28 replies to this topic

[Ain]

http://us.battle.net...47/hero/2355783

I have absolutely no idea what I should work on upgrading next, everythings so expensive at this point. I play archon build, and am in love with it.

Any tips on what I should upgrade, or what an upgrade order from here out should be? Thanks!

[tissuepaper]

Amazing, can't believe its 120k with those gears!

[Ain]

tissuepaper, on 26 December 2012 - 06:01 AM, said:

Amazing, can't believe its 120k with those gears!

It's the Offhand, really that's over half my dps. I can use a crappy Skorn to reach 145k, though. But that's a crappy Skorn with no life steal.

I have no idea what I should be saving up for next, though. x.x

[Forock]

Inna's pants with vit. You can get them really, really cheap with stats like ~90 dex, ~100 vit, 1% crit, 8% IAS, movement speed and 2 sockets (int, int of course). You will lose around ~100 vit, yes... but your DPS will get a huge boost (which helps life steal) and you will also have more movement speed which is really needed if you're farming Archon.

Edit: ...and ditch Tyreals Might for any yellow chest with int / vit / resists / sockets. If you have the extra goldz go for a Tal Rasha chest for even more DPS.

Edited by Forock, 26 December 2012 - 09:29 AM.

[Shinna1989]

Innas pants is terrible in terms of ehp and i wouldnt bother buying one in ops current state of gear. Archons dmg is related to 4 things:

- Int
- Crit
- Crit Dmg
- Avg. Dmg and "Adds x% to elemental dmg" when using a non elemental dmg mainhand.

IAS inflates just the sheet character dps but is not real dmg in terms of kill speed while farming. My question to the op is: What do you wanne achieve with next upgrades? Do you wanne just raise your DPS? Get more survivability for farming higher mp? Wihtout knowing the goal its hard to tell what to upgrade.

[JKlimek]

"Black" (no elemental damage) weapon and a Triumvirate are a huge upgrade for you.  Chest and pants both don't have sockets.  There is all sorts of equipment that adds attack speed on pants, belt, and chest too.  No offense to Shinna, but Archon DOES care about IAS.  Once you get a black weapon, anything that adds +x% to elemental damage will be a huge upgrade (zunna boots, tal rasha amulet, etc)

[Ain]

Shinna1989, on 26 December 2012 - 01:03 PM, said:

Innas pants is terrible in terms of ehp and i wouldnt bother buying one in ops current state of gear. Archons dmg is related to 4 things:

- Int
- Crit
- Crit Dmg
- Avg. Dmg and "Adds x% to elemental dmg" when using a non elemental dmg mainhand.

IAS inflates just the sheet character dps but is not real dmg in terms of kill speed while farming. My question to the op is: What do you wanne achieve with next upgrades? Do you wanne just raise your DPS? Get more survivability for farming higher mp? Wihtout knowing the goal its hard to tell what to upgrade.

A bit of both, 32k HP is a bit low, I'd like to hit 40k HP, but I need 180k dps to be able to farm MP2 effectively - so those are my goals. 40-50k HP, and 180-200k DPS.

Forock, on 26 December 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

Inna's pants with vit. You can get them really, really cheap with stats like ~90 dex, ~100 vit, 1% crit, 8% IAS, movement speed and 2 sockets (int, int of course). You will lose around ~100 vit, yes... but your DPS will get a huge boost (which helps life steal) and you will also have more movement speed which is really needed if you're farming Archon.

Edit: ...and ditch Tyreals Might for any yellow chest with int / vit / resists / sockets. If you have the extra goldz go for a Tal Rasha chest for even more DPS.

Inna's is a huge loss in vit, I'm already to the point that I can almost instantly die vs certain groups. I need MORE hp, not less. I would only replace Tyraels with a better tyraels, Movement speed is one of the primary ways to speed up a run, and keep Archon up in MP1. I'm already finding archon fall off when certain areas turn up barren

Thanks for the suggestions! But what in the blazes is BLACK damage?.

The best Triumvate I found on the AH(perfect damage roll, 8.5% crit chance) was a 1100 dps upgrade....for 1.98Bil. Perfect damage roll (110-405), 8.5% crit, crits grant arcane power, 6/6/6%s 152 int... I found dozens of Chantodos that are a larger dps upgrade, for 50-60M.

Edited by Ain, 26 December 2012 - 02:44 PM.

[Bagstone]

Ain, on 26 December 2012 - 02:31 PM, said:

Thanks for the suggestions! But what in the blazes is BLACK damage?.

It's a weapon with no elemental damage. Black because the background of the tooltip's color (yes, welcome to the world of ridiculous made-up expert terms). Some weapons get their damage from +elemental damage (for example Chantodo's with its fire damage bonus) and some from +min/max damage (for example Echoing Fury). Read more about the "adds +x to elemental damage" issue here.

Edited by Bagstone, 26 December 2012 - 02:39 PM.

