Thanks OP for this informative post. Its nice to have someone willing to put in the effort to help educate the rest of the player base. I was wondering if you would mind if I repost this information on my website, Diablo 3 Inferno Builds . I'd like to help spread this information and I would include back link back to this site so it is evident where the information came from. This site just started roughly three weeks ago and i've been working on filling it with some quality content so I hope you consider it! Thanks again for the information.
I don't mind you linking it at all as long as you attribute it and don't claim it as your own.
INTRODUCTION
This guide is intended only to cover the basics of the wizard class in inferno; i.e. what the popular builds are and how to gear your wizard in a general sense. A friend of mine just hit 60 on his wizard and asked me to write something up for him so I decided to make it into this post in case anybody else is interested. It’s a general guide; if I don’t mention your build or your strategy it doesn’t mean I think it sucks, I’m just posting general information on what I perceive to be the popular builds/strategies. The guide is geared towards preparing for and clearing act3/4 inferno, and eventually farming act 3.
Strategy:
This build’s strength comes from the use of two combos: Blizzard’s strong 60% slow + Venom Hydra’s stacking DOT pools, and Teleport + Illusionist. To play this build you want to engage from max distance (preferably the very edge of the screen) by dropping a hydra about halfway between you and the mobs and then dropping a blizzard on top of them and then a line of blizzards between you and them. This way the mobs will walk through your blizzard trail while slowed and take continuous damage from both the blizzard and the venom hydra. When possible, you spam your signature spell to add damage. Continue this while kiting. When/if the mobs eventually get to you, you take a hit (which is reduced to 35% of your HP by force armor) and then teleport away. Since you have illusionist, you can do this every time you take a hit. For sustainability in the longish fights vs. elites you need some form of healing - life regen/sec is the most effective in combination with force armor.
This is the build I used to clear inferno and after trying numerous other builds its what I’ve come back to and currently use to farm act 3. A lot of people find it boring but its very efficient. Since 1.0.3 I have not had to skip a single elite pack in act 3 while farming and I generally die less than once an hour farming act 3.
Pros/Cons:
+Least gear dependant of all the builds, great for new 60 wizards, but still scales well
+Extremely safe due to permanent Blizzard slow + Illusionist/Teleport
+Great AOE damage from Blizzard + Venom Hydra + Piercing Orb
-Some people find it boring
-You have to kite a lot, you can’t stand and tank like the prismatic armor builds
- Relies somewhat on skillful play to avoid taking hits
Choices/Variants:
Signature Spell - I like Piercing Orb for better AOE damage and for shielding/invulnerable minion packs, but some people prefer Magic Missile - Seeker.
Blizzard - Stark Winter is a viable alternative to Snowbound.
Teleport - Some people prefer Fracture to Wormhole, both are fine.
4th Skill - I recommend Force Weapon at lower gear levels, but once you get enough DPS you can switch to Diamond Skin, or if you find yourself dying too much. Some people think Familiar - Sparkflint is better than Force Weapon. Some people like Mirror Images or Frost Nova here too, but I don’t think they are as strong. CRITICAL MASS BUILDS
Example: http://us.battle.net...YXhj!gWY!YZcbcZ
Strategy:
These builds are based primarily on utilizing high crit rate and the Critical Mass passive to constantly refresh cooldowns such as Frost Nova and Diamond Skin. Some use Prismatic Armor instead of Force Armor and build fairly tanky so that they can stand in melee range. They rely either on Spectral Blades or Energy Twister - Wicked Wind to trigger Critical Mass as much as possible. The Energy Twister variants are probably more gear dependant because you will need AP on Crit gear in order to not run out of AP, but the Spectral Blades variants probably require more defensive/resistance gear. These are the builds I have the least experience with, so I would refer people to http://www.windupwizard.com/ for more specifics on what’s probably the most popular variant of the build.
Pros/Cons:
+Much less kiting required, can often stand still and spam abilities
+Some consider it more fun/exciting, possibly more fast paced depending on the variant
+Able to put out massive dps - see the video of the Belial kill on the link above
-More gear dependant than the force armor builds
-Not nearly as safe as the blizzard/vhydra build since you are in melee range and don’t have teleport
-Requires careful play to make sure the combo doesn’t “fizzle out”
Choices/Variants:
Spectral Blades vs. Wicked Wind
Prismatic Armor + Tanky gear vs foregoing that and relying on Diamond Skin + Frost Nova spam.
Lots of variance in the damaging abilities used - some use meteor, some explosive blast. ARCANE ORB BUILDS
Example: http://us.battle.net...XOQS!YdU!YbaYZZ
Strategy:
These builds are kiting builds similar to the Blizzard build above, but replace Blizzard with Arcane Orb + Temporal Flux for the slow. At higher gear levels it’s possible to drop Temporal Flux altogether due to the damage output of Arcane Orb. The basic strategy is similar to the Blizzard build above; engage from max range, drop Hydra and spam Arcane Orb while kiting. When you get caught, you rely on Illusionist + Teleport to get away.
Pros/Cons:
+Less gear dependant than the Critical Mass or Archon builds
+High burst damage from hard hitting Arcane Orbs
+Fairly safe kiting build
-Not as safe as the Blizzard build since you are using a weaker/less reliable slow
-More gear dependant than the Blizzard build
-Relies on kiting, which some find boring
Choices/Variants:
Orb - Tap the Source is the most popular rune for Arcane Orb, but some people use Obliterate or Celestial Orb. To use these you probably need to add a signature spell, likely Magic Missile - Seeker.
Hydra - Arcane Hydra can be used instead of Venom Hydra to make the build safer by adding a more reliable slow. It is less damage, but not tons less and is perfectly viable/safer. Probably better at lower gear levels.
Teleport - Again, some prefer Fracture to Wormhole.
3rd and 4th Skills - Any combination of Diamond Skin / Force Weapon / Familiar - Sparkflint / Frost Nova / Mirror Images is fine.
Strategy:
These builds revolve around being in Archon the most time possible and using it to quickly melt everything. They are the most gear dependant, but probably also the most efficient at the highest levels of gear. Your buffs such as Energy Armor, Force Weapon and Familiar persist into Archon form, which itself also adds 40% resists/armor. The goal is to buff your dps as high as possible, pop archon, and maintain it by killing tons of mobs to get a bonus to the duration from each kill. Once Archon ends your goal is to refresh it as quickly as possible so that you can do it again. Actually killing things with Archon is self-explanatory, just hold down right click and point at the mobs. Don’t forget that you likely don’t have an escape or CC spell though and will quickly die if you allow anything to actually get to you and hit you.
