I went out and got an entire set for this and only got to use it a full 1 day before it was nerfed, but I definitely kept my entire last set on the bottom row of my inventory just in case... good move.
Yeah I just got home from work and hopped in game to test it out, I have 4721hp/127vit which is absolute base, none on my gear. 1427 life/sec, I just let some skeletons in act 1 hit me and it is working exactly as it was last night.
nice guide. If you have low life to make the build work ofc, how do you deal with plague/desecrator/fire? on bosses there are also times where u have plague all over the place like belial and that fire from the butcher I suppose would kill you with such lowlife? Im guessing you would have to avoid those at all costs, how do u manage?
There's no plague/desecrator/fire on Belial fight. Those green spots are marks where he'll hit soon. If you have enough regen/life on hit/life leech I think you can stand still and DPS for the whole phase 2.
In the Butcher fight and any other boss fight there's plenty of time to get out of the AOE.
ok than agaisnt belial its better to just stand still, but how about champions/elite packs who have things like jailer/waller and plague/desecrator how do u do against those?
ps:also do u guys think it would be good to use a shield for blocking purposes?(its also cheaper than those orbs)
nice guide. If you have low life to make the build work ofc, how do you deal with plague/desecrator/fire? on bosses there are also times where u have plague all over the place like belial and that fire from the butcher I suppose would kill you with such lowlife? Im guessing you would have to avoid those at all costs, how do u manage?
There's no plague/desecrator/fire on Belial fight. Those green spots are marks where he'll hit soon. If you have enough regen/life on hit/life leech I think you can stand still and DPS for the whole phase 2.
In the Butcher fight and any other boss fight there's plenty of time to get out of the AOE.
ok than agaisnt belial its better to just stand still, but how about champions/elite packs who have things like jailer/waller and plague/desecrator how do u do against those?
Kite them, when jailed cast Diamond Skin. Waller is easy, just hug the walls/doorways and half the time the wall has gaps in it or prevents the monsters from getting to you. The rest of the time cast Diamond Skin until it's gone. Plague is easy to avoid since it appears directly under them. Desecrator gives you a good couple seconds to move before it hurts you. Jailer doesn't typically last long enough to make Desecrator or Frozen a threat. The worst would be you kiting a desecrator pack leaving blobs on the ground behind you. The pack has vortex and sucks you right on top of a desecrator patch. That doesn't happen often, and you can use Diamond Skin the few times it does happen.
Pretty much you should be able to avoid MOST dot effects, and you should be able to predict the ones you can't avoid. If you can predict it, you can Diamond Skin it. It's rare to have two such events within one cooldown of DS.
I think a key thing to keep in perspective with this build is: how good are you at kiting? Because as much as we'd love to believe that you can move mobs away from melee damage, its very hard to make sure that happens while also avoiding projectiles. The key to the success of this is making sure that multiple hits do not come in all at once. The idea that every hit is reduced to 35% life and with no vitality those hits are small is great - but when five hits land, all at once and then five more come in - your regen can't keep up and your dead. I played around with this build and found that more often than not I was dieing to Champions with Fast and or Vortex. They simply hit you too many times, too quickly to mitigate the damage with DS and life regen. Thus more life is needed.
I'm sure though I just suck at kiting or whatever and this build is amazing. When I hear people say "I've cleared all the way to this solo" I wonder how many times the die every five minutes to reach that point.
I like Miasma's build because it essentially uses a knockback to keep mobs away from you and DS to help when Fast and Vortex make that almost impossible. I may give it a try.
Nice guide ^^
I'm currently using lightning orb/hydra/diamondskin/teleport. with force weap and armor of course.
With 35k damage i'm farming a2 fairly easily. I'll give your skill choices a shot in a3 and see how it goes.
Also I hope there are no nerfs in the future, as it's very fun to play.
I haven't seen anything that specifically says how it got nerfed.
Just got home from work, no nerf in sight. Friends have told me it was nerfed for an hour or so, then servers went down and it was back to normal.. so maybe somthig in the works.
do u guys think it works with subpar items in the life regeneration department like lets say u get like 700 life regeneration plus galvanizing ward = 1k life reg total, considering you have no vita at all added.
I'm already hearing reports of this being nerfed, not sure myself because I'm EU it might be smart to wait a little before you buy a set of no-vit gear.
It wasn't nerfed - the topic claiming it got nerfed was posted while the servers were still offline. Somebody who plays another class was probably just mad and wanted to start shit.
Anyway, this build works perfectly fine with as low as 800 life regen if you have 4k HP (0 vit) starting as early as Act 1 Hell (but I'd recommend it more in Act 2 Hell and further). Stack your damage up like crazy - just search the AH for Int and Life Regen pieces for under 20k and buy away.
My Build: Hydra - Venom: This is a very popular offensive skill because Venom Hydra does a boatload of damage to all types of mobs and is easy to use while kiting with a low AP cost. Arcane Orb - Tap the Source: Yet another popular offensive choice. Arcane Orb does ridiculous amounts of AoE damage and the Tap the Source rune makes it so that it is hard to run out of AP when using a slow, high-damage 2hander (which you should be using with this build anyway). Energy Armor - Force Armor: The skill you are basing this build around. It is extremely powerful.
