Boss Killing Softcore Wizard - WIP

[Wolfpaq777]

Hey guys,

I got started on this build and wanted to get a little feedback on it. First the build in question:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ekZSgi!fbY!ZZZZYb

As we all know there are 3 factors in every boss fight.

1) Your damage output
2) your mobility (or ability to avoid taking hits)
3) your defenses (or ability to reduce the damage of hits taken).

Now as you can see from this build I have heavily focused on #1 with a serious contribution to #2. I have tossed #3 out the door. We have know way of knowing if this is viable or not, but seeing as this is meant to be a softcore build I'd like to steer comments away from "drop some of #1 or #2 for #3". This was an intentional choice on my part. You guys can go make your RoF hardcore boss builds all day, this build is really about damage and stacking multipliers and having the mobility to get out of the way when I need to.

To that effect, let's look at the multipliers we've got and throw some wild numbers out there. Since I don't really want this to turn into a "my formula guess is better than your formula guess" thread, I'm going to pick a pretty neutral formula.

Base Weapon Damage * Skill WD Multiplier * (gear boost) * (skill boost)

What that means is Sparkflint, Frost Nova, Slow Time, Disruption, and Glass Cannon are all going to be additively lumped together in the second parenthesis, while all attack and wizard dmg% from gear will go in the first. I highly doubt this will be the case when the game goes live; my expectation is that the debuffs (ST, FN, disruption) will be in a separate category, but no real point debating it until we can test.

So! Base Weapon Damage: standard 135 for wands, let's say 800 wizard damage % and 1000 attack, and calculate out the Arcane orb damage for different scenarios.

FN, ST and Disruption are up:
135 * 4.95 * 2.8 * (1 + .4 + .2 + 1.1 + 1.4 + 1.2 = 5.3) = 9,917 arcane orb

ST and Disruption are up:
135 * 4.95 * 2.8 * (1 + .4 + .2 + 1.4 + 1.2 = 4.2) = 7,859 arcane blast

FN and Disruption are up:
135 * 4.95 * 2.8 * (1 + .4 + .2 + 1.1 + 1.2 = 3.9) = 7,297 arcane blast

Only Disruption is up:
135 * 4.95 * 2.8 * (1 + .4 + .2 + 1.2 = 2.8) = 5,239 arcane blast

Not too shabby. For comparison's sake, let's look at what a crimson meteor (highest damaging wizard spell) would be doing on a wizard using the same gear:

135 * 9.9 * 2.8 *(1 + .4 + .2 + 1.1 + 1.4 = 4.1) = 15,343
135 * 9.9 * 2.8 *(1 + .4 + .2 + 1.4 = 3) = 11,227
135 * 9.9 * 2.8 *(1 + .4 + .2 + 1.1 = 2.7) = 10,104
135 * 9.9 * 2.8 *(1 + .4 + .2 = 1.6) = 5,988

For significantly less AP, you get a much more easily landed nuke doing comparable damage. The disadvantage is you need to land arcane torrent on the boss every 5 seconds, which should not be difficult, but i could be wrong.

So as far as mobility goes, fights should be pretty straight forward. When you aren't lining up your next orb, you should be mobile. 20% movement boost every time you're hit for 5 seconds should help you stay out of harms way. Reverse teleport + fast runspeed for juking the boss. It looks like Blizzard isn't putting run speed on every item slot known to man, so the 20% should actually be meaningful. Throw a ruby in your helm for another 15% and rock some 12% boots and you will be very speedy, and the boss will almost always be at -24% movespeed thanks to your unhittable familiar.

Why I am looking for feedback? My primary concern is AP. I have no AP management at all in my build. I'm not sure that I need it. At 12.5 regen / second I should only need 7ish to land disruption, 15 for teleport, and 35 for arcane orb for a relatively cheap nuke. Let me know what you think!

[PlatinumWarlock]

Long story short, you're going to run out of AP very quickly, and be unable to spam Arcane Torrent/Orb long enough to deal damage consistently.

On top of that, you deal almost entirely Arcane damage. What happens when you run across a boss with high Arcane resist, or even Immunity? Frost Nova isn't going to cut it, in those situations. I can imagine they'll be fairly frequent, and having some other damage dealing ability runed-up and ready to go is pretty important.

