188 replies to this topic

[Loroese]

Jaetch, on 10 December 2012 - 10:36 PM, said:

I'll admit I'm not all too familiar with the logistics behind CM/WW, and last night was actually the first time I touched WW in a very long time.

My resists and armor stood around 600 and 3500 unbuffed, respectively, so I figured that's reasonable to tackle most things considering my DPS and the life steal. After I got knocked around by Reflect, I realized I was not healing nearly as fast with the massive number of WWs I was laying on entire packs (the rate at which my HP pool disappeared was so alarming it was actually hilarious).

I'm going to test this out solo tonight if I can find the time. Last night I basically spontaneously bought a  6 cc, 10 apoc Storm Crow and 10 apoc Triumvirate on the spot and jumped into an uber run. Tonight I'll try and pick up a decent DPS black wand with high LoH and see where that goes in comparison to my 2.6% LS EF.

If all else fails, I'm just going back to my original hybrid Archon build for ubers.

You'd probably see a lot of difference if you can make the jump to 2.5 APS or 2.73 and pick up 1-2 pieces with LoH (like the SC you mentioned). The LoH return gain is huge (33% more at 2.5). Also, I'd definitely recommend some more armor/resists for using CMWW at that MP with your DPS. Alternatively you could probaly just not use EB against RD mobs, or try Crystal Shell, as I said before.


EDIT: Also, I made a few updates to the guide, including the addition of a glossary, and inclusion of Prism rune on DS for lower gear levels.

Edited by Loroese, 10 December 2012 - 11:26 PM.

[Jaetch]

Bagstone, on 10 December 2012 - 11:08 PM, said:

Jaetch, on 10 December 2012 - 10:36 PM, said:

My resists and armor stood around 600 and 3500 unbuffed, respectively, so I figured that's reasonable to tackle most things considering my DPS and the life steal.

Hm, are you talking about mobs in general or reflect damage (including Siegebreaker)? I think 600/3500 is quite low; according to Loroese's table it's about MP5/MP6 level. More DPS and some LS might at some point compensate for that for non-RD mobs, but I can't seem how you'd survive against RD mobs. Since the mobs always reflect 10% and your LS can't go beyond 0.9% you'd need over 90% mitigation (plus a 3% LS weapon and Blood Magic) to survive LS without additional LoH etc...

I only have trouble with Reflect as CM/WW (ironically, not when I'm using Archon). When I'm using my hybrid Archon build, I'm running about 500K DPS with the 4.1% life steal (2.6 from EF and 1.5 from Blood Magic) and I can sit on multiple Desolates while blasting 3-4 Reflect simultaneously on MP10 while gaining more HP than losing. I guess that goes to show what a difference the EHP makes with Archon than standing around human form with CM/WW. I can also try dumping Stretch Time for Blood Magic and swap Shards for Crystal Shell and see if those help at all.

Looks like I'll be sticking with hybrid Archon for future high MP uber runs. I'll let someone else take care of the disabling. That's unless I swap in more gear parts, like a high EHP Blackthorne's pants and perhaps switch to IAS+CC Blackthorne's ammy.

Edited by Jaetch, 10 December 2012 - 11:28 PM.

[Loroese]

If you need anyone to freeze your ubers, feel free to ask   If I ever find any spare time, which might take a month or two.  

[TheDemokin]

Nicely done Loroese, could you please add hyperlinks to the parts of the guide from the contents table - would make browsing it a fair bit more manageable.

As for your EHP estimates:
I run with http://d3up.com/b/100961 355k EHP buffed and 400k EHP vs elites. For MP10 ubers - this is a cakewalk. On the ubers - the only thing to watch out for is the Maghda's beam - that stupid thing eats thru the crystal shell like a hot knife thru butter.

For general elites - unless it's a molten pack, it's very managable, arcane enchanted is a big problem - the beam is really > you. The rest of the stuff is easy.

Reflect damage is an issue for some people here that i saw, i think there's a point to be made here:
How much damage you take it dependent not only on your EHP (resist / armor) but also on your APS. Higher APS = faster refresh of diamond skin = a lot more absorption offered. I am running at 3.03 APS & 40 ticks of WW - i take no damage from reflect damage mobs at all. My DPS in CM/WW setup is 170k (granted it's not fantastically high).

