DiabloFans

In my experience:

Ray of Frost

Pros:

1. Best single-target DPS provided you use the right rune and passives.
2. Easy to keep on a single target because the game "snaps" it to the mob closest to the cursor, meaning you can easily maintain the beam on moving targets.

Cons:

1. Lack of pierce means you often run into the problem of "living meat-shields" where a less significant mob obstructs your ability to quickly bring down more important targets (like Fallen Shamans).
2. As it stands, the slow is virtually negligible on Inferno elites (the only thing that a single-target snare is useful for). This will remain the case until Blizzard addresses snare skills the same way they are addressing CC's in patch 1.05.

Disintigrate

Pros:

1. Pierce makes the skill an excellent AoE. With every additional enemy in the same line you are dealing more net damage.
2. Pierce also lets you bypass the "living meat-shield" problem by both hitting the juicy mob and all the lesser drab in front of it.
3. The popular Chaos Nexus rune scales with the number of enemies in close proximity. The more targets there are to hit, the more beams will erupt from you. This is very useful with procs and the Temporal Flux passive (should it ever be buffed to be useful, that is)

Cons:

1. Low base damage when compared to Ray of Frost and other competitors like Arcane Orb and Arcane Torrent. You feel the deficit when you use it on a single target.
2. Unlike Ray of Frost, the beam from Disintegrate does not lock on a single target, meaning keeping it on a moving target is tricky.

Both

Pros:

1. Instantaneous - there is zero delay between the beginning of the animation and the damage being delivered to your intended target.
2. Non-projectile. Some enemies (like Dune Dervishes and Elites with the Missle Damping affix) make projectile spells hard to use. Beam spells are non-projectile and therefore bypass their special tricks.
3. Flexibility - you can stand still and maintain the same beam, or you can fire it in short bursts. This lets you adapt to the type of enemy you're facing.
4. Both spells benefit tremendously from the Prism rune on Diamond Skin.

​Cons:

1. They force you to stand still. What more need I say?
2. Increased Attack Speed is not a benefit, it's a detriment, because it increases AP cost. Only way to compensate this is APoC with a high crit. chance.
3. Limited Range - most projectile spells keep going even when they're off the screen, meaning you can even hit targets that you can't see. Not the case for beams. You need to be at a certain proximity to be able to use them.

Quote from Istvan

Also I have the question about if when my arcane orb explode and makes 4 critical hits to a 4 mobs I receive some AP for these 4 crit hits? Thanks in advance again xD

I don't know about how critical hits work with AoE, but I can tell you that if you use Prodigy with an AoE Signature spell, you will in fact get more AP when you hit multiple enemies. I reckon it should work the same for the item affix.

Quote from phuzi0n

Quote from overneathe

Why would they tick every .5 sec if it states "25% for 3 seconds"? Doesn't that imply every second it's 25%?

Sorry, I already edited my post. It is indeed 25% every sec for 3 secs but dots actually do their damage much smoother if you watch the health bar and the floating damage done numbers are displayed every 0.5 secs.

This confusion is in fact the main reason they made the change. Now it simply does not matter to the reader how the damage is distributed. It's the end result that counts.

Quote from Brake Failure

At least I can spend my repair gold without having to run to a merchant now?

Not to mention it made zero sense that merchants could repair your gear and the blacksmith could not.

Quote from ruksak

I'm doing this to the next AFK camper in a pub game. Just sayin

Must... resist... the temptation!

Quote from Frolk

You should be banned for griefing like that, hope that dude gets his char back

He won't. Because you aren't supposed to treat Hardcore games lightly. If you need to go AFK, just leave the damned game. Especially if it's a public game.

Quote from ruksak

Blizzard has been made an easy target BECAUSE they've been so tremendously successful. For whatever reason, many people are inherently distrustful and cynical toward successful companies.

Gamer psychology 101: "You made a game I fell in love with! You must be gods! I will bow to thee and worship thy name for eternity!" (1 sequel later) "WTF?! This isn't the work of Gods! What the hell did I do all the worshipping for? I have been betrayed! You must be demons! I curse thy name and pray it will never be uttered in my presence again!" (another sequel gets announced) "Really??? Ok, scratch that, you can do it this time! I know there's some divinity left within you!" (it comes out) "Oh... #$^@... you're just human... right...".

Quote from Wakka9000

this thread surpased all what i have seen and heard in x-files

You saw nothing

Quote from LordRayken

Diablo 3 is fundamentally flawed. They cannot fix it and nothing they do will give it a "Lord of Destruction."

Quote from LordRayken

What if I told you the game cannot be patched or fixed because it is fundamentally broken, and it is FUNDAMENTALLY not the same game as Diablo 2 was.

Take the blue pill.

Quote from Boss_Hogg

/yawn

Another troll post putting this community on the defense or offense. Why don't we post info on the game that can help us play?

This forum game needs more ban-hammer. I sympathize with the mods who have to slog through this trash day after day, but enough is enough.

If you don't like farming why play a Diablo game?

Haven't noticed yet that there is nothing else in the game to do?