The only item on your character that you might keep for a longer time is the Stone of Jordan. Unfortunately it rolled lightning, which is the weakest element for wizards right now, but it doesn't really matter; I would keep it (unless you find a Unity, which is a very good alternative at your gear level and even an end-game item if you find two of those and use it on your follower with the "follower can't die" legendary item).
Like Jamoose said - all other gear needs to be replaced in the end. Rare items aren't really end-game content, and the legendaries you have (except the SoJ) are all not end-game gear. That being said, you have other things to worry about for now.
I'd say the quickest way for you to gear up is crafting (given that you have the necessary plans already), especially since you have the Ring of Royal Grandeur. Many sets are useful depending on the build you want to play:
- Aughild's is great in general, and an endgame set, because of the 3 piece bonus.
- Asheara's is great because of 100 all resist and the 4 set bonus if you decide to use a follower. (20% life are NOT the reason why you want this set.)
- Born's is awesome if you decide to use cooldown spells.
- Cain's is nice because of the attack speed; if you use channeling spells though stay away from this set!!!
- Captain Crimson's is a very decent overall set with cooldown reduction, resource cost reduction, and 50 all resist - it's probably the second best after Aughild's overall and the 2nd priority to craft.
Forget all other crafted sets.
Legendary items that are worth crafting are Utar's Roar if you go cold or Devastator if you go fire. Cosmic Strand is a very nice starter orb; I see you're not using Teleport but give it a try. It's a life saver in solo play and almost essential in any quick group as all classes have some sort of speed buff similar to Teleport.
Pick a combination of set items/slots that sounds reasonable to you and craft a few items, equip your Ring of Grandeur and it should look much better.
Here's a breakdown of stats you want to get on all the specific slots (obviously intelligence on EVERY slot, so I'm omitting that):
- Helmet: critical hit chance, socket, vitality. You can give up on the socket if you're not using cooldown spells.
- Shoulders: depending on your build cooldown reduction (Archon build) or resource cost reduction (channeling spells like Arcane Torrent); toughness stats (vitality, all resist, armor)
- Chest: 3 sockets, high armor roll (500+). Fourth stat vitality or all resist or 11% elite damage reduction or whatever you prefer.
- Bracers: critical hit chance, elemental damage bonus, toughness stat (vitality, all resist, or armor). Note that bracers are very expensive to craft now (120 Arcane Dust, will be lowered to 72 with 2.1, so don't craft too many).
- Pants: 2 sockets, high armor roll (500+), vitality or all resist.
- Gloves: critical hit chance (absolutely must-have on gloves), critical hit damage, and depending on your build attack speed or cooldown reduction. If you are below 250k life overall, you can also get vitality here (rolls up to 750).
- Belt: vitality, all resist, armor. Never life%, and only damage spell that makes sense is Magic Missile if you have a Mirrorball.
- Boots: movement speed (until you are paragon 200 - then max movement speed in paragon and remove it from boots); toughness stats (vitality, amor, all resist).
- Amulet: critical hit chance can roll up to 100 on an amulet and is therefore #1 priority, absolute must. Critical hit chance is #2, followed by elemental damage. Amulet is the one slot where your main stat is only priority number #4!
- Rings: critical hit damage (you'll have more CHC than CHD because of your orb, therefore CHD is more important on rings); critical hit chance, and cooldown reduction. However, in the end you can't have all of those because endgame rings (Stone of Jordan, Ring of Grandeur, Unity) have fixed rolls, therefore just keep in mind the order "main stat > CHD > CDR/CHC" for rings and you'll be fine.
- Orb: critical hit damage, vitality, your main damage spell as damage bonus (socket is also acceptable; it's very difficult to re-roll a perfect orb so don't waste too much here).
- Weapon: high damage (check the blue damage roll range, 1199-1490 is max, so anything above 1100-1400 is quite good); socket is an absolute must. Including main stat that's already 3 primary affixes - the fourth one depends on which weapon/spec you have. For all weapons that have an element affix (like Devastator) that's already the fourth affix and you should keep that; Sunkeeper is also awesome because of the up to 30% elite damage. The best weapons are the Wand of Woh or Thunderfury, but many other weapons are viable as well. Take what you can get a hold of.
Regarding a build, read Jaetch's guide. Nothing to add there.