Wave of Force - Impactful Wave: This skill is used purely to buy time in case your Diamond Skin/Teleport is on cooldown. Some people choose to replace this with a third offensive skill to farm faster, but I usually don't (at least in my gear). Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell: Mandatory. This is a core part of almost every single Wizard build and is even MORE powerful with the Force Armor Build. Use this when you are going to take hits, and time the cooldown between this, Wave of Force, and Teleport so that you always have one of the three available to prevent damage Teleport - Fracture: This is your primary escape tool. The Safe Passage and Wormhole runes are acceptable alternatives but the Fracture rune combines Teleport and Mirror Images into a single button of win. Fracture is very nice against the Hulking Phasebeasts and other mobs with Teleport and Vortex affects.
Astral Presence: This is pretty much part of every Wizard build because it is ridiculously good. The only reason you may not need this is if you can Crit enough and have +AP on Crit items which make you never run out of AP. Illusionist: An extremely common passive in Hell and Inferno because most Wizards are going to take either Teleport or Mirror Images (or both in some cases). This is for when you mess up or for packs with double/triple affixes against your teleport (e.g. Vortex + Teleporter + Frozen). Some people replace this with a damage passive (like Glass Cannon once you're in Inferno) or with Critical Mass. Galvanizing Ward: Despite what you may think, this passive is actually fairly bad. If you had a full set of max level life regen gear, this passive would be nearly worthless. The increase in 3 minutes on the armor because "you forget to refresh it sometimes" just means you should learn to refresh it more. It doesn't increase your DPS (unless you want to argue it saves you 6 AP per minute). The only advantage this passive gives is 180ish life regen. That can be found on a single piece of gear and is not an acceptable use of this passive slot compared to something like Glass Cannon (15% DPS vs 180 life regen = lol). That said, I'm not in full level 60 life regen gear and neither are most people, so this is a commonly used passive until you are better geared. Just realize that there will be a point when Galvanzing Ward becomes a waste of a slot.
Other common options (that I don't use in the above build):
Disintegrate
Blizzard
Ray of Frost
Magic Weapon (with +AP on hit rune or with +damage % rune)
Familiar (with +damage % rune)
Frost Nova (with Critical Mass builds)
Mirror Images (I switch to this on certain packs - like Mortar/Teleporter versions of the Act 2 wasps).
Here's my Force Armor build/guide. It fills in some of the holes that this one has, and is an overall more seemless build IMO. Always looking to improve it, so insights and criticisms welcome!
Here's my Force Armor build/guide. It fills in some of the holes that this one has, and is an overall more seemless build IMO. Always looking to improve it, so insights and criticisms welcome!
Ironic because I just finished a mini guide before reading your post. I mentioned Critical Mass builds very briefly in my miniguide and you seem to have taken pretty much the same approach as me except with Critical Mass and a few abilities to help power it up.
I wanted to try a Critical Mass build but didn't feel I have the gear: currently I just have pure +life regen and +int pretty much all over so I have no +crit%. Would a Critical Mass build still work anyway?
I know that I probably in the minority, but I am kind of glad the immortal build was nerfed as a mage. It was kind of play on game mechanics that was inventive for sure, but I would rather use skills vs. modified mechanics. Not saying that this did not require skill and planning, but it would be nice to utilize other builds and make them viable.
I know that I probably in the minority, but I am kind of glad the immortal build was nerfed as a mage. It was kind of play on game mechanics that was inventive for sure, but I would rather use skills vs. modified mechanics. Not saying that this did not require skill and planning, but it would be nice to utilize other builds and make them viable.
I feel the same way. It was out of tune with the rest of the game, and needed to be brought back into line so that it was not the only viable way to play a wizard.
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I haven't seen anything that specifically says how it got nerfed.
With regards to rumours, I wouldn't put any faith in anything less than official patch notes.
ok than agaisnt belial its better to just stand still, but how about champions/elite packs who have things like jailer/waller and plague/desecrator how do u do against those?
ps:also do u guys think it would be good to use a shield for blocking purposes?(its also cheaper than those orbs)
Kite them, when jailed cast Diamond Skin. Waller is easy, just hug the walls/doorways and half the time the wall has gaps in it or prevents the monsters from getting to you. The rest of the time cast Diamond Skin until it's gone. Plague is easy to avoid since it appears directly under them. Desecrator gives you a good couple seconds to move before it hurts you. Jailer doesn't typically last long enough to make Desecrator or Frozen a threat. The worst would be you kiting a desecrator pack leaving blobs on the ground behind you. The pack has vortex and sucks you right on top of a desecrator patch. That doesn't happen often, and you can use Diamond Skin the few times it does happen.
Pretty much you should be able to avoid MOST dot effects, and you should be able to predict the ones you can't avoid. If you can predict it, you can Diamond Skin it. It's rare to have two such events within one cooldown of DS.
