How does the build play? It's quite simple really, you run around looking for large groups of mobs (gathering up a few smaller groups works well too) and, once you have a nicely clumped up group, plant your feet into the group and start channeling Arcane Torrent into the largest "cluster" of mobs. Move your cursor and things start dying everywhere! I generally don't waste time focusing single target white mobs with AT unless they're one of those "beefy" mobs that tend to be able to knock you back (resetting Unwavering Will). Whenever possible, just kite the mob into another pack and focus it down then. This keeps our clear speed more efficient by making the most use of our AoE damage and having to stand still for 1.5secs to enable UW.
Now, just because we build somewhat tanky and use UW does not mean you become an immovable object in all situations. This is most important when facing Elite or Champion packs (or some bosses as well) that have potent (or several) ground targeted effects. NEVER EVER EVER stand in a Frozen "bomb". The second or 2 you lose control of your character is enough to get you killed very quickly. This is because you can't run or pop a health potion until the freeze effect dissipates. What amplifies the danger is that you are no longer casting and therefore not procing your Deflection stacks. This is DANGEROUS, you have been warned.
Teleport is a fantastic tool for avoiding ground effects, but be smart about when you use it. Teleporting to avoid an Arcane Lazor when the Elites also have the Frozen affix can be perilous. You may find yourself with Teleport on cooldown and Frozen bombs all around you with no way to avoid the inevitable freeze. Other ground effects are not as mortally threatening but standing in a Desecrator or Poison pool increases the damage you take by a fair bit. Arcane Lazorz do a great deal of damage but are usually fairly easy to avoid (Unless you run into a Horde Champion who's minions have the Arcane Enchanted affix. Those are a NIGHTMARE to deal with, LAZORZ EVERYWHERE!!!) Ultimately, you need to get familiar with your own survivability to know when you can take the extra damage and when doing so would be dangerous.
Take care when out of AP and using your signature spell, your overall survivability may temporarily lower until you get back to channeling AT (unless running SB-BB, then your survivability INCREASES for the most part).
Also, when not dealing with nasty affixes, do not hesitate to use Teleport - Safe Passage as extra mitigation or to create distance to kite with if necessary. And sometimes, it is necessary to kite particularly nasty packs. I cannot stress this enough; just because we run UW does not mean we just sit in one place and take a ton of damage. Re-activating the passive is fairly quick after some careful repositioning.
FOLLWERS (Solo only)
Followers have received a fairly nice buff at level 70 (and with Loot 2.0 in general). This is because items roll massive amounts of main stats compared to pre-2.0, especially at lvl 70. In case some of you are not aware, followers QUADRUPLE the main stats on their items. This is HUGE when you consider that some 2-handers can roll over 900 to any given stat (that's 2800 int for your enchantress on her weapon alone!) Gearing followers is fairly simple then; get as much Vitality and their main stat as possible on their items. Mitigation is great too, but they can get such ridiculous health pools now that mitigation is only truly important in higher torment levels.
Each follower has their own advantages/disadvantages and choosing which one you want to run with is purely up to personal preference. For this reason I won't post any follower "builds", it's so easy to change them up that anyone can alter their abilities on the fly to find out what works best for their setup.
Templar: If you need a tank, Kormac's your man. Able to equip a shield and taunt enemies means that choosing the Templar offers some substantial defensive perks. But he also offers some nice utility as well! For those who want more AP generation, his 4th set of abilities has a passive that adds 1.4 AP/sec to your Wizard. He can also provide a massive increase in Life/sec (just shy of 5000hp/sec) passively. His heals are now massive and unless you stack some serious Vitality, will likely heal you for anywhere between 50% and 100% of your life! This makes for some pretty clutch moments. Overall, the Templar is your defensive option when choosing followers and is particularly useful in the early stages of gearing once you hit 70.
Scoundrel: Lyndon is hands down the funniest follower to have around. The witty conversations you'll overhear between he and your Wizard are reason enough to choose him as your follower as you play through the campaign. Not so much in adventure mode, however. The scoundrel provides almost exclusively one thing: damage, lots of it. He can also passively add some Crit Chance to your character or a small damage buff when you crit, increasing your DPS as well! He can provide some basic utility as well; a slow, a blind and a short stun, should you choose to allocate those skills. One slight detriment to using the scoundrel is that we CAN equip bows, meaning that 80% of bows you find will have Intelligence on them because of the Smart Loot system. Having a monk or Demon hunter craft a bow or crossbow for him is easy enough however.
Enchantress: Much like the Scoundrel, Eirena provides mostly damage during your travels. I find her utility to be slightly superior than the Scoundrel's, but this comes at the cost of good bit of her damage potential. The scoundrel's damage potential when skilling for more utility doesn't drop off as much as it does here. Her passives add either a small armor buff or reduced ranged damage and if you choose to pass on her utility you can also gain a passive 3% AS buff. Seeing as we don't want too much AS, I find this passive to be a bit weaker than the scoundrel's Crit Chance. I do find, however, that stacking damage on the enchantress to be the easiest amongst the followers, especially since we'll be seeing lots of high Intelligence 2-handers.
One last thing I would like to mention is a very cool setup you can use with the Enchantress should you be lucky enough to find an Azurewrath ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/azurewrath ). The Enchantress CAN equip 1hand weapons, but she does not gain the ability to wield a shield when she does so. The build revolves around Azurewrath's high Chance to Freeze. By equiping her with high amounts of AS and (ideally) an Amulet with Chance to Freeze as well, she becomes a monster at controlling enemies. Erosion is the only required skill with this setup. She will lay down an Erosion pool that ticks incredibly fast thanks to the AS on her rings and amulet and this will cause almost instant freezing to every mob that crosses into the pool. I used this setup with my WotB Barb last year and it was tremendously fun.
