I've always had a hard time fitting Meteor into any of my builds. My goal this morning was to make a viable build with Meteor as the main damage dealer.... and I may have done it? Let me know your thoughts.
This build is all about crits and AP generation. Every crit = 1 second off my cooldown which will be huge because I'll rely on Diamond Armor - Prism to get lots of meteors off. With proper crit gear, this build could be REALLY good.
Electrocute - Chain lightning: Not only is this pretty decent damage to do while I regen AP, it has lot of chances to get a crit which would enable me to cast Prism again!
Meteor - Star Pact: 35 AP Meteor sounds good. It's 28AP with Prism up which would mean I could cast 7 of them in a row if I had a 1.0 attack speed weapon (due to AP regen of 14.)
Diamond Skin - Prism: The skill that makes the magic happen. I need this up as much as possible. Not only does it protect me but it allows me to spam Meteor pretty well.
Frost Nova - Deep Freeze: Good CC but also a way to get more crits and have Diamond Skin up more often.
Familiar - Arcanot: Mostly for the extra 2AP/sec but the damage is a nice addition as well.
Energy Armor - Pinpoint Barrier: Another crit skill w/ 5% passive crit. Also, 65% armor will help me stay alive and the AP penalty is negated by my passive choices.
Passives:
Blur - This is a bit of a floater. It could change easily enough but I like the 20% DR because once things get tough in Inferno I think it'll be needed. This isn't exactly a kite build. Other top options would be Prodigy, Power Hungry, or Evocation. I think I'm good enough on AP generation and cooldowns though.
Astral Presence - Negates the 20AP loss from energy armor and gives me 2AP/sec.
Critical Mass - I hope to crit a lot with this build. Prism should available most of the time.
Are you planning on trying to stack +AP on crit gear if possible?
Good call... I forgot the wizard had those affixes to be honest but yes... with + crit and +AP on crit gear, this build could be pretty sweet! If the AP regen got good enough, I could possibly change the Meteor rune to something with even more damage like molten impact..... or just spam even more meteors. The problem with spamming meteors is that I doubt the DoT part of the spell stacks so molten impact would likely be better if regen got high enough.
I might be going out on a limb here but I just think that slow time is superior to frost nova, specially with the rune you want youll need to get really close to at least a medium sized pack of monsters to get the critical bonus(at least 5 monters), and that much proximity to many monsters on inferno.... is not a good idea. With the slow time though you can still cast it and lure the mobs into it, also it can save your life against ranged, while frost nova wont do anything against those. I also think that prodigy is better than blur, so u can spam those meteors. I also dont think the familiars are too hot, but maybe they are the best option in your build. Id also change astral presence for evocation. As for the armor, Id also go for the prismatic one, but ofc the rune youve chosen will have better synergy with critical mass so it is really a matter of testing but I think those extra res will prove very valuable in the later difficulties.
nice build. a change id make (which is a bit off the stacked AP regen) is to take out Familiar and add in Mirror Image w/Mirror Mimics. Costs zero AP, 15 second CD (works well with critical mass and crits) and can amp up your CC and Damage... especially your CC. Worth it for the frost novas alone IMO locking down the screen. Not to mention id adds some survivability because your mimcs can eat some damage instead of you.
other changes id play around with is Arcane Dynamo (timing it on meteor casts) + Conflag... however youd have less survivability and AP regen... so not sure if its worth it or not. I guess it depends on your on your gear.. if its enough to use non AP regen skills then good way to up some DPS.
I will never use Arcane Dynamo in any of my PvM builds (unless it works with channeled spells for the entire duration). It's a complete garbage passive for pvm imo
Like I've said in the past, even if the proc rate is 100% (which it's not), it only provides a total +12.5% damage increase and that's if you use it to full effect by casting 5 sig spells in a row and then a single non-sig spell (which decreases your dps by a lot because sig spells do less damage than AP spenders). It's complete and utter crap. In this build, if I were to make a ballpark guess, it will improve my dps by 1% (I'm not going to be spamming electrocute much at all).
Anyway..... I do like your mimics idea. That could reduce the cooldown of prism by even more. If I have a problem with the cooldown, I'll think about switching it out. Without testing, I think I'll need that 2AP/sec because I'd prefer to cast Meteor over chain lightning.I don't think they mimic what you are doing though. If you watch the video of the skill they do their own thing. Also, in the video they cast frost nova and it does not freeze the enemies.
I thought about conflag but it would also be a small dps increase. It won't increase the damage of the initial meteor and there will be many chain lightning casts that don't get the effect because I'll be casting it when I'm oom so they won't have the debuff on them. 2 AP a sec would give me much more damage. 10% damage on about half my casts does not sound very cool.
