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Well Indigo AO doesn't miss. It hits everything in 16 yards of your character (no aiming). Plus, taking into account the AP difference, you'd be able to cast 12 AOs for every 7 meteors (or 1.7 AO per Meteor). Obviously Meteor is still more powerful, but you'll be casting AOs much more frequently than Meteor. I guess I personally just prefer the mechanic of Indigo AO to Meteor, but to each his own.

Quote from jaclashflash

Also,
Shouldnt Frost Nova use an alabaster rune?
Deep Freeze = +50% crit if you Hit 5 or more mobs.

Since you are already going to be in melee, chances are there will be sufficient mobs, and your healing relies heavily on critical hits.

Exact point I was going to make. The synergy between Alabaster Frost Nova and Alabaster Spectral Blades I think is a must for this build.

I also like Indigo Arcane Orb for a melee Wizard build, changing the spell to a PBAoE.

Depending on possible survivability issues, I would also strongly consider Arcane Dynamo for the third passive (Blur and Galvanizing Ward are a given, of course) since your primary "spamming" spell is a Signature spell, you'll be building up plenty of Flashes of Insight to give your Arcane Orb a big boost in damage (especially if you use it when your Frost Nova crit buff is up!).

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#XWeZQi!VeU!aaYaac

Quote from Laedo

I guess the only thing I don't like is the lack of leap. And leap isn't necessary, but to me, it's utility as a means to quickly jump out of battle seems like it would save more lives than any of the other skills.

What about replacing Leap with Indigo Furious Charge?
Furious Charge still acts as an escape mechanism that generates Fury, but with Indigo, it'll also heal you when you use it!

I also think Crimson Seismic Slam would be useful in HC for the AoE knockback and decent damage.

http://www.diablofans.com/topic/29836-regarding-closed-beta-release-and-preorder-discussion/

Release
The release date for Diablo III has been pushed to some time in the first quarter of 2012 (January - April). A specific date has not yet been announced and is not yet known.

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The DH's boar looks exactly like (some) boars from WoW.

I'd assume those are Morlu

"Morlu are heavy warriors who are so consumed by a blood-lust and love for battle that they even turn onto each other when their services are not required by the Primus. They are described as tall, armor-clad humanoids, bearing ram skulls as helmets. Though they vaguely resemble humans in appearance, their demonic and undead nature is given away by their eyes which are black pits filled with a reddish glow, emanating hatred."

Quote from michielecker

I think the wizard in the first couple of pics is dual wielding, not clear though

http://www.diablofans.com/blog/220/entry-529-melee-wizard-visual-diary/

That's a shield.

I think there are quite a few passives that are offensive passives disguised as defensive passives. One With Everything, Seize the Initiative, and Sixth Sense all seem defensive in their nature, but they also allow you to choose and stack much more offensive gear/stats than you might be able to get away with without those skills.

IMO, Monk has the best passive skills so far. All the other classes have lots of things like +damage, which is great, but I think the Monk's passives do the best job of synergizing with his skills to create interesting build combinations.

Quote from Ogen

But compare that to Haunt in this build. Haunt can have three effects going at once, with the rune I have in there it deals damage over 1.9 seconds with 320% damage per second, that is 608 damage right there... so three haunts at once would be 1824% weapon damage. Now compare that to 800%.

More than either mana or single target skills, what the build lacks is life gaining. How will you survive against a massive army when Mass confusion and zombie dogs are on cooldown? Wall of Zombies is the only damage dealing skill in the list here that doesn't have a cooldown, and it does cost mana.

I'm fairly certain that Haunt won't be able to stack on a single target, so a single Haunt would do 608% weapon damage over its duration, and 3 would do 1824%, as you mentioned. However, that's the MAX damage for Haunt. 800% is the minimum for Sacrifice, assuming all four explosions hit at least one target (which they obviously should, otherwise you shouldn't have used it in that situation). If they hit more, even better. It only takes 3 targets per explosion to blow Haunt out of the water, and with a 12yd range, I don't assume it'll be too difficult to achieve that, especially if everything is clumped together.

My build deals with health regen through the runes I have in Dogs and Grasp, which add a good chance to drop lots of health globes (which also synergizes with Gruesome Feast). And yeah, you could be in trouble if you have no way to get Dogs up and are being gang rushed by monsters. You have to use discretion with Sacrifice; just because you have Dogs up doesn't mean you need to (or should) Sacrifice them, even in a Sacrifice-centric build.

The need for active Zombie Dogs is an obvious limitation of this build, but I hardly think it prevents the build from being viable. In any case, I definitely won't be using this build to level (Spirit Doc all the way!), but I think it'll be a lot of fun to play around with later in the game.

Quote from Ogen

I really don't think these builds would work very well unless you have huge mana regen items... and health gain items... but really you can't count on finding those kind of things, and this build just has no sustainability. Not to mention any single target damage at all.

