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Before the hotfix, SoH frozen skull cast almost all the time when you recast Frozen Armor, but now it has a chance based on enemies getting hit by the ice aoe itself. Assuming you're standing with an enemy (or objects, whatever) in range, I see the frozen skull proc once every.. hmm maybe 5 seconds? It's not really enough to be useful but it can randomly help at times. It's also really really hard to aim because it goes where your character happens to be facing at the time of proc.

When I wrote the guide Arc Lighting had a 100% proc rate with SoH so it was amazing, but the rate is really bad now (which is why I'm using Shock Pulse, because I've yet to find anything that replaces a 2400dps SoH for any build.)

As I said SoH is trash with electrocute now (here are the coefficients that show you that % legendaries and such have a change to proc per attack depending on the skill) but the other two might be interesting. I didn't think Myken's was worth it alone, but a 20 hit Chain Lightning might make it good. Shame it's one of those 'lol gl getting this to drop even with the worst stats ever' designated items. If nothing else, you could probably make an interesting stunlock build with it.

I've tried Myken's, but the conditions to get it to work aren't that useful and it does it's damage pretty slowly in my opinion. You need at least two targets or it won't jump at all, and the jumps have a delay. So no 10x proc on one target the way you might hope with Chain Lightning.

You can swap around the Familiar and Magic Weapon as you like (or you could just have an Arcane weapon, or a Fire weapon, but I have neither, so.) Personally though I'd rather have 10% exposure applied to everything nearby, 5% more to anything I'm focusing on, and the final 5% available for elites as needed. This is good enough for me considering the trade offs. Sparkflint is giving a 10% bonus all by itself. Magic Weapon can obviously be another 10% with force, but I feel like Deflection is a really big survivability boost (8k shield with every attack, stacks, synergises really nicely with Galv Ward which I'm using now.) Using a weapon for the damage you'd also lose a Tal Rasha's meteor (not that I have it.)

I've been playing a pure Arcane/Disintegrate build for a while, but when I noticed there were replies today I went back to this and I was again surprised by how much damage it does compared to other builds at equivalent gear levels. Obviously you're not going to beat Wand of Woh builds, etc. but if you find yourself with a bunch of lightning gear it works fine with an aggressive play style.

One thing worth adding is that if you do have a nice Shard of Hate, an option is to drop Arc Lightning and pick up Shock Pulse (no rune) as your main attack. I know it sounds retarded, but for some reason Shard scales really well with lightning damage, and Shock Pulse still has a 100% proc rate. It's a really dumb, abusive build but it does make the most of that legendary's damage (to where it can outshine your actual abilities.)



Realistically I need to redo the entire guide but since people only seem to want T6 guides (despite the really average builds that make the front page at times) I doubt there's much interest in it.

Not sure about Torrent though I expect it works since Disintegrate does indeed seem to work from what I've tested. You wouldn't expect it to work but it does seem to be the case that all damage is set on beginning to channel, rather than updated during. I think.

Disclaimer: This is going off what other people have said and I've been able to see from personal testing. If it's somehow wrong don't blame me >.>

Quote from Jar

I'm currently running Disintegrate build on my wiz doing t4-5 rifts (still not content with t6), you can check it here:

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Jar-2330/hero/1807043

It's a bit gear dependant but you should get the general idea, I clear rifts with ease-main idea is to make use of arcane dynamo and oculus+teleport with calamity rune to escape tough situations and practically perma-stun the mobs. Also elite dmg% modifier play an important role here as well as %arcane damage- I don't think this build will work without slorak or orpheus wand. SOJ is also EXTREMELY recommended, still trying to roll that %arcane dmg on it. String of ears gives me a lot of ehp to survive elite onslaught since you'll be standing in place a lot (due to arcane dynamo passive-as long as you're channeling you get that 60% bonus).

That's really interesting; I thought that Dynamo would be consumed in the first tick the way Power Hungry is, but it seems like it works for the whole cast (as close as I can tell looking at Nexus shots and the ticks I could make out, anyway.) It's worth noting though that if Disintegrate does front load its damage calculations the way Arcane Orbit does that Unwavering Will won't factor in unless you're standing still for the 1.5 seconds before you start beaming things, which makes it a lot less desirable to me.

