Maybe a silly question but is there way to refresh skills like magic weapon or the armor skills while under archon? I switched to archon for leveling runs and I keep it up the entire time so my skills run out.
You have to manually cancel the Archon buff to refresh abilities. If you time it right, you can cancel your buff right after you port to save a few seconds on the other hand, if you don't time it right, it will cancel your port action...
Couple Archon Wizard questions (I enjoy this build much more then CM-SC)
Does Shocking Aspect work with Disintegrate?
Why is is Prismatic Armor prefered over Force Armor?
and finally, Reflect damage is mitigated by Armor AND Arcane Resist, correct? It seems like the only practical way to defend against it is to equip a weapon with ~3.00 Lifesteal and Blood Magic PLUS Diamond Shell, although Archon cancels it/cannot cast it yet.
Shocking Aspect should work with Disintegrate.
PA is used over FA when your EHP is high enough in Archon form that you don't get hit for more than 35% of your health with most attacks. Even if you get hit for around 40%, PA is prefered because it helps with damage reflect mobs. At higher MP levels though, FA would likely be used unless you have very high EHP.
Reflect damage is mitigated by physical resist, in addition to armor. DS Is a great tool against damage reflect mobs, and some Archon builds use that over teleport, cancel Archon, hit DS, then reactivate Archon or just tackle the mob out of archon form. LS weapon with blood magic is usually sufficient in Archon form as long as you're not pushing the MP level too high, so that you can kill the elites before they do much to you. Even with up to 4.5% life steal, if your armor and resists are low you the reflect mobs can hurt a lot.
Without hundreds of millions budget only option is mediocre DPS weapon with LS ?
LS from weapon up to 3% on 1h, 6% from 2h, and another 1.5% from Blood Magic rune of Magic Weapon. It costs a bit extra for LS on weapon but you can still get reasonable prices on mid range weapons, like around 1k dps weapons with LS and socket for 1-10 mil. I don't consider those mediocre weapons but that's just my opinion. a 1070 dps weapon is good enough to get me over 200k dps with appropriate gear.
I didn't realize that you had both Inna's and Lacuni, plus Zunimassa's Trail boots. That seems... excessive. Then I thought about it, and I guess no other armors can have that high of dps stats.
I guess my current issue is trying to figure out which "major" upgrade to get next. I put major in quotes because I'm planning on spending 50-100m on it (depending on the final sale price of a couple of auctions). I can run the usual act 3 route on MP0 in archon, but the buff tends to drop in areas like the Core and Fields of Slaughter, which both have some distance to run between packs. I've been running with Blood Magic as my only life steal, which is doing the job, but I'm loathe to give up any EHP without getting better health recovery.
http://us.battle.net...53/hero/3275686
Feel free to laugh at my chest piece. In my defense, it was a drop I got on my second ever inferno run, before I even cleared act 1. But you can see why I was leaning toward Tyrael's chest. Whichever upgrade I choose, I'm upgrading whatever gems I can with leftover monies.
With that amount of money, what I'd recommend is not just buying 1 major upgrade but buying a couple smaller upgrades that will really boost your dps more than 1 major one. Basically the top end set items have cheap versions with relatively high dps and low EHP, and expensive versions that have similar but maybe a bit more dps, but high EHP. So basically most of the extra cost comes from the high EHP. If you're fine with farming MP0 and MP1 for a bit, you can get away with low EHP, but the higher dps will make farming much faster.
A good chest is the Tal chest that has Int, Vit, and IAS with 3 sockets base. You can find them pretty cheap right now and for a little bit more get some extra vit and/or armor. With one of those and a few other upgrades, you should be able to hit around 100k dps or higher. I don't see anyway to up your dps that much by spending all your gold on one upgrade. Also, with the higher dps you can change out the Improved Archon rune to Teleport and make farming even faster. I love teleport rune with illusionist passive as you can really breeze through areas with ranged mobs and it even adds survivability against annoying elites like phasebeasts, or against the keywarden.
