When you run archon spec, you have to kill monsters fast, in order to keep up archon time. This means lots health globes, which in my opinion makes Life after Kill close to worthless for this build.
There are three reasons why Life After Kill is worthwhile.
The first is that it's cheap. Its basically a throwaway stat for the majority of people.
The second is that it is not limited by not having +pickup radius on gear. Your Archon beam weapon has a significantly farther range than trying to pick up orbs.
The third is that it works even when you are trapped by wallers, jailers, surrounded by illusionists, etc etc. The Archon beam passes through all of it, and can kill a group of crawlers even while you are trapped on top of a desecration.
Your argument is even less valid when you consider Life Steal. You already point out that Archon is based on killing hordes of monsters, creating a lot of health orbs. With so many health orbs, why even have Life Steal, or Life on Hit? When you're fighting a reflect damage mob, why can't you just run over a little bit and pick up the orb left from the last mob you killed?
Nearly every single one of my deaths has occurred while there are health globes on the screen, but for some reason I wasn't able to get them.
There is something called a "Confirmation Bias" which basically means that humans tend to focus on the evidence that supports their point of view.
A great example is this thread itself. A casual gamer, who doesn't really play enough or have enough gear to get very many legendaries will see this thread (as well as all the others in these forums) and think that everyone is getting legendaries. Then, when they finally do get a single drop (even if it sucks) it will confirm their belief that suddenly everyone is getting legendaries and set items in 1.0.5. Nevermind that if you watch any high-end streaming player they will get legendary drops left and right.
Now, I'm not saying that people aren't actually getting more legendaries than in 1.0.4, just that it is not nearly as much as people seem to think. Plus, there are other things at work than pure drop rate. Higher monster power increases your MF. Better yellow items mean that its cheaper to gear up, which means you can kill faster, which means you get more drops. Personally I think this last point is the most salient. Being able to slaugher hordes of monsters on MP0 will give you more legendary drops than if you couldn't kill that many. The % has only doubled, but volume has also gone up, creating more drops.
What do you guys use for your second +movespeed item? I'm guessing it comes down to either Tyrael's Might or Lacuni Prowlers. Tyrael's seems like the better choice to me, due to the bonus to demons and that its significantly cheaper. But just looking at a few profiles (Aesthia in particular) it seems like Lacuni is better if you can afford it.
Inna's Temperance, the monk pants, also works. It comes with 1% crit, 8-9% attack speed, 12% movement speed, and 2 sockets base. The only downside is you don't have a lot of options for the random stat. It's just one roll with no base Int so it's basically either Int or Int/vit. They're also pretty cheap now so you can get more dps out of these pants+normal bracers with crit%, assuming you have a lot of crit damage. If you have the money for crit prowlers, that will give more dps than rare bracers, of course, but costs more than the set pants.
Just for a comparison, I used to have 180 int/180 vit/70 all resist/2 socket Depth Diggers pants before I switched to my current Inna's Temperance. Even though I lost a hefty amount of EHP (about 60K, if I remember correctly), I did gain over 20K DPS and fully capped out my movement speed.
The difference? I sold the Depth Diggers for 400M and bought the Inna's Temperance at 550M, which was still a ton of extra gold from my side. It's really hard to find Inna's Temperance for wizards if you want decent vitality, good int, and maximum attack speed. A better pair of Lacuni's is my next target... though I have no gold for it at the moment since I just geared up my monk
I'm not entirely sure about the worthiness of Tyrael's Might. A good set with 3 sockets and great int won't come cheap, especially when you throw something like all resist in there. I'd rather get the huge DPS boost from Inna's.
I didn't realize that you had both Inna's and Lacuni, plus Zunimassa's Trail boots. That seems... excessive. Then I thought about it, and I guess no other armors can have that high of dps stats.
