After getting to Inferno finally and messing around a little bit I have all but decided there is no point in trying to take ANY damage in Inferno. With my old Hell gear I was getting killed in 2-3 shots on average, so upgrading my resistances and armor and stacking defensive abilities would end up with me dying in...what...4-5 hits?
In my opinion the trade off of getting more defense far outweights the benefit of higher DPS, which is how I landed on a Decoy based build. Rather than TAKE hits and try not to die, I would prefer to never get hit in the first place.
Primary: Magic Missile - Penetrating Blast
Secondary: Arcane Orb - Arcane Nova
Action Bar 1: Mirror Image - Duplicates
Action Bar 2: Teleport - Fracture
Action Bar 3: Hydra - Venom Hydra
Action Bar 4: Magic Weapon - Force Weapon
Passives: Evocation, Illusionist, Glass Cannon
My equipment is quite bad, and consists of mostly +Int, +Vit, and +%Crit stats. Not sure where to go with this.
Right now I am using this build effectively in Act 1 Inferno. My gear is rather terrible though and I am wondering if others are using this effectively in Act 2 and beyond, and what types of gear they are using. Is it worth going for Dexterity over Vitality to rely on Dodging?
Anyway, I'm curious who else is using a Decoy build like this and their thoughts on it. Watch my video below to see a longer explanation, as well as the build in action in Act 1.
After getting to Inferno finally and messing around a little bit I have all but decided there is no point in trying to take ANY damage in Inferno. With my old Hell gear I was getting killed in 2-3 shots on average, so upgrading my resistances and armor and stacking defensive abilities would end up with me dying in...what...4-5 hits?
In my opinion the trade off of getting more defense far outweights the benefit of higher DPS, which is how I landed on a Decoy based build. Rather than TAKE hits and try not to die, I would prefer to never get hit in the first place.
Primary: Magic Missile - Penetrating Blast
Secondary: Arcane Orb - Arcane Nova
Action Bar 1: Mirror Image - Duplicates
Action Bar 2: Teleport - Fracture
Action Bar 3: Hydra - Venom Hydra
Action Bar 4: Magic Weapon - Force Weapon
Passives: Evocation, Illusionist, Glass Cannon
My equipment is quite bad, and consists of mostly +Int, +Vit, and +%Crit stats. Not sure where to go with this.
Right now I am using this build effectively in Act 1 Inferno. My gear is rather terrible though and I am wondering if others are using this effectively in Act 2 and beyond, and what types of gear they are using. Is it worth going for Dexterity over Vitality to rely on Dodging?
Anyway, I'm curious who else is using a Decoy build like this and their thoughts on it. Watch my video below to see a longer explanation, as well as the build in action in Act 1.
Works ok in act II, steam rolls act I, but thinking of swapping out hydra for teleport fracture and removing astral presence for illusionist, hydra i find isn't working well enough as everything in act 2 is way faster than normal and hydra gets no chance to lay down damage unless it's a slow moving boss. I'd rather take less hits thanks to teleport and fracture, might give me a fighting chance vs fast mobs with jailer and waller
The problem is that you will be one-shot in Act 2 without Energy Armor (and either Prismatic or Force). My current build is similar though.
Hydra - Venom Hydra (OR Hydra - Arcane Hydra)
Blizzard - Snowbound (OR Arcane Orb - Tap the Source)
Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor (use Force Armor when you are regularly taking hits over 1/3 of your HP)
Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell
Mirror Image - Duplicates
Teleport - Wormhole (you will need this versus Fast packs usually instead of Fracture)
I'm right before Belial in Act 2 Inferno. I'm toying around between the two specs (Hydra/Blizzard vs Temporal Flux) and probably will switch to Force Armor now since things are doing over 1/3 of my HP quite often now.
The Arcane Orb-based build can do absurdly more damage, but the Hydra/Blizzard build can kite so much better that it is hard to pick between the two.
The problem is that you will be one-shot in Act 2 without Energy Armor (and either Prismatic or Force). My current build is similar though.
Hydra - Venom Hydra (OR Hydra - Arcane Hydra)
Blizzard - Snowbound (OR Arcane Orb - Tap the Source)
Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor (use Force Armor when you are regularly taking hits over 1/3 of your HP)
Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell
Mirror Image - Duplicates
Teleport - Wormhole (you will need this versus Fast packs usually instead of Fracture)
I'm right before Belial in Act 2 Inferno. I'm toying around between the two specs (Hydra/Blizzard vs Temporal Flux) and probably will switch to Force Armor now since things are doing over 1/3 of my HP quite often now.
