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Quote from Rade

It also used to be a must for the infamous Critmass build, but Blizzard nerfed its capacity to generate critical hits in the latest patch.

Its been determined that the Storm Chaser rune is still procing critical mass at the pre 1.0.4 rate.

Energy Twister is largely only for melee builds because it becomes exponentially harder to connect the farther you are from the target, coupled with the fact that when compared with most meteor runes (Meteor also suffers from being difficult to reliably connect with) the damage just isn't there.

Wicked Wind and Storm Chaser are the runes that are most reliable to hit with, WW doesn't do much damage but was the staple spell of critical mass tanks before the proc coefficient was nerfed. Storm Chaser is the only rune I consider viable in inferno anymore because you can easily aim the wind charge tornado and the proc coefficient is still high enough to run Critical Mass builds, and it does substantially more damage than WW did.

Strategically a Kite Build can make use of this by filling up relatively enclosed spaces with numerous tornados and running packs of mobs through them repeatedly. All Energy Twister runes deal arcane damage so Temporal Flux can give you a slow to assist your kiting without adding an additional skill. Storm Chaser has a high proc coefficient given the way it hits enemies and will therefor with some solid crit chance pair very well with Arcane Power on Crit gear to let you run up a pretty hefty wall of tornados. Combining this with a high damage signature spell setup (Electrocute - Forked Lightning being a pretty popular one) you could make a decent kite build out of it.

Quote from nariusseldon

I use a 2H. Slow 2H is better for a AO build. I use a variant that include blizz/cold blooded to maximize AO crit potential.

http://us.battle.net...XQOS!XWf!bYaYcZ

It works quite well in Act 2 & 3. You don't need APOC for a AO build.

Have you tried Arcane Torrent (Disruption) or Arcane Torrent (Cascade) in place of Arcane Orb? Compared to tap the source Arcane Torrent is now a similar radius, less arcane power, more damage, and slightly more accurate than Arcane Orb. It doesn't work as well with stutter step kiting as Arcane Orb but the extra damage potential should mean you spend less time kiting and more time nuking anyway.

Quote from Aggnog

I found a storm chaser spec on the US forums over here http://us.battle.net...opic/6398490038 .

Because storm chaser has the higher coef like it says it's about as good or better than 1.0.3 WW builds but the single target damage was really low so I took diamond shards rune for the extra dps vs elites. It procs on DS refresh so you can almost spam it and it's easier to use now because mob damage is lower than before.

I saw this thread too, no one has tested Gale Force of Raging Storm runes for their procs yet it looks like. I'd be inclined if Gale Force has the same proc rate as Stormchaser to dump the signature spell and essentially build WW/CM over again with Gale Force, much as I hate Twister pathing.

I'll definitely be trying diamond shards though if it will proc on refresh.

Post on the official forums claims the Stormchaser rune for Energy Twister is procing at the old rate, and has been having success with a build using stormchaser and shock pulse in place of wicked wind and teleport. Another poster claims they tried Mistral Breeze without success but no one has said anything about Raging Storm of Gale Force yet. Looks like I'll have some more to test when I get home.

Thread: http://us.battle.net...opic/6398490038
Build: http://us.battle.net...XYOi!gYZ!bcaZca

My thoughts:

1) I'm not sold on Hydra vs Explosive Blast for damage. Hydra costs less arcane power than EB but will not cause CM procs on his own while EB racks up quite a few. Hydra is more damage per cast and more damage per arcane power but significantly less overall damage than EB spam.
2) I'm not sold on Shock Pulse for the signature spell. I'd consider using Spectral Blades (Deep Cuts) for Life on Hit or Electrocute (Forked Lightning) for AoE Damage or a rune that can refund some arcane power to lower the APoC requirements a little .
3) I want teleport back, so if Gale Force or Raging Storm procs as well Stormchaser I'm dumping the signature spell and just dealing with all the baggage of "Aiming Energy Twisters"
4) If this works as well as it seems to, Cold Snap won't be needed and Bone Chill can go in its place.
5) Glass Cannon in a Nova Spam build seems like a waste in light of Cold Blooded.

