Disintegrate cannot crit, however Chaos Nexus damage can. While I can't say for certain, it certainly seems like when you are in range for Chaos Nexus damage, Disintegrate is significantly higher damage than Ray of Frost. Does anyone know the cast speed of the Chaos Nexus lasers? They seem to be 3-4x faster than your weapon speed, which would put that damage at 120% or 160%. Added to the 155% of Disintegrate, and you get 275% or 315% weapon damage. Obviously I could be wrong in my estimation of how fast those little lasers fire, but even at 3x the speed you are doing greater damage (through crits) than Snow Blast runed Ray of Frost. The downside, obviously, is having to stay within range.
Treasure goblins can be knocked from their portal a couple of times, but if you don't kill them fast enough they start to ignore any interruptions.
Tip of my own: Slow Time can get you killed if you aren't careful. By slowing a ton of missiles, as soon as the time bubble expires you get all of those stacked on top of each other. It is much better to ignore Slow Time and just kite so you can avoid missiles or let them get absorbed by diamond skin.
While 4 defensive skills may be overkill, those phase beasts can really hurt. I would totally go with a build like this to get around that spot in act 3.
Remember that with enough defensive skills, you can cast offensive skills more.
The next character you start will come with a Blacksmith at whatever level you trained up your first one. Not exactly wasted.
And really, what did you expect? It only makes sense that you should be leveling your artisans up at about the same rate as your character so they stay relevant and let you craft gear to fill in any slot you are lacking.
As of right now, Nephalem Valor is only lvl 60 (any difficulty, as long as you are lvl 60). Bosses drop a guaranteed rare on the first kill only on Normal difficulty, not Nightmare or Hell.
Personally I think first kill bosses should drop a rare on every difficulty, including Inferno. The next area after a boss tends to be much harder, so the extra item would make sense.
I love reading your posts Maerlimi. Very informative, and they really make sense to me. Hell, even before you did all the math I was on board because it is so obvious I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it first.
Casting faster drains your resources faster. This has been around since... well, since the first person played a spellcaster in the first video game. The interesting part is that in D3 it is a lot more direct to choose between a fast cast but weaker spells, and slower cast but stronger spells. Simply change your weapon type (since same-level weapons have similar dps ratings) and you can sustain a higher dps for longer.
One nitpick: its spelled "cycle" not "cicle". Unless you were using a word I've never heard before, which is quite possible.
People always assume that Inferno (or Hell for that matter) is going to have tons of immune mobs everywhere. Blizzard has stated explicitly that it will NOT be like Diablo 2. The resistances will be high, yes, but most mobs will NOT have an immunity to a specific damage type. It might be entirely viable to have a build that uses a single damage type. Then again, I'm pretty sure unique monsters can spawn with an immunity type.
I have a funny feeling that most bosses I'm going to end up switching out disintegrate for ray of frost. Unless of course it's an add-heavy encounter, but even the skeleton king didn't need a lot of aoe.
never heard of that speed increasing with the weapon, so I should get the slowest high damage weapon possible? Some kind of two handed sword ?
It's not common knowledge yet, but contrary to spell casters in other games, every single attack is based off your weapon. This includes both spells and physical attacks. And it includes weapon damage and weapon speed.
Let's give an example that was in the theorycrafting board recently. Your base Wizard casting Ray of Frost will start with 100 AP, regenerate 10 AP a second, and Ray of Frost will drain 20 AP every "cycle". The speed of that cycle is based on your weapon speed.
(The following is an example, and the real game is more complicated)
For a 1.0 speed 50 damage weapon, your dps will be 50, and RoF will cycle every 1.0 seconds. This means you will drain 20 AP and regain 10 AP every second, resulting in a net loss of 10 AP per second. You can channel Ray of Frost for 10 seconds (100 starting AP). 50dps * 10seconds = 500 damage
For a 2.0 speed, 25 damage weapon, your dps will be 50 (same as above), and RoF will cycle every .5 seconds, or twice every second. This means you will drain 40 AP and gain 10 AP every second, resulting in a net loss of 30 AP a second. You can channel Ray of Frost for 3.33 seconds (100 starting AP). 50dps * 3.33 seconds = 165 damage.
