Note: This guide is pre-2.0 patch and therefore outdated. All of this will probably be of zero value once RoS hits. The updated, RoS version can be found here:

http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-class-forums/wizard-the-ancient-repositories/90166-guide-wizard-gear-guide-reaper-of-souls-edition?comment=11



[Guide] Wizard Gear Guide
1) Introduction Changelog 2) Terminology and builds Terminology Builds 3) Categories of stats Offensive Defensive Life recovery Other stats 4) List by slot Helm Shoulders Chest Amulet Gloves Belt Bracers Pants Boots Rings Orb Weapon 5) TL;DR BiS list 6) Follower’s gear 7) Wizard FAQ I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something similar before… just where? How can I compare items/plan my character? What the hell is a “black weapon”? Why is this important? What is the maximum stat for item X on slot Y? What is the maximum possible DPS with all these BiS items? How can wizards deals with problems of Arcane Power shortage?

1) Introduction
I wanted to write this guide in quite a while. Inspiration for this guide (or is it rather a list?) was actually the gear list in the barbarian guide – it was quite useful when I geared my barbarian up. When I switched to my wizard, there were similar lists, but nothing really tailored to what I was looking for. Now, a couple of months later, I thought it might be useful to create what I would have deemed to be helpful when I switched to my wizard as main. So, for who is this guide useful? If you’re gearing up your wizard and you’re interested in learning for which items to look out for, which stats are important, then take a look. Also, if you are any other class and you want to learn what items we wizards are interested in, section 5 might be interesting for you. Basically, I tried to cover all the answers given in many threads in one guide. There are many low budget guides, and many build guides, but none of the existing guides really helped to answer the general questions like “which slot should I update next”, “which helm should I buy”, and so on. At this point, I need to mention that there is one outstanding guide about gearing already – Jaetch’s Massive Guide to Upgrading Wizard Gear. However, it’s not up to date anymore and I think that this guide will turn out to be slightly different in terms of target audience and the way it reads; furthermore, Jaetch told me that he put his project on hold for the time being.

In this guide, I will first explain some of the basic terms and abbreviations that will be used later, introduce some of the main builds that are being played right now (because it makes a big difference for gearing up) and summarize some of the main points to consider when gearing up by categorizing stats into different types. The main part consists of a list of all useful items (which will of course be growing as it’s difficult to make such a list ever “complete“) and explains for each item why and in which situations it will be helpful for your wizard. For those who prefer TL;DR version I’ll also have a list of items in the subsequent section without explanation. Obviously, there have been other people pursuing similar efforts and I would be a fool to not acknowledge them – I’ll link to them in the last section, and also try to cover questions that have been asked (and answered) previously on these forums or elsewhere.

Changelog Dec 30, 2012 - release
Jan 22, 2013 - minor tweaks, typos and links fixed
Feb 14, 2013 - updates for 1.07 (ongoing): builds (Blizzard), stats (LS, LaK, XP), slots (helm, shoulders, chest, amulet, gloves, wrist, rings, weapon because of new crafting recipes, gems, and bonus XP changes)
Mar 20, 2013 - AP shortage FAQ point added

2) Terminology and builds
There are many terms and abbreviations that have developed in the past. For a full list please check Jaetch’s D3 Urban Dictionary. I’ll just try to cover most of the terms that will be used in this guide.

Terminology
CC – Critical hit chance
CD – Critical hit damage
IAS – Increased attack speed
APS – Attacks per second (displayed in detailed character screen)
APoC – Arcane Power on Crit
AR/Allres – “All resistance” (resistance to all elements)
MS – Movement speed
MF – Magic find
GF – Gold find
Trifecta – item that has IAS, CC, and CD. Becomes quadfecta with intelligence and quinfecta with intelligence and average damage.
CM – Critical Mass WW – Energy Twister – Wicked Wind rune
CMWW – A very popular build based on CM and WW, see below
LS – Life steal
LoH – Life on hit
LaK – Life after each kill
EHP – Effective hit points (see below)
DPS – Damage per second (displayed in character screen)
MP – Monster power NV5 – Nephalem Valor buff of 5 stacks
BiS – Best in slot item
XP – Experience points
HP – Health points
BoA - Binds on Account (i.e., non-tradable)

Builds
There are two main builds being used by the majority of wizards. However, despite many people saying there are “only two viable builds” available, these builds can vary in which specific spells/runes are being used, and there are other builds which might not be as efficient, but equally fun. The two main builds are CMWW and Archon:

CMWW is very efficient for high MP levels and/or in groups as a support spec. There is an excellent CMWW guide written by Loroese.

Archon is the opposite of CMWW – it works best on low MP levels and for solo farming. TheDemokin wrote an Archon guide, check it out.

There are also interesting hybrid builds, one that works well for many people is Jaetch’s MP10 stunlock build that combines Archon and CMWW – have a look at his original thread and an updated version. Keep in mind, however, that this requires quite decent gear; if you’re low on budget it’s probably best to focus on one strategy and not head for MP10 straight away.

Blizzard builds might become more interesting soon - there isn't a definite build yet that seems to stand out particularly. Due to the buff 1.07 (nearly tripled the damage) it's a very strong spell now, but needs to be accompanied with another spell that can is being used while Blizzard rains on your enemies; it makes sense to use Ray of Frost since Cold Blooded is a passive that almost every Blizzard build will use. Some first specs that were proposed are the Sleet Storm build or the Black Ice Wizard (and they even work on mid-high MP levels for extremely low budgets, as has been shown here!).

Kiting builds are one alternative. In early days, they were often mentioned as the cheap alternative to the rather expensive CMWW and Archon builds. However, as there are recent guide for 1 million budget CMWW and 1 million budget Archon gear, kiting builds are only used by very few players. Many wizard damage spells lent itself to kiting (Blizzard, Hydra, Meteor) and some blue posts hint that these might see further buffs; therefore these "outdated" kiting builds might become popular again in the foreseeable future.

Keep in mind: there are 1,259,070,313,000 possible build variations in Diablo 3 only for the wizard class (see the math). Each build works best with specific gear optimized towards it, and it takes a while to figure out in which situations and how exactly it works best. This guide looks at gear tied towards the existing common builds, but this is just to clarify that no “build overview” or “gear list” will ever be “complete”. See the Inferno guide in these forums or the wizard compendium on the official forums which has a lot of thought-provoking build ideas - if you're stuck or don't enjoy any of the existing builds, why not come up with a new one?

