21 replies to this topic

[syckodragon]

cant link profile tag is  skywyrd#1466

feeling kinda stuck, can farm mp1 pretty ez, mp2 is destroying me for the most part.
anything above that and it just isn't possible. i feel like more crit chance would be better, well needed.  i cant seem to find where to get it, seems like i have to replace 2-3 peices to get it up.
also flipping between, Force armor and Prismatic, cant seem to decide.

ran d3rawr EHP  and got 211k (264k melee due to blur passive) with energy armor just up. and with prismatic i get 245k and 305k(melee) nothing about force armor.

all my current skills stay the same except for force weapon, iv been messing around with that and slow time(time warp).
with force weapon im running around 40k dps according to d3 rawr. 55k dps with like frost nova(with dmg passive) and coldblooded passive etc.

only got 1 mil gold right now, but hope more in a few days.  Thank you.

[Loroese]

here's your profile http://us.battle.net...66/hero/1725453

I don't really know why you'd be getting destroyed in MP2. My main suggestion is swap blur for evocation, which will help a bit on the FN and DS uptime. Energy Armor alone should be sufficient up to MP4-6 or so, so I'd swap to Pinpoint barrier. Your crit and APoC are a little low but I was able to run MP5-7 with those stats and around 300k EHP in prismatic.

What is it that's destroying you? Are you moving out of desecration, avoiding Arcane Sentries, etc? or are you trying to face tank all that stuff? Are you just having problems with some elites, or is it all mobs, even trash mobs? What act or acts are you trying to farm that are giving you trouble?

I really hate trying to farm act 3 as CM wizard, so if that's what you're running, you could try Act 1 or 2.

[syckodragon]

thanks loro, did that, and yeah i know what you mean now more ApoC needed, i can feel it,
I was trying to just face tank everything, for the most part, but never stand in the "fire".
yeah i was mainly running act 3, il farm act 1 for a bit and go from there.

what about attack speed and LoH, i can get 8.5% crit chance if i repalce my neck but lose 7% attack and all my LoH. other stats stay pretty close, no life regen on it.

Edited by syckodragon, 08 November 2012 - 12:52 AM.

[Loroese]

Attack speed and LoH are fairly important, though the amount of LoH you need depends on your gear overall. For now, you should probably aim to keep at least 500-800 LoH as you change gear around. Attack speed increases the effectiveness of LoH because it makes your WW produce more cm procs. I'm running with 890 or so and it works fairly well. I'm reluctant to drop any LoH because I find electrical mobs to be one of the most annoying at the moment and  LoH helps a lot with that.

To me, I'd say crit > Attack speed since crit gives you more dps, more effective dps, and more CM procs, leading to more survivability. It would be useful to replace the neck with something that has high crit (8%+). If you can't get one with LoH, you can try swapping your helm to a storm crow for around 400 LoH. Another cheap source of LoH is Blackthorne pants, which is like the storm crow in that it comes with 300-400 or so LoH standard, plus it has a lot of vit and life% for decent EHP. Both pieces are relatively cheap too.

At your gear level I'd say focus more on raising your crit, dps, and EHP, in no particular order. Your APoC is fine, and you'll gain 1-2 when switching to a storm crow. With your current stats, I figure you could run MP3-5 with a decent dps spec, using either pinpoint barrier or storm armor with shocking aspect, and not have issues dying. With higher dps and slightly higher EHP you can raise the MP level for key farming and/or use an Archon spec to farm xp/loot at low MP levels without changing any gear. The best ways to raise your DPS are via crit, IAS, and Int, since all those stats improve survivability in addition to dps, while raising crit damage only raises dps.

[BlackRose]

Looking at your profile i can see a few things that my help, i dont play CM wiz as i dont like it that much but use a CM mech for my archon build and swap to cm for uber bosses.

http://eu.battle.net...78/hero/9557567

Change wicked wind for shock pulse/lighting lash - it puts out alot less dps than twister but seams to crit alot more than keeping stuns up just fine, this also means ApoC isnt needed, first off on gear you need to change helm with something with a socket, make sure it has over 5% crit. Then change wand to somehting with LoH on it, go for a blue if needed offhand with high damage and get +crit hit on neck.

Untill you can do mp2-3 without a problem dont worry on crit hit dmg or offensive stats to much, crit hit chance is your man prio.
Poped onto US AH (im EU) and found these, as i dont know whats amount of cash you have i found cheapish ones. Please remeber they will probs drop your dps and without APoC twister isnt viable. Also most of your gear has int+vit+ something+ something. If you need stats like res all try go for high int or high vit on that piece and do other on another, you end up with the same or better stats for alot less gold.







