Just thought I'd post to share the build I am currently using to farm. I beat inferno a little over a week ago with the standard high IAS (3.25 attacks per second), movement speed (24% with unity and lacunis), 1H+source build with venom hydra, blizzard and piercing orb. Nothing wrong with that build, its very effective, but when they announced the upcoming IAS nerf I thought I would change it up for fun by getting rid of my IAS gear and building differently. Here's what I did and its working very well so I thought others might be interested.
This build may look weak because its sole defensive ability is teleport. However, it does work but its very gear dependent. I dropped all my IAS and stacked up on int, crit chance and crit damage and traded in my 1h+source for a 2h staff (with int and a socket). Now I have about 2140 int, 34% crit, and 205% crit damage.
This means that my obliteration runed arcane orb hits for just about 100k on a normal hit and around 300k on a crit. This is what allows the build to function with the minimal kiting ability that you get from just arcane orb+temporal flux, slow casting speed, and no +movement other than the boots. The reason it works is that a 300k crit will basically 1 shot almost any white mob in the game. A 100k regular hit will 1 shot many of them and 2 shot most. Combined with venom hydra, you basically don't kite white mob packs you just explode them. Trust me when I say this is a lot of fun.
What about champs? Obviously you aren't going to 1 shot those, so how do you deal with them? What I discovered when I tried this build is that being able to unload 300-900k in 3 arcane orbs on a champ mob is a much bigger deal than you might think. It allows you to quickly burst down a single champ, often right at the start of the encounter, which makes the entire fight much easier. Of course you have to kite after that, but you do have teleport and you do have a slow in arcane orb + temporal flux. In addition, I've been going back and forth on venom hydra + arcane hydra and both are very close in power for this build. Venom hydra does more damage obviously, but arcane hydra provides a consistent slow and you get so much damage from arcane orb that the dps loss is acceptable.
This build is 100% viable for endgame... I currently do most of my farming in whimyshire because I just find it the most enjoyable (both due to lack of ranged mobs and the pleasant color scheme, lol), but I've also used it successfully to farm siegebreaker/azmo. It works in act 4 also of course, but why would you go there to farm?
Anyways, point of the thread is not to brag but just to let people know that there is a viable and (to me) fun alternative to the fast attack speed venom hydra/blizzard kiting. Its a lot of fun to just stand there and explode things before they can even reach you rather than running away, and those huge yellow numbers make me smile.
have you tried tap the source? what about celestial to beat invulnerables? I think you could use critical mass with diamond skin for better survivability against rares/champs, what do u think?
Would you mind posting some of your gear for comparison's sake? I have a very similar build I recently switched to. I'm only missing a good weapon and I really want to know what your weapon is like to get crits that high. The highest I've seen with my current build is 120k, and I'm very close to your intel/crit damage. Of course, I'm also using a 1h+source. I didn't think I would gain that much damage per orb by changing to 2h, but if 300k crits are possible then I'll definitely start looking for a 2h weapon. I really prefer the 'bursty' style of this build. Fights are over a lot faster and I have to kite less than the piercing orb/blizz/hydra build I was using.
Sounds fun for sure, I too enjoy seeing big yellow numbers pop up. I'm looking to move towards crit gear. If you were so inclined, would love to see a screen shot of your gear.
arcane orb hits for just about 100k on a normal hit and around 300k on a crit
Tried something like that (although my gear was pretty modest, so my numbers were lower) and switched back to "piercing orb machine gun", since everything with the "Reflect" affix was nearly impossible to kill with such a burst.
This is the build I use, except I use tap the source. one suggestion I have is to use wave of force instead of sparkflint. the knockback is amazing amd it hits like a truck with this build and gear!
Edit: And I use a 0,9 speed 1400 dps 2 hander with a socket. one shotting mobs in whimsyshire inferno is awesome! It feels like revenge for all the one shotting you have recieved;)
Good to know that it can work! I'm an arcane orb fan and that's the kind of playstyle that got me through all of hell and early inferno (act 1 and part of act 2), then I had to switch back to blizzard/hydra.