3) Categories of stats
Diablo 3 has many different affixes on items. I’ll loosely categorize them into four different categories: offensive, defensive, life recovery, and others. These should be self-explanatory: offensive stats help to increase your pew-pew, defensive stats protect yourself against pew-pew, and others might contribute to one or the other but are optional and you can even have zero of one of these and still be a top-class wizard.

Offensive
Intelligence (int) is your main stat. For every wizard build it is very important and you want to get as much as possible. Even as CMWW wizard, when other stats are more important, you will have a lot of int. Keep in mind that int is a defensive stat as well: 10 int provide you with 1 AR; in the endgame wizards usually have about 2500 int, which translates to 250 AR!

Improved attack speed (IAS) is the most important stat for CMWW wizards. Most other builds benefit from IAS as well since it increases your DPS. If you at some point plan on creating a hybrid build or you want to switch between CMWW and a different build without maintaining two sets of gear, it’s not a bad idea to get a decent amount of IAS. However, if you are a pure Archon or kiting wizard you can save a lot of money here as people pay a lot of extra money for IAS. Note that many BiS legendaries have IAS as one fixed stat, therefore you’ll get some of it eventually anyways. In general, IAS is an important stat for many builds and if you have CM as a passive or LoH for life recovery you want lots of IAS; otherwise you might consider saving money here by shifting attention to other stats.

Critical hit chance (CC) is again very important for almost all builds, but for different reasons. CMWW wizards want as much CC as possible in order to proc CM as often as possible. 35% is a minimum, the more the better; your goal should be 50%. All other builds want CC because it gives you a huge increase in DPS. However, other builds should not just stack “as much CC as possible” but try to maintain a good ratio of CC and CD. While CMWW wizards can completely neglect CD in the early stages, wizards playing other builds should aim for a ratio of 10 CD per 1 CC. For example, if you have a crit chance of 30%, it’s most efficient if you have about 300% critical hit damage.

Critical hit damage (CD), as mentioned before, is not very important if you’re playing CMWW (unless your stunlock works well, your EHP is fine and you’re just looking for DPS increase). All other builds should try to get about as ten times much CD as their CC (e.g., if you have 30% CC try to get 300% CD). If your crits do 1000% of normal damage but your crit chance is 5%, it’s a waste; similarly, if you have 60% crit chance but you’re at 50% crit hit damage, you’re wasting potential.

Average damage comes in different affix shapes: either as “+x min damage”, “+y max damage”, or “x-y damage”. It’s a base stat of all weapons, but it can also roll on jewelry (amulets, rings) and offhands (sources). It’s one of the most underrated stats; maxing the average damage on your offhand can be key in raising your DPS. Similarly, many people treat the three aforementioned attributes as “trifecta” (IAS, CC, CD), but slowly the term “quadfecta” is becoming more and more popular, which essentially means trifecta plus average damage. And because no item should come without int, “quinfecta” is the term for an ultimate item of awesomeness (int, average damage, IAS, CC, CD).

“Adds +x% to elemental damage” – this affix caused a lot of confusion. It essential means it will give an x% bonus damage to all your physical damage, and the damage will be dealt as elemental damage of the specific given type. It does not matter what spell you’re using, but it does matter what weapon you’re using. Your weapon must be a “black weapon” – see the FAQ part for a detailed explanation – otherwise this affix will lose about 60% of its usefulness. There is a blue post about this, and there were many threads where all the details have been explained thoroughly. This affix only appears on legendary ones, but it’s an essential part of high-end DPS, in particular for Archon wizards. For CMWW wizards this affix is not as useful because one of the most useful weapons for CMWW is not a “black weapon” (more about this in the respective section).
There are some other stats that somehow affect your damage, but I’ll get to them in the last section, because they’re not as important and commonly used as the others.

Defensive
Resistance to all elements (AR) is one of the most important stats. You need at least 300-400 AR buffed (Archon MP0), but some people like to have as much as 1000 AR buffed (CMWW on MP10). Keep in mind that a huge chunk of your AR comes from int; however, you need at least some pieces of gear with all resist on them.

Armor is a stat that is heavily underrated by many wizards, but also other classes and therefore quite cheap. There is no minimum amount of armor that is absolutely necessary to hit, but getting a few pieces with this stat can significantly increase you EHP. CMWW wizards try to get about 3500-4000 armor (though some people like to have about 5000 buffed).

A common topic is the “armor-AR 10-1 ratio”. What does this mean? Essentially, this rule of thumb says that 1 AR is worth about 10 armor. However, this is only true if you are already at a 10:1 ratio, e.g., if your wizard has 4000 armor and 400 AR. This is usually not the case, because we get AR through int and AR comes in as much as 80 on a single slot, while we try to avoid strength (which gives 1 armor per 1 strength) and armor can’t roll higher than 397 (chest, pants, helm, amulet) or 265 (other slots). Therefore, many people rather have something like 2500 armor and 600 AR. In this case, armor is much better for your mitigation (the ratio would then be about 6:1). Therefore, try to get some armor and not go AR only – both ways of damage reduction work multiplicatively and it’s inefficient to boost one to infinity while neglecting the other stat.

Vitality is obviously another important stat. Each point in vitality awards you 35 HP, and your goal should be about 30-35k HP. This is very subjective – some people prefer to have much more (I’ve played with 90k for uber fights just for fun, and I know that this much HP is usual if you play hardcore), while some people manage to get along with much less (e.g., 20k HP glass canons). See what works for you, but aiming at 30-35k is not a bad idea for most people.

Life % is another way of raising your HP, however, it’s only useful if you have already a considerably amount of HP. Keep in mind, 100 vitality grant you 3500 HP; if you have 35k HP, you 10% to life will be as good as 100 vitality. If you’re at 22k HP, the maximum amount of life bonus (12%) will give you 2640 HP, which is only 75 vit, a stat that often comes for free. Therefore, unless you’re stacking high amount of health, stay away from life % and choose one of the other stats (AR, armor, vit) to boost your EHP. Wait, EHP?

These three stats (armor, AR, HP) combined can be used to calculate your effective health pool, EHP. You can find a more elaborate explanation of EHP in a thread on the official forums. It essentially shows how much damage you can really take before you die, and when you calculate this stat it helps to value if an item will be really beneficial for your survival. These three main survival stats should always be balanced.

