Honestly it's a toss up between WD and Barb, and mostly depends on what gear you find first. A Barb with str, vit and resists can finish the game, and Witch Doctor is basically the same deal now but with int, vit and resists. Though the builds that will work for you (in a reasonable amount of play-time) are limited to defense oriented builds. The nice thing is if you keep a set of dps gear or even just spec into a dps build for a while you can run lower acts quickly if you get bored of progression.
However with either one, don't expect it to be fast. When they said inferno would take months of playing to clear, they were thinking about people that mostly find their gear. Rather than buying it from the AH. It does indeed take "months". It can certainly be a more rewarding way to play though. Especially because a much larger percentage of the items that drop for you will be upgrades.
Yes Witch Doctors are actually buffed, anyone that actually tries the Vision quest build will see that they have 97.5% of the mana regen they used to, but will now be able to cast spells when they are a good idea to cast instead of as soon as they come off cooldown.
And anyone that plays as a spec other than Vision Quest..... won't be completely screwed anymore.
People just see the big difference in the number (300% to 30%) and assume they were nerfed into the ground.... they don't actually do the math, used to be having Vision Quest up would bring you to 60 mana regen, now with it up you have 58.5 mana regen.
Yeah, not to mention the increased chance to freeze the enemy that hits you. It sounds like it mostly is giving you a different choice if you have more armor than resists... And more choices is the whole point. It has to be different, and this is a pretty easy way of making it comparable but still different.
There are builds and situations in which that would be the better choice for a shield. One of the more obvious situations is someone that decides to save money in gearing up by starting with +armor and not focusing as heavily on all resist. It does happen. Or say a kiter that is mostly interested in the slow/freeze, but also wants to be protected in the rare occasion where a few things hit them in a short time. It has them covered in both situations.
With survivability becoming easier as time goes on and gear becomes easier to get, It'll be normal for a kiting focused wizard to be able to take a few hits and they won't need a mitigation-heavy armor.
And apologies, It's after 2 AM here, so I have to sleep. But I'll hopefully remember I was doing this tomorrow morning and see if you have any more questions.
In the hopes that it might help answer any more questions. Though I should mention, I'm by no means an expert. But I have killed 95% of the rares I've come across in act 3/4 with my wizard as she is now, or worse.
I have a Barb too, Not sure of you have any questions there, but my Barb was the first one I cleared inferno with, and is still the easier one to do it with, albiet a little slower.
Oh, just noticed the Barb is in her act 3/4 magic find gear. Well she still runs it fine in that gear, but there might be a few wrong turns in there gear-wise.
Oh lol... and the wizard is partially naked... ok, nevermind, that is just a waste of your time, lol.
Hehe, sorry I've done a heavy amount of editing to that post.
Quite a bit of resists unfortunately, try about 500 before the rune and see if that is enough... but I suspect it might be more. I kept my buffed armor amount even with my buffed resists x10 while i was gearing up, to maintian price efficiency on the gear. So while i do recommend the same tactic, it'll probably cost more money than you currently have to do both right away... though it might be a good idea to go ahead and do both anyway... and maybe keep your current set for act 2 for now, since switching over will temporarily weaken your defence... I think. Maybe not as long as you switch back to force armor with the new gear... it should still be fine. Until you get to a point, probably around 300 base resist all where you can then handle act 2 with prismatic armor.
And that ^ is of course why i spent so much time editing... hehe. Thought barfing.
What I'm thinking is happening is you have found a mob that hits hard enough that your force armor rune can't reduce it enough anymore. You will find alot more from now on.
So you'll have to switch strategies to having Resist All gear. And using Prismatic armor rune instead.
Also you could probably switch glass cannon to cold blooded, for 20% more damage at no cost, instead of 15% but costs armor and resist.
The wording on it is wrong, it increases all damage, not just cold damage.
Diamond skin is affected by your mitigation, so the more armor and resists you have, the more damage your skin will be able to take before breaking. Avoidance too, but it's not as big of a priority.
Also, another good option for increasing your defense is surprisingly changing the frost nova rune to reduce the cooldown, It doesn't immediately seem like a good idea since cooldowns are already so short with critical mass. But it makes a huge difference in the first 6 seconds of combat, which is the scariest time for a wind-up Wizard.
And eventually getting a hat and weapon for arcane power on crit will let you switch astral presence to Evocation, which again is basically like saying 15% more defence and 15% more damage, since it directly affects how mony explosions you have going off simultaneously, as well as the percentage of the time that the mobs spend frozen by frost nova and thus unable to attack you. And gets you a re-proc of diamond skin sooner.
I've actually managed a profitable run of act 3/4 with no vitality... I don't recommend it, but that gives you an idea of how important it is as a stat... you basically only need as much as your mitigation/avoidance and reliability to keep them frozen dictates... if they never clear through your diamond skin, your health doesn't matter.