[Forock]

Black damage is when a weapon has just +dmg, and not +elemental dmg (fire, cold, etc). This damage benefits from %eledmg on gear, such as triumvirate. If you had a black dmg weapon + triumvirate, you will gain insane numbers in DPS.

[JKlimek]

Black weapons are weapons that have bonus damage, but no elemental damage.

When you get an item that says "adds +% to elemental damage" that only adds a % of your non elemental damage.  Take a look at my profile:
http://us.battle.net...37/hero/5121825

My weapon has no elemental damage on it, so my trimvurate alone adds 17% damage.  If my weapon had been 400 base damage and 600 elemental damage, it would only add 17% to the 400 base damage, or a total of about 7% overall damage.

As to your comments, I farm MP2 and higher just fine.  The higher your dps/life steal get the less you need EHP.  I think I have like 30K hp.  And MS is very important as you suggest.  I get mine from Zuni boots, lacuni bracers and/or Inna's pants (you only need 2 of those, I have no idea why I'm wearing all three ).  You certainly don't need them from Tryael's Might

[Ain]

JKlimek, on 26 December 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:

Black weapons are weapons that have bonus damage, but no elemental damage.

When you get an item that says "adds +% to elemental damage" that only adds a % of your non elemental damage.  Take a look at my profile:
http://us.battle.net...37/hero/5121825

My weapon has no elemental damage on it, so my trimvurate alone adds 17% damage.  If my weapon had been 400 base damage and 600 elemental damage, it would only add 17% to the 400 base damage, or a total of about 7% overall damage.

As to your comments, I farm MP2 and higher just fine.  The higher your dps/life steal get the less you need EHP.  I think I have like 30K hp.  And MS is very important as you suggest.  I get mine from Zuni boots, lacuni bracers and/or Inna's pants (you only need 2 of those, I have no idea why I'm wearing all three ).  You certainly don't need them from Tryael's Might

Tyraels' is just a very cheap way to get a lot. To get a solid pair of inna's would cost millions, this tyrael's cost me 119k. Eventually I want to wear all 4, but that's a dream for another day. I'll go and price zuni, Lacuni, and inna's though.

As for this black weapon stuff, what? I read that post, but the logic is just..GONE. It makes so little sense, no one would think that naturally... Ah well, Thanks for the tips, I think I have quite a bit of gold to farm now.

[Litheum]

JKlimek, on 26 December 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

"Black" (no elemental damage) weapon and a Triumvirate are a huge upgrade for you.  Chest and pants both don't have sockets.  There is all sorts of equipment that adds attack speed on pants, belt, and chest too.  No offense to Shinna, but Archon DOES care about IAS.  Once you get a black weapon, anything that adds +x% to elemental damage will be a huge upgrade (zunna boots, tal rasha amulet, etc)

Pants: 1 item (Innas)
Belt: 1 item (Witching Hour)
Chest 1 item (Tal Rashas)

Not sure what other items you meant. Unless you meant the lvl 30ish items?

[Bagstone]

Oh, completely overread this. "Archon DOES care about IAS" - well, sort of. Archon uses sheet DPS, it ticks every .5 seconds so the ticks will just be higher if your APS increases sheet DPS, but there will not be more ticks or such. Therefore, Archon itself does not care about IAS, it just wants more DPS, and it totally doesn't care where it comes from.

Archon wizards however, sometimes care about IAS, only for one reason: whenever Archon drops, you want to get rid of your cooldown ASAP, and for that having a high APS helps. This is the only reason why any Archon wizard would actually *want* IAS. The reason why high-end Archon wizards have loads of IAS is because there are lots of BiS items that come with IAS (WH, Tal chest, Mempo Lacuni's, Inna's pants) on slots that usually don't have IAS. If there would be BiS items that come without IAS giving you the choice, and if you would only farm MP0 Alkaizer runs in high mob density areas where Archon almost never drops, I would probably get rid of all IAS because it absolutely doesn't matter for a pure Archon build and the most important part is that IAS is completely overpriced due to the IAS bandwaggon everyone's jumping on, thanks to CM as must-have skill for 99% of all specs.

TL;DR: High-end Archon wizards wear IAS because it comes with BiS items, IAS is a nice support stat for situations when Archon wears off, but the Archon skill itself does not gain or lose anything by adding IAS.

[Shinna1989]

Bagstone is totaly right here and its like i said. IAS inflates just the sheet dps while on the other hand int, crit, crit dmg and % elemantal dmg/avg dmg adds real dmg. If you wanne farm efficient xp then you care about oneshotting trash and dont wanne spend more then like max. 10sec on an elitepack. IAS wont help you there. Thats why the other stats i already mentioned helping you way more...

Quote

A bit of both, 32k HP is a bit low, I'd like to hit 40k HP, but I need 180k dps to be able to farm MP2 effectively - so those are my goals. 40-50k HP, and 180-200k DPS.