Physical resistance is the one additional resistance that you want to go for, if it comes for free. Why? Because many mobs deal physical damage and it’s a pain, especially in melee, and whether you’re an Archon wizard with Scramble rune or a CMWW wizard, you will eventually get hit in melee from time to time. Furthermore, reflected damage is always physical (regardless of what type your damage is, it’s always reflected as physical and 10% of the amount of damage you dealt), so this is your way to make this mob affix less painful. Other resistances that might be worthwhile are fire or lightning – don’t bother with poison or cold resistance, the damage dealt is a joke and if you’re having troubles with these kind of elements, you should bump up your EHP in general.

Life recovery
I thought about putting these in the defensive stats category; however, these are optional and there are wizards who have none of these stats on their gear and are totally fine (there’s always the Blood Magic rune to cope with loss of HP).

Life regeneration is the cheapest stat to recover your HP. However, it’s also the one that is the weakest in terms of efficiency. You need to stack a lot of life regeneration in order to notice it and survive some of the nasty attacks. Some situations will be difficult to survive with life regeneration only, even if you have close to the maximum (about 5000). It’s probably most useful if you have low DPS and you are interesting in a kiting build. For higher DPS and MP I would not recommend it, at least not as single life recovery resource (combine it with one of the other ways of getting life back). There's an interesting discussion going on about the life regeneration affix and how it needs to be fixed to be viable for endgame again - look at Lezard_Valeth's thread over here.

Life on hit (LoH) is the best way to go if you have low DPS, and regardless of your DPS it’s the best way if you run CMWW. CMWW causes not only CM but also LoH to proc very often; therefore you get a lot of life back. 400-500 LoH can be enough for any endgame build if the other stats are sufficiently high. If you are a high DPS Archon wizard, LoH becomes less efficient and you should switch to life steal.

Life steal (LS) – for Archon wizards, at around 100k DPS LS trumps LoH. It can only roll on a weapon and therefore occupies an affix slot and makes the weapon ridiculously expensive; you can also get LS via rune (Blood Magic), but only 1.5%. Note that life steal gets a 80% reduction in Inferno, so Blood Magic will only recover 0.3% of your damage dealt as life – however, it’s still a lot better than LoH once you get past a certain DPS threshold. Note that LS makes any weapon really expensive; if you play on lower MP levels and have a decent kill speed, consider LaK (see below).

Life after kill (LaK) is one of these stats that is completely neglected by many players and often seen as almost useless, but it can be very strong indeed, especially for Archon wizards. Archon wizards want to kill quick and as many enemies as possible, therefore you tend to play on MP levels where monsters are basically a one hit. You can get as much as 9000 LaK, and if you see your life drop a few kills can completely refill your health globe in no time. Due to the damage reflect changes in 1.07, LS is not an absolute must anymore and LaK became a perfectly viable alternative to LS. Give it a try!

Extra health from health globes – for the sake of completeness, this stat is mentioned here. It’s not a bad idea to get this affix on one or two items, like +20k HP for each health globe. Health globes drop more often as you think, and combined with increased pickup radius this can be very strong and reduce your downtimes a lot. It’s probably a good combination if you decide to go with Blood Magic only and ditch all the LoH/LS stats which are so expensive.

Other stats
Pickup radius, is, as mentioned before, almost mandatory if you rely on extra health from health globes. How much pickup radius you get is totally up to you though; some people like to have as much as possible (20+) which causes you to pick up almost everything instantly. Other people like to keep this stat small (5-7, only one item) such that you can control what you pick up. In any case, I would urge everyone to at least try out once to play a while with a pickup radius of 20+, because it’s just amazing to run around and feel like a big badass vacuum cleaner. If you’re OCD and want to pick up every gold pile, this stat is a must because otherwise you spend too much time walking around.

Increased damage against elites can be useful if you’re skipping lots of trash mobs and go for elite packs or boss fights. In most cases items that have this affix are worse than other items in these slots, and therefore you have to consider your playing style (how much time of my play time will I encounter elite enemies and how much time will I be fighting normal mobs) and the DPS you lose by equipping these items. For example, if you lose 10% DPS by equipping an item that improves your damage versus elite by 30%, but you will only fight against elite in about 30% of your play time, it will slow you down (your 70% time of trash mob fights will be 10% slower, while the 30% of your play time fighting elite will be 20% faster). For uber bosses or key runs this stat might be useful – however, many people use CMWW in that case and then damage is not always your first priority.

Arcane power on crit (APoC) is needed when you intend to create a build with a main spell that uses arcane power and you don’t back it up with a signature spell and a passive to get arcane power back. Archon wizards usually don’t need this, while CMWW wizards need a lot of APoC (aim for about 16-20). For kiting builds it depends on the support spells you use in your kiting build and your play style, but it’s not a bad idea to get some APoC. Similarly, if you’re using Arcane Orb or Disintegrate, you probably want this as well; the latter can be sustained with the 4 piece set bonus of the wizard set (Tal Rasha), more on that later. It very much depends on your build, play style, and other gear (e.g., IAS). APoC only comes on the three wizard-specific items: wizard hats, wands, and sources.

Sockets – on all slots where you can get sockets, you want them, and you want as many as possible. At the same time, sockets can be damn expensive and if you’re on low budget it takes some time which combination is the best “bang for a buck” for you – should I take this 3 socket pants with low vitality or the one socket pants with decent stats? What gems can I buy from the budget I have left? I’ll try to cover sockets in the respective sections for each slot.

Movement speed (MS) – this is absolutely mandatory for Archon and kiting builds. However, it’s capped at 25%, so we want to get two items with 12% (the maximum per slot). For CMWW, MS is not that important – you can use Teleport to compensate for that.

Bonus experience can only be gained from four different sources: Hellfire Ring (35%), Leoric’s Signet (up to 30%), a ruby gem in your helmet (up to 33%), and Cain’s set (3 piece bonus 30%). The maximum amount of bonus XP on gear is therefore 124%. However, you lose a lot of stats if you decide to go with all these items. I will cover the rings and ruby in the respective sections, but I will not talk about the Cain’s set, for a reason: If you’re at NV5 on MP1 with Hellfire Ring, max ruby and Leoric’s on yourself and follower (counts as 20%), your bonus XP is 207%. If a mob yields 5000 XP it would now give you 15350 XP. By adding Cain’s set, you would get 232% bonus XP or 16850 XP; an increase of 9.8% XP due to the 30% of the Cain’s set bonus. This is because all bonuses are calculated multiplicatively. However, Cain’s set is very low level and has virtually no useful stats, therefore you will definitely lose about 20% of your DPS – and thus it’s not worth it in most cases. As of 1.07, it might even be the case that you don't want any XP gear if you're playing on high MP (see here for some examples and here for a complete chart (NV5) or one for NV0).