The Arcane Orb-based build can do absurdly more damage, but the Hydra/Blizzard build can kite so much better that it is hard to pick between the two.
Interesting. I had heard of people using Blizzard but didn't see how it worked, but that makes sense.
What kinds of gear are you stacking? I'm assuming +Int....do you still try for +Vit? What about resistanceS?
I have to say, this is a pretty creative build and I'm excited to try it out when I get home from work! I'll be making a few changes though. I feel that Evocation doesn't help in the slightest when paired with Illusionist because in Inferno, every hit wether from monster or champion will likely do more than 15% damage, meaning the reduction in cooldown time is pointless because your cooldowns are always available when you need them. I haven't decided wether I'll switch it out for Astral Presence or Blur, depending on wether things still hit me for more than 15% with Blur active or not, so I'll have to experiment with these two to see which one I like most over Evocation.
Also, with any build involving kiting + Magic Missile, Seeker is an amazing rune! It works around corrners and requires no accuracy when running for your life, I think I'll definitely be using Seeker as the rune for Magic Missile.
And finally, Venom Weapon works amazingly well with Venom Hydra. The dots from Venom Magic Weapon stack very quickly when using Venom Hydra, and stack ON TOP of the stacking damage from the Venom Hydra's poison pools. The two pair extremely well, and I'd suggest trying it out if you havn't, it helps a ton.
As a side note, with this build you will still absolutly have to stack vitality. Though you can do it in a more controlled fasion than just making it a primary stat, beceause as long as you arent getting one shot, you can get away. You want your vitality to allow for you to take, on averate, two to three hits from champion packs, this will allow the first hit to reset your cooldowns, allowing you to teleport then mirror image and DPS again.
How do you survive against wallers and jailers? I've tried to get away with not using teleport but I seem to insta-die without it.
I find wallers and jailers are no problem, UNLESS, they are also fast enchanted. If you kite correctly and kite close to the walls and map obstruction boundaries, the walls always run somewhat perpendicular to the map, 90% of the time you just walk out of them, when you do get stuck i pop diamond skin and again try to walk out, 99% of the time waller is no problem.
Jailer, different story but, if you are far enough away and using the map obstructions again, they jail you, you push as much DPS at them as possible and wait for it to run out, if you are kiting correctly by the time they reach you, you are out of the jail, if they do catch up with you, pop DS spam spam spam with orb, pray DS holds. Jailing again, is 90% mitigated by your gameplay, keep your distance keep moving.
If they are fast and you don't have teleport, you are gone, my build can't do anything vs fast champion packs in act II, they just hit to hard for me to live long enough to pump out enough DPS to make it worth the deaths, again kite them somewhere useless and leave em alone when you respawn, and then watch your templar run over to them and point to where you are trying to hide.
This is actually the only build I can come up with (the general idea: personally use disintegrate and blizzard, hate signature spells, hate arcane orb) and the biggest problem is quite simple.
Mirror images isn't a guarantee in any way to avoid damage. Its completely luck based. The enemies sometimes ALL say "oooh, shiny mirrors, attack them!".
Or, you use mirror image, get launched toward enemies (or not), and they attack you first, I'm guessing killing you in Inferno.
As far as I'm concerned, this makes my survival semi-random and while its mostly in your favor, random slip up of the rule kills you no questions asked.
I'd rather use this than Force Armor and eternal kiting, but whatever.
I have to say, this is a pretty creative build and I'm excited to try it out when I get home from work! I'll be making a few changes though. I feel that Evocation doesn't help in the slightest when paired with Illusionist because in Inferno, every hit wether from monster or champion will likely do more than 15% damage, meaning the reduction in cooldown time is pointless because your cooldowns are always available when you need them. I haven't decided wether I'll switch it out for Astral Presence or Blur, depending on wether things still hit me for more than 15% with Blur active or not, so I'll have to experiment with these two to see which one I like most over Evocation.
Also, with any build involving kiting + Magic Missile, Seeker is an amazing rune! It works around corrners and requires no accuracy when running for your life, I think I'll definitely be using Seeker as the rune for Magic Missile.
And finally, Venom Weapon works amazingly well with Venom Hydra. The dots from Venom Magic Weapon stack very quickly when using Venom Hydra, and stack ON TOP of the stacking damage from the Venom Hydra's poison pools. The two pair extremely well, and I'd suggest trying it out if you havn't, it helps a ton.