Also, keep en eye out for the lvl 61+ Legendary tokens (the follower unique items), there's two for each follower and the legendary effect on the first set of these is that it unlocks ALL the follower's skills at once. The other makes it so your follower cannot die. Quite powerful effects, should you be lucky enough to find one of these:
Survivability
Survivability is very important, especially for us since we want to tank to a reasonable extent. Gearing can be tricky for some because "toughness" on your character sheet can be quite misleading. Vitality "inflates" your toughness while not necessarily increasing your ability to survive by a relative amount. This is due to a variety of factors but the one we will take advantage of is how mitigation interacts with healing and our shields.
Because of this, we want to heavily focus on building mitigation, Armor and All Resists being the most common but stats such as "Reduce Damage From Melee/Ranged Attacks by x%" are useful as well. Vitality is still very important, but do not stack it. Keep a decent amount, but focus on All Res and Armor for survivability. Also keep in mind that the more mitigation you stack, the more valuable every point of Vitality becomes.
Note: The "Reduced Damage from Melee/Ranged" affix can roll as a secondary affix, which is tremendously important to remember! While it's unlikely you'll be able to reroll a secondary stat on many pieces of equipment you have, it's worth considering on items that you don't want to change any primary stats on.
Resource Management
APoC can only roll on Sources and Wizard Helms (our unique class items) and, since Patch 2.0, can only roll 3-4 APoC per item. This puts our maximum APoC with lvl 70 gear at 8. This means channeling AT on single targets indefinitely is now rather difficult to achieve, but not impossible. To compensate for this nerf, we now have access to a new stat; Resource Cost Reduction. This stat is fantastic. Idealy you will want both APoC and RCR.
Note: It is best to gear RCR on a few items, say 2 or 3, with higher rolls than to stack it everywhere in smaller amounts (so aim for max rolls on the items you pick it up on). This is because the stat does not stack additively with itself. Thus, every time you add more RCR, it becomes less effective. If you're interested in a more detailed explanation, post any questions you have here.
Life Sustain
We will be hit, A LOT, while playing this build. Therefore we need a way to restore lost health. We will find this with 3 different stats; Life on Hit (LoH), Life on Kill (LoK) and Life per Second (Life/sec). Ideally you will want a balance of all 3, but if you have to prioritize them I would go in this order; Life/sec > LoH > LoK. The reasoning for this is because our proc coefficient on AT isn't terribly high so LoH will not be as effective as it might be with other skills, and LoK does literally nothing for you in single target situations (usually boss fights, but champions with no/dead minions can also sometimes cause problems). This makes life/sec VERY consistent comparatively, especially in situations where you find yourself not casting spells, LoH does nothing for you then (ex: while frozen, or kiting).
One very important note to make however is that Life/sec and LoH are both primary stats while LoK is a secondary stat. This makes LoK very efficient in gear because it never detracts from potential damage affixes and the only defensive affixes it could replace would be the single resistance rolls and the Reduced Damage from Melee/Ranged affix. Rolling 2 of any of these on an item's secondary affixes is fantastic for mitigation/sustain.
Also consider how all this sustain synergizes with our mitigation. The more mitigation we have, the more value our sustain and shields have! This works extremely well with our MW - Deflection shield (and SB - Barrier Blades if you're running it as well). The less damage you take per attack (from a % point of view), the greater % of your effective health every 1 healing/shield provides. You can brush up on the specifics by looking up up more mechanically oriented posts. I highly recommend this thread; http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8770117237 . While very technical, everything is well explained and this can be a great source of fundamental knowledge for not only the Wizard class but every other class as well.
Damage
The most strait-forward way to increase your damage is through Critical hits. Thus we want a great deal of Crit Chance. And since we're focusing on a fair amount of Crit Chance, stacking some Crit Damage is a no brainer. Too much of one and the other becomes less effective so keeping a healthy ratio of Crit Chance to Crit Damage is crucial. Most people recommend a 10:1 ratio of Crit Damage: Crit Chance (ex: if you have 400% Crit Damage, try to have at least 40% crit chance). Also, we wants TONS of Intelligence (note that every 10int gives you 1all res too! Therefore, Int increases your damage substantially as well as adding a respectable amount of mitigation) so get this affix on EVERY SINGLE ITEM!
The most important (and largest) upgrade you should always be looking for is a high DPS 1hand weapon with an open socket and lots of Intelligence. The socket should have the highest quality Emerald you can get put into it. Bonus points for finding a weapon with some nice Resource Cost Reduction on it! The speed of the weapon should also be considered. The faster you attack, the more quickly you will drain your AP. A wand is great because it can roll +max AP as a secondary affix, but does come with a base 1.4 APS. An axe or even a hammer would be very useful if you're still struggling with AP generation. But in the end, use the highest DPS weapon available, within reason at least.
This brings me to an important point about Attack Speed. We avoid it for the most part. AS is great for average DPS, but it does increase the rate at which we use up AP while channeling AT. It does help AP generation with our Signature spell, but overall I would pass on the stat in most cases. Do not discount an item just because it has AS on it, but I would lend more weight to Crit Chance, Crit Damage or other DPS stats. The more passive AP generation you have however, the more AS you can safely use without taxing your AP usage too much.