Magic find (MF)/gold find (GF) is a stat that can become very expensive and it never comes for free, i.e., you have to keep in mind that every time you get an item with this stat you’re giving up on another useful defensive or offensive stat. Yes, you can stack magic find and feel a difference in drops when farming – however, by having 150 MF on your gear you have up on a huge amount of DPS, which in turn would have resulted in increased farming speed and also increased amount of drops. At the same time, faster farming does not only give you more loot, but also more XP, and XP lead to paragon levels. Paragon levels give you permanent magic find and gold find. Therefore my personal advice: skip MF/GF on gear and max DPS, gain paragon levels and enjoy the lasting effect of free MF/GF that does not occupy any affix slots on your gear.

4) List by slot
For each slot, I’ll list the items to consider, why they’re good and in which situations it might be good to aim for them. I’m adding one thing that I’m missing in many other guides – caveats on some legendaries/sets which are often overlooked and lead people to invest in expensive items even though there are cheaper, better choices available and they just go straight for the “BiS” item without knowing why.

Helm
For most people, a socket in your helmet is probably a must-have. If you’re leveling paragon on low MP, you want to put a ruby in there (up to 33% bonus XP); if you're playing high MP, it's not that important anymore (see bonus XP section above). For those who are paragon 100 or mostly fighting ubers, the other gem of your choice is an amethyst (up to 19% life bonus). Keep in mind, 19% life is more than the maximum for this affix on every slot (12%) and a huge bonus. However, the socket makes a helm expensive, and a helm without socket is a hard sell sometimes even if it has godly stats. There are three legendary helms and one set helm worth considering, and “bad rolls” of these helms are really cheap so there is no point in going for a rare item on this slot.

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Mempo of Twilight	Comes with great DPS (int+IAS) and great EHP (AR + life%). The one random property should be CC if you want to go for max DPS, otherwise get one with vitality for the extra EHP (also much cheaper). Great for all builds and absolute BiS with int+CC roll.	A Mempo with CC is insanely expensive (usually starting at 100 million for 3% CC and other stats quite low as well). However, Mempo with vitality as random stat instead of CC is still great and quite cheap.
Tal Rasha’s Guise of Wisdom	Perfect rolls would be vitality and AR, but armor is a good roll too. If you don’t need IAS on your head slot this is a great boost (especially in EHP) for CMWW.	If your health is too low, the life% bonus is useless. Unless you get a really good roll for this helm, other (cheaper) helms will most likely be better. Also, the set bonus for 2 and 3 pieces are quite disappointing.
Andariel’s Visage	Only helm with IAS and CC by default. Unlike Mempo or Tal Rasha’s, comes without a socket – so this is the random roll you most likely want; with 1.07 and if you're playing high MPs, you might prefer some EHP stat here.	If you want one of these, make sure that the “fire bonus taken” affix is as low as possible, don’t take anything with more than 10, or you will be constantly dead on many elite packs. Also keep in mind that it will never reach the EHP of a Mempo.
Storm Crow	Great starter helm for CMWW builds due to APoC and LoH. Has no CC, so you probably have to give up the extra XP from a socket here to get CC as random roll.	Lacks high int, CC, AR, vitality, armor, life%, socket… therefore you should aim to get LoH and APoC on other slots and go for one of the other helms – even mediocre rolls will be better than a good Storm Crow, DPS- and EHP-wise. Also, you need a black weapon.

Shoulders

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Archon Spaulders of Intelligence	These crafted shoulders can potentially be better than perfect Vile Ward, (330 vs. 300 intelligence max). However, it's extremely rare to get a good roll, considering that Vile Ward always come with huge EHP.	You need to invest quite a lot in order to trump your Vile Ward, and you can't trade them.
Vile Ward	Absolute BiS item. There’s no DPS affix that can roll on shoulders except for int, and Vile Ward have the second-highest roll after the crafted shoulders (up to 300). The other random stat of your choice would be life%, though some like to get pickup radius here. Always comes with a lot o EHP.	The drawbacks might vanish soon: they're not absolute BiS anymore thanks to the new crafting recipe, so not everyone is wearing them anymore, and you can finally use Vanishing Dye to hide their ugly looks (yeah I know, it's subjective).

Chest

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Tal Rasha’s Relentless Pursuit	Of the wizard’s set’s items, this is the one everyone wants. It’s the only chest with IAS and therefore a must-have for many CMWW wizards. As for the random rolls, keep in mind that chest can roll up to 300 vitality which is huge. AR is the most wanted stat on TR chest, along with vit, armor, and life%.	Since every wizard wants one, it’s still not quite cheap, and it’s almost impossible to get your hands on one with high AR and still have reasonably high other stats (unless you plan on selling your mother).
Tyrael’s Might	If you’re Archon and gearing up, this is a great choice, because it provides you with MS. Pick a random roll of your choice, the best one in terms of DPS being 3 sockets.	If you want to match the DPS of a TR chest, you need 3 sockets and high gems, which makes it almost equally expensive. Once you get MS on bracers or pants, consider moving on.
Zunimassa’s Marrow	The witch doctor’s set has nice bonuses (130 int and 55 AR), which makes it an interesting target for us as well. Their chest has the same stats but AR instead of IAS. Not a bad choice if you’re not craving for IAS and own one or two pieces of the set already.	Since IAS is quite important for almost all wizard builds, and EHP is easier to obtain than DPS at some point, consider Tal Rasha’s first.
Blackthorne’s Surcoat	If you’re a pure CMWW support wizard, your APS is fine and you just want to stack more EHP, this is great, especially since the pants and amulet are also nice items for CMWW and the set bonus isn’t bad either. Get a mix of int, vit, armor, or life% as random stats.	In most cases, you would prefer the IAS from Tal Rasha chest over the slight EHP bonus this chest offers. It’s rather for gearing up if you’re on low budget.
Archon Armor of Intelligence	Highest possible int roll (up to 330!).	Needs a lot of money and patience to get a lucky roll that has good other stats (high EHP, preferably).
Rare chest	Despite the great choice of set and legendary chests, a rare chest might be worth a look, too. If you don’t need the IAS from Tal Rasha’s or the MS from Tyrael’s, you can get all other important stats from any rare as well – int, vit, AR, armor, sockets.	Even a godly roll won’t make it to BiS.