Why Storm Armor? I can't imagine that it's going to do that much for you. I'd exchange that for Energy Armor (probably with a Golden Rune for the extra AP when you get hit, or Indigo, for the straight-up 40 AP). Either that, or change out for an Academic/Signature spell--Electrocute or Shock Pulse, for AoE, with a Golden rune. That'd give you a secondary damage type, while fixing your AP-regen issue.

Sorry, I just don't see your build as being sustainable for a lengthy boss-fight, as is.

[Wolfpaq777]

There is no immunity in this game. If there is a boss that is highly resistant to arcane, obviously there will need to be a different build for that one.

Fortunately we can switch skills on the fly so your first two issues are quite neatly resolved.

I picked storm armor for the mobility. In D2 when fighting bosses a very important part of the game was being able to move quickly to get out of the way of ... whatever it is. I imagine D3 will be the same. However you are right, it is clearly the weakest link in the build. Perhaps swapping it out for a golden runed signature skill, possibly arcane missile to take advantage of temporal flux and get the guaranteed 14 AP back would be the way to go.

Thanks!

[PlatinumWarlock]

When there's a Barbarian skill that outright states that it can break monster immunities (Wrath of the Berserker), I think there are going to be immunities, particularly in Inferno difficulty.

Even if there aren't, there will definitely be Arcane Resistant monsters many of which will be Uniques/Bosses, which will put a crimp on your plans.

I agree that the respec mechanic will help you get around this, but let's face it--no one wants to have to swap out their skills in the middle of a boss fight, and your typically unruned (or lesser-runed) swap skills aren't going to hold a candle to the skills you've invested high level runes in. While, after 87 playthroughs, you might end up with Level 7 runes in everything...that's not going to be the case for quite a while.

One of the reasons that I would recommend Electrocute or Shock Pulse over Magic Missile is the multi-target effect they have. If the Skeleton King is any indication, we can expect that quite a few of the boss encounters in DIII are going to be able to summon mobs to distract you. Taking out those mobs quickly (and picking up the Health Globes they drop), will let you get back to the bigger task of beating the boss. As such, a multi-target, AP-regenning skill becomes important--of the three available, only Electrocute and Shock Pulse are long-range skills, which is why I didn't recommend Spectral Blades.

For mobility, I think you'll be fine between Teleport and Slow Time. Dropping Storm Armor in favor of something to regen AP, I think, will really help the overall resource problem here.

I'm still not sold on Frost Nova, but it makes for a good "emergency" button. Personally, I think I'm leaning more towards Wave of Force, but that's neither here nor there.

[Wolfpaq777]

Both of my main damaging skills are AoE so I don't think AoE will be a problem. Keep in mind that arcane torrent has a net cost of 7.5 AP / second, meaning 1-2 pieces of 8 AP on crit should be all I need to keep it going endlessly.

Frost nova is taken to synergize with evocation for another damage booster. I may be sacrificing too much for damage boosts though.

The immunity breaking barb skill may have existed... a long time ago. Go check the calculator now, it is no longer there (or its effect has been changed). Blizzard has said multiple times in interviews, at blizzcon, etc that there will be no immunities in Diablo 3.

[PlatinumWarlock]

Fair enough on the WotB skill--the point remains, though, that Arcane resistant monsters will still be rough.

I guess I look at Frost Nova this way--if you're that close to a monster, even with Teleport, you're hip deep in trouble anyway. It makes for a good "emergency button", as I mentioned, but I just don't see it being reliable as a method of setting up a damage combo.

My recommendation for AoE on a Signature/Academic spell comes more from the idea of this: if you're out of AP, Arcane Orb and Arcane Torrent aren't going to do you much good. So, while they're AoE, they're not useful at that point. It's a thought.

Overall, you've got some really good stuff stacking here. I really don't mean to come off as critically as I think I have. I just think that resource cost is going to be a class-defining element for the Wizard, probably more than any other class.

[Wolfpaq777]

I appreciate the feedback. I'm not sure how useful the fast running storm armor would be anyway so AP returning electrocute could be a good idea.

[Buu]

If AP management is your concern, I would suggest changing the storm armor rune to golden (decreases arcane costs by 7), or swap storm armor for a golden runed familiar for more AP regen.

