and of course finding a Serpent Sparker would be great, but I haven't found a good one either myself.

Getting your Molten Wildebeest gem to lvl 25 will also help your survivability.

Also, check out some of the Wizard guides on this site, like the Delrasha one.

Anyway, good luck and have fun!

Good tips! I've tried 'the queens dessert' and it worked out pretty well. I'll have to try the Templar bounty next.

I'm a fan of the Festering Woods because it has high density of skeletons and bats, has the two chambers (warriors rest, crypt of the ancients), and can spawn a few events.

Official forums are full of random crash reports - HC characters are being lost.

I'm experiencing these crashes myself but have been only playing SC, fortunately.

Checkout the technical support forum at battle.net, it's FULL of these reports!

I also have this issue, crashed twice within about 20 min of each other. I even rebooted PC after the first one but this didn't help.

The crash happens like so: screen freezes and diablo cursor disappears and is replaced by the windows cursor. i can move the cursor but D3 is unresponsive. have to bring up task manager to get back out to windows and at this point the "Diablo encountered an unexpected error" window pops up and asks for a description of what I was doing. First time it was in Act 1 town about to open a GR, second time inside a lvl 41 GR at about 90% done.

I just got my firebirds set on my wizard recently, and it lets me destroy T6 and do low 30's grifts. Luckily I had a pretty good Furnace from my WD that I could use, that helps quite a bit I'm sure. I do not find the grifts to be very fun however, and I just find the firebirds playstyle a bit boring after doing it for a while. I have some Tal Rasha's pieces and I'm looking forward to 2.2!

That's a nice SOJ you got, and I think it's good advice to keep it as-is until the patch hits and see if you can use the cold dmg. I had the same thing happen to me but I got lighting damage (but no crit on the ring). I'm just holding onto it for now. You may be able to roll off the INT since the other stats are good and try to get a socket. Is it an ancient? Didn't think you could get +600 INT on a non-ancient.

If you're gambling for firebirds pieces with shards, I'd recommend going for the helm last because it's harder to get, you tend to get wizard hats which end up diluting your chances. That was my experience anyway, it was the last thing I got, even after getting a mediocre Cindercoat.

Good luck getting your pieces!

Quin C has a recent guide for the templar on his youtube channel.

Basically he states that the Bul-Kathos wedding band proc scales with physical damage, and benefits from elite damage on the RG for example. So he says to use a Sunkeeper (+elite dmg) and Lidlesswall (+physical dmg), as well as the wedding band ring and an SOJ (+physical dmg). Red gems everywhere possible including the weapon. Not sure if this is only PTR/patch 2.2 or if it applies to live servers.

I don't have these items myself so I still use the Azurewrath and Freeze of Deflection combo, with Bul-Kathos wedding band. Sometimes Thunderfury instead, for the CC proc.

[removed - posted in wrong forum]

Quote from Cannae»

Getting into GR 40+ has more to do with how you group the mobs and the types of rifts you get than it does with gear.

I find this to be very true. I also play raekor's barb and I judge my gear level is similar to yours, although I don't have a decent immunity neck or SOJ. The highest I've done is lvl 40 and that was most definitely due to lucky grift layout and having high density of favorable mobs.

I also had to learn to force myself to skip trying to kill small groups of white mobs because even if you get them to very low health, trying to kill them if there's only 2 or 3 left is a huge waste of time. Same with yellow champs, I find it's better to try to lead the nearly dead yellow to the next pack of mobs to finish it off, or just skip it entirely.

I found that putting Ess of Johan on my follower helped with grouping up the mobs too.

GL HF!

That's a shame, R.I.P. I normally play SC but I do have a HC barb, and the first time they died it was upsetting. It was rather undignified too, an arcane sentry in whimsyshire did me in!

I was going to caution you about that cloak that shoots rockets, I have read that it can get you killed if a reflect damage mob reflects the rockets back at you... not sure if this is still the case or if it's been fixed. But either way I guess it's too late now!

Good luck to you!

Quote from Cap75»

I'm going with EP-Impending Doom with WoL-Pillar to detonate and Sweeping Wind for extra damage.

Impending doom only does damage when the enemy dies, so on a Rift Guardian it will not help directly (it will help if there are add mobs around that die and blow up). WoL-Pillar won't "detonate" EP as far as I know. EP-The Flesh Is Weak might be better for DPS on the RG since mobs take 20% additional damage. Spamming WoL will increase damage due to the clones that spawn from the SWK set.

Unfortunate that you have over 7% RCR since it's impossible to use SW to keep up Taeguk, maybe replace the ammy asap?

BTW I'm assuming "Ariel Servant" means "Air Ally"

What they both said above sounds like good advice. You are only getting about 250 all resist from Harmony, so another defensive passive may be better. Also, you've got tonnes of VIT and high HP so you may be better served loosing some VIT and gaining defensive stats like AR, armour, reduced dmg... I notice a lot of the VIT is coming from your 2H sledge and cannot be changed at this point.

A different RoRG with a socket like Heltah said is a good idea, and Epiphany w DS and the dodge from dashing strike are really nice. But looks like you may prefer to keep EP since you have Gungdo Gear bracers, and you are getting all four mantras from Inna's set which is a lot of toughness, so maybe you can just keep EP and focus on improving other areas.

Looks like you play mostly in groups since your followers don't have any items equipped? If this is the case then Unity ring obviously won't be of much use.

You didn't mention your Paragon points, but those could be put towards defense and regen as well. And upgrading your Diamonds whenever possible.

No....

But, it depends on what you are asking. Difference classes DO have difference chances of getting specific items and there are several tables online that provide this information, as here: google docs spread sheet

Part of the reason is obvious, for instance a barbarian has a much lower chance of getting a legendary wand than a wizard. And a barbarian tends to have a lower chance of getting certain belts (ie witching hour) when gambling from Kadala for belts because they also will get mighty belts. Other classes have similar specific chances due to class items, ie. Monk has spirt stones/helms, DH has cloaks/chest, WD has masks/helm, etc.

TL/DR: not all items are capable of dropping for all classes so the chances for specific items varies by class... but this is a highly specific situation and in general, RNG is the same for everyone.