Hope this helps, dont check these forum very often but if it does and u need any other help contact me ingame via battletag, as i said before remeber youll have to cheang to eu server in options first.

[BlackRose]

Loroese, on 08 November 2012 - 03:51 AM, said:

If you can't get one with LoH, you can try swapping your helm to a storm crow for around 400 LoH. Another cheap source of LoH is Blackthorne pants, which is like the storm crow in that it comes with 300-400 or so LoH standard, plus it has a lot of vit and life% for decent EHP. Both pieces are relatively cheap too.

Figured i take a look while i was on US, and omfg you US gits have everything so cheap, equal of some of that gear goes for 10times more on EU

[syckodragon]

Thanks a'lot guys helped out a bunch, grabbed pants and new neck piece, with pinpoint sitting at 52% crit, at 350 LoH till i grab a storm crow, ran act 1 mp4 ez get key ran act 2 mp3 got key first shot.  once you get over 50% crit i find i don't need evocation so i swapped that for astral presence, have not tried glass cannon, but with it on i sit at around 500 resis for everything and a little shy of 4k armor. il try it out later after my break.
next up is a pair of lacuni's time to save.

[Jaetch]

I am not a big fan of Pinpoint Armor at all. CM stunlock works perfectly fine with 40% crit chance. I'll trade 5% crit for a ton of EHP any day of the week.

But if it's working well for you right now, run with it. Just farm as much as you can at a comfortable level that works for you (fast kills, decent amount of loot, least deaths) and save up that gold. Most likely, at your level, you'll be able to find your own upgrades. But you want to save that gold in case you want to make that big DPS/EHP jump.

[Loroese]

Jaetch, on 08 November 2012 - 07:01 AM, said:

I am not a big fan of Pinpoint Armor at all. CM stunlock works perfectly fine with 40% crit chance. I'll trade 5% crit for a ton of EHP any day of the week.

But if it's working well for you right now, run with it. Just farm as much as you can at a comfortable level that works for you (fast kills, decent amount of loot, least deaths) and save up that gold. Most likely, at your level, you'll be able to find your own upgrades. But you want to save that gold in case you want to make that big DPS/EHP jump.

Regarding Pinpoint vs Prismatic, I find it depends a ton on the mp level and EHP. If you have enough EHP that dropping prismatic armor doesn't affect your survival, the extra DPS from the 5% crit is great, doubly so since it not only increases your char sheet dps but also increases your effective dps, which I've found from my dps simulator can give a net dps increase of around 20% over prismatic armor. If you have sufficient EHP that you don't need Energy Armor at all, then you can swap to Storm Armor for even greater dps increase. With even more EHP you can use the so called SNS spec (shocknadoshard, i.e., shocking aspect with diamond shards rune on DS) for maximum dps. When farming with the CM spec, I think the most efficient method is to drop the MP to the highest level where you can use the SNS spec but still survive against elites. I've only done some preliminary analysis of the various specs but so far it seems the effective dps of the SNS increased by 60-100% over using prismatic armor, which is quite a significant increase.

I totally concur that the nova lock works just fine for the build with CC as low as 40%, even with APoC around 17 and attack speed below 2. You might not be able to 100% freeze a single target but you can still get a good 60-70% uptime of nova which is sufficient to stutter lock single mobs. I've been trying to list my min CM reqs as 40% CC, 17 APoC, 1.5 APS, 800 LoH, 300k EHP buffed with 30k hp in order to tank MP5-7 or so uber bosses. Obviously more of each stat is a bonus but it's quite suprising how well the spec works with just those stats, at least in acts 1 and 2. Act 3 is a pain because there's so many mobs that like to run away.

[dabishi]

Don't know if anybody has had the idea if using shock pulse - living lightning  for the people who have no apoc to switch out one of the passives for arcane dynamo make the explosive blasts hit even harder!

[DisposableHeero]

Lets dispel one myth.  Living Lightning is a considerably worse proc generator than Wicked Wind, and should really only be used if you have some substantially good Weapons, Sources, or Helms without APoC that will make a big difference in your DPS, or you don't have the APoC gear at all.

