23 replies to this topic

[Freshmint]

After months of swapping back and forth, I've finally decided on my wizard as my main paragon leveling character.  Only issue is, I'm not much of a fan of Archon just yet (Though I can see myself moving into it in the future).

I tend to farm MP1 for XP and gear, and as stated, I generally use a kiting CM build.  My question is this; which of the two abilities is better to use in most cases,  Energy Twister (Wicked Wind rune, to keep em in place), or Arcane Orb (Celestial Orb rune).

Since its a new acct and I can't my profile yet, heres some base stats of mine.
Dmg: 48986
Crit Chance: 43.5%
Crit Dmg: 211%
LoH: 559
Movement Speed: 24%

My other abilities I use,
Teleport (Wormhole)   Frost Nova (Bone Chill) Magic Weapon(Blood Magic)  Storm Armor(SA)

Passives:  Cold Blooded, CM, Galvanizing Ward

Let me know if there's anything that y'all find wrong, and as soon as I find a way to link my profile I will do so, but the name is Cinnamint...Battletag  Freshmint#1153

[Psychatog]

Pretty much everything your doing looks wrong, not to be mean but to be blunt.

CM "kiting" is completely unintuitive and negates the whole strategy and plan.

The necessities for CM are frost nova diamond skin explosive blast with chain reaction and a high APOC generator (wicked wind living lightning meteor or something like that, def NOT arcane orb.

For reference check my build, its next to my name.

[Freshmint]

Like I said, new to the wiz (mostly)  decided on it about a week ago if that.  I like her because I am able to do pretty decent damage with the stuff I have but really had no idea on builds per say outside of Archon which I'm not a fan of atm.

Definately will use what you said and give it a whirl, thanks a lot =)

[Jaetch]

Er... I'm not sure why you actually need CM for this build.

If you have APoC, just run Arcane Orb and maybe throw in Blizzard - Snowbound to hold things down instead of Frost Nova. Instead of relying on CM to refresh your Teleport, just run Illusionist passive.

Edit: http://us.battle.net...53/hero/7509759 Looks like I found you.

Drop your Slorak's and run a wand with APoC to complement your Tal Rasha's source. And try running Scramble to improve your character's positioning (or just turn tail and run). And obviously if you find survival issues, go Force or Prismatic Armor instead of Storm.

Edited by Jaetch, 07 December 2012 - 09:07 PM.

[Freshmint]

thanks Jaetch,
I think thats more along the lines of what I was looking for, didnt even read into Illusionist Passive at all...which is what I was using CM for anyway (a lower TP cd)

Will try your suggestions out and ditch CM for now, thanks again

[Psychatog]

I

Jaetch, on 07 December 2012 - 09:01 PM, said:

Er... I'm not sure why you actually need CM for this build.

If you have APoC, just run Arcane Orb and maybe throw in Blizzard - Snowbound to hold things down instead of Frost Nova. Instead of relying on CM to refresh your Teleport, just run Illusionist passive.

Edit: http://us.battle.net...53/hero/7509759 Looks like I found you.

Drop your Slorak's and run a wand with APoC to complement your Tal Rasha's source. And try running Scramble to improve your character's positioning (or just turn tail and run). And obviously if you find survival issues, go Force or Prismatic Armor instead of Storm.

When he asked for a CM build I gave him one, I didnt know I was supposed to just tell him to do something different. Okay then get blizzard and acid hydra and kite things. This is completely irrelevant to your question of how to play CM, but its what Im supposed to respond with apparently.

[Jaetch]

Freshmint, on 07 December 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

I generally use a kiting CM build ... My question is this; which of the two abilities is better to use in most cases,  Energy Twister (Wicked Wind rune, to keep em in place), or Arcane Orb (Celestial Orb rune).

Freshmint, on 07 December 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Let me know if there's anything that y'all find wrong

I answered him according to those two statements and based on what I saw regarding his gear/skill selection. I find CM to be out of place there, so I pointed it out.

[Freshmint]

I apologize if I offended either of you, I figured I would go to the great wiz community here to help me out with what I was doing wrong, I thought CM was a requirement for having teleport in my build (which I do want to have, I'm a big ole coward when I got mobs coming at me).

Had I done research on my own skills I would have swapped to Illusionist and not even called myself a "CM build".

Again, apologies!

[Jaetch]

Freshmint, on 07 December 2012 - 09:45 PM, said:

I apologize if I offended either of you, I figured I would go to the great wiz community here to help me out with what I was doing wrong, I thought CM was a requirement for having teleport in my build (which I do want to have, I'm a big ole coward when I got mobs coming at me).

Had I done research on my own skills I would have swapped to Illusionist and not even called myself a "CM build".

Again, apologies!

No, I see what Psychatog meant. You can easily run pure CM—and not kite—by getting rid of Electrocute and adding in Explosive Blast instead and use WW as your main spell (you'll need more APoC for this to work). At the same time, you can easily run pure kite—and no CM—by dropping Frost Nova and WW and substituting them with snaring spells like Blizzard and nuking with Arcane Orb. He's right when saying CM + kiting don't work together.

[Psychatog]

Jaetch, on 07 December 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

Freshmint, on 07 December 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

I generally use a kiting CM build ... My question is this; which of the two abilities is better to use in most cases,  Energy Twister (Wicked Wind rune, to keep em in place), or Arcane Orb (Celestial Orb rune).

Freshmint, on 07 December 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Let me know if there's anything that y'all find wrong

I answered him according to those two statements and based on what I saw regarding his gear/skill selection. I find CM to be out of place there, so I pointed it out.

yes I can see where I missed that. You are correct, I believe both options are viable.

