First off there is no such thing as a melee wizard, you may be up close, but aside from spectral blade there is not a single melee skill the wizards aresnal, things like armor, or the skill runes that make something whirl around you are not melee skills, they are protection skills.
But it seems like a decent enough build if you have the skill to play it, but Diamond skin likely won't be lasting the whole duration, things are going to hit really hard in even just NM, but it looks cool.
I would change the Time Warp rune to the one that makes them take more damage. And I think your going to have an issue with Arcane Dynamo, depending on it's mechanics. If it unleashes the charges when your Ice Armor causes damage, you'll loose control of when it happens, but from the wording on the passive it doesn't sound like that will be a possibility.
Personally I found it a horrible skill. But we can only do it as it's base move so it might get better with Skill Runes. However, being good at destroying the environment is not a good reason to use a skill, and it's really only that great if your surrounded, which you shouldn't be.
Where did you get that new base regen amount? I know that they did a tuning pass but I hadn't seen it worked out anywhere yet, and it was 60 base regen before that seems like quite a bit lower.
A sacrifice build before was extremely based on having high end runestones already, so this really doesn't change much. They weren't going to be all that great getting through Inferno, and were going to be even less leading up to it, because the scaling of the proc chacnes didn't get to favorable numbers until the runestones that were going to be dropping in Inferno.
Because of the need for either skills, passives, or runestones in order to continously provide dogs (usually a combination of several of those) you were loosing out on a great deal of utility, and if you ran into some monster or group that for some reason made sacrifice no good, you were using a useless build. It already wasn't a top tier build concept, and now it's going to be even worse. At best it was going to be a situational skill to use when you could guarantee you would get your dogs back quickly, which meant the CD on summon zombie dogs was up, and even then you were letting you main means of defence go away. Mass Confusion is going to be a crappy skill to summon dogs with because charm effects (and don't get confused it says confusion but it's a charm effect) means that you can't attack those enemies anyway, so they have to have dots on them, or be surrounded by other monsters that will kill them in order to eve have the chance of proccing the dog.
BBV was the best of them, and is still relatively good for building up dogs, while CoL is one of the worse ones, but at least the range can be extended, even though pickup radius is buggy, and it seems like increasing it only works after the base 12 yards, which will make it difficult to increase until later on, but it's hard to judge if it's working properly or not because of how messed up the measurement system is in Diablo.
All in all though it doesn't surprise me they nerfed the chances, sacrifice builds had the chance of becoming the obvious best build for WD's with level 7 runestones, which could have been purchased early in the game once a few months had gone by, thus making them OP for most of the game, this change makes it more of a risk verses reward style of play that fits in better in terms of balance with the other skills the class has.
Blizzard has posted videos of some of the skills for each class in their game guide on the D3 site, Acid Cloud is one of them.
The reason that some of the numbers are green is that there is SOMETHING that will change that number, some of them scale with attack speed, other will likely be affected by Affixes, as was revealed on this site, there is an affix for every skill that we have, which will probably change more than just the damage of a skill.
The mana return from Haunt is based on damage, that's why it seems so low, its no where near as good as it was before, but we'll have to wait and see how this tuning pass of our mana ends up. Before, Spiritual Attunement and Haunt for mana regen could sustain almost any build that didn't go over board with high cost spells. Locust Swarm is a skill I'm a bit worried about, if it's like Haunt and will jump only once the initial target is dead I don't know how worth it it will be, but we'll see.
Big Bad VooDoo is a good skill for group play and solo play, but there are other options for getting health and mana back, and the increases to the group would be better off than something that only affects you. I'm going to guess that while it seems low Haunt will still provide a decent enough mana regen.
I really hate Soul Harvest, unless you stack gold picup radius to stand further back, it's going to be a very dangerous ability, but in group play it's not as bad, but it will requires you to be very smart with the way you use your spells, it all depends on how damage buffs are calculated in skill damage, if it's like WoW and DoT buffs are updated on a per tick basis (which it seems like they won't be) then it won't matter as much, but otherwise you'll need to lead off with soul harvest to get the best effect from it, and then drop your DoT's and such, and it requires sacrificing either damage, not as big of a deal because of the buff, or defensive stats on your gear to get the increased damage, and then still only affects 5 enemies, so I dont' really like it, but that's play style differences, not the skill being bad.