Amulet

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Amulet of Intelligence / rare amulet	Yes, believe it or not, a godly rolled rare amulet will be BiS, even though almost every high-end wizard is wearing Tal Rasha’s. A godly rare amulet has basically quinfecta (high int, average damage, CC, CD, IAS) and some vit. Anyways – even some of these stats are fine for starters! If you’re CMWW, get LoH here (up to 959).	Such an item has not been created by the Diablo loot machine yet – all DPS item score lists are topped by the Tal Rasha’s amulet. However, with the new crafting recipe we might seen more of them showing up; but then, crafting the int amulets is quite expensive and a gambling.
Tal Rasha’s Allegiance	Great amulet even with “bad rolls”, however, we really want IAS and CC here, and lots of them, because this slot and gloves are the only ones where we can get +10 CC. As a CMWW wizard, you absolutely need high CC and some IAS here, and for many other builds it’s the same.	Since you want CC and IAS, and it already has int and CD, it means that every “decent Tal Rasha” automatically is a quadfecta item and thus insanely expensive. Also, you need a black weapon again for the elemental bonus damage to work.
Blackthorne’s Duncraig Cross	Offers great EHP, IAS and LoH – stats we need for CMWW; and you’re most likely wearing the pants already, giving you the neat set bonus.	We absolutely need high CC here for CMWW, which makes this amulet really expensive.
Ouroboros	Often overlooked, this has decent DPS and EHP built-in and the CC comes for free. Good choice for CMWW, since it has LoH as well – obviously you need IAS as one of the random rolls then.	Since the CC is fixed at 7-7.5%, you will definitely lose at least 2.5% CC – otherwise this would have BiS potential for CMWW wizards.

Gloves

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Archon Gauntlets of Intelligence / Rare gloves	High int and trifecta. If you’re CMWW, you may skip CD here, if you’re Archon or kiting, you may skip IAS – and save a lot of money. Crafted gloves always come with high int, so consider crafting as an option.	Since you can only have 6 affixes and four of them should be high quadfecta stats, you’ll lose EHP on this slot. Good trifecta gloves are expensive on the AH, so if you like "gambling" you can try to craft some and hope to get a good roll.
Tasker and Theo	These are interesting because of the socket. They don’t really come close to BiS rare gloves, but might be an alternative if you get one with high CC and int for CMWW.	Can’t roll high int with trifecta.
Frostburn Gauntlets	A low-budget solution for some Blizzard builds. Make sure you have max cold skill damage (close to 30%) and a black weapon!	You lose up to 10% CC, 50% CD, and a lot of int compared to rare gloves – especially the crit hit synergy effects that you lose make Frostburn’s a bad choice once your gear has reached a certain level.
Immortal King’s Irons	“What? Barb gloves for wizards?” – Yeah. High crit built-in, lots of bonus armor, and if you get high int and IAS as random roll, these aren’t bad for CMWW either.	Obviously these gloves can’t have trifecta and high int, therefore they’re useless for most Archon wizards and builds alike.

Belt

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
The Witching Hour	Even a badly rolled WH will give more DPS than a perfect rare. Go for 1-2 useful rolls for the random affix rolls; a perfect WH with int/vit, AR, and armor is what you want if you just won the lottery. Only IAS item on this slot (CMWW).	Even a badly rolled WH might still be beyond your budget, and even a perfect roll will have less EHP than a rare belt.
Tal Rasha’s Brace	Since the set bonuses are useless, this belt only makes sense if you plan on going for a build that demands high Arcane Power without APoC backup (e.g., Disintegrate). But then, the 4 piece set bonus is better than one might think, especially if paired with Astral Presence.	Won’t even come close to Witching Hour (DPS) or rare belt (EHP, in terms of price).
Rare belt	If you can’t afford a Witching Hour and/or you badly need some EHP, this is the slot to get some! High int, vit, maybe even strength; high AR and armor, if you have a lot of HP life%, and you still can fit a nice bonus affix like pickup radius or health globe bonus in.	Except for up to 200 int, a rare belt will lack lots of DPS compared to any Witching Hour. This is what makes rare belts so cheap and Witching Hours so expensive.

Bracers

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Lacuni Prowlers	Only IAS item on this slot (CMWW). Also a great choice because of MS. Look for high CC and if possible high AR.	High CC and AR Lacuni’s are still quite expensive, depending on your budget. However, the unique MS+IAS makes this a requirement for almost every build.
Razorspikes of Intelligence	The new crafting recipe can roll up to 330 int (as opposed to 269 for Strongarm Bracers, see below, or 200 max for all others). High CC and good EHP make these a valid option.	Basically, the only drawback is that they're not Lacuni's, i.e., you don't get MS+IAS. And of course crafting is sort of gambling.
Rare bracers	High CC is a must for almost every build, along with the usual stats (high int, AR, vit, armor). But thankfully, it’s one of the slots where not every decent item is insanely overpriced!	If you’re CMWW, you probably want Lacuni’s because of the IAS, otherwise there’s no real reason to not always look at perfect rare bracers as an alternative.
Strongarm Bracers	These have great EHP stats and might be useful for starters, but don’t take them if you’re CMWW! Otherwise, go for high int, vit, AR.	Because of the knockback effect, refrain from using them as CMWW. It’s extremely counter-productive and annoying.

Pants

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Inna’s Temperance	BiS pants because of IAS, 1% CC, 2 sockets and the MS (although you probably got this from Lacuni’s).	You NEED int as random roll, and therefore these pants lack any EHP. For this reason (and due to a better alternative, see below) not a wise choice for CMWW.
Depth Diggers	With int/vit and 2 sockets, these combine great EHP with great DPS, plus MF as a nice bonus. Max int pants (up to 408 with perfect rolls and gems).	For less money, you’ll get Inna’s (if you want IAS) or a rare (if you want EHP) – really only useful if you want the MF bonus. Nothing comes for free!
Blackthorne’s Jousting Mail	These pants are quite cheap and offer the badly needed LoH for CMWW. Get some more EHP (depending on your budget and what stat you need; vit, AR, armor, sockets, …). Also, the set bonus makes these nice, though a nice amulet or chest of Blackthorne’s set is more expensive.	If you don’t need the LoH, these pants don’t offer anything that you won’t get on cheap rare pants – make sure you don’t get caught just by its color.
Rare pants	High int is mandatory as on all items, but pants (other than Inna’s) are a slot for great EHP because they can roll up to 300 vitality (plus two sockets if you’re really craving for HP). Int, vit, AR, armor, life%, maybe even strength (for armor) make some perfect pants for a huge EHP boost.	Godly rolled rare pants can get really expensive and will never get at the DPS of Inna’s.

Boots

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Zunimassa’s Trail	BiS because it comes with lots of useful stats plus the added poison damage. Get AR and armor as random rolls.	Needs a black weapon, otherwise go with Ice Climbers.
Ice Climbers	High int boots due to socket (up to 358).	No MS by default, make sure you don’t miss that if you are kiting/Archon.
Fire Walkers	Great overall boots with MS by default and chance for high int.	If they have less than 200 int, you might as well get rare boots.
Natalya’s Bloody Footprints	Okay, by itself these boots are not a good choice for wizards. If you combine them with a decent ring, the first set bonus (7% CC!) is mind-blowing.	Get the ring first, the boots are not the expensive of the two.
Immortal King’s Stride	Craving for EHP? Consider these and go for the first set bonus! (Gloves being the other item)	Of course, these items won’t get you anywhere in terms of DPS.
Rare boots	Even though there are lots of legendaries and sets, rare boots can often be a match. If you are Archon or kiting wizard, 12% MS are absolutely mandatory; other than that, go for the usual (int, vit, AR, armor, …)	There is no real drawback here, and if you’re short on money, rare boots are fine.

Rings
There are so many different rings, it all comes down to “what you need” on your gear (EHP? DPS?) and if you want experience bonus. Note: rings can have as much IAS as amulets and gloves (9%), but less CC (6% vs 10%) and much less CD (50% vs 100% on amulets).

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Hellfire Ring	If you’re not yet paragon 100 and you play on low MP levels, you definitely want this one for the bonus XP. However, it takes some time to get a reasonable one – don’t give up; even a non-perfect roll will still be good, don’t underestimate the 170+ int.	You’ll definitely lose some DPS compared to a rare ring – it might be a good idea to get other rings for non-farming occasions (uber boss gear). And for high MP levels it's not that useful, see bonus experience for an explanation why.
Rare ring	A “quinfecta” (int, average damage, CC, CD, IAS) with some vit will be BiS. However, to save some money you can also get some other stats instead (like AR or vit for EHP or LoH if you need some for your CMWW setup).	It’s often difficult to find the right ring – unless you’re super rich, there isn’t “the one ring to rule them all”. Therefore: keep sub-par rings to have options for your gear, in particular when aiming for a CMWW APS breakpoint.
Leoric’s Signet	For max XP bonus, consider this ring.	You’ll lose a lot of stats because it is a level 14 (!) ring, and with the XP buff for MP levels it's useless on higher MP levels.
Skull Grasp	If your build mainly uses Hydra, Meteor, Disintegrate, or Arcane Torrent, consider this to solve your Arcane Power problems.	Other than for these for spells, it’s not worth sacrificing the huge DPS loss – don’t get it for the increased damage or CC on other spells.
Stone of Jordan	If your play style is something like “skip every white mob and only kill elite packs”, consider using this ring – a huge DPS boost for elite fights (including ubers!).	Needs black weapon. Useless for CMWW because no CC and IAS.
Unity	Not a superb rings, but with IAS as random roll a good start for CMWW.	Don’t overestimate this ring; a rare ring will almost always be better and cheaper.
Natalya’s Reflection	This one is really great for CMWW – because of the set bonus (the boots are the cheaper part of the deal). High int and CC is desired – but the latter extremely expensive. However, even if you can’t afford CC on this ring, it’s still more than on any rare ring, considering the 7% set bonus.	If you aim for high CC you’re competing with all other classes and it’s going to be really expensive – and at some point you’re better off buying an expensive near-perfect rare ring and Zuni boots. Therefore it’s only useful for CMWW, where CC is crucial.
Zunimassa’s Pox	If you have the set’s boots already, this ring comes with a nice 130 int bonus (and it’s even possible to get the chest as well and go for 55 AR bonus here).	Don’t get this as your first Zuni set item, it will be more expensive than an equivalent rare ring.

Orb

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Triumvirate	Because of the up to 18% bonus damage, this is absolute BiS.	You definitely need a black weapon for this to be useful.
Tal Rasha’s Unwavering Glare	This is a nice alternative to a Triumvirate, especially if you don’t have a nice weapon. And if your main spell is Meteor, you want this one (with Meteor AP cost reduction).	Doesn’t have IAS, therefore the equally priced Chantodo’s is better for CMWW in most cases.
Chantodo’s Force	It might not be BiS in terms of DPS, it’s not really cheap, but this is a really good choice for CMWW – all stats already there, plus bonus IAS. You want APoC as random roll then.	Not really a cheap choice, and a Triumvirate with APoC gives more DPS for probably less money. It’s most useful if you have the main hand as well (and this means, getting rid of all elemental damage bonus stats on your gear).
The Oculus	Overall great orb and a nice alternative to the others – often a bit cheaper. If you don’t care about IAS and you don’t have a black weapon, this might be the orb of your choice.	It’s no real match DPS-wise to a good Triumvirate (given that you have a black weapon).
Rare orb	All aforementioned orbs are quite expensive, so a rare orb with high average damage (absolute first priority) int, vit and crit will do.	It’s only a good choice for starters, this is a slot where the legendaries/sets are pricey but really much better without any drawbacks.

Weapon
The main question you have to answer yourself before you start looking for a weapon is “how much life steal, if any, do I need”? You can get up to 6% if you go for a two-handed weapon, but you give up on a lot of stats on the off hand – not recommended. Furthermore, you can save a lot of money by not getting any life steal on your weapon; compensate for it by raising your EHP, choosing the Blood Magic rune and getting more life regeneration. Most importantly, try using LoH (for CMWW this is absolutely sufficient and LS not necessary at all) or LaK (especially useful for Archon where killing fast is your business anyways).

Another important thing is the socket; you definitely want one if you go for DPS, almost no exception here. For most people an emerald will be the gem of choice. The weapon gem is most important and thus should always be the highest gem on your gear (i.e., if you only have money for maxing out one gem, let this be your weapon gem). Get a Radiant Star Emerald or, if you want to squeeze out every single bit of DPS and have the money, a Marquise Emerald. The pure crafting cost (considered you have all materials) are about 16 million gold (radiant star) and 120 million gold (marquise), keep that in mind. Plus, the marquise gem is bind on account and expensive to remove from a slot (5 million gold). But: the emerald is not the only option, you might also consider a ruby. It really depends on gear, spec, budget, and availability of gems.

Item	Why is it great and for which build?	Drawbacks
Rare weapon	If you’re CMWW, you want a wand (because of APoC) or a Dagger (because it’s fast), with IAS. If you’re just looking for highest DPS, take a sword with IAS, CD, and socket (and LS/LaK depending on what you feel comfortable with). Make sure this is a “black weapon”, i.e., it has no elemental damage!	Swords, daggers and wands are really expensive if they have good stats and high DPS. Your way out is to take a mace or axe – works fine if you don’t need IAS (Archon).
Echoing Fury	It’s a black weapon with high DPS, some IAS, and can roll int, socket and lifesteal – quite nice.	Horribly overpriced; it doesn’t have any unique affix that you’d miss on rare weapons. Also, can’t roll CD, socket, and LS!
Chantodo’s Will	Great choice for CMWW, especially if you have the orb. You can get up to 1.79 weapon speed! Alternatively, get one with a socket for DPS.	Since its base DPS is not that high and it offers only one random roll (no CD+socket possible), a dagger with IAS will offer more DPS.
Skorn	Was once advertised as the low budget solution – frankly, it’s not that cheap. However, if you really feel like you want up to 6% LS and you’re willing to sacrifice DPS and in particular CC (no orb), try it out! It might be especially useful for the new Blizzard builds.	Even though this weapon can be really really great, your DPS will definitely take a hit and you lose a lot of stats because you give up on an orb.

5) TL;DR BiS list
It’s difficult to make a BiS list because different items have different priorities for different builds and existing gear setups – therefore the order within these lists might be “random” for some of the slots/builds.

Helm

1. Mempo of Twilight
2. Tal Rasha’s Guise of Wisdom
3. Andariel’s Visage
4. Storm Crow

Shoulders

1. Archon Spaulders of Intelligence
2. Vile Ward

Chest

1. Tal Rasha’s Relentless Pursuit
2. Tyrael’s Might
3. Zunimassa’s Marrow
4. Blackthorne’s Surcoat
5. Archon Armor of Intelligence
6. Rare chest

Amulet

1. Amulet of Intelligence / rare amulet
2. Tal Rasha’s Allegiance
3. Blackthorne’s Duncraig Cross
4. Ouroboros

Gloves

1. Archon Gauntlets of Intelligence / Rare gloves
2. Tasker and Theo
3. Frostburn Gauntlets
4. Immortal King’s Irons

Belt

1. The Witching Hour
2. Tal Rasha’s Brace
3. Rare belt

Bracers

1. Lacuni Prowlers
2. Razorspikes of Intelligence
3. Rare bracers
4. Strongarm Bracers

Pants

1. Inna’s Temperance
2. Depth Diggers
3. Blackthorne’s Jousting Mail
4. Rare pants

Boots

1. Zunimassa’s Trail
2. Ice Climbers
3. Fire Walkers
4. Natalya’s Bloody Footprints
5. Immortal King’s Stride
6. Rare boots

Rings

1. Hellfire Ring
2. Rare ring
3. Zunimassa’s Pox
4. Natalya’s Reflection
5. Leoric’s Signet
6. Stone of Jordan
7. Skull Grasp
8. Unity

Orb

1. Triumvirate
2. Tal Rasha’s Unwavering Glare
3. Chantodo’s Force
4. The Oculus
5. Rare orb

Weapon

1. Rare sword/wand/dagger
2. Echoing Fury
3. Chantodo’s Will
4. Skorn

6) Follower’s gear
Before gearing up your follower, you need to decide which one you want to take with you, and what his function will be. All followers share 20% of the magic find, gold find, and experience bonus on their items with you; therefore, followers in D3 are mainly considered to be “MF/GF/XP bitches”. However, besides this they can have other functions, as follows:

The Templar can be a decent tank, and add some life and Arcane Power regeneration; however, to be fair, it is almost unnoticeably little.

The Scoundrel gives you a 3% CC buff, but besides this it can also be equipped with a specific weapon to freeze all enemies.

The Enchantress offers a 3% IAS buff, along with a 6% ranged damage reduction from enemies. Furthermore, she can offer you a tank by giving her a specific weapon.

Choose buffs/functionality that you deem to be most helpful for you. If you want MF plus tank, take the Templar; if you want MF plus buffs, take Enchantress. Don’t even think about turning them into damage toons – their damage is a joke and it’s much more useful to give them helpful bonus stats or functionality rather than trying to gear them up to 10-20k DPS (difficult and expensive enough). But in order for them to provide you with buffs or tanking/freezing functionality, they need to be alive; therefore their EHP should be your number one concern. Followers receive 250% of the bonus from all basic affixes (vit, int, str, dex), which means that 100 vit, 100 int, and 100 str will provide your follower with 8750 life, 25 AR, and 250 armor. Therefore, vit, str, and int (in this order) are highest priority, followed by life%, AR, and armor. These are basic stats you should try to get for all followers to make them last long enough even in tough battles.

For bonus XP, equip your followers with a Hellfire Ring and – if you have the money – a Leoric’s Signet; it will give you up to 13% bonus XP. The perfect Hellfire Ring is crafted using the vitality recipe and has MF, GF, AR, and life% as random rolls.

For magic find, you want to give your Templar a Sun Keeper or your Enchantress a Grand Vizier. Jewelry and shield (for Templar) should have all the other necessary EHP stats plus max MF, obviously. Even though the Templar can wear 20% more MF, it’s only 4% more for you and not worth sacrificing the way more useful buffs that the Enchantress has to offer – but the choice is yours.
The freezing Scoundrel is a nice option in particular if you’re running a Blizzard kiting build – her freeze works nicely together with your Cold Blooded passive. What you need is a Buriza-Do Kyanon with high “chance to freeze” (at least 12%, but the more the better) and high piercing value (at least 65%, but again the more the better). Combine this with The Star of Azkaranth to maximize the effect; again, the amulet should have high chance of freeze on hit (> 4%). Besides the usual EHP stats, you should aim for IAS. Obviously, this entire setup will not allow you to maximize bonus XP and MF, but it’s a lot of fun and works really nice when combined with a Blizzard build.

Last but not least, the Enchantress can offer you a nice tanking option if you give her a Maximus. The summoned demon actually tanks almost better than the Templar and is around almost all the time – so if you want to get the Enchantress’s buffs, try it out, Maximus is really cheap.

7) Wizard FAQ
I thought about having a list of links here, or some general comments, but instead I’m just gonna do this “FAQ style” – basically trying to answer some of the questions that have been asked many times or providing links to threads or websites I’ve come across in the past and I’ve found to be helpful.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something similar before… just where?
Yes, there have been previous “gear lists” or similar threads like this. However, they’re not maintained anymore or have a slightly different format/goal. But let me know if you have an idea how I can improve this one.

The first gear guide I want to mention again is Jaetch’s guide here on these forums. I would not have written all this stuff if he wouldn’t have told me to do so in a discussion a while ago – and I sincerely hope he updates his thread at some point. His thread is actually much more tied to different levels of prices, whereas I try to stay away from numbers as the economy seems to be pretty much unpredictable. Morphos’ Inferno wizard guide (which is still pinned) also offers great info and some tips on gearing up. The guides for the specific builds, namely the Archon guide by TheDemokin and the CMWW guide by Loroese, also have a lot of helpful food for thought about gear. Without all these threads and their input, I wouldn’t even have been able to compile all this.

Another great guide is the huge wizard thread on IncGamers, offering lots of advices beyond gear.
Last but not least, there’s a great thread called the wizard build compendium. While it does not talk about items itself, it has a lot of links to interesting wizard builds and if you follow some of these links, you will find specific advices pertaining to the respective build.

How can I compare items/plan my character?
There are many helpful tools that let you do this:

• Loroese’s DPS and EHP spreadsheet is probably one of the most accurate, most elaborate, and most versatile tools for all-around character planning.
• Kieble has written a nice website that automatically imports your character and offers similar options like Loroese’s spreadsheet.
• Jesta is the author of D3up.com, a website that also offers character import and overview of stats. The real beauty of this tool is that you can combine this with D3bit.com, a tool that automatically scans an item’s tooltip and offers a quick comparison of stats, showing you the benefit in terms of EHP and DPS.
• Loroese has also written a CMWW damage calculator – you need Matlab to run it though.
• On d3cmww.com you can find a CMWW damage calculator similar to Loroese's Matlab tool (does not run in IE).
• SaikoDrakie created an EHP calculator and posted it in the theorycrafting corner on these forums.

What the hell is a “black weapon”? Why is this important?
A black weapon is a weapon that has only physical damage and no elemental damage. Here are examples of an elemental weapon and a black weapon. More popular examples are Chantodo’s Force (elemental, because it always has fire damage) and Echoing Fury (black, because it always has min/max damage). The term “black” actually comes from the color of the tooltip’s background. (Yeah, if you’re reading this and you think it’s ridiculous you’re not the only one).

It’s desirable to get a black weapon because many items have an “adds +x% to elemental damage” affix, like Zuni boots, the BiS boots. The description is flawed and Blizzard is aware of this – what this affix means is that 7% (or 8%) of poison damage are added to your overall damage. However, this bonus is only applied to non-elemental damage. For example, for this weapon only 25% of its damage are physical but 75% are elemental (arcane in this case). The poison damage bonus of the Zuni boots would only apply to 25% of the weapon’s damage, and because all your DPS is based on the weapon DPS, this scales up to your character sheet DPS – 75% of the Zuni boots bonus damage affix will be lost!

If you want to read more about this (or don’t understand my explanation), look at the blue post about this affix or these two threads where this has been asked and answered before.

What is the maximum stat for item X on slot Y?
If you want to know what affixes can roll on which slot and how the different values are, there are two websites. The older of the two which lets you sort by level is D3own.com – even though it says 1.05 PTR, the values seem to be up to date. A more recent site that doesn’t just throw a table at you but combines a nice visualization with nice extras (like which legendary item provides unique stats on a slot) is D3MaxStats.com.

What is the maximum possible DPS with all these BiS items?
Thankfully, people took the time to do the math. TheDemokin did not just create one BiS character, but compared several options (different weapons, boots, offhands) with some interesting and surprising results (go to the thread or check the #1 profile on D3up.com with a stunning 781k DPS unbuffed). On the official forums, Shelendil calculated the maximum buffed DPS a few weeks earlier; look at the post to see how you could theoretically reach 1.3 million DPS buffed.

How can wizards deals with problems of Arcane Power shortage?
There is a variety of things wizards can do when they run into Arcane Power problems. This section is about showing all possible ways to get around this issue and is hopefully helpful for those who intend to try out new builds.

• APoC - Arcane Power on critical hit. It puts heavy constraint on gear as it requires quite an amount of crit chance and since APoC only comes on wizard class items (wands, wizard hats, sources).
• Astral Presence - a great passive to start with, but it will not solve all problems on its own.
• Inspire - the templar's skill might look like a joke, but it's better than nothing. Combine it with other AP regen skills and you might feel it.
• Tal Rasha four piece set bonus - great to double Astral Presence.
• Power Hungry - combine with a higher pickup radius (or just take your fellow Witch Doctor friend with you).
• Prodigy - if you have a heavy AP spender on one mouse button, and a signature spell on the other mouse button, Prodigy might just help you to keep the balance.
• Conduit - probably rather a last resort than your first choice, but worth mentioning.
• Arcanot - just as powerful as 4 piece Tal Rasha and Astral Presence.
• Power of the Storm - again, only a small effect, but especially useful for "cheap" skills.
• Absorption - if you are an EHP monster and like to get hit, take this.
• Prism - this looks like a strong spell, but ask yourself how much of the time Diamond Skin is active.
• Items that decrease Arcane Power cost. For example, Disintegrate can be channeled infinitely if some of the AP regeneration skills above are combined with some of these items: Dark Mage's Shade, Mara's Kaleidoscope, Skull Grasp, Stone of Jordan, Lidless Wall, The Oculus, Chantodo's Force, Tal Rasha's Unwavering Glare (can affect Hydra, Arcane Torrent, Meteor, Disintegrate).