ias should have no effect on the damage of locust swarm. I does do 2 things though:
1) makes your cast animation faster.
2) (not sure if true) makes your tick faster (but for less damage each tick) which can proc stuff more often.
Well it's not just about the timing, it also have to do with builds and gears. I am too poor to experimenting much with gears so if anyone has any experience, the input would be useful.
For skill like locust swarm (crittable dot), I can see 3 possible scenarios.
1) Crit rolls per cast, meaning if that cast crits, all enemies and all ticks from that cast will crit.
2) Crit rolls per jump, meaning for each jump, if it crits, all ticks from that jump on that enemy will crit, but if does not crit, no tick will crit on that enemy.
3) Crit rolls per tick. This means each tick can crit independently from subsequent crits and other affected enemies.
From my experience, I believe locust swarm follows the first scenario, as all monsters of the same type (same hp) on each pack seems to die after the same amount of time. But on some packs, they seem to die much faster than usual (probably crit).
But this is based on experience only and it is very hard to test this unless you have very good eyes and can write down the dmg numbers.
With the buff to high MP exp bonus, the 75% exp from 5 stacks of NV is less significant and I heard people farming just keep depths 2 over and over without trying kill elites (just skip elites, kill white enemies, once you get to the exit or dead end, just tp and reset game). Do you think it's better than the usual 5NV farming?
Also, if this is worth the time, is keep 2 the densest area in game in terms of white mobs?
I just want to add that I tried bliz (large area rune) + one source of APoC and it gives me back about 1-2 procs per cast. I hope this gives an idea how much bliz procs CM.
Most of the CDs fall into two categories: defensive/utility abilities and long-CD offensive abilities. I'm not sure if I really like the entire second category myself, but I certainly understand why they wouldn't want a WD to have no CD on Spirit Walk.
I actually like long-CD offensive abilities. Because it's powerful, you have to limit its use either by 1) long CD or 2) high resource cost. In d3, they opt for long CD and low cost (DH's free rain of vengeance, barb's EQ), which I prefer to high resource. High resource cost makes me feel like I have to save my resource for the critical moment all the time and it's not fun. Another thing is, there are many specs that pretty much bypass the resource cost like barb's into the fray or CMwiz, so let's say EQ now has no CD but costs 100 fury, then barb would just spam it on ubers because there's no CD and fury is always there.
Basically I hear people complaining that you can't search the +skill/-skill legendaries for the desired skills. Here is my workaround the problem. (I am pretty sure someone else must have posted about it or maybe it's a well-known fact by now, but still many people are complaining, so I think I should share.)
First, search by armor, don't specify the specific armor plot, select legendaries only. In the prefix selection, put in the skill you want. If you want to search for SoJ, enter damage to elites. If you want to search for Mara or skullgrasp, put in int/dex/str of your choice. Click search, then sort by armor. If you enter damage to elites, Soj's should be on the first pages. If you sort by int/dex/str, mara's should be on the first pages, followed by skullgrasp. You can also swap the order of the prefix search so you can sort according to the first prefix you select.
More subtle question: is the crit roll per cast or per tick. What I mean is whether a) each bliz cast is rolled to be crit or not crit, if it crits, all the tick from that cast will be crits, b ) each bliz tick is rolled for crit separately, so that first tick may crit, but the next tick from the same bliz may not.
This will have an impact on how I prioritize my cc and cd. If it's roll per cast, then I need high cc and low cd, because as long as the whole cast is crit, everything (on low mp) will die anyway even at only 100% cd. If it's roll per tick, then I need about highest (1+cc)*(1+cd) as usual because everything will average out.
I guess if you just use blizzard like locust swarm as in you just cast it and keep going, anything longer than 5-6secs won't help because if you are a few screens away, the mobs don't take dmg anymore. I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug because you can try it yourself with locust swarm. Just cast it, run quickly away, then come back, you can see mobs with the green debuff graphics, but the health does not drop anymore.
I don't think I will get +bliz duration because I tried it on ptr, stuff dies in 3-4 secs on mp0 already.
On live, I farm with my WD locust swarm (360% weapon dmg), and most stuffs die already in one cast at 60k sheet dps (non-crit gear), so with bliz (510%) that can also benefit from crits, I don't think I need +duration.
The playstyle for this build would be just cast and move on to the next group while stuff dies behind you. This does not work well in live because the lack of off-screen legendary notification. This should be better in 1.0.7 with the mini-map icon.