All in all the build is okay for a mid range build that isn't concentrating on Inferno, but once you hit level 60 it would need to be tweaked depending on what other players seem to be doing the most, random groups will require players to really adapt their own builds much more to account for how others are playing, verses playing solo when you can make a build that works, and will work the whole time. If playing with a consistent group, then you won't need to adapt as much, and can concentrate on gear that affects those specific build choices verses just being all around stats.
Max Mana is likely going to be around 1200 or so, that's what was figured out last patch, but it could be different with the new tuning it got. Either way the base of 60/sec is really low, it almost requires you to take Spiritual Attunement.
It could be a bug, but GotD IS affected by line of sight, if you stand behind a pillar or post in a building, or even if your just around a corner, it won't cast it on the targetted area, but since this isn't a consistent effect, I think it's just a bit buggy.
Acid Raid is beastly, even with it's high cost it's one of our most damaging abilities we have if used properly. I think that people are stuck in the D2 frame of mind where they think that an AoE skill should be useable to it's best against small groups, Acid Rain will absolutely shine against large groups of mobd, but it doesn't really compete against moves like Arcane Orb, we'll have to wait and see, but it's not supposed to be a spammed ability.
Remember too that the WD is a DoT class, to use the class to it's fullest extent you'll be stacking DoT's on top of one another, using things like Haunt (which seems like it may kinda suck now) Locust Swarm, Acid Rain, summons (not a true DoT but function the same) all the while spamming a skill that does immediate damage as well, you're not going to get optimal damage out of using just one DoT.
I really don't see it happening for a long time. There are certain skills though that I can see getting tweaked with patches with PvP in mind. Horrify comes to mind. This skill is quite obviously a PvP skill, and as state by blizzard there are skills in the game for each class that were included with PvP in mind. So I could see them tweaking those specific skills a bit if there is too big of an out cry. But even that is a really long shot.
The only way I see them balancing PvP would be if after they have released the last expansion for the game, that people are still playing, and the demand for a more balanced PvP system is high. Even then they would have to introduce some kind of ranking system, or other various mechanics that allow for PvP. As it stands now it sounds like you can't do things like War Games in WoW, and choose to fight against another group, which means tournaments will be harder to organize, if not impossible.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if upon release, PvP is cut, and to be implemented in a future patch, because we haven't heard anything about it since blizzcon, and even then we were told very little. Not saying it's for sure, and I think it's more likely for them to be in there, since it's just about creating the arenas and a queue system which seemed to be done already, but it wouldn't be a shock to me if the game released without PvP at all given that they are now trying to work quickly towards release.
Hm, I can agree with that, Blizzard has really been lacking in the story telling aspect of their games for a while. But I mean, so far, I think that D3 is doing a much, much better job of it then they did in D2. In D2 you had to talk to everyone, and then gather all of that into some sort of a story, of course the cinematics between the acts were amazing, but I'm expecting something like them for D3, the Black soulstone video is probably one of them, or part of one, I'm really looking forward to it.
But I do agree, in terms of lore I really like the books, it's just too bad that so few are canon. I am working through the 3rd sin wars book at the moment, read two in the last two days so it's a pretty interesting story.
It is harder to analyze the deeper characters of the story. The three prime evils especially, however, now that I have read a few of the books, I'm realizing things that I really didn't get from just in game details. The personalities of the prime evils, as well as the other lesser evils, of the total 7, are greatly tied to their names. The Lord of Terror for instance, his actions speak very cose to this, and you can use this alone to deduce his thought process and the way he's likely to act. The same goes for all of them, it's the amount of detail that limits our ability to do so.
@Phrozen, totally, on my old WoW server there was a guild called Wheel of Time, but they were not very good so I never joined them lol. It's always fun though when you see other people with names from the story, it's always makes me smile.
@Phrozen thanks, I love those books, all my characters in WoW are named after characters in WoT, and I'll probably keep that up in Diablo.
More on topic. He had a good point about Leoric mentioning the star, it would be expected that out of anyone Leoric, as the SK, would know best what it is that has truly fallen on the cathedral.
I agree that the psychology of a character is important in understanding their motives for things, and the reasons for them being there in the first place. We actually get a good amount of detail as to why he is now the SK, outside of what we already knew, the scene in the room where you pull his sword out of the ground, demonstrates this, and actually gives a bit of context to the enemies we are fighting, and his motives for being evil in death, besides the corruption he faced in life. Character development is essential in video games, almost more so then it is in books, because we get much more interaction with the characters of a video game. We fight with them or against them in some cases, and while a book may leave some things up to the imagination, in this specific case, we know a good deal about his history, and understanding that history is vital in understanding the current events. Ultimately though I think the SK is just a small player in all of this, and probably plays very little role in the story of D3, and serves more as to delay us just walking into the cathedral and down to the fallen star.
But this same sort of analyzing of characters and their motives, applies beyond this, and could be applied to the more vital characters in the story, such as Azmodean, Tyrael, and Diablo himself. But it's also not vital to do so to enjoy the story, even if it is more fun in my opinion, to each their own.
Your a bit late to the party on this one my friend. There will be no support for add ons in D3, as it was a very easy way for people to cheat. So blizzard decided against add ons for D3.
There's the changes I would make, that would make you a bit more useful. The thing is that being a support character will only be useful if you are playing with the same people consistently. As then they can tune their builds to compensate for your weaknesses. With this build, you will be a bit more competitive with damage, and also have a good amount of support.
You could change the rune in cyclone strike to alabaster if the healing wasn't as needed so you had a better chance of surviving when you used it. But for this build it's not going to be a main use ability, but something for oh shit moments when you need to pull enemies off of others, and deliver a good heal as well.
You'll notice that there is no runestone in fists of thunder, this is because the one I would have picked, is not a runestone available in the calculator, but is a different one available in the new system. This makes me question how many of these same runestones will be available, but we'll have to wait til they update the skill calculator with the new system. Even in the beta you can't see the Skill Runes available for skills you haven't unlocked yet, which is a bit annoying, so it's hard to tell. But this build will be a good starting place. If any of the classes will be a good support character though it's the Monk for sure, the WD is a good choice as well, but if you like the Monk, then it's a moot point.
Hope I helped, it's a bit early still to tell for sure since the new skill system hasn't been updated on the site, but while some of the other runes are likely to change, there will likely be options close to the ones I chose. Another note, I wanted to keep this short so I didn't go too in depth about the changes I made, but I can explain it more if you'd like.
I never got to play D1, and since for the most part it seems like it doesn't run on newer systems, I sadly won't get to, but the fondness for which people look back on this boss makes me really excited to fight him.
Hm. Well, Wizards have armor that functions like a monk Mantra, but they get no added effect for a short period of time, so IDK if that is exactly the thought process behind why they do extra stuff, not saying it wasn't, but it doesn't add up.
The dogs added function is control. Unlike the Wizard armor, or the Monk mantra, the zombie dogs directly affect the battle field, as they can be used as meat shields keeping enemies off of you. So I don't really think that they need to have some sort of secondary effect upon being summoned.
Sacrifice is a very situation skill at best, yes it does a decent amount of damage, but I mean, Hungry Bats does just as much, and doesn't leaev you without your meat shield. The only upside is that with a Skill Rune you get a chance at getting the dogs back. But even in the beta you see monsters ignore your dogs and go for you instead, so it's likely that as soon as you sacrifice you'll get stormed by any remaining enemies. Depending on what level of runestone the Skill Rune for it go, the chances of getting another dog in the first place could be small.
All in all I don't see any reason to have added effects for the zombie dogs, they just nerfed the whole class because it was going to be too strong at end game, and even still, with the right player using it, the WD will easily be the most powerful of the classes, no need to add to that.
To me, it all kind of made sense. I'm a writer by profession, and while it's a bit different writing books, I can understand the quick change in behavior. It was a necessity, as others have mentioned they couldn't go into a long drawn out conversation about it, and even when you talk to him about it after, he doesn't want to give up much more than he has, he's obviously upset, and unhappy about what happened, but knew it must be done. Personally I felt like I was the one that killed his wife, while he seemed to fight kind of half heartedly, not really going full force, but that could be a jaded view from playing that part of the beta so many times.