Finally, ALWAYS try to fit the following stats on your gear whenever possible; "Increase Arcane Damage by x%" and "Increase Arcane Torrent Damage by x%". These stats DO NOT show up on your character sheet's damage. This makes the Damage display somewhat deceptive (just like Toughness... seeing a trend here?). These stats stack multiplicatively with themselves as well as each other. This means that every time you get another one, the total increase is greater than the sum of its parts. (Ex: 15% and 20% = 38%, not the 35% you would expect). These are such a massive increase in effective damage compared to EVERY other stat that you want as much of these as you can manage.
Note: The Increased Arcane Damage affix can roll on bracers and amulets while Increased Arcane Torrent Damage can roll on helms, boots and sources. Some legendary items can have these affixes despite not belonging to these categories but I won't be listing those here.
ITEMS
Wondering where you should get which stats? Here's a rough guideline:
Helm: Focus on offensive stats here. Intelligence, Crit Chance, APoC and Increase Arcane Torrent Damage are what you're looking for. A good place to put some Vitality if you don't need the APoC. A socket can work as well for the %Life increase, but only if you can't find something better.
Shoulders: Primarily a defensive item. Intelligence, Vitality, Armor, All Resist are all great here. Can roll some nice Resource Cost Reduction which I would highly recommend trying to roll here.
Chest: Mostly defensive, but rolling 3sockets is almost a must, the amount of All Resist or Intelligence you can put in here is awesome. Other than the sockets, Intelligence, Armor All Resist will be what you want here.
Belt: Primarily defensive item. Intelligence, Armor, All Resist and a good roll of Life/sec would be ideal, if not, more Vitality.
Pants: Mostly defensive again. Rolling 2 sockets is ideal, other stats should be Intelligence, Vitality, Armor, All Resist or Life/sec.
Boots: Defensive item. Intelligence, Armor, All Resist, Increased Arcane Torrent Damage. Squeezing in Movement Speed here is very nice for clear speed if you don't have Paragon lvl 200 to max it there. Some Life/sec would work as well.
Gloves: One of your biggest sources of raw damage. Intelligence, Crit Chance, Crit Damage are pretty much mandatory here. If you're lucky enough to roll a trifecta (by getting Attack Speed) and can handle the increased AP usage, fantastic! Otherwise, look for some more Armor, All Resist or Vitality.
Bracers: A mostly offensive item. Increased Arcane Damage, Crit Chance and Intelligence are a must here. Last affix can be any of the standard defensive rolls (Vitality, Armor, All Resist, Life/sec).
Jewelry: The bulk of your offensive power comes from these 3 items. You're looking for the same thing on all three, for the most part.The only exception is that you want Increased Arcane Damage on your amulet (it can't roll on rings). Affixes to look for include; Intelligence, Crit Chance, Crit Damage and +damage (ex: +21-58 damage).
Source: Another large source of damage. A high +damage range is ideal, for obvious reasons. Intelligence, Crit Chance, APoC and Increased Arcane Torrent Damage are the most important affixes to look for. Getting a high roll of Increased Max Arcane Power on one of the secondaries is quite nice too, but not required.
Weapon: As mentioned earlier, you want the highest DPS weapon possible! The base damage of the weapon is what is multiplied by all our offensive stats, so the higher the damage, the more "effective" all our other affixes are. A socket is mandatory here, the massive Crit Damage you'll get from socketing an Emerald is very powerful. Intelligence is nearly mandatory. A nice roll of Resource Cost Reduction can be quite nice, though it will likely come at the expense of some offensive power. Anything else is less than ideal, but if you're really in need of Life on Hit, weapons can roll this affix in large amounts. Also, if you're lucky, getting a Life on Kill affix for one of your secondaries is fantastic here, seeing as (I believe) weapons can roll this affix in amounts that are MUCH larger than any other item.
Update: The % damage affix was recently fixed so that it now properly applies to elemental damage rolled on weapons. This makes it a great affix to roll on your weapon, should you be lucky enough to either get it or an open socket, allowing you to reroll for it. I would value this stat as 3rd in priority (Intelligence and the open socket being more valuable), even above RCR.
Legendaries with unique effects are highly sought after. Finding a specific legendary however can be ridiculously time consuming (and many will never find some legendaries at all) so if you're lucky enough to find something useful, try to alter your build after the unique effect as much as is reasonable.
Hello everyone! I've been a long time lurker around these forums (and DiabloFans in general) and thought it might be time to step out of the shadows, so to speak. I've recently written up a rather large guide on the official forums and decided to post it here as well. Hope you all enjoy and learn a bit!
METD (METD#1485 on Bnet)
Note: I am far from an expert with the Wizard and some other posters will have a MUCH deeper level of insight into the class. It's what I've been using at Torment 4, and could probably work well up to Torment 5 without major issue. Beyond that, I have little experience to draw upon and would just be making uninformed assumptions. Also, if you notice something is wrong or have a suggestion on improving the build, feel free to chime in with some constructive criticism.
I'm calling this build "Torrent Overwhelming" (points if you get the reference, not a hard one to figure out though). Let me know what you think of the name. Now, let's get into it!
ACRONYMS
A short list of acronyms I use in this guide. most people won't need this, but it's here for those who aren't as familiar with the terminology many of us use!