As for toughness, make sure to check your life as well; stay away from life % on items and focus on mitigation first (armor, all resist, melee/ranged/elite damage reduction - the first two are secondary affixes, so those are important to consider as well). Keep your life somewhere at 250k-300k, or 350k in the beginning if you feel too squishy, but not much higher. Here's a good thread that elaborates on why toughness is oftentimes misleading us. And here's a calculator that let's you calculate your mitigation. I see that your gems are really low level - until you have the money to upgrade to at least 220 int topazes just put diamonds in all your armor sockets, they offer much better bang for your buck. Also note that four slots can roll higher armor (up to 595) than the others - chest, pants, amulet, and helmet - which is why armor is a must on chest and pants (if it rolls 500+, it can also roll the lower 350+ roll, in which case it's not better but just on par with other stats). On amulet and helmet, other stats are more desirable.
Good luck with the hunt!
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Otherwise, Dex-Vit is just as good because you can further push your Dex, and having that +vit, works better with those who use VIt Gem in Helm. And Also that extra +vit enables them to hunt down higher base +Dex pieces on each slot, or that when crafting Bracers, the RNG may not enable you to have more than 80 vit, then your boots can cover it, so +vit on boots is at a later game or that when you have covered the resistance issue.
At some point, Stats is better than the resistance, offensiveness and bigger pool just aids your Life % (for those that usually give instant advice with "Vit Gem in Helm"), which Focus Nat's Boots can't give. It is all situational and gear-based on each different profile.
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Normally, even though it's not very good for DPS, double Vitality Inna's Pants to start out when leveling Paragon levels.
1) Vitality Inna's Pants >>> 162+ vit / 96+ dex / 9% Attack Speed Bonus
If you do not wish to do that, then you would change your chest to a really high Vitality one.
2) Vitality Inna's Chest >>.> 188+ vit / 184+ dex / 11% Life or 12 / 6% Melee Dmg Reduction
or do both
At your HP, I really like Serenity Peaceful Repose if you were to use/keep Serenity. Why Peaceful Repose? Ascension is usually pre-popped, unless you're guaranteed not to get a Shielding affix pack and you must be hitting them constantly, or else you'd still be at low HP at the 5th second.
Everything you do for foundation stats is, each slot, think in a Gem Tier perspective. You have many slots where you have +vit, a gem tier method to think about is...
Let's say for example your Nat's Boots, I understand that your current gems are very mid-tier, but the final tier is a Marquise (62-stat)
So you want to make sure that each of your foundation stat for +vit for "every slot" is at least 58 to 62 vit and no less. Or else, you pretty much want to work on changing/upgrading.
This way, you will know how to advance and have "bare minimum stats" to boost your survivability, as well as feeling like your pieces are worthwhile.
So why did I say 184 up above? 100 (first max roll) + 2 * 42-stat gems.... just an example number, you can always go for more.
So, for your Nat's Boots (currently @ 180dex/37int/42vit/71AR/5% mDR), you can upgrade it to:
3) 196+ dex / 62+ vit / 76+ AR / 6% Melee Damage Reduction
or you can go 224+ dex
So why 196 or why 224? 100 + 2 * 46-stat + 4 = 196 or 224 = 100 + 100 + each gem goes up by 4's so i just do an estimated increase.
Once you use some of these methods, you'll know how to budget for per-stat purchasing
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Thank you for your welcoming
Of course, the utilization of 15% straight onto CHC, is always efficient, however, like you said, if you fall into the trap, 3 seconds won't buy you anything, well you can't handle to stop them to cast more Living Lightning. The goal here is to actually let your Living Lightning play through.
Even though this game does not really "endorse" Hit Recovery, freezing them more consistently, 3-seconds of freezing time enables you to do more Living Lightning without feeling the pressure when you are indeed "surrounded". In fact, coming from this, most people I have seen actually ran Diamond Skin Crystal Shell of sorts, rather than Frost Nova of "any rune".
Your goal is to kill them, if you do crit them so much from having the need of Frost Nova Deep Freeze, then it's not really out-of-archon mode, it's actually a "lifesaving" concept then because you're now relying on your Deep Freeze rune to buck you back into Archon Mode. My way is an out-of-archon game play to do it at a relaxed rate, and then with foundation Critical Hit Chance ratio to your Critical Hit Damage, I am not saying you need a lot of Critical Hit Chance for Archon but it shouldn't be any different if you were to talk about the 15% straight up from the Deep Freeze rune, you can very well gear as if you were CM in Archon, you just got to prioritize the Critical Hit Damage, more than Attack Speed Bonus % and of course, the other things that you would need to do to get more "Sheet DPS", I am no expert in the "Sheet DPS" concept, but I do know that if I am not going to run out of archon, I don't need Deep Freeze to buck me back into it.
The idea of "Out-of-archon mode" is to enable you to still kill if you happen to say, you had to 'spilled' coffee, or like your party members didnt clear mobs for you to keep on reducing cooldown, like you went back to town, and you still came back in time. The idea is that your Critical Hit Chance should come from your gear.
Deep Freeze rune, even for CM side, has always been a rune in question. Most people use it, in CM, as a "reliance" because it is a direct 15%, so it's like you no longer need to purchase 15% CHC (which is beneficial to low low budget) but at some point, that is very well undermining the actual tooltip of the passive. So with a mindset of "reliance" over actually being able to gear that 15% from gear, you shouldn't actually need Deep Freeze to help you with that "recovery", mine is a lax out-of-archon method to play the game as if you were half CM.
If you get my drift. I am not saying you are wrong, and I am not saying I'm 100% right. But either way, you didn't really need to play out-of-archon for "bucking yourself back in", the idea is to be able to play outside of archon mode, in some situations you may take too long to clear an elite pack, and you need to "cc" them, yes your gear should have had that 15% CHC.
The fact is also, an elite pack is often 3 to 4, only the yellow elite boss is 5, but the minions fall off quicker "as your SHEET DPS" goes up and improving.
At the same time, even though the concept is to "chain" to buy time for your Archon (to stay in Archon), sometimes you just have no choice, like you say you're walled in, or surrounded, you need to get things done, you may not have the opportunity to have more than 5 creatures, like say in Leoric Courtyard, do you expect yourself to run thru the gates if you have already killed all the excess guys or you always want to ensure you have at least 5 to benefit that 12-seconds? The 12-seconds is also not used on a lower Sheet DPS (a low low budget).
Deep Freeze rune: That 12-second as the buff, especially in CM, the 12-second is the ideal time to "KILL" the elite, not the "reliance of the 15% chc", that should be within your endgame gear, 'coz when you end up with "Single Target", or below 5 whatever it may be, you're only talking about chaining, I want to see "Single Target" (I won't mind you teaching me on Single Target control for a low budget, that will be extremely helpful, and i don't mean to kill off on a lower MP that is suited to your DPS, I mean really for the CM tooltip and concept for CHC.
I hope that you understand my explanation and I really want to learn more about when you really don't have 5 targets, I know about mob density but there are certain situations that you are surrounded, but doesnt mean 5 monsters are within hit radius either.
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Not entirely up to the Archon spec, however, I can definitely provide some survival aspect advice.
Skills
1) Frost Nova Cold Snap rune for out-of-Archon is better.
The only thing about this is that if you came from CM --> Archon (in terms of Critical Hit Chance gear from CM, then your Frost Nova if you happen to play more out-of-Archon-mode, then you will have a better cooldown to keep freezing, and also cooldown reduction via Critical Mass passive helps to regain access to Archon mode if you lost it somehow)
2) Switch out Cold Blooded for Glass Cannon
3) Temporal Flux is quite unorthodox, and you should go for the standard Galvanizing Ward, to try to top-off more Life Regen aiding the standard use of Vile Ward
**** Your current HP is 31.7k (with Star Amethyst in Helm) is a real warning sign. ****
Your Vile Ward (@ 175int/74vit/80AR/240Life Regen), while you succeed in minimally doing that Shoulder Slot for base Vitality, offensively, being below-200 Primary Stat is really not up-to-date.
Of course, good job on keeping yourself with 24% Movement Speed, however your current problem of HP will mean, 0 HP = 0 DPS.
So you may want to reconsider your Chest, Pants and Bracers, prioritizing more on Vitality in some way, while also noting that Life% on Strongarms, is not going to be as effective. Reason is: Life % also acts upon base +Vitality, the balance between both is important to boost up one's HP.
