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Quote from Nastai

The cast speed of SB decreases as your weapon speed decreases, huh? Some nice information there! So, too however, will the damage. It will take a lot of experimenting to find out what really works best.

It's possible that a 10 dps weapon (shiv for example) at 1.0 speed could be better than a 20 dps weapon (1h sword for example) at 1.8 speed if the shiv had +% casting speed (which I feel many will) and casting speed actually impacted the cast time of SB.

All of this is very juicy! ;D

It's mostly just a way to keep the spell in line with the dps of the weapon. Slower weapons hit harder, faster weapons hit weaker. That will always be the case. By setting the spell up this way it ensures that you're not forced to use a 2H slow weapon to be effective, you simply want the highest dps weapon you can find.

How casting speed impacts will be important to find out. If it does than slower weapons would end up being more powerful.

Quote from akainu

What I want to know is will the runed effects for magic weapon effect spectral blade.

Did you read all the posts? We've come to the tentative conclusion that it will. It doesn't really make much sense otherwise. Procylon brought up a great point of how Barbs have skills that they can spam just like Spectral Blade which means they too have no reason to ever do an actual normal hit.

On a side note, yesterday on stream I saw a guy testing out a melee wizard. He figured out that the cast speed of Spectral IS influenced by the attack speed of the weapon you have equipped. Useful information imo. Also enforces the idea that it will proc melee hit effects.

Quote from ElectricEel

A bunch of people are going to be using these 3 spells along with Frost Nova, Diamond Skin, and Energy Armor/Storm Armor.

I love how you just assume everyone is going to be using your build. Have you even thought of the time it takes Disintegrate to ramp up during that 6 second window of de-buff time you have? I know you haven't thought about the fact you're going to be standing in place to deal damage.

I also know you haven't thought of the possibility that Alabaster runed Disintegrate might actually do more damage than Crimson.... I know it's the only rune I'll be using with it.

Quote from ElectricEel

Talking with someone like you Nastai is pointless, some of the other people at least have math that they did and they have alternatives, and the have actually mentioned the things they don't agree with me about so we can discuss them. You say you don't agree but you can't think of or are too lazy say anything to put yourself out there. You say you don't agree but we can never know or benefit from the alternative that you're apparently too lazy to come up with.

When I trashed temporal flux I actually mentioned the alternative, something that lasted longer but in a previous post someone was mentioning it but didn't bother to say whether I was right that Miasma lasted longer and slowed better than TF.

They are just upset that I actually had an opinion on it that wasn't theirs....

Yah..... about your "alternative"..... Go read my reply to your trash post.

I wasn't going to, but since you're standing by this list of yours I'll point out some of your errors in judgement. (The fact so many people disagree with you should be cluing you in already).

NOTE: I came up with every example build in under 1 minute. I'm not claiming they're amazing or that I'd use them per-say, but I do feel they would work just fine.

INCOMING WALL OF TEXT!

Quote from ElectricEel

Top of the list:

Temporal Flux: Slow time with Miasma lasts longer, better slow, and you don't have to hit them, just form it around them.

Right, first off you have a MASSIVE issue here. How do you even begin to compare an active skill to a passive? You don't equip them in the same slot, you get 6 actives vs 3 passives, if so many of our passives weren't mediocre they would be a lot more valuable.

Putting that aside your comparison of the two abilities is just flat out wrong. Slow Time is an AoE effect, fixed location spell, with a 30 second cooldown. Temporal Flux is applied to all spells that deal arcane damage, and is only used in builds that focus completely on arcane damage (kind of like your disintegrate obsession, so I don't understand why you wouldn't take this passive).

Now your claim: It lasts longer? How is that possible? With your own math you can channel disintegrate for 4 minutes. That's 4 minutes of slow from Flux. YOu don't even have to stop channeling your Crimson rune to get the slow effect. Seems more effective to me. Better slow? Yah sure. By 11%. Not to mention the fact that we don't know if Flux scales with gear. Even if it doesn't, 11% isn't that much and is a FREE effect, you don't have to use a spell cast to get it's effect like you would for Slow Time. You don't have to hit them? What? Do you even read what you write? How is hitting an enemy with Disintegrate + Flux harder than hitting with Slow Time? That doesn't even make sense!