Currently playing through act 3, I still don't have enough dps to roll with this kind of build : I'm sitting at 40k dps with 27% crit and +115% crit damage, but too low AP and no AP on crit. Using a 1130 dps 2-hander with 270 int, but no +crit damage (and no socket). Also, using temporal flux felt almost useless on most packs.
Using a 2hander is always bad in my opinion, because you lose out on source +1h stats and even damage..
get a 1k dps 1h.. and a 100-300 source thats 1400 dpsish.... also u have ALOT more stats on both items than 1 item ever could provide.
Getting that kind of stuff is waaaaaay more expensive. I bought a 1.1k dps/277int 2-hander for 900k. I don't have the millions of gold required to get a good 1h+source.
Also 2handers are slow, and yes the damage might be high, but what about fast mobs? what about fast champs? what about being overrun with many little mobs? Having slow high damage is bad for those situations, very bad..
Depends. If you're using celestial orb, for instance, it's very nice to have a hard-hitting orb.
also you run out of arcane power FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST veyr fast.. with obliteration rune.... try tap the source instead
Tap the source is great, but I prefer celestial orb. Matter of preference, really. But anyway, with a fast 1-hander, you'll run out of arcane power much faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaster Unless your gear includes high crit/ap on crit.
also, IAS isn't getting nerfed so much you think it is in next patch... only if u got ALOT of it... diminish returns...b ut having 30 % IAS is not gonna change anything next patch.. its still gonna be very good to have.. especially on weapons.
You got a special friend at Blizzard who told you that?
Also having cast more arcane orbs, is better, because your crit chance will go up, so in the long run, im pretty sure firing fast and many times with high crit, is better than firing slow and seldom with a medium crit chance....
Well, since high crit chance is better than medium crit chance, obviously ... the real question is, is firing fast really better than firing slow with the same level of crit.
There seems to be consensus on a few points, regarding that question :
- the higher the IAS, the easier it is to kite (shorter cast animations)
- 1H+source can offer better stats (specifically +crit chance and AP on crit) than 2H
- 1H+source is usually way more expensive to get
- 1H+source and 2H are both viable, with some builds/playstyles favoring one or the other.
Well I don't really agree... I haven't seen 1 instance where I would want to take a 2h over a 1h + source.. other than yes.. cheaper?
I'd like to say I enjoy seeing big yellow numbers, but I don't have enough gear to get really big numbers
but cmon man... its not THAT expensive to get a good 1h and source... and u can just farm shit.. earn millions.... i got great gear... and i did so by just farming a little.. and playing the AH markets smartly... anyway
Well, depends on what you call "farming a little"
I have significant RL time constraints, and I just reached Inferno Siegebreaker. I'll be farming it for a few days before I start progressing again through inferno, hoping to make a bit of money there.
Also, I play on the EU servers and from what I read on here, EU prices seem to be significantly higher than US prices.
And yes.. u run out of arcane power faster with a 1h.... but you also do twice the amount of dmg in a short time than a 2h does.... ergo the fastness of it. Having high ap on crit + maximum arcane power ... solves this problem.
How do you calculate that? If a 1H+source gives 1200 dps (factoring in the source's damage) and a 2H gives 1200 dps, you're doing the same amount of damage in the same time (kiting problems notwithstanding). 2H will deplete your AP much slower for the same damage, while 1H+source, if correctly itemized, will deplete it much faster but also replenish it through +AP on crit.
I think u need celestial against invulnerables to have a chance, and also I dont see how u deal with "reflects damage", although this seems like a fun build, its not as flexible as the hydra/blizzard/piercing orb usual build which can deal with almost any sort of rares/champions...
I took SS's of all my gear and of a 300k crit on an inferno pony at home but forgot to put them up before I went to work, so I can't get them now. I'll try to remember to upload this evening.