As a side note, with this build you will still absolutly have to stack vitality. Though you can do it in a more controlled fasion than just making it a primary stat, beceause as long as you arent getting one shot, you can get away. You want your vitality to allow for you to take, on averate, two to three hits from champion packs, this will allow the first hit to reset your cooldowns, allowing you to teleport then mirror image and DPS again.
Really good point about Evocation...I'm going to try swapping it out with Astral Presence and see if it makes a difference. I'll also give Seeker a try. I've actually NEVER used that skill before but I've seen it pop up in other people's builds, so it's time to experiment I like that it still has a damage bonus from the base damage.
This is actually the only build I can come up with (the general idea: personally use disintegrate and blizzard, hate signature spells, hate arcane orb) and the biggest problem is quite simple.
Mirror images isn't a guarantee in any way to avoid damage. Its completely luck based. The enemies sometimes ALL say "oooh, shiny mirrors, attack them!".
Or, you use mirror image, get launched toward enemies (or not), and they attack you first, I'm guessing killing you in Inferno.
As far as I'm concerned, this makes my survival semi-random and while its mostly in your favor, random slip up of the rule kills you no questions asked.
I'd rather use this than Force Armor and eternal kiting, but whatever.
It's funny that you think that Force Armor prevents you from having to kite, you're not in Inferno yet are you? If you're a Wizard, you kite. Period. All Force Armor does is prevent you from being 1 shot (to a certain degree) and instead makes you get 3 shot.
The worst thing about this build is that you can't rely on images - sometimes mobs will hit them, sometimes 1-2 will still go after you. In A1 that's perfectly fine, because A1 is a walk in the park. A2 is a whole different story.
And as he clearly states, monsters go for the closest enemy;
I'll wait for a video of somebody using this build in Inferno A2 where shit drops right on top of your head, so you can't hide behind your copies effectively (IMO), hence you need DS or FA or both to survive.
I'm currently using Mirror Image and Teleport in combination with the more traditional kiting Blizzard/Venom Hydra with great success in Act 3 Inferno. Here is my full build:
I was previously using Diamond Skin and Force Weapon in place of the decoy skills, however Diamond Skin simply begins to become almost worthless in the later Inferno acts. Since it doesn't scale, the 21k damage absorption seemed almost insignificant, especially once I got to act 3.
Even though I had to give up some dps with force weapon, I am finding it is much easier to contend with Act 3 mobs including all champion/elite types I have run across. The beauty of using the decoy skills is that not only do they act to diffuse incoming damage when monsters have become too close, they also give me a few seconds to turn and blast some good dps when kiting the champions/elites.
I'm about halfway through act 3 now and the only champion set that I was forced to kite to a corner and pass up was a set of those annoying rippers with an illusionist affix. When they multiplied, there were simply too many of them and they were too fast and did too much damage at once to kite. Other than that, I have found all the other types which used to give me difficulty (combos of waller, jailer, vortex, fast) I can now kite fairly easily. I don't even have the greatest gear (only 24k dps and 37k health), but I am more or less coasting through act 3 and loving these skills.
The Signature spell and secondary damaging spell are circled around casting non stop for high damage.
Teleport with Fracture to get away.
DS - MW - EA trinity for default.
Glass cannon to complement damage on signature spell and secondary spell.
Galvanazing ward to complement with Energy armor for higher survibability and life regen.
Critical Mass to complement Teleport with fracture. Since Signature Spell and Secondary Spell are supposed to be casted a lot the chances of criting are high.
Other options for passives are: Astral Pressence for more resources. Illusionist for narrow escapes. Prodigy for even more resources
Anyway, I'm definitively gonna try this when I get back home from work!
Well this is quite funny. I had made a build around Images and Fracture before D3 came out and a lot of people said Mirror Images will be useless because they'll get one shot.
What I think they missed is that the images have a % of your own health, so they scale, and if they're getting one shot, then you're not.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
And may the odds be ever in your favour. Emmo#2406
Well this is quite funny. I had made a build around Images and Fracture before D3 came out and a lot of people said Mirror Images will be useless because they'll get one shot.
What I think they missed is that the images have a % of your own health, so they scale, and if they're getting one shot, then you're not.
Exactly, and I don't think any of us were expecting that the further we get in Inferno the LESS Vitality actually matters! Good theorycrafting
I liked your reasoning behind the build. Being a fresh 60 and poorly geared, I liked the idea of just completely avoiding damage and ended up trying your build last night, with limited success. I tweaked your build a bit as the night progressed, but not much since it was a solid layout. To give you an idea of what gear I was using to start the night with this build I had roughly 30k hp, 50% dmg reduction from armor, ~100-200 res, 18k dps.