I had never thought of the crown, and why it would be needed to kill him. It's certainly an interesting question. And I can see us getting more detail. But it still makes sense. Traditionally ghosts are things that are holding onto this world, and items of personal value often can be a center for their energies. When you encoutner him before, he's in a more corpreal state, but when you put the crown on his head, he takes a physical form, instead of summoning other demons to do his bidding, I mean he could have struck down Cain all by himself but he chooses to use summons instead. So I think the crown is what was needed to defeat not only his body, but the part of his soul that was tethered to the world. But that's just logic attached to speculation, and I'm hoping that it's revealed more in the full game.
I found it very odd that the first real mini boss would say something like "You shall never defeat me." It seemed really cheesy, and not placed well. I mean think about it, we're obviously going to defeat him, he's the first damn boss. If Diablo, or one of the lesser demon lords said that, it's a little bit more believable that we could have a tough time defeating him, but my first thought when I heard that was, "Yeah right." And then smashed his face in (or rather shot him with darts til he died.)
I'd like to see something taking place during the sin wars, it's a really interesting time in Sanctuary's history. But the problem with prequels is that you know what the ending will be. So I don't think it will happen.
If they are going to continue on with the series, just change up the villain and such, I really see them going to the angels side of things. It's quite likely we'll be doing something with them towards the end of the game, so it would make sense to continue on with that, and it's certainly possible for them to make them into villains. They haven't exactly been what would necessarily be considered the good guys this whole time, it was them in fact that almost wiped out life on Sanctuary themselves instead of just leaving us to our own devices.
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But it seems like a decent enough build if you have the skill to play it, but Diamond skin likely won't be lasting the whole duration, things are going to hit really hard in even just NM, but it looks cool.
I would change the Time Warp rune to the one that makes them take more damage. And I think your going to have an issue with Arcane Dynamo, depending on it's mechanics. If it unleashes the charges when your Ice Armor causes damage, you'll loose control of when it happens, but from the wording on the passive it doesn't sound like that will be a possibility.
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Because of the need for either skills, passives, or runestones in order to continously provide dogs (usually a combination of several of those) you were loosing out on a great deal of utility, and if you ran into some monster or group that for some reason made sacrifice no good, you were using a useless build. It already wasn't a top tier build concept, and now it's going to be even worse. At best it was going to be a situational skill to use when you could guarantee you would get your dogs back quickly, which meant the CD on summon zombie dogs was up, and even then you were letting you main means of defence go away. Mass Confusion is going to be a crappy skill to summon dogs with because charm effects (and don't get confused it says confusion but it's a charm effect) means that you can't attack those enemies anyway, so they have to have dots on them, or be surrounded by other monsters that will kill them in order to eve have the chance of proccing the dog.
BBV was the best of them, and is still relatively good for building up dogs, while CoL is one of the worse ones, but at least the range can be extended, even though pickup radius is buggy, and it seems like increasing it only works after the base 12 yards, which will make it difficult to increase until later on, but it's hard to judge if it's working properly or not because of how messed up the measurement system is in Diablo.
All in all though it doesn't surprise me they nerfed the chances, sacrifice builds had the chance of becoming the obvious best build for WD's with level 7 runestones, which could have been purchased early in the game once a few months had gone by, thus making them OP for most of the game, this change makes it more of a risk verses reward style of play that fits in better in terms of balance with the other skills the class has.
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The reason that some of the numbers are green is that there is SOMETHING that will change that number, some of them scale with attack speed, other will likely be affected by Affixes, as was revealed on this site, there is an affix for every skill that we have, which will probably change more than just the damage of a skill.
The mana return from Haunt is based on damage, that's why it seems so low, its no where near as good as it was before, but we'll have to wait and see how this tuning pass of our mana ends up. Before, Spiritual Attunement and Haunt for mana regen could sustain almost any build that didn't go over board with high cost spells. Locust Swarm is a skill I'm a bit worried about, if it's like Haunt and will jump only once the initial target is dead I don't know how worth it it will be, but we'll see.
Big Bad VooDoo is a good skill for group play and solo play, but there are other options for getting health and mana back, and the increases to the group would be better off than something that only affects you. I'm going to guess that while it seems low Haunt will still provide a decent enough mana regen.