To answer a couple of questions:
Tap the source / celestial orb vs obliteration orb -
I am sure both of these are viable choices. Tap the source may even be better than obliterate, but I use obliterate for 2 reasons. First, this build really relies on you just blowing something up. If its white mobs they should die in 1-2 hits. If its a champ pack, the way you win is to unload 3 obliterate orbs into 1 of the champs at max range which will do 300-900k damage. Then you run a bit and do it again, and pretty quickly that one is dead. Tap the source would obviously be better with a 1 hand+source though, but that brings me to the next issue.
1H/source vs 2hand -
If you prefer 1h/source over 2 hand, go for it. I'm sure its great, I'm not going to tell you its bad. But I switched for 2 reasons. First, and probably most importantly for me, I was just bored of using dagger/source after clearing inferno and wanted to try something different.
Second, because of the nature of how sources work, 1h/source dps will scale much higher with attack speed than a 2 hander will. This is because the source is a flat +dmg modifier and stays the same whether you are using a 1.2 speed mace or a 1.5 speed dagger, and therefore adds much more dmg/dps with the dagger. This makes you kind of reliant on attack speed for high dps, and once you have a ton of attack speed you'll want to use piercing orb over arcane orb and now you're back to the piercing orb/blizz/vhydra build.
Beyond that, even though you will get equivalent DPS numbers with 1h+source, you will not get equivalent weapon damage numbers and therefore your arcane orbs won't hit as hard. This makes a lot of difference for this build, because the whole premise of the build is to quickly burst down stuff with very large hits. This does deplete your arcane power, obviously, but you wait for it to regen and then do it again. If thats not your style and you would rather always have arcane power and always be casting something, you are probably better off with 1h+source and piercing orb/blizz/vhydra. That build is great and will stay great, this is just something different.
I think u need celestial against invulnerables to have a chance, and also I dont see how u deal with "reflects damage", although this seems like a fun build, its not as flexible as the hydra/blizzard/piercing orb usual build which can deal with almost any sort of rares/champions...
I've been clearing both reflects damage and invulnerable minions in ponyland, but of course those are 2 of the hardest affixes, along with fast. I actually feel like I can any one of those affixes just fine with this build, but 2 or more of those 3 can be pretty hard.
For invuln. minions I run around until I get a clear shot and then unload arcane orbs into the main guy. Because of the way this build can do so much burst, it is really workable. If they are invuln and fast though then it becomes very difficult becauses the invuln minions will run in front of your orbs a lot.
Reflect damage is fine also, in fact I think its easier than with the other build because what you do is just blow up 1 mob at a time. Then you kite until you can get your life back from pots/health globes (which the guy you just blew up almost certainly dropped) and then you do it again. In you hit all the mobs at once you'll probably die, but as long as you blow up one at a time its fine.
This is basically the strategy with every pack. Its even better for champions than for elites, but it works for both. You blow up one guy and then wait until you can do it again. This really is much more effective than you might think, because especially with champs there is a very big difference between 3 champs and 2 in terms of being able to stay alive. And if you do die then when you res you've actually made progress because there are less mobs in the pack and its therefore much easier to handle, rather than all of the mobs being at half life which doesn't really improve your survival chances at all.
Thanks for taking the time to take the screenshots Morphos. I'm looking forward to seeing the gear screens so I can start searching for similar. There will always be debate of 2h vs. 1h + Oh, and personally each has it's place. For a while I went with a 2h myself because I couldn't afford the 1h combo that could give me more damage.
Your build and gearing for it sounds like a lot fun, who doesn't enjoy blowing things up with big numbers as icing on the cake! I'm definitely going to try and put a gear set together for this build to have fun with it. Honestly, as effective as the orbs, hydra, or blizz combo is, I'm rather bored with it. And I don't think shooting orbs looks as cool as launching missiles or big arcane orbs lol.
Here's a question for you and I think I might know the answer but want to here your experience. Just from the screenshots you have up, it looks as if you probably just have 12% run speed? I didn't notice something like lacuni's or hammer's. I'm assuming you can be comfortable with that because you can launch your orbs at good distance and either kill instantly or by the time they start closing they drop dead because of the high damage you put out with the crits?