Zombie Dogs is the only required skill in this build that even has a mana cost (and it's quite low with a 60sec CD). Neither Sacrifice nor Mass Confusion have mana costs at all. I can't speak for the others' version(s) of this build, but for mine, the highest mana cost spell is the summon, which, even with Pierce the Veil, is only 229 mana. Compare that to some of the more "spammable" spells (numbers assuming PtV) like Plague of Toads (274), Zombie Charger (298), Firebats (457/sec), Firebomb (343), etc. I think this is one of the better builds as far as sustainability goes. Only a Spirit Doc is probably going to be more efficient with mana, IMO.

And just because Sacrifice hits all targets in a radius doesn't mean it can't be effective for single-target damage too. Imagine Sacrificing your dogs so that all their explosions hit one target (pretty likely in, say, a boss scenario). That's 800% weapon damage right there (before Attack benefits). I'm not worried.

As far as I'm aware, only the Barb and Monk can dual-wield (plus DH with hand xbows). Wizard has off-hand items that she can equip along with a 1h weapon, maybe that's what you saw?

Quote from elitedesolator

I wonder if the explosions between Wrath of the Beserker stack with the other skills. But for instance Rend and Cleave are just redundant.

Seems like an interesting concept but I feel like one skill with an exploding element is more than enough. I think what I'm asking is, what edge does having more than one exploding on kill spell give you that only one Alabaster Cleave doesn't?

And killing bosses for instance may be more difficult than a more well-balanced build.

I would assume the WotB and Cleave explosions would stack or, more specifically, I assume that they would both be able to trigger simultaneously from killing the same monster (so technically there are two explosions, one for 150% and one for 450% that hit at the same time, not just one explosion for 600%). But that's purely speculation.

The "edge" of having multiple exploder skills rests on that assumption as well. And I'm not sure why you think that Rend and Cleave are redundant, since Rend does AoE damage over time (which spreads and becomes more powerful on kill with the rune) and Cleave does up front AoE damage, plus the explode on kill. You can be Cleaving away while Rend ticks, so they work quite well together IMO.

Bosses would definitely not be this build's strong point for sure, but that's OK. It's a "concept build."

Quote from Nyaldee

I would bet on it being completly unviable in solo setting inferno and inferior to many different builds for group setting.

Yup. It's getting a little late for me to point out all the glaring deficiencies of logic in this build, but I might get around to it tomorrow if no one's beat me to it (not to be a dick).

---

OK, let's see...

Quote from PakstraX

Leaving your weapon with:

135.71 to 589.18 Damage
Average: 362,445
2.21 Attacks Per Second
--------------
801.00345 Damage per second

Now. I applied the average damage to some runed skills. The following is the list of 6 highest DPS skills:

Plague of Toads (crimson) - 1730/toad (5191 total)
Haunt (any) - 145/s (2175 total)
Firebats (crimson) - 1649/s
Poison Dart (crimson) - 1605
Wall of Zombies (alabaster) - 1414
Acid Cloud (crimson) - 1414

Compared with the amount of mana needed, the next list of skills contains the most economic:

Grasp of the Dead (crimson) - 78,78/mana
Corpse Spider (indigo) - 40,77/mana (if a baby spider bites 1x each sec)
Plague of Toads (crimson) - 24,60/mana
Haunt (any) - 20,52/mana
Poison Dart (crimson) - 9,12/mana
Zombie Charger (alabaster) - 4,98/mana

Let's keep in mind you claim this is the "statistically highest DPS" build for the WD:

• Let's get semantics out of the way first. There's no statistics in this thread (so far), so the title is misleading and erroneous. Your build is just a hodgepodge of skills which, according to your calculations, do the most damage. There's a difference. Probably a significant one (statistics joke!).
• You seem to only take weapon damage into account when calculating your numbers (there are several other stats that affect damage, of course). For the sake of simplicity, we'll ignore this fact for now, though if you want to make the "statistically highest DPS" build, you wouldn't be able to.
• Your list of "highest DPS" skills are actually the highest damage skills per cast (assuming all your numbers are otherwise correct; I'm not gonna go through the trouble of checking them). This has significant implications when you're claiming to be calculating DPS. Let's take Haunt for example. You actually calculate the DPS of Haunt with any rune as 145 (though this isn't correct either, as an Alabaster rune significantly increases its DPS, but decreases its DPC), but then list it as doing 2175 damage, the second highest on the list. This is over 15 seconds though. Haunt will never be the WD's second-highest DPS skill. It's going to be extremely difficult to calculate an accurate DPS number for a lot of WD skills, because there are so many variables that go into it (Haunt will always do its damage to the target you cast it on, for example, but Plague of Toads just hops around until an enemy steps on one, reducing its DPS all the while).
• None of your numbers take into account targets. Most AoE skills, for example, will probably result in much, much higher DPS in most - not all - situations than a single-target skill like Poison Dart. That's just how Diablo works.
• Your claim of "statistically highest DPS" is further flawed by the fact that you take two skills (Grasp and Spiders) that don't, even based on your calculations, do good DPS. They're efficient in terms of mana, sure, but that doesn't make them good spells for high DPS.
• Skill rotations will play a huge role in determining DPS and this isn't taken into account at all. You won't be able to cast Plague of Toads while you're channeling Firebats, for example.

I'm sure there are more similar points that could be brought up, but I think this is sufficient for starters.