Thanks for the suggestions rupp. I figure i'll try torrent and archon out in the game and see from there. I'm a little hesitant for them though just because they aren't really melee, at least i think they arent. blossom might be but i explain efficiency a bit below, whereas archon has disintegrate, which i'll decide about later.
I was looking at unleashed for explosive blast as well. basically i reason, and i think i'm right, that sleet storm and shock together won't be doing enough damage to kill everything effectively. I wanted to put something that is fire and forget, and blast i thought would be great because i use it, have 6 seconds to wait and then another use. I figure i'm going to have to move within those 6 seconds (to readjust positioning which is the most important thing for this type of build), so it provides an extra way to do damage that doesn't require me to stand still.
From experience in beta at least sleet storm really doesn't eat up AP very quickly. It will eat it up if you stand still for a while but between a little movement and 1-2 other free spells you can manage your ap relatively easily. I'm not really at full ever, but i'm not running dry. I'll have to see what it's like adding in blast, but essentially i'll only have 1 real AP spender, and that spender isn't going to be TOO different dps wise from bolts (if 2 hit).
To be most efficient i was aiming towards having skills be fire and forget. If i'm casting anything that time is not casting sleet storm, which makes 1 skill ineffective. I was leaning away from teleport because if i'm right in the middle the only time i'd want to use teleport would be to leave, meaning im losing time/dps. The benefit of cold armor would be the attack speed slow. It doesnt say on the skill but i'd be extremely surprised if it didnt slow attack speed (and it can freeze). If i didnt take cold armor though, what do you guys think would be best?
So yea it's very similar to a normal melee wizard, but i so very rarely see shock pulse, and tbh i really like it, ESPECIALLY now that it is relatively accurate (and essentially always hit if you're decent close). In fact, that's something i just love and atm don't want to change (with explosive bolts).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bZXfhP!afh!aaaZYa
here's the build i'll say a few things. There already is a thread about melee wizards but it's better to make a specific one for a build from what i've seen and i want to go more off topic than that other thread. I'm really leaving this open-ended. Some stuff i won't have for ages, i'm just mixing and matching, and i'm sure i'll find some things more efficient than here.
Basically i love shock pulse (explosive bolts), and at least for normal its perfectly fine. I suspect for NM+ it will have problems because stuff won't die as fast. Maybe this isn't true maybe it is, but i'm building for fun, not for 100% best efficiency. If it doesn't work later i'll change it. For beta though, it's fun as shit to cast one and have it chain react off an entire pack of skeletons and obliterate them instantly.
Essentially my damage is just to be efficient. blast has a cooldown, so in that time i'll use ray of frost sleet storm (or could even start with that for the slow), while in times with low AP i can use shock pulse. It's a pretty straightforward thing, i think there are other choices but i think it'd work perfectly fine.
The tough stuff is the defensive things. Looking at it, if i'm using sleet storm he slow from ice armor is redundant, although the armor isn't. I could see energy armor but the rune choice? I'd just have to see what i'd want to use for the time. The other things are i could see frost nova shatter being really good, as well as slow time perpetuity or stretch time. Even wave of force could have its uses if damage seems to be lacking. Magic weapon blood magic could be good, and there are plenty of others that i havent looked at closely.
The final thing is chose mirror image simulacrum because it's essentially an extra x200% life. Im assuming strong monsters will kill the images, which means that damage is being dealt to something other than me, along with a nice distraction while i can spam or regenerate cooldowns as needed. This rune provides the most effective life for the skill.
For passives blur is the only one that seemed like it was too good not to have for this. It depends on how much max life we have but ward seemed useful if that life is actually significant. the extra time added is pointless, the spell lasts 2 minutes already, don't care if it lasts 4. I originally picked anomaly but while i was writing this i realized how good illusionist will be (i bet 90% of attacks can and will take >15%), so that's another great one. The other best choices i could see (or the only other usable ones) are power hungry, anomaly, paralysis (could be amazing if shit dies to shock pulse but that'll all depend on if i can kill stuff quickly with it so that i can get explosions decently in NM/hell/inferno).
When it comes to optimization i think dual wielding vs 2h is going to be one of the toughest things to figure out (discounting what build you want to use, lets ignore that for now). It makes sense that generators alternate, which is one of the biggest things. It does, for dps, come down to just whether offhand is within 15% damage of your main hand. If it does then it completely comes down to stats. i think after that it becomes tough because stats, once we're getting 6+ affixes, aren't just going to be a flat 'your dps increases by this'.