I don't think Sloraks or Orpheus are necessary - sure they help a ton but so does any %arcane item. It's not like they completely transform the build though so you can start without them.

Quote from Venaliter

Quote from Syldra

Quote from Sigma

Disintegrate does FEEL week, but I can assure its not.

Sure you don't see the Big Yellow numbers all the time, however if you take note of the white none critical one's, then you will see that they are much, much bigger. Its not unusual for me to have 2m yellow crits, but 10-15m white none crit damage. As I understand its due to the main beam of disintegrate being akin to a channeled DOT, Similar to what a Shadow priest in wow uses, And the Yellow 1-2m crits you're seeing are from the beam's off shooting from the Chaos nexus rune. (at least this is what was explained to me on the official forums)

Well yes, and it feels like crit hit & damage don't affect disintegrate as much because of it.

. I think Blizzard and Hydra are one of the few spells that cannot critically hit. Disintegrate is certainly not a weak skill, if that's what you are thinking.

A more relevant observation may be does Chaos Nexus benefit from +% Disintegrate damage or just +% Arcane damage? I do not know this.

Witch Doctor DoTs can crit but appear with white text. However some of them decide on whether they're a crit beforehand and others do it on a per tick basis. I don't know which Disintegrate does (if either) but as a gut feelling I'd say it's a per tick can crit basis, because I've seen white numbers in the range of 15m and even with multiple hits factored in that's a ton of damage for a non crit. I think that if it was on a per cast basis damage would feel much peakier.

Also on a note on spell mechanics I do know that Arcane Orbit damage is calculated on cast, not on proc (simple test get a damage proc like Harrington's, cast then let the buff run out and the orbs will continue to do the big damage.)

Logic suggests that Chaos Nexus benefits from %Disintegrate damage, but I don't know if it actually does.Also after doing some testing, I had no idea that Chaos Nexus hit that many targets that fast so obviously I was vastly undervaluing it. You do still need to dive in to get the most out of it though.

It seems like most of the problem here is just not knowing how Disintegrate really works. It does its damage in such a weird way that it's hard to really observe compared to anything else.

Probably because it is probably the best rune in t4-6 when you Entropy is REALLY dangerous. Intensify only wins out when there are multiple Arcane users in group.

I dunno it has around a 20y range (it shoots a bit outside Frozen Storm's circle at least.) Meleeing T4 is fine but if I was going to do T5-6 I wouldn't even want to be that close. Up close with how fast it is Chaos is probably a lot better than I thought, but you do still need to be close to use it.

(Also the reason I use Intensify is because I like the debuff boosting all of the other arcane damage going on and on triple magic missiles between beams. Generator-free Chaos might be interesting though.)

Entropy feels really weak to me when I use it, but I think it's more the way the skill does damage rather than it not actually doing much damage. Biggish numbers pop up occasionally as normal but it looks more like it's doing it's damage really really fast rather than giving you those big hit feeling impacts.

The other runes felt like that for a bit but I'm pretty used to general Disintegrate now. Entropy still feels like garbage but that's more because I don't think the range loss is worth the damage you gain compared to using Intensify. No idea why you'd ever use Charged Nexus.

I think it all depends on your priorities. If your goal is to defeat the highest Torment, then no, lightning probably won't compete. If your goal is to farm gear, then choosing higher torments to do it on is already an inefficient choice (unless your gear and build allows you to do hundreds of millions of damage per hit, but this is not the vast majority of people.) For every one of us that considers T1 the absolute baseline of acceptable farming, there are probably ten players who don't even do Torment difficulty.

Your build also depends on your gear: what do you do if you have a ton of lightning gear drop and nothing else? In this case I think my build is certainly one of the more effective options no matter what your goal in game.

As an example I did some tests using both Electrocute vs Entropy. i only have a few pieces I could swap in (Slorak wand, Moonlight ward, a few other arcane/disintegrate/APoC pieces) so Lightning damage was still higher than Arcane, but then Entropy has double the damage multiplier of Arc Lightning. I was expecting the two do to about equal damage using that gear, but Arc Lightning was still much faster and didn't need me to stop and recharge it. Now obviously this is probably a result of modifiers on the gear I have suiting lightning more (but it shouldn't have suited itthat much more) but it does go to show that in real terms there are plenty of situations a player can wind up in with their gear where lightning is superior for them at that time.