LOH / LS is another issue i'd like to make a point on - in my gear setup i have 0 LOH and 0 LS, yet i have very little issues primarily because of the 40 tick WW refreshing diamond skin extremely fast offering a HUGE amount of absorption. When things go bad and you take a few hits - LOH / LS is not really going to save you - you'll die anyway, hence all my healing comes from globes + life regen. Personally, i would not recommend anyone spending gold on those stats - it's better to go for high APS instead, not only does that increase mitigation, but it also increases the frost nova uptime on mobs allowing for a lot less hits, etc - with 3.03 APS i am able to perma freeze stuff to the point where Ghom doesn't cast his cloud even the whole fight on MP10. Surely if you do have insane amounts of gold - you should get some LOH/LS, however, if you get them on MH (chantodo) you're foregoing a socket, which is a very large DPS boost for any CM (since we work on high CC), if you're going to get LOH on a trifecta ring / amulet = 1 billion gold is about how much you'll need to get each piece. (you can't get 400-500 LOH blackthorn legs because you need AIS from pants = inna's)

Last point i think you should put in your guide is that CM/WW is primarily a build for groups. Frankly - there's no way CM/WW could compare in efficiency to archon / teleport build for farming of MP0/1 and it takes stupid investment to make archon really worthwhile in MP10 ubers. Hence the wizard works out very nicely as CM/WW for high MP ubers and switch skills with same gear setup for archon for low MP paragon leveling / farming.
As such, i personally, view CM/WW as a 'utility' build rather than raw DPS / farming build, the DPS you bring as CM/WW is insignificant as compared to HOTA barbs. However a HOTA barb is not going to be able to stand and melt face to max out their potential without a CM/WW Wizard. As a CM/WW it's very easy to find a group to do MP10 either ubers or wardens, i've made a post on d2jsp about CM Wiz LFG MP10 ubers last night and in 5 minutes of the post i got 3 replies on forum and 5 people 'add friend' ingame.

[Loroese]

I tried adding links inside the guide to other portions of the guide, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. I know how to do it in Word, but I don't know if it would work when copying.

I disagree about no LoH/LS. I can take plenty of hits, particularly against Mag/SK, and LoH tops me off very fast since I gain about 8k life per second, per target. I can agree that there are lots of times it's not needed because of DS mitigation, but when you hit reflect+electrical mobs and are using shards rune, it falls of pretty quickly and pretty often, even while refreshing it every second. The more APS you have the worse that gets since as far as I can tell Electrical is almost the same as RD, except instead of reflecting 10% of your dps, it just makes bolts. That's mostly what the LoH is for. I ran MP8-9 with 450 LoH and it worked out surprisingly well, though RD mobs were annoying and Electrical mobs were annoying, but I didn't fight any with both. I had 2.73 APS, so 36 tics per cast, which isn't too much different from 3.0 considering latency starts to play an unpredictable role in how well you can play the build at those high APS.

Also, while LoH on rings/amulet might be costly, so does having to overcome the EHP deficiency of using Inna's pants. I have 310k EHP with storm armor and I'd lose 97k if I removed the pants. It's really hard to beat ~800 armor (when you account for the str on them), 90 vit+, 12% life, and 60-80 resists. You can neglect Int on Inna's and get back ~400 armor+80 resists but you're still out 400 armor, 90 vit and 12% life, and I imagine 80 resist Inna's is expensive, otherwise you have to make up the extra 80 resist too.

Also, after getting to 2.73 APS I don't feel the need to reach 3.0, in part because I'd have to lose a lot of EHP to do so, but also because I can lock down the ubers pretty well at 2.73, making 2 of the fights a complete joke. Mag/SK seems to be the only real challenge of the bosses at that gear level because no amount of chain freezing will keep her from dropping her sentries and SK can still use his attack that makes him immune to FN. That's one last issue with LoH is against Mag, if I had no LoH I would die very very fast. With 800-1k LoH she's much easier, though I've been pushing the fight with Storm Armor.