Sorry I meant to get back to this post. I think I understand what you're asking so I'll give a brief description on how this works to hopefully clear this up.
Most skills will alternate between your main hand and off hand when you attack. Because you are holding 2 weapons, your attack speed is given a 15% increase because 2 weapons will typically not hit as hard as one 2 handed weapon. This attack speed bonus is granted to BOTH weapons, not just the off hand weapon.
When you use a skill it will calculate the damage based on the hand that's about to swing, it will not base the damage on the average of the two weapons. So if you have a 100 damage weapon as your main hand and a 50 damage weapon in your off hand, you'll see as skill like Bash (assuming 100% weapon damage for simplicity) do 100 damage on one strike then 50 on another.
We don't know what skills will only use the main hand, but chances are they will be higher cost spells that are intended to not be sued as often like "Wave of Light" for the monk. Since you cannot use the skill very often, then the damage will always be based on your main hand, this means you should ALWAYS have your highest damage weapon in your main hand. Assuming, again, 100% weapon damage on Wave of Light... You should always see Wave of Light do 100 damage and never do 50 damage as that is the damage of the main hand weapon in this example.
I hope that has cleared up how this works. Someone suggested I make a video regarding the differences between weapon play styles. Since this question seems to get asked a lot, I think it might be a good idea, though I admit I'm not really an expert on game mechanics like this. I also need to get some good example weapons to make that video happen.
the thing is, and i may have this wrong, i remember there being a blue post mentioning that many skills did base off of main hand only (as your example of wave of light). If i'm wrong remembering this then it's no big deal, but if i am recalling it correctly, then it does buff dual wielding considerably. As well as this, it means if they can they should change the UI to display dps better, because it will be, mostly, using main hand dps ONLY when you fight, whereas dps displayed on the UI will be an average and could be considerably different.
Remember that some of the stuff we've seen makes it very possible we'll be seeing 1000+ damage hits frequently. 15% more damage from just equipping a weapon could be extremely large, multiplied by the fact you get a lot more resource regen from 2 weapons rather than a 2h wep. that 15% could be quite a bit beyond the added effect of a 2h. I'm not saying 2h would be useless, there would be some hard hitting high resource cost builds that still benefit, but i worry that the fine balance in benefit from 2h-1h+shield-dual wield could be upset to make it preferable to use dual wielding because on avg dual wield style builds COULD do more damage.
just as a sidenote i'm not saying dual wield is better or that 2h does suck, but that there's the potential that main hand only damage for skills could significantly impact the choice of weapon. Most people now don't dual wield because when you equip that extra wep it makes your dps go down. However if this in reality isn't the case, then it is quite a bit better to equip that weapon even if the dps that shows on the UI doesn't increase.
Recently many of the skills were changed to do most of the skill damage based on using your main hand only, and not switching to the offhand. My question is if this is true, is there any drawback to using 2 weapons even if the dps that appears in the character window shows up as a lower dps. I know people say that 'damage comes from the avg dps that is displayed' but if this is true, what's the purpose of a distinction in a skill like the barbarians bash working off the main hand? Is that for effects like poison only, or is it as i suspect, and that dual wielding is slightly different now.
Basically as it worked a bit ago any dual wielding weapons with >15% difference between them would reduce dps, because the +15% attack speed would not outweigh it. This would work out to just be a flat +15% damage buff on skills that use main hand weapon for damage only though, because it wouldn't even consider an offhand dps, all that would matter would be offhand stats.
Hopefully someone who made some of the instructional videos on dual wielding can help? Seems like no one knows.
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I was looking at unleashed for explosive blast as well. basically i reason, and i think i'm right, that sleet storm and shock together won't be doing enough damage to kill everything effectively. I wanted to put something that is fire and forget, and blast i thought would be great because i use it, have 6 seconds to wait and then another use. I figure i'm going to have to move within those 6 seconds (to readjust positioning which is the most important thing for this type of build), so it provides an extra way to do damage that doesn't require me to stand still.
From experience in beta at least sleet storm really doesn't eat up AP very quickly. It will eat it up if you stand still for a while but between a little movement and 1-2 other free spells you can manage your ap relatively easily. I'm not really at full ever, but i'm not running dry. I'll have to see what it's like adding in blast, but essentially i'll only have 1 real AP spender, and that spender isn't going to be TOO different dps wise from bolts (if 2 hit).