Added Wyrdward, thanks. Obviously it's not as good as the other two, but there are plenty of players who I imagine have neither.

I didn't mean you tried to copy it, I meant you could have made a quick look through the forum and seen almost the exact same builld in its own thread already ; )

Sometimes people miss things. At least I put more effort in than linking a build and writing one sentence, as many people do.

Well, Wave of force hits "hard" too. Having not played it I am not 100% sure, but I don't think sparkflint can deal the damage of WoF, each to their own though I guess.

This is true, but Wave of Force hits for 351% and requires you to stop doing anything else to cast it (and it has a clunky cast time unless you glitch it.) The time spent casting Wave of Force is time you are no longer casting Electrocute (310%) and Sparkflint casts along with it automatically for another 179% single target. Obviously you gain the all around effect but I don't think that makes it worth it.

Well let's say you can keep up until t3, perhaps even 4, but then you are already in top of the line gear. Shard of hate is like Wand of Woh for Fire/some arcane builds and it doesn't change up the gameplay as drastically as the wand does. So while the lightning tops out around that level you can still get gear as fire or arcane that can make higher torment efficient to farm. I guess it depends on what your goal is but if you want to continue to gain in strength and be able to do new things efficiently then lightning just tops off earlier, at least the lightning builds i've seen, it's still early after the expansion so we'll see what the future holds, I am hopefully wrong.

I can do T4 now, and the wizards I've seen posting that do T6 have had around double my sheet stats. That makes me hopeful that if I had that gear I could do T6 too. Would I do it efficiently? I have no idea. I'm going to try and stick with it until I do have the gear and not get pigeonholed into a typical Arcane build. The point of the build wasn't to defeat all Arcane / Frozen Orb builds, but to try something different and maybe be viable with lightning.

Similarly, if you can find a way to make Entropy viable to spam (assuming APOC which I don't have on hand right now) then of course it's probably going to destroy Electrocute, and so it should. But then it's not a lightning build or a build trying to make a generator viable.

I wound up switching the chests around because I was trying to fit all four sets on at once (this is probably a mistake and Firebird should burn in the hell it deserves) but depending on the crit level you're at Vyr's is equially as unique. Tal Rasha's is probably better and it's the one I use - but realistically it's the one I use because it's the one I found. Several times. While not finding any for the other slots >.> I added to the stat discussion that while I think IAS is good, I rated it a bit lower because the playstyle either has you killing things in 1-2 hits, or dashing in and out a bit if things get to hairy, meaning you don't really get full use of sustained dps as you would on a target dummy (if you're going to stand still for long periods Unwavering Will becomes much much better, too.)

Thanks for your reply.

I really wasn't trying to copy anyone else with this build, but it doesn't surprise me that someone else came up with it either. Mostly it's just a build I've been having a lot of fun playing and wanted to show the multiple reasons why skills can be really good together. I like Sparkflint better than Wave of Force because you're basically trading 15% passive damage + whatever the familiar does for 15% active damage, which seems counter productive.

I did point out that I'd only played the build up to T4, but tried to make it clearer for people to see. I really don't understand why people are so obsessed with T6, other than as a completionist challenge. And I don't think a build that can still slaughter T3 easily with average level gear should be considered worthless.

I swapped out my 2400dps Shard of Hate for a 2000dps Pig Sticker (only thing I had handy with a socket) and did a few quick tests, and it was certainly slower, but in no way did not having Shard break the build. Obviously having it helps but it helps every lightning or cold build by that much, too.

I also updated the gear list - idk was accurate; no good non-set gloves >.> also added a bis guide with all four sets (good luck ever finding all that stuff though.)

Quote from Venaliter

Why on earth are you building around Arc Lightning, which is half the damage of Entropy? At a time most wizards are trying to cheat having to use a spender at all, you are building around one.

These two sentences contradict each other. The whole point was to cheat needing to use a spender; Entropy would be building around one.

It's a melee wizard, of course it's going to get smashed in the face in T5 and T6. Maybe you can gear around that with damage reduction, but I certainly don't have the gear to do so. The skills chosen don't change that though (obv you pick up blur for higher difficulties.)