Big pros if this build works out are that Storm Chaser is a HUGE damage upgrade from Wicked Wind, and Gale Force would be an even more enormous one, the downsides will be dealing with Energy Twister pathing issues in wide open spaces, I'm not convinced even if the proc rate is really solid that I'm not going to die a few times to Twister Whiffs.

While I think the new wizardspike bears testing given the history of Venom Weapon and Critical Mass I would doubt something with a coefficient based proc will be allowed to again proc critical mass.

I think my feedback is going to have to be that current wizard skills do not nearly proc things enough since the nerf because as far as I can tell wicked wind is STILL the best way to proc critical mass after the nerf. I would be fine with that if those stupid coefficients weren't the deciding factor in fucking everything. Arcane Power on Crit, Critical Mass, Life on Hit, Legendary Procs, Venom Weapon, just about fucking everything good that can be done in inferno boils down to this single blasted number on skills and we don't even have one thats any good for it anymore. That number that isn't even in the tooltip is infinitely more important than the damage the skill does in determining how a wizard plays.

So disintegrate was a bust for a melee build. I'm pretty sure the info on Entropy and Intensify having 50% proc coefficients is bogus as I could not generate sufficient procs to roll Crystal Shell with a 37% crit rate even on large packs of mobs and I can still do that reliably with wicked wind post nerf.

Also its hard to reach sustainable arcane power without using a two hander and cutting that much attack speed cuts down the number of procs significantly (I could channel for about 35 seconds with 37% crit and 27 arcane power on crit using my attack speed setup which is around 1.9 attacks per second which is the closest I came to rolling Crystal Shell)

Quote from Brake Failure

Quote from DisposableHeero

After some googling, I found some slightly conflicting information that indicated that Disintegrate (Entropy) and Disintegrate (Intensify) might in practice have very high proc rates (roughly double what wicked wind had pre-nerf) I might to try test this out, though I'm not sure if the channeling will work out, I think you can crystal shell while channeling it in which case frost nova might be dropped for some other defensives (Slow Time - Time Warp comes to mind) or Force Weapon/Sparkflint for more damage.

I was under the impression that Disintegrate didnt crit?

Disintegrate like Energy Twister, Blizzard, Ray of Frost and a few others have what I would best describe as microticks every few tenths of a second (depending on your attack speed) that can crit and in turn can proc critical mass, however those ticks, crit or not are almalgamated every half second and their total is posted to the screen which is the damage we see coming off the mobs. That alamgamated damage number cannot itself crit, and always just shows the total in white, which is what gives people the impression it cannot crit.

http://www.twitch.tv...895/b/319528069

There is a video clearly showing Ray of Frost and Disintegrate procing critical mass.

This easiest way to see the results of this in game is to cast one of these spells on a mob with reflect damage and watch the fountain of tiny red numbers that sprout off you while the ticks are being reflected.

Quote from Rencol

Quote from RenescoD3

Skill Rune - Mirror Skin

• Amount of damage reflection increased from 50% to 100%

Could this work instead of Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell?

Doubtful. No matter what build wizard uses, his priority is not to get hit. That includes even melee wizard builds.

I would use Prism personally if I could routinely survive using a non-crystal shell rune, getting a larger number of concurrent tornados or meteors ticking seems like it would be a bigger increase than reflecting. Remember that Mirror Skin can reflect a maximum of 10K damage berfore the skin breaks, where as even in my terrible gear one more meteor will crit in the vicinity of 100K

Edit:
After some googling, I found some slightly conflicting information that indicated that Disintegrate (Entropy) and Disintegrate (Intensify) might in practice have very high proc rates (roughly double what wicked wind had pre-nerf) I might to try test this out, though I'm not sure if the channeling will work out, I think you can crystal shell while channeling it in which case frost nova might be dropped for some other defensives (Slow Time - Time Warp comes to mind) or Force Weapon/Sparkflint for more damage.

Quote from hvgotcodes

Quote from DisposableHeero

Quote from hvgotcodes

Quote from Aggnog

I cleared inferno with meteor before ever switching to WW because I just hated it, with the buff now it should be extremely good as long as you can tank act3+ which really isn't hard at all. Don't underestimate spamming of 400%+ weapon dmg meteors compared to which WW hits like a noodle. ESPECIALLY with arcane dynamo.