I really hate Soul Harvest, unless you stack gold picup radius to stand further back, it's going to be a very dangerous ability, but in group play it's not as bad, but it will requires you to be very smart with the way you use your spells, it all depends on how damage buffs are calculated in skill damage, if it's like WoW and DoT buffs are updated on a per tick basis (which it seems like they won't be) then it won't matter as much, but otherwise you'll need to lead off with soul harvest to get the best effect from it, and then drop your DoT's and such, and it requires sacrificing either damage, not as big of a deal because of the buff, or defensive stats on your gear to get the increased damage, and then still only affects 5 enemies, so I dont' really like it, but that's play style differences, not the skill being bad.
All in all the build is okay for a mid range build that isn't concentrating on Inferno, but once you hit level 60 it would need to be tweaked depending on what other players seem to be doing the most, random groups will require players to really adapt their own builds much more to account for how others are playing, verses playing solo when you can make a build that works, and will work the whole time. If playing with a consistent group, then you won't need to adapt as much, and can concentrate on gear that affects those specific build choices verses just being all around stats.
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It could be a bug, but GotD IS affected by line of sight, if you stand behind a pillar or post in a building, or even if your just around a corner, it won't cast it on the targetted area, but since this isn't a consistent effect, I think it's just a bit buggy.
Acid Raid is beastly, even with it's high cost it's one of our most damaging abilities we have if used properly. I think that people are stuck in the D2 frame of mind where they think that an AoE skill should be useable to it's best against small groups, Acid Rain will absolutely shine against large groups of mobd, but it doesn't really compete against moves like Arcane Orb, we'll have to wait and see, but it's not supposed to be a spammed ability.
Remember too that the WD is a DoT class, to use the class to it's fullest extent you'll be stacking DoT's on top of one another, using things like Haunt (which seems like it may kinda suck now) Locust Swarm, Acid Rain, summons (not a true DoT but function the same) all the while spamming a skill that does immediate damage as well, you're not going to get optimal damage out of using just one DoT.
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The only way I see them balancing PvP would be if after they have released the last expansion for the game, that people are still playing, and the demand for a more balanced PvP system is high. Even then they would have to introduce some kind of ranking system, or other various mechanics that allow for PvP. As it stands now it sounds like you can't do things like War Games in WoW, and choose to fight against another group, which means tournaments will be harder to organize, if not impossible.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if upon release, PvP is cut, and to be implemented in a future patch, because we haven't heard anything about it since blizzcon, and even then we were told very little. Not saying it's for sure, and I think it's more likely for them to be in there, since it's just about creating the arenas and a queue system which seemed to be done already, but it wouldn't be a shock to me if the game released without PvP at all given that they are now trying to work quickly towards release.
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But I do agree, in terms of lore I really like the books, it's just too bad that so few are canon. I am working through the 3rd sin wars book at the moment, read two in the last two days so it's a pretty interesting story.
It is harder to analyze the deeper characters of the story. The three prime evils especially, however, now that I have read a few of the books, I'm realizing things that I really didn't get from just in game details. The personalities of the prime evils, as well as the other lesser evils, of the total 7, are greatly tied to their names. The Lord of Terror for instance, his actions speak very cose to this, and you can use this alone to deduce his thought process and the way he's likely to act. The same goes for all of them, it's the amount of detail that limits our ability to do so.
@Phrozen, totally, on my old WoW server there was a guild called Wheel of Time, but they were not very good so I never joined them lol. It's always fun though when you see other people with names from the story, it's always makes me smile.
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@Phrozen thanks, I love those books, all my characters in WoW are named after characters in WoT, and I'll probably keep that up in Diablo.
More on topic. He had a good point about Leoric mentioning the star, it would be expected that out of anyone Leoric, as the SK, would know best what it is that has truly fallen on the cathedral.
I agree that the psychology of a character is important in understanding their motives for things, and the reasons for them being there in the first place. We actually get a good amount of detail as to why he is now the SK, outside of what we already knew, the scene in the room where you pull his sword out of the ground, demonstrates this, and actually gives a bit of context to the enemies we are fighting, and his motives for being evil in death, besides the corruption he faced in life. Character development is essential in video games, almost more so then it is in books, because we get much more interaction with the characters of a video game. We fight with them or against them in some cases, and while a book may leave some things up to the imagination, in this specific case, we know a good deal about his history, and understanding that history is vital in understanding the current events. Ultimately though I think the SK is just a small player in all of this, and probably plays very little role in the story of D3, and serves more as to delay us just walking into the cathedral and down to the fallen star.