Living Lightning executes between 5 and 6 attacks per cast when passing over a stationary mob with a normal hitbox size (that is anything below the size of Demonic Temors and Colossal Golgors).  It has a proc chance of 0.2, meaning an adjusted proc chance of 1.0 to 1.2 per cast per target.  Wicked Wind has with a totally inappropriate 1.0 attack speed weapon and no attack speed on gear, 12 ticks, and a coefficient of 0.125 meaning an adjusted proc chance of 1.5 per cast per target.  Looking just at base weapon speeds this goes up to 1.875 using a slow 1.2 attacks per second weapon, 2.25 for a 1.4 speed weapon, and 3.25 at 2.0 attacks per second.

For any resonable attack speed and crit chance wicked wind spam will generate close to a factor of three more procs per second than living lightning spam.  Only use living lightning if you have to give up some massive stats to get the two 8+ APoC sources to run wicked wind, or you just can't get the sources at your current progression level.  I don't mind talking about how to optimize living lightning, but please don't pretend its a viable alternative to wicked wind in any circumstances other than the above.  it just isn't.

[Loroese]

DisposableHeero, on 08 November 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

Lets dispel one myth.  Living Lightning is a considerably worse proc generator than Wicked Wind, and should really only be used if you have some substantially good Weapons, Sources, or Helms without APoC that will make a big difference in your DPS, or you don't have the APoC gear at all.

Living Lightning executes between 5 and 6 attacks per cast when passing over a stationary mob with a normal hitbox size (that is anything below the size of Demonic Temors and Colossal Golgors).  It has a proc chance of 0.2, meaning an adjusted proc chance of 1.0 to 1.2 per cast per target.  Wicked Wind has with a totally inappropriate 1.0 attack speed weapon and no attack speed on gear, 12 ticks, and a coefficient of 0.125 meaning an adjusted proc chance of 1.5 per cast per target.  Looking just at base weapon speeds this goes up to 1.875 using a slow 1.2 attacks per second weapon, 2.25 for a 1.4 speed weapon, and 3.25 at 2.0 attacks per second.

For any resonable attack speed and crit chance wicked wind spam will generate close to a factor of three more procs per second than living lightning spam.  Only use living lightning if you have to give up some massive stats to get the two 8+ APoC sources to run wicked wind, or you just can't get the sources at your current progression level.  I don't mind talking about how to optimize living lightning, but please don't pretend its a viable alternative to wicked wind in any circumstances other than the above.  it just isn't.

Thanks for this analysis. I was getting interested in just how effective it was in those types of builds but hadn't had a chance to actually try it. I suspected WW would come out on top but I wasn't completely sure.

[Jaetch]

Loroese, on 08 November 2012 - 07:54 PM, said:

DisposableHeero, on 08 November 2012 - 01:15 PM, said:

Lets dispel one myth.  Living Lightning is a considerably worse proc generator than Wicked Wind, and should really only be used if you have some substantially good Weapons, Sources, or Helms without APoC that will make a big difference in your DPS, or you don't have the APoC gear at all.

Living Lightning executes between 5 and 6 attacks per cast when passing over a stationary mob with a normal hitbox size (that is anything below the size of Demonic Temors and Colossal Golgors).  It has a proc chance of 0.2, meaning an adjusted proc chance of 1.0 to 1.2 per cast per target.  Wicked Wind has with a totally inappropriate 1.0 attack speed weapon and no attack speed on gear, 12 ticks, and a coefficient of 0.125 meaning an adjusted proc chance of 1.5 per cast per target.  Looking just at base weapon speeds this goes up to 1.875 using a slow 1.2 attacks per second weapon, 2.25 for a 1.4 speed weapon, and 3.25 at 2.0 attacks per second.

For any resonable attack speed and crit chance wicked wind spam will generate close to a factor of three more procs per second than living lightning spam.  Only use living lightning if you have to give up some massive stats to get the two 8+ APoC sources to run wicked wind, or you just can't get the sources at your current progression level.  I don't mind talking about how to optimize living lightning, but please don't pretend its a viable alternative to wicked wind in any circumstances other than the above.  it just isn't.

Thanks for this analysis. I was getting interested in just how effective it was in those types of builds but hadn't had a chance to actually try it. I suspected WW would come out on top but I wasn't completely sure.

WW is the optimal choice, but like mentioned, Living Lightning is the best alternative to those who don't run APoC. I've used WW/SC when either were the best depending on the patch when I did gear with APoC. Now without APoC, I can only cast three or so WW before running out of MP. Living Lightning makes CM-stunlock viable as long as you have the crit chance and IAS to do so.