Pros/Cons:
+Insane speed/efficiency at high gear levels
+Hilariously fun to melt entire screens of enemies in 1-2 seconds and champ packs in 5-10 seconds
+Great AOE damage, great single target damage, trivializes certain boss fights
-Most gear dependant build
-Not very safe while in Archon form due to no escape spell or CC
-Weak/vulnerable when Archon is on cooldown
Choices/Variants:
Archon Rune - I think Improved Archon, Teleport or Pure Power are the best. Some people use Slow Time.
What you do when you aren’t in Archon is up for debate. Some people take Arcane Orb and try to farm or at least clear white mobs with that while Archon is down. Another strategy (the one in the build linked above) is to take Critical Mass and either Wicked Wind or Spectral Blades to try to refresh Archon as quickly as possible. I prefer the latter.
Offense - Your primary offensive stats are int, crit chance, crit damage, attack speed and bonus damage, and not necessarily in that order. The relative value of all of these stats depends entirely on how much of them you already have, and the only good way to figure it out for you individually is with the DPS spreadsheet I linked above. Just as an example, for me with my current gear my equivalencies are as follows: 1% crit = 27.28 int, 1% crit damage = 4.47 int, 1% IAS = 22.29 int, and 1 average bonus damage = 2.52 int. Bonus damage is an often overlooked damage stat that can be very valuable and can often be found on jewelry for less cost than its worth because people overlook it. Stacking crit + crit damage is really the only way to get very high dps.
2h vs 1h + source is an endless debate, but after trying both extensively I prefer 1h + source, mostly because you can get crit chance on the offhand which I think at higher gear levels pushes 1H+OH over any 2h. If you are just starting out in inferno a good 2h may be cheaper and a better way to go initially.
Defense - Your primary defensive stats are vit, % life, bonus armor (which includes strength), resistances (which includes intellect), life regen, dexterity (everybody should have at least 100), movement speed (which includes IAS), and for some builds life on hit. Which of these stats and how much of them you want depends very much on whether you are using force armor or prismatic armor, which I’ll address more below.
Gearing by slot:
As you’ll have noticed from the link above, various different stats can appear or can not appear on different slots, and in different amounts. That means there is a strategy for which stats you want to look for on each slot. Generally, the slots you should focus on for offensive stats are your jewelry, helm, bracers, gloves, weapon and offhand, while you should focus on defensive stats on your shoulders, chest, legs, belt, and boots because, except for legendaries, those slots can’t spawn the good dps stats. Every slot should have some amount of int.
DPS gear:
Helm - You want the highest int and crit chance you can afford. A socket is nice, but not necessary and sometimes artifically inflates the price. Use a calculator to compare your gain from the % life on the socket to what you can get on an unsocketed helm in terms of vit and % life. This is one of the two slots (gloves are the other) that can spawn particularly high int, so this is a relatively cheap place to get a lot of it.
Gloves - You really want int, crit chance and crit damage all on this item. This slot, along with the amulet and the weapon, is the best place to look for crit damage. These three slots (gloves/ammy/weapon) are likely going to be both the most expensive and the most worth spending on. Again, one of the two slots that can spawn especially high int.
Bracers - Again you want int and crit chance here. There are a lot of these on the market, probably due to crafting, so this is a slot you can get a very good value on.
Amulet - Similar to the gloves, but more expensive. Int, crit chance and crit damage are all mandatory. Bonus damage is a nice plus as well, and can lead to you getting more of a bang for buck on this slot. For example, an amulet with +15-25 damage adds 20 average bonus damage, which for me would equate to an additional 50 int in terms of dps. IAS would be great but unless you are super rich you aren’t getting all of that on one amulet.
Rings - Crit chance and crit damage both spawn on this item, but the crit damage modifier on rings is fairly low and adds a ton to the cost of the item. Its often a better idea to skip it in favor of getting more crit chance, some bonus damage, or some IAS.
Weapon - If you’re just starting out this is going to be one of your biggest purchases, and is also your biggest opportunity to both get a ton of value or to vastly overspend. Basically, weapon DPS is highly overvalued by a lot of people, and the stats on the weapons are undervalued, although that is becoming less true as more people are figuring this out. For example, with my current gear I could replace my 789 dps weapon (with 126 int, 65% crit damage and a socket with a 90% crit damage gem) with a 1450 dps blue weapon with no stats and I would lose dps. A 1500 dps blue weapon with no stats would very slightly raise my dps. Obviously such weapons don’t even exist. The point is to use the spreadsheet when you make this purchase and actually figure out which weapons are best before you overspend for listed dps. Another thing is that weapon speed on a 1h matters when you are using an offhand and have bonus damage from gear, so you are generally going to want to buy either a sword, wand, or dagger. The 1.3 speed 1h axe can be acceptable too if it has good enough stats, but a 1.2 speed mace or spear needs much higher stats to be better so they probably won’t be cost efficient for you.
Offhand - Bonus damage is king on this item. Here’s a thread explaining some of the math on why that is: http://www.reddit.co...ds_and_why_you/
Basically at a minimum you want the numbers on the offhand to add up to 400, for a total of 200 bonus damage, bare minimum. Don’t buy anything less than that. 450 total is better and what you’ll want eventually, and 500 total is near perfect. The biggest stat to look for on this item is crit chance. You really want a source with the highest bonus damage and crit chance that you can afford.
Defense gear:
Shoulders - Int/vit/resists/life regen. Nothing special here, probably the most boring slot for wizards. I wore a blue archon spaulders with 170 int / a bunch of vit for the longest time, because there just isn’t anything special here. Probably best to pick up something like that if you’re on a budget. Good slot to get your resists as they are usually cheaper here than on chest/pants.
Chest - One of the two slots that can spawn a particularly high vit, the other being the pants. Also the slot that can spawn the most life regen. If you’re using a force armor build you want life regen here. Also, its almost always best to get one with 3 sockets.
Belt - Sort of like the shoulders, nothing really special here. It can spawn high strength so sometimes that’s a good find as strength = armor and you get 65% more of it from energy armor. Like shoulders, a good slot to get your resists as they are usually cheaper than on chest/pants.
Legs - Another slot to get your vit from. Get one with 2 sockets, it's almost always better.
Boots - 11%+ movement speed is mandatory, and 12% is better. This is a slot that can spawn high dex so it’s a good place to make sure you’re over 100. Another good spot to grab resists potentially.