Im recently watching cdx/todds stream on twitch. One of the best streams out there.
http://www.reddit.co...lts_1m_mp3_25m/
This is about building archon wizzard gearsets and very in depth. I would recommand watching it. You will get an idea where to get survivability stats like vit, res and armor and where getting your dps from.

[JKlimek]

Litheum, on 26 December 2012 - 07:14 PM, said:

Pants: 1 item (Innas)
Belt: 1 item (Witching Hour)
Chest 1 item (Tal Rashas)

Not sure what other items you meant. Unless you meant the lvl 30ish items?

I'm actually not sure what you're asking me here.  Those were all random thoughts not connected to each other.  Are you asking about IAS items?  All of those items you listed have IAS but you can also get it on your gloves, rings, amulet, Lacuni Bracers, Mempo of Twilight, Andariel's Visage, etc.

As to those commenting on IAS for archon:
The tics displayed are not showing you all of the information; you do crit while in archon mode, and you do hit more often with IAS.  I understand what you're saying about sheet dps, but I run CM with my archon as well, and the IAS helps with both damage output as well as CM cooldown rate.  When you are low dps or just starting off, you're going to need to activate Archon more than a couple times in a farming run.

@Ain, Lacuni Bracers are cheap and include both MS and IAS standard.

Sorry, sometimes I look at my equipment and forget how hard it was for me to get that stuff :/

There are some great budget archon guides where you can just focus on crit chance and crit damage and not worry about IAS too.

YOU REALLY NEED TO UNDERSTAND BLACK WEAPONS THO.  They are they key to making a triumvirate from an ok off hand to the best thing your dps ever saw.  Look at your weapon for example.  The second line lists 296-559 as arcane damage.  That means your total "black" damage is 182-326.  That is the only damage that your "adds x% to fire damage" will add to.
The math on your weapon with zuni boots that add 7% fire damage:
182 * 1.07 = 195
326 * 1.07 = 349
add those to your elemental damage and you get a weapon that is 491-908 damage or 979 dps.  That's only a 2.6% increase in total DPS.

Lets say instead your weapon said +296 minimum damage and + 263 maximum damage.  That weapon would be the same base DPS as yours (954) but when you add the 7% fire damage, you get ALL of the 7% because your weapon has no elemental damage on it.  Your dps would increase to 1020 instead of 979.

[Bagstone]

JKlimek, on 26 December 2012 - 10:26 PM, said:

As to those commenting on IAS for archon:
The tics displayed are not showing you all of the information; you do crit while in archon mode, and you do hit more often with IAS.

Everything in your post is correct and great information, especially the elaborate explanation of black weapon mechanics. However, I just want to clarify that what you said in bold is wrong. You're right about IAS as an important stat because of CD reduction, and you're right about crits and Archon, but this has nothing to do with Archon damage ticks and IAS. Your Archon ticks every .5 seconds, if you have more IAS it doesn't tick faster or more often. Other than the damage increase of IAS on your char sheet there's no DPS gain for Archon by IAS. If you get IAS "for free" (through Lacuni's) it's fine, as long as you don't sacrifice any DPS for it.

[Shinna1989]

I think this eplains "non elemental dmg weapons" kinda good.
http://i.imgur.com/bGXL1.png

[JKlimek]

Bagstone,The tics show up every half second, just like life regen and other abilities, but there should be more hits going on in the background.  I've noticed a definite improvement in cooldown timers since I have increased my IAS significantly, but I have to admit I have no actual research numbers to carry this argument any farther, just my own personal experience.  What is your information based on?  I know that it doesn't show you crits because the tics only display damage over time, but you are still crit'ing and I have to assume IAS increases the number of times you're going to crit in the background.

[Bagstone]

IAS and Archon beams were discussed on this forum and the official forums months ago. Theorycrafters did insane amount of research to get to this information. I can't find it anymore, but if you do some Google research you can see tons of threads coming up that explain how Archon and IAS work together (or rather, don't). I believe Loroese and/or Jaetch also looked into it at some point, maybe they remember more of the details or have some stuff bookmarked.

[Litheum]

JKlimek, on 26 December 2012 - 10:26 PM, said:

Litheum, on 26 December 2012 - 07:14 PM, said:

Pants: 1 item (Innas)
Belt: 1 item (Witching Hour)
Chest 1 item (Tal Rashas)

Not sure what other items you meant. Unless you meant the lvl 30ish items?

I'm actually not sure what you're asking me here.  Those were all random thoughts not connected to each other.  Are you asking about IAS items?  All of those items you listed have IAS but you can also get it on your gloves, rings, amulet, Lacuni Bracers, Mempo of Twilight, Andariel's Visage, etc.

You said "There is all sorts of equipment that adds attack speed on pants, belt, and chest too."

All one sentence. I just wanted to clarify there are very few options, so the OP or anyone else did not try searching for items that dont exist.
You are correct about other items and IAS, but your sentence was misleading if thats what you meant to say. Just trying to clear things up for readers.....and ask if their are items I didnt know about....cuz I want them.

Edited by Litheum, 27 December 2012 - 02:25 PM.