Thanks a lot for the answers. So I am thinking about +int, +cc, +cd gears. Now the question is whether to use two hander or 1h+oh. I'm leaning towards 2h here because bliz does weapon dmg, so slower weapon should be more dps.
Basically I'm trying to make a farming build for 1.0.7 based on the blizzard spell (its base damage is buffed to 510% weapon dmg per cast). So I have a few questions about the spell so I can gear up correctly. (I tried searching the forum for these information but 90% of the result is about the bliz company lol.)
1) Because it says 510% weapon dmg over 6 secs, does this mean it does not benefit at all from +ias except that the casting animation is faster? ie. no matter how much ias I have, will it be 510% weapon dmg over 6 secs?
2) Can it crit? (I suspect that it can.) If yes, does it roll crit chance separately for each tick and each monster?
3) In practice, does APOC and loh proc enough for these stats to be worthwhile if 90% of the time I just use blizzard.
4) Which damaging spell would you recommend as a supplement to blizzard for single target dps (like for elites)? I plan to use bliz, one armor spell, one defensive spell (diamond skin or frost nova or teleport), magic weapon, sparkflint and one single target dps spell. Passive should be glass cannon, cold blooded, then either arcane dynamo or astral presence.
0
1) makes your cast animation faster.
2) (not sure if true) makes your tick faster (but for less damage each tick) which can proc stuff more often.
0
0
1) Crit rolls per cast, meaning if that cast crits, all enemies and all ticks from that cast will crit.
2) Crit rolls per jump, meaning for each jump, if it crits, all ticks from that jump on that enemy will crit, but if does not crit, no tick will crit on that enemy.
3) Crit rolls per tick. This means each tick can crit independently from subsequent crits and other affected enemies.
From my experience, I believe locust swarm follows the first scenario, as all monsters of the same type (same hp) on each pack seems to die after the same amount of time. But on some packs, they seem to die much faster than usual (probably crit).
But this is based on experience only and it is very hard to test this unless you have very good eyes and can write down the dmg numbers.
0
Also, if this is worth the time, is keep 2 the densest area in game in terms of white mobs?
0
0
0
I actually like long-CD offensive abilities. Because it's powerful, you have to limit its use either by 1) long CD or 2) high resource cost. In d3, they opt for long CD and low cost (DH's free rain of vengeance, barb's EQ), which I prefer to high resource. High resource cost makes me feel like I have to save my resource for the critical moment all the time and it's not fun. Another thing is, there are many specs that pretty much bypass the resource cost like barb's into the fray or CMwiz, so let's say EQ now has no CD but costs 100 fury, then barb would just spam it on ubers because there's no CD and fury is always there.
0
0
0
First, search by armor, don't specify the specific armor plot, select legendaries only. In the prefix selection, put in the skill you want. If you want to search for SoJ, enter damage to elites. If you want to search for Mara or skullgrasp, put in int/dex/str of your choice. Click search, then sort by armor. If you enter damage to elites, Soj's should be on the first pages. If you sort by int/dex/str, mara's should be on the first pages, followed by skullgrasp. You can also swap the order of the prefix search so you can sort according to the first prefix you select.
Hope that helps.
0
This will have an impact on how I prioritize my cc and cd. If it's roll per cast, then I need high cc and low cd, because as long as the whole cast is crit, everything (on low mp) will die anyway even at only 100% cd. If it's roll per tick, then I need about highest (1+cc)*(1+cd) as usual because everything will average out.
0
0
On live, I farm with my WD locust swarm (360% weapon dmg), and most stuffs die already in one cast at 60k sheet dps (non-crit gear), so with bliz (510%) that can also benefit from crits, I don't think I need +duration.
The playstyle for this build would be just cast and move on to the next group while stuff dies behind you. This does not work well in live because the lack of off-screen legendary notification. This should be better in 1.0.7 with the mini-map icon.
0
0
1) Because it says 510% weapon dmg over 6 secs, does this mean it does not benefit at all from +ias except that the casting animation is faster? ie. no matter how much ias I have, will it be 510% weapon dmg over 6 secs?
2) Can it crit? (I suspect that it can.) If yes, does it roll crit chance separately for each tick and each monster?
3) In practice, does APOC and loh proc enough for these stats to be worthwhile if 90% of the time I just use blizzard.
4) Which damaging spell would you recommend as a supplement to blizzard for single target dps (like for elites)? I plan to use bliz, one armor spell, one defensive spell (diamond skin or frost nova or teleport), magic weapon, sparkflint and one single target dps spell. Passive should be glass cannon, cold blooded, then either arcane dynamo or astral presence.
Thanks in advance.