I guess my current issue is trying to figure out which "major" upgrade to get next. I put major in quotes because I'm planning on spending 50-100m on it (depending on the final sale price of a couple of auctions). I can run the usual act 3 route on MP0 in archon, but the buff tends to drop in areas like the Core and Fields of Slaughter, which both have some distance to run between packs. I've been running with Blood Magic as my only life steal, which is doing the job, but I'm loathe to give up any EHP without getting better health recovery.
http://us.battle.net...53/hero/3275686
Feel free to laugh at my chest piece. In my defense, it was a drop I got on my second ever inferno run, before I even cleared act 1. But you can see why I was leaning toward Tyrael's chest. Whichever upgrade I choose, I'm upgrading whatever gems I can with leftover monies.
What do you guys use for your second +movespeed item? I'm guessing it comes down to either Tyrael's Might or Lacuni Prowlers. Tyrael's seems like the better choice to me, due to the bonus to demons and that its significantly cheaper. But just looking at a few profiles (Aesthia in particular) it seems like Lacuni is better if you can afford it.
So like the title suggests, I'm looking for input from you guys on how you fight the uber bosses from the infernal machine. Any experience, theorycrafting, or just hare-brained ideas would help not only me but anyone else that lurks these forums.
What do you guys find works best? What build do you use? Are some of the fights easier solo, or do wizards really need a group?
I'm assuming that Archon doesn't work very well except maybe for the Skele King fight (even though I'm not geared enough for archon). Would a CM build work at all, with the nerfed coefficients?
21. If an elite is hard to kill, it cannot drop anything good. The only possible way for a rare to drop is the forced rare from 5x NV and even then it won't be ilvl 63.
22. Legendaries have a significantly higher drop rate when you town portal back to town to sell/repair in a multiplayer party.
So... I'm trying to figure out an easy way to spell everything out...
Damage over time: X% weapon damage over Y seconds (Energy Twister: 360% damage over 6 seconds, Blizzard: 210% damage over 6 seconds) - never affected by attack speed. Always will do a set amount of damage over a set amount of time.
Damage per second: X% weapon damage per second (Venom Hydra: 18% damage per second, Disintegrate: 155% damage per tick of damage) - always affected by attack speed. Has no cap and will do higher damage the more you pump up your DPS.
Damage over time is correct. Just remember that attack speed still affects cast speed, but not damage.
Damage per second is oversimplifying. Disintegrate is not damage per second. It is damage per attack period, which means that it acts like a single-cast spell like Magic Missile. It just averages its damage over a certain period. Attack speed makes channeled spells "cast" faster. The only difference is that because it's channeled there is no visual delay between casts. The cast times still sync up directly to attack speed like MM or Arcane Orb, you just don't have separate projectiles. Channel disintegrate in town one day, and you can see your AP fall in jumps, not smoothly like you would expect.
Hydra counts as a pet. It isn't a spell. You can't generalize how other spells cast by looking at hydra's mechanics.
Hydra damage is based on char sheet dps so it does do more damage if you increase your attack speed.
Blizzard and all other spells that do X damage over Y seconds do not scale with attack speed, so even though your char sheet dps is higher with more IAS, it doesn't mean these spells do more damage. They scale with your weapon damage, total primary stat, crit % and crit damage. While they typically do not display crits as yellow numbers, they still crit because the game calculates damage events at a rate faster than the damage is displayed, and just totals the damage every 0.5s then displays that, lumping crits and normal hits together.
Casted spells do scale with attack speed in that you can cast them more frequent, but if they cost AP they scale poorly because your limiting factor is AP. It's probably best to neglect the IAS affect on their dps.
Signature spells are the main castable spell that totally scales with attack speed because you can spam it regardless of AP, so if you double your attack speed, you can cast it twice as fast, thus doubling your effective dps with that spell.