Here's a question for you and I think I might know the answer but want to here your experience. Just from the screenshots you have up, it looks as if you probably just have 12% run speed? I didn't notice something like lacuni's or hammer's. I'm assuming you can be comfortable with that because you can launch your orbs at good distance and either kill instantly or by the time they start closing they drop dead because of the high damage you put out with the crits?
Yeah, I have just 12% run speed. I was nervous about dropping it also, and when I sold my lacunis I was worried I was making a mistake, but I figured I could always go back to it if need be. Anyways, movement speed is really good and it would be nice to have more, but I've found that it isn't strictly necessary. Again, yeah, trying to burst things down is the key. You do have to kite elites/champs some though, of course, and movement speed would be nice but I've found with temporal flux and teleport I've been able to do fine without it.
On a related note though I have been switching back and forth constantly between venom hydra and arcane hydra and I think I am beginning to like arcane hydra more. The total damage is lower, but it is more front loaded and it crits for high damage and it applies the constant temporal flux slow that makes having only 12% movement speed more viable.
I think that, even though the ias% will get nerfd in the upcoming patch(we dont know "how it will be nerfd"), I think it is important to have some ias% because, unilke what it was in D2(that had fcr%), in D3 ias seems to affect the cast rate speed.
I think that, even though the ias% will get nerfd in the upcoming patch(we dont know "how it will be nerfd"), I think it is important to have some ias% because, unilke what it was in D2(that had fcr%), in D3 ias seems to affect the cast rate speed.
I am definitely not saying that IAS is bad or that you shouldn't use IAS gear. I just decided to try something different, and I figure the price on IAS gear will drop some after the nerf at which point I'll just buy some of it back if I decide I want it.
This build is definitely working for me though with a 1.0 speed weapon and no IAS gear, although I am not saying IAS is bad at all I am saying it is possible to farm endgame without it.
wanna give some input on this thread as I myself play a slow 2h focusing on crit % and dmg.
firstly, this is my own personal opinion which I strongly believe but you can do whatever is better, tap the source is MUCH better for killing elites FASTER than obliteration rune. the dmg/AP for tap the source is so much better than obliteration, since for elites you're not gonna kill them wtih your initial 100/80 AP that you have.
presently, my stats are 62k dps with FW rune, 20k hp, 20% crit, 160% crit dmg. 1.2x sec/attack, yeah i know im undergeared cuz i don't have much time to play the game. But i was farming act 3 siege breaker when my DPS was just only 30k, and that was without tyrael because i started the quest at machines of war -_-??
I play a similar build as you. (dumping IAS and going crit dmg and crit% with a slow 2h)
It's not only the upcoming IAS nerf that makes this build good, but I theory crafted once before about the wizard damage resource : ARCANE POWER, which is KEY to wizard's SUSTAINED damage while kiting/damaging elites.
You have 100 available or 80 (with force armour) and regen 10/sec or 12/sec (with passive)
the reason why this works so well is because the damage output of this build (forsaking IAS for crit dmg+%) is insane, and going IAS instead of crit dmg+% would mean you would getting less damage from each arcane power abilities, as its a fixed regenerative resource.
Consider the situation where you would expend your AP with higher AS, hitting for less using arcane orb, and when you run out of AP you would have to use a signature spell or perhaps just wait if you did not take a signature spell. Conversely, with slow attack speed and higher crit% and dmg, you expend your AP higher but each AP hits for almost double of the previous fast AS build. You expend AP slower and hence your DMG/AP usage is much better than going for IAS built with fast 1H over crit%+dmg with slow 2h.
wanna give some input on this thread as I myself play a slow 2h focusing on crit % and dmg.
firstly, this is my own personal opinion which I strongly believe but you can do whatever is better, tap the source is MUCH better for killing elites FASTER than obliteration rune. the dmg/AP for tap the source is so much better than obliteration, since for elites you're not gonna kill them wtih your initial 100/80 AP that you have.
presently, my stats are 62k dps with FW rune, 20k hp, 20% crit, 160% crit dmg. 1.2x sec/attack, yeah i know im undergeared cuz i don't have much time to play the game. But i was farming act 3 siege breaker when my DPS was just only 30k, and that was without tyrael because i started the quest at machines of war -_-??
I play a similar build as you. (dumping IAS and going crit dmg and crit% with a slow 2h)
It's not only the upcoming IAS nerf that makes this build good, but I theory crafted once before about the wizard damage resource : ARCANE POWER, which is KEY to wizard's SUSTAINED damage while kiting/damaging elites.
You have 100 available or 80 (with force armour) and regen 10/sec or 12/sec (with passive)
the reason why this works so well is because the damage output of this build (forsaking IAS for crit dmg+%) is insane, and going IAS instead of crit dmg+% would mean you would getting less damage from each arcane power abilities, as its a fixed regenerative resource.
Consider the situation where you would expend your AP with higher AS, hitting for less using arcane orb, and when you run out of AP you would have to use a signature spell or perhaps just wait if you did not take a signature spell. Conversely, with slow attack speed and higher crit% and dmg, you expend your AP higher but each AP hits for almost double of the previous fast AS build. You expend AP slower and hence your DMG/AP usage is much better than going for IAS built with fast 1H over crit%+dmg with slow 2h.
furthermore, if you have really high attack speed while kiting compared to lower attack speed, it's hard to get perfect casts in between kiting, aka casting and moving, thus some of that attack speed that you pumped into your gear might be negligible when you are kiting. while with a slow IAS it's much easier to get perfect casts+kite
If you prefer 1h/source over 2 hand, go for it. I'm sure its great, I'm not going to tell you its bad. But I switched for 2 reasons. First, and probably most importantly for me, I was just bored of using dagger/source after clearing inferno and wanted to try something different.
Second, because of the nature of how sources work, 1h/source dps will scale much higher with attack speed than a 2 hander will. This is because the source is a flat +dmg modifier and stays the same whether you are using a 1.2 speed mace or a 1.5 speed dagger, and therefore adds much more dmg/dps with the dagger. This makes you kind of reliant on attack speed for high dps, and once you have a ton of attack speed you'll want to use piercing orb over arcane orb and now you're back to the piercing orb/blizz/vhydra build.
Beyond that, even though you will get equivalent DPS numbers with 1h+source, you will not get equivalent weapon damage numbers and therefore your arcane orbs won't hit as hard. This makes a lot of difference for this build, because the whole premise of the build is to quickly burst down stuff with very large hits. This does deplete your arcane power, obviously, but you wait for it to regen and then do it again. If thats not your style and you would rather always have arcane power and always be casting something, you are probably better off with 1h+source and piercing orb/blizz/vhydra. That build is great and will stay great, this is just something different.
1H+Source can work with the Arcane Orb/Hydra strategy, but it requires even more gear. You NEED a Helmet with +Arcane Power on Crit (at least 9-10) and an Offhand with +Arcane Power on Crit. To get a good item that has those stats, you'd probably pay twice as much as you would have to otherwise. Additionally, to make 1H+Source truly amazing, you will want a +Arcane Power on Crit 1H Wand as well, and that will cost you millions to get one around 900-1000 DPS with that stat.
If I had infinite money, I'd definitely try an "Infinite Obliteration Orb" spam build where you could shoot out Obliteration Orbs like a machine gun. You can get up to +30 Arcane Power on Crit if you get all three of those slots perfect. With ~40% Crit, you should be able to maintain infinite spam on 2 mobs. Anything more than 2 is just icing on the cake.
I'm not trying to bring you down or anything... just trying to understand people with 2handers
My wizard has about 160 hours played and I've made probably around ~8 millionish. To get the level of gear you'd need to viably sustain infinite orb spam while still maintaining the All Resist required for Act 4 Oppressors/Diablo, you would probably need about 15 Million. This is why people use 2-handers for Arcane Orb/Hydra.
You mention that making money is easy, and while it can be (lots of luck involved), I'd wager a significant majority of your money was made pre-nerf to most of the farming locations.
