Perhaps I need to clarify... I was mocking the incorrect use of "your" as opposed to "you're," by assuming that the statement intended to refer to "your behind" as the possessive of one's butt (even though that parsing of the sentence is grammatically incorrect and would lack an "is" between "behind" and "on.")
Depending on how Diamond Skin scales with gear, and how much damage enemies do (particularly on higher difficulties), it may or may not be a very good ability. Assuming that we even take the obsidian runed form for higher damage block rather than duration (on the assumption that the lower damage would be extinguished before the end of its duration anyway), we start with ~7k hp blocked. Without accounting for gear, that sounds to me like 1-3 hits on a high difficulty, which I do not deem sufficient on an active ability for reliable survival. Realistically, this may scale exactly like damage and climb by a factor of 5-10(?) making it much more reasonable, but I, at least, have no confirmation on its scaling nature. I suspect it is geared more towards arena than PvE, where knowing that 1 or 2 big hits are coming (and then nothing for some time, *if* you survive) may be perfect for it.
It had not occurred to me that people may be unfamiliar w/ DI/II, so I should point out since I haven't seen it mentioned that in both previous games, melee and many missile hits causes *momentary* "interrupt," which basically meant momentary stun. As a result, a barrage of hits could kill you even if they were small because you could get locked and unable to run. In my experience, TP was a good way out of this since you only needed 1 cast time of uninterrupted time, not the ability to outrun things. Hence Illusionist may have value; I took it in the HC build I made for fun (I would *never* actually play hardcore.) http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZkcihO!ZVd!aZacZa
I will have to agree that Virtuoso is actually fairly bad; since it requires that you have a Sig spell anyway, I would much-prefer to use that spell's rune slot for regen which is at least ~3x, if not more times as effective (~4, potentially, for Shock Pulse, possibly(?) more for Spectral Blade depending on base range/play style) though it may take some skill/effort to gain those benefits, esp, as ArcWeap said, since it takes a (much-coveted) passive slot. I would expect Sig spells' main purpose in *most* builds (excluding melee wiz, arena [alabaster homing MM], and whatever builds may include the other Sig spells), they will be used primarily for regen, even if only passively as they cost 0 AP to cast at high level. I can't see the boost from Virtuoso being worthwhile as compared to the golden rune effects and as compared to the other non-regen effects available in that slot.
We also do not know how Mirror Images will behave, but I assume they will either spam spells, or cast reasonably quickly. Depending on the intelligence of their AI, they may pick very effective spells, and may be quite capable of surviving for their duration, esp if you have crimson runed them and are thus making an effort to keep them alive (as I intend to do!) I *presume* their spells will carry the effects of your runes, so consider: crimson (or other-runed) Slow Time from your images, meaning up to 3 Slow Times active at once, images casting Hydra (of whatever rune form), crimson Arcane Torrent from your images, keeping the debuff up allowing you to spam a much-longer Disintegrate without loosing the debuff!
We (I) also do not know yet how slows will stack; whether the highest-value slow will simply override others, whether they will stack additively (virtually out-of-the-question), multiplicatively (most-likely, if at all), or through some other formula. If they do stack additively, then multiple slows (such as Slow Time + Temporal Flux will be quite awesome), but otherwise, I intend to run Temporal Flux on any Disintegrate, Arc Torrent, or Arc Orb-based builds (I don't expect to have an Arc Orb build though), since Slow Time has a cooldown (and you better believe I'm hittin up either Time Warp (crimson) or Stretch Time (alabaster) for +140% damage!) and an area; slowing everything in my Disintegrate path or whatever creature(s) my Arc Torrent are hitting is well-worth the passive slot imo.
The truth about many, if not most, of these abilities is that their descriptions are often vague enough that we really don't know exactly how they will work, how good they will be (even relative to each other), and so we will have to actually wait until release (and our opportunity for testing) to rule anything in or out categorically.
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I don't think anyone plans to sit on "the spells thing."
It had not occurred to me that people may be unfamiliar w/ DI/II, so I should point out since I haven't seen it mentioned that in both previous games, melee and many missile hits causes *momentary* "interrupt," which basically meant momentary stun. As a result, a barrage of hits could kill you even if they were small because you could get locked and unable to run. In my experience, TP was a good way out of this since you only needed 1 cast time of uninterrupted time, not the ability to outrun things. Hence Illusionist may have value; I took it in the HC build I made for fun (I would *never* actually play hardcore.) http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZkcihO!ZVd!aZacZa
I will have to agree that Virtuoso is actually fairly bad; since it requires that you have a Sig spell anyway, I would much-prefer to use that spell's rune slot for regen which is at least ~3x, if not more times as effective (~4, potentially, for Shock Pulse, possibly(?) more for Spectral Blade depending on base range/play style) though it may take some skill/effort to gain those benefits, esp, as ArcWeap said, since it takes a (much-coveted) passive slot. I would expect Sig spells' main purpose in *most* builds (excluding melee wiz, arena [alabaster homing MM], and whatever builds may include the other Sig spells), they will be used primarily for regen, even if only passively as they cost 0 AP to cast at high level. I can't see the boost from Virtuoso being worthwhile as compared to the golden rune effects and as compared to the other non-regen effects available in that slot.
We also do not know how Mirror Images will behave, but I assume they will either spam spells, or cast reasonably quickly. Depending on the intelligence of their AI, they may pick very effective spells, and may be quite capable of surviving for their duration, esp if you have crimson runed them and are thus making an effort to keep them alive (as I intend to do!) I *presume* their spells will carry the effects of your runes, so consider: crimson (or other-runed) Slow Time from your images, meaning up to 3 Slow Times active at once, images casting Hydra (of whatever rune form), crimson Arcane Torrent from your images, keeping the debuff up allowing you to spam a much-longer Disintegrate without loosing the debuff!
We (I) also do not know yet how slows will stack; whether the highest-value slow will simply override others, whether they will stack additively (virtually out-of-the-question), multiplicatively (most-likely, if at all), or through some other formula. If they do stack additively, then multiple slows (such as Slow Time + Temporal Flux will be quite awesome), but otherwise, I intend to run Temporal Flux on any Disintegrate, Arc Torrent, or Arc Orb-based builds (I don't expect to have an Arc Orb build though), since Slow Time has a cooldown (and you better believe I'm hittin up either Time Warp (crimson) or Stretch Time (alabaster) for +140% damage!) and an area; slowing everything in my Disintegrate path or whatever creature(s) my Arc Torrent are hitting is well-worth the passive slot imo.
The truth about many, if not most, of these abilities is that their descriptions are often vague enough that we really don't know exactly how they will work, how good they will be (even relative to each other), and so we will have to actually wait until release (and our opportunity for testing) to rule anything in or out categorically.