In short, with a bit of LoH you can get more dps by using Diamond Shards rune and you give yourself a lot more room for error. It's also cheaper to just gear for 2.73 APS and forego Inna's then just swap to IAS Chanto if you want to get to 3.0+ for ubers (or Slow TIme IAS bubble, I suppose).

I agree with the group part, with the coveat that the build is amazing for solo key farming, so I usually consider it my uber and key spec, while I use Archon for xp/loot at low MP. If only I had time to try and get into MP9-10 to see how it goes. I bet I would do fine with Force Armor or Prismatic Armor.

[TheDemokin]

Agree on that, the reason why i was saying LOH / LS is not really needed is that with a 'decent' group stuff will die very fast, hence you are not pressed on DPS yourself by any means, which translates into no reason to use shards. Following this logic - your job is solely freeze stuff for others to kill. Which works out very well without any LS / LOH for me, i've done a few dozens on ubers on MP10 in the last few nights and i have died only once, which was my own 'experiment' to see if i can tank the beam (lol no i can't). I do take occasional hit from magda / SK but those hits are so rare that health globes / 300 life regen more than covers the HP deficiency at that point for me.

There are a few ways to go about doing this for sure, one of the ways is the way i'm doing it - i'm just letting other people know that it works too

[DisposableHeero]

Might want to add a section about dealing with various elite affixes, that includes a warning that electrified elites are CM/WW's kryptonite.  I run at the 2.3077 APS breakpoint (my gear is 2.39) and they seem to create bolts as fast as they will animate.  I feel like Storm Armor and Shocking Aspect not procing life steal is a bug, and should be reported as such, especially given that they seem to proc Reflect Damage and Electrified (the Monster Affix not the Magic Weapon Rune) just fine.

[Bagstone]

DisposableHeero, on 11 December 2012 - 12:47 PM, said:

Might want to add a section about dealing with various elite affixes, that includes a warning that electrified elites are CM/WW's kryptonite.  I run at the 2.3077 APS breakpoint (my gear is 2.39) and they seem to create bolts as fast as they will animate.  I feel like Storm Armor and Shocking Aspect not procing life steal is a bug, and should be reported as such, especially given that they seem to proc Reflect Damage and Electrified (the Monster Affix not the Magic Weapon Rune) just fine.

My guess on SA's zero proc coefficient is "working as intended", because it's a passive skill. But just a guess and since there's plenty of LoH/CM proc skills out there already, it's unlikely that they will even buff this. Shocking Aspect will never proc anything, because you could create a perpetuum mobile (crit procs SA, SA procs crit).

About electrified: working as intended. Move a bit away from the group such that you're not standing in the middle of 5 electrified mobs. Also, the lightning bolts have a certain pattern with regard to the direction they're moving. If you re-position yourself correctly you can manage to stand next to an electrified mob and get hit by only a small amount of their bolts.

[Jaywalker]

This is a very detailed guide that serves great usage for me. I sincerely appreciate the effort TS put in to this guide.

I recently came back to d3 after leaving it for like 4 months. Went in to my wizard and kept dying with the old hydra/blizz build.
Implemented this skill build and its working very well.

Anyway, is there an alternative to explosive blast? I can't really use that skill well as its range is small and there is a delay before it explode. Most of the time I am hitting blank. It would be nice if you could give me some advice.

Thanks.

[Bagstone]

Jaywalker, on 14 December 2012 - 05:03 PM, said:

Anyway, is there an alternative to explosive blast? I can't really use that skill well as its range is small and there is a delay before it explode. Most of the time I am hitting blank. It would be nice if you could give me some advice.

You could take the Short Fuse rune for EB.

[Loroese]

Jaywalker, on 14 December 2012 - 05:03 PM, said:

This is a very detailed guide that serves great usage for me. I sincerely appreciate the effort TS put in to this guide.

I recently came back to d3 after leaving it for like 4 months. Went in to my wizard and kept dying with the old hydra/blizz build.
Implemented this skill build and its working very well.