Though with the patch coming in a couple days now, I expect more vitality to be necessary soon, Like... more than 0. Not sure exactly how hard the wicked wind nerf is actually going to hit us, since explosions is also a pretty huge part of our crit procs, but I'd reasonably expect a drop of about 33% uptime on frost nova's freeze.
If there are any other atk spd videos that are 5.00 and above, it would be good if you can post and share them here with us. Thank you =D
This one isn't great, but I do have a video from before when I just wanted to see how fast barbarian attack speed could go. I didn't have much money, and I didn't want to spend much on what was just a one-time joke. So all of the attack speed items were cheap blues, especially the daggers.
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However with either one, don't expect it to be fast. When they said inferno would take months of playing to clear, they were thinking about people that mostly find their gear. Rather than buying it from the AH. It does indeed take "months". It can certainly be a more rewarding way to play though. Especially because a much larger percentage of the items that drop for you will be upgrades.
0
And anyone that plays as a spec other than Vision Quest..... won't be completely screwed anymore.
People just see the big difference in the number (300% to 30%) and assume they were nerfed into the ground.... they don't actually do the math, used to be having Vision Quest up would bring you to 60 mana regen, now with it up you have 58.5 mana regen.
0
There are builds and situations in which that would be the better choice for a shield. One of the more obvious situations is someone that decides to save money in gearing up by starting with +armor and not focusing as heavily on all resist. It does happen. Or say a kiter that is mostly interested in the slow/freeze, but also wants to be protected in the rare occasion where a few things hit them in a short time. It has them covered in both situations.
With survivability becoming easier as time goes on and gear becomes easier to get, It'll be normal for a kiting focused wizard to be able to take a few hits and they won't need a mitigation-heavy armor.
0
I'll leave you with this http://us.battle.net...quinn2049-1176/
In the hopes that it might help answer any more questions. Though I should mention, I'm by no means an expert. But I have killed 95% of the rares I've come across in act 3/4 with my wizard as she is now, or worse.
I have a Barb too, Not sure of you have any questions there, but my Barb was the first one I cleared inferno with, and is still the easier one to do it with, albiet a little slower.
Oh, just noticed the Barb is in her act 3/4 magic find gear. Well she still runs it fine in that gear, but there might be a few wrong turns in there gear-wise.
Oh lol... and the wizard is partially naked... ok, nevermind, that is just a waste of your time, lol.
0
Quite a bit of resists unfortunately, try about 500 before the rune and see if that is enough... but I suspect it might be more. I kept my buffed armor amount even with my buffed resists x10 while i was gearing up, to maintian price efficiency on the gear. So while i do recommend the same tactic, it'll probably cost more money than you currently have to do both right away... though it might be a good idea to go ahead and do both anyway... and maybe keep your current set for act 2 for now, since switching over will temporarily weaken your defence... I think. Maybe not as long as you switch back to force armor with the new gear... it should still be fine. Until you get to a point, probably around 300 base resist all where you can then handle act 2 with prismatic armor.
And that ^ is of course why i spent so much time editing... hehe. Thought barfing.
0
So you'll have to switch strategies to having Resist All gear. And using Prismatic armor rune instead.
Also you could probably switch glass cannon to cold blooded, for 20% more damage at no cost, instead of 15% but costs armor and resist.
The wording on it is wrong, it increases all damage, not just cold damage.
Diamond skin is affected by your mitigation, so the more armor and resists you have, the more damage your skin will be able to take before breaking. Avoidance too, but it's not as big of a priority.
Also, another good option for increasing your defense is surprisingly changing the frost nova rune to reduce the cooldown, It doesn't immediately seem like a good idea since cooldowns are already so short with critical mass. But it makes a huge difference in the first 6 seconds of combat, which is the scariest time for a wind-up Wizard.
And eventually getting a hat and weapon for arcane power on crit will let you switch astral presence to Evocation, which again is basically like saying 15% more defence and 15% more damage, since it directly affects how mony explosions you have going off simultaneously, as well as the percentage of the time that the mobs spend frozen by frost nova and thus unable to attack you. And gets you a re-proc of diamond skin sooner.
I've actually managed a profitable run of act 3/4 with no vitality... I don't recommend it, but that gives you an idea of how important it is as a stat... you basically only need as much as your mitigation/avoidance and reliability to keep them frozen dictates... if they never clear through your diamond skin, your health doesn't matter.
Though with the patch coming in a couple days now, I expect more vitality to be necessary soon, Like... more than 0. Not sure exactly how hard the wicked wind nerf is actually going to hit us, since explosions is also a pretty huge part of our crit procs, but I'd reasonably expect a drop of about 33% uptime on frost nova's freeze.
0
This one isn't great, but I do have a video from before when I just wanted to see how fast barbarian attack speed could go. I didn't have much money, and I didn't want to spend much on what was just a one-time joke. So all of the attack speed items were cheap blues, especially the daggers.