Force Armor vs. Prismatic armor builds:
If you’re going for prismatic armor you’re going to need a lot more EHP and resistances. If that’s the case, there really isn’t much to say other than just get as much as you can afford. However, for force armor its much more tricky.
Force armor reduces any hit to 35% of your HP, but it cannot reduce the hit by more than 100% of your HP. Therefore, Force Armor does one of four things when you get hit:
A) The hit is for less than 35% of your HP. Force Armor does nothing.
B ) The hit is for more than 35% of your HP but less than 135% of your HP. The hit is reduced to 35% of your HP.
C) The hit is for more than 135% of your HP but less than 199% of your HP. The hit is reduced by 100% of your HP and you live with a varying amount of life left depending on how hard the hit was.
D) The hit is for more than 199% of your HP. Since Force Armor can only reduce it by 100% of your HP, you die.
The short story is that for Act 3 inferno you want 117.5k EHP in order to not take more than 35% of your life from any hit. This is fairly easy to obtain. Also, fire and physical are the most common sources of damage so you can fudge a little bit by getting those to 117.5k EHP while shorting the others a little.
Obviously, there are various ways to get to 117.5k EHP, because vit, % life, resistances and armor all contribute. However, the optimal way to do it is by raising resistances and armor as much as possible while reducing vit and % life. You will still need a good bit of HP, probably at least 20k, but if you can get to 117.5k EHP while keeping your life low your survivability will increase dramatically because you will get a much larger benefit from heals. This makes the life regen stat very strong. If you can get to 117.5k EHP with 20k hp, then 1k of life regen will full heal you in 20 seconds and heal a hit that is absorbed by force armor in 7 seconds.
AP on Crit:
This stat is important for some builds and only appears on Wizard Hats, Sources, and Wands. It’s expensive on good items and part of what makes the critical mass and arcane orb builds more gear dependant.
Here are *base* damage number changes for level 62 and 63 mobs, secondhand via Reddit; i.e. these are modified by mob-specific values, but if you lower them, you lower everything's damage.
If I read that right, level 62 base damage was lowered by ~36%, and level 63 base damage was lowered to just 120% of what 62 *used to be*, or lowered by ~44% from what 63 was pre-patch.
Let me preface this by saying I'm making a lot of assumptions here so this is probably wrong. Based on those numbers though and the pre-nerf 170k incoming damage number brought up in the wizard threads on force armor, it looks like a wizard with glass cannon and without the enchantress buff would only need 4000 armor, 200 resist all and about 15k health to be able to take only 35% of their health or less in damage from everything except guys with big, slow wind-up attacks. Wow.
EDIT: That 4000 armor number above is before energy armor and glass cannon, or 6200 after they are applied.
This isn't quite correct. I'm the author of that post you are referring to. The numbers quoted are base damage for act 3/4 mobs. The hard hitting mobs (that were hitting for 170k before) have a 1.5 multiplier, so their min damage was 170k pre-patch (113k * 1.5) and is now 95442. In addition, and this wasn't covered in my original post since I learned it since then, they have a damage range and that number is their minimum damage. So pre-patch they actually did 170k-226k and now they actually do 95k-127k.
So now you need about 96k EHP in order to get a full reduction from force armor on any act 3/4 hit, which is a lot lower than pre-patch. In fact, with my current gear I can drop almost 11k hp, all else being equal.
But I thought I should also post it here because the wizard discussion here is good. Its very long, sorry, but there's a TLDR at the end.
Blizzard has made a number of announcements this week regarding proposed changes to Inferno which are intended, among other things, to encourage ranged classes to build more defensively. Overall, it seems the purpose is to reduce the gap between melee and ranged classes. I’ve been thinking about these changes a great deal and the effect that they will have on my wizard, and I do not think that they are likely to have the intended effect of encouraging defensive builds. For context, I play a wizard who has fully completed inferno and farms act 3.
The two primary changes which have been announced that are intended to encourage more defensive builds are 1) Reducing enemy health and damage in Acts II, III, and IV of Inferno, and 2) severely increasing repair costs. See http://us.battle.net...ic/5590647017#8
The developer in that post stated that “For the ranged classes, I'm hoping that the incoming damage reduction will make some survival stats more appealing to ranged classes.” With regard to repair costs, the developer stated “ I don't think the answer is to make death-zerging more attractive for melee; I'd rather make death-zerging a less profitable strategy for ranged.”
I’ll address these one at a time.
Reducing enemy health and damage in Acts II, III, and IV of Inferno
We start from the premise that the most popular current build for wizards is to equip a minimum of defensive stats sufficient to allow Force Armor to function to reduce most incoming hits to near 35% and then to devote the rest of their stats to DPS. This is confirmed by the developer post above which directly addresses this type of build, as well as watching any number of streams of wizards in act 3/4. The reason that this is the optimum build is addressed by the developer in the above linked post: “[I]t just feels like the minimum amount of survivability to avoid the 1-shot is so large it's unattainable. That's one of the things 1.0.3 seeks to address.” Why is this?
A large number of monsters in act 3/4 hit for at least 170k raw damage. This includes armaddons, phase beasts (acts 3&4), soul lashers, and tremor demons. This means that at approximately 126k EHP, force armor will reduce that hit to 35%, meaning you can survive 2 hits and will die on the third, not considering any source of healing. I outlined this in a previous post: http://www.reddit.co...ent_use_out_of/
However, without force armor, in order for the 170k raw damage of the act3 mob hit to do 35% of your life, you would need to have 485,714 EHP, or nearly 4 times as much! If you instead wanted to survive 6 hits without force armor, by building defensively and using prismatic armor, you would need 1,020,000 EHP, or over 8 times the EHP you need to utilize force armor. For context, to achieve this you would need (for example) 50k HP, 10k armor and 1200 resist all including buffs from prismatic armor and the enchantress, or said another way 1260 vit, 6000 armor and 925 resist all *unbuffed*!
Now, this is exactly what they’ve said is a problem and that they intend to address by reducing enemy damage in inferno. However, lets look at how enemy damage reduction will effect the use of force armor. Since we don’t know how much they will reduce the damage by, let’s look at it with a 10% reduction in damage and a 25% reduction in damage.
10% Reduction - Mobs now do 170,000 x .9 = 153,000 damage per hit. To survive 6 hits you would now need 918k EHP, but now you only need 113k EHP for force armor to reduce these hits to 35%. For 918K EHP you still need 50k HP, ~9k buffed armor and ~1200 buffed resists.