I actually think power hungry could be really cool in this build. It's a burst build so things will die quickly and I'll be OOM quickly (even with prism). A quick AP boost mid combat when I kill a section of monsters could be extremely valuable.
Additionally, I'd probably go with Meteor Shower to increase both number of hits (crit opportunities) and damage (assuming Meteor Shower will be able to mostly hit every target, or one target if there is only one, with every impact), or Comet for more control of mobs w/ the slow, or Molten Impact for straight dps if Meteor Shower isn't quite up to par.
I would also get Hydra in there, esp as a source of more crit opportunities. If using a form of Meteor other than Comet, then I'd definitely go with Mammoth Hydra and probably then get Conflagration in place of one of the passives. (On the possibility that AoE DoTs like the Meteor fire DoT and the Mammoth Hydra firewall DoT are unable to crit, I'd use a different Hydra which can crit.)
For passives in general, I think Evocation will be worthwhile, given that you somewhat rely on both Diamond Skin and Frost Nova as CD abilities, and I think Prodigy will outshine both Astral Presence and Familiar - Arcanot for AP regen, and will be the best way to cover your needs. Between Evocation, Prodigy, and Critical Mass, I'd consider dropping Evo or Crit Mass for Glass Cannon, or esp Cold Blooded if you go with Comet (in which case I'd probably go with the Frost Hydra), or Conflagration (esp if in a group); increased damage is always something to strongly consider.
I've always had a hard time fitting Meteor into any of my builds.
In general, I'm planning a Wiz build along these lines: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZkRQgj!YWe!bbcZZa
Although if it turns out that RoF cannot, in fact, be runed below the base (or geared) AP regen point, I may swap it for a sig spell, in which case, I might also replace Meteor with a channeled attack.
Prodigy is much worse than Arcane Presence with this build. With Star Pact + Prism, I plan on spending most of my time casting Meteor, not chain lightning. The 2AP/sec alone will be superior than 4 AP per chain lightning... that's not even considering the fact that I'd also get 20 AP. I don't want to have a build that relies on spending 35AP and having a cap of 80AP. If I were to pick up prodigy I'd pick it up in place of Blur but I think Power Hungry would be better since I'll want to pick up a big chunk instantly mid combat.
I think with +crit Gear, the crit will be high enough to cast prism whenever I have enough AP to cast a few meteors so I didn't pick Evocation. The biggest bottleneck will be AP, so I don't plan on giving up my +2 AP/sec skills... unless my current assumptions are incorrect and there is a different bottleneck.
Depending on how much you'd need the extra survivability of Frost Nova you could throw in Storm Armor with Power of the Storm rune for another -3 AP/spell.
Depending on how much you'd need the extra survivability of Frost Nova you could throw in Storm Armor with Power of the Storm rune for another -3 AP/spell.
I'd have to give up Energy Armor if I went that way. Funny that you mention that skill though because I was debating between it and Energy Armor. I concluded that I'd need the extra armor to survive without many kiting options in this build... the + crit is just gravy (inferno may need + resistances instead tho like sumsarr stated).
Depending on how much you'd need the extra survivability of Frost Nova you could throw in Storm Armor with Power of the Storm rune for another -3 AP/spell.
I'd have to give up Energy Armor if I went that way. Funny that you mention that skill though because I was debating between it and Energy Armor. I concluded that I'd need the extra armor to survive without many kiting options in this build... the + crit is just gravy (inferno may need + resistances instead tho like sumsarr stated).
bah, Forgot the 'only one armor at a time' thing.
Also since you're crit based, maybe Forked Lightning instead of Chain Lightning?
Prodigy is much worse than Arcane Presence with this build. With Star Pact + Prism, I plan on spending most of my time casting Meteor, not chain lightning. The 2AP/sec alone will be superior than 4 AP per chain lightning...
Assuming you expect to cast even a small number of Chain Lightnings, I think Prodigy will quickly overwhelm Arcane Presence, esp if it procs multiple times off of multiple targets (is there confirmation on whether it does or does not behave that way? If not, I'd probably rune it for Surge of Power or use Shock Pulse - Lightning Affinity.) If you really expect to be running effectively-pure Meteor casts, I'd not even carry a sig spell at all, just swap it for something else (Slow Time, Familiar, Mirror Images, Magic Weapon, or Teleport or Wave of Force for defensive purposes.)
