Before 1.03 I was sitting at 2.6+ attacks per second and it was possible to jump far enough with wormhole on each hit you take to spam loads of piercing orbs while the mobs are 1 screen+ away from you and running through blizzard/hydra.
After 1.03 hit, I decided to jump the arcane orb bandwagon and currently sitting at 1.3 attacks per second, 52k dps with 30% crit and 150% critdamage.
Needless to say, I have NO goddamn idea on how you're supposed to kill such pack.
Also most of unicorn elites fall under this category too (before 1.03 I was able to clear ANY pack in whimsyshire without using the bugged bottleneck spot) - I have no idea how you can kill 'rainbow' (the fast ones) unicorns with painful affixes like fast/vortex/firechains-teleporter etc without blizzard/hydra/porb. Same goes with invulnerable minions - that's why I'm going with celestial orb for now actually.
Anyway, I know these packs aren't that hard if you have 200m+ gold gear or you're stupid enough to waste real money. I can't see wizard going around with 1300+ allres and tanking shit even if I had that amount of gold. I was never a fan of whitstans/mosers/stormshield and 75% block sorcs, you know. I want to play a ranged class as a ranged class.
Is there any way to successfully kill such packs with reasonable resistances/armor/hp? By reasonable I mean the amount required for force armor to work - around 30k hp, 300 allres and 5k armor buffed.
//Edit: Yes, I'm using Scoundrel with multishot and cold damage bow. It's great but not THAT great when we're talking about the elite packs in question.
Soul lashers, Ponies with fast == avoid, I just can't take that many hits in a row. Fast is the affix I have the most trouble with as wiz, even with wormhole some of the packs just hunt you down and turn you into wormfood.
That said I find very few packs, cept for INV that I can't melt with the wormhole + orb + crit build. Guess you can't kill everything, I dunno, never really found a good solution for fast creatures who roll fast affix..
You can't kill everything as a glass cannon, so just skip what seems unkillable for you. Or get a tank and one more ranged - things will become manageable. My current stats are 38k HP, 45k DPS (with Glass Cannon only), no resists/armor gear, hydra+blizzard+porb build. Most of the time I kill phasebeasts if there's enough room for kiting, although sometimes I die 1-2 times in the process. Lashers are pain in the ass. I can kill some, but generally it doesn't feel like it's worth the trouble. The difficulty of Fast packs really depends on the mob type and affixes, but generally it's an anti-glass cannon affix, so even if I kite like a boss, I still die several times in the process, since they shit in blizzard's snare, so there's no way for me to prevent them from hitting.
I find teleport-fracture with illusionist to be essential for killing elite phasebeasts. I tend to kite them in a straight line with orbs and hydra being the only damage - if i try to kite them in circles on a small area i usually die. If they're particularly bad i sometimes drag them to a portal and do the diamon skin, 3 orbs, leave, wait for diamon skin, repeat kinda thing. I usually dont have to though.
im 350 res, 19k hp, 45k dps with 0.9 attack/sec
Fast elites in general arent a problem, might be because im capped at 25% movement speed so i just run around randomly with hydra and occasional orb.
soul lashers i never meet on my farm areas so i havent tried those since patch.
oh, and i use both force armor, teleport and diamond skin as defensive skills. orb and hydra only damage
Just kite constantly with vhydra and drop blizzards whenever you can. Against a pack like that you dont have too much time to cast orb. What lets you win though is the life regen combined with diamond skin and illusionist. You're going to take hits, but every time you do you can teleport away and between the life regen and diamond skin you should be able to basically continuously take hits. I also use the templar instead of the scroundrel for the heals/life regen. With this build I have not had to skip a single pack since 1.0.3
How much attacks per second do you have? This question is directed to everyone using the 'old' P.orb + hydra (+ blizzard).
I loved this build when I had 2.64 but my gear dropped to less than 2.00 after the patch so I sold everything in frustration.
Right now I don't have much gold but if I sell all my crit/critdmg gear (which is quite useless for hydra and blizzard I guess) and buy a lot of ias stuff I might get to 2.2+ again...
Is it worth it? I really loved the playstyle. Yes, my 'damage' number won't be big, I'll be killing stuff in a1-a2 way longer than with fat arcane orb crits, but I simply can't stand this gameplay I currently have. I'm basically on the verge of quitting.
I take it ias items aren't that expensive nowadays and I can afford stuff like andy/lacunis/boj way cheaper than it was pre-1.0.3... Coupled with a wand/dagger with 10-11% ias it might be worth it?
I have no IAS on gear, so I have only 1.4 attacks per second from my sword. I am running p. orb + vhydra + blizz stacking crit/crit damage. You don't need IAS, the crit gear works fine for the build.
Ive ran into a rare pack of phasebeasts a couple of days ago on the way to azmodan, core of arreat so there is no tower shooting or anything like that there.
They had teleport+fast affix, needless to say I died almost instantly on the first encounter. One might think well they already have teleport as a natural ability, well in this case they teleported twice as much, also note that the teleport affix makes them teleport right onto you while their natural teleporting ability makes them appear near you, but with "fast" affix they were pretty much on top of me already when they appeared, coming from flanks making running simply impossible. Like Morphos I havent skipped a pack after patch, so that wouldnt be the first time. I run the exactly same build as him with the exception of using fracture instead of wormhole.