AD - Arcane Dynamo
AP - Arcane Power
APoC - Arcane Power on Crit
APS - Attacks per Second
AS - Attack Speed
(Also known as IAS - Increased Attack Speed)
AT - Arcane Torrent
CDR - Cooldown Reduction
EA - Energy Armor
LoH - Life on Hit
LoK - Life on Kill
MW - Magic Weapon
OS - Open Socket
RCR - Resource Cost Reduction
SB - Spectral Blades
UW - Unwavering Will
Obviously, the core of the build is centered on Arcane Torrent. My goals here were to maximize damage by building around a fair amount of Arcane Power generation to increase channel times on AT. Secondary was building a great deal of defensive power to, once again, increase channel times on AT before having to move. By having the toughness AND sustain to "facetank" a great deal of content, we increase our effective DPS in many situations.
This is what I would consider the bare-bones of the build. Beyond this exists a great deal of flexibility based on personal preference and gearing.
LMB
Spectral Blade (Siphoning Blade) - The obvious choice for AP generation when you're running a little dry.
Spectral Blade (Barrier Blades) - Also a viable option if you favor a bit more defensive power over AP generation. The shield proc does stack with MW - Deflection making you very tanky when casting Spectral Blades.
Electrocute (Surge of Power) - The main drawback being it won't be increased by the % Arcane Damage you'll be stacking on your items. The range however I find very convenient. And breaking stuff is oh so easy! (Suggested for AD builds, since it casts very fast, allowing you to charge your 5 stacks quickly!)
NOTE: This guide provides a solid "starting point" for your Wizard. As you gear up and optimize your gear, you will find that, eventually, you are able to channel AT on a single target for long periods of time. At this point it is very much recommended to consider dropping your Signature spell altogether in favor of something that provides more damage, utility or defensive power (whatever you're in need of most). Good options here will vary tremendously, but once you've reached this point, you should have a solid grasp on your character and should be able to decide what to put here based on how you like to play.
NOTE2: It has been brought to my attention that Arcane Dynamo works with channeled spells once again. This makes it a solid passive for us and opens up an alternate gearing path as well. By keeping a signature spell in our build, we technically free up some AP generation since we can fall back on our sig when we run out. This opens up both gearing options (by dropping APoC or RCR for other defensive or offensive affixes) or build options (dropping Familiar - Arcanot for Sparkflint or another skill that would provide more survivability/damage/utility). Thanks to wuffiliate for pointing out my mistake here!The passives section has been updated to reflect this.
RMB
AT - Cascade is our go-to rune in most situations. It holds up very well against the Disruption rune in single target situations and is superior in AoE situations from my observations. This being said, if running in a party with another Wizard who uses Arcane spells, making a quick change to Disruption would be advised since the extra damage gained overall in this situation would be superior to Cascade. Just make sure to coordinate with your party members! Running 2 Disruptions runes does nothing for anyone. Credit to Helycon for clarifying some details regarding the Cascade rune.
SKILL 1
I use Teleport - Safe Passage because it further reinforces the goal of being an immovable AT spamming machine while offering fantastic mobility when combined with Illusionist in difficult fights. Any other rune would work here however.
SKILL 2
Running Familiar - Arcanot is great for helping you with AP generation while you gear up toward some APoC. Once you feel comfortable dropping the 2 AP/sec this becomes a free skill. My personal favorite is Familiar - Sparkflint for more raw DPS but you could just as easily throw in any other spell. Be creative!
SKILL 3
Magic Weapon - Deflection is quite useful for tanking damage. It "scales" with mitigation, which is central to this setup, and offers some synergy with health generation (Loh, LoK, Life/sec). An alternative if you don't really need the extra survivability would be to go with MW - Conduit for more AP generation or any of the other Magic Weapon runes for some extra DPS.
SKILL 4
Energy Armor is nearly required for the huge increase in effective health (EHP) since we'll be taking a lot of hits. Running EA - Prismatic Armor offers ridiculous mitigation bonuses but if you want to squeeze out a bit of extra DPS, running EA - Pinpoint Barrier offers a good balance of damage, utility (with APoC) and mitigation.
For those with balls of steel (or stupid amounts of toughness), running Storm Armor - Power of the Storm makes holding a perma-channel AT very easy. however, the trade-off of DPS (which you will lose by gearing for more mitigation) for increased channel times is debatable at best I think.
Passives
Illusionist is mandatory (when running Teleport) because of the fantastic mobility it affords you in difficult situations.
Blur is just a huge boost of free mitigation, but with increasing gear levels you may be able to drop this for more utility or DPS oriented passives.
Unwavering Will is not mandatory but honestly is just WAY TOO GOOD to pass up. Seeing as AT is a channeled ability we will often be sitting in place for substantial amounts of time, in these cases, UW is just free mitigation AND damage. I don't know why anyone would considering taking anything else here.
The last passive is very flexible. Temporal Flux is a solid option because it offers a great deal of "invisible" mitigation (if that melee minion can't get in range to hit you, that's an effective 100% mitigation right there!). Other options include Astral Presence, Audacity, Arcane Dynamo or Elemental Exposure (if you can get 2+ different elemental sources of damage into your built, otherwise, it's not worth it for 5% dmg).
This being said, we also have the option of running Arcane Dynamo, which I would strongly suggest at this time. This means keeping a signature spell, and alters the way the build plays a bit, however the increase in damage is SUBSTANTIAL. The 60% bonus will persist for an entire *UNINTERUPTED* channel of AT, this means knockbacks/knockups/vortex pulls/running out of AP or releasing the channel button for even a second will see that bonus damage lost until you "charge" the proc again. I would highly recommend trying this passive first before considering other options.