Here, a flux build with your almighty channeled spells: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#dUkQOm!ZXb!baZYZZ

In a build that only deals arcane damage (so you get maximum effect) flux allows you to take less defensive spells and focus on the damage output.

Glass Cannon: Marginal increase in damage, marginal decrease in AC and resistance. Familiar with Crimson rune is double the damage, who cares about just 20%. Throw in Arcane Torrent with Crimson Rune and you do 120% more damage with an arcane spell. Recycle Bin.

Again, you're comparing a Passive to an Active (Granted, Familiar is pretty damn passive, but still). I'll say it again, the spells take different slots, you cannot compare them.

Glass Cannon is for sitting in the back, behind your party members, and unleashing hell. Kinda like this build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#dUhOkS!bXV!bZZZZZ

Wow, look at that, Familiar, Crimson Arcane Torrent, AND Glass Cannon! All 3 in one build! With Crimson Slow Time!

Unstable Anomaly: If your planning to be below 20% life enough to make this a useful weapon then you need to change all your spells out! Trash it.

For a general wizard yes. For a melee wizard or a Hardcore wizard it could be useful. It's not a "weapon" as you call it, it's defense. When compared to other PASSIVES, yes, it's on the weaker side for sure, especially considering it's our top end one.

Power Hungry: Gain 30 power when healed by health. You gain 12 power just from standing still, in a pinch this could be useful but for most, trash it !

From what I've seen in Beta health globes are disgustingly common. Now I imagine that will peter off as you go along meaning that this could be the most OP passive for the first 3 Acts even if it's worthless in Inferno. Once you get to end game, yes, compared to other PASSIVES, it's weaker.

Prodigy: Marginal at best, you'll spend half the time firing off this saving up for meteor when you could use disintegrate crimson with storm armor and get more damage in less time.... Recycle bin. Good for a low level/melee wizard.

Again your Crimson Disintegrate with Storm Armor, it's like your only argument. Ever. -_-. Prodigy is pretty much required for builds that don't use a Golden Sig spell but still cast Sig spells often. Maybe Indigo Electrocute or Magic Missile. Long story short you need some form of regen other than base to fuel more expensive spells. These might not be the most competitive, top damage dealing builds, but they're going to be fun as hell:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZRVQOm!YXf!YaYYZa

Arcane Dynamo: Why do this spell when you can do Arcane Torrent with crimson rune and get 120% more damage with arcane spells for 6 seconds. Trash.

Yet again with comparing a passive to an active. Not going to go into this again. Just think of this though: Imagine you have 7 stacks of Dynamo. You hit the boss with Crimson Arcane Torrent to get the 120% damage boost, then you cast another sig spell to get your 8th charge. Now you cast Disintegrate and for it's entire channel it does 50% more damage. Lets see.... 40% from Familiar, 120% from Torrent, how about another 140% from Time Warp, and then the 50% from Dynamo. Thats +350% damage on your Disintegrate.

Side Note: I find it amusing you didn't say Crimson Familiar is better as well. A constant 40% boost is stronger than a 50% boost every 12 seconds. Obviously it doesn't work because of the passive vs active aspect, but you did it for Glass Cannon. I guess the math on that was more obvious.

Illusionist: A better illusion is Diamond skin and then kill the thing ! If your that worried about getting hit, probably by a melee thing, add Blur as passive with Diamond Skin and you don't have to worry. Even in Arena games Diamond skin seemed to work awesome and with Indigo rune you'll be up more often. Trash.

Passive vs Active AGAIN. (Starting to get why I was so disdainful of this post on first read and why so many others think it's a joke?)

Maybe you don't mind dying all the time, but in higher difficulties, especially before you're decked out in final gear, survivability is essential. Not to mention the fact you can use Mirror Image as a 140% damage boost.

