Venom hydra does significantly more damage than the other hydras, especially if the monsters are standing still or even moving slowly. I'm not sure about the exact math behind it, but a quick experiment will show you very clear results regarding how powerful venom hydra is. Arcane hydra is the 2nd most powerful (though quite weaker than venom), and is only any good with the matching passive, and even then it's not all that great really. Other hydras are just way too weak in comparison. Don't be mislead by the damage on the tooltip, as there seem to be additional mechanics affecting the actual damage they deal (making venom hydra that much stronger than it might seem if you just read the tooltip).
Wicked wind is a pretty weak spell. It is really ONLY good for ciritcal mass procs. Sure it deals some damage on top, but if you try to use it as a primary damage dealer, you will find yourself switching it out to just about anything else pretty quickly.
I don't wear any MF because I want to be farming act 3. Currently I'm still unsure whether act 2 with MF is better or worse than act 3 without MF spending the same amount of gold on gear, but so far it seems like if I wanted to get enough MF to matter, I'll either have to spend more gold or farm act 2 slower. When I can do act 2 in ~2.5 hours, I will need pretty high MF to compensate if I want to run act 2 in more than 1.5 hours, and getting there without getting the run time closer to 2~2.5 hours would cost a lot. Again, not saying anything definite, because this is impossible to truly theorycraft, but my guess is getting into act 3 2.5h runs would end up more profitable. Not to mention that with a sprint barb finding elite packs we can run it in under 2 hours, making act 2 farming even less viable. For act 3 I don't see how I can afford any MF without making a lot more gold than I have now, since even after getting a few upgrades some elites are still quite difficult/annoying, and dying slows you down so much when you are solo (less so in group due to banner teleport, but still a noticeable slowdown).
As for wizard vs barb, I have 2 friends who rolled run like the wind barbs, and spending less gold than me they are farming faster. I doubt this is because they are better players. The class and build simply require less expensive gear to do the same at the same speed. Sure, a critical mass wizard might be able to clear stuff with even cheaper gear than the barb would need to clear it, but once both have enough gear to clear it, the barb definitely clears it significantly faster. Remember that Kripp's gear doesn't really give him more run speed than any undergeared barbarian! He just saves a few seconds on each elite pack and saves deaths on some nasty ones that would spawn a lot of random crap on your screen too quickly if you don't have enough DPS, but since most of the time is really spent finding elites rather than killing them, the barb is the clear winner here regardless whether you have just the bare minimum needed to farm act 3 or if you have Kripp level of gear. The difference is much more significant in act 3, too, since there are a lot of doorways where teleport just doesn't work well.
I have been using the templar for his emergency healing abilities and gave him a lot of vit (>90k hp) so he stays alive to use them. Recently, though, I have switched him for the enchantress with some minimal MF/vit gear for the armor and MF bonus, both of which apply even if she is dead (and the vit is there so that she dies less so that I have the 3% attack speed buff avaiablle more often, as it does go away if she dies).
You really should experiment with critical mass build, it is clearly the 2nd most overpowered build in the game right now, with the first being the sprint barb (check kripp's videos for it).
Here's a part of a run I did with this build in act 2:
Of course act 3 is perfectly do-able, but some rare elite packs are incredibly annoying. Not that I have to skip any, but dying 2-3 times on such a pack and having 1-3 such packs in a run can be very time consuming when you have to run back at them from the checkpoint. After some gear upgrades I managed to get the number of annoying elite packs down enough so that I can clear it in 2-3 hours, which I think makes it more worthwhile than the 90-100 minutes it normally takes to clear act 2. Clearing all zones and dungeons of all elites of course, to minimize the need to create new games and lose valor buffs.
Of course, until you have good enough crit and AP on crit (which you should really get even if you're playing low budget due to how overpowered this build is, just sacrifice as much damage as you have to in order to get it to fit in your budget), I think bliz/hydra is the best because it can simply avoid just about anything deadly while slowly picking at it until it dies. But again, I doubt you can't gear a critical mass wizard at least for act 1 farming with only 700k gold (which is about what you should have when you hit 60 for the first time).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Wicked wind is a pretty weak spell. It is really ONLY good for ciritcal mass procs. Sure it deals some damage on top, but if you try to use it as a primary damage dealer, you will find yourself switching it out to just about anything else pretty quickly.
I don't wear any MF because I want to be farming act 3. Currently I'm still unsure whether act 2 with MF is better or worse than act 3 without MF spending the same amount of gold on gear, but so far it seems like if I wanted to get enough MF to matter, I'll either have to spend more gold or farm act 2 slower. When I can do act 2 in ~2.5 hours, I will need pretty high MF to compensate if I want to run act 2 in more than 1.5 hours, and getting there without getting the run time closer to 2~2.5 hours would cost a lot. Again, not saying anything definite, because this is impossible to truly theorycraft, but my guess is getting into act 3 2.5h runs would end up more profitable. Not to mention that with a sprint barb finding elite packs we can run it in under 2 hours, making act 2 farming even less viable. For act 3 I don't see how I can afford any MF without making a lot more gold than I have now, since even after getting a few upgrades some elites are still quite difficult/annoying, and dying slows you down so much when you are solo (less so in group due to banner teleport, but still a noticeable slowdown).
As for wizard vs barb, I have 2 friends who rolled run like the wind barbs, and spending less gold than me they are farming faster. I doubt this is because they are better players. The class and build simply require less expensive gear to do the same at the same speed. Sure, a critical mass wizard might be able to clear stuff with even cheaper gear than the barb would need to clear it, but once both have enough gear to clear it, the barb definitely clears it significantly faster. Remember that Kripp's gear doesn't really give him more run speed than any undergeared barbarian! He just saves a few seconds on each elite pack and saves deaths on some nasty ones that would spawn a lot of random crap on your screen too quickly if you don't have enough DPS, but since most of the time is really spent finding elites rather than killing them, the barb is the clear winner here regardless whether you have just the bare minimum needed to farm act 3 or if you have Kripp level of gear. The difference is much more significant in act 3, too, since there are a lot of doorways where teleport just doesn't work well.
I have been using the templar for his emergency healing abilities and gave him a lot of vit (>90k hp) so he stays alive to use them. Recently, though, I have switched him for the enchantress with some minimal MF/vit gear for the armor and MF bonus, both of which apply even if she is dead (and the vit is there so that she dies less so that I have the 3% attack speed buff avaiablle more often, as it does go away if she dies).
Here's a part of a run I did with this build in act 2:
Of course act 3 is perfectly do-able, but some rare elite packs are incredibly annoying. Not that I have to skip any, but dying 2-3 times on such a pack and having 1-3 such packs in a run can be very time consuming when you have to run back at them from the checkpoint. After some gear upgrades I managed to get the number of annoying elite packs down enough so that I can clear it in 2-3 hours, which I think makes it more worthwhile than the 90-100 minutes it normally takes to clear act 2. Clearing all zones and dungeons of all elites of course, to minimize the need to create new games and lose valor buffs.
Of course, until you have good enough crit and AP on crit (which you should really get even if you're playing low budget due to how overpowered this build is, just sacrifice as much damage as you have to in order to get it to fit in your budget), I think bliz/hydra is the best because it can simply avoid just about anything deadly while slowly picking at it until it dies. But again, I doubt you can't gear a critical mass wizard at least for act 1 farming with only 700k gold (which is about what you should have when you hit 60 for the first time).