25% Reduction - Mobs now do 170k x .75 = 127,500 damage per hit. To survive 6 hits you would now need 765k EHP, which still requires ~50k HP, ~8k armor and ~1000+ resist all buffed. However, now for force armor to reduce these hits to 35% you only need 94.5k EHP. For context, 94.5k EHP can be had with roughly ~29k HP, 180 resist all, and 3400 armor buffed from energy/force armor. Basically, you can expect to get this amount of resist all / armor baseline from int gear, and then you only need about 725 vitality.
Essentially, even with a 25% reduction in damage (it seems unlikely that the reduction will be this drastic), you still need a very large amount of defensive stats to take a reasonable number of hits. Now, lets consider that they have also said that they are reducing the **health** of the monsters as well. Since the survivability of a glass cannon wizard basically revolves around burning down the monsters as quickly as possible (while avoiding their attacks), this actually increases the survivability of the low defense build.
Therefore, with even a 25% reduction in damage which is likely the best case scenario for a high defense build, you have a choice between needing to increase your HP by 2/3, your resists by 4-5 times, and more or less doubling your armor in order to survive 6 hits, or using all of that stat allocation for increased damage, which will kill mobs more quickly especially with their reduced health. This seems like a clear decision.
Increased repair costs
But what about increased repair costs? Won’t this discourage low defense builds? No, I don’t believe they will, and here’s why.
The goal for people who are farming in inferno is to farm whatever has the highest expected profitability - i.e. will result in the most gold to them over time. Now, obviously increased repair costs will decrease profitability IF a player dies a lot attempting to farm an area. The developers appear to think this will encourage people to build more defensive in an effort to farm acts 3/4 while dying less. However, the same patch is also introducing the drops of acts 2/3/4 drops to act 1 and 2, and reducing the health and damage of act 2 mobs which are already significantly easier than act 3/4 mobs. It is already trivially easy for a low defense wizard who is capable of farming act 3 to clear whatever parts of act I they wish, in incredibly quick fashion, without dying at all. If the health/damage of mobs in act 2 are reduced, I expect it will be equally easy to do this in most of act 2. Building defensively merely slows these clear times, and it slows them even more in act 3/4 were the mobs have more health.
Therefore, I expect that the actual effect of increased repair costs will be to encourage players to simply farm trivial content as quickly as possible, rather than to slowly farm more difficult content while building defensively. This is the change I am most worried about, because I am afraid it has the possibility of making the game boring to farm.
The second major problem with the increased repair costs as a disincentive to low defense builds is that there are two types of players farming inferno - new players who have hit 60 and are just beginning to farm, and established players who are already capable of farming inferno. The new 60 is likely relatively poor, while the established farmer likely has millions of gold which he has earned from farming inferno. The problem here is that the increased repair costs have a much greater effect as a barrier to entry for the new player than as a disincentive to the established farmer. If the repair costs are very low, as they are now, they can be essentially disregarded by both types of players. However, if they are raised significantly, they provide a difficult barrier for entry to a player who is barely geared enough to begin to farm inferno, while an established farmer can realistically disregard these repair bills because he has large gold reserves to absorb them and is farming content where he has a chance to obtain drops worth multiple millions. In a sense, they are “regressive,” in that they have the greatest effect on the least well off players and the least effect on the most well off players.
I apologize for the extreme length. I hope somebody found this worthwhile.
TLDR:
1) Decreased mob damage/health encourages, rather than discourages, low defense builds, because of the nature of force armor and because a low defense ranged player’s survivability increasing with increased dps and lower mob health - i.e. mobs die faster and they therefore have less chance to get hit.
2) Increased repair costs merely encourage players to farm trivial content, i.e. act 1 inferno, rather than to build defensively and attempt to slowly farm acts 3/4. Moreover, increased repair costs provide a barrier for entry to players entering inferno while having a much less pronounced effect on established farmers.
Posted this on reddit also but I figured I'd also post here in case it helps anybody.
I play a wizard and am progressing through act 4 inferno, and I wanted to know exactly how much defense I needed to run with in order to efficiently use force armor while maximizing my dps, so I did some research. The basic premise is that force armor will have its full effect on a hit of 135% of your EHP, and that it will prevent a 1 shot kill on any hit of less than 200% of your EHP. So therefore it seems most efficient to get your EHP to X where X is the amount of damage from common monster hits divided by 1.35. So to find out what this efficient EHP value is, we need the data of raw monster hits. Luckily, the brady game guide lists much of this information and here's what it says:
Most things in Act 4 and many in act 3 hit for 113k raw damage. This includes terror demons, subjugators, oppressors, morlu legionnairres, and corrupted angels. Most of these attacks are physical damage. However, it does not list the damage on the oppressors or the angel's charge. The guide does vaguely indicate that the oppressors charge is fire damage instead of physical. If anybody knows how much damage these abilities do please post them.
Two notable mobs hit for 142k raw damage - the morlu incinerator and the blood clan sorceror (fat sorceror guys). The blood clan sorceror's fireball is actually physical damage even though it appears to be a fireball.
Then there are the heavy hitters of acts 3/4. These guys hit for 170k raw damage. This includes armaddons, phase beasts (acts 3&4), soul lashers, and tremor demons (the armored guys).
Lastly, a handful of mobs hit for major damage but are basically completely avoidable. The mallet lord in act 4 with the long windup attack hits for 227k, as do the colossal gorgors in act 3. The skeletons with the enormous axes and the windup attack in the basement of act 3 hit for 284k raw damage.
What does this mean? For acts 3/4, you will be taking hits of 170k raw damage from attacks that are very difficult to avoid - phase beasts and soul lashers especially. So if you want force armor to have its full effect on those attacks, you need ~126,000 EHP. This is pretty easily attainable. It comes out to about 35-40k hp with about 175-225 resists if you have a fairly typical amount of armor. Obviously this depends entirely on your specific gear, so play with the calculator here - http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator/#intro
For me I get there with about ~39k HP and 170 resists after the reduction from glass cannon (with ~3500 armor with energy armor). With 35k hp I need about 225 resists. Here's a trick though - all of the 170k hits are physical damage, so you could potentially get just your physical resist up to 225 with 35k hp and not have to buy so much expensive resist all gear. Watch out for the 142k morlu incinerator fireballs though.