Elites and Champs felt pretty straight forward, as you show in your video. However as I got later into A1, I kept having issues with various affixes on elite packs and I kept dying to them as a result. Mostly anything with Teleport/Fast/Invincible Minions affix would 1-2 shot me and it wasn't like I couldn't survive a single hit by just teleporting away myself, it was the fact I couldn't recover fast enough before it would happen again.
With the addition of EA I lost a bit of damage from Magic Weapon, but it was offset by not getting 2 shot anymore (yay 3 shot). The addition of Temporal Flux also made things easier to kite, especially after I changed Venom Hydra to Arcane Hydra. I coupled this with finding/buying more hp regen gear. The end result was aprox 15k dps, 26k hp same res/armor but now I had 1200 hp/s (self buffed). Having the extra HP/S was enough to keep me in most fights for longer and gave me *a lot* more breathing room. All in all a very successful build for me, as I was able to down the butcher the same night I entered Inferno.
I'm currently using Mirror Image and Teleport in combination with the more traditional kiting Blizzard/Venom Hydra with great success in Act 3 Inferno. Here is my full build:
I was previously using Diamond Skin and Force Weapon in place of the decoy skills, however Diamond Skin simply begins to become almost worthless in the later Inferno acts. Since it doesn't scale, the 21k damage absorption seemed almost insignificant, especially once I got to act 3.
Even though I had to give up some dps with force weapon, I am finding it is much easier to contend with Act 3 mobs including all champion/elite types I have run across. The beauty of using the decoy skills is that not only do they act to diffuse incoming damage when monsters have become too close, they also give me a few seconds to turn and blast some good dps when kiting the champions/elites.
I'm about halfway through act 3 now and the only champion set that I was forced to kite to a corner and pass up was a set of those annoying rippers with an illusionist affix. When they multiplied, there were simply too many of them and they were too fast and did too much damage at once to kite. Other than that, I have found all the other types which used to give me difficulty (combos of waller, jailer, vortex, fast) I can now kite fairly easily. I don't even have the greatest gear (only 24k dps and 37k health), but I am more or less coasting through act 3 and loving these skills.
I'm only in Act III Hell, but this is the best time to learn kiting, and it has been working very well. Even though I like builds with Arcane Orb, the increased damage isn't worth it when there are a ton of mobs coming from multiple directions. I quickly learned that kiting isn't as effective with Arcane Orb + Temporal Flux because it's not as spammable as Blizzard + Snowbound. The AoE slow of Blizzard + Snowbound makes kiting a snap. The slow effect lasts long enough that Mirror Images and/or Teleport are usually available when needed.
I imagine I'll ditch Magic Weapon for Shock Pulse / Piercing Orb or some variation of Magic Missile when I raise my damage number significantly, like your build that I quoted above. At the moment, I have about 8800-9000+ damage, depending on whether I use Glass Cannon in place of Blur. For now, though, Blizzard + Venom Hydra gets the job done slow and steady with the champ packs. I also have a decent 750-ish dps wand waiting for me as soon as I hit L60. I'm currently nearing L59 with a ~350 dps axe.
The only place I've found mirror images really effective is on Diablo to remove debuffs. In other areas, teleport + wormhole is usually all I need elsewhere.
The only place I've found mirror images really effective is on Diablo to remove debuffs. In other areas, teleport + wormhole is usually all I need elsewhere.
I just learned this. I watched a vid on Youtube of someone using Familiar/Sparkflint in place of Mirror images. He used Teleport/Wormhole/Illusionist to get out of trouble very effectively. I plan to try the same.
In my opinion the trade off of getting more defense far outweights the benefit of higher DPS, which is how I landed on a Decoy based build. Rather than TAKE hits and try not to die, I would prefer to never get hit in the first place.
Here is my skill setup:
http://us.battle.net...PQRS!bdY!abZYbZ
Primary: Magic Missile - Penetrating Blast
Secondary: Arcane Orb - Arcane Nova
Action Bar 1: Mirror Image - Duplicates
Action Bar 2: Teleport - Fracture
Action Bar 3: Hydra - Venom Hydra
Action Bar 4: Magic Weapon - Force Weapon
Passives: Evocation, Illusionist, Glass Cannon
My equipment is quite bad, and consists of mostly +Int, +Vit, and +%Crit stats. Not sure where to go with this.