Indigo Diamond Skin (and Obsidian) is certainly a powerful defensive tool. It's near impossible to compare it to Teleport however. If you're stuck surrounded by a massive group of enemies being pounded on in melee and shot at from range which would you prefer, Diamond Skin to take a bit of a beating or Teleport to just get the hell out of there?

Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ihdQRl!dXV!cZbYaa

Virtuoso: Recycle bin, could work ok for Energy armor but more often than not people will probably not use it.

The fact you so easily discard this skill when it has the potential to be amazing is alarming. This passive is one of two ways wizards have to regen health and this is a %, not even a flat number!! Assuming Galvanizing Ward's HP/sec scales with gear then this would as well. How fast do wands attack? There's so much information we don't have that makes it so you can't just throw this away.

Tentative build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ahOQRl!cXV!ZZZYaa

Mirror Images (except Simulacrum and Extension of Will)- All other mirror images are probably useless or not as useful. The one that creates 6 images could be good, but, they only have 25% health which means they go bye bye fast if your taking a lot of damage. A neat trick at low levels but higher it'll probably just be laughed at as they disappear in a second. maybe good for Arena. Recycle bin. Why do mocking demise, when you could put the same rune in Wave of Force and definitely stun for 5.0 seconds and knock them back from you.

So, how often do Images cast spells? Cause see, I imagine this would be used in Arena, meaning they probably cast fairly often, maybe even at max speed, other wise it would be preeeeeety easy to figure out which one was real. Until we know that it's hard to say with this spell. Crimson runed it gives 140% damage increase for 15 seconds. Thats better than your Crimson Arcane Torrent you always bring up both in duration AND the fact that it boost all damage not just arcane AND that it provides a bit of defense at the same time! AND the two spells are both actives!!! OMG!!!! A logical comparison!?

I've used Crimson MI in a few other builds, not going to bother making another.

Meteor cost too high, good for one hit wonder if you can hit and if it does the max damage but Arcane torrent with Disintegrate will do more damage in the same amount of time, throw in the supposed cast time of 3 seconds for meteor and ease of missing and lower chance of critical compared to disintegrate. Trash.

Meteor is iconic. I get the feeling you haven't played Diablo 2. I can't tell you how many Meteor sorcs I made in that game. I know that it was easily one of the top damage builds (THE top damage for a period of time) and that I spent hours upon hours raining fiery death and it was awesome. Rumors are the 3 sec delay on it falling was removed for this game, even with it I can tell you that I don't miss with Meteor. With delay it takes skill to land, the reward for that skill is massive damage. Indigo runed Meteor is still the highest damage spell the wizard has assuming you can land all 14. How hard it is to do that is the real question.

You say "lower chance of critical than disintegrate" I don;t understand that, where are you even getting that from?

This build is heavily influenced from juba's awesome "look's like it's going to rain" thread: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#PldaQO!bYX!YabZYZ

Arcane Orb: Recycle bin. Disintegrate is better, hits everything in front of you, less mana use etc. etc.

Energy Twister: Why use this when Ray of Frost or Disintegrate will cost less with more damage. Trash.

Explosive blast: Almost as bad as Energy twister, the only reason I would use it is if something is immune to arcane, that is it. Recycle Bin.

Not even going to do these three as this is already taking too long and I have a feeling I'm wasting my time with this whole thing regardless.

P.S. There are no immunities.

Ice Armor is great but slow with miasma is better. There is nothing Ice Armor can do that Slow time with Miasma can't do better, longer, or more reliably. Trash.

Alright. At least here we're comparing two actives. First off I don't like Ice Armor at all, but I'm still going to defend it. Lets start with your claim. "There is nothing Ice Armor can do that Slow time with Miasma can't do better, longer, or more reliably." Yah? What about increase your armor by 50%? I wasn't aware Miasma did that.

Now, the huge issue with this spell is that there's SO much unexplained. "...chilling them for 2 seconds." Okay.... what's chilling do? Is that an attack speed reduction? Movement speed? How much?

Does the Frost Nova from the Alabaster rune use the rune you have in Frost Nova if it's among your actives? (could be an awesome way to multi proc that if so). The Indigo Rune makes it so the chill effect is an AoE and doesn't require that you get hit which is awesome, but it doesn't give the numbers for the speed reductions. Then with Golden, if you have enough armor that effect could end up making you ridiculously resistant to physical damage! Math time!