I can't say what T5 or T6 is like with the gear to do them, because I (and most people) don't have the gear to be efficient there. Some people do, and that's great. When I have better gear and explode on T6, i'll be sure to update that.

** If anyone can tell me how to insert the pretty build images I'd appreciate it.

I make no claims to this build being the best, original, or even good. I might have missed some really glaring mechanics or ideas. I do, however, have a lot of fun playing this build. Play what you enjoy!

TLDR Version

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UNfQSj!diRV!cbccca
Use these, fry stuff. You probably won't steamroll high Torments, but what were you expecting from a melee wizard?

Details

The build is based around the concept of Electrocute (Arc Lightning) having a spender level modifier (310%) with zero cost.

This is not a Torment 6 wonderbuild.With my current average gear (~900k sheet dps, ~4m toughness, ~75% lightning) white enemies in T1 get one shot, elites die in 1-2 seconds, and bosses 5-10 seconds. T2 and 3 are pretty easy, T4 is doable, but silly (I don't think that anything above T3 is worth doing unless you want the challenge, and personally I don't even go above T1 while searching for gear because it's just faster to oneshot everything and then start a new rift/bounty.)

Skills

Generally I look for there to be multiple reasons to pick any given skill. Also, you only want 1-2 active damage skills. You can't cast more than that at once, wasting a skill slot. Everything else should be long cooldown abilities or Utility skills. Fortunately the wizard has a ton of utility that gives us damage without needing to cast anything.

Primary: Electrocute (Arc Lightning)
This is the vast majority of your damage. The range is low, but once you get used to being able to dive into fights it becomes a non-issue. With my gear Electrocute crits from anywhere between 4-6m, up to 10m+ per crit when I use Black Hole. As main skills go, Arcane Torrent does hit harder, but it has a wind up time (and costs.) Electrocute is instant and free (this does make a difference.)
+Hits hard
+Instant cast. also ticks fast.
+Pierces; not limited to enemy count.
+Is free

Secondary: Black Hole (Event Horizon)
I feel like this is the most underrated utility in the wizard's arsenal. The ability to simply "turn off" almost any elite or boss ability is unreal. It's also a 2 second "stun" on most enemies. With good timing you can remove all those pesky walls and beams while also CCing the elitesand make them take a ton more damage.
+You can use it as a gap closer on ranged groups (CCs the nearest enemies, prevents anyone on the other side of the hole from attacking you since the hole absorbs projectiles.)
+Use it at the start of an elite fight (once you're next to them.) You get two seconds of CCd elites with no affix interference, which should be enough to kill them, or at least win the fight.
+Waller? Arcane beams? That annoying frozen pulse thing? Nope. Eat them all. Obviously youcan dodge around these things, but if you're dodging you're not killing everything.
+Adds the 5% Elemental Exposure debuff for Arcane.
+If you have Strongarm Bracers, Black Hole gives the knockback effect for your extra 20-30% damage.

1: Ice Armor (Frozen Storm)
+Anything that gets near you is going to be slowed, making kiting about really easy (not sure why you'd want to kite, but whatever.) +Anything that does hit you has a high chance of being frozen for a few seconds, which stops the damage and lets you murder it in revenge.
+12% melee damage reduction. More than Energy Armor is likely to give you, but less ranged protection.
+The AOE adds the 5% Cold Elemental Exposure debuff to everything near you.
+The AOE also breaks all nearby objects. Unless you normally spend a lot of time intentionally smashing everything around you, this actually finds a surprising number of items. Really good if you have the bracers that give a speed boost on destroying objects, or for annoying someone in your group that has them.
+Cast once, forget about it for 10 minutes. If you have a legendary or set ability that procs on frost cast (Shard of Hate, Tal Rashas?) you can recast it to proc those abilities.

2: Teleport (Calamity)
I don't know why anyone would ever build any wizard without teleport. Jump in and out of trouble, leap over ledges / walls. Wormhole is obviously better if you enjoy marathons, but Calamity is a bit more combat based. Use whichever you like. Calamity's advantages are:
+Gives you a second ranged engage. Teleport into a big group for an aoe stun and damage.
+Adds the 5% Arcane Elemental Exposure debuff.
+With Illusionist, you can teleport into a group, do some damage, then if you start getting mauled your Teleport CD will reset, allowing you to either teleport away to freedom, or deeper into a bit group of enemies, stunning them and hopefully picking up some life on kill / health globe restore. This is a lot of fun, but can also go very wrong.

3: Magic Weapon (Deflection)
Magic Weapon is an obvious choice. You give up 10% damage by taking Deflection over Force Weapon, but gain a ton of survivability. An 8k shield doesn't sound like much, but you have to remember that the shield is being reapplied with every attack (and you should be attacking more than once per second) which makes it more like wearing a real shield with average block rates but a 100% block chance. This means you don't have to do anything silly like wearing a real shield. Wear a Source instead and do a ton more damage.
+10% damage.
+Survivability needs.
+Cast and forget for 10mins.

4: Familiar (Sparkflint)
+It's 10% damage. What else are you going to use the slot for? +It gives you your 5% damage Fire Elemental Exposure debuff. Only on the target you're attacking, but that's good enough for bosses and elites.


Passive 1: Illusionist
Gives you some runspeed when you teleport (good for boring empty stretches) and resets the cd when you get in trouble. If you can't react and teleport out again in time, you might just want to stick with Blur.

Passive 2: Audacity
Most of your damage is focused within 15 yards. This passive gives massage damage gains with no downsides.

Passive 3: Elemental Exposure
With this skill selection, you should have 2-4 stacks up on enemies. The Arcane part isn't ideal, but even at 2 stacks it's still better than everything else considering that there are no downsides to the passive (unlike glass cannon or unwavering will) and works for the entire group.
+Electrocute adds Lightning on everything.
+Ice Armor adds Frost to anything within 15y of you.
+Sparkflint adds Fire to your current target (not amazing but good for bosses/elites.)
+Black Hole and Teleport add Arcane (on a cooldown, but it's enough for elites.)
* I don't have the set to test, but this should also complete the criteria for Tal Rasha's 4pc. You might need to spam Ice Armor every 8 seconds.

Passive 4: Paralysis
The fourth slot can probably be anything you want.
-Paralysis keeps everything you're actively attacking stunned.
-Blur is better if you're afraid of ranged or aoe damage (because they usually come from things you aren't stunning anyway.)
-Unwavering Will is better if you stand still much (good if you spend a lot of time facetanking elites/bosses. I find I rarely get use out of this except on bosses, so I moved away from using it.)
-Glass Cannon is better if you're suicidal. Fun but this will get you killed at random times.
I don't think any of the other passives are as good for this build, unless there's something I haven't considered.

Gear

This build is specifically designed to not require any specific legendary in order to work (because I hate reading a thread and realising I can't do a build just because I don't have x legendary to make a skill go from expensive to free, or whatever.) That said, lots of them do help a lot. In particular, Shard of Hate and Thunderfury will make your damage skyrocket, but I don't think they're required in the way that a Mirrorball is required for a magic missile build.

Obviously you work with whatever you can get. The 500int set bonuses are good, Tal Rasha's seems really good considering we have all four elements covered, and Aughild's %elite damage bonuses are good. Shard of Hate is amazing. But most of us won't have found even half of all these. So let's look at more general options.


Core Stats
Int (You want this on every item, with as high a roll as possible.)
Vit (Keeps you not dead, but don't go overboard. I've heard around 450k life is a good number.)
Crit% (You need a decent amount of this, but I think that beyond 50% you get massively diminishing returns.)
Crit Damage (Supposedly you want 10% crit damage to every 1% crit. Realistically just get as much as you can. Always socket weapon with the best emerald you can.)
%Lightning Damage (Get this anywhere you can whenever you can. Neck and Bracers by default.)
%Electrocute Damage (Belt and Pants.)
%Increased Attack Speed (More lightning more of the time. I rate this slightly lower than crit because the nature of a melee wizard is generally going to be more about getting in burst damage rather than sustained dps.)
%Damage to Elites (I think this is really rare but really strong.)
AP (This build does not use AP other than Black Hole and so has no need of AP boosting items.)

Here are some legendaries that stand out for each slot. Not of them are specifically needed but I think that all of them help the build in their own ways.

Head:
-Storm Crow(20% Lightning, Fiery ball does about 300% damage at a guess.)
-Andariel's Visage (20% Lightning, you're in melee to take advantage of the Poison Nova.)