To be most efficient i was aiming towards having skills be fire and forget. If i'm casting anything that time is not casting sleet storm, which makes 1 skill ineffective. I was leaning away from teleport because if i'm right in the middle the only time i'd want to use teleport would be to leave, meaning im losing time/dps. The benefit of cold armor would be the attack speed slow. It doesnt say on the skill but i'd be extremely surprised if it didnt slow attack speed (and it can freeze). If i didnt take cold armor though, what do you guys think would be best?
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bZXfhP!afh!aaaZYa
here's the build i'll say a few things. There already is a thread about melee wizards but it's better to make a specific one for a build from what i've seen and i want to go more off topic than that other thread. I'm really leaving this open-ended. Some stuff i won't have for ages, i'm just mixing and matching, and i'm sure i'll find some things more efficient than here.
Basically i love shock pulse (explosive bolts), and at least for normal its perfectly fine. I suspect for NM+ it will have problems because stuff won't die as fast. Maybe this isn't true maybe it is, but i'm building for fun, not for 100% best efficiency. If it doesn't work later i'll change it. For beta though, it's fun as shit to cast one and have it chain react off an entire pack of skeletons and obliterate them instantly.
Essentially my damage is just to be efficient. blast has a cooldown, so in that time i'll use ray of frost sleet storm (or could even start with that for the slow), while in times with low AP i can use shock pulse. It's a pretty straightforward thing, i think there are other choices but i think it'd work perfectly fine.
The tough stuff is the defensive things. Looking at it, if i'm using sleet storm he slow from ice armor is redundant, although the armor isn't. I could see energy armor but the rune choice? I'd just have to see what i'd want to use for the time. The other things are i could see frost nova shatter being really good, as well as slow time perpetuity or stretch time. Even wave of force could have its uses if damage seems to be lacking. Magic weapon blood magic could be good, and there are plenty of others that i havent looked at closely.
The final thing is chose mirror image simulacrum because it's essentially an extra x200% life. Im assuming strong monsters will kill the images, which means that damage is being dealt to something other than me, along with a nice distraction while i can spam or regenerate cooldowns as needed. This rune provides the most effective life for the skill.
For passives blur is the only one that seemed like it was too good not to have for this. It depends on how much max life we have but ward seemed useful if that life is actually significant. the extra time added is pointless, the spell lasts 2 minutes already, don't care if it lasts 4. I originally picked anomaly but while i was writing this i realized how good illusionist will be (i bet 90% of attacks can and will take >15%), so that's another great one. The other best choices i could see (or the only other usable ones) are power hungry, anomaly, paralysis (could be amazing if shit dies to shock pulse but that'll all depend on if i can kill stuff quickly with it so that i can get explosions decently in NM/hell/inferno).
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the thing is, and i may have this wrong, i remember there being a blue post mentioning that many skills did base off of main hand only (as your example of wave of light). If i'm wrong remembering this then it's no big deal, but if i am recalling it correctly, then it does buff dual wielding considerably. As well as this, it means if they can they should change the UI to display dps better, because it will be, mostly, using main hand dps ONLY when you fight, whereas dps displayed on the UI will be an average and could be considerably different.
Remember that some of the stuff we've seen makes it very possible we'll be seeing 1000+ damage hits frequently. 15% more damage from just equipping a weapon could be extremely large, multiplied by the fact you get a lot more resource regen from 2 weapons rather than a 2h wep. that 15% could be quite a bit beyond the added effect of a 2h. I'm not saying 2h would be useless, there would be some hard hitting high resource cost builds that still benefit, but i worry that the fine balance in benefit from 2h-1h+shield-dual wield could be upset to make it preferable to use dual wielding because on avg dual wield style builds COULD do more damage.
just as a sidenote i'm not saying dual wield is better or that 2h does suck, but that there's the potential that main hand only damage for skills could significantly impact the choice of weapon. Most people now don't dual wield because when you equip that extra wep it makes your dps go down. However if this in reality isn't the case, then it is quite a bit better to equip that weapon even if the dps that shows on the UI doesn't increase.
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Basically as it worked a bit ago any dual wielding weapons with >15% difference between them would reduce dps, because the +15% attack speed would not outweigh it. This would work out to just be a flat +15% damage buff on skills that use main hand weapon for damage only though, because it wouldn't even consider an offhand dps, all that would matter would be offhand stats.
Hopefully someone who made some of the instructional videos on dual wielding can help? Seems like no one knows.