At 35 - 7 = 28, you will have a 15.5 AP loss per second, on a 1sec Meteor cast, at base regen (11.5 with Astral Presence and Familiar - Arcanot); even in the latter case, I can't imagine that this translates to particularly small down time spent casting Chain Lightning. I'm realizing that this will come down very much to how fast casts get. With a sufficiently high cast speed, Prodigy + some sig spell will definitely overwhelm Astral Presence or Familiar - Arcanot, but for a slow-ish cast speed, it won't; that balancing point might be rather deep into the fast-cast realm, since you will effectively get off 7-8 Meteors before being out of AP. Given that, I might consider: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#kRYgXO!bXg!ZcYZZZ or http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#kRYXjO!bXg!ZcYZYZ
and if Evocation really turns out not to be valuable because you can chain Diamond Skin enough to keep the AP cost buff any time you would Meteor, and chain Frost Novas (and Slow Time, if you have it) enough for defensive/herding purposes, then I'd probably swap it for Conflagration.
If you really don't have much castable downtime, and thus don't actually need a sig spell at all, I think Hydra is going to be more useful than Chain Lightning due to it's fire-and-forget dps and crit opportunities.
That would explain why you insist on Prodigy if you think it works that way. If prodigy works for every target your spell hits, everyone will run chain lightning + prodigy in every single build. There's no way blizzard is that dumb in designing skill balance.
Base regen is 10AP/sec so it's 14AP/sec with my build.
Hydra could be nice for a passive damage boost if I don't need chain lightning but the big reason I want to use chain lightning is to get the prism cooldown back up. A typical cast sequence would be Prism + 5-6 meteors + chain lightning to get the prism back (6 chances to crit per cast) while I regen AP at 14 AP/sec. Most things won't survive that volley of damage. The weaker enemies will definitely die (and possibly drop globes) so I really do like the idea of power hungry to finish off the harder enemies quickly. Blur might be needed though.
With +AP on crit gear, lightning will be even better because it will regen me AP quickly as well as lowering my cooldowns.
I thought base regen was 12.5? Was it once that and it changed? Is there a good place to find a regularly-updated list of resource pool descriptions (unmodified maximums and regen rates?)
I think you will end up with more net attacks/time from Hydra than from Chain Lightning, esp in the Mammoth Hydra form (although really, in any of it's AoE forms), assuming that such effects are capable of crit.
If Prodigy is more a once-per-cast (that was my original assumption, but it seems to be widely understood to be once-per-damage; the former makes more sense to me too), then I might still run it with Shock Pulse - Lightning Affinity. http://us.battle.net...RYXO!cXg!YZcYZZ
I think the intent is to use Meteor for single targets as necessary; in the context of spammability, there's no reason its dps shouldn't be comparable to that of any explicitly-single target spell.
Love it. There are a few people on this forum who I consider smart when discussing builds and you're one of them. Making a neat build is like doing a puzzle.
This one is neat. The only thing I would consider changing is Energy Armor rune. I understand completely why someone would prefer the 5% crit in this type of build, but 40% extra resistance is so strong, especially in hell/inferno.
Resists were important in D2 but will they be in D3? It may be worthless to stack them.
I actually think power hungry could be really cool in this build. It's a burst build so things will die quickly and I'll be OOM quickly (even with prism). A quick AP boost mid combat when I kill a section of monsters could be extremely valuable.
Ive actually been looking at power hungry as well. Im starting to think its the single best passive there is. If you think about it, it can take the place of prodigy (passive) as well as all AP regen runes. You can then focus on DPS runes instead. 30 AP from one health globe is absurd imo and im pretty sure drop at least once per room clear.
anyone notice anything about power hungry passive?
Anyway..... I do like your mimics idea....Also, in the video they cast frost nova and it does not freeze the enemies.
if they werent doing damage then, Mirror Image spell must have been runed with Mirror Mimics. If it was runed with Mirror Mimics then the clones would have done damage.
I think the intent is to use Meteor for single targets as necessary; in the context of spammability, there's no reason its dps shouldn't be comparable to that of any explicitly-single target spell.
There's no spammability in the context. Even with an infinite Prism (not the case) you would still lose ap and would only be able to cast 7 meteors before completely ooap.
EVEN if we were talking about spammability. Spam 280% ray of frost and you're better both in terms of damage and in terms of arcane power cost.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UkXYjO!aXg!aZZYYZ
This build is all about crits and AP generation. Every crit = 1 second off my cooldown which will be huge because I'll rely on Diamond Armor - Prism to get lots of meteors off. With proper crit gear, this build could be REALLY good.
Electrocute - Chain lightning: Not only is this pretty decent damage to do while I regen AP, it has lot of chances to get a crit which would enable me to cast Prism again!