Inna's Temperance, the monk pants, also works. It comes with 1% crit, 8-9% attack speed, 12% movement speed, and 2 sockets base. The only downside is you don't have a lot of options for the random stat. It's just one roll with no base Int so it's basically either Int or Int/vit. They're also pretty cheap now so you can get more dps out of these pants+normal bracers with crit%, assuming you have a lot of crit damage. If you have the money for crit prowlers, that will give more dps than rare bracers, of course, but costs more than the set pants.
I feel it's really worth considering the Teleport rune for Archon. Not only does it allow you to move through an area a little faster but it gives a little bit extra survivability for higher MP levels, like if you're raising the MP to get more keys, instead of keeping it low to just 1 shot everything. Also the Illusionist passive works on the Archon Teleport, which raises survivability even more. I find it extremely useful for the Act 3 keywarden.
Any guide for 1.05? Been having some thoughts about what should I use next. I got about 100 Mil ready for upgrades but wanted to wait a couple of weeks for the items to start rolling in. Any suggestions on what skills/gear upgrades I should do with 1.05 changes? I am looking right now to buy Lacuni Prowlers. Thanks!
Battle net ID:Swoosh#1236. Wouldn't let me post a link yet.
http ://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Swoosh-1236/hero/3842623
First thing I'd do, and do now, is get a Triumvirate OH. Use a dps calculator or spreadsheet but even a mid damage one (150 average damge) should be a pretty good upgrade. They're also pretty cheap, and now that you can search for average damage, it's even easier to get the best value for your gold. For 5 mil or so you can probably get one with around 100-300 damage, and if you're wanting a perma-Archon build, you can ignore APoC so try getting one with 200+ Int for even more dps.
You'll probably also want a weapon with Life Steal, though if you just want to farm MP0 it might not be needed. You can start with just Magic Weapon - Blood Magic and see how they are before jumping into buying a new weapon though, since Life Steal is pretty expensive right now.
If you try any mid-high MP levels, you probably want to use Force Armor, otherwise use whatever Armor you feel comfortable with. I use Force armor for all but I've got a low EHP build with high dps so I don't have the resists and armor to pull of a Prismatic Armor or Storm Armor build.
Other potential upgrades include Tal Rasha's Allegience (amulet), if you aren't super attached to your Firewalkers you can go for zunimassa boots and the ring also makes for a good 2pc bonus. Prowlers are great or if you don't mind losing the EHP you can opt for Inna's Temperance (pants) that has 1% crit, 8-9% attack speed, and 12% movement. The only downside is they roll with dex main and only 1 random, so the ones with Int are around 30 mil, meaning you'll lose a lot of EHP. Tal Rasha Relentless Persuit (chest) is another good dps piece, though to maintain the EHP of your current chest, it would likely cost most of or more than your 100 mil. Lower end ones, like 9% IAS, 150 Int, 50 vit, and armor, like mine, are 10-20 mil. Andrial's Visage is the cheap helm of choice, and you can get one for a couple mil with 50+ all resist, so you'd only lose a bit of vit but would gain 8-9% IAS.
Those upgrades are suggestions from my own experience and really give the best dps gain for your gold. The difficulty lies with deciding what you want to do with your EHP. The easiest thing to do is mostly ignore EHP as long as you're around 150k+ in Archon form and just switch to Force Armor, but you might find yourself dying more than you like. Once you have those really high dps pieces with low EHP, it's hard to upgrade to a similar piece with high EHP and it's hard to drop all that dps for the extra EHP so it's up to you if you want to upgrade 1-2 pieces to raise dps and maintain EHP or upgrade 3-5 pieces and just raise DPS pretty high.
IMO, ranking the set pieces in terms of relative DPS per cost, based on my current purchases I'd put it at Triumvirate = Andriel's Visage > Tal neck > tal chest > Zunimassa boots = ring > Witching Hour. Keep in mind that's relative to current gear and that ranking is specific to my current gear and based mostly on dps.
EDIT: Zunimassa chest is a good EHP alternative to the tal chest, if you're looking at keeping or improving your EHP. It works great for 2pc and/or 3pc bonus depending on your gearing choices.