Lets say you have 1000 armor (no idea how realistic that is, not terribly relevant since we're interested in the end % increase)
Ice Armor gives you a bonus 50% armor so 500.
First hit increases that by 85% so 925 armor now.
2nd hit is 1,711 armor
and finally 3rd hit is 3165.

You've gone from a 50% increase (500) to a 316% increase of your armor (3165) bringing you to a total of 4165 armor. Wow, I'm a little surprised by this. Can Wizards have the highest armor in the game??? We don't know reasonable armor numbers, and how the percentage of physical damage reduced works and scales, but a 316% boost to your armor (assuming I did the math correctly and I triple checked it) seems amazing.

Well.... that was quite interesting and kinda made this whole thing worth it.... Here's my new Melee Wizard build!
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bWXVPS!XUe!babYYZ

Hopefully this will help you realize some of the mistakes you've made. Even if it doesn't at least it will help people who read it after reading your first post.

Quote from Alexander.A

Channeling could be great for team play. It would be fun watching zombies burn or titans getting frosted. Glad to see everyone has their personal style and opinion. I wouldn't mind using all the trash skills just for fun.

The problem is the vast majority of them aren't trash.

Quote from emyln

Also unless you're really stuck on Electrocute, I would switch it to Magic Missile. If your main concern is to use it as AP Regen, a golden rune on this will regen 14 AP instead of only 7 for Electrocute. Plus, this is arcane and would also benefit from the Temporal Flux passive.

Your calculations on Electrocute are off. It regens 7 AP PER target hit and can hit up to 3 targets. So it's AP regen is 7 - 21. MM provides a more stable regen of 14, but Electrocute is better assuming at least 3 mobs. In general you're always going to be fighting at least 3 enemies, meaning you want Electrocute over MM, for bosses the opposite is true.

Don't mind Electric. He's found the "best" build and is trying to convince everyone else it's so. His "trash" post in particular is fairly depressing, especially when considering that Blizzard has specifically stated they want want all spells to be viable.

While I have my doubts about the effectiveness of this build on paper, it certainly is unique and interesting.

Quote from Schrobbert

This looks a lot like a build i would pick. I always like the straightforward dps builds, and this spec kinda suits that! However, i would take out the passive Evocation (20% less cooldowns), cause that would only benefit your Slow Time (takes of 6 sec) and Frost Nova spells(takes off 2.4sec). Instead i think i would take Power Hungry (30 arcane power whenever youre healed by a health globe). This would be to ensure that i can keep spamming spells. There's gonna be a lot of health globes to pick up anyways when AoEing. Can someone verify though, whether you really need to be HEALED by the globe in order to get that 30 AP? Or do you just need to pick it up (even at full health already).

I would imagine it would still give AP at full life. This passive will work well for normal. Nightmare/Hell/Inferno I strongly imagine will have decreased health globe drop chances and as a result make this passive not as good. Taking Power Hungry AND a Golden Sig spell is a little contradictory. There is such a thing as too much AP regen.

Quote from Mac_an_tSaoir

Quote from ArcaneWeapon

Quote from Mac_an_tSaoir

This isnt D2, the AI is vastly improved, dont expect the same buggy lolol easy targets you got in d2

Lol, the fact of the matter is that enemies will always chase you. If enemies chase you and you run away, by default they must form into a line. Monsters aren't going to have leashes and I doubt they have the AI to dodge and weave as they chase after you.

wasting time setting them up to get disint to work is wasting time

Heh, I wasn't aware there was a race. I'm not a Disintegrate fan. I'm simply saying its not hard getting enemies into position to maximize the effectiveness of the spell.

Quote from Mac_an_tSaoir

This isnt D2, the AI is vastly improved, dont expect the same buggy lolol easy targets you got in d2

Lol, the fact of the matter is that enemies will always chase you. If enemies chase you and you run away, by default they must form into a line. Monsters aren't going to have leashes and I doubt they have the AI to dodge and weave as they chase after you.