I came back to them and died another couple of times when I got greedy with my diamond skin, only to see them back at full life when I came back(love that xD). So I decided to be a little more careful, cast teleport/fracture and one of them teleports onto me/near me hits me, teleport again, rinse/repeat, all of that casting hydra/blizz whenever I could, nevermind piercing orb the only time I could cast some was with diamond skin on(diamond skin can tank 3-4 hits for me since I have only 18k HP)and that was like 2-3. Eventually I killed them, so yeah life regeneration with low hp is the way to go against those guys, but remember to keep some resists/armor so you wont get too much bleeding damage out of force armor. 18k life(113kEHP), 1,5k life regeneration, 40k dps. Another benefit of having low life is that ur templar healing ability will actually heal you from almost a full hit you take(I take like 6,3k damage hits).
edit: by the way these guys were the ones the gave me most trouble since patch, as ive ran into vortex/teleport + fire chains and what not but those teleport/fast phasebeast got the cake...
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Before 1.03 I was sitting at 2.6+ attacks per second and it was possible to jump far enough with wormhole on each hit you take to spam loads of piercing orbs while the mobs are 1 screen+ away from you and running through blizzard/hydra.
After 1.03 hit, I decided to jump the arcane orb bandwagon and currently sitting at 1.3 attacks per second, 52k dps with 30% crit and 150% critdamage.
Needless to say, I have NO goddamn idea on how you're supposed to kill such pack.
Also most of unicorn elites fall under this category too (before 1.03 I was able to clear ANY pack in whimsyshire without using the bugged bottleneck spot) - I have no idea how you can kill 'rainbow' (the fast ones) unicorns with painful affixes like fast/vortex/firechains-teleporter etc without blizzard/hydra/porb. Same goes with invulnerable minions - that's why I'm going with celestial orb for now actually.
Anyway, I know these packs aren't that hard if you have 200m+ gold gear or you're stupid enough to waste real money. I can't see wizard going around with 1300+ allres and tanking shit even if I had that amount of gold. I was never a fan of whitstans/mosers/stormshield and 75% block sorcs, you know. I want to play a ranged class as a ranged class.
Is there any way to successfully kill such packs with reasonable resistances/armor/hp? By reasonable I mean the amount required for force armor to work - around 30k hp, 300 allres and 5k armor buffed.
//Edit: Yes, I'm using Scoundrel with multishot and cold damage bow. It's great but not THAT great when we're talking about the elite packs in question.
My wiz stats with the scoundrel are
82k dps, 52k hp, 1.5 APS, 29% crit chance, 250% crit dmg
Soul lashers, Ponies with fast == avoid, I just can't take that many hits in a row. Fast is the affix I have the most trouble with as wiz, even with wormhole some of the packs just hunt you down and turn you into wormfood.
That said I find very few packs, cept for INV that I can't melt with the wormhole + orb + crit build. Guess you can't kill everything, I dunno, never really found a good solution for fast creatures who roll fast affix..
im 350 res, 19k hp, 45k dps with 0.9 attack/sec
Fast elites in general arent a problem, might be because im capped at 25% movement speed so i just run around randomly with hydra and occasional orb.
soul lashers i never meet on my farm areas so i havent tried those since patch.
oh, and i use both force armor, teleport and diamond skin as defensive skills. orb and hydra only damage
Just kite constantly with vhydra and drop blizzards whenever you can. Against a pack like that you dont have too much time to cast orb. What lets you win though is the life regen combined with diamond skin and illusionist. You're going to take hits, but every time you do you can teleport away and between the life regen and diamond skin you should be able to basically continuously take hits. I also use the templar instead of the scroundrel for the heals/life regen. With this build I have not had to skip a single pack since 1.0.3
I loved this build when I had 2.64 but my gear dropped to less than 2.00 after the patch so I sold everything in frustration.
Right now I don't have much gold but if I sell all my crit/critdmg gear (which is quite useless for hydra and blizzard I guess) and buy a lot of ias stuff I might get to 2.2+ again...
Is it worth it? I really loved the playstyle. Yes, my 'damage' number won't be big, I'll be killing stuff in a1-a2 way longer than with fat arcane orb crits, but I simply can't stand this gameplay I currently have. I'm basically on the verge of quitting.
I take it ias items aren't that expensive nowadays and I can afford stuff like andy/lacunis/boj way cheaper than it was pre-1.0.3... Coupled with a wand/dagger with 10-11% ias it might be worth it?
They had teleport+fast affix, needless to say I died almost instantly on the first encounter. One might think well they already have teleport as a natural ability, well in this case they teleported twice as much, also note that the teleport affix makes them teleport right onto you while their natural teleporting ability makes them appear near you, but with "fast" affix they were pretty much on top of me already when they appeared, coming from flanks making running simply impossible. Like Morphos I havent skipped a pack after patch, so that wouldnt be the first time. I run the exactly same build as him with the exception of using fracture instead of wormhole.
I came back to them and died another couple of times when I got greedy with my diamond skin, only to see them back at full life when I came back(love that xD). So I decided to be a little more careful, cast teleport/fracture and one of them teleports onto me/near me hits me, teleport again, rinse/repeat, all of that casting hydra/blizz whenever I could, nevermind piercing orb the only time I could cast some was with diamond skin on(diamond skin can tank 3-4 hits for me since I have only 18k HP)and that was like 2-3. Eventually I killed them, so yeah life regeneration with low hp is the way to go against those guys, but remember to keep some resists/armor so you wont get too much bleeding damage out of force armor. 18k life(113kEHP), 1,5k life regeneration, 40k dps. Another benefit of having low life is that ur templar healing ability will actually heal you from almost a full hit you take(I take like 6,3k damage hits).
edit: by the way these guys were the ones the gave me most trouble since patch, as ive ran into vortex/teleport + fire chains and what not but those teleport/fast phasebeast got the cake...