I stated this in another post but it is also relavent to the guide here but CM does indeed work to reduce the CD of Archon even while Archon is active. The easiest way to test it is to active a 2 min Armor buff right before activating Archon, then killing as many mobs as possible to keep archon active for a good 90s+, then cancelling Archon and just waiting for the CD to resume. The CD should be up before the armor falls off.
This is mostly relevent as an alternative to Evocation for people having issues running out of time in Archon form. I also like the fact that CM reduces the CD of your Archon Blast (#1 hotkey that does not interrupt your beam). I use that ability a lot when face tanking elites to gain a bit more health.
On a side note, regarding Stone of Jordan or any other item with +elemental damage, the bonus damage is applied to all your skills, not just skills with that damage type, as long as the affix doesn't mention skills. So any stone of jordan damage type will work and add extra damage. I mention this because in section 5 of the guide you mention Stone of Jordan and +arcane damage. The only issue is the bonus damage is only applied to your total minumum physical damage. Also this extra damage does show up on your in game damage number, so people considering switching to a Stone of Jordan won't see quite as much of a dps drop on their char sheet as they might think.
I've been playing around with an Archon spec and have a question about the farming route you mentioned.
"8. Take the waypoint to keep level 1, zone into the keep level 2 right away and do a full clear of the place"
When you say do a full clear of the place, do you mean all 3 levels, or just level 2? If it's all 3 levels, do you start with level 2, head to level 3, take lvl 3 waypoint back to lvl 1 to clear that backwards?
Keep levels 1 and 3 are more sparse and less circular. I found keeping Archon up hard. Once you get the hang of the general layouts of Keep level 2, you will find that it is the easiest place to keep Archon up.
So, to summarize, do only keep level 2.
PS: Watch out for those suicidal monsters.
Thanks. I had noticed I was having a heck of a time keeping Archon active, and thought it might just be due to my dps (only 70k or so). And I really hate those exploding mobs. I die to them at least once everytime I farm.
Don't forget that Life Steal is reduced to %20 in inferno, that or %25.
I would only recommend EXCLUSIVELY using life steal over life on hit for someone who has a 2 hander because it can roll up to %6 rather than just %3.
however with some LoH %3 life steal works just fine.
I already took the Life Steal reduction into account when posting those numbers. Regardless of 1h vs 2h, Life Steal should outperform LoH for Archon builds with any decent dps. Don't forget 2h can roll up to 2k LoH meaning both Life Steal and LoH are doubled for 2h so it doesn't matter if you use 1h vs 2h in that respect.
made some updates to the guide with farming route as well as SoJ / disintegrate update
I've been playing around with an Archon spec and have a question about the farming route you mentioned.
"8. Take the waypoint to keep level 1, zone into the keep level 2 right away and do a full clear of the place"
When you say do a full clear of the place, do you mean all 3 levels, or just level 2? If it's all 3 levels, do you start with level 2, head to level 3, take lvl 3 waypoint back to lvl 1 to clear that backwards?
Do you know if reflect damage is reduced by your armor/resistances?
I am trying to estimate how much LoH I need, since I dont want to change from my wand+source combo
Get life steal if you can. It scales much better than LoH especially for Archon builds. Also the coefficient for Archon beam is 0.25 so LoH only returns 25% of your LoH each tic. For example, at ~70k dps with 1 attack per second, 2.5% life steal is about the same as 4.2k LoH, at 1.5 attacks per second it would be equivalent to 2800 LoH roughly.
These numbers might be a little off though, because that's assuming the beam tics at the same speed as your attack. Does anyone know the mechanics of the beam tic for sure? Does it tic at same speed as your attack or does it just tic a specific amount of times per second? I have been of the impression that the damage shown as tics is some averaged damage over the tic interval, which makes me think the damage is being done over discrete time periods, and the tics show up every 0.5s. As far as I know just about anything that tics shows up in 0.5s intervals (health regen, WW damage, LoH return from WW to name a few).
How well does piercing orb triggers CM? Can you trigger CM in archon form?