TLDR: Get about 126k EHP for acts 3/4 if you're using force armor. Hope this helps other people starting acts 2/3.
1
I don't mind you linking it at all as long as you attribute it and don't claim it as your own.
7
INTRODUCTION
This guide is intended only to cover the basics of the wizard class in inferno; i.e. what the popular builds are and how to gear your wizard in a general sense. A friend of mine just hit 60 on his wizard and asked me to write something up for him so I decided to make it into this post in case anybody else is interested. It’s a general guide; if I don’t mention your build or your strategy it doesn’t mean I think it sucks, I’m just posting general information on what I perceive to be the popular builds/strategies. The guide is geared towards preparing for and clearing act3/4 inferno, and eventually farming act 3.
BUILDS
BLIZZARD KITING BUILDS
Example: http://us.battle.net...ROQS!Ydf!bbbYZZ
Strategy:
This build’s strength comes from the use of two combos: Blizzard’s strong 60% slow + Venom Hydra’s stacking DOT pools, and Teleport + Illusionist. To play this build you want to engage from max distance (preferably the very edge of the screen) by dropping a hydra about halfway between you and the mobs and then dropping a blizzard on top of them and then a line of blizzards between you and them. This way the mobs will walk through your blizzard trail while slowed and take continuous damage from both the blizzard and the venom hydra. When possible, you spam your signature spell to add damage. Continue this while kiting. When/if the mobs eventually get to you, you take a hit (which is reduced to 35% of your HP by force armor) and then teleport away. Since you have illusionist, you can do this every time you take a hit. For sustainability in the longish fights vs. elites you need some form of healing - life regen/sec is the most effective in combination with force armor.
This is the build I used to clear inferno and after trying numerous other builds its what I’ve come back to and currently use to farm act 3. A lot of people find it boring but its very efficient. Since 1.0.3 I have not had to skip a single elite pack in act 3 while farming and I generally die less than once an hour farming act 3.
Pros/Cons:
+Least gear dependant of all the builds, great for new 60 wizards, but still scales well
+Extremely safe due to permanent Blizzard slow + Illusionist/Teleport
+Great AOE damage from Blizzard + Venom Hydra + Piercing Orb
-Some people find it boring
-You have to kite a lot, you can’t stand and tank like the prismatic armor builds
- Relies somewhat on skillful play to avoid taking hits
Choices/Variants:
Signature Spell - I like Piercing Orb for better AOE damage and for shielding/invulnerable minion packs, but some people prefer Magic Missile - Seeker.
Blizzard - Stark Winter is a viable alternative to Snowbound.
Teleport - Some people prefer Fracture to Wormhole, both are fine.
4th Skill - I recommend Force Weapon at lower gear levels, but once you get enough DPS you can switch to Diamond Skin, or if you find yourself dying too much. Some people think Familiar - Sparkflint is better than Force Weapon. Some people like Mirror Images or Frost Nova here too, but I don’t think they are as strong.
CRITICAL MASS BUILDS
Example: http://us.battle.net...YXhj!gWY!YZcbcZ
Strategy:
These builds are based primarily on utilizing high crit rate and the Critical Mass passive to constantly refresh cooldowns such as Frost Nova and Diamond Skin. Some use Prismatic Armor instead of Force Armor and build fairly tanky so that they can stand in melee range. They rely either on Spectral Blades or Energy Twister - Wicked Wind to trigger Critical Mass as much as possible. The Energy Twister variants are probably more gear dependant because you will need AP on Crit gear in order to not run out of AP, but the Spectral Blades variants probably require more defensive/resistance gear. These are the builds I have the least experience with, so I would refer people to http://www.windupwizard.com/ for more specifics on what’s probably the most popular variant of the build.
Pros/Cons:
+Much less kiting required, can often stand still and spam abilities
+Some consider it more fun/exciting, possibly more fast paced depending on the variant
+Able to put out massive dps - see the video of the Belial kill on the link above
-More gear dependant than the force armor builds
-Not nearly as safe as the blizzard/vhydra build since you are in melee range and don’t have teleport
-Requires careful play to make sure the combo doesn’t “fizzle out”
Choices/Variants:
Spectral Blades vs. Wicked Wind
Prismatic Armor + Tanky gear vs foregoing that and relying on Diamond Skin + Frost Nova spam.
Lots of variance in the damaging abilities used - some use meteor, some explosive blast.
ARCANE ORB BUILDS
Example: http://us.battle.net...XOQS!YdU!YbaYZZ
Strategy:
These builds are kiting builds similar to the Blizzard build above, but replace Blizzard with Arcane Orb + Temporal Flux for the slow. At higher gear levels it’s possible to drop Temporal Flux altogether due to the damage output of Arcane Orb. The basic strategy is similar to the Blizzard build above; engage from max range, drop Hydra and spam Arcane Orb while kiting. When you get caught, you rely on Illusionist + Teleport to get away.
Pros/Cons:
+Less gear dependant than the Critical Mass or Archon builds
+High burst damage from hard hitting Arcane Orbs
+Fairly safe kiting build
-Not as safe as the Blizzard build since you are using a weaker/less reliable slow
-More gear dependant than the Blizzard build
-Relies on kiting, which some find boring
Choices/Variants:
Orb - Tap the Source is the most popular rune for Arcane Orb, but some people use Obliterate or Celestial Orb. To use these you probably need to add a signature spell, likely Magic Missile - Seeker.
Hydra - Arcane Hydra can be used instead of Venom Hydra to make the build safer by adding a more reliable slow. It is less damage, but not tons less and is perfectly viable/safer. Probably better at lower gear levels.
Teleport - Again, some prefer Fracture to Wormhole.
3rd and 4th Skills - Any combination of Diamond Skin / Force Weapon / Familiar - Sparkflint / Frost Nova / Mirror Images is fine.
Passives - At higher gear levels you can drop Temporal Flux for something else.
ARCHON BUILDS
Example: http://us.battle.net...jOQS!Ybg!YcacZZ
Strategy:
These builds revolve around being in Archon the most time possible and using it to quickly melt everything. They are the most gear dependant, but probably also the most efficient at the highest levels of gear. Your buffs such as Energy Armor, Force Weapon and Familiar persist into Archon form, which itself also adds 40% resists/armor. The goal is to buff your dps as high as possible, pop archon, and maintain it by killing tons of mobs to get a bonus to the duration from each kill. Once Archon ends your goal is to refresh it as quickly as possible so that you can do it again. Actually killing things with Archon is self-explanatory, just hold down right click and point at the mobs. Don’t forget that you likely don’t have an escape or CC spell though and will quickly die if you allow anything to actually get to you and hit you.