But this same sort of analyzing of characters and their motives, applies beyond this, and could be applied to the more vital characters in the story, such as Azmodean, Tyrael, and Diablo himself. But it's also not vital to do so to enjoy the story, even if it is more fun in my opinion, to each their own.
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There's the changes I would make, that would make you a bit more useful. The thing is that being a support character will only be useful if you are playing with the same people consistently. As then they can tune their builds to compensate for your weaknesses. With this build, you will be a bit more competitive with damage, and also have a good amount of support.
You could change the rune in cyclone strike to alabaster if the healing wasn't as needed so you had a better chance of surviving when you used it. But for this build it's not going to be a main use ability, but something for oh shit moments when you need to pull enemies off of others, and deliver a good heal as well.
You'll notice that there is no runestone in fists of thunder, this is because the one I would have picked, is not a runestone available in the calculator, but is a different one available in the new system. This makes me question how many of these same runestones will be available, but we'll have to wait til they update the skill calculator with the new system. Even in the beta you can't see the Skill Runes available for skills you haven't unlocked yet, which is a bit annoying, so it's hard to tell. But this build will be a good starting place. If any of the classes will be a good support character though it's the Monk for sure, the WD is a good choice as well, but if you like the Monk, then it's a moot point.
Hope I helped, it's a bit early still to tell for sure since the new skill system hasn't been updated on the site, but while some of the other runes are likely to change, there will likely be options close to the ones I chose. Another note, I wanted to keep this short so I didn't go too in depth about the changes I made, but I can explain it more if you'd like.
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The dogs added function is control. Unlike the Wizard armor, or the Monk mantra, the zombie dogs directly affect the battle field, as they can be used as meat shields keeping enemies off of you. So I don't really think that they need to have some sort of secondary effect upon being summoned.
Sacrifice is a very situation skill at best, yes it does a decent amount of damage, but I mean, Hungry Bats does just as much, and doesn't leaev you without your meat shield. The only upside is that with a Skill Rune you get a chance at getting the dogs back. But even in the beta you see monsters ignore your dogs and go for you instead, so it's likely that as soon as you sacrifice you'll get stormed by any remaining enemies. Depending on what level of runestone the Skill Rune for it go, the chances of getting another dog in the first place could be small.
All in all I don't see any reason to have added effects for the zombie dogs, they just nerfed the whole class because it was going to be too strong at end game, and even still, with the right player using it, the WD will easily be the most powerful of the classes, no need to add to that.
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I had never thought of the crown, and why it would be needed to kill him. It's certainly an interesting question. And I can see us getting more detail. But it still makes sense. Traditionally ghosts are things that are holding onto this world, and items of personal value often can be a center for their energies. When you encoutner him before, he's in a more corpreal state, but when you put the crown on his head, he takes a physical form, instead of summoning other demons to do his bidding, I mean he could have struck down Cain all by himself but he chooses to use summons instead. So I think the crown is what was needed to defeat not only his body, but the part of his soul that was tethered to the world. But that's just logic attached to speculation, and I'm hoping that it's revealed more in the full game.
I found it very odd that the first real mini boss would say something like "You shall never defeat me." It seemed really cheesy, and not placed well. I mean think about it, we're obviously going to defeat him, he's the first damn boss. If Diablo, or one of the lesser demon lords said that, it's a little bit more believable that we could have a tough time defeating him, but my first thought when I heard that was, "Yeah right." And then smashed his face in (or rather shot him with darts til he died.)
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If they are going to continue on with the series, just change up the villain and such, I really see them going to the angels side of things. It's quite likely we'll be doing something with them towards the end of the game, so it would make sense to continue on with that, and it's certainly possible for them to make them into villains. They haven't exactly been what would necessarily be considered the good guys this whole time, it was them in fact that almost wiped out life on Sanctuary themselves instead of just leaving us to our own devices.