Freshmint, on 07 December 2012 - 09:45 PM, said:

I apologize if I offended either of you, I figured I would go to the great wiz community here to help me out with what I was doing wrong, I thought CM was a requirement for having teleport in my build (which I do want to have, I'm a big ole coward when I got mobs coming at me).

Had I done research on my own skills I would have swapped to Illusionist and not even called myself a "CM build".

Again, apologies!

You didnt offend anyone, were just trying to help and give you the best information to help you succeed, no apologies required.

[agadabagada]

just curous, how do u even survive a semi mean look from a monstor in inferno with 2 all resist items and 27k hp and 3.2k armor? ???

[Freshmint]

Hence the "kiting"  I generally kill before being killed.  Typically on an a3 mp1 run I die maybe 2-3 times total, and its typically to fast, waller, frozen, immune   or a combo of.

And my lowest resist is 359...so its not like I have nothing helping me out.

Edited by Freshmint, 07 December 2012 - 11:47 PM.

[Laserbabz]

agadabagada, on 07 December 2012 - 11:18 PM, said:

just curous, how do u even survive a semi mean look from a monstor in inferno with 2 all resist items and 27k hp and 3.2k armor? ???

He clearly KITES - as he stated in both the title and his text o.O?

You know - like every ranged class did in the first month of the game .

[Freshmint]

And at least for me, kiting is kinda fun.  Gives more action to the game vs "see pack, run in, destroy" that I had been doing with my monk

[Profetu]

According to diabloprogress.com the wizzard kitting builds are almost extinct. Arcane Orb, Blizzard and Hydra are used by less then 2% of the top 500 players. I always thought blizz+hydra as a used build but seems I was wrong.

I am a CM meteor wizzard and I sometimes(like10-15% of the time) kite. Works pretty good especially with Slow Time. Dropping ice or fire on a group of unsuspecting mobs is so fun.

[JKlimek]

agadabagada, on 07 December 2012 - 11:18 PM, said:

just curous, how do u even survive a semi mean look from a monstor in inferno with 2 all resist items and 27k hp and 3.2k armor? ???

This is basically where I'm at for farming.  I have more armor, but I run archon and don't get hit often.  My dps is high enough that even if hits come in right after each other, I have enough def bonus from archon to survive them and enough LS to reload faster than I get hit.

@OP, I think maybe you don't like archon because your dps isn't high enough or maybe you don't know how to keep it running the whole time?  Check out my build:
http://us.battle.net...37/hero/5121825
I pop Storm Armor, Familiar, Magic Weapon, and then Archon and I'm usually in Archon mode the entire run.  Try doing this in Hell Act 3 and see if you can get it going the whole time and see if you like it.  At your DPS, you should be able to do Inferno Arreat Crater level 2 and the Depths (2 is best).  I really think that Archon is by far the best Wiz build for farming/leveling.  Once you get to ubers/key farming/higher mps you might look at kiting/CMWW but those can require expensive builds.

Edited by JKlimek, 13 December 2012 - 02:49 PM.

[Bagstone]

Profetu, on 13 December 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

According to diabloprogress.com the wizzard kitting builds are almost extinct. Arcane Orb, Blizzard and Hydra are used by less then 2% of the top 500 players. I always thought blizz+hydra as a used build but seems I was wrong.

The top500 is the most unrepresentative sample you can take for any kind of assessment. These people 1) have reached p100 already and are just messing around 2) mostly have insane gear 3) some of the accounts seem to be wasted, as they are not playing anymore and sold their gear or re-rolled WD.

[Profetu]

Bagstone, on 13 December 2012 - 02:50 PM, said:

Profetu, on 13 December 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

According to diabloprogress.com the wizzard kitting builds are almost extinct. Arcane Orb, Blizzard and Hydra are used by less then 2% of the top 500 players. I always thought blizz+hydra as a used build but seems I was wrong.

The top500 is the most unrepresentative sample you can take for any kind of assessment. These people 1) have reached p100 already and are just messing around 2) mostly have insane gear 3) some of the accounts seem to be wasted, as they are not playing anymore and sold their gear or re-rolled WD.

This was the best sample I could find. If you have access to better statistics let us know.

1)Some of them might be messing around still the CM passive is used by 94%. So they aren't messing around that much. And if they do mess around they should do it using Blizz/Hydra/Arcane or other unpopular spells since they are sick of CM builds by now.
2)They have insane gear yet Magic Weapon is used by 86% and Archon by 74%.
3)Didn't check them all by hand. But if they have no gear on them eventually someone will re-check and they lose the top 500 spot.

[Bagstone]

I remember that there were some other statistics a while ago, but I can't find them anymore, and I also don't know if they were "better". All I'm saying is: take it with a grain of salt. The CM passive for example is probably used by 95% of all players, so that's kind of a safe bet.

2) "They have insane gear yet Magic Weapon is used by 86% and Archon by 74%." => Archon is even better with insane gear. It works on MP0 with sub-par gear, but once you have insane DPS, you don't want a build without Archon. Ask Jaetch Same for Magic Weapon, if you have bad gear you need a more defensive spell (Teleport), so my guess is that 86% is definitely not representative across the wizard population.

3) Not sure, but I think the top 500 means just the top 500 on the front page ranking, which is the first 500 people in the paragon race.

No hard feelings, didn't want to offend you, just raise awareness for possibly skewed results as other people might read too much into it.

[Profetu]

I choosed Top 500 by Heroscore but for Top 500 by DPS is almost the same thing. The stats may not be representative but I never thought kitting builds are so unpopular. At least in softcore, because in hardcore Hydra has above 40%.

So all in all the 1.05 didn't diversify builds that much. At least for wizzard I see that wirlwind/HOTA ratios are around 50/50.

So CM nerf incoming?

Cheers