Meteor - Star Pact: 35 AP Meteor sounds good. It's 28AP with Prism up which would mean I could cast 7 of them in a row if I had a 1.0 attack speed weapon (due to AP regen of 14.)
Diamond Skin - Prism: The skill that makes the magic happen. I need this up as much as possible. Not only does it protect me but it allows me to spam Meteor pretty well.
Frost Nova - Deep Freeze: Good CC but also a way to get more crits and have Diamond Skin up more often.
Familiar - Arcanot: Mostly for the extra 2AP/sec but the damage is a nice addition as well.
Energy Armor - Pinpoint Barrier: Another crit skill w/ 5% passive crit. Also, 65% armor will help me stay alive and the AP penalty is negated by my passive choices.
Passives:
Blur - This is a bit of a floater. It could change easily enough but I like the 20% DR because once things get tough in Inferno I think it'll be needed. This isn't exactly a kite build. Other top options would be Prodigy, Power Hungry, or Evocation. I think I'm good enough on AP generation and cooldowns though.
Astral Presence - Negates the 20AP loss from energy armor and gives me 2AP/sec.
Critical Mass - I hope to crit a lot with this build. Prism should available most of the time.
So what do you think?
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Good call... I forgot the wizard had those affixes to be honest but yes... with + crit and +AP on crit gear, this build could be pretty sweet! If the AP regen got good enough, I could possibly change the Meteor rune to something with even more damage like molten impact..... or just spam even more meteors. The problem with spamming meteors is that I doubt the DoT part of the spell stacks so molten impact would likely be better if regen got high enough.
other changes id play around with is Arcane Dynamo (timing it on meteor casts) + Conflag... however youd have less survivability and AP regen... so not sure if its worth it or not. I guess it depends on your on your gear.. if its enough to use non AP regen skills then good way to up some DPS.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UkXYPO!Teg!aZZYcZ
Like I've said in the past, even if the proc rate is 100% (which it's not), it only provides a total +12.5% damage increase and that's if you use it to full effect by casting 5 sig spells in a row and then a single non-sig spell (which decreases your dps by a lot because sig spells do less damage than AP spenders). It's complete and utter crap. In this build, if I were to make a ballpark guess, it will improve my dps by 1% (I'm not going to be spamming electrocute much at all).
Anyway..... I do like your mimics idea. That could reduce the cooldown of prism by even more. If I have a problem with the cooldown, I'll think about switching it out. Without testing, I think I'll need that 2AP/sec because I'd prefer to cast Meteor over chain lightning.I don't think they mimic what you are doing though. If you watch the video of the skill they do their own thing. Also, in the video they cast frost nova and it does not freeze the enemies.
I thought about conflag but it would also be a small dps increase. It won't increase the damage of the initial meteor and there will be many chain lightning casts that don't get the effect because I'll be casting it when I'm oom so they won't have the debuff on them. 2 AP a sec would give me much more damage. 10% damage on about half my casts does not sound very cool.
I actually think power hungry could be really cool in this build. It's a burst build so things will die quickly and I'll be OOM quickly (even with prism). A quick AP boost mid combat when I kill a section of monsters could be extremely valuable.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UkRYXO!bcg!aZcYZZ
Additionally, I'd probably go with Meteor Shower to increase both number of hits (crit opportunities) and damage (assuming Meteor Shower will be able to mostly hit every target, or one target if there is only one, with every impact), or Comet for more control of mobs w/ the slow, or Molten Impact for straight dps if Meteor Shower isn't quite up to par.
I would also get Hydra in there, esp as a source of more crit opportunities. If using a form of Meteor other than Comet, then I'd definitely go with Mammoth Hydra and probably then get Conflagration in place of one of the passives. (On the possibility that AoE DoTs like the Meteor fire DoT and the Mammoth Hydra firewall DoT are unable to crit, I'd use a different Hydra which can crit.)
For passives in general, I think Evocation will be worthwhile, given that you somewhat rely on both Diamond Skin and Frost Nova as CD abilities, and I think Prodigy will outshine both Astral Presence and Familiar - Arcanot for AP regen, and will be the best way to cover your needs. Between Evocation, Prodigy, and Critical Mass, I'd consider dropping Evo or Crit Mass for Glass Cannon, or esp Cold Blooded if you go with Comet (in which case I'd probably go with the Frost Hydra), or Conflagration (esp if in a group); increased damage is always something to strongly consider.