Pros/Cons:
+Insane speed/efficiency at high gear levels
+Hilariously fun to melt entire screens of enemies in 1-2 seconds and champ packs in 5-10 seconds
+Great AOE damage, great single target damage, trivializes certain boss fights
-Most gear dependant build
-Not very safe while in Archon form due to no escape spell or CC
-Weak/vulnerable when Archon is on cooldown
Choices/Variants:
Archon Rune - I think Improved Archon, Teleport or Pure Power are the best. Some people use Slow Time.
What you do when you aren’t in Archon is up for debate. Some people take Arcane Orb and try to farm or at least clear white mobs with that while Archon is down. Another strategy (the one in the build linked above) is to take Critical Mass and either Wicked Wind or Spectral Blades to try to refresh Archon as quickly as possible. I prefer the latter.
GEARING YOUR WIZARD FOR INFERNO
Tools:
The Wizard DPS spreadsheet, the best way to compare gear and decide on potential DPS upgrades:
https://docs.google....dNdS1TeWc#gid=1
The EHP calculator, an essential tool if you’re using force armor and very useful regardless:
http://rubensayshi.g...lculator/#intro
The maximum values of stats which can appear on gear of different slots:
http://www.d3rmt.com...maximum-values/
Offense - Your primary offensive stats are int, crit chance, crit damage, attack speed and bonus damage, and not necessarily in that order. The relative value of all of these stats depends entirely on how much of them you already have, and the only good way to figure it out for you individually is with the DPS spreadsheet I linked above. Just as an example, for me with my current gear my equivalencies are as follows: 1% crit = 27.28 int, 1% crit damage = 4.47 int, 1% IAS = 22.29 int, and 1 average bonus damage = 2.52 int. Bonus damage is an often overlooked damage stat that can be very valuable and can often be found on jewelry for less cost than its worth because people overlook it. Stacking crit + crit damage is really the only way to get very high dps.
2h vs 1h + source is an endless debate, but after trying both extensively I prefer 1h + source, mostly because you can get crit chance on the offhand which I think at higher gear levels pushes 1H+OH over any 2h. If you are just starting out in inferno a good 2h may be cheaper and a better way to go initially.
Defense - Your primary defensive stats are vit, % life, bonus armor (which includes strength), resistances (which includes intellect), life regen, dexterity (everybody should have at least 100), movement speed (which includes IAS), and for some builds life on hit. Which of these stats and how much of them you want depends very much on whether you are using force armor or prismatic armor, which I’ll address more below.
Gearing by slot:
As you’ll have noticed from the link above, various different stats can appear or can not appear on different slots, and in different amounts. That means there is a strategy for which stats you want to look for on each slot. Generally, the slots you should focus on for offensive stats are your jewelry, helm, bracers, gloves, weapon and offhand, while you should focus on defensive stats on your shoulders, chest, legs, belt, and boots because, except for legendaries, those slots can’t spawn the good dps stats. Every slot should have some amount of int.
DPS gear:
Helm - You want the highest int and crit chance you can afford. A socket is nice, but not necessary and sometimes artifically inflates the price. Use a calculator to compare your gain from the % life on the socket to what you can get on an unsocketed helm in terms of vit and % life. This is one of the two slots (gloves are the other) that can spawn particularly high int, so this is a relatively cheap place to get a lot of it.
Gloves - You really want int, crit chance and crit damage all on this item. This slot, along with the amulet and the weapon, is the best place to look for crit damage. These three slots (gloves/ammy/weapon) are likely going to be both the most expensive and the most worth spending on. Again, one of the two slots that can spawn especially high int.
Bracers - Again you want int and crit chance here. There are a lot of these on the market, probably due to crafting, so this is a slot you can get a very good value on.
Amulet - Similar to the gloves, but more expensive. Int, crit chance and crit damage are all mandatory. Bonus damage is a nice plus as well, and can lead to you getting more of a bang for buck on this slot. For example, an amulet with +15-25 damage adds 20 average bonus damage, which for me would equate to an additional 50 int in terms of dps. IAS would be great but unless you are super rich you aren’t getting all of that on one amulet.
Rings - Crit chance and crit damage both spawn on this item, but the crit damage modifier on rings is fairly low and adds a ton to the cost of the item. Its often a better idea to skip it in favor of getting more crit chance, some bonus damage, or some IAS.
Weapon - If you’re just starting out this is going to be one of your biggest purchases, and is also your biggest opportunity to both get a ton of value or to vastly overspend. Basically, weapon DPS is highly overvalued by a lot of people, and the stats on the weapons are undervalued, although that is becoming less true as more people are figuring this out. For example, with my current gear I could replace my 789 dps weapon (with 126 int, 65% crit damage and a socket with a 90% crit damage gem) with a 1450 dps blue weapon with no stats and I would lose dps. A 1500 dps blue weapon with no stats would very slightly raise my dps. Obviously such weapons don’t even exist. The point is to use the spreadsheet when you make this purchase and actually figure out which weapons are best before you overspend for listed dps. Another thing is that weapon speed on a 1h matters when you are using an offhand and have bonus damage from gear, so you are generally going to want to buy either a sword, wand, or dagger. The 1.3 speed 1h axe can be acceptable too if it has good enough stats, but a 1.2 speed mace or spear needs much higher stats to be better so they probably won’t be cost efficient for you.
Offhand - Bonus damage is king on this item. Here’s a thread explaining some of the math on why that is:
http://www.reddit.co...ds_and_why_you/
Basically at a minimum you want the numbers on the offhand to add up to 400, for a total of 200 bonus damage, bare minimum. Don’t buy anything less than that. 450 total is better and what you’ll want eventually, and 500 total is near perfect. The biggest stat to look for on this item is crit chance. You really want a source with the highest bonus damage and crit chance that you can afford.
Defense gear:
Shoulders - Int/vit/resists/life regen. Nothing special here, probably the most boring slot for wizards. I wore a blue archon spaulders with 170 int / a bunch of vit for the longest time, because there just isn’t anything special here. Probably best to pick up something like that if you’re on a budget. Good slot to get your resists as they are usually cheaper here than on chest/pants.
Chest - One of the two slots that can spawn a particularly high vit, the other being the pants. Also the slot that can spawn the most life regen. If you’re using a force armor build you want life regen here. Also, its almost always best to get one with 3 sockets.