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The build is this: http://us.battle.net...jOQS!YUX!abaYZZ
This build may look weak because its sole defensive ability is teleport. However, it does work but its very gear dependent. I dropped all my IAS and stacked up on int, crit chance and crit damage and traded in my 1h+source for a 2h staff (with int and a socket). Now I have about 2140 int, 34% crit, and 205% crit damage.
This means that my obliteration runed arcane orb hits for just about 100k on a normal hit and around 300k on a crit. This is what allows the build to function with the minimal kiting ability that you get from just arcane orb+temporal flux, slow casting speed, and no +movement other than the boots. The reason it works is that a 300k crit will basically 1 shot almost any white mob in the game. A 100k regular hit will 1 shot many of them and 2 shot most. Combined with venom hydra, you basically don't kite white mob packs you just explode them. Trust me when I say this is a lot of fun.
What about champs? Obviously you aren't going to 1 shot those, so how do you deal with them? What I discovered when I tried this build is that being able to unload 300-900k in 3 arcane orbs on a champ mob is a much bigger deal than you might think. It allows you to quickly burst down a single champ, often right at the start of the encounter, which makes the entire fight much easier. Of course you have to kite after that, but you do have teleport and you do have a slow in arcane orb + temporal flux. In addition, I've been going back and forth on venom hydra + arcane hydra and both are very close in power for this build. Venom hydra does more damage obviously, but arcane hydra provides a consistent slow and you get so much damage from arcane orb that the dps loss is acceptable.
This build is 100% viable for endgame... I currently do most of my farming in whimyshire because I just find it the most enjoyable (both due to lack of ranged mobs and the pleasant color scheme, lol), but I've also used it successfully to farm siegebreaker/azmo. It works in act 4 also of course, but why would you go there to farm?
Anyways, point of the thread is not to brag but just to let people know that there is a viable and (to me) fun alternative to the fast attack speed venom hydra/blizzard kiting. Its a lot of fun to just stand there and explode things before they can even reach you rather than running away, and those huge yellow numbers make me smile.
How much did your regearing cost?
Edit: And I use a 0,9 speed 1400 dps 2 hander with a socket. one shotting mobs in whimsyshire inferno is awesome! It feels like revenge for all the one shotting you have recieved;)
Currently playing through act 3, I still don't have enough dps to roll with this kind of build : I'm sitting at 40k dps with 27% crit and +115% crit damage, but too low AP and no AP on crit. Using a 1130 dps 2-hander with 270 int, but no +crit damage (and no socket). Also, using temporal flux felt almost useless on most packs.
I'll try again when I'm better geared.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Taliesyn-2517/hero/66020932
Depends. If you're using celestial orb, for instance, it's very nice to have a hard-hitting orb.
Tap the source is great, but I prefer celestial orb. Matter of preference, really. But anyway, with a fast 1-hander, you'll run out of arcane power much faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaster
You got a special friend at Blizzard who told you that?
Well, since high crit chance is better than medium crit chance, obviously ... the real question is, is firing fast really better than firing slow with the same level of crit.
There seems to be consensus on a few points, regarding that question :
- the higher the IAS, the easier it is to kite (shorter cast animations)
- 1H+source can offer better stats (specifically +crit chance and AP on crit) than 2H
- 1H+source is usually way more expensive to get
- 1H+source and 2H are both viable, with some builds/playstyles favoring one or the other.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Taliesyn-2517/hero/66020932
Well, depends on what you call "farming a little"
I have significant RL time constraints, and I just reached Inferno Siegebreaker. I'll be farming it for a few days before I start progressing again through inferno, hoping to make a bit of money there.
Also, I play on the EU servers and from what I read on here, EU prices seem to be significantly higher than US prices.
How do you calculate that? If a 1H+source gives 1200 dps (factoring in the source's damage) and a 2H gives 1200 dps, you're doing the same amount of damage in the same time (kiting problems notwithstanding). 2H will deplete your AP much slower for the same damage, while 1H+source, if correctly itemized, will deplete it much faster but also replenish it through +AP on crit.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Taliesyn-2517/hero/66020932
I took SS's of all my gear and of a 300k crit on an inferno pony at home but forgot to put them up before I went to work, so I can't get them now. I'll try to remember to upload this evening.