0
How does the build play? It's quite simple really, you run around looking for large groups of mobs (gathering up a few smaller groups works well too) and, once you have a nicely clumped up group, plant your feet into the group and start channeling Arcane Torrent into the largest "cluster" of mobs. Move your cursor and things start dying everywhere! I generally don't waste time focusing single target white mobs with AT unless they're one of those "beefy" mobs that tend to be able to knock you back (resetting Unwavering Will). Whenever possible, just kite the mob into another pack and focus it down then. This keeps our clear speed more efficient by making the most use of our AoE damage and having to stand still for 1.5secs to enable UW.
Now, just because we build somewhat tanky and use UW does not mean you become an immovable object in all situations. This is most important when facing Elite or Champion packs (or some bosses as well) that have potent (or several) ground targeted effects. NEVER EVER EVER stand in a Frozen "bomb". The second or 2 you lose control of your character is enough to get you killed very quickly. This is because you can't run or pop a health potion until the freeze effect dissipates. What amplifies the danger is that you are no longer casting and therefore not procing your Deflection stacks. This is DANGEROUS, you have been warned.
Teleport is a fantastic tool for avoiding ground effects, but be smart about when you use it. Teleporting to avoid an Arcane Lazor when the Elites also have the Frozen affix can be perilous. You may find yourself with Teleport on cooldown and Frozen bombs all around you with no way to avoid the inevitable freeze. Other ground effects are not as mortally threatening but standing in a Desecrator or Poison pool increases the damage you take by a fair bit. Arcane Lazorz do a great deal of damage but are usually fairly easy to avoid (Unless you run into a Horde Champion who's minions have the Arcane Enchanted affix. Those are a NIGHTMARE to deal with, LAZORZ EVERYWHERE!!!) Ultimately, you need to get familiar with your own survivability to know when you can take the extra damage and when doing so would be dangerous.
Take care when out of AP and using your signature spell, your overall survivability may temporarily lower until you get back to channeling AT (unless running SB-BB, then your survivability INCREASES for the most part).
Also, when not dealing with nasty affixes, do not hesitate to use Teleport - Safe Passage as extra mitigation or to create distance to kite with if necessary. And sometimes, it is necessary to kite particularly nasty packs. I cannot stress this enough; just because we run UW does not mean we just sit in one place and take a ton of damage. Re-activating the passive is fairly quick after some careful repositioning.
FOLLWERS (Solo only)
Followers have received a fairly nice buff at level 70 (and with Loot 2.0 in general). This is because items roll massive amounts of main stats compared to pre-2.0, especially at lvl 70. In case some of you are not aware, followers QUADRUPLE the main stats on their items. This is HUGE when you consider that some 2-handers can roll over 900 to any given stat (that's 2800 int for your enchantress on her weapon alone!) Gearing followers is fairly simple then; get as much Vitality and their main stat as possible on their items. Mitigation is great too, but they can get such ridiculous health pools now that mitigation is only truly important in higher torment levels.
Each follower has their own advantages/disadvantages and choosing which one you want to run with is purely up to personal preference. For this reason I won't post any follower "builds", it's so easy to change them up that anyone can alter their abilities on the fly to find out what works best for their setup.
Templar: If you need a tank, Kormac's your man. Able to equip a shield and taunt enemies means that choosing the Templar offers some substantial defensive perks. But he also offers some nice utility as well! For those who want more AP generation, his 4th set of abilities has a passive that adds 1.4 AP/sec to your Wizard. He can also provide a massive increase in Life/sec (just shy of 5000hp/sec) passively. His heals are now massive and unless you stack some serious Vitality, will likely heal you for anywhere between 50% and 100% of your life! This makes for some pretty clutch moments. Overall, the Templar is your defensive option when choosing followers and is particularly useful in the early stages of gearing once you hit 70.
Scoundrel: Lyndon is hands down the funniest follower to have around. The witty conversations you'll overhear between he and your Wizard are reason enough to choose him as your follower as you play through the campaign. Not so much in adventure mode, however. The scoundrel provides almost exclusively one thing: damage, lots of it. He can also passively add some Crit Chance to your character or a small damage buff when you crit, increasing your DPS as well! He can provide some basic utility as well; a slow, a blind and a short stun, should you choose to allocate those skills. One slight detriment to using the scoundrel is that we CAN equip bows, meaning that 80% of bows you find will have Intelligence on them because of the Smart Loot system. Having a monk or Demon hunter craft a bow or crossbow for him is easy enough however.
Enchantress: Much like the Scoundrel, Eirena provides mostly damage during your travels. I find her utility to be slightly superior than the Scoundrel's, but this comes at the cost of good bit of her damage potential. The scoundrel's damage potential when skilling for more utility doesn't drop off as much as it does here. Her passives add either a small armor buff or reduced ranged damage and if you choose to pass on her utility you can also gain a passive 3% AS buff. Seeing as we don't want too much AS, I find this passive to be a bit weaker than the scoundrel's Crit Chance. I do find, however, that stacking damage on the enchantress to be the easiest amongst the followers, especially since we'll be seeing lots of high Intelligence 2-handers.
One last thing I would like to mention is a very cool setup you can use with the Enchantress should you be lucky enough to find an Azurewrath ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/azurewrath ). The Enchantress CAN equip 1hand weapons, but she does not gain the ability to wield a shield when she does so. The build revolves around Azurewrath's high Chance to Freeze. By equiping her with high amounts of AS and (ideally) an Amulet with Chance to Freeze as well, she becomes a monster at controlling enemies. Erosion is the only required skill with this setup. She will lay down an Erosion pool that ticks incredibly fast thanks to the AS on her rings and amulet and this will cause almost instant freezing to every mob that crosses into the pool. I used this setup with my WotB Barb last year and it was tremendously fun.