Right now I am using this build effectively in Act 1 Inferno. My gear is rather terrible though and I am wondering if others are using this effectively in Act 2 and beyond, and what types of gear they are using. Is it worth going for Dexterity over Vitality to rely on Dodging?
Anyway, I'm curious who else is using a Decoy build like this and their thoughts on it. Watch my video below to see a longer explanation, as well as the build in action in Act 1.
Current build
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#acRXSO!Xfc!YYbaZY
Works ok in act II, steam rolls act I, but thinking of swapping out hydra for teleport fracture and removing astral presence for illusionist, hydra i find isn't working well enough as everything in act 2 is way faster than normal and hydra gets no chance to lay down damage unless it's a slow moving boss. I'd rather take less hits thanks to teleport and fracture, might give me a fighting chance vs fast mobs with jailer and waller
Hydra - Venom Hydra (OR Hydra - Arcane Hydra)
Blizzard - Snowbound (OR Arcane Orb - Tap the Source)
Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor (use Force Armor when you are regularly taking hits over 1/3 of your HP)
Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell
Mirror Image - Duplicates
Teleport - Wormhole (you will need this versus Fast packs usually instead of Fracture)
Astral Presence, Illusionist, Glass Cannon (OR Temporal Flux)
I'm right before Belial in Act 2 Inferno. I'm toying around between the two specs (Hydra/Blizzard vs Temporal Flux) and probably will switch to Force Armor now since things are doing over 1/3 of my HP quite often now.
The Arcane Orb-based build can do absurdly more damage, but the Hydra/Blizzard build can kite so much better that it is hard to pick between the two.
Interesting. I had heard of people using Blizzard but didn't see how it worked, but that makes sense.
What kinds of gear are you stacking? I'm assuming +Int....do you still try for +Vit? What about resistanceS?
Also, with any build involving kiting + Magic Missile, Seeker is an amazing rune! It works around corrners and requires no accuracy when running for your life, I think I'll definitely be using Seeker as the rune for Magic Missile.
And finally, Venom Weapon works amazingly well with Venom Hydra. The dots from Venom Magic Weapon stack very quickly when using Venom Hydra, and stack ON TOP of the stacking damage from the Venom Hydra's poison pools. The two pair extremely well, and I'd suggest trying it out if you havn't, it helps a ton.
As a side note, with this build you will still absolutly have to stack vitality. Though you can do it in a more controlled fasion than just making it a primary stat, beceause as long as you arent getting one shot, you can get away. You want your vitality to allow for you to take, on averate, two to three hits from champion packs, this will allow the first hit to reset your cooldowns, allowing you to teleport then mirror image and DPS again.
I find wallers and jailers are no problem, UNLESS, they are also fast enchanted. If you kite correctly and kite close to the walls and map obstruction boundaries, the walls always run somewhat perpendicular to the map, 90% of the time you just walk out of them, when you do get stuck i pop diamond skin and again try to walk out, 99% of the time waller is no problem.
Jailer, different story but, if you are far enough away and using the map obstructions again, they jail you, you push as much DPS at them as possible and wait for it to run out, if you are kiting correctly by the time they reach you, you are out of the jail, if they do catch up with you, pop DS spam spam spam with orb, pray DS holds. Jailing again, is 90% mitigated by your gameplay, keep your distance keep moving.
If they are fast and you don't have teleport, you are gone, my build can't do anything vs fast champion packs in act II, they just hit to hard for me to live long enough to pump out enough DPS to make it worth the deaths, again kite them somewhere useless and leave em alone when you respawn, and then watch your templar run over to them and point to where you are trying to hide.
Mirror images isn't a guarantee in any way to avoid damage. Its completely luck based. The enemies sometimes ALL say "oooh, shiny mirrors, attack them!".
Or, you use mirror image, get launched toward enemies (or not), and they attack you first, I'm guessing killing you in Inferno.
As far as I'm concerned, this makes my survival semi-random and while its mostly in your favor, random slip up of the rule kills you no questions asked.
I'd rather use this than Force Armor and eternal kiting, but whatever.
It's funny that you think that Force Armor prevents you from having to kite, you're not in Inferno yet are you? If you're a Wizard, you kite. Period. All Force Armor does is prevent you from being 1 shot (to a certain degree) and instead makes you get 3 shot.
http://us.battle.net...RPQO!XfY!bbbZYY
I was previously using Diamond Skin and Force Weapon in place of the decoy skills, however Diamond Skin simply begins to become almost worthless in the later Inferno acts. Since it doesn't scale, the 21k damage absorption seemed almost insignificant, especially once I got to act 3.