To answer a couple of questions:
Tap the source / celestial orb vs obliteration orb -
I am sure both of these are viable choices. Tap the source may even be better than obliterate, but I use obliterate for 2 reasons. First, this build really relies on you just blowing something up. If its white mobs they should die in 1-2 hits. If its a champ pack, the way you win is to unload 3 obliterate orbs into 1 of the champs at max range which will do 300-900k damage. Then you run a bit and do it again, and pretty quickly that one is dead. Tap the source would obviously be better with a 1 hand+source though, but that brings me to the next issue.
1H/source vs 2hand -
If you prefer 1h/source over 2 hand, go for it. I'm sure its great, I'm not going to tell you its bad. But I switched for 2 reasons. First, and probably most importantly for me, I was just bored of using dagger/source after clearing inferno and wanted to try something different.
Second, because of the nature of how sources work, 1h/source dps will scale much higher with attack speed than a 2 hander will. This is because the source is a flat +dmg modifier and stays the same whether you are using a 1.2 speed mace or a 1.5 speed dagger, and therefore adds much more dmg/dps with the dagger. This makes you kind of reliant on attack speed for high dps, and once you have a ton of attack speed you'll want to use piercing orb over arcane orb and now you're back to the piercing orb/blizz/vhydra build.
Beyond that, even though you will get equivalent DPS numbers with 1h+source, you will not get equivalent weapon damage numbers and therefore your arcane orbs won't hit as hard. This makes a lot of difference for this build, because the whole premise of the build is to quickly burst down stuff with very large hits. This does deplete your arcane power, obviously, but you wait for it to regen and then do it again. If thats not your style and you would rather always have arcane power and always be casting something, you are probably better off with 1h+source and piercing orb/blizz/vhydra. That build is great and will stay great, this is just something different.
I've been clearing both reflects damage and invulnerable minions in ponyland, but of course those are 2 of the hardest affixes, along with fast. I actually feel like I can any one of those affixes just fine with this build, but 2 or more of those 3 can be pretty hard.
For invuln. minions I run around until I get a clear shot and then unload arcane orbs into the main guy. Because of the way this build can do so much burst, it is really workable. If they are invuln and fast though then it becomes very difficult becauses the invuln minions will run in front of your orbs a lot.
Reflect damage is fine also, in fact I think its easier than with the other build because what you do is just blow up 1 mob at a time. Then you kite until you can get your life back from pots/health globes (which the guy you just blew up almost certainly dropped) and then you do it again. In you hit all the mobs at once you'll probably die, but as long as you blow up one at a time its fine.
This is basically the strategy with every pack. Its even better for champions than for elites, but it works for both. You blow up one guy and then wait until you can do it again. This really is much more effective than you might think, because especially with champs there is a very big difference between 3 champs and 2 in terms of being able to stay alive. And if you do die then when you res you've actually made progress because there are less mobs in the pack and its therefore much easier to handle, rather than all of the mobs being at half life which doesn't really improve your survival chances at all.
Your build and gearing for it sounds like a lot fun, who doesn't enjoy blowing things up with big numbers as icing on the cake! I'm definitely going to try and put a gear set together for this build to have fun with it. Honestly, as effective as the orbs, hydra, or blizz combo is, I'm rather bored with it. And I don't think shooting orbs looks as cool as launching missiles or big arcane orbs lol.
Here's a question for you and I think I might know the answer but want to here your experience. Just from the screenshots you have up, it looks as if you probably just have 12% run speed? I didn't notice something like lacuni's or hammer's. I'm assuming you can be comfortable with that because you can launch your orbs at good distance and either kill instantly or by the time they start closing they drop dead because of the high damage you put out with the crits?
Anyway, thanks again.
There is definitely a lot of room for improvement on it. Next priority is a weapon though I think, and those are very expensive.