Also, keep en eye out for the lvl 61+ Legendary tokens (the follower unique items), there's two for each follower and the legendary effect on the first set of these is that it unlocks ALL the follower's skills at once. The other makes it so your follower cannot die. Quite powerful effects, should you be lucky enough to find one of these:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/smoking-thurible
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/hand-of-the-prophet
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/ribald-etchings
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/skeleton-key
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/enchanting-favor
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/relic-of-akarat
0
Survivability
Survivability is very important, especially for us since we want to tank to a reasonable extent. Gearing can be tricky for some because "toughness" on your character sheet can be quite misleading. Vitality "inflates" your toughness while not necessarily increasing your ability to survive by a relative amount. This is due to a variety of factors but the one we will take advantage of is how mitigation interacts with healing and our shields.
Because of this, we want to heavily focus on building mitigation, Armor and All Resists being the most common but stats such as "Reduce Damage From Melee/Ranged Attacks by x%" are useful as well. Vitality is still very important, but do not stack it. Keep a decent amount, but focus on All Res and Armor for survivability. Also keep in mind that the more mitigation you stack, the more valuable every point of Vitality becomes.
Note: The "Reduced Damage from Melee/Ranged" affix can roll as a secondary affix, which is tremendously important to remember! While it's unlikely you'll be able to reroll a secondary stat on many pieces of equipment you have, it's worth considering on items that you don't want to change any primary stats on.
Resource Management
APoC can only roll on Sources and Wizard Helms (our unique class items) and, since Patch 2.0, can only roll 3-4 APoC per item. This puts our maximum APoC with lvl 70 gear at 8. This means channeling AT on single targets indefinitely is now rather difficult to achieve, but not impossible. To compensate for this nerf, we now have access to a new stat; Resource Cost Reduction. This stat is fantastic. Idealy you will want both APoC and RCR.
Note: It is best to gear RCR on a few items, say 2 or 3, with higher rolls than to stack it everywhere in smaller amounts (so aim for max rolls on the items you pick it up on). This is because the stat does not stack additively with itself. Thus, every time you add more RCR, it becomes less effective. If you're interested in a more detailed explanation, post any questions you have here.
Life Sustain
We will be hit, A LOT, while playing this build. Therefore we need a way to restore lost health. We will find this with 3 different stats; Life on Hit (LoH), Life on Kill (LoK) and Life per Second (Life/sec). Ideally you will want a balance of all 3, but if you have to prioritize them I would go in this order; Life/sec > LoH > LoK. The reasoning for this is because our proc coefficient on AT isn't terribly high so LoH will not be as effective as it might be with other skills, and LoK does literally nothing for you in single target situations (usually boss fights, but champions with no/dead minions can also sometimes cause problems). This makes life/sec VERY consistent comparatively, especially in situations where you find yourself not casting spells, LoH does nothing for you then (ex: while frozen, or kiting).
One very important note to make however is that Life/sec and LoH are both primary stats while LoK is a secondary stat. This makes LoK very efficient in gear because it never detracts from potential damage affixes and the only defensive affixes it could replace would be the single resistance rolls and the Reduced Damage from Melee/Ranged affix. Rolling 2 of any of these on an item's secondary affixes is fantastic for mitigation/sustain.
Also consider how all this sustain synergizes with our mitigation. The more mitigation we have, the more value our sustain and shields have! This works extremely well with our MW - Deflection shield (and SB - Barrier Blades if you're running it as well). The less damage you take per attack (from a % point of view), the greater % of your effective health every 1 healing/shield provides. You can brush up on the specifics by looking up up more mechanically oriented posts. I highly recommend this thread; http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8770117237 . While very technical, everything is well explained and this can be a great source of fundamental knowledge for not only the Wizard class but every other class as well.
Damage
The most strait-forward way to increase your damage is through Critical hits. Thus we want a great deal of Crit Chance. And since we're focusing on a fair amount of Crit Chance, stacking some Crit Damage is a no brainer. Too much of one and the other becomes less effective so keeping a healthy ratio of Crit Chance to Crit Damage is crucial. Most people recommend a 10:1 ratio of Crit Damage: Crit Chance (ex: if you have 400% Crit Damage, try to have at least 40% crit chance). Also, we wants TONS of Intelligence (note that every 10int gives you 1all res too! Therefore, Int increases your damage substantially as well as adding a respectable amount of mitigation) so get this affix on EVERY SINGLE ITEM!
The most important (and largest) upgrade you should always be looking for is a high DPS 1hand weapon with an open socket and lots of Intelligence. The socket should have the highest quality Emerald you can get put into it. Bonus points for finding a weapon with some nice Resource Cost Reduction on it! The speed of the weapon should also be considered. The faster you attack, the more quickly you will drain your AP. A wand is great because it can roll +max AP as a secondary affix, but does come with a base 1.4 APS. An axe or even a hammer would be very useful if you're still struggling with AP generation. But in the end, use the highest DPS weapon available, within reason at least.
This brings me to an important point about Attack Speed. We avoid it for the most part. AS is great for average DPS, but it does increase the rate at which we use up AP while channeling AT. It does help AP generation with our Signature spell, but overall I would pass on the stat in most cases. Do not discount an item just because it has AS on it, but I would lend more weight to Crit Chance, Crit Damage or other DPS stats. The more passive AP generation you have however, the more AS you can safely use without taxing your AP usage too much.