How can you spam them? It costs so much you can get 3-4 off max right? Unless you take whatever the rune that reduces cost, but then it doesn't do extra damage...

Meteor CM generally uses Spectral Blades and Prodigy, which combined with solid Arcane Power on Crit could let you get pretty spammy with Molten Impact Meteors. Most of the time the build uses Star Pact, but at 320% overall weapon damage per cast and 560% with arcane dynamo, its still a significant chunk of damage, especially compared to wicked wind

Forgive me, but what is "CM" here? ok, 1.0.4 is significantly easier. I'm walking thru Inferno at this point.

Critical Mass

Quote from hvgotcodes

Quote from Aggnog

I cleared inferno with meteor before ever switching to WW because I just hated it, with the buff now it should be extremely good as long as you can tank act3+ which really isn't hard at all. Don't underestimate spamming of 400%+ weapon dmg meteors compared to which WW hits like a noodle. ESPECIALLY with arcane dynamo.

How can you spam them? It costs so much you can get 3-4 off max right? Unless you take whatever the rune that reduces cost, but then it doesn't do extra damage...

Meteor CM generally uses Spectral Blades and Prodigy, which combined with solid Arcane Power on Crit could let you get pretty spammy with Molten Impact Meteors. Most of the time the build uses Star Pact, but at 320% overall weapon damage per cast and 560% with arcane dynamo, its still a significant chunk of damage, especially compared to wicked wind

Rencol, a lot of theorycraft has gone into melee wizard and critical mass tanking builds. Yours is similar to an early version of it. Most of the optimization of the build has gone into optimzing critical mass to the point where Frost Nova and Diamond Skin can be up 100% of the time or very close to it. Some things I will mention:

The proc coefficient on spells is one of the most important thing to understand for builds like this. When you score a critical hit, this coefficient is the change for critical mass to trigger. When you use life on hit, this coefficient is the percentage of your life on hit that is granted. I believe it also effects arcane power on crit as well but it may not.

For Spectral Blade versions the proc coefficient on deep cuts is considerably higher than on any of the other runes so it is generally used. With a solid amount of life on hit this will work out to more healing than healing blades will, while making diamond skin and frost nova available more often. Too that end this build eventually evolved to using Energy Twister (Wicked Wind) because it generated so many more procs than spectral blades/meteor. This version stacks up to ~20 arcane power on crit and uses explosive blast (chain reaction) to deal most of its damage in addition to wicked wind. Energy Twister and all of its runes had their proc coefficient cut in half in patch 1.04 because they would proc legendary items to easily. I'm not sure if that change makes spectral blade the way to go again or not but for a spectral blade build, you should look at the following changes:

1) Deep Cuts will give you more healing than Healing Blades assuming you can get yourself around 800-1000 total life on hit.
2) Comet is not needed to trigger Cold Blooded, you should have very high uptime on Frost Nova CCs if you are optimizing this correctly, which will trigger the frozen condition needed for Cold Blooded. It should be noted that the "change" in the patch notes to cold blooded is a tooltip correction, as it works this way in 1.0.3.
3) Even with the reduction in monster damage and the buffs to Ice Armor, I just don't see this build working without either Force Armor or Prismatic Armor runes from Energy Armor.
4) Teleport (Fracture) or Teleport (Safe Passage) are extremely useful skills to have in a build like this and I don't think Force Weapon really makes enough of a difference in a tank focused build to justify not having one of these.
5) Gearing for this build is very specific. Critical Mass demands high crit chance mixes with some improved attack speed, and usually some life on hit and arcane power on crit to run the engine for you. Tanking demands bonus armor, resist all, and at least a respectable amount of vitality. Dealing enough damage for solo play involves stacking intelligence and Crit Damage, so you're going to be pulled in a lot of different directions and finding the right balance is tricky.

I'll be trying some wicked wind variations when I get home from work to see if they are still the way to go or if the proc nerf kills it.