Anyway, is there an alternative to explosive blast? I can't really use that skill well as its range is small and there is a delay before it explode. Most of the time I am hitting blank. It would be nice if you could give me some advice.

Thanks.

There is no viable alternative because the spell does not use an attack animation, so you can cast it at the same time as WW or FN. As bagstone said you can use Short Fuse if you want to remove the delay. I suppose I should mention that rune for people who farm on lower MPs where they kill trash very fast, but my general belief is in that scenario you're probably better off using Archon.

[Qoffee]

Great guide, finally made me really understand how it works and where to go.
Just killed my first uber (mp7). Solo kill so my fingers hurt and i think i broke my 1,2,3 buttons.

No organ unfortunately.

Spoiler

http:..imgur.com/PVpBa

Was pretty hectic, esp with the low dmg but enough resist/armor to just keep standing in the gas.

[Loroese]

Yay Stcky!  Thank you mods!

[overneathe]

Loroese, on 14 December 2012 - 10:10 PM, said:

Yay Stcky!  Thank you mods!

Please. You deserve money for this.

[TheDemokin]

A question:

For example, my WW DPS is shown as 23'211 on D3up.com, but that is for a single tornado,
A tornado exists for 6 seconds,
with 3.03 APS we cast 3 tornadoes a second (lets take AP out of equation for a second)
so after 6 seconds we should have 6*3=18 tornadoes going at the same time on the mob
18*23'211=417'798 DPS from WW alone
Am i on the right track here?

[Loroese]

TheDemokin, on 18 December 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

A question:

For example, my WW DPS is shown as 23'211 on D3up.com, but that is for a single tornado,
A tornado exists for 6 seconds,
with 3.03 APS we cast 3 tornadoes a second (lets take AP out of equation for a second)
so after 6 seconds we should have 6*3=18 tornadoes going at the same time on the mob
18*23'211=417'798 DPS from WW alone
Am i on the right track here?

If I'm looking at that link correctly, that 21k dps is your WW dps for 1 WW every 6s. Your 418k calculation is correct if you do nothing but cast WW.

However, you won't cast 3 WW per second unless you forego FN. It'll be more like 2 WW + 1 FN.

There's a couple ways you could look at pure WW DPS. The first, like you seem to be looking for, is if you just spammed WW non-stop. Then your dps would simply be 2.52x your char sheet dps. That's the high end and you can't get more DPS out of WW than that because every cast will do 2.52x your weapon damage, with weapon damage being DPS / APS, but you get APS casts per second.

The second way, which is more like the effective WW dps, would be to either use my simulator or do some in game testing to calculate your effective dps multiplier, then take about 20-30% of that. Typical multipliers for 3 APS is 6-8, so I'd expect your WW dps to be about 1.2 - 2.4x your char sheet dps. Based on a char sheet dps of 168k I'd expect WW dps to be somewhere around 200-400k, when using the full rotation, including CR and FN.

[TheDemokin]

Loroese, i can't use the m file, could you perhaps do a sim with my gear of the resulting DPS please? I'll do a timed MP10 Azmodan. I'm quite curious on the actual DPS output of the CMWW.

The ranges that you do suggest 1.2-2.4 char sheet DPS is rather quite a drastic variation, perhaps there's a way to narrow it down to be more specific?

[Loroese]

TheDemokin, on 19 December 2012 - 03:59 AM, said:

Loroese, i can't use the m file, could you perhaps do a sim with my gear of the resulting DPS please? I'll do a timed MP10 Azmodan. I'm quite curious on the actual DPS output of the CMWW.

The ranges that you do suggest 1.2-2.4 char sheet DPS is rather quite a drastic variation, perhaps there's a way to narrow it down to be more specific?

I used 60s fight duration, 100ms latency/reaction time, against 1 mob. Your char sheet shows 3.03 APS, 49.5 crit, 20 APoC, and 172.9k dps. The FN uptime was estimated at around 64% for both runs.