Finally, ALWAYS try to fit the following stats on your gear whenever possible; "Increase Arcane Damage by x%" and "Increase Arcane Torrent Damage by x%". These stats DO NOT show up on your character sheet's damage. This makes the Damage display somewhat deceptive (just like Toughness... seeing a trend here?). These stats stack multiplicatively with themselves as well as each other. This means that every time you get another one, the total increase is greater than the sum of its parts. (Ex: 15% and 20% = 38%, not the 35% you would expect). These are such a massive increase in effective damage compared to EVERY other stat that you want as much of these as you can manage.
Note: The Increased Arcane Damage affix can roll on bracers and amulets while Increased Arcane Torrent Damage can roll on helms, boots and sources. Some legendary items can have these affixes despite not belonging to these categories but I won't be listing those here.
ITEMS
Wondering where you should get which stats? Here's a rough guideline:
Helm: Focus on offensive stats here. Intelligence, Crit Chance, APoC and Increase Arcane Torrent Damage are what you're looking for. A good place to put some Vitality if you don't need the APoC. A socket can work as well for the %Life increase, but only if you can't find something better.
Shoulders: Primarily a defensive item. Intelligence, Vitality, Armor, All Resist are all great here. Can roll some nice Resource Cost Reduction which I would highly recommend trying to roll here.
Chest: Mostly defensive, but rolling 3sockets is almost a must, the amount of All Resist or Intelligence you can put in here is awesome. Other than the sockets, Intelligence, Armor All Resist will be what you want here.
Belt: Primarily defensive item. Intelligence, Armor, All Resist and a good roll of Life/sec would be ideal, if not, more Vitality.
Pants: Mostly defensive again. Rolling 2 sockets is ideal, other stats should be Intelligence, Vitality, Armor, All Resist or Life/sec.
Boots: Defensive item. Intelligence, Armor, All Resist, Increased Arcane Torrent Damage. Squeezing in Movement Speed here is very nice for clear speed if you don't have Paragon lvl 200 to max it there. Some Life/sec would work as well.
Gloves: One of your biggest sources of raw damage. Intelligence, Crit Chance, Crit Damage are pretty much mandatory here. If you're lucky enough to roll a trifecta (by getting Attack Speed) and can handle the increased AP usage, fantastic! Otherwise, look for some more Armor, All Resist or Vitality.
Bracers: A mostly offensive item. Increased Arcane Damage, Crit Chance and Intelligence are a must here. Last affix can be any of the standard defensive rolls (Vitality, Armor, All Resist, Life/sec).
Jewelry: The bulk of your offensive power comes from these 3 items. You're looking for the same thing on all three, for the most part.The only exception is that you want Increased Arcane Damage on your amulet (it can't roll on rings). Affixes to look for include; Intelligence, Crit Chance, Crit Damage and +damage (ex: +21-58 damage).
Source: Another large source of damage. A high +damage range is ideal, for obvious reasons. Intelligence, Crit Chance, APoC and Increased Arcane Torrent Damage are the most important affixes to look for. Getting a high roll of Increased Max Arcane Power on one of the secondaries is quite nice too, but not required.
Weapon: As mentioned earlier, you want the highest DPS weapon possible! The base damage of the weapon is what is multiplied by all our offensive stats, so the higher the damage, the more "effective" all our other affixes are. A socket is mandatory here, the massive Crit Damage you'll get from socketing an Emerald is very powerful. Intelligence is nearly mandatory. A nice roll of Resource Cost Reduction can be quite nice, though it will likely come at the expense of some offensive power. Anything else is less than ideal, but if you're really in need of Life on Hit, weapons can roll this affix in large amounts. Also, if you're lucky, getting a Life on Kill affix for one of your secondaries is fantastic here, seeing as (I believe) weapons can roll this affix in amounts that are MUCH larger than any other item.
Update: The % damage affix was recently fixed so that it now properly applies to elemental damage rolled on weapons. This makes it a great affix to roll on your weapon, should you be lucky enough to either get it or an open socket, allowing you to reroll for it. I would value this stat as 3rd in priority (Intelligence and the open socket being more valuable), even above RCR.
Legendaries with unique effects are highly sought after. Finding a specific legendary however can be ridiculously time consuming (and many will never find some legendaries at all) so if you're lucky enough to find something useful, try to alter your build after the unique effect as much as is reasonable.
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METD (METD#1485 on Bnet)
Note: I am far from an expert with the Wizard and some other posters will have a MUCH deeper level of insight into the class. It's what I've been using at Torment 4, and could probably work well up to Torment 5 without major issue. Beyond that, I have little experience to draw upon and would just be making uninformed assumptions. Also, if you notice something is wrong or have a suggestion on improving the build, feel free to chime in with some constructive criticism.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACRONYMS
BUILD
GEARING
PLAYSTYLE
FOLLOWERS
PARAGON
TIPS AND TRICKS
CLOSING THOUGHTS
TL:DR
I'm calling this build "Torrent Overwhelming" (points if you get the reference, not a hard one to figure out though). Let me know what you think of the name. Now, let's get into it!
ACRONYMS
A short list of acronyms I use in this guide. most people won't need this, but it's here for those who aren't as familiar with the terminology many of us use!