Although this would be a hilariously high damage output configuration (assuming familiar works with spells, and not just it's own attacks).
Also depends on the effect of Archon on the other skills.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ekOSmZ!fbY!ZZZZZZ

[PlatinumWarlock]

Oooh, I totally forgot about Familiar! Yeah, with a Golden rune for AP regen, you'll be able to spam your Arcane Torrent all day long.

Plus, if the Familiar gets the same damage boosts as you, that'll make for a great secondary damage source.

[mysticjbyrd]

We conducted a few tests on the Blizz forums and we speculated that,

The formula is likely,
Base Damage *[Attack Function%]*[Sum of Gear%]*[Sum of Passive Bonus%]

You can see our #s here,
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3279039059?page=2


PS: Concerning the build.
Any build w/o some method to regain AP is imo flawed.
Signature spells are by far the best method, Power of the Storm is potent, and passive regens pretty much suck.

[Wolfpaq777]

hm... I'd like to keep the familiar crimson for the increase in multiplicative damage, especially since it appears that attack and wizard damage is calculated seperately.

So I could either throw a golden rune in storm armor, or grab a golden signature spell in its place. Seeing as this is a build specifically for boss fights, and I am already set on arcane damage / temporal flux / disruption, I think I'll go with golden magic missile for 14 returned every hit with no need to rely on hitting 2+ targets as i would need to with electrocute.

[mysticjbyrd]

The equation for calculating the # of casts possible, (Assuming haste does not increase passive regen)
(a-r* t^2)*(c-1) = m-a

=> c =(m-rt^2)/(a-rt^2)

a = arcane power cost
m = maximum arcane power
r = regen rate of arcane power
t = cast speed
c = # of casts

a = 35
m = 89 (I assume you open with Arcane Torrent, thus (-20AP/0.7+12.5)*0.7 = -11 AP)
r = 12.5
t = 0.7 (I pulled 0.7 sec cast speed from my dark orifice.)

c =(80-12.5*0.7^2)/(35-12.5*0.7^2) = 2.87 casts


So, you would only get 1 Arcane Torrent + 2 Arcane Orbs off before you had to stop, stand there, and regen. With Power of the Storm you could get off 4.1 casts before you had to stop.

Magic Missile + golden is not only a great choice for this build, but you could almost go as far as to say required for single target.

EDIT: Also, the only CD you have are fairly short, so you could replace evocation for astral presence. It would increase the # of Arcane Orbs possible from 2.87 to 3.65.

EDIT2: Magic Missile + golden might actually be overtaken by Magic Missile + Crimson on OVERALL average dmg. I will look into it more.

[magicrectangle]

It seems to me that you only need to use one skill slot for a boss killer ability: crimson ray of frost.

Then you have the rest of your slots free for figuring out how you want to deal with the mobs of enemies you'll spend most of your time fighting. A build that's primary focus is boss killing seems silly given that D3 isn't going to allow you to skip to bosses (and that doing so wouldn't be beneficial anyway).

[Ice Mistress Freya]

How FCR affects channeled spells will determine how ridiculous or useless ROF is. Mobility requirements as well, but those apply equally to this build (they're actually much more severe depending on the speed of the target).

Maintaining a short duration debuff is usually quite annoying. But at the end of the day with the right gear things are going to die almost instantaneously anyway.

[magicrectangle]

If mobility turns out to be a big concern I'd say that hydra would become a pretty nice anti-boss ability. Arcane hydra might pair nicely with the above build, although IMHO you still need a real AoE killer like disintegrate in any build. In beta when I got disintegrate I immediately stopped using arcane orb. There is really no comparison.

[Ice Mistress Freya]

As with ROD, how +cast speed interacts with channeled spells will determine whether disintegrate is viable or completely useless.

And yes, if the developers are to be believed (a dubious proposition), being able to handle the hordes will be as or more important than pure boss killing power.

[mysticjbyrd]

I looked into it and you do get more dmg using Crimson Magic Missile over Golden Magic Missile in single target boss fights. However, the dmg increase is really small, maybe +10% wpn dmg at best. Obviously Golden Magic Missile wins hands down in AoE.