Armor is indeed important as Archon, however you'll need to start working to provide a certain balance. So far your Vile Ward and Zuni Pox are your two All Resistance pieces, so you got to know your Defensive slots, prioritizing +Armor and All Resistance properly on the Defensive Slots.
Okay onto DPS, your current Average Damage on your Triumvirate is: ( 106 + 263 ) / 2 = 184.5
1) You'll want to work onto grabbing 235-240+ Average Damage, on mid-tier.
2) Open socket weapon is always handy for more Critical Hit Damage.
3) Average Damage on your pieces of jewelry is also really important, so your Skull Grasp will most likely be your immediate change.
Right now, work on getting your HP towards 40k HP (preferably without that Vit Gem in Helm).
And then slowly work on that Primary Stat, Critical Hit Damage, and Average Damage.
I mainly help people with "foundation stats" than the actual "Sheet DPS", like I said, 0 HP = 0 DPS, and more time wasted to get back to where you were just killed is "loss of DPS".
I hope there will be others to help you with more about your DPS.
Enjoy!
Cheers!
- Lotware -
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Okay, for any specific build that you do, a "Ranged" class should always use "distance" as DPS, so my priority is also to look after the Generator shot, or any other DPS skills that may apply. In concept, it is same with Zombie Bears build, you don't just simply run in and hope to spam zombie bears, you use your distance and throw/cast a ranged generator shot, "distance is your friend, aka a ranged class.
As for him also, i am seeing at least one defensive skill like Guardian Turret. He could easily output even more DPS via Echoing Blast Spike Trap, placing that near himself if when he does "channel" until the monster comes right up at him, at least he's punching out more DPS for Shadow Power Gloom.
To clarify further, I actually just checked his APS (after these conversations, i just had to make sure I wasn't just being a jerk about the IAS), this is a really good discussion though. It allows me to understand the perspectives of another person.
His DH is showing "Attacks Per Second: 2.014", Unless I'm seeing it wrong, Manticore user, no matter what, really should maintain that 2APS, or is it 2.1? I don't remember. It will be good if someone can remind me on this.
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Besides, he needs to rework the resistance, 74 + 58 + 62 on pants (which is gonna go more or less) + 77 = 271 AR
I hope that his "crafted bracers" is 80 AR and the +vit better be at least 80+ if crafting were to "fix" foundation stats as his nat's ring is also holding 71vit, rings need to be offensive, especially towards "his goal of 350k dps", so the pressure is ON if we put crafting on the line. He needs to make it past 300 towards 350. Provided as well that his default armor on each slot boosts him enough, as +Armor is just as essential, for the "optimal mitigation values".
And I did say, "to not talk about budget", and besides Manticore is sleepy at the wrong APS, ofc Rapidfire is different but you don't want your Generator to be so lackluster if you hapen to be roaming very quickly or needing to move and can't even channel properly, you need your other attacks to be "hit & run" or deal just as much when you can't hold out for "channeling".
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Foundation Stats just needs to be worked on a bit more.
Boots: Your current Nat's Boots' +22 vit is barely helping you at all in most cases. Think of it this way, all your current gems, or most of it is at least a Perfect Star (+54 dex and above), so you may want to consider making that your goal that each slot in which you want base +vitality to be, at least +54 vitality. So your boots you can take up more +vitality.
Organizing All Resistance on a DH Is really important.
Helm, Belt, Bracers are a few good places to do All Resistance, Gloves too but those can be harshly expensive, the ones that provide a wall of text of all the required elements.
I am not guaranteeing 350k+ but you need to re-organize that AR if you're really upgrading because you're being "locked in".
Gloves: 150+ dex / 7%+ IAS / 40+ AR / 27%+ CHD / 8%+ CHC
Bracers: 70+ dex / 9% IAS / 45+ AR / 5% or more CHC
Boots: 224+ dex / 62+ vit / 77+ AR / 6% Melee Dmg Reduction
Helm: Grab the Mempo for more base AR
Pants: 162+ dex / 62+ vit / 9% IAS
Your jewelry pieces, you are also lacking, at least one piece of "xx - xx Average Damage".
Your current green gem in your Manticore, you should just also push it up to Marquise Emerald.