Short ranged wizard build - Abusing cooldown reduction and you der

[ElementEight]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UiXgOm!abg!cYZYbb

Key points:

Rapid damage dealing signature skill and arcane power spender to quickly generate critical hits.
These critical hits reduce all cooldowns.
The reduced cooldowns include Diamond Skin with the Prism rune, which basically makes Disintegrate free, and ensure your survival.
The reduced cooldowns include Slow Time, already on a short cooldown due to its rune and Evocation, which ensure your survival even more. Potential other defensive replacements include Wave of Force, Mirror Images or Frost Nova.
Archon also has its cooldown reduced by crits, its base cooldown already low due to its rune and Evocation. Archon is ****ing badass.
Energy Armor provides armor (you're short ranged, after all) and additonnal arcane power for Archon and the times your Prism isn't up.
Blur provides more damage reduction still.

Some hypothetical numbers:

Disintegrate hits twice per second. With a reasonable 33% chance to crit, you would crit once per 1.5 sec against a single target, basically making the cooldown of your Diamond Skin (base: 15; with evocation: 13) barely longer than its duration, due to Critical Mass. Against two targets or more, you'll potentially be able to keep it up faster than they can break it, especially with Slow Time. Yeah, Slow Time is affected in a similar manner, except that it's got like, 2-3 more seconds of a cooldown.

The rotation:

(without Archon)
You see, like, a champion pack of 4. Make sure that Energy Armor is up.
1) Diamond Skin
2) Slow Time
3) Disintegrate
4) Refresh Diamond Skin & Slow Time as they really quickly come back up, due to your quickly ticking (and critting) Disintegrate via Critical Mass, and of course, Evocation.
5) Running out of AP? Shouldn't really happen, since you have 12 regen per sec, and Disintegrate costs 5 per sec due to Prism, but if that happens, just use the lesser Electrocute.

Enjoy

[Karpalo]

I had similar idea, but if you go the way of critical mass and cooldown reduction i think archon is too good skill to pass up.

[Elfik]

Do archon abilities require AP? I'm asking because I would rather pinpoint barrier than force tap for energy armour, to increase critical hit % by 5%, which will increase damage and increase your critical mass procs.

I agree that disintegrate is probably the best non-signature skill for generating critical hits, assuming it can do so, as the jury seems to be out on that one.

Also, frost nova: deep freeze, is something I'd fit in the build somehow, probably by dropping slow time. I think the freeze effect of frost nova more than offsets the loss of a 30/20 snare from slow time. The perpetuity rune effect I think is far inferior to something like stretch time, which would net you more criticals by the way.

[Jaago]

Why go short-range with Entropy when you can keep your distance and do just as much or more damage with Intensify? I don't think energy tap is really needed with Prism, the effect most likely doesn't last through into Archon, anyways.

I remember someone testing the proc rate of Critical Mass and the result was quite disappointing, like 10% on a critical. If that remains so, I'd consider another passive. There's also some discussion going on about whether skills like Disintegrate can crit at all.

Besides these concerns, I like the build, and will definitely try it myself.

[stillman]

I suspect all builds will be short range builds, like it or not. With so little run speed available and almost no reliable Wizard AoE skills, we will never have much opportunity to hit from a huge distance, exceptions being maybe in the easy Act 1 areas or if you have a party keeping enemies at bay. Also, the defensive skills for slowing, freezing, and stunning enemies work at close range: Frost Nova, Slow Time, Wave of Force, and the armor spells. It's just speculation, but I think we will all have to think in terms of short range like the OP.

[ElementEight]

Disintegrate can't crit, if I recall. A shame, as it'll certainly ruin the scalling on the skill in comparison to other skills.
Frost Nova is an alternative I've suggested over Slow Time. It has a slightly shorter cooldown (from 4 to 7 seconds shorter with the rune), but it also has less than half the duration. The jury needs to play the game to figure that one out.
If Prism can be kept up for a good amount of time, the extra AP on Energy Armor may indeed seem lackluster.
I highly doubt the proc % chance on critical mass would be a measly 10% per crit.


As a result of these, I have switched the build around: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UeXYOm!abg!aaZYZb

The choice of Disruption on Arcane Torrent (to replace the non-critting Disintegrate) is that it makes the skill the most damaging and reliable rune. It will also benefit Archon for its first 6 seconds if you use AT then timely use your Archon skill against affected foes.

As Arcane Torrent is not a melee alternative, Electrocute was also changed to Chain Lightning, a ranged version of the skill which hits up to 6 targets, hopefully racking up quick critical strikes.

In a non-solo environment, Blur could be changed to Glass Cannon or Arcane Dynamo. The latter, as Electrocute can gather up flashes of insight pretty quickly, and since Arcane Torrent is a channeled skill, it would be able to benefit from the bonus for an entire AP bulb, which is by far superior to non channeled skills.

[Karpalo]

Do archon abilities require AP? I'm asking because I would rather pinpoint barrier than force tap for energy armour, to increase critical hit % by 5%, which will increase damage and increase your critical mass procs.

I agree that disintegrate is probably the best non-signature skill for generating critical hits, assuming it can do so, as the jury seems to be out on that one.