AD - Arcane Dynamo
AP - Arcane Power
APoC - Arcane Power on Crit
APS - Attacks per Second
AS - Attack Speed
(Also known as IAS - Increased Attack Speed)
AT - Arcane Torrent
CDR - Cooldown Reduction
EA - Energy Armor
LoH - Life on Hit
LoK - Life on Kill
MW - Magic Weapon
OS - Open Socket
RCR - Resource Cost Reduction
SB - Spectral Blades
UW - Unwavering Will
BUILD
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WeQjSO!ZdST!ZcaYcc
Obviously, the core of the build is centered on Arcane Torrent. My goals here were to maximize damage by building around a fair amount of Arcane Power generation to increase channel times on AT. Secondary was building a great deal of defensive power to, once again, increase channel times on AT before having to move. By having the toughness AND sustain to "facetank" a great deal of content, we increase our effective DPS in many situations.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#.eQ.SO!SZd!....c
This is what I would consider the bare-bones of the build. Beyond this exists a great deal of flexibility based on personal preference and gearing.
LMB
Spectral Blade (Siphoning Blade) - The obvious choice for AP generation when you're running a little dry.
Spectral Blade (Barrier Blades) - Also a viable option if you favor a bit more defensive power over AP generation. The shield proc does stack with MW - Deflection making you very tanky when casting Spectral Blades.
Electrocute (Surge of Power) - The main drawback being it won't be increased by the % Arcane Damage you'll be stacking on your items. The range however I find very convenient. And breaking stuff is oh so easy! (Suggested for AD builds, since it casts very fast, allowing you to charge your 5 stacks quickly!)
NOTE: This guide provides a solid "starting point" for your Wizard. As you gear up and optimize your gear, you will find that, eventually, you are able to channel AT on a single target for long periods of time. At this point it is very much recommended to consider dropping your Signature spell altogether in favor of something that provides more damage, utility or defensive power (whatever you're in need of most). Good options here will vary tremendously, but once you've reached this point, you should have a solid grasp on your character and should be able to decide what to put here based on how you like to play.
NOTE2: It has been brought to my attention that Arcane Dynamo works with channeled spells once again. This makes it a solid passive for us and opens up an alternate gearing path as well. By keeping a signature spell in our build, we technically free up some AP generation since we can fall back on our sig when we run out. This opens up both gearing options (by dropping APoC or RCR for other defensive or offensive affixes) or build options (dropping Familiar - Arcanot for Sparkflint or another skill that would provide more survivability/damage/utility). Thanks to wuffiliate for pointing out my mistake here! The passives section has been updated to reflect this.
RMB
AT - Cascade is our go-to rune in most situations. It holds up very well against the Disruption rune in single target situations and is superior in AoE situations from my observations. This being said, if running in a party with another Wizard who uses Arcane spells, making a quick change to Disruption would be advised since the extra damage gained overall in this situation would be superior to Cascade. Just make sure to coordinate with your party members! Running 2 Disruptions runes does nothing for anyone.
Credit to Helycon for clarifying some details regarding the Cascade rune.
SKILL 1
I use Teleport - Safe Passage because it further reinforces the goal of being an immovable AT spamming machine while offering fantastic mobility when combined with Illusionist in difficult fights. Any other rune would work here however.
SKILL 2
Running Familiar - Arcanot is great for helping you with AP generation while you gear up toward some APoC. Once you feel comfortable dropping the 2 AP/sec this becomes a free skill. My personal favorite is Familiar - Sparkflint for more raw DPS but you could just as easily throw in any other spell. Be creative!
SKILL 3
Magic Weapon - Deflection is quite useful for tanking damage. It "scales" with mitigation, which is central to this setup, and offers some synergy with health generation (Loh, LoK, Life/sec). An alternative if you don't really need the extra survivability would be to go with MW - Conduit for more AP generation or any of the other Magic Weapon runes for some extra DPS.
SKILL 4
Energy Armor is nearly required for the huge increase in effective health (EHP) since we'll be taking a lot of hits. Running EA - Prismatic Armor offers ridiculous mitigation bonuses but if you want to squeeze out a bit of extra DPS, running EA - Pinpoint Barrier offers a good balance of damage, utility (with APoC) and mitigation.
For those with balls of steel (or stupid amounts of toughness), running Storm Armor - Power of the Storm makes holding a perma-channel AT very easy. however, the trade-off of DPS (which you will lose by gearing for more mitigation) for increased channel times is debatable at best I think.
Passives
Illusionist is mandatory (when running Teleport) because of the fantastic mobility it affords you in difficult situations.
Blur is just a huge boost of free mitigation, but with increasing gear levels you may be able to drop this for more utility or DPS oriented passives.
Unwavering Will is not mandatory but honestly is just WAY TOO GOOD to pass up. Seeing as AT is a channeled ability we will often be sitting in place for substantial amounts of time, in these cases, UW is just free mitigation AND damage. I don't know why anyone would considering taking anything else here.
The last passive is very flexible. Temporal Flux is a solid option because it offers a great deal of "invisible" mitigation (if that melee minion can't get in range to hit you, that's an effective 100% mitigation right there!). Other options include Astral Presence, Audacity, Arcane Dynamo or Elemental Exposure (if you can get 2+ different elemental sources of damage into your built, otherwise, it's not worth it for 5% dmg).
This being said, we also have the option of running Arcane Dynamo, which I would strongly suggest at this time. This means keeping a signature spell, and alters the way the build plays a bit, however the increase in damage is SUBSTANTIAL. The 60% bonus will persist for an entire *UNINTERUPTED* channel of AT, this means knockbacks/knockups/vortex pulls/running out of AP or releasing the channel button for even a second will see that bonus damage lost until you "charge" the proc again. I would highly recommend trying this passive first before considering other options.
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Also, hurray for HotS beta key giveaway! *crosses fingers*