From what I've seen of it Arcane Orb is pretty sweet. It's harder to compare with Disint than Ray for obvious reasons.

Plus side - You can cast and move, no need to stay in one place (Pretty big)

Negative side - If you have a huge mob of enemies the orb is only going to hit the front of it while Disint would pierce through the entire thing.


Rune Wise -
Alabaster rune for it is silly since it pretty much just turns it into a more expensive version of Disint, and the Obsidian rune is for melee mages. Indigo could be better than Crimson for damage output, it depends on how much 8 yards is. I'm doubtful Golden is worth it.

Quote from Geoff326

I don't think your build will fly. no AP regen once Disintegrate and Arcane Torrent uses up all your AP.

you also choose Galvanizing Ward over Glass Cannon? Galvanizing Ward seems more like a passive I'd throw in the trash unless I'm playing HC. I'll take increased damage over safety any day on softcore.

The sad thing is that Galvanizing Ward isn't even worth it for Hardcore. And you're right, it's the one ability I know for sure I will never, ever use. (Unless the HP/sec scales with gear) For an idea of life totals, Witch Doctors have a spell with no cost on a 15 second CD that heals for 21,290 if they hit 5 targets with it. Galvanizing Ward can heal that much damage in 665 seconds! Woohoo!! The extra 120 seconds is stupid, armor spells only cost 25 AP and during the 120 seconds they last you'll have a moment of downtime you can afford to refresh it.

Quote from DKR_87

Not sure if this fits into what you guys are speaking about, but I did some math.

With Astral Presence, Storm Armor w/Gold Rune (-7 AP costs), and Familair (4.5 AP regen/sec), I'm regenerating AP at 19/sec.

With 120 AP pool, I can cast Ray of Frost (22AP/sec) for 40 seconds for 16461.5 damage total over that time.

I can cast Dis exponentially longer, but I would never be sitting casting for 4 minutes straight.
For 40 seconds, I could do 8440 damage total over that time.

RoF does twice as much damage in the 40sec AP lifespan, but after 4 minutes of Disintegrating a monsters face off,
it does 25320 damage total over that time.

So for 'shorter' bursts of channeling, as you put it, I'm going with RoF.

However, I should make mention of RoF being a single target only spell. Disintegrate, according to you guys right?...pierces enemies so those damage numbers I'm reporting...you could do double those or triple those if there 2-3 monsters around. I just don't expect them to always (or even occasionally) be a single file line.

My thoughts,
DKR

Disintegrate, used correctly, will hands down always do more damage than Ray of Frost vs anything other than bosses. If you've played Diablo 2 you know how stupidly easy it is to get enemies into a line. Once you've got their attention all you have to do is back off and they'll chase you.... forming into a line.

Quote from ElectricEel

Yeah, if your not using Storm armor with gold rune and ap neutral spells (spells below the 14.5 ap a second regen) with astral presence, Then yes, you will tap out...

They can be great, but sometimes it just looks like you'll be casting these spells most of the time that is why I personally don't like to focus on it, unless your a Melee Wizard with energy armor and pinpoint barrier then spamming sig spells is your bread and butter and I think they would be a match for a meteor or even disintegrate wizard 1 on 1.

Actually it wouldn't be only casting disintegrate, it would be also casting Arcane torrent with crimson to get 120% extra damage then disintegrate, and or slow time with miasma, it wouldn't even come close to being just 1 spell cast over and over.....

Did you even look at my post? Sure, you tap out after 8 seconds after dropping 5 Meteors or Hyrdas. I don't care that I'm tapped out because everything is DEAD.

Mac and I aren't attacking you. Your Golden Storm Armor + Crimson Disintegrate build simply isn't as amazing as you keep claiming it is. It's like you came up with the idea and can't think of anything else. I still don't know what build I really want to use (All I know is Storm Armor, Shock Pulse, Unstable Anomaly and Galvanizing Ward are crap imo).

On a side note, since you keep bringing up Arena, here's my Barb build who would crush your Disintegrate Wiz: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#dbePRY!bWa!aZbZcZ