Neck:
-The Star of Azkaranth (stand in the fireee)

Shoulders:
There aren't any interesting shoulders. Set slot.

Gloves:
No interesting gloves. Set slot. Vyr's spawn with crit.

Chest:
Set slot.

Bracers:
-Ancient Parthan Defenders(Retarded amounts of damage reduction with Paralysis and Teleport Calamity)
-Strongarm Bracers (Black Hole procs it)
-Warzechian Armguards (runspeed boost thanks to Ice Armor)

Waist:
-Thundergod's Vigor (15% Lightning Damage, melee proc)

Rings:
-Stone of Jordan (20% Lightning damage AND 30% elite damage. This ring is unreal.)
-Ring of Royal Grandeur (link isn't listed on the item guide, but it gives +1 to set bonus completion. Only found in Act I Bounty Bags.)
-Wyrdward (13-17% chance to stun on lightning, nice for extra cc if you can't find the other two.)

Pants:
There are no interesting legendary pants. Set slot.

Boots:
-Ice Climbers (for ignoring freeze which is probably the deadliest affix for a melee to not see.)

Main Hand:
-Shard of Hate(Great lightning proc, frost proc via spamming Ice Armor. I was lucky enough to find a good one of these and I really really like it. Your damage now stretches well beyond 15y.)
-Odyn Son (20% Lightning damage, chian lightning proc)
-Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Winidseeker (Everyone's favourite legendary, probably the best general weapon in the game for everyone that doesn't have a specific legendary their build needs.)
-Fulminator (I'm only adding this because I've seen it mentioned a lot, but I had one and I think the proc is really, overrated.)

Offhand
-No real preference on Sources right now. I'd probably use Tal Rasha's here.
-Triumvirate (This is a legendary option, has %lightning %fire and %cold.)
-Cosmic Strand (Crafted, allows you to run both wormhole+calamity, might be nice.)

Again, none of these are necessary in any way, but they're the ones with interesting, relevant unique effects that will help.


My current gear is pretty average, but I imagine my BiS would look something like this (the list isn't perfect but then who is going to have the perfect choice of gear to actually use?)

Head: Stormcrow/Andariel
Neck: Tal Rasha
Shoulders: Aughild
Chest: Vyr
Gloves: Vyr
Wrist: Aughild (sad because there are great wrists, maybe things could be reshuffled)
Waist: Tal Rasha
Pants: Firebird
Boots: Firebird
Ring 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Mainhand: Shard of Hate
Offhand: Tal Rasha

Okay, I think that's all for now. Not sure what else I could add? Any feedback, errors, or ways to improve are appreciated.

I was actually testing this build on the weekend as an alternative to mine. It was a lot of fun, but felt kind of suicidal in comparison.

I wouldn't have thought that more damage would be the issue: you should absolutely melt t1 and 2 (probably even 3 with that gear) and any higher I would have thought that survivability is what becomes a problem?

How you'd want to change the build depends a lot on what content you're doing. The obvious answer to you wanting more damage is to ditch Blur or Paralysis for Glass Cannon. I have a suspicion that Force Weapon does more damage than Electrify, though I don't have any sort of numbers to back it up.

Personally though I would prefer a more balanced build that uses all the elements and EE for more defence and damage, since apart from Electrocute, all of the lightning skills get outshone by other options (with Wave of Force being a debatable exception.)

Ohh so it's a completely separate calculation.



Thank you, I finally understand it now. Sorry I'm so slow.

Apologies if this is really obvious to a lot of people, but I feel like it's something that isn't incredibly clear to a lot of people, me included.

According to the character sheet (using a wizard as an example) every point of Intelligence gives you 1% more damage (7000 int, increases damage by 7000%) while passives like Glass Cannon give you 15% more damage, and everyone is madly after +% skill damage on items now.

But with the way the character sheet says it works, doesn't that mean a passive like Glass Cannon is only actually worth 15 int? And say +10% cold damage on an item would be worse than a 10 int gain on an item?

It seems so natural to leap after the 10% damage buffs, but are they really worth so little? Or are there other mechanics behind it that the game doesn't explain? (For the massive amount of numbers it gives, there are way too many that aren't explained properly.)