I'm sure though I just suck at kiting or whatever and this build is amazing. When I hear people say "I've cleared all the way to this solo" I wonder how many times the die every five minutes to reach that point.
I like Miasma's build because it essentially uses a knockback to keep mobs away from you and DS to help when Fast and Vortex make that almost impossible. I may give it a try.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
I'm currently using lightning orb/hydra/diamondskin/teleport. with force weap and armor of course.
With 35k damage i'm farming a2 fairly easily. I'll give your skill choices a shot in a3 and see how it goes.
Also I hope there are no nerfs in the future, as it's very fun to play.
Just got home from work, no nerf in sight. Friends have told me it was nerfed for an hour or so, then servers went down and it was back to normal.. so maybe somthig in the works.
1. How much life regen do you need to make this effective?
2. Generally, how many items will you need to reach this amount of regen?
To clarify, this means that it's possible to have a much less optimal setup, but still be viable?
I currently have about 13k hp, and about 1000 regen, and don't have the money to optimise everything better at the moment.
I'm currently face-rolling Act I. I'm assuming it just requires more kiting?
It wasn't nerfed - the topic claiming it got nerfed was posted while the servers were still offline. Somebody who plays another class was probably just mad and wanted to start shit.
Anyway, this build works perfectly fine with as low as 800 life regen if you have 4k HP (0 vit) starting as early as Act 1 Hell (but I'd recommend it more in Act 2 Hell and further). Stack your damage up like crazy - just search the AH for Int and Life Regen pieces for under 20k and buy away.
My Build:
Hydra - Venom: This is a very popular offensive skill because Venom Hydra does a boatload of damage to all types of mobs and is easy to use while kiting with a low AP cost.
Arcane Orb - Tap the Source: Yet another popular offensive choice. Arcane Orb does ridiculous amounts of AoE damage and the Tap the Source rune makes it so that it is hard to run out of AP when using a slow, high-damage 2hander (which you should be using with this build anyway).
Energy Armor - Force Armor: The skill you are basing this build around. It is extremely powerful.
Wave of Force - Impactful Wave: This skill is used purely to buy time in case your Diamond Skin/Teleport is on cooldown. Some people choose to replace this with a third offensive skill to farm faster, but I usually don't (at least in my gear).
Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell: Mandatory. This is a core part of almost every single Wizard build and is even MORE powerful with the Force Armor Build. Use this when you are going to take hits, and time the cooldown between this, Wave of Force, and Teleport so that you always have one of the three available to prevent damage
Teleport - Fracture: This is your primary escape tool. The Safe Passage and Wormhole runes are acceptable alternatives but the Fracture rune combines Teleport and Mirror Images into a single button of win. Fracture is very nice against the Hulking Phasebeasts and other mobs with Teleport and Vortex affects.
Astral Presence: This is pretty much part of every Wizard build because it is ridiculously good. The only reason you may not need this is if you can Crit enough and have +AP on Crit items which make you never run out of AP.
Illusionist: An extremely common passive in Hell and Inferno because most Wizards are going to take either Teleport or Mirror Images (or both in some cases). This is for when you mess up or for packs with double/triple affixes against your teleport (e.g. Vortex + Teleporter + Frozen). Some people replace this with a damage passive (like Glass Cannon once you're in Inferno) or with Critical Mass.
Galvanizing Ward: Despite what you may think, this passive is actually fairly bad. If you had a full set of max level life regen gear, this passive would be nearly worthless. The increase in 3 minutes on the armor because "you forget to refresh it sometimes" just means you should learn to refresh it more. It doesn't increase your DPS (unless you want to argue it saves you 6 AP per minute). The only advantage this passive gives is 180ish life regen. That can be found on a single piece of gear and is not an acceptable use of this passive slot compared to something like Glass Cannon (15% DPS vs 180 life regen = lol). That said, I'm not in full level 60 life regen gear and neither are most people, so this is a commonly used passive until you are better geared. Just realize that there will be a point when Galvanzing Ward becomes a waste of a slot.
Other common options (that I don't use in the above build):
Disintegrate
Blizzard
Ray of Frost
Magic Weapon (with +AP on hit rune or with +damage % rune)
Familiar (with +damage % rune)
Frost Nova (with Critical Mass builds)
Mirror Images (I switch to this on certain packs - like Mortar/Teleporter versions of the Act 2 wasps).
Here's my Force Armor build/guide. It fills in some of the holes that this one has, and is an overall more seemless build IMO. Always looking to improve it, so insights and criticisms welcome!
Ironic because I just finished a mini guide before reading your post. I mentioned Critical Mass builds very briefly in my miniguide and you seem to have taken pretty much the same approach as me except with Critical Mass and a few abilities to help power it up.
I wanted to try a Critical Mass build but didn't feel I have the gear: currently I just have pure +life regen and +int pretty much all over so I have no +crit%. Would a Critical Mass build still work anyway?
I feel the same way. It was out of tune with the rest of the game, and needed to be brought back into line so that it was not the only viable way to play a wizard.