In the case that survivability is a strong concern, I'd consider:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UkRYXO!cWg!aYYYZZ
In general, I'm planning a Wiz build along these lines:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZkRQgj!YWe!bbcZZa
Although if it turns out that RoF cannot, in fact, be runed below the base (or geared) AP regen point, I may swap it for a sig spell, in which case, I might also replace Meteor with a channeled attack.
I think with +crit Gear, the crit will be high enough to cast prism whenever I have enough AP to cast a few meteors so I didn't pick Evocation. The biggest bottleneck will be AP, so I don't plan on giving up my +2 AP/sec skills... unless my current assumptions are incorrect and there is a different bottleneck.
I'd have to give up Energy Armor if I went that way. Funny that you mention that skill though because I was debating between it and Energy Armor. I concluded that I'd need the extra armor to survive without many kiting options in this build... the + crit is just gravy (inferno may need + resistances instead tho like sumsarr stated).
bah, Forgot the 'only one armor at a time' thing.
Also since you're crit based, maybe Forked Lightning instead of Chain Lightning?
Assuming you expect to cast even a small number of Chain Lightnings, I think Prodigy will quickly overwhelm Arcane Presence, esp if it procs multiple times off of multiple targets (is there confirmation on whether it does or does not behave that way? If not, I'd probably rune it for Surge of Power or use Shock Pulse - Lightning Affinity.) If you really expect to be running effectively-pure Meteor casts, I'd not even carry a sig spell at all, just swap it for something else (Slow Time, Familiar, Mirror Images, Magic Weapon, or Teleport or Wave of Force for defensive purposes.)
At 35 - 7 = 28, you will have a 15.5 AP loss per second, on a 1sec Meteor cast, at base regen (11.5 with Astral Presence and Familiar - Arcanot); even in the latter case, I can't imagine that this translates to particularly small down time spent casting Chain Lightning. I'm realizing that this will come down very much to how fast casts get. With a sufficiently high cast speed, Prodigy + some sig spell will definitely overwhelm Astral Presence or Familiar - Arcanot, but for a slow-ish cast speed, it won't; that balancing point might be rather deep into the fast-cast realm, since you will effectively get off 7-8 Meteors before being out of AP. Given that, I might consider:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#kRYgXO!bXg!ZcYZZZ or
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#kRYXjO!bXg!ZcYZYZ
and if Evocation really turns out not to be valuable because you can chain Diamond Skin enough to keep the AP cost buff any time you would Meteor, and chain Frost Novas (and Slow Time, if you have it) enough for defensive/herding purposes, then I'd probably swap it for Conflagration.
If you really don't have much castable downtime, and thus don't actually need a sig spell at all, I think Hydra is going to be more useful than Chain Lightning due to it's fire-and-forget dps and crit opportunities.
Base regen is 10AP/sec so it's 14AP/sec with my build.
Hydra could be nice for a passive damage boost if I don't need chain lightning but the big reason I want to use chain lightning is to get the prism cooldown back up. A typical cast sequence would be Prism + 5-6 meteors + chain lightning to get the prism back (6 chances to crit per cast) while I regen AP at 14 AP/sec. Most things won't survive that volley of damage. The weaker enemies will definitely die (and possibly drop globes) so I really do like the idea of power hungry to finish off the harder enemies quickly. Blur might be needed though.
With +AP on crit gear, lightning will be even better because it will regen me AP quickly as well as lowering my cooldowns.
I think you will end up with more net attacks/time from Hydra than from Chain Lightning, esp in the Mammoth Hydra form (although really, in any of it's AoE forms), assuming that such effects are capable of crit.
If Prodigy is more a once-per-cast (that was my original assumption, but it seems to be widely understood to be once-per-damage; the former makes more sense to me too), then I might still run it with Shock Pulse - Lightning Affinity.
http://us.battle.net...RYXO!cXg!YZcYZZ
I think the intent is to use Meteor for single targets as necessary; in the context of spammability, there's no reason its dps shouldn't be comparable to that of any explicitly-single target spell.
How do you think it works...?
Resists were important in D2 but will they be in D3? It may be worthless to stack them.
Ive actually been looking at power hungry as well. Im starting to think its the single best passive there is. If you think about it, it can take the place of prodigy (passive) as well as all AP regen runes. You can then focus on DPS runes instead. 30 AP from one health globe is absurd imo and im pretty sure drop at least once per room clear.
anyone notice anything about power hungry passive?
if they werent doing damage then, Mirror Image spell must have been runed with Mirror Mimics. If it was runed with Mirror Mimics then the clones would have done damage.
EVEN if we were talking about spammability. Spam 280% ray of frost and you're better both in terms of damage and in terms of arcane power cost.