Also, frost nova: deep freeze, is something I'd fit in the build somehow, probably by dropping slow time. I think the freeze effect of frost nova more than offsets the loss of a 30/20 snare from slow time. The perpetuity rune effect I think is far inferior to something like stretch time, which would net you more criticals by the way.

I think combination of arcane hydra and arcane torrent is better than disintegrate as long you are not hitting absurd amount of targets with the beam (assuming it even can crit). Hydra and torrent share pretty good synergy with each other.

My take on wizard build would be this: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#aeXROm!bYg!ZaZaZb

Glass cannon is kinda questionable passive perk (depends how it's calculated), but it could be replaced with something totally different like 20% reduced physical damage. Equipping shield in the offhand and using archon would make that wizard absurdly tanky.

Interesting point to make is that critical mass has that 1 second written on green. I'm under assumption that it means that could perhaps somehow be affected and maybe increased to like 2 seconds shaved off per proc. Maybe it's level tied or something?

[Elfik]

Yeah I know reflexii tested critical mass in, I think patch 12; here is the thread: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?822983-New-archon-info-analysis/page2

So he found only about 10% of critical hits procced a cooldown reduction from critical mass. This may seem low but since every hit on every target can potentially proc a critical mass cooldown reduction (cmcr?), fast attacks and area attacks will still have decent amounts of procs. Thus, I believe either electrocute: chain lightning or spectral blade: thrown blades (spectral blade is actually 3 attacks at 35% weapon damage) to be the best signature skills for critical hits. Maybe shock pulse with the explosions will be decent.

Also, I would probably prefer the long range versions of disintegrate, since disintegrate has pierce, may as well use that (not many wizard skills have it). I like convergence for the wider beam. Still, I would have to try all the skills before deciding.

As for the arcane hydra thing, I think it's a nice build, but in terms of maximizing the effects of the critical mass passive, it's not optimal. But the build itself might be better, if critical mass or frost nova or some other factor turns out to be weaker than assumed. Personally, my favorite archon build is still the one I posted in the archon thread (see link above). I use wave of force, frost nova, and diamond skin to maximize my return on the passives evocation, and critical mass.

[ElementEight]

Yeah I know reflexii tested critical mass in, I think patch 12; here is the thread: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?822983-New-archon-info-analysis/page2

So he found only about 10% of critical hits procced a cooldown reduction from critical mass. This may seem low but since every hit on every target can potentially proc a critical mass cooldown reduction (cmcr?), fast attacks and area attacks will still have decent amounts of procs. Thus, I believe either electrocute: chain lightning or spectral blade: thrown blades (spectral blade is actually 3 attacks at 35% weapon damage) to be the best signature skills for critical hits. Maybe shock pulse with the explosions will be decent.

Also, I would probably prefer the long range versions of disintegrate, since disintegrate has pierce, may as well use that (not many wizard skills have it). I like convergence for the wider beam. Still, I would have to try all the skills before deciding.

As for the arcane hydra thing, I think it's a nice build, but in terms of maximizing the effects of the critical mass passive, it's not optimal. But the build itself might be better, if critical mass or frost nova or some other factor turns out to be weaker than assumed. Personally, my favorite archon build is still the one I posted in the archon thread (see link above). I use wave of force, frost nova, and diamond skin to maximize my return on the passives evocation, and critical mass.

I've found all of these thoughts to be correct. If you look 2 posts above, I've modified the initial build to take these ideas into account.

Our builds are really similar, but I think you're really missing out on not having an actual AP spender that isn't dictated by a long cooldown, especially since the entire point of Prism is being able to spam Arcane Torrent/Disruption, one of the highest DPS skill in the game, basically for free.

I'm still debating Blur. While the build has the advantage of having basically the lowest CC and defensive tool cooldown ever, you'll probably still be tanking a few hits. The 30% redux on Temp. Flux doesn't seem all that big. Glass Cannon, perhaps, if tanking ends up being a non-issue due to skin/nova's cd's?

In fact, I'm not even sure why your build has it since your only sources of arcane damage come from Archon.

[Karpalo]

Hydra is fire and forget. I think it would have fairly good synergy with critical mass. Question is how many times it will hit over the duration it is active. As a bonus arcane torrents disruption boosts arcane hydras damage. Another option i see viable could be using blizzard with cold blooded in the place of hydra. Still i think on average combination of hydra and arcane torrent will give you the most projectiles per second, which in turn translates to max amount of critical mass procs (if it's not normalized somehow).

[Elfik]

I've found all of these thoughts to be correct. If you look 2 posts above, I've modified the initial build to take these ideas into account.

Our builds are really similar, but I think you're really missing out on not having an actual AP spender that isn't dictated by a long cooldown, especially since the entire point of Prism is being able to spam Arcane Torrent/Disruption, one of the highest DPS skill in the game, basically for free.

I'm still debating Blur. While the build has the advantage of having basically the lowest CC and defensive tool cooldown ever, you'll probably still be tanking a few hits. The 30% redux on Temp. Flux doesn't seem all that big. Glass Cannon, perhaps, if tanking ends up being a non-issue due to skin/nova's cd's?

In fact, I'm not even sