It depends on what your issue is, are you dying too much in high grifts or is your damage too low and you are failing to clear in time?
If you need more survivability, using Energy Armor - Force Armor gives great damage reduction.
You could try using Shock Pulse - Piercing Orb instead of electrocute because the orbs hit a large number of mobs and spread damage through Elemental Exposure, etc. to more enemies. Thus, the +dmg to electrocute on your belt and pants could be changed to something else, like %life or Armor if you need toughness, I'm not sure how good the plus spell damage is on those armor pieces because your primary spells aren't contributing a lot to your overall damage, afaik.
Black Hole is good to use if you need some crowd control, as it groups up the mobs... although you are already getting some CC from Blizzard.
Also note that Slow Time will give you a stack of Cold Damage from Elemental Exposure... I don't know why it's cold because the tool tip says it's an arcane spell, but I've tested it and it seems to be cold.
Boosting your Attack Speed should give more damage output from Hydra, and of course finding a Serpent Sparker would be great, but I haven't found a good one either myself.
Getting your Molten Wildebeest gem to lvl 25 will also help your survivability.
Also, check out some of the Wizard guides on this site, like the Delrasha one.
My biggest problem is survivability. I am hitting decent dmg numbers, on par with most others. I have huge issues with elite mobs.
I will try to drop the electrocute dmg and roll for life or armor. Hopefully that will do the trick until i can get into the 500 paragon level.
I thought slow time stacks fire damage, it's procing the fire meteor off the tal rasha set. I have to use teleport for the arcane meteor.
Still working on my gems, got a little lost and started putting points into the wrong ones. Still trying to decide on which ones i should be using. I might switch Enforcer for Teguk while i wait for a SS.
Then I think Force Armor will serve you well, it seems to be a "go-to" for damage reduction. You can also roll reduced elite damage on the chest, but then you sacrifice other more valuable stats like hydra dmg. Additional armor may help, but you probably wouldn't want to sacrifice a good damage stat in order to get armor. However, armor should be more valuable on INT classes though because they have high resistances from their high intelligence numbers, while conversely STR/DEX classes have high armor and benefit from all resist.
I must be wrong about Slow Time damage... I found a post on reddit that states it uses your highest % elemental damage type, so in your case you have % fire damage while I had % cold damage. That's pretty interesting and good to know!
While it's hard to get "perfect" gear, you can be on the lookout for useful secondary stats like reduced melee or ranged damage, which can roll as secondaries from 6% to 7% on certain slots (some elite affix damage types count as either melee or ranged), and also secondary resistances (FYI in case you don't know, if your piece has All Resist it cannot roll a secondary single resist).
Something I've learned with wizards (and demon hunters for that matter) is in higher greater rifts, you basically have to avoid incoming damage as much as possible because you cannot get your toughness high enough to absorb all the damage. This requires learning how to dance around the screen so you don't get hit by anything. The "glass cannon" metaphor is very appropriate
You can also gear your Templar to be more helpful. He doesn't do a lot of damage but you can use him for CC. There's guides for this on the forums here, but essentially you can give him a weapon that has a useful stun, slow, or freeze effect and then stack attack speed so it proc's often. It doesn't matter if they are ancient since those stats are not affected by being ancient. Eun Jang Do freezes when the mobs HP is below ~20% which is good for rift guardians. Thunderfury has a reduced movement speed proc. Azurewrath has a chance to freeze the target. For a shield, the Freeze-of-deflection is commonly used since it has a chance to freeze the mob on block. You can roll % block chance bonus on the shield and on the Templar Relic. You could use the ring Justice Lantern for additional % block, but more commonly you see Wyrdward used in combination with a weapon with a Lightning damage roll on it (the main damage range should be lightning) to proc the stun effect. For the amulet, you can use Dovu-energy-trap to increase the stun duration from Wyrdward, or The-ess-of-johan for some CC. The main stats that matter will be % attack speed and % block, as well as the lightning damage weapon. Cooldown reduction is also good so the Templar can use more abilities. Damage stats like CHC and CHD don't really matter on the Templar since his damage is so minimal compared to your own, and he doesn't need VIT or resistances.
FYI all this info I acquired from reading the forums and other sites, I can't take credit for it myself at all! Hopefully it is helpful.
Slow time elemental damage is based on the highest elemental damage you have to proc the Tals meteor. From my experience if you have an equal amount of arcane and fire, your slow time will be arcane. Not sure how this goes with equal amounts of cold and fire. You'll have to test it out.
A couple of things about your current build. You are running a DelRasha hybrid. But you don't have any skills that help to pump out more Slow time bubbles. That's the point of it. Get as much out as you can and surround yourself for protection as well as damage. You don't take advantage at all with the Del 2 set bonus and getting as much cooldown as you can to get out those bubbles so using Electrocute is not good. Magic Missle - Glacial Spike is a typical generator that DelRasha builds use. You could also use Shock Pulse - Piercing Orb. But remember to pick one with a particular element that you don't already have as a skill for the Tal Rasha bonus.
If you haven't seen rebjorn's build, you should take a look. He has so many variations on the hybrid build and you don't need a specific weapon for it. He's got a ton of videos as well. http://www.diablofans.com/builds/54387-delrasha-gr50-4pc-delseres-6pc-tal-rashas If you like using Hydra he has a version with the Hydra build but uses a Serpent Sparker, but you could still make use if it but might cap you off at a certain GR level. Watch his videos on how to play it. He's actually very offensive with his bubbles. Not just surrounding himself for protection but seeking packs.
As for survivability, you really need Energy Armor - Force Armor even with Unity. Ice Armor - Crystalize is really only good with the Halo or Arlyse ring.
As for items, a better RROG with crit stats. If you have another pair of gloves, that resource cost reduction is kind of a wasted stat because you aren't spamming a ton of arcane spenders. If you have gloves with Int, Vit, CC, and CD you will want to change that Vit in your amulet to CC. Or if you have gloves with Int, CC, CD, and CDR you can keep Vit in your amulet.
For gems, typically Taeguk is used when you spam a lot of spenders to keep the Taeguk stacks up. The hybrid guide above will explain which gems that are typically used. I have used Bane of the Trapped, Zei, and Toxin.
I am still looking for better weapons and rolls on gear. I have not had a lot of lucking getting a good roll on my RROG (8 trash drops and counting) I have a bad WoH and an even worse Furnace. I am fairly new to the game so I have a lot of trash drops to get through before I find a Diamond in the rough. Waiting on the gloves, but figured CHD was more important. I have some Tal Rash, but the stats are similar.
I tried a couple of rebjorn's builds, but having issues adjusting to the play style. I dont see the duplicate's time warp stacking dots. I didnt get a chance to grift with it, tried to get a new RROG (two disappointments). I switched out force armor, but went back to hydra and drop the duplicates. I dont really like the black hole, i dont have enough cd reduction yet to pull it off. I might have to just be happy with 41 until I can get a couple more cdr pieces with better rolls, or some more paragon to beef up my defense and resist all. I was able to upgrade my last major gem last night so i have spare gems to rework my rings. This weekend I'll start working on the toxin gem.
Any suggestions on how to get a couple more of the item that adds gem slots to weapons or is it just rng?
I haven't reached over grift 41 on my (seasonal) wizard either, so don't feel too bad! [link to my wiz]. I'm doing a hybrid build as well, but I'm including the seasonal bracers Ranslor's Folly which I really like for the CC, it's better than Black Hole but it doesn't work on elites, so I'm using both just for fun I started with the same hybrid build from rebjorn but dropped the duplicates and added energy twister, but this was for T6 speed farming and wouldn't be great in greater rifts. I don't even have the option of using Unity on my seasonal character right now (only one Unity, no Templar relic). I don't really have a great weapon yet either.
I noticed that your Templar is wearing a nearly perfect Unity, you could roll the INT off of that into a socket so you'll have CHC, CHD, elite dmg, and a socket. I expect you'll gain more DPS but you'll loose some toughness from the INT and physical resist.
Are you sure you have a fire spell ? Unless I missed sthg, you don't, so you never reach the 4th TR stack. And your fire% affix on your bracers is useless
The fire %dmg on the bracers is making Slow Time proc the fire damage stack, so this isn't an issue.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Cataclysim-1722/hero/62579074
I am having trouble getting past lvl 41 and above grifts. I cant tell if my paragons are set wrong, or if my build needs tweaking.
Slow time, blizzard, electrocute, hydra, teleport, blizzard, more slow time.
I have zero luck finding a game changing weapon, wondering if this is my problem or if my build is weak.
Any suggestions?
Hi,
It depends on what your issue is, are you dying too much in high grifts or is your damage too low and you are failing to clear in time?
If you need more survivability, using Energy Armor - Force Armor gives great damage reduction.
You could try using Shock Pulse - Piercing Orb instead of electrocute because the orbs hit a large number of mobs and spread damage through Elemental Exposure, etc. to more enemies. Thus, the +dmg to electrocute on your belt and pants could be changed to something else, like %life or Armor if you need toughness, I'm not sure how good the plus spell damage is on those armor pieces because your primary spells aren't contributing a lot to your overall damage, afaik.
Black Hole is good to use if you need some crowd control, as it groups up the mobs... although you are already getting some CC from Blizzard.
Also note that Slow Time will give you a stack of Cold Damage from Elemental Exposure... I don't know why it's cold because the tool tip says it's an arcane spell, but I've tested it and it seems to be cold.
Boosting your Attack Speed should give more damage output from Hydra, and of course finding a Serpent Sparker would be great, but I haven't found a good one either myself.
Getting your Molten Wildebeest gem to lvl 25 will also help your survivability.
Also, check out some of the Wizard guides on this site, like the Delrasha one.
Anyway, good luck and have fun!
My biggest problem is survivability. I am hitting decent dmg numbers, on par with most others. I have huge issues with elite mobs.
I will try to drop the electrocute dmg and roll for life or armor. Hopefully that will do the trick until i can get into the 500 paragon level.
I thought slow time stacks fire damage, it's procing the fire meteor off the tal rasha set. I have to use teleport for the arcane meteor.
Still working on my gems, got a little lost and started putting points into the wrong ones. Still trying to decide on which ones i should be using. I might switch Enforcer for Teguk while i wait for a SS.
Then I think Force Armor will serve you well, it seems to be a "go-to" for damage reduction. You can also roll reduced elite damage on the chest, but then you sacrifice other more valuable stats like hydra dmg. Additional armor may help, but you probably wouldn't want to sacrifice a good damage stat in order to get armor. However, armor should be more valuable on INT classes though because they have high resistances from their high intelligence numbers, while conversely STR/DEX classes have high armor and benefit from all resist.
I must be wrong about Slow Time damage... I found a post on reddit that states it uses your highest % elemental damage type, so in your case you have % fire damage while I had % cold damage. That's pretty interesting and good to know!
While it's hard to get "perfect" gear, you can be on the lookout for useful secondary stats like reduced melee or ranged damage, which can roll as secondaries from 6% to 7% on certain slots (some elite affix damage types count as either melee or ranged), and also secondary resistances (FYI in case you don't know, if your piece has All Resist it cannot roll a secondary single resist).
Something I've learned with wizards (and demon hunters for that matter) is in higher greater rifts, you basically have to avoid incoming damage as much as possible because you cannot get your toughness high enough to absorb all the damage. This requires learning how to dance around the screen so you don't get hit by anything. The "glass cannon" metaphor is very appropriate
You can also gear your Templar to be more helpful. He doesn't do a lot of damage but you can use him for CC. There's guides for this on the forums here, but essentially you can give him a weapon that has a useful stun, slow, or freeze effect and then stack attack speed so it proc's often. It doesn't matter if they are ancient since those stats are not affected by being ancient. Eun Jang Do freezes when the mobs HP is below ~20% which is good for rift guardians. Thunderfury has a reduced movement speed proc. Azurewrath has a chance to freeze the target. For a shield, the Freeze-of-deflection is commonly used since it has a chance to freeze the mob on block. You can roll % block chance bonus on the shield and on the Templar Relic. You could use the ring Justice Lantern for additional % block, but more commonly you see Wyrdward used in combination with a weapon with a Lightning damage roll on it (the main damage range should be lightning) to proc the stun effect. For the amulet, you can use Dovu-energy-trap to increase the stun duration from Wyrdward, or The-ess-of-johan for some CC. The main stats that matter will be % attack speed and % block, as well as the lightning damage weapon. Cooldown reduction is also good so the Templar can use more abilities. Damage stats like CHC and CHD don't really matter on the Templar since his damage is so minimal compared to your own, and he doesn't need VIT or resistances.
FYI all this info I acquired from reading the forums and other sites, I can't take credit for it myself at all! Hopefully it is helpful.
Slow time elemental damage is based on the highest elemental damage you have to proc the Tals meteor. From my experience if you have an equal amount of arcane and fire, your slow time will be arcane. Not sure how this goes with equal amounts of cold and fire. You'll have to test it out.
A couple of things about your current build. You are running a DelRasha hybrid. But you don't have any skills that help to pump out more Slow time bubbles. That's the point of it. Get as much out as you can and surround yourself for protection as well as damage. You don't take advantage at all with the Del 2 set bonus and getting as much cooldown as you can to get out those bubbles so using Electrocute is not good. Magic Missle - Glacial Spike is a typical generator that DelRasha builds use. You could also use Shock Pulse - Piercing Orb. But remember to pick one with a particular element that you don't already have as a skill for the Tal Rasha bonus.
If you haven't seen rebjorn's build, you should take a look. He has so many variations on the hybrid build and you don't need a specific weapon for it. He's got a ton of videos as well. http://www.diablofans.com/builds/54387-delrasha-gr50-4pc-delseres-6pc-tal-rashas If you like using Hydra he has a version with the Hydra build but uses a Serpent Sparker, but you could still make use if it but might cap you off at a certain GR level. Watch his videos on how to play it. He's actually very offensive with his bubbles. Not just surrounding himself for protection but seeking packs.
As for survivability, you really need Energy Armor - Force Armor even with Unity. Ice Armor - Crystalize is really only good with the Halo or Arlyse ring.
As for items, a better RROG with crit stats. If you have another pair of gloves, that resource cost reduction is kind of a wasted stat because you aren't spamming a ton of arcane spenders. If you have gloves with Int, Vit, CC, and CD you will want to change that Vit in your amulet to CC. Or if you have gloves with Int, CC, CD, and CDR you can keep Vit in your amulet.
For gems, typically Taeguk is used when you spam a lot of spenders to keep the Taeguk stacks up. The hybrid guide above will explain which gems that are typically used. I have used Bane of the Trapped, Zei, and Toxin.
I am still looking for better weapons and rolls on gear. I have not had a lot of lucking getting a good roll on my RROG (8 trash drops and counting) I have a bad WoH and an even worse Furnace. I am fairly new to the game so I have a lot of trash drops to get through before I find a Diamond in the rough. Waiting on the gloves, but figured CHD was more important. I have some Tal Rash, but the stats are similar.
I tried a couple of rebjorn's builds, but having issues adjusting to the play style. I dont see the duplicate's time warp stacking dots. I didnt get a chance to grift with it, tried to get a new RROG (two disappointments). I switched out force armor, but went back to hydra and drop the duplicates. I dont really like the black hole, i dont have enough cd reduction yet to pull it off. I might have to just be happy with 41 until I can get a couple more cdr pieces with better rolls, or some more paragon to beef up my defense and resist all. I was able to upgrade my last major gem last night so i have spare gems to rework my rings. This weekend I'll start working on the toxin gem.
Any suggestions on how to get a couple more of the item that adds gem slots to weapons or is it just rng?
I haven't reached over grift 41 on my (seasonal) wizard either, so don't feel too bad! [link to my wiz]. I'm doing a hybrid build as well, but I'm including the seasonal bracers Ranslor's Folly which I really like for the CC, it's better than Black Hole but it doesn't work on elites, so I'm using both just for fun I started with the same hybrid build from rebjorn but dropped the duplicates and added energy twister, but this was for T6 speed farming and wouldn't be great in greater rifts. I don't even have the option of using Unity on my seasonal character right now (only one Unity, no Templar relic). I don't really have a great weapon yet either.
I noticed that your Templar is wearing a nearly perfect Unity, you could roll the INT off of that into a socket so you'll have CHC, CHD, elite dmg, and a socket. I expect you'll gain more DPS but you'll loose some toughness from the INT and physical resist.
The fire %dmg on the bracers is making Slow Time proc the fire damage stack, so this isn't an issue.