Belt - Sort of like the shoulders, nothing really special here. It can spawn high strength so sometimes that’s a good find as strength = armor and you get 65% more of it from energy armor. Like shoulders, a good slot to get your resists as they are usually cheaper than on chest/pants.
Legs - Another slot to get your vit from. Get one with 2 sockets, it's almost always better.
Boots - 11%+ movement speed is mandatory, and 12% is better. This is a slot that can spawn high dex so it’s a good place to make sure you’re over 100. Another good spot to grab resists potentially.
Force Armor vs. Prismatic armor builds:
If you’re going for prismatic armor you’re going to need a lot more EHP and resistances. If that’s the case, there really isn’t much to say other than just get as much as you can afford. However, for force armor its much more tricky.
Force armor reduces any hit to 35% of your HP, but it cannot reduce the hit by more than 100% of your HP. Therefore, Force Armor does one of four things when you get hit:
A) The hit is for less than 35% of your HP. Force Armor does nothing.
B ) The hit is for more than 35% of your HP but less than 135% of your HP. The hit is reduced to 35% of your HP.
C) The hit is for more than 135% of your HP but less than 199% of your HP. The hit is reduced by 100% of your HP and you live with a varying amount of life left depending on how hard the hit was.
D) The hit is for more than 199% of your HP. Since Force Armor can only reduce it by 100% of your HP, you die.
I wrote two large posts about this in the past, one pre-1.0.3 and an update after 1.0.3. You can find them here:
http://www.reddit.co...ent_use_out_of/
and here:
http://www.diablofan...032#entry951032
The short story is that for Act 3 inferno you want 117.5k EHP in order to not take more than 35% of your life from any hit. This is fairly easy to obtain. Also, fire and physical are the most common sources of damage so you can fudge a little bit by getting those to 117.5k EHP while shorting the others a little.
Obviously, there are various ways to get to 117.5k EHP, because vit, % life, resistances and armor all contribute. However, the optimal way to do it is by raising resistances and armor as much as possible while reducing vit and % life. You will still need a good bit of HP, probably at least 20k, but if you can get to 117.5k EHP while keeping your life low your survivability will increase dramatically because you will get a much larger benefit from heals. This makes the life regen stat very strong. If you can get to 117.5k EHP with 20k hp, then 1k of life regen will full heal you in 20 seconds and heal a hit that is absorbed by force armor in 7 seconds.
AP on Crit:
This stat is important for some builds and only appears on Wizard Hats, Sources, and Wands. It’s expensive on good items and part of what makes the critical mass and arcane orb builds more gear dependant.
ABOUT ME
I’ve played a wizard as my main character since release. I cleared inferno on 6/7/12, pre-patch: http://imgur.com/4bbB6
My profile: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Morphos-1475/hero/1467
1
This isn't quite correct. I'm the author of that post you are referring to. The numbers quoted are base damage for act 3/4 mobs. The hard hitting mobs (that were hitting for 170k before) have a 1.5 multiplier, so their min damage was 170k pre-patch (113k * 1.5) and is now 95442. In addition, and this wasn't covered in my original post since I learned it since then, they have a damage range and that number is their minimum damage. So pre-patch they actually did 170k-226k and now they actually do 95k-127k.
So now you need about 96k EHP in order to get a full reduction from force armor on any act 3/4 hit, which is a lot lower than pre-patch. In fact, with my current gear I can drop almost 11k hp, all else being equal.
3
But I thought I should also post it here because the wizard discussion here is good. Its very long, sorry, but there's a TLDR at the end.
Blizzard has made a number of announcements this week regarding proposed changes to Inferno which are intended, among other things, to encourage ranged classes to build more defensively. Overall, it seems the purpose is to reduce the gap between melee and ranged classes. I’ve been thinking about these changes a great deal and the effect that they will have on my wizard, and I do not think that they are likely to have the intended effect of encouraging defensive builds. For context, I play a wizard who has fully completed inferno and farms act 3.
The two primary changes which have been announced that are intended to encourage more defensive builds are 1) Reducing enemy health and damage in Acts II, III, and IV of Inferno, and 2) severely increasing repair costs. See http://us.battle.net...ic/5590647017#8
The developer in that post stated that “For the ranged classes, I'm hoping that the incoming damage reduction will make some survival stats more appealing to ranged classes.” With regard to repair costs, the developer stated “ I don't think the answer is to make death-zerging more attractive for melee; I'd rather make death-zerging a less profitable strategy for ranged.”
I’ll address these one at a time.
Reducing enemy health and damage in Acts II, III, and IV of Inferno
We start from the premise that the most popular current build for wizards is to equip a minimum of defensive stats sufficient to allow Force Armor to function to reduce most incoming hits to near 35% and then to devote the rest of their stats to DPS. This is confirmed by the developer post above which directly addresses this type of build, as well as watching any number of streams of wizards in act 3/4. The reason that this is the optimum build is addressed by the developer in the above linked post: “[I]t just feels like the minimum amount of survivability to avoid the 1-shot is so large it's unattainable. That's one of the things 1.0.3 seeks to address.” Why is this?
A large number of monsters in act 3/4 hit for at least 170k raw damage. This includes armaddons, phase beasts (acts 3&4), soul lashers, and tremor demons. This means that at approximately 126k EHP, force armor will reduce that hit to 35%, meaning you can survive 2 hits and will die on the third, not considering any source of healing. I outlined this in a previous post: http://www.reddit.co...ent_use_out_of/
However, without force armor, in order for the 170k raw damage of the act3 mob hit to do 35% of your life, you would need to have 485,714 EHP, or nearly 4 times as much! If you instead wanted to survive 6 hits without force armor, by building defensively and using prismatic armor, you would need 1,020,000 EHP, or over 8 times the EHP you need to utilize force armor. For context, to achieve this you would need (for example) 50k HP, 10k armor and 1200 resist all including buffs from prismatic armor and the enchantress, or said another way 1260 vit, 6000 armor and 925 resist all *unbuffed*!
Now, this is exactly what they’ve said is a problem and that they intend to address by reducing enemy damage in inferno. However, lets look at how enemy damage reduction will effect the use of force armor. Since we don’t know how much they will reduce the damage by, let’s look at it with a 10% reduction in damage and a 25% reduction in damage.
10% Reduction - Mobs now do 170,000 x .9 = 153,000 damage per hit. To survive 6 hits you would now need 918k EHP, but now you only need 113k EHP for force armor to reduce these hits to 35%. For 918K EHP you still need 50k HP, ~9k buffed armor and ~1200 buffed resists.
25% Reduction - Mobs now do 170k x .75 = 127,500 damage per hit. To survive 6 hits you would now need 765k EHP, which still requires ~50k HP, ~8k armor and ~1000+ resist all buffed. However, now for force armor to reduce these hits to 35% you only need 94.5k EHP. For context, 94.5k EHP can be had with roughly ~29k HP, 180 resist all, and 3400 armor buffed from energy/force armor. Basically, you can expect to get this amount of resist all / armor baseline from int gear, and then you only need about 725 vitality.
Essentially, even with a 25% reduction in damage (it seems unlikely that the reduction will be this drastic), you still need a very large amount of defensive stats to take a reasonable number of hits. Now, lets consider that they have also said that they are reducing the **health** of the monsters as well. Since the survivability of a glass cannon wizard basically revolves around burning down the monsters as quickly as possible (while avoiding their attacks), this actually increases the survivability of the low defense build.
Therefore, with even a 25% reduction in damage which is likely the best case scenario for a high defense build, you have a choice between needing to increase your HP by 2/3, your resists by 4-5 times, and more or less doubling your armor in order to survive 6 hits, or using all of that stat allocation for increased damage, which will kill mobs more quickly especially with their reduced health. This seems like a clear decision.
Increased repair costs
But what about increased repair costs? Won’t this discourage low defense builds? No, I don’t believe they will, and here’s why.
The goal for people who are farming in inferno is to farm whatever has the highest expected profitability - i.e. will result in the most gold to them over time. Now, obviously increased repair costs will decrease profitability IF a player dies a lot attempting to farm an area. The developers appear to think this will encourage people to build more defensive in an effort to farm acts 3/4 while dying less. However, the same patch is also introducing the drops of acts 2/3/4 drops to act 1 and 2, and reducing the health and damage of act 2 mobs which are already significantly easier than act 3/4 mobs. It is already trivially easy for a low defense wizard who is capable of farming act 3 to clear whatever parts of act I they wish, in incredibly quick fashion, without dying at all. If the health/damage of mobs in act 2 are reduced, I expect it will be equally easy to do this in most of act 2. Building defensively merely slows these clear times, and it slows them even more in act 3/4 were the mobs have more health.
Therefore, I expect that the actual effect of increased repair costs will be to encourage players to simply farm trivial content as quickly as possible, rather than to slowly farm more difficult content while building defensively. This is the change I am most worried about, because I am afraid it has the possibility of making the game boring to farm.
The second major problem with the increased repair costs as a disincentive to low defense builds is that there are two types of players farming inferno - new players who have hit 60 and are just beginning to farm, and established players who are already capable of farming inferno. The new 60 is likely relatively poor, while the established farmer likely has millions of gold which he has earned from farming inferno. The problem here is that the increased repair costs have a much greater effect as a barrier to entry for the new player than as a disincentive to the established farmer. If the repair costs are very low, as they are now, they can be essentially disregarded by both types of players. However, if they are raised significantly, they provide a difficult barrier for entry to a player who is barely geared enough to begin to farm inferno, while an established farmer can realistically disregard these repair bills because he has large gold reserves to absorb them and is farming content where he has a chance to obtain drops worth multiple millions. In a sense, they are “regressive,” in that they have the greatest effect on the least well off players and the least effect on the most well off players.
I apologize for the extreme length. I hope somebody found this worthwhile.
TLDR:
1) Decreased mob damage/health encourages, rather than discourages, low defense builds, because of the nature of force armor and because a low defense ranged player’s survivability increasing with increased dps and lower mob health - i.e. mobs die faster and they therefore have less chance to get hit.
2) Increased repair costs merely encourage players to farm trivial content, i.e. act 1 inferno, rather than to build defensively and attempt to slowly farm acts 3/4. Moreover, increased repair costs provide a barrier for entry to players entering inferno while having a much less pronounced effect on established farmers.
3
I play a wizard and am progressing through act 4 inferno, and I wanted to know exactly how much defense I needed to run with in order to efficiently use force armor while maximizing my dps, so I did some research. The basic premise is that force armor will have its full effect on a hit of 135% of your EHP, and that it will prevent a 1 shot kill on any hit of less than 200% of your EHP. So therefore it seems most efficient to get your EHP to X where X is the amount of damage from common monster hits divided by 1.35. So to find out what this efficient EHP value is, we need the data of raw monster hits. Luckily, the brady game guide lists much of this information and here's what it says:
Most things in Act 4 and many in act 3 hit for 113k raw damage. This includes terror demons, subjugators, oppressors, morlu legionnairres, and corrupted angels. Most of these attacks are physical damage. However, it does not list the damage on the oppressors or the angel's charge. The guide does vaguely indicate that the oppressors charge is fire damage instead of physical. If anybody knows how much damage these abilities do please post them.
Two notable mobs hit for 142k raw damage - the morlu incinerator and the blood clan sorceror (fat sorceror guys). The blood clan sorceror's fireball is actually physical damage even though it appears to be a fireball.
Then there are the heavy hitters of acts 3/4. These guys hit for 170k raw damage. This includes armaddons, phase beasts (acts 3&4), soul lashers, and tremor demons (the armored guys).
Lastly, a handful of mobs hit for major damage but are basically completely avoidable. The mallet lord in act 4 with the long windup attack hits for 227k, as do the colossal gorgors in act 3. The skeletons with the enormous axes and the windup attack in the basement of act 3 hit for 284k raw damage.
What does this mean? For acts 3/4, you will be taking hits of 170k raw damage from attacks that are very difficult to avoid - phase beasts and soul lashers especially. So if you want force armor to have its full effect on those attacks, you need ~126,000 EHP. This is pretty easily attainable. It comes out to about 35-40k hp with about 175-225 resists if you have a fairly typical amount of armor. Obviously this depends entirely on your specific gear, so play with the calculator here - http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator/#intro
For me I get there with about ~39k HP and 170 resists after the reduction from glass cannon (with ~3500 armor with energy armor). With 35k hp I need about 225 resists. Here's a trick though - all of the 170k hits are physical damage, so you could potentially get just your physical resist up to 225 with 35k hp and not have to buy so much expensive resist all gear. Watch out for the 142k morlu incinerator fireballs though.
TLDR: Get about 126k EHP for acts 3/4 if you're using force armor. Hope this helps other people starting acts 2/3.