With EA, crystal shell, Time Warp, and bone chill it calculates your effective dps multiplier to be 2.97, so your effective dps is 514k. Your WW makes up about 65% of that, with 34% from CR and 1% from white attacks. (WW = 1.93x char sheet dps)

If you used full SNS your multiplier would be 5.18 for an effective dps of 896k. The breakdown is 19.6% CR, 0.7% White attacks, 37.3% WW, 28.4% SA, 7.9% Storm Armor, and 6.1% DS. (WW = 1.47x char sheet dps).

Keep in mind these results depends pretty heavily on the latency value used. I actually simulate higher dps at lower APS when 100ms is used. Also, the SA procs aren't 100% correct since the mechanics are really odd when combined with WW. The EA test should be pretty comparable for that latency though.

You can also see the difference in WW effective dps between the two cases, which is why I gave an approximation of 1.2-2.4x. Yes it's a large range but the results are highly dependent on gear, latency, and fight duration.

[Jaetch]

Just an update for the scenario I detailed before about dying too much as CM-WW on MP10.

I swapped Diamond Shards for Crystal Shell, removed Glass Cannon in favor of Blur, kept Prismatic Armor, swapped out Stretch Time for Blood Magic and now I barely get tickled by anything. Guess the culprit from before was Glass Cannon along with too many DPS-boosting abilities.

God mode has officially activated.

[TheDemokin]

Loroese, on 19 December 2012 - 04:47 AM, said:

I used 60s fight duration, 100ms latency/reaction time, against 1 mob. Your char sheet shows 3.03 APS, 49.5 crit, 20 APoC, and 172.9k dps. The FN uptime was estimated at around 64% for both runs.

With EA, crystal shell, Time Warp, and bone chill it calculates your effective dps multiplier to be 2.97, so your effective dps is 514k. Your WW makes up about 65% of that, with 34% from CR and 1% from white attacks. (WW = 1.93x char sheet dps)

If you used full SNS your multiplier would be 5.18 for an effective dps of 896k. The breakdown is 19.6% CR, 0.7% White attacks, 37.3% WW, 28.4% SA, 7.9% Storm Armor, and 6.1% DS. (WW = 1.47x char sheet dps).

Did a few runs on MP5 today on Azmodan (to avoid the EHP problems on MP10, although the fight duration has gone down quite a bit). Did 5 of each to average out the time and to take out some random RNG (still a small sample)

Azmodan HP on MP5 = 25'738'048
No followers
Base of about 200ms latency
EA + CS + Time Warp + Cold Blooded + Bone chill = 46 seconds = 559'523 DPS (which is only 8% off your simulated number)
Full SNS = 25 seconds = 1'029'522 DPS (14% off your simulated number)

That really is a huge difference in DPS between the 2 setups, however, in terms of EHP my life did not move at all with the EA build, while with SNS i had to pot to stay alive (i have 0 LOH 0 LS), the way i'm looking at it - with my EHP level it's going to be very fast to farm elites on MP6 and may be 7 with full SNS, while for MP10 ubers or group farming it has got to be EA build.

If you wish to have some point of reference:
Current EHP (vs elite) = 463'024 with EA (prismatic) up and that is sufficient for MP10 elites (easily survive Magda's hits)
Current EHP (vs elite) = 334'449 without EA is sufficient to survive MP6 elites easily

Using the MP10 value we can solve for all the other values in the table for each MP:

MP1	109.60%	202'916
MP2	120.12%	222'393
MP3	131.65%	243'740
MP4	144.29%	267'142
MP5	158.14%	292'785
MP6	173.32%	320'889
MP7	189.96%	351'697
MP8	208.20%	385'467
MP9	228.18%	422'459
MP10	250.09%	463'024

This table also fits in the MP6 values quite nicely that i've reported just above. It is a fair bit higher than your table for EHP, to me, personally - this would be a 'comfortable' survival without being one shot by anything inclusive of Magda's attacks even while sitting on 0 LOH and 0 LS.

Using this table what i can do is: use EA with pinpoint which would give me 397,153 EHP vs elite and that will put me on 'comfortable' place to farm MP8

Alternatively adding 130k EHP would allow me to go full SNS build on MP10

Or i can add 35k EHP and go MP10 with pinpoint barrier instead