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STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP Calling this a nerf. You are INTENTIONALLY stirring up unrest within the community when the first line of the Blue Post report on THIS SITE says "It was actually a bug fix."

You did this with the flaming shoes legendary (the name escapes me right now) and it's just a gross misuse of Admin/posting privaledges. Do you want this to be a legitimate news site or a controversy creator?

Don't know why this post is labelled as "melee wizard" because it's not really. Melee implies, or in my taking it does, that actual melee damage or an attack will be made, yet this build has neither. If it is meant as "spells that have about a melee range" then I suppose this is true. Not knocking this post at all though, it's a great guide for a tough tornado wizard, but it's far from what I see as a melee/battlemage (in simple terms: a Wizard that fights like a Monk/Barb).

The build I use for a melee wizard is very similar, except it actually has the only melee ability the wizard has: Spectral Blade.

I'll outline the build and then why it works below for anyone interested:

Talents:

Spectral Blade (Deep Cuts) - Deep Cuts takes advantage of 88% LoH unlike the rest of the runes at 66.6%. This ability with its multiple hits is also nice for proccing crits as well. Per: http://us.battle.net...opic/5149154265

Explosive Blast (Short Fuse, sometimes Chain Reaction) - I mainly use short fuse to remove the 1.5 delay as my crits will shred the 6 second cooldown fast enough to basically spam this. I know chain reaction does technically more damage, but the problem I found with it is it's uncontrolability (e.g. with packs with knockback, mobs with natural knockback, sync with teleport skill, etc). There are times you're going to have to have one of those Chain Reactions miss and then you're only doing 194% instead of the normal 225%. Also, if you want to get technical, Chain Reaction takes 1.5s to cast and ~.25/.5s per blast, so thats 291% in 2-2.25 seconds, while with enough crit and Short Fuse coming up all the time it does 450% in 2 seconds.

Frost Nova (Bone Chill / Deep Freeze) - I 100% agree with the OP about the runes. If you have enough crit, use Bone Chill for the extra damage (and vs champ packs / for farming runs), if not, use Deep Freeze when you know you're doing regular mobs (i.e. progression through acts).

Diamond Skin (Crystal Shell) - Here I agree with the OP as well, use this as your damage absorb and use shards if you have enough resists and life return.

Teleport (Safe Passage) - I use Safe Passage as my WoW style damage reduction cooldown, generally teleporting in place for the 30% reduction it gives when Diamon Skin is not up.

*Note: I find Fracture (as well as Mirror Images) to be broken currently. The clones do not act as I feel they should (being mini tanks) and I fault this to lazy programming making them just run ahead/behind you in all the wrong situations. My personal feeling is they should stand ground if they are attacking an enemy or I am in combat with one because there is no point in them "running and gunning" with you as they do no damage.

Energy Armor (Prismatic / Force) - I generally use Prismatic as the resistances are beastly, however, there are fights (like Belial) where resists will do little and big absorbs are much better, so I swap to force.

Passives:

Critical Mass - The central passive in this build for obvious reasons, see OP if they are not so obvious.

Blur - I love this ability as it lets me just stand in place and SBlade mobs. This combined with my resistances means I rarely have to move out of anything. Even on boss fights like the Butcher, I just tank him in a single panel, Diamond Skin / Safe Passage the hits and fire (and heal it up with LoH) and Frost Nova his charge and he never moves out of place and I don't have to either.

Galvanizing Wizard - I currently use this for the Life Regen as I am a bit lacking there, but once I get more on gear I plan to swap to Cold Blooded (if still broken) or Arcane Dynamo if it is fixed. Arcane Dynamo works nicely with SBlades and EB.

Stats:

My stat priority is generally the same except for the AP on Crit. This is not really useful as there is enough regen to cover EB and the Blades are free. I instead move LoH and Life Regen up the scale below Int / Crit / IAS (and LoH is actually higher than IAS and even Crit until you are at a decent threshold). The reason I also take Life Regen is because packs like Shielding / Invulnerable Minion / Knockback / Vortex make it hard to stand your ground and just Blade regen, so some passive regen is nice.

*Note: I also find LoH to be severely misworded and broken. Life on Hit would imply X life when I hit, not when I deal damage (which is how it currently works). Life Steal % is based on damage, but Life on Hit should be a flat amount, whether damage was done or not, otherwise, it's just an unnerfed Life Steal %. This is what causes issues with Shielding and Invulnerable Minion packs. Am I not still *hitting* them even though I do no damage? Le sigh.

Hope this has helped, melee wizard is incredibly fun, especially rolling into public games and random players expecting you to be fragile and you just go up and tank shit like a boss. If only I could see their gasping faces as they die and I live and kill stuff.

-Ecco

Quote from youwillneverknow

Jay is still very wrong. We will ALL remember how long it took to put this game out, it may not affect whether we buy the game or not, but we will surely remember this as the bad version of a classic 'Blizzard' project. And the fact that they couldn't even put out a simple pvp system even with all the suggestions the community gave them really speaks to how terrible their management and design methods are.

Sorry, I rarely post, but I think something you forget is that, and I'll say this in all caps so it sinks in better: THEY DON'T HAVE TO TELL YOU ANYTHING. This means if for their next project they want to announce it and the details a month before release, they can. You got to be a part of an [b]internal[b] development process and be sure that they, other than making a great game, have no obligation to let you be a part of this process. The trends for game developers lately is of course to let the community inside, behind the scenes, etc, and I love this personally. What I hate is the negativity and complaints once you've seen inside.

An analogy? I'm sure you love that hamburger you just got from some fast food place, but, and maybe this is only for me personally, I don't want to see or be involved in the raising, feeding, slaughtering, butchering, preparing of the meat that went in to make it.

In the end, enjoy you backstage pass in this process, but realize it's a privaledge, not a right, so leave the negativity for elsewhere and enjoy the game, whenever it does come out.