Reports indicate Porb has a 25% coefficient, per target. It's not as good as say Storm Chaser, but it lets you actually have some offensive capability while Archon is on CD.
You have to manually cancel the Archon buff to refresh abilities. If you time it right, you can cancel your buff right after you port to save a few seconds
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Shocking Aspect should work with Disintegrate.
PA is used over FA when your EHP is high enough in Archon form that you don't get hit for more than 35% of your health with most attacks. Even if you get hit for around 40%, PA is prefered because it helps with damage reflect mobs. At higher MP levels though, FA would likely be used unless you have very high EHP.
Reflect damage is mitigated by physical resist, in addition to armor. DS Is a great tool against damage reflect mobs, and some Archon builds use that over teleport, cancel Archon, hit DS, then reactivate Archon or just tackle the mob out of archon form. LS weapon with blood magic is usually sufficient in Archon form as long as you're not pushing the MP level too high, so that you can kill the elites before they do much to you. Even with up to 4.5% life steal, if your armor and resists are low you the reflect mobs can hurt a lot.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
LS from weapon up to 3% on 1h, 6% from 2h, and another 1.5% from Blood Magic rune of Magic Weapon. It costs a bit extra for LS on weapon but you can still get reasonable prices on mid range weapons, like around 1k dps weapons with LS and socket for 1-10 mil. I don't consider those mediocre weapons but that's just my opinion. a 1070 dps weapon is good enough to get me over 200k dps with appropriate gear.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
With that amount of money, what I'd recommend is not just buying 1 major upgrade but buying a couple smaller upgrades that will really boost your dps more than 1 major one. Basically the top end set items have cheap versions with relatively high dps and low EHP, and expensive versions that have similar but maybe a bit more dps, but high EHP. So basically most of the extra cost comes from the high EHP. If you're fine with farming MP0 and MP1 for a bit, you can get away with low EHP, but the higher dps will make farming much faster.
A good chest is the Tal chest that has Int, Vit, and IAS with 3 sockets base. You can find them pretty cheap right now and for a little bit more get some extra vit and/or armor. With one of those and a few other upgrades, you should be able to hit around 100k dps or higher. I don't see anyway to up your dps that much by spending all your gold on one upgrade. Also, with the higher dps you can change out the Improved Archon rune to Teleport and make farming even faster. I love teleport rune with illusionist passive as you can really breeze through areas with ranged mobs and it even adds survivability against annoying elites like phasebeasts, or against the keywarden.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
First thing I'd do, and do now, is get a Triumvirate OH. Use a dps calculator or spreadsheet but even a mid damage one (150 average damge) should be a pretty good upgrade. They're also pretty cheap, and now that you can search for average damage, it's even easier to get the best value for your gold. For 5 mil or so you can probably get one with around 100-300 damage, and if you're wanting a perma-Archon build, you can ignore APoC so try getting one with 200+ Int for even more dps.
You'll probably also want a weapon with Life Steal, though if you just want to farm MP0 it might not be needed. You can start with just Magic Weapon - Blood Magic and see how they are before jumping into buying a new weapon though, since Life Steal is pretty expensive right now.
If you try any mid-high MP levels, you probably want to use Force Armor, otherwise use whatever Armor you feel comfortable with. I use Force armor for all but I've got a low EHP build with high dps so I don't have the resists and armor to pull of a Prismatic Armor or Storm Armor build.
Other potential upgrades include Tal Rasha's Allegience (amulet), if you aren't super attached to your Firewalkers you can go for zunimassa boots and the ring also makes for a good 2pc bonus. Prowlers are great or if you don't mind losing the EHP you can opt for Inna's Temperance (pants) that has 1% crit, 8-9% attack speed, and 12% movement. The only downside is they roll with dex main and only 1 random, so the ones with Int are around 30 mil, meaning you'll lose a lot of EHP. Tal Rasha Relentless Persuit (chest) is another good dps piece, though to maintain the EHP of your current chest, it would likely cost most of or more than your 100 mil. Lower end ones, like 9% IAS, 150 Int, 50 vit, and armor, like mine, are 10-20 mil. Andrial's Visage is the cheap helm of choice, and you can get one for a couple mil with 50+ all resist, so you'd only lose a bit of vit but would gain 8-9% IAS.