Channeled spells, like disintigrate, Archon beam, ray of frost, etc, scale with your displayed dps, like hydra, though the faster your attack speed the faster your resources are consumed, so they are very similar to casted spells with AP cost, just with a more continual damage output. They can crit, but since the displayed damage is just a total of damage done every 0.5s the crits are not displayed as yellow numbers.
This is accurate, although slightly confusing. The game has so many different types of spells and damage that it is hard to come up with general rules without examining each spell individually.
Projectiles: Single cast, does weapon damage regardless of Attack Speed (AS or IAS). IAS just means you can fire them faster, resulting in increased dps but burning through AP faster. This actually results in lower damage over time unless you are using a free signature spell (or you kill the mob before running out of AP).
Channeled beam spells (Ray of frost, disintegrate, archon beam): Deals damage on a continuous basis but only displays damage at certain "intervals" (I'm not sure if the display intervals are the same for all three spells, but it doesn't matter anyway). This means that they are affected by both crit and attack speed, but you don't actually see the yellow crit numbers. The interval sums up all the damage it does in that time and displays it as a single number. For example, a 1.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in 1.0 seconds. A 2.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in .5 seconds, meaning it will do 310% weapon damage and cost 40 AP in 1.0 seconds.
A side note: since you regen 10 AP a second base, that 1.0 spd cast will actually cost 10 AP while that 2.0 spd cast will cost 30 AP per sec. This ends up meaning that you do double damage but at three times the cost. This is why IAS isn't very good for channeled spells, except for the AP-free archon beam.
Hydra is special. It attacks at the same rate, but uses your displayed dps for its damage. So anything that can bump up dps makes hydra hit harder.
Damage over time spells (Blizzard, energy twister, etc): Damage is not affected by IAS. However, Life on Hit is still affected. I'm not 100% sure on blizzard, but there is an awesome post right below this one examining energy twister and life on hit. Still, if you use blizzard or twister the attack speed only makes you cast faster, it doesn't affect damage at all. This actually makes them similar to projectile spells in that you can create more twisters the faster you cast but the damage is only based on weapon damage. Since LoH is tied to the spell hitting a monster rather than the act of casting, attack speed makes those ticks happen more often even though it doesn't affect the damage ticks. I hope that makes as much sense as it did in my head.
You're right, I looked at the wrong number when calculating resistances for 1.0.4 however, I did use the right number for 1.0.5
I used the wording in the blue post specifically because it was confusing on the actual implementation of the math.
The damage reduction calculator I used was found: http://messor.fi/D3/
(hopefully) correct math:
1.0.4 - 50,000 damage hit
No buff: 6000 armor, 800 resistance, 90.27% reduction, 4865 damage taken
EA+Pris: 9900 armor, 1120 resistance, 94.7% reduction, 2650 damage taken
Archon: 8400 armor, 1120 resistance, 94.01% reduction, 2995 damage taken
EA+Pris+Archon: 12300 armor, 1440 resistance, 96.34% reduction, 1830 damage taken
1.0.5 - 50,000 damage hit
No buff: 6000 armor, 800 resistance, 90.27% reduction, 4865 damage taken
EA+Pris: 8100 armor, 1000 resistance, 93.29% reduction, 3355 damage taken
Archon: 8400 armor, 1120 resistance, 94.01% reduction, 2995 damage taken
EA+Pris+Archon: 10500 armor, 1320 resistance, 95.55% reduction, 2225 damage taken
1830/2225=.822 So if archon remains the same, the end result is about 3% less damage taken. Am I interpreting that correctly?
Wild speculation, but if it is a straight 25% nerf to monster damage, that 50,000 damage hit will turn into 40,000. With the new EA and Archon unchanged, (40,000 * .0445=) 1780 damage taken. In this case, the actual damage taken is 190 damage less. or, 1780/1830=.9727 or 2.73% difference in damage taken. After all the nerfs, you could consider Archon is getting a 2.7% buff to defense.
Anyway, you proved me wrong that Archon will get more powerful with the nerf to incoming damage. However, I still maintain that it isn't a significant difference and not something that will suddenly make an Archon build OP.
I'm confused. Don't most Archon builds use Prismatic Armor? Wouldn't nerfing Energy Armor affect Archon too, when the two defense buffs are stacking together?
This change will make it less dangerous to let Energy Armor drop off while Archon is active, or to even just ignore it and go with another skill to increase damage.
The thoughts are that while the armor and resist bonuses on Energy Armor and Prismatic Armor have been reduced, the armor and resists on Archon might not be changed, so the 25% less damage mobs do is evened out with changes to EA and PA, but when you're in Archon form, you get an effective 25% increase to EHP compared to now because of the lack of changes to Archon form.
Your logic is... flawed. Because the armor/res boost from Archon stacks directly with the armor/res boost from EA/Pris, a nerf to one is a nerf to the combination.
In patch 1.0.4, the 65% from Energy armor is added to the 40% from Archon, resulting in 105% armor boost. After the nerf, the 35% from Energy Armor will be added to the 40% from Archon, resulting in 75% armor boost. Similarly, the current version gives 40% resist from EA and 40% from Archon, for 80% Resistance boost. After the change, the 25% from prismatic armor adds to the 40% from Archon for 65% resistance.
Ready for some math? Let's use the same numbers and examples in the developer blog:
You start with 6000 armor and 800 resist before any buffs, against a lvl 63 enemy.
In 1.0.4 this results in 12300 Armor and 1640 Resist, for a total of 96.71% damage reduction (the calculator I found doesn't give them separately but the math still works out.)
After 1.0.5 this results in 10500 Armor and 1320 Resist, for a total of 95.55% damage reduction.
Suppose a 50,000 damage monster hit, the damage taken goes from 1645 to 2225.
This means that for the damage to remain the same, monster damage would have to be lowered by 26.07% (1645/2225=73.93%)
If they only reduce the damage monsters do in Inferno by 25%, we will end up taking ~1% more damage when using both Prismatic Armor and Archon.
Of course, this means that Archon on its own is SIGNIFICANTLY stronger. It also means that letting Prismatic Armor drop is not going to be nearly as dangerous. But when you have both armor buffs active, the nerf to EA and Prismatic Armor is going to be felt by Archon form just as much if not more than other builds.
From what I read, this is an absolutely enormous buff to Archon, whose 40% baseline buff to both armor and resistances isn't being touched according to that blog, but inferno damage is being nerfed by 25%. This likely means archon builds will become viable even at very modest gear levels.
I can't imagine Devs forgetting Archon in their mitigation nerf round. If they don't touch it, and at the same time nerf SC to the ground, I don't see any build matching Archon at any level of gear.
I'm confused. Don't most Archon builds use Prismatic Armor? Wouldn't nerfing Energy Armor affect Archon too, when the two defense buffs are stacking together?
This change will make it less dangerous to let Energy Armor drop off while Archon is active, or to even just ignore it and go with another skill to increase damage.
I think you're getting ahead of yourself. If you aren't even lvl 60, you can't possibly make informed decisions based on your own play style.
Arcane Orb lets you fire-and-forget. Celestial Orb lets your obliterate large groups of skeletons or illusion or what have you. The cost is high, but with some +AP on crit, you can easily fire off 3 in a row. And that is enough to destroy nearly everything.
Arcane Torrent has a delay before it does damage. The damage is high, but if you miss its a waste.
Blizzard is never used for damage. It is used for the snare and the 20% from Cold Blooded. Don't expect to do much damage with Blizzard, if you use that build about 2/3 of your damage comes from Hydra.
Really though, don't worry about it too much. I spent several runs in Inferno playing around with spells to see what I liked, before finally settling on what I use. Is it the best? It is for me. It fits my play style very well, gives me plenty of damage, and I don't have to do a lot of weird things or keep track of my cooldowns to be effective. It's... relaxing.
The problem with Archon:
Actually there are two problems with Archon. The most obvious is that you lose your defensive abilities, and any mobility spells you have. This means that while Archon is active you can't Teleport out of a waller, desecrated, fire chains trifecta of death. You also can't use Diamond Skin, if that is something you have on your bar.
The second problem is that you shouldn't need Archon active to kill anything. If you do, then you get ~20 seconds of killing followed by 100 seconds of waiting. Archon is most used in Inferno for when you overgear the content (the 90k dps comment made above) and you can move from room to room mowing down enemies while you're safe with your bonuses to armor and resistance. When you are in a group, you don't actually get the killing blow on every single monster, which means that you can't refresh the duration of Archon and end up only getting 15-20 seconds out of it. That basically translates into a wasted slot on your bar.
The problem with Disintegrate:
You have to channel. That's pretty much the biggest problem with Disintegrate. When you get to Inferno, you will find that stuff kills you very fast. You can't hope to pop Diamond Skin and stand in one place very long. While I feel that the Chaos Nexus rune is still the best, you don't really want to stand still when monsters get that close to you. Similarly, you need to be significantly more aware of your environment in Inferno, so nothing should be able to sneak up behind you.
You might ask yourself why Archon gets to channel but Disintegrate is death. The answer is due to the previously recommended overgearing content, but Archon also gives some defense boosts that you don't get with Disintegrate.
Before I get into my recommended build, I have a few hints for co-op Inferno. First of all, a tank makes things much easier as a squishy caster. If you want to run with a Wizard and a Witch Doctor, it can work, but you have to have a lot of coordination. If your friend decides on Barbarian, you're golden. Have them build defensively, and basically block paths for you to rain hell from afar.
You will want a Hydra. If you have a tank, the Venom Hydra can stack up its pools in one spot and do huge amounts of damage. If you have to kite, the Arcane Hydra can snare (with Temporal Flux) and make life easier on both of you.
For starting out in Inferno, you will want to hit the AH and get a decent set of lvl 60 gear. At this point you can get good starting gear for cheap. The lvl 60 gear is such a huge jump in damage and defense, you will be surprised.
Here's my build http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Zeyn-1153/hero/3275686
You can see that I don't need to build for crit because I don't have a CM build. However, it still boosts my damage and once I build more gear I can try out different builds. The Magic Missile-Seeker rune is incredible for co-op because you can keep firing wildly even when there is a ton of explosions and graphic effects going off and you can't see where you're aiming. Arcane Orb- Celetial Orb means that I can shoot "through" enemies and hit the elite in the back where I want to deal the most damage to. No minions blocking my shots!
Although, you might want to start out with Force Armor, until you get better gear.
0
There are three reasons why Life After Kill is worthwhile.
The first is that it's cheap. Its basically a throwaway stat for the majority of people.
The second is that it is not limited by not having +pickup radius on gear. Your Archon beam weapon has a significantly farther range than trying to pick up orbs.
The third is that it works even when you are trapped by wallers, jailers, surrounded by illusionists, etc etc. The Archon beam passes through all of it, and can kill a group of crawlers even while you are trapped on top of a desecration.
Your argument is even less valid when you consider Life Steal. You already point out that Archon is based on killing hordes of monsters, creating a lot of health orbs. With so many health orbs, why even have Life Steal, or Life on Hit? When you're fighting a reflect damage mob, why can't you just run over a little bit and pick up the orb left from the last mob you killed?
Nearly every single one of my deaths has occurred while there are health globes on the screen, but for some reason I wasn't able to get them.
0
A great example is this thread itself. A casual gamer, who doesn't really play enough or have enough gear to get very many legendaries will see this thread (as well as all the others in these forums) and think that everyone is getting legendaries. Then, when they finally do get a single drop (even if it sucks) it will confirm their belief that suddenly everyone is getting legendaries and set items in 1.0.5. Nevermind that if you watch any high-end streaming player they will get legendary drops left and right.
Now, I'm not saying that people aren't actually getting more legendaries than in 1.0.4, just that it is not nearly as much as people seem to think. Plus, there are other things at work than pure drop rate. Higher monster power increases your MF. Better yellow items mean that its cheaper to gear up, which means you can kill faster, which means you get more drops. Personally I think this last point is the most salient. Being able to slaugher hordes of monsters on MP0 will give you more legendary drops than if you couldn't kill that many. The % has only doubled, but volume has also gone up, creating more drops.
0
I didn't realize that you had both Inna's and Lacuni, plus Zunimassa's Trail boots. That seems... excessive. Then I thought about it, and I guess no other armors can have that high of dps stats.
I guess my current issue is trying to figure out which "major" upgrade to get next. I put major in quotes because I'm planning on spending 50-100m on it (depending on the final sale price of a couple of auctions). I can run the usual act 3 route on MP0 in archon, but the buff tends to drop in areas like the Core and Fields of Slaughter, which both have some distance to run between packs. I've been running with Blood Magic as my only life steal, which is doing the job, but I'm loathe to give up any EHP without getting better health recovery.
http://us.battle.net...53/hero/3275686
Feel free to laugh at my chest piece. In my defense, it was a drop I got on my second ever inferno run, before I even cleared act 1. But you can see why I was leaning toward Tyrael's chest. Whichever upgrade I choose, I'm upgrading whatever gems I can with leftover monies.
0
0
What do you guys find works best? What build do you use? Are some of the fights easier solo, or do wizards really need a group?
I'm assuming that Archon doesn't work very well except maybe for the Skele King fight (even though I'm not geared enough for archon). Would a CM build work at all, with the nerfed coefficients?
Thanks in advance.
0
0
22. Legendaries have a significantly higher drop rate when you town portal back to town to sell/repair in a multiplayer party.
0
Damage over time is correct. Just remember that attack speed still affects cast speed, but not damage.
Damage per second is oversimplifying. Disintegrate is not damage per second. It is damage per attack period, which means that it acts like a single-cast spell like Magic Missile. It just averages its damage over a certain period. Attack speed makes channeled spells "cast" faster. The only difference is that because it's channeled there is no visual delay between casts. The cast times still sync up directly to attack speed like MM or Arcane Orb, you just don't have separate projectiles. Channel disintegrate in town one day, and you can see your AP fall in jumps, not smoothly like you would expect.
Hydra counts as a pet. It isn't a spell. You can't generalize how other spells cast by looking at hydra's mechanics.
0
This is accurate, although slightly confusing. The game has so many different types of spells and damage that it is hard to come up with general rules without examining each spell individually.
Projectiles: Single cast, does weapon damage regardless of Attack Speed (AS or IAS). IAS just means you can fire them faster, resulting in increased dps but burning through AP faster. This actually results in lower damage over time unless you are using a free signature spell (or you kill the mob before running out of AP).
Channeled beam spells (Ray of frost, disintegrate, archon beam): Deals damage on a continuous basis but only displays damage at certain "intervals" (I'm not sure if the display intervals are the same for all three spells, but it doesn't matter anyway). This means that they are affected by both crit and attack speed, but you don't actually see the yellow crit numbers. The interval sums up all the damage it does in that time and displays it as a single number. For example, a 1.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in 1.0 seconds. A 2.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in .5 seconds, meaning it will do 310% weapon damage and cost 40 AP in 1.0 seconds.
A side note: since you regen 10 AP a second base, that 1.0 spd cast will actually cost 10 AP while that 2.0 spd cast will cost 30 AP per sec. This ends up meaning that you do double damage but at three times the cost. This is why IAS isn't very good for channeled spells, except for the AP-free archon beam.
Hydra is special. It attacks at the same rate, but uses your displayed dps for its damage. So anything that can bump up dps makes hydra hit harder.
Damage over time spells (Blizzard, energy twister, etc): Damage is not affected by IAS. However, Life on Hit is still affected. I'm not 100% sure on blizzard, but there is an awesome post right below this one examining energy twister and life on hit. Still, if you use blizzard or twister the attack speed only makes you cast faster, it doesn't affect damage at all. This actually makes them similar to projectile spells in that you can create more twisters the faster you cast but the damage is only based on weapon damage. Since LoH is tied to the spell hitting a monster rather than the act of casting, attack speed makes those ticks happen more often even though it doesn't affect the damage ticks. I hope that makes as much sense as it did in my head.
0
0
I used the wording in the blue post specifically because it was confusing on the actual implementation of the math.
The damage reduction calculator I used was found: http://messor.fi/D3/
(hopefully) correct math:
1.0.4 - 50,000 damage hit
No buff: 6000 armor, 800 resistance, 90.27% reduction, 4865 damage taken
EA+Pris: 9900 armor, 1120 resistance, 94.7% reduction, 2650 damage taken
Archon: 8400 armor, 1120 resistance, 94.01% reduction, 2995 damage taken
EA+Pris+Archon: 12300 armor, 1440 resistance, 96.34% reduction, 1830 damage taken
1.0.5 - 50,000 damage hit
No buff: 6000 armor, 800 resistance, 90.27% reduction, 4865 damage taken
EA+Pris: 8100 armor, 1000 resistance, 93.29% reduction, 3355 damage taken
Archon: 8400 armor, 1120 resistance, 94.01% reduction, 2995 damage taken
EA+Pris+Archon: 10500 armor, 1320 resistance, 95.55% reduction, 2225 damage taken
1830/2225=.822 So if archon remains the same, the end result is about 3% less damage taken. Am I interpreting that correctly?
Wild speculation, but if it is a straight 25% nerf to monster damage, that 50,000 damage hit will turn into 40,000. With the new EA and Archon unchanged, (40,000 * .0445=) 1780 damage taken. In this case, the actual damage taken is 190 damage less. or, 1780/1830=.9727 or 2.73% difference in damage taken. After all the nerfs, you could consider Archon is getting a 2.7% buff to defense.
Anyway, you proved me wrong that Archon will get more powerful with the nerf to incoming damage. However, I still maintain that it isn't a significant difference and not something that will suddenly make an Archon build OP.
0
Your logic is... flawed. Because the armor/res boost from Archon stacks directly with the armor/res boost from EA/Pris, a nerf to one is a nerf to the combination.
In patch 1.0.4, the 65% from Energy armor is added to the 40% from Archon, resulting in 105% armor boost. After the nerf, the 35% from Energy Armor will be added to the 40% from Archon, resulting in 75% armor boost. Similarly, the current version gives 40% resist from EA and 40% from Archon, for 80% Resistance boost. After the change, the 25% from prismatic armor adds to the 40% from Archon for 65% resistance.
Ready for some math? Let's use the same numbers and examples in the developer blog:
You start with 6000 armor and 800 resist before any buffs, against a lvl 63 enemy.
In 1.0.4 this results in 12300 Armor and 1640 Resist, for a total of 96.71% damage reduction (the calculator I found doesn't give them separately but the math still works out.)
After 1.0.5 this results in 10500 Armor and 1320 Resist, for a total of 95.55% damage reduction.
Suppose a 50,000 damage monster hit, the damage taken goes from 1645 to 2225.
This means that for the damage to remain the same, monster damage would have to be lowered by 26.07% (1645/2225=73.93%)
If they only reduce the damage monsters do in Inferno by 25%, we will end up taking ~1% more damage when using both Prismatic Armor and Archon.
Of course, this means that Archon on its own is SIGNIFICANTLY stronger. It also means that letting Prismatic Armor drop is not going to be nearly as dangerous. But when you have both armor buffs active, the nerf to EA and Prismatic Armor is going to be felt by Archon form just as much if not more than other builds.
0
I'm confused. Don't most Archon builds use Prismatic Armor? Wouldn't nerfing Energy Armor affect Archon too, when the two defense buffs are stacking together?
This change will make it less dangerous to let Energy Armor drop off while Archon is active, or to even just ignore it and go with another skill to increase damage.
0
Arcane Orb lets you fire-and-forget. Celestial Orb lets your obliterate large groups of skeletons or illusion or what have you. The cost is high, but with some +AP on crit, you can easily fire off 3 in a row. And that is enough to destroy nearly everything.
Arcane Torrent has a delay before it does damage. The damage is high, but if you miss its a waste.
Blizzard is never used for damage. It is used for the snare and the 20% from Cold Blooded. Don't expect to do much damage with Blizzard, if you use that build about 2/3 of your damage comes from Hydra.
Really though, don't worry about it too much. I spent several runs in Inferno playing around with spells to see what I liked, before finally settling on what I use. Is it the best? It is for me. It fits my play style very well, gives me plenty of damage, and I don't have to do a lot of weird things or keep track of my cooldowns to be effective. It's... relaxing.
0
Actually there are two problems with Archon. The most obvious is that you lose your defensive abilities, and any mobility spells you have. This means that while Archon is active you can't Teleport out of a waller, desecrated, fire chains trifecta of death. You also can't use Diamond Skin, if that is something you have on your bar.
The second problem is that you shouldn't need Archon active to kill anything. If you do, then you get ~20 seconds of killing followed by 100 seconds of waiting. Archon is most used in Inferno for when you overgear the content (the 90k dps comment made above) and you can move from room to room mowing down enemies while you're safe with your bonuses to armor and resistance. When you are in a group, you don't actually get the killing blow on every single monster, which means that you can't refresh the duration of Archon and end up only getting 15-20 seconds out of it. That basically translates into a wasted slot on your bar.
The problem with Disintegrate:
You have to channel. That's pretty much the biggest problem with Disintegrate. When you get to Inferno, you will find that stuff kills you very fast. You can't hope to pop Diamond Skin and stand in one place very long. While I feel that the Chaos Nexus rune is still the best, you don't really want to stand still when monsters get that close to you. Similarly, you need to be significantly more aware of your environment in Inferno, so nothing should be able to sneak up behind you.
You might ask yourself why Archon gets to channel but Disintegrate is death. The answer is due to the previously recommended overgearing content, but Archon also gives some defense boosts that you don't get with Disintegrate.
Before I get into my recommended build, I have a few hints for co-op Inferno. First of all, a tank makes things much easier as a squishy caster. If you want to run with a Wizard and a Witch Doctor, it can work, but you have to have a lot of coordination. If your friend decides on Barbarian, you're golden. Have them build defensively, and basically block paths for you to rain hell from afar.
You will want a Hydra. If you have a tank, the Venom Hydra can stack up its pools in one spot and do huge amounts of damage. If you have to kite, the Arcane Hydra can snare (with Temporal Flux) and make life easier on both of you.
For starting out in Inferno, you will want to hit the AH and get a decent set of lvl 60 gear. At this point you can get good starting gear for cheap. The lvl 60 gear is such a huge jump in damage and defense, you will be surprised.
Here's my build http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Zeyn-1153/hero/3275686
You can see that I don't need to build for crit because I don't have a CM build. However, it still boosts my damage and once I build more gear I can try out different builds. The Magic Missile-Seeker rune is incredible for co-op because you can keep firing wildly even when there is a ton of explosions and graphic effects going off and you can't see where you're aiming. Arcane Orb- Celetial Orb means that I can shoot "through" enemies and hit the elite in the back where I want to deal the most damage to. No minions blocking my shots!
Although, you might want to start out with Force Armor, until you get better gear.