Please note that the above assumes NO signature spells to fill the gaps, so you must rely on AP spenders to do all your damage. There are certain setups, including lots of AP on crit gear, that can make attack speed the way to go. However, it is something to be aware of. This build especially might have plenty of extra AP regen, that attack speed doesn't matter. On the other hand, there might be a perfect speed that lets you chain-cast to your heart's content and never run out of AP.
There is also the fact that attack speed raises the cast speed of even non-channeled spells, which means you have more time to move and kite/escape. Like I said, the real game is more complicated, but this is an interesting fact that is worth being aware of.
Paralysis, in its current form, is horrible. The fact that in your build it can only proc off a proc is even worse. I doubt that I would give up Glass Cannon unless it was closer to a 50% chance to stun, and even then I doubt it would make much of a difference.
Remember that when you are either channeling a spell, or chain-casting, the faster your weapon the faster you drain AP. It will take some tweaking during the game, but a build that relies on so much AP regen would have to pay attention to getting the right speed of weapon. Getting a faster weapon might end up LOWERING your damage over time.
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Treasure goblins can be knocked from their portal a couple of times, but if you don't kill them fast enough they start to ignore any interruptions.
Tip of my own: Slow Time can get you killed if you aren't careful. By slowing a ton of missiles, as soon as the time bubble expires you get all of those stacked on top of each other. It is much better to ignore Slow Time and just kite so you can avoid missiles or let them get absorbed by diamond skin.
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Remember that with enough defensive skills, you can cast offensive skills more.
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And really, what did you expect? It only makes sense that you should be leveling your artisans up at about the same rate as your character so they stay relevant and let you craft gear to fill in any slot you are lacking.
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Personally I think first kill bosses should drop a rare on every difficulty, including Inferno. The next area after a boss tends to be much harder, so the extra item would make sense.
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Unless you're arguing that it shouldn't be like this? Maybe I missed the point.
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Casting faster drains your resources faster. This has been around since... well, since the first person played a spellcaster in the first video game. The interesting part is that in D3 it is a lot more direct to choose between a fast cast but weaker spells, and slower cast but stronger spells. Simply change your weapon type (since same-level weapons have similar dps ratings) and you can sustain a higher dps for longer.
One nitpick: its spelled "cycle" not "cicle". Unless you were using a word I've never heard before, which is quite possible.
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It's not common knowledge yet, but contrary to spell casters in other games, every single attack is based off your weapon. This includes both spells and physical attacks. And it includes weapon damage and weapon speed.
Let's give an example that was in the theorycrafting board recently. Your base Wizard casting Ray of Frost will start with 100 AP, regenerate 10 AP a second, and Ray of Frost will drain 20 AP every "cycle". The speed of that cycle is based on your weapon speed.
(The following is an example, and the real game is more complicated)
For a 1.0 speed 50 damage weapon, your dps will be 50, and RoF will cycle every 1.0 seconds. This means you will drain 20 AP and regain 10 AP every second, resulting in a net loss of 10 AP per second. You can channel Ray of Frost for 10 seconds (100 starting AP). 50dps * 10seconds = 500 damage
For a 2.0 speed, 25 damage weapon, your dps will be 50 (same as above), and RoF will cycle every .5 seconds, or twice every second. This means you will drain 40 AP and gain 10 AP every second, resulting in a net loss of 30 AP a second. You can channel Ray of Frost for 3.33 seconds (100 starting AP). 50dps * 3.33 seconds = 165 damage.
Please note that the above assumes NO signature spells to fill the gaps, so you must rely on AP spenders to do all your damage. There are certain setups, including lots of AP on crit gear, that can make attack speed the way to go. However, it is something to be aware of. This build especially might have plenty of extra AP regen, that attack speed doesn't matter. On the other hand, there might be a perfect speed that lets you chain-cast to your heart's content and never run out of AP.
There is also the fact that attack speed raises the cast speed of even non-channeled spells, which means you have more time to move and kite/escape. Like I said, the real game is more complicated, but this is an interesting fact that is worth being aware of.
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Remember that when you are either channeling a spell, or chain-casting, the faster your weapon the faster you drain AP. It will take some tweaking during the game, but a build that relies on so much AP regen would have to pay attention to getting the right speed of weapon. Getting a faster weapon might end up LOWERING your damage over time.