[Gnarf]

a bit off topic here, Jaetch did you put more effort into gearing your wizard or making that (badass) signature?

[Jaetch]

Gnarf, on 08 November 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

a bit off topic here, Jaetch did you put more effort into gearing your wizard or making that (badass) signature?

Ah, that sig took me like 15 minutes last night. Suddenly felt like being creative.

OT: If OP is still having issues, feel free to contact me in-game. I can probably do some AH research with you or donate a thing or two from my stash.

Edited by Jaetch, 08 November 2012 - 08:51 PM.

[syckodragon]

not having issues right now, i do not like pinpoint armor really, but i need it for now if i do mp4+.
i ran act 1 mp3 switched out energy armor for storm armor worked well running with that right now farming mp3 sooo fast . and i did find 45% crit chance you can easily lock down a single target for 85% of the time. i have 19APoC.
jecht il add ya.

[Syronicus]

syckodragon, on 08 November 2012 - 06:31 AM, said:

Thanks a'lot guys helped out a bunch, grabbed pants and new neck piece, with pinpoint sitting at 52% crit, at 350 LoH till i grab a storm crow, ran act 1 mp4 ez get key ran act 2 mp3 got key first shot.  once you get over 50% crit i find i don't need evocation so i swapped that for astral presence, have not tried glass cannon, but with it on i sit at around 500 resis for everything and a little shy of 4k armor. il try it out later after my break.
next up is a pair of lacuni's time to save.

I have a couple Storm Crows at the moment so if you need one just let me know. Hit me up in the game.

[Angedefoi]

Hi all!

I leveled my wiz before 1.04 and was playing her until 1.05. Played her a little in 1.05 but didn't feel that synergy  in the CM spec that was there in 1.04 due to the proc co-efficient reduction. I've played around with Archon spec and feel comfortable in MP1-3 but anything higher I'm just not "surviving". I'm not sure what's going on but any suggestions would help! I know a few items I should probably scrap and for some +AR. Not sure what to do but I'd really like to start playing my wiz again instead of my barb but not sure what to do at this point.

(Can't post links yet)
I'm on US servers: Angedefoi #1306
"us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/angedefoi-1306/"

Edited by Angedefoi, 15 November 2012 - 06:30 PM.

[Loroese]

Angedefoi, on 15 November 2012 - 06:26 PM, said:

Hi all!

I leveled my wiz before 1.04 and was playing her until 1.05. Played her a little in 1.05 but didn't feel that synergy  in the CM spec that was there in 1.04 due to the proc co-efficient reduction. I've played around with Archon spec and feel comfortable in MP1-3 but anything higher I'm just not "surviving". I'm not sure what's going on but any suggestions would help! I know a few items I should probably scrap and for some +AR. Not sure what to do but I'd really like to start playing my wiz again instead of my barb but not sure what to do at this point.

(Can't post links yet)
I'm on US servers: Angedefoi #1306
"us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/angedefoi-1306/"

It's not recommended to use Archon over MP3 or so unless you have really high dps (200-300k+). Even at 200k, I farm MP2 because it's much faster and easier than MP3-4. With your gear I'd probably stick with MP1-2, but drop Evocation for CM, imo.

If you have some extra gold, buy a new weapon, and find one with all physical damage (so no poison, holy, arcane, etc). That will give you a pretty big dps boost and you don't have to fine one with int and crit, just grab one with LS and a socket with high dps (if you have a couple mil, aim for 1k dps sword, wand, or dagger).

Honestly your resists and defensive stats are fine for MP1-3, so don't worry about that. If you want to run higher MP, I highly recommend building a CM set because they're much more efficient than Archon at high mp and it's pretty easy to get into uber groups as a well built CM. You even have a pretty awsome hellfire ring for CM too. However, while you can run CM at higher MP and survive pretty well, Archon at low MP will still be far more efficient, so if you're just farming xp and legendaries, keep it at MP1-3.

Also, try Scramble Armor, even if you have to drop the MP level a little, it's wicked fun.

[Angedefoi]

Thanks for the response Loroese! I guess I'll just keep my wiz to level and farm gear. Ideally, I would like to run higher level Ubers with a CM spec but since I can do that with my barb at MP7-8 I'll just have to deal with it. When you say to drop Evocation for CM? You mean Critial Mass right... because I already have that as one of my passives. I'll have to check out Scramble Armor tonight to see how I like it!