Those upgrades are suggestions from my own experience and really give the best dps gain for your gold. The difficulty lies with deciding what you want to do with your EHP. The easiest thing to do is mostly ignore EHP as long as you're around 150k+ in Archon form and just switch to Force Armor, but you might find yourself dying more than you like. Once you have those really high dps pieces with low EHP, it's hard to upgrade to a similar piece with high EHP and it's hard to drop all that dps for the extra EHP so it's up to you if you want to upgrade 1-2 pieces to raise dps and maintain EHP or upgrade 3-5 pieces and just raise DPS pretty high.
IMO, ranking the set pieces in terms of relative DPS per cost, based on my current purchases I'd put it at Triumvirate = Andriel's Visage > Tal neck > tal chest > Zunimassa boots = ring > Witching Hour. Keep in mind that's relative to current gear and that ranking is specific to my current gear and based mostly on dps.
EDIT: Zunimassa chest is a good EHP alternative to the tal chest, if you're looking at keeping or improving your EHP. It works great for 2pc and/or 3pc bonus depending on your gearing choices.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
This is mostly relevent as an alternative to Evocation for people having issues running out of time in Archon form. I also like the fact that CM reduces the CD of your Archon Blast (#1 hotkey that does not interrupt your beam). I use that ability a lot when face tanking elites to gain a bit more health.
On a side note, regarding Stone of Jordan or any other item with +elemental damage, the bonus damage is applied to all your skills, not just skills with that damage type, as long as the affix doesn't mention skills. So any stone of jordan damage type will work and add extra damage. I mention this because in section 5 of the guide you mention Stone of Jordan and +arcane damage. The only issue is the bonus damage is only applied to your total minumum physical damage. Also this extra damage does show up on your in game damage number, so people considering switching to a Stone of Jordan won't see quite as much of a dps drop on their char sheet as they might think.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Short of an insanely rolled yellow with high DPS+socket+high int+high crit+Life Steal, yes Skorn is the best 2h around.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Thanks. I had noticed I was having a heck of a time keeping Archon active, and thought it might just be due to my dps (only 70k or so). And I really hate those exploding mobs. I die to them at least once everytime I farm.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I already took the Life Steal reduction into account when posting those numbers. Regardless of 1h vs 2h, Life Steal should outperform LoH for Archon builds with any decent dps. Don't forget 2h can roll up to 2k LoH meaning both Life Steal and LoH are doubled for 2h so it doesn't matter if you use 1h vs 2h in that respect.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I've been playing around with an Archon spec and have a question about the farming route you mentioned.
"8. Take the waypoint to keep level 1, zone into the keep level 2 right away and do a full clear of the place"
When you say do a full clear of the place, do you mean all 3 levels, or just level 2? If it's all 3 levels, do you start with level 2, head to level 3, take lvl 3 waypoint back to lvl 1 to clear that backwards?
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Get life steal if you can. It scales much better than LoH especially for Archon builds. Also the coefficient for Archon beam is 0.25 so LoH only returns 25% of your LoH each tic. For example, at ~70k dps with 1 attack per second, 2.5% life steal is about the same as 4.2k LoH, at 1.5 attacks per second it would be equivalent to 2800 LoH roughly.
These numbers might be a little off though, because that's assuming the beam tics at the same speed as your attack. Does anyone know the mechanics of the beam tic for sure? Does it tic at same speed as your attack or does it just tic a specific amount of times per second? I have been of the impression that the damage shown as tics is some averaged damage over the tic interval, which makes me think the damage is being done over discrete time periods, and the tics show up every 0.5s. As far as I know just about anything that tics shows up in 0.5s intervals (health regen, WW damage, LoH return from WW to name a few).
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Reports indicate Porb has a 25% coefficient, per target. It's not as good as say Storm Chaser, but it lets you actually have some offensive capability while Archon is on CD.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard