Here are my thoughts on clearing speed. This build requires no signature spell because its really light on Arcane Power consumption. Unless I am mistaken, every other ROS wizard build requires at least 1 signature to recover Arcane Power unless you're using something like Blizzard + Hydra. Thus, while Arcane Orbit and Explosive Blast -> Chain Reaction may not have the raw killing power of say Disintegrate or Frozen Orb, it isn't hindered by the use of signature spells to recover Arcane power either. I think it only looks slow due to the lack of spamming. In addition, you are moving 30% faster, so when you move from mob to mob, you can easily chain up massive massacre counts.
Cooldown reduction also reduces the cooldown on explosive blast. With over 40% CDR, you will get an explosion every second. In addition, I think the internal CD of arcane orbit is about 1 second. Thus, every second, you are getting off 2 explosions, thus you are never running around doing nothing unless you were careless with your Arcane Orbit castings and used up all your Arcane power. Finally, due to cooldown reduction, Explosive Blast will always be ready before your 4th orb goes off, so you will never be running around for no reason. Also, since you are in the thick of mobs, you are maximizing the AOE component of both spells as well.
With regards to plagued/molten/arcane enchanted/electrified/fire chains/etc, the danger lies in the elites surrounding themselves in pools of whatever. The AI isn't smart enough to realize that they are fighting a melee build and thus surround themselves with pools of whatever, they will be using it to try to kill you, thus the trick is to use strafing patterns or simply kite them to another area if the damage pools become too dense. Alternatively, you can simply run through a pool with Diamond Skin on, this will trigger Scamble, which will stack with Diamond Skin, thus allowing you to simply find another group of mobs to build Dominance stacks and return to fight the elites. Remember that you have extreme mobility, so you're not really losing much time by doing this.
Wand of Woh would be a very nice addition to this build, unfortunately, I haven't found one yet. As for the amulet, I thinking of either Moonlight ward or Ess of Johan. There are several other items I am looking at to assist in this area, but I have to find them first.
To be fair, I don't really know how much more effective it is verses other builds, so I will make a video to compare theclearing speeds. Are there any particular builds any of you would like to me use specifically in the comparison?
I am currently working on my Illusionary Engine build, once I am done that, this will be one of the builds that I will rework. There has been quite a few changes that benefit Death Blossom and I have been investigating them as far as skills go, but its the new items that I am looking at to see if anything can be worked into this build.
Introduction:
Blizzard buffed the Illusionist passive a few patches ago because it was an under used passive. Unfortunately, this passive is still an under used talent. However, I believe that this passive has enormous potential when properly understood. Its really good at generating massacre streaks. Thus, I would like to present the "Illusionary Engine" build.
How this works:
Illusionist has 2 parts, it will reset the cooldown of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport when you take more than 15% damage of your Max HP and when you cast any one of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport, it will give you 30% movement speed for 3 seconds. There is also a forth spell that isn't influenced by Illusionist, but gives the same benefit, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Under normal circumstances, you cannot maintain the 30% movement speed bonus through any clever chain casting of Mirror Image, Teleport, Slow time and Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell because the cooldown duration is too high. Therefore, we rely on sufficient cooldown reduction so that it is possible to chain cast in such a way to perpetually maintain the 30% movement speed bonus. At 40% cooldown reduction, you can perpetually chain cast 3 spells so that you always get the movement speed bonus. This is the core engine that makes this build possible.
Secondary considerations:
The next thing to consider is attacks. You actually have total freedom to choose which ever attacks you wish, but here is my opinion. To maximize the benefit of the bonus speed, it is best to use attacks that have no casting animation. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to choose from, there is Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit and Explosive Blast. These spells can be cast while you are on the move, but it requires you to be in close to melee range. Being in melee range means that survivability is necessary. Fortunately, the requirements on survivability isn't concrete and you do have some freedom.
On a side note, you could use other ranged attacks like Blizzard and Hydra and kite with your superior speed, but this is a preference thing, either will work well.
Skills:
Required:
Illusionist: The namesake of this build, this is a must. The movement speed increase it gives when you cast something is what makes this build possible, but don't discount the primary mechanic. Remember that what I propose is a melee build, so you will be able to utilize the primary mechanic to instantly refresh your Slow Time/Teleport/Mirror Image. This will be covered in detail in later sections.
Any 3 out of the 4 skills is required:
Slow Time: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus, however, it does serve the secondary function of helping you deal with ranged mobs. Remember that this is a melee build, thus being able to slow down projectiles goes a long way in helping you survive. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer Point of No Return for the stun to assist in surivability. Unfortunately, you do have to stand still to cast this. Fortunately, any time lost in standing still is made up with teleport.
Teleport: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus plus the teleport ability. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer the Calamity rune over the Wormhole rune because of the stun it provides. Remember that teleport gives you the ability to escape vitually everything. In fact, short of being carelessly Frozen, teleport ensures that there shouldn't be any one elite mod that will be the bane of your existance. Also remember, that being in melee means that Illusionist will most likely refresh it regularly, meaning that Teleport -> Calamity can also be used offensively. This is why I prefer the Calamity rune.
Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell: This is one of the skills I use. I think everyone would agree that there really is no reason why you wouldn't have Diamond Skin. I use this skill to free up a skill slot while meeting the 3 skills necessary to maintain perpetual movement speed bonus.
Mirror Image: This skill works with this build, but I personally don't use it because I don't like how you have to stand and cast it and how it moves you in a random direction. To me its counter productive for this build. But if you do want to use it, any rune does work with this build, Mocking Blow in particular would have some uses in this build.
At this point, given that you have sufficient survivability, you have full freedom to use which ever spells you choose. Here are my choices:
Attacks:
Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. Remember that you don't need to spam this spell because the orbs don't all go off at once, so this allows you to ration your Arcane Power easier, just cast it when there is roughly 1 orb left will make it very effective.
Explosive Blast: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. This spell isn't spamable, but the 40% cooldown reduction that is required with this build works on this spell too. Any rune works, but I prefer Chain Reaction because it provides extra hits to proc APOC.
Armour:
Storm Armour -> Scramble: I use this skill because this is a melee build, thus this will be triggering a lot. This isn't necessary, in fact you can really use any armour/rune you wish. I personally like the extra mobility that this rune gives.
Passives:
Blur: This is to help with survivability. Nothing more.
Dominance: This is to help with survivability. You will be killing mobs fairly quickly, thus getting a 10 stack is actually common.
Evocation: This is to assit with getting 40% cooldown reduction. Note that you really don't need this as 40% is achievable without having to make huge compromises, but my gear isn't there yet, so this is why I use this.
Items:
Your gear has to provide sufficient survivability so that you don't suddenly die when you run into melee range for Torment 1, I have roughly 5k armour, 1350 all resist and about 377k HP with no shield and I can run mindlessly into mobs without dying. There isn't a specific item that is a must in this build. The basic requirements are as follows:
1. At least 40% cooldown reduction for 3 spells with movement bonus.
2. Sufficient suvivability so that you can take some hits and enough life on hit/life regen to refill your HP as you take hits.
3. Sufficient Crit change and APOC so that you can refill your Arcane Power.
Number 1 and 2 are more important than number 3. This build isn't Arcane Power hungry, so you don't actually need to worry about Arcane Power too much. I have about 48% Crit Chance and 8 APOC and I don't run into problems. Also having 25% movement speed on your gear and or paragon attributes is a no brainer.
Notable mentions include Illusory Boots and Cosmic Strand. Illusory Boots gives you the ability run through mobs, meaning its a lot harder to get trapped, which is a definite plus when you are in compact maps. Cosmic Strand allows you to combine wormhole with Calamity, which is excellent.
Special Notes:
This is an aggressive build and it will let you zip quickly through maps and bounties. The sequence that you cast Slow Time, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell and Teleport is important because they also double as your survival spells. Because Diamond Skin is part of the casting sequence to maintain the perpetual speed bonus, you need to know when to engage mobs. Fortunately, your superior speed and mobility makes this a non-issue. Typically, my cast sequence is Slow Time -> Teleport -> Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Also, pay attention to when Illusionist trigger and refreshes your Teleport and Slow Time, it will allow you to use them again for defensive or offensive purposes, depending on what the need is. Finally, keep moving, you have speed for a reason, it will help with your survivability.
Please feel free to leave any comments. Flames will be laughed at if entertaining enough, but it will be ignored if they are too boring.
Introduction:
It’s been over a month since I made the first Starfighter build and I have gotten some interesting feedback, criticism and suggestions. So I felt that it would be appropriate to make another video that address the criticisms as well as explore the suggestions given. I’ve had a chance to upgrade my gear, play around with the build to improve performance and I’m happy to report that the build can now be reasonably played in MP7 without much difficulty and the possibility of MP10 is just around the horizon. So let’s begin the Starfighter Refit.
What’s changed:
I managed to get my hands on a SOJ with cold damage, so Ice Armour with Chilling Aura is no longer required. Thus, I have replaced it with Energy Armour with Prismatic Armour for the added survivability. In addition, I now use stormshield instead of a source because it offers far more survivability than any other source that is currently out there. Everything else pretty much remains the same. My upgraded gear now has me at the following:
~1000 all resists
~113k HP
~ 7k armour
~41k DPS
~12.5 CC
~1.51 APS
What’s so interesting about this video vs the original one?
One thing you may question is how come I’m reasonably playing at MP7 with almost half of the CC and DPS that I had in my original video, but in my original video, I couldn’t go past MP5. This illustrates the oddity and uniqueness of this build, the true power of Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo plus Cold Blooded allows you to get away with significantly lower on screen DPS and still clear higher MPs in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, from my own experience, low DPS doesn’t really become apparent until MP8 and above and even then it’s only against elites. At the end of the video, you actually see me kill mobs in MP10 in a reasonable amount of time with just ~41k dps, so the potential of this build. This also illustrates why survivability is so much more important in this build than DPS. This is also why it’s so much different than the CMWW and Archon mainstream builds, because you can’t possibly go into MP10 with only 41k DPS and expect to kill mobs in a reasonable amount of time.
Exploring suggestions:
So I’ve gotten quite a few constructive suggestions in my previous thread for this build, so I’ve explored them and here are my findings:
Azurewrath/Windforce/Echoing Fury:
The original suggestion was using Azurewrath for its high percentage to freeze. Since the proc co-efficient for Death Blossom is so high, there should be a significant of procs that occur. However, lifesteal is not possible on Azurewrath because it cannot roll any random properties, so your lifesteal will have to come from Blood Magic. But even then, you have to consider how damage you are doing with Azurewrath. During my tests, I was using one with 861 DPS and I rarely saw a life leech total over 2000, most were in the 600 to 1000 range. This is an inherent problem because life leech is very important in this build. This isn’t to say that this won’t work, but you would need to invest more in higher end gear to get this to work.
This idea was interesting enough for me to consider other builds and thus, I eventually came up with 2 other choices, Echoing Fury and Windforce. Echoing Fury, while it does provide a CC, the CC is fear. At the beginning, the CC was great when there were great numbers of mobs, but as the mobs started to thin out, it became more of a hinderance because mobs would often run out of Death Blossom’s range. Windforce, on the other had worked nicely, there were noticeable procs and Windforce does roll life leech. However, the trade off of not having a shield did noticeably reduce survivability in MP7, but I could still comfortably play at MP7. Also, for some reason, I feel that there is some limit to how many times you could knockback a target, but maybe it was just my imagination. I didn’t have a high end Windforce, mine did not have a socket, but I believe that a high end Windforce with high enough DPS could reasonably MP10.
Critical Mass:
Many are probably wondering if Critical Mass fits in this build, Critical Mass does wonders for this build, but I will not explore it in this video so that this build won’t be labelled as another “CM build”. In the future, I will make a video that explores the possibilities of Critical Mass in this build. So stay tuned.
Why should I even try this build?
Now let me be clear that this build is not intended to replace the mainstream CMWW or Archon builds and the build itself is not cheap, however, one thing that I would like to point out is that Blizzard has IMPLIED that they are looking to break these build because:
1. CMWW builds, in their opinion, is abusing a game mechanic resulting in perma freeze, thus they are happy with any build that can do this.
AND
2. Archon, by desing, was originally meant to be an super powered cooldown that you were supposed to use when the situation demanded it, not as a permanent state to maintain, thus they are not happy the state the Archon is in at the moment.
So if you assume that Blizzard eventually does make the changes so that these builds don’t work anymore, you really have to question just what exactly builds are left that doesn’t require a ridiculous amount of kiting. In fact, I’m actually personally questioning if Blizzard is purposely limiting us to kiting builds only. Fortunately, in coming up with the original Starfighter build, I have discovered that it offers an entirely new approach towards Wizard build design and I have in fact discovered several new builds that follows this new philosophy. I will be making more videos in the future that makes use of under utilized skills. So for those worried that Wizards will be forced to kite only, fear not, the builds that I have come up with don’t involve much kiting at all. Stay tuned and subscribe to my channel for new developments.
Since you mention that dps isn't really an issue, have you considered using Azurewrath ?It is a really fast weapon. You wouldn't have lifesteal though, but if the proc rate is really nice, life on hit could work (with Bloodmagic Enchant Weapon).
Its funny that you mentioned Azurewrath because I happen to have one lying around in my stash. I think I kept it because it looked cool. Anyway, I tried your suggestion and it does work nicely, it procs enough that it will freeze 2 or 3 mobs on average. The only problem I noticed was the life leech from the Azurewrath and BM rune rarely produced anything over 2k. When I used my Chantodo's wand, I would often see ticks as high as 6k.
DPS isn't really an issue, but how much you leech sometimes is, it all depends on how quickly you're losing HP. If my gear offered more damage, (for example, I don't have crit chance or crit damage on my lacuni's), I believe your suggestion would work and it would allow this build to go to higher MPs. I built on your idea and used my Echoing Fury and observed a noticable improvement in survivability because there were often 2 or 4 mobs feared. However, it did get pretty annoying trying to kill elites because they kept running away and since you can't aim Death Blossom, well, you get the picture. So maybe you would probably need to carry a second weapon and swap if you are going to use Echoing Fury. But the bottom line is that gear exists that offers better survivability and damage than what I am currently using, so if you happen to have something that gives you even better stats, Azurewrath will allow you to push the build into higher MPs. Good suggestion.
I get the build, but there are two main drawbacks / weaknesses which I cannot wrap my head around-
1) You must stay stationary. That means every time you have to avoid arcane/plagued/desecrator/boss abilities/whatever else, you have to recharge arcane dynamo. I feel like this contributes to a lot of downtime
2) You cannot aim, and stuff shoots randomly in 360 degrees. It helps if you are surrounded by enemies, but that would involve basically running in the middle of huge packs and starting your attack after that.
It looks fun, but I have trouble seeing this going beyond a novelty build.
You don't necessarily need to recharge Arcane Dynamo when you shoot Death Blossom. If you take away Arcane Dynamo, you still have Cold Blooded and the damage modifier is 804%. So you can still kite and shoot Death Blossom without Arcane Dynamo and expect it to take down mobs in a reasonable amount of time. But if you feel the need rebuild Arcane Dynamo Charges, just cast Shock Pulse - Living Lightning once or twice. At over 2 aps, it only takes 1 or 2 seconds to build up another 5 charges, so you can easily have it ready for another Death Blossom. Check out the video I posted, there are some elites that I fight that requires kiting and it doesn't take me an unreasonable amount of time to kill.
With regards to the inability to aim, its no issue with melee, they will walk into Death Blossom, so you don't have to be right in their faces before you start shooting Death Blossom. If you are too far away and Death Blossom isn't hitting them, use the familiar to pull them. Remember that why you cannot aim with Death Blossom, you can aim the Familiar. This is also true of most ranged mobs, most will walk into the blast range before they start attacking. Now sometimes you will have to chase ranged mobs, but that is what chilling aura is for, just get close enough so that it snares them, then use Death Blossom. Of course you can't be too reckless and turn on Rambo mode, survival takes priority, kill the ranged mobs once all of the melee mobs are dead.
I don't have the best gear, but I do have a video of me playing at MP4, its at the top of the post. The main limitations of this builds depends on how much you can survive with the gear that you have. I don't know what kind of survival the best gear can provide, but at 78k HP, 450 AR, 70k DPS and 2.49 APS, I was doing fine on MP4, so I imagine if you had significantly better gear, higher MPs are possible. I do get your point, because I'm not really sure if the current gear available is sufficient for MP10, but then again, I haven't tested it either so I can't say that for certain.
Greetings Starfighter, you have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against the Ko Dan armada.
If you wish to see a demonstration of this build at work at MP4, please view the video below:
Introduction:
The name Starfighter actually refers to the movie "The Last Starfighter" because the central skill to this build is the Arcane Torrent rune "Death Blossom". Death Blossom has an excessively high damage modifier of 670%, if you combine it with 5 stacks of Arcane Dynamo, it becomes 1171.5%. Now this sounds a lot like the "UberDeath" build on the battle.net forums, but I assure you that its actually quite different. The Uberdeath build is stated to be a glass cannon, as in not the glass cannon passive, but the build is actually a squishy glass cannnon. It also recommends that you get a CMWW tank. This is where the Starfighter build differs in that is an actual build that you can run and farm solo.
When you combine Arcane Dynamo, Cold Blooded and Death Blossom together, the modifier becomes 1465.63% which is well over 4 times what Archon can produce. If my math is wrong, and if it is, please feel free to correct me, but the bottom line is, since the damage modifier is so high, this allows you to do the one thing that most other builds won't let you do, go into an MP with lower than expected DPS and still be able to clear it in an efficient manner. But there is a catch, you cannot aim Death Blossom and you lose the Arcane Dynamo charge when you stop channelling. These are inherently big problems because you could very well run out of AP before all of the enemies are dead or they could very well kill you before you kill them since you can't aim Death Blossom. Therefore, these issues will have to be addressed before we actually take Death Blossom into the battlefield.
To address these issues, here are the 3 things that this build will include:
-Infinite or near infinte Channelling of Arcane Torrent
-Survivability
-Attack Speed
"Don't worry, I'll have it all figured out when we reach the Frontier." Beep Beep Beep... "What's that?" "The Frontier...."
Why this build works?
Here is the logic behind this build: Assume for a moment that God Mode was enabled and you couldn't die. Under this assumption, run into a group of trash mobs with 5 charges of Arcane Dynamo, stand still and use Death Blossom until all mobs are dead and suppose it takes 10 seconds to kill all mobs. Now let’s take away God Mode and have you run into that same group of trash mobs, what this means is that you have to stand still and live for 10 seconds or more if Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo is going to do anything for you. If you can stand still and survive for 10 seconds or more, then statistically speaking, Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo will work for you. When you break Diablo 3 down to its basics, every build essentially does one thing, kill the monsters before they kill you. This build achieves this by tanking the damage long enough for Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo to work its magic.
Sounds like tank and spank, but there are some unique features. The true power of Death Blossom lies in the fact that the DPS offered by your items doesn't have to be amazing to do higher MPs because the damage modifiers offered by Death Blossom, Arcane Dynamo and Cold Blooded are already so high that you can sacrifice damage for survivability without significantly affecting your killing efficiency. In fact, this is one of those rare builds where your ability to survive matters more than the DPS that you're doing. To put it another way, this build is like trying to kill someone with a bazooka while standing in the middle of a cross fire. You don’t really care what the explosive yield of the RPG that’s loaded in your bazooka because you know it’s going to kill the guy you’re aiming at. You’d more worry about surviving the crossfire you’re standing in.
Infinite or near infinite channelling of Arcane Torrent is a must, because you need to be able to maintain Arcane Dyname charged Death Blossom for as long as possible. Without any form of AP cost reduction or increased AP regeneration, you have roughly only 4 seconds of Death Blossom channeling. But first, let’s take a look at the skills.
“At your fingers is the weaponary, the lasers, photon bolts, particle beam....”
Active Skills:
Below are the active skills necessary for this build:
Shock Pulse - Living Lightning: This is for you to build Arcane Dynamo Charges, its free to cast and by far builds it faster than any other spell available.
Ice Armour - Chilling Aura: This serves 3 purposes, first, is it auto snares nearby enemies and second, it allows you to proc Cold Blooded and 3rd, it reduces melee damage by 12%, which helps with survivability. In addition, you can cast this while channeling, thus it will not disrupt your Death Blossom channelling.
Familiar - Sparkflint/Arcanot: There are 2 choices here, you can use Sparkflint for the DPS increase, or you can use Arcanot if you are having problems achieving infinite Arcane Torrent Channelling and survival gear. This will be explained in the items section. The Familiar is necessary because it serves as your primary way to aggro a mob while channelling Death Blossom. The range on Death Blossom isn't great and often you will see it fall short of enemies outside of the blast range. The Familiar shoots in the direction your cursor is pointing at, therefore you can aim it, so use it to pull monsters outside of the Death Blossom blast range without losing your Arcane Dynamo charge.
Arcane Torrent - Death Blossom: This is where the real power of this build is, I have seen character display 69k DPS produce 240k crits under Arcane Dynamo and Cold Blooded, thus you can partially ignore what your on screen DPS is. Now that is not to say that its not important, but its less important that survivability. Also, something to note, Death Blossom isn't truly random, a larger concentration of bolts tends to hit closer to you than away from you. This plays an important part when trying to kill Goblins. Also, Death Blossom has a 0.6 proc coefficient, which we will discuss in the item and strategy section.
That leaves 2 optional skills. I use Magic Weapon – Force Weapon and Diamond Skin – Crystal Shell. Some may question why Diamond Skin – Crystal Shell isn’t a requirement for this build. The reason is because it depends on what MP you play on and what how much survival your gear gives. I play on MP4 with 78k HP and 450 AR and I really only need Diamond Skin – Crystal Shell for the elites with nasty combos. I mean sure, I’ll use it when I am clearing trash just for safety, but if I play on MP0 with those stats, there really isn’t a reason for me to use Diamond Skin. It’s entirely possible that your gear gives you so much survival on the MP you play it that Diamond Skin doesn’t really offer any added value to survival even with a build as random as Death Blossom. In scenarios like this, you’re better off taking a mobility skill like Teleport – Wormhole to increase your efficiency. As stated before, you don’t need to max your DPS because the Death Blossom, Arcane Dynamo combo is potentially overkill even with mediocre DPS, so you can use this slot for whatever suits your play style. In the video, I do not use any mobility spell or utility spell Frost Nova or Wave of Force to demonstrate that these skills are not necessary to this build. More will be covered in the item section.
Passive Skills:
Below are the passive skills necessary for this build:
Arcane Dynamo: This is part of what makes this build so powerful, it provides an additional 75% damage dealt. Death Blossom is a channelling spell, there the Arcane Dynamo "charge" is retained as long as you keep channelling. This is also what makes infinite or near infinite Death Blossom a requirement because you want to maintain the charge as long as possible.
Cold Blooded: Since Ice Armour - Chilling Aura is already part of core build, this will always proc when mobs are close enough to you. But why this over glass cannon? Well there are 2 issues, first, survival is an issue and second because it does more damage. While its true that Chilling Aura's area of influence is smaller than Death Blossom's potential blast radius, Death Blossom also tends to hit closer targets more, so the difference isn't too significant.
That leaves 1 optional skill. More will be covered in the item section. Please note, Critical Mass is not necessary in this build. As with all new builds, we will be avoiding Critical Mass in this build though this build can certainly incorporate it. In the video, I will demonstrate that it is not necessary. I use Blur to assist with survivability.
“She isn't like the other Gunstars, she's a prototype. She has increased range, more power and slight weapons modification. She also has deflector plating, so she can withstand several direct hits.”
Items:
As stated before, this build differs from most builds in that priority of survivability over dps is the focus of this build. Survivability is what determines if this build is going be a steam roller or dying marathon. Also, keep in mind that infinite or near infinite Arcane Torrent is required as well. So your gear will have to have both of these aspects.
Infinite Arcane Power for Arcane Torrent:
Reduced Arcane Power to Arcane Torrent(RAPTAT) only appears on 3 types of items: rings, helms and amulets. Since Arcane Torrent costs 16 AP, I believe that you're guaranteed infinite Arcane Torrent channelling when the RAPTAT is 13 even at 3 APS because of inherent 10 AP regeneration. Now this isn't your only source of AP, there are also items that give AP on crit. Since Death Blossom has such a high proc coefficient, crits will also generate AP, thus you don't necessarily need 13 RAPTAT, allowing extra flexibility in your gear setup. So if you have sufficient APoC on your items, you can realisitcally get away with 2 RAPTAT items totalling 9 or 10. I have gotten away with only 9 APoC, the default 10 AP regeneration and 8 RAPTAT without running into any AP issues. In addition, there are several skills that either increase AP regeneration such as Astral Presence or Familiar - Arcanot or Diamond Skin - Prism that reduces the AP cost of skills. Remember that the DPS from the Death Blossom, Arcane Dynamo and Cold Blooded combo is already EXTREMELY high, thus it’s very possible that if you include damage skills Magic Weapon that you may be doing too much overkill. Remember that DPS is secondary to achieving survival and RAPTAT.
Survival:
This is simple, get as much Vit, AR, DR and life regen as you can. However, since RAPTAT is so much more restrictive in terms of what available, survival sort of has to take a backseat in importance even though survivability pretty much makes or breaks this build. In most cases, you can assume that you will have to give up 2 slots for RAPTAT unless you're willing to use all the AP reduction and AP regeneration skills to possibly get away with using just 1 slot, but again, this all depends on what you have. While DPS is secondary, you can't completely ignore it because of damage stun. If you do enough damage in a single hit to a single monster, the monster will get stunned and this actually plays a critical part in this build. Also, there are quite a few defensive skills that could also help your survival such as Blur, Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell and Slow Time. The bottom line is you can't over do it in one area and expect this build to work. You have to balance survival, infinite Death Blossom channeling and attack speed to make this build work. One last thing to consider is Life Steel, this will be covered in the Attack Speed section.
Attack Speed:
This was not mentioned as one of the requirements, but it is none the less important. Attack Speed dictates how often you can shoot out Death Blossom volleys. More volleys over 1 second means more chances trash mobs will be hit over 1 second and means they will die faster. In addition, it means you can leech more per second. Since both the proc coefficient and damage modifiers are so high, it makes sense that hitting quicker means you will be leeching more. Leeching also helps in your survival, thus attack speed with life leech helps with your survivability.
"How many starfighters are left?" "Including yourself?" "Yea" "One" "WTF #@*&%%"
Strategy:
The basic strategy is pretty simple, build up 5 charges of Arcane Dynamo, stand still and channel Death Blossom until everything is dead around you. The idea is simple, but there are several tricks to remember, spells that you can cast without losing your channelling animation will help you retain your Arcane Dynamo Charge. So having Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell or Prism, while not necessary depending on your survivability, can easily be incorporated without disrupting your Death Blossom charging. Also, Living Lightning usually builds 5 Arcane charges in 1 cast if it hits multiple enemies, thus if you start channeling Death Blossom before Living Lightning finishes you will have a few charges built up already. Next is the Familiar, remember that sometimes melee trash mobs will be outside your Death Blossom blast range. You can aim with the Familiar, so use it to pull aggro so that they walk into your blast radius while you retain your Arcane Dynamo charge. Also, when there are 1 or 2 mobs left, finish them with living lightning. It will help you build your Arcane Dynamo charge so that you will already be ready to use Death Blossom.
One thing to remember is that while you are built for survival, don't be pull too many mobs at once or it will get you killed. Also, choose a MP where your Death Blossom can reliably stun the trash mobs, this actually significantly increases your ability to survive. Remember that enemies closer to you get hit more often than enemies further away from you, so don't always activate your Diamond Skin too early, save it for when your leech isn't able to keep up with damage coming it. Remember that you do not have Critical Mass, so you cannot spam it.
Finally, this last section deals with elites. Certain elite mods will complete ruin your channelling, like vortex, nightmare, frozen and knockback. Things like Arcane Beams or Desecration can also challenge your survival. In cases like this, some kiting is necessary. When this happens, be sure to remember that 5 charges of Arcane Dynamo is not a requirement to Death Blossom. Death Blossom on its own does more than 3 times the damage that the beam skill from Archon can ever do, and when you combine it with Cold Blooded, the damage modifier is still 804%. Remember, the key is surviving.
"Ah..., now you look like a Starfighter...."
Gear Suggestions:
Since attack speed is key to your survival via leeching, you have some freedom, but not too much. Since attack speed is important to your leeching, armour pieces with attack speed pretty much dictate the pool of items that you have to choose from.
Weapon: Chantodo's Will with Lifesteal. This is pretty much the best choice out there, it has the fastest attack speed, comes with APoC and as stated before, Lifesteal is pretty much key. Note that this is not a requirement, because there are wands out there with APoC and you can also get it on your orb, but good legendary orbs with APoC are expensive. It is also available on your helm, but Attack Speed for helms only exist on Andariel's Visage and Mempo's Twilight. So if you want to get it for your helm, you can get Storm Crow, which can also have the RAPTAT mod, but you have to give up Attack Speed.
Offhand: You have complete freedom in this slot, good choices are Chantodo's Force or Triumvirate. But you can also use a shield if you need the survivability. Remember that the damage mod is already INSANE, so you don't necessarily need the damage offered by the Orb.
Jewelry: RAPTAT will have to appear on 2 item slots unless you plan to sacrafice skills to achieve infinite Death Blossom. Skull Grasp is by far one of the best items to have as it also has built in attack speed. That leaves either the necklace or the second ring to have RAPTAT. Mara's Keleidoscope is a good choice if you wish to use Natalya's Reflection and Natalya's Bloody Footprints for the crit set. Stone of Jordan would be the second ring if you plan to use BlackThrone's Duncraig Cross along with Blackthorne's Breeches for the Vit set bonus. If you use Storm Crow, you can get both Blackthorne and Natalya 2 piece set bonuses which are pretty nice. Also note that Stone of Jordan can roll the RAPTAT and adds X% cold damage mod, thus if you get that ring, Cold Blooded will always proc.
Helm: As stated, you essentially have 3 choices, Andariel's Visage, Mempo's Twilight and Storm Crow. Storm Crow cannot have Attack Speed and Andariel's Visage and Mempo's Twilight cannot have RAPTAT and APoc. So you have to choose depending on your jewelery selection. If you want to get both Blackthorne and Natalya 2 piece set bonuses, you have to get Storm Crow.
Everything else: Since attack speed on appears on select legendaries, they are your pool to choose from. I won't go into too much detail as the best choice for say Archon or CMWW usually are these same legendaries anyway. Thus, with the exception of the items I mentioned above, any good Archon or CMWW guild will give you some good direction with regards to what gear to get. However, always remember that survival is more important than max DPS, so your gear for most legendaries tend to be cheaper than what is necessary for an Archon build doing the same MP because you neglect the DPS roll for many of the items you buy. Now this isn’t saying that a Starfighter build is cheap to begin with, you do need some good gear to make this build work. To give you an idea of a gear setup that works, this is what I run in MP4:
Head: Mempo
Neck: Blackthorne
Chest: Zunimassa
Wrist: Lacunni
Gloves: Sage
Shoulders: Craft Shoulders
Belt: The Witching Hour or rare belt
Ring 1: Skull Grasp
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Weapon: Chantodo's Will
Off hand: Chantodo's Force
Pants: Blackthrone
Boots: Ice Climbers
With this setup, I have ~78k HP, attack speed of 2.49 with Enchantress, 23% crit, AR of 450+, and ~70k dps and I survive fine on MP4.
"My appologies Starfighter..."
About me:
In case some of you are wondering, I am the original ChunLi who wrote one of the first Amazon guides for Diablo 2. If you don't know or remember who I am, that's ok, hope you enjoyed reading guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you do know who I am, then most likely I have pissed you off at one point or another, so please feel free to criticize, troll, laugh, flame, cry foul, etc. I find it very entertaining and will occasionally feed you if I find your flames interesting and creative enough, but I usually ignore flames and trolling that are lame and boring. But with that being said, I hope this guide gives everyone something new to try.
"So I was wondering if you'd be willing to stay to help rebuild Starfighter Legion...."
About this guide:
I am going to claim that this build is original, but I cannot guarantee it. I looked around the Bnet forums and the forums here and there are no mention of it anywhere, so I am going to assume that it’s my original build. If I did steal your build, my apologies, I didn't do it on purpose, no hard feelings. But with that being said, I don't have godly gear, so I can't really test this out in anything higher than MP5 with what I currently have, so for those are up for something new and have the gear please give this a try and let me know of your experiences.
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Cooldown reduction also reduces the cooldown on explosive blast. With over 40% CDR, you will get an explosion every second. In addition, I think the internal CD of arcane orbit is about 1 second. Thus, every second, you are getting off 2 explosions, thus you are never running around doing nothing unless you were careless with your Arcane Orbit castings and used up all your Arcane power. Finally, due to cooldown reduction, Explosive Blast will always be ready before your 4th orb goes off, so you will never be running around for no reason. Also, since you are in the thick of mobs, you are maximizing the AOE component of both spells as well.
With regards to plagued/molten/arcane enchanted/electrified/fire chains/etc, the danger lies in the elites surrounding themselves in pools of whatever. The AI isn't smart enough to realize that they are fighting a melee build and thus surround themselves with pools of whatever, they will be using it to try to kill you, thus the trick is to use strafing patterns or simply kite them to another area if the damage pools become too dense. Alternatively, you can simply run through a pool with Diamond Skin on, this will trigger Scamble, which will stack with Diamond Skin, thus allowing you to simply find another group of mobs to build Dominance stacks and return to fight the elites. Remember that you have extreme mobility, so you're not really losing much time by doing this.
Wand of Woh would be a very nice addition to this build, unfortunately, I haven't found one yet. As for the amulet, I thinking of either Moonlight ward or Ess of Johan. There are several other items I am looking at to assist in this area, but I have to find them first.
To be fair, I don't really know how much more effective it is verses other builds, so I will make a video to compare theclearing speeds. Are there any particular builds any of you would like to me use specifically in the comparison?
ChunLi
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If you can't see the video, please go the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd5rdGxCT0s
Introduction:
Blizzard buffed the Illusionist passive a few patches ago because it was an under used passive. Unfortunately, this passive is still an under used talent. However, I believe that this passive has enormous potential when properly understood. Its really good at generating massacre streaks. Thus, I would like to present the "Illusionary Engine" build.
How this works:
Illusionist has 2 parts, it will reset the cooldown of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport when you take more than 15% damage of your Max HP and when you cast any one of Mirror Image, Slow Time and Teleport, it will give you 30% movement speed for 3 seconds. There is also a forth spell that isn't influenced by Illusionist, but gives the same benefit, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Under normal circumstances, you cannot maintain the 30% movement speed bonus through any clever chain casting of Mirror Image, Teleport, Slow time and Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell because the cooldown duration is too high. Therefore, we rely on sufficient cooldown reduction so that it is possible to chain cast in such a way to perpetually maintain the 30% movement speed bonus. At 40% cooldown reduction, you can perpetually chain cast 3 spells so that you always get the movement speed bonus. This is the core engine that makes this build possible.
Secondary considerations:
The next thing to consider is attacks. You actually have total freedom to choose which ever attacks you wish, but here is my opinion. To maximize the benefit of the bonus speed, it is best to use attacks that have no casting animation. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to choose from, there is Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit and Explosive Blast. These spells can be cast while you are on the move, but it requires you to be in close to melee range. Being in melee range means that survivability is necessary. Fortunately, the requirements on survivability isn't concrete and you do have some freedom.
On a side note, you could use other ranged attacks like Blizzard and Hydra and kite with your superior speed, but this is a preference thing, either will work well.
Skills:
Required:
Illusionist: The namesake of this build, this is a must. The movement speed increase it gives when you cast something is what makes this build possible, but don't discount the primary mechanic. Remember that what I propose is a melee build, so you will be able to utilize the primary mechanic to instantly refresh your Slow Time/Teleport/Mirror Image. This will be covered in detail in later sections.
Any 3 out of the 4 skills is required:
Slow Time: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus, however, it does serve the secondary function of helping you deal with ranged mobs. Remember that this is a melee build, thus being able to slow down projectiles goes a long way in helping you survive. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer Point of No Return for the stun to assist in surivability. Unfortunately, you do have to stand still to cast this. Fortunately, any time lost in standing still is made up with teleport.
Teleport: This is one of the skills I use, its primary function is to trigger the speed bonus plus the teleport ability. Any rune works with this build, but I prefer the Calamity rune over the Wormhole rune because of the stun it provides. Remember that teleport gives you the ability to escape vitually everything. In fact, short of being carelessly Frozen, teleport ensures that there shouldn't be any one elite mod that will be the bane of your existance. Also remember, that being in melee means that Illusionist will most likely refresh it regularly, meaning that Teleport -> Calamity can also be used offensively. This is why I prefer the Calamity rune.
Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell: This is one of the skills I use. I think everyone would agree that there really is no reason why you wouldn't have Diamond Skin. I use this skill to free up a skill slot while meeting the 3 skills necessary to maintain perpetual movement speed bonus.
Mirror Image: This skill works with this build, but I personally don't use it because I don't like how you have to stand and cast it and how it moves you in a random direction. To me its counter productive for this build. But if you do want to use it, any rune does work with this build, Mocking Blow in particular would have some uses in this build.
At this point, given that you have sufficient survivability, you have full freedom to use which ever spells you choose. Here are my choices:
Attacks:
Arcane Orb -> Arcane Orbit: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. Remember that you don't need to spam this spell because the orbs don't all go off at once, so this allows you to ration your Arcane Power easier, just cast it when there is roughly 1 orb left will make it very effective.
Explosive Blast: As mentioned before, this skill has not casting animation, thus allowing you to cast and move at the same time. This spell isn't spamable, but the 40% cooldown reduction that is required with this build works on this spell too. Any rune works, but I prefer Chain Reaction because it provides extra hits to proc APOC.
Armour:
Storm Armour -> Scramble: I use this skill because this is a melee build, thus this will be triggering a lot. This isn't necessary, in fact you can really use any armour/rune you wish. I personally like the extra mobility that this rune gives.
Passives:
Blur: This is to help with survivability. Nothing more.
Dominance: This is to help with survivability. You will be killing mobs fairly quickly, thus getting a 10 stack is actually common.
Evocation: This is to assit with getting 40% cooldown reduction. Note that you really don't need this as 40% is achievable without having to make huge compromises, but my gear isn't there yet, so this is why I use this.
Items:
Your gear has to provide sufficient survivability so that you don't suddenly die when you run into melee range for Torment 1, I have roughly 5k armour, 1350 all resist and about 377k HP with no shield and I can run mindlessly into mobs without dying. There isn't a specific item that is a must in this build. The basic requirements are as follows:
1. At least 40% cooldown reduction for 3 spells with movement bonus.
2. Sufficient suvivability so that you can take some hits and enough life on hit/life regen to refill your HP as you take hits.
3. Sufficient Crit change and APOC so that you can refill your Arcane Power.
Number 1 and 2 are more important than number 3. This build isn't Arcane Power hungry, so you don't actually need to worry about Arcane Power too much. I have about 48% Crit Chance and 8 APOC and I don't run into problems. Also having 25% movement speed on your gear and or paragon attributes is a no brainer.
Notable mentions include Illusory Boots and Cosmic Strand. Illusory Boots gives you the ability run through mobs, meaning its a lot harder to get trapped, which is a definite plus when you are in compact maps. Cosmic Strand allows you to combine wormhole with Calamity, which is excellent.
Special Notes:
This is an aggressive build and it will let you zip quickly through maps and bounties. The sequence that you cast Slow Time, Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell and Teleport is important because they also double as your survival spells. Because Diamond Skin is part of the casting sequence to maintain the perpetual speed bonus, you need to know when to engage mobs. Fortunately, your superior speed and mobility makes this a non-issue. Typically, my cast sequence is Slow Time -> Teleport -> Diamond Skin -> Sleek Shell. Also, pay attention to when Illusionist trigger and refreshes your Teleport and Slow Time, it will allow you to use them again for defensive or offensive purposes, depending on what the need is. Finally, keep moving, you have speed for a reason, it will help with your survivability.
Please feel free to leave any comments. Flames will be laughed at if entertaining enough, but it will be ignored if they are too boring.
ChunLi
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The original build can be found here: http://www.diablofan...-blossom-build/
Introduction:
It’s been over a month since I made the first Starfighter build and I have gotten some interesting feedback, criticism and suggestions. So I felt that it would be appropriate to make another video that address the criticisms as well as explore the suggestions given. I’ve had a chance to upgrade my gear, play around with the build to improve performance and I’m happy to report that the build can now be reasonably played in MP7 without much difficulty and the possibility of MP10 is just around the horizon. So let’s begin the Starfighter Refit.
What’s changed:
I managed to get my hands on a SOJ with cold damage, so Ice Armour with Chilling Aura is no longer required. Thus, I have replaced it with Energy Armour with Prismatic Armour for the added survivability. In addition, I now use stormshield instead of a source because it offers far more survivability than any other source that is currently out there. Everything else pretty much remains the same. My upgraded gear now has me at the following:
~1000 all resists
~113k HP
~ 7k armour
~41k DPS
~12.5 CC
~1.51 APS
What’s so interesting about this video vs the original one?
One thing you may question is how come I’m reasonably playing at MP7 with almost half of the CC and DPS that I had in my original video, but in my original video, I couldn’t go past MP5. This illustrates the oddity and uniqueness of this build, the true power of Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo plus Cold Blooded allows you to get away with significantly lower on screen DPS and still clear higher MPs in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, from my own experience, low DPS doesn’t really become apparent until MP8 and above and even then it’s only against elites. At the end of the video, you actually see me kill mobs in MP10 in a reasonable amount of time with just ~41k dps, so the potential of this build. This also illustrates why survivability is so much more important in this build than DPS. This is also why it’s so much different than the CMWW and Archon mainstream builds, because you can’t possibly go into MP10 with only 41k DPS and expect to kill mobs in a reasonable amount of time.
Exploring suggestions:
So I’ve gotten quite a few constructive suggestions in my previous thread for this build, so I’ve explored them and here are my findings:
Azurewrath/Windforce/Echoing Fury:
The original suggestion was using Azurewrath for its high percentage to freeze. Since the proc co-efficient for Death Blossom is so high, there should be a significant of procs that occur. However, lifesteal is not possible on Azurewrath because it cannot roll any random properties, so your lifesteal will have to come from Blood Magic. But even then, you have to consider how damage you are doing with Azurewrath. During my tests, I was using one with 861 DPS and I rarely saw a life leech total over 2000, most were in the 600 to 1000 range. This is an inherent problem because life leech is very important in this build. This isn’t to say that this won’t work, but you would need to invest more in higher end gear to get this to work.
This idea was interesting enough for me to consider other builds and thus, I eventually came up with 2 other choices, Echoing Fury and Windforce. Echoing Fury, while it does provide a CC, the CC is fear. At the beginning, the CC was great when there were great numbers of mobs, but as the mobs started to thin out, it became more of a hinderance because mobs would often run out of Death Blossom’s range. Windforce, on the other had worked nicely, there were noticeable procs and Windforce does roll life leech. However, the trade off of not having a shield did noticeably reduce survivability in MP7, but I could still comfortably play at MP7. Also, for some reason, I feel that there is some limit to how many times you could knockback a target, but maybe it was just my imagination. I didn’t have a high end Windforce, mine did not have a socket, but I believe that a high end Windforce with high enough DPS could reasonably MP10.
Critical Mass:
Many are probably wondering if Critical Mass fits in this build, Critical Mass does wonders for this build, but I will not explore it in this video so that this build won’t be labelled as another “CM build”. In the future, I will make a video that explores the possibilities of Critical Mass in this build. So stay tuned.
Why should I even try this build?
Now let me be clear that this build is not intended to replace the mainstream CMWW or Archon builds and the build itself is not cheap, however, one thing that I would like to point out is that Blizzard has IMPLIED that they are looking to break these build because:
1. CMWW builds, in their opinion, is abusing a game mechanic resulting in perma freeze, thus they are happy with any build that can do this.
AND
2. Archon, by desing, was originally meant to be an super powered cooldown that you were supposed to use when the situation demanded it, not as a permanent state to maintain, thus they are not happy the state the Archon is in at the moment.
So if you assume that Blizzard eventually does make the changes so that these builds don’t work anymore, you really have to question just what exactly builds are left that doesn’t require a ridiculous amount of kiting. In fact, I’m actually personally questioning if Blizzard is purposely limiting us to kiting builds only. Fortunately, in coming up with the original Starfighter build, I have discovered that it offers an entirely new approach towards Wizard build design and I have in fact discovered several new builds that follows this new philosophy. I will be making more videos in the future that makes use of under utilized skills. So for those worried that Wizards will be forced to kite only, fear not, the builds that I have come up with don’t involve much kiting at all. Stay tuned and subscribe to my channel for new developments.
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Its funny that you mentioned Azurewrath because I happen to have one lying around in my stash. I think I kept it because it looked cool. Anyway, I tried your suggestion and it does work nicely, it procs enough that it will freeze 2 or 3 mobs on average. The only problem I noticed was the life leech from the Azurewrath and BM rune rarely produced anything over 2k. When I used my Chantodo's wand, I would often see ticks as high as 6k.
DPS isn't really an issue, but how much you leech sometimes is, it all depends on how quickly you're losing HP. If my gear offered more damage, (for example, I don't have crit chance or crit damage on my lacuni's), I believe your suggestion would work and it would allow this build to go to higher MPs. I built on your idea and used my Echoing Fury and observed a noticable improvement in survivability because there were often 2 or 4 mobs feared. However, it did get pretty annoying trying to kill elites because they kept running away and since you can't aim Death Blossom, well, you get the picture. So maybe you would probably need to carry a second weapon and swap if you are going to use Echoing Fury. But the bottom line is that gear exists that offers better survivability and damage than what I am currently using, so if you happen to have something that gives you even better stats, Azurewrath will allow you to push the build into higher MPs. Good suggestion.
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You don't necessarily need to recharge Arcane Dynamo when you shoot Death Blossom. If you take away Arcane Dynamo, you still have Cold Blooded and the damage modifier is 804%. So you can still kite and shoot Death Blossom without Arcane Dynamo and expect it to take down mobs in a reasonable amount of time. But if you feel the need rebuild Arcane Dynamo Charges, just cast Shock Pulse - Living Lightning once or twice. At over 2 aps, it only takes 1 or 2 seconds to build up another 5 charges, so you can easily have it ready for another Death Blossom. Check out the video I posted, there are some elites that I fight that requires kiting and it doesn't take me an unreasonable amount of time to kill.
With regards to the inability to aim, its no issue with melee, they will walk into Death Blossom, so you don't have to be right in their faces before you start shooting Death Blossom. If you are too far away and Death Blossom isn't hitting them, use the familiar to pull them. Remember that why you cannot aim with Death Blossom, you can aim the Familiar. This is also true of most ranged mobs, most will walk into the blast range before they start attacking. Now sometimes you will have to chase ranged mobs, but that is what chilling aura is for, just get close enough so that it snares them, then use Death Blossom. Of course you can't be too reckless and turn on Rambo mode, survival takes priority, kill the ranged mobs once all of the melee mobs are dead.
I don't have the best gear, but I do have a video of me playing at MP4, its at the top of the post. The main limitations of this builds depends on how much you can survive with the gear that you have. I don't know what kind of survival the best gear can provide, but at 78k HP, 450 AR, 70k DPS and 2.49 APS, I was doing fine on MP4, so I imagine if you had significantly better gear, higher MPs are possible. I do get your point, because I'm not really sure if the current gear available is sufficient for MP10, but then again, I haven't tested it either so I can't say that for certain.
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If you wish to see a demonstration of this build at work at MP4, please view the video below:
Introduction:
The name Starfighter actually refers to the movie "The Last Starfighter" because the central skill to this build is the Arcane Torrent rune "Death Blossom". Death Blossom has an excessively high damage modifier of 670%, if you combine it with 5 stacks of Arcane Dynamo, it becomes 1171.5%. Now this sounds a lot like the "UberDeath" build on the battle.net forums, but I assure you that its actually quite different. The Uberdeath build is stated to be a glass cannon, as in not the glass cannon passive, but the build is actually a squishy glass cannnon. It also recommends that you get a CMWW tank. This is where the Starfighter build differs in that is an actual build that you can run and farm solo.
When you combine Arcane Dynamo, Cold Blooded and Death Blossom together, the modifier becomes 1465.63% which is well over 4 times what Archon can produce. If my math is wrong, and if it is, please feel free to correct me, but the bottom line is, since the damage modifier is so high, this allows you to do the one thing that most other builds won't let you do, go into an MP with lower than expected DPS and still be able to clear it in an efficient manner. But there is a catch, you cannot aim Death Blossom and you lose the Arcane Dynamo charge when you stop channelling. These are inherently big problems because you could very well run out of AP before all of the enemies are dead or they could very well kill you before you kill them since you can't aim Death Blossom. Therefore, these issues will have to be addressed before we actually take Death Blossom into the battlefield.
To address these issues, here are the 3 things that this build will include:
-Infinite or near infinte Channelling of Arcane Torrent
-Survivability
-Attack Speed
"Don't worry, I'll have it all figured out when we reach the Frontier." Beep Beep Beep... "What's that?" "The Frontier...."
Why this build works?
Here is the logic behind this build: Assume for a moment that God Mode was enabled and you couldn't die. Under this assumption, run into a group of trash mobs with 5 charges of Arcane Dynamo, stand still and use Death Blossom until all mobs are dead and suppose it takes 10 seconds to kill all mobs. Now let’s take away God Mode and have you run into that same group of trash mobs, what this means is that you have to stand still and live for 10 seconds or more if Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo is going to do anything for you. If you can stand still and survive for 10 seconds or more, then statistically speaking, Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo will work for you. When you break Diablo 3 down to its basics, every build essentially does one thing, kill the monsters before they kill you. This build achieves this by tanking the damage long enough for Death Blossom plus Arcane Dynamo to work its magic.
Sounds like tank and spank, but there are some unique features. The true power of Death Blossom lies in the fact that the DPS offered by your items doesn't have to be amazing to do higher MPs because the damage modifiers offered by Death Blossom, Arcane Dynamo and Cold Blooded are already so high that you can sacrifice damage for survivability without significantly affecting your killing efficiency. In fact, this is one of those rare builds where your ability to survive matters more than the DPS that you're doing. To put it another way, this build is like trying to kill someone with a bazooka while standing in the middle of a cross fire. You don’t really care what the explosive yield of the RPG that’s loaded in your bazooka because you know it’s going to kill the guy you’re aiming at. You’d more worry about surviving the crossfire you’re standing in.
Infinite or near infinite channelling of Arcane Torrent is a must, because you need to be able to maintain Arcane Dyname charged Death Blossom for as long as possible. Without any form of AP cost reduction or increased AP regeneration, you have roughly only 4 seconds of Death Blossom channeling. But first, let’s take a look at the skills.
“At your fingers is the weaponary, the lasers, photon bolts, particle beam....”
Active Skills:
Below are the active skills necessary for this build:
Shock Pulse - Living Lightning: This is for you to build Arcane Dynamo Charges, its free to cast and by far builds it faster than any other spell available.
Ice Armour - Chilling Aura: This serves 3 purposes, first, is it auto snares nearby enemies and second, it allows you to proc Cold Blooded and 3rd, it reduces melee damage by 12%, which helps with survivability. In addition, you can cast this while channeling, thus it will not disrupt your Death Blossom channelling.
Familiar - Sparkflint/Arcanot: There are 2 choices here, you can use Sparkflint for the DPS increase, or you can use Arcanot if you are having problems achieving infinite Arcane Torrent Channelling and survival gear. This will be explained in the items section. The Familiar is necessary because it serves as your primary way to aggro a mob while channelling Death Blossom. The range on Death Blossom isn't great and often you will see it fall short of enemies outside of the blast range. The Familiar shoots in the direction your cursor is pointing at, therefore you can aim it, so use it to pull monsters outside of the Death Blossom blast range without losing your Arcane Dynamo charge.
Arcane Torrent - Death Blossom: This is where the real power of this build is, I have seen character display 69k DPS produce 240k crits under Arcane Dynamo and Cold Blooded, thus you can partially ignore what your on screen DPS is. Now that is not to say that its not important, but its less important that survivability. Also, something to note, Death Blossom isn't truly random, a larger concentration of bolts tends to hit closer to you than away from you. This plays an important part when trying to kill Goblins. Also, Death Blossom has a 0.6 proc coefficient, which we will discuss in the item and strategy section.
That leaves 2 optional skills. I use Magic Weapon – Force Weapon and Diamond Skin – Crystal Shell. Some may question why Diamond Skin – Crystal Shell isn’t a requirement for this build. The reason is because it depends on what MP you play on and what how much survival your gear gives. I play on MP4 with 78k HP and 450 AR and I really only need Diamond Skin – Crystal Shell for the elites with nasty combos. I mean sure, I’ll use it when I am clearing trash just for safety, but if I play on MP0 with those stats, there really isn’t a reason for me to use Diamond Skin. It’s entirely possible that your gear gives you so much survival on the MP you play it that Diamond Skin doesn’t really offer any added value to survival even with a build as random as Death Blossom. In scenarios like this, you’re better off taking a mobility skill like Teleport – Wormhole to increase your efficiency. As stated before, you don’t need to max your DPS because the Death Blossom, Arcane Dynamo combo is potentially overkill even with mediocre DPS, so you can use this slot for whatever suits your play style. In the video, I do not use any mobility spell or utility spell Frost Nova or Wave of Force to demonstrate that these skills are not necessary to this build. More will be covered in the item section.
Passive Skills:
Below are the passive skills necessary for this build:
Arcane Dynamo: This is part of what makes this build so powerful, it provides an additional 75% damage dealt. Death Blossom is a channelling spell, there the Arcane Dynamo "charge" is retained as long as you keep channelling. This is also what makes infinite or near infinite Death Blossom a requirement because you want to maintain the charge as long as possible.
Cold Blooded: Since Ice Armour - Chilling Aura is already part of core build, this will always proc when mobs are close enough to you. But why this over glass cannon? Well there are 2 issues, first, survival is an issue and second because it does more damage. While its true that Chilling Aura's area of influence is smaller than Death Blossom's potential blast radius, Death Blossom also tends to hit closer targets more, so the difference isn't too significant.
That leaves 1 optional skill. More will be covered in the item section. Please note, Critical Mass is not necessary in this build. As with all new builds, we will be avoiding Critical Mass in this build though this build can certainly incorporate it. In the video, I will demonstrate that it is not necessary. I use Blur to assist with survivability.
“She isn't like the other Gunstars, she's a prototype. She has increased range, more power and slight weapons modification. She also has deflector plating, so she can withstand several direct hits.”
Items:
As stated before, this build differs from most builds in that priority of survivability over dps is the focus of this build. Survivability is what determines if this build is going be a steam roller or dying marathon. Also, keep in mind that infinite or near infinite Arcane Torrent is required as well. So your gear will have to have both of these aspects.
Infinite Arcane Power for Arcane Torrent:
Reduced Arcane Power to Arcane Torrent(RAPTAT) only appears on 3 types of items: rings, helms and amulets. Since Arcane Torrent costs 16 AP, I believe that you're guaranteed infinite Arcane Torrent channelling when the RAPTAT is 13 even at 3 APS because of inherent 10 AP regeneration. Now this isn't your only source of AP, there are also items that give AP on crit. Since Death Blossom has such a high proc coefficient, crits will also generate AP, thus you don't necessarily need 13 RAPTAT, allowing extra flexibility in your gear setup. So if you have sufficient APoC on your items, you can realisitcally get away with 2 RAPTAT items totalling 9 or 10. I have gotten away with only 9 APoC, the default 10 AP regeneration and 8 RAPTAT without running into any AP issues. In addition, there are several skills that either increase AP regeneration such as Astral Presence or Familiar - Arcanot or Diamond Skin - Prism that reduces the AP cost of skills. Remember that the DPS from the Death Blossom, Arcane Dynamo and Cold Blooded combo is already EXTREMELY high, thus it’s very possible that if you include damage skills Magic Weapon that you may be doing too much overkill. Remember that DPS is secondary to achieving survival and RAPTAT.
Survival:
This is simple, get as much Vit, AR, DR and life regen as you can. However, since RAPTAT is so much more restrictive in terms of what available, survival sort of has to take a backseat in importance even though survivability pretty much makes or breaks this build. In most cases, you can assume that you will have to give up 2 slots for RAPTAT unless you're willing to use all the AP reduction and AP regeneration skills to possibly get away with using just 1 slot, but again, this all depends on what you have. While DPS is secondary, you can't completely ignore it because of damage stun. If you do enough damage in a single hit to a single monster, the monster will get stunned and this actually plays a critical part in this build. Also, there are quite a few defensive skills that could also help your survival such as Blur, Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell and Slow Time. The bottom line is you can't over do it in one area and expect this build to work. You have to balance survival, infinite Death Blossom channeling and attack speed to make this build work. One last thing to consider is Life Steel, this will be covered in the Attack Speed section.
Attack Speed:
This was not mentioned as one of the requirements, but it is none the less important. Attack Speed dictates how often you can shoot out Death Blossom volleys. More volleys over 1 second means more chances trash mobs will be hit over 1 second and means they will die faster. In addition, it means you can leech more per second. Since both the proc coefficient and damage modifiers are so high, it makes sense that hitting quicker means you will be leeching more. Leeching also helps in your survival, thus attack speed with life leech helps with your survivability.
"How many starfighters are left?" "Including yourself?" "Yea" "One" "WTF #@*&%%"
Strategy:
The basic strategy is pretty simple, build up 5 charges of Arcane Dynamo, stand still and channel Death Blossom until everything is dead around you. The idea is simple, but there are several tricks to remember, spells that you can cast without losing your channelling animation will help you retain your Arcane Dynamo Charge. So having Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell or Prism, while not necessary depending on your survivability, can easily be incorporated without disrupting your Death Blossom charging. Also, Living Lightning usually builds 5 Arcane charges in 1 cast if it hits multiple enemies, thus if you start channeling Death Blossom before Living Lightning finishes you will have a few charges built up already. Next is the Familiar, remember that sometimes melee trash mobs will be outside your Death Blossom blast range. You can aim with the Familiar, so use it to pull aggro so that they walk into your blast radius while you retain your Arcane Dynamo charge. Also, when there are 1 or 2 mobs left, finish them with living lightning. It will help you build your Arcane Dynamo charge so that you will already be ready to use Death Blossom.
One thing to remember is that while you are built for survival, don't be pull too many mobs at once or it will get you killed. Also, choose a MP where your Death Blossom can reliably stun the trash mobs, this actually significantly increases your ability to survive. Remember that enemies closer to you get hit more often than enemies further away from you, so don't always activate your Diamond Skin too early, save it for when your leech isn't able to keep up with damage coming it. Remember that you do not have Critical Mass, so you cannot spam it.
Finally, this last section deals with elites. Certain elite mods will complete ruin your channelling, like vortex, nightmare, frozen and knockback. Things like Arcane Beams or Desecration can also challenge your survival. In cases like this, some kiting is necessary. When this happens, be sure to remember that 5 charges of Arcane Dynamo is not a requirement to Death Blossom. Death Blossom on its own does more than 3 times the damage that the beam skill from Archon can ever do, and when you combine it with Cold Blooded, the damage modifier is still 804%. Remember, the key is surviving.
"Ah..., now you look like a Starfighter...."
Gear Suggestions:
Since attack speed is key to your survival via leeching, you have some freedom, but not too much. Since attack speed is important to your leeching, armour pieces with attack speed pretty much dictate the pool of items that you have to choose from.
Weapon: Chantodo's Will with Lifesteal. This is pretty much the best choice out there, it has the fastest attack speed, comes with APoC and as stated before, Lifesteal is pretty much key. Note that this is not a requirement, because there are wands out there with APoC and you can also get it on your orb, but good legendary orbs with APoC are expensive. It is also available on your helm, but Attack Speed for helms only exist on Andariel's Visage and Mempo's Twilight. So if you want to get it for your helm, you can get Storm Crow, which can also have the RAPTAT mod, but you have to give up Attack Speed.
Offhand: You have complete freedom in this slot, good choices are Chantodo's Force or Triumvirate. But you can also use a shield if you need the survivability. Remember that the damage mod is already INSANE, so you don't necessarily need the damage offered by the Orb.
Jewelry: RAPTAT will have to appear on 2 item slots unless you plan to sacrafice skills to achieve infinite Death Blossom. Skull Grasp is by far one of the best items to have as it also has built in attack speed. That leaves either the necklace or the second ring to have RAPTAT. Mara's Keleidoscope is a good choice if you wish to use Natalya's Reflection and Natalya's Bloody Footprints for the crit set. Stone of Jordan would be the second ring if you plan to use BlackThrone's Duncraig Cross along with Blackthorne's Breeches for the Vit set bonus. If you use Storm Crow, you can get both Blackthorne and Natalya 2 piece set bonuses which are pretty nice. Also note that Stone of Jordan can roll the RAPTAT and adds X% cold damage mod, thus if you get that ring, Cold Blooded will always proc.
Helm: As stated, you essentially have 3 choices, Andariel's Visage, Mempo's Twilight and Storm Crow. Storm Crow cannot have Attack Speed and Andariel's Visage and Mempo's Twilight cannot have RAPTAT and APoc. So you have to choose depending on your jewelery selection. If you want to get both Blackthorne and Natalya 2 piece set bonuses, you have to get Storm Crow.
Everything else: Since attack speed on appears on select legendaries, they are your pool to choose from. I won't go into too much detail as the best choice for say Archon or CMWW usually are these same legendaries anyway. Thus, with the exception of the items I mentioned above, any good Archon or CMWW guild will give you some good direction with regards to what gear to get. However, always remember that survival is more important than max DPS, so your gear for most legendaries tend to be cheaper than what is necessary for an Archon build doing the same MP because you neglect the DPS roll for many of the items you buy. Now this isn’t saying that a Starfighter build is cheap to begin with, you do need some good gear to make this build work. To give you an idea of a gear setup that works, this is what I run in MP4:
Head: Mempo
Neck: Blackthorne
Chest: Zunimassa
Wrist: Lacunni
Gloves: Sage
Shoulders: Craft Shoulders
Belt: The Witching Hour or rare belt
Ring 1: Skull Grasp
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Weapon: Chantodo's Will
Off hand: Chantodo's Force
Pants: Blackthrone
Boots: Ice Climbers
With this setup, I have ~78k HP, attack speed of 2.49 with Enchantress, 23% crit, AR of 450+, and ~70k dps and I survive fine on MP4.
"My appologies Starfighter..."
About me:
In case some of you are wondering, I am the original ChunLi who wrote one of the first Amazon guides for Diablo 2. If you don't know or remember who I am, that's ok, hope you enjoyed reading guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you do know who I am, then most likely I have pissed you off at one point or another, so please feel free to criticize, troll, laugh, flame, cry foul, etc. I find it very entertaining and will occasionally feed you if I find your flames interesting and creative enough, but I usually ignore flames and trolling that are lame and boring. But with that being said, I hope this guide gives everyone something new to try.
"So I was wondering if you'd be willing to stay to help rebuild Starfighter Legion...."
About this guide:
I am going to claim that this build is original, but I cannot guarantee it. I looked around the Bnet forums and the forums here and there are no mention of it anywhere, so I am going to assume that it’s my original build. If I did steal your build, my apologies, I didn't do it on purpose, no hard feelings. But with that being said, I don't have godly gear, so I can't really test this out in anything higher than MP5 with what I currently have, so for those are up for something new and have the gear please give this a try and let me know of your experiences.
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