Even though I had to give up some dps with force weapon, I am finding it is much easier to contend with Act 3 mobs including all champion/elite types I have run across. The beauty of using the decoy skills is that not only do they act to diffuse incoming damage when monsters have become too close, they also give me a few seconds to turn and blast some good dps when kiting the champions/elites.
I'm about halfway through act 3 now and the only champion set that I was forced to kite to a corner and pass up was a set of those annoying rippers with an illusionist affix. When they multiplied, there were simply too many of them and they were too fast and did too much damage at once to kite. Other than that, I have found all the other types which used to give me difficulty (combos of waller, jailer, vortex, fast) I can now kite fairly easily. I don't even have the greatest gear (only 24k dps and 37k health), but I am more or less coasting through act 3 and loving these skills.
This is the build I got from reading your comments:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#acQXSO!Yfg!YYYaZY
The Signature spell and secondary damaging spell are circled around casting non stop for high damage.
Teleport with Fracture to get away.
DS - MW - EA trinity for default.
Glass cannon to complement damage on signature spell and secondary spell.
Galvanazing ward to complement with Energy armor for higher survibability and life regen.
Critical Mass to complement Teleport with fracture. Since Signature Spell and Secondary Spell are supposed to be casted a lot the chances of criting are high.
Other options for passives are: Astral Pressence for more resources. Illusionist for narrow escapes. Prodigy for even more resources
Anyway, I'm definitively gonna try this when I get back home from work!
What I think they missed is that the images have a % of your own health, so they scale, and if they're getting one shot, then you're not.
And may the odds be ever in your favour.
Emmo#2406
I liked your reasoning behind the build. Being a fresh 60 and poorly geared, I liked the idea of just completely avoiding damage and ended up trying your build last night, with limited success. I tweaked your build a bit as the night progressed, but not much since it was a solid layout. To give you an idea of what gear I was using to start the night with this build I had roughly 30k hp, 50% dmg reduction from armor, ~100-200 res, 18k dps.
Elites and Champs felt pretty straight forward, as you show in your video. However as I got later into A1, I kept having issues with various affixes on elite packs and I kept dying to them as a result. Mostly anything with Teleport/Fast/Invincible Minions affix would 1-2 shot me and it wasn't like I couldn't survive a single hit by just teleporting away myself, it was the fact I couldn't recover fast enough before it would happen again.
I then changed the build to this: http://us.battle.net...POQR!fUd!cYZYYa
With the addition of EA I lost a bit of damage from Magic Weapon, but it was offset by not getting 2 shot anymore (yay 3 shot). The addition of Temporal Flux also made things easier to kite, especially after I changed Venom Hydra to Arcane Hydra. I coupled this with finding/buying more hp regen gear. The end result was aprox 15k dps, 26k hp same res/armor but now I had 1200 hp/s (self buffed). Having the extra HP/S was enough to keep me in most fights for longer and gave me *a lot* more breathing room. All in all a very successful build for me, as I was able to down the butcher the same night I entered Inferno.
Cheers and thanks for posting!
I'm also having more success with a similar build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#lRPQOS!aXd!bbZYYZ
I'm only in Act III Hell, but this is the best time to learn kiting, and it has been working very well. Even though I like builds with Arcane Orb, the increased damage isn't worth it when there are a ton of mobs coming from multiple directions. I quickly learned that kiting isn't as effective with Arcane Orb + Temporal Flux because it's not as spammable as Blizzard + Snowbound. The AoE slow of Blizzard + Snowbound makes kiting a snap. The slow effect lasts long enough that Mirror Images and/or Teleport are usually available when needed.
I imagine I'll ditch Magic Weapon for Shock Pulse / Piercing Orb or some variation of Magic Missile when I raise my damage number significantly, like your build that I quoted above. At the moment, I have about 8800-9000+ damage, depending on whether I use Glass Cannon in place of Blur. For now, though, Blizzard + Venom Hydra gets the job done slow and steady with the champ packs. I also have a decent 750-ish dps wand waiting for me as soon as I hit L60. I'm currently nearing L59 with a ~350 dps axe.
I just learned this. I watched a vid on Youtube of someone using Familiar/Sparkflint in place of Mirror images. He used Teleport/Wormhole/Illusionist to get out of trouble very effectively. I plan to try the same.