Yeah, I have just 12% run speed. I was nervous about dropping it also, and when I sold my lacunis I was worried I was making a mistake, but I figured I could always go back to it if need be. Anyways, movement speed is really good and it would be nice to have more, but I've found that it isn't strictly necessary. Again, yeah, trying to burst things down is the key. You do have to kite elites/champs some though, of course, and movement speed would be nice but I've found with temporal flux and teleport I've been able to do fine without it.
On a related note though I have been switching back and forth constantly between venom hydra and arcane hydra and I think I am beginning to like arcane hydra more. The total damage is lower, but it is more front loaded and it crits for high damage and it applies the constant temporal flux slow that makes having only 12% movement speed more viable.
I am definitely not saying that IAS is bad or that you shouldn't use IAS gear. I just decided to try something different, and I figure the price on IAS gear will drop some after the nerf at which point I'll just buy some of it back if I decide I want it.
This build is definitely working for me though with a 1.0 speed weapon and no IAS gear, although I am not saying IAS is bad at all I am saying it is possible to farm endgame without it.
firstly, this is my own personal opinion which I strongly believe but you can do whatever is better, tap the source is MUCH better for killing elites FASTER than obliteration rune. the dmg/AP for tap the source is so much better than obliteration, since for elites you're not gonna kill them wtih your initial 100/80 AP that you have.
presently, my stats are 62k dps with FW rune, 20k hp, 20% crit, 160% crit dmg. 1.2x sec/attack, yeah i know im undergeared cuz i don't have much time to play the game. But i was farming act 3 siege breaker when my DPS was just only 30k, and that was without tyrael because i started the quest at machines of war -_-??
I play a similar build as you. (dumping IAS and going crit dmg and crit% with a slow 2h)
It's not only the upcoming IAS nerf that makes this build good, but I theory crafted once before about the wizard damage resource : ARCANE POWER, which is KEY to wizard's SUSTAINED damage while kiting/damaging elites.
You have 100 available or 80 (with force armour) and regen 10/sec or 12/sec (with passive)
the reason why this works so well is because the damage output of this build (forsaking IAS for crit dmg+%) is insane, and going IAS instead of crit dmg+% would mean you would getting less damage from each arcane power abilities, as its a fixed regenerative resource.
Consider the situation where you would expend your AP with higher AS, hitting for less using arcane orb, and when you run out of AP you would have to use a signature spell or perhaps just wait if you did not take a signature spell. Conversely, with slow attack speed and higher crit% and dmg, you expend your AP higher but each AP hits for almost double of the previous fast AS build. You expend AP slower and hence your DMG/AP usage is much better than going for IAS built with fast 1H over crit%+dmg with slow 2h.
furthermore, if you have really high attack speed while kiting compared to lower attack speed, it's hard to get perfect casts in between kiting, aka casting and moving, thus some of that attack speed that you pumped into your gear might be negligible when you are kiting. while with a slow IAS it's much easier to get perfect casts+kite
1H+Source can work with the Arcane Orb/Hydra strategy, but it requires even more gear. You NEED a Helmet with +Arcane Power on Crit (at least 9-10) and an Offhand with +Arcane Power on Crit. To get a good item that has those stats, you'd probably pay twice as much as you would have to otherwise. Additionally, to make 1H+Source truly amazing, you will want a +Arcane Power on Crit 1H Wand as well, and that will cost you millions to get one around 900-1000 DPS with that stat.
If I had infinite money, I'd definitely try an "Infinite Obliteration Orb" spam build where you could shoot out Obliteration Orbs like a machine gun. You can get up to +30 Arcane Power on Crit if you get all three of those slots perfect. With ~40% Crit, you should be able to maintain infinite spam on 2 mobs. Anything more than 2 is just icing on the cake.
My wizard has about 160 hours played and I've made probably around ~8 millionish. To get the level of gear you'd need to viably sustain infinite orb spam while still maintaining the All Resist required for Act 4 Oppressors/Diablo, you would probably need about 15 Million. This is why people use 2-handers for Arcane Orb/Hydra.
You mention that making money is easy, and while it can be (lots of luck involved), I'd wager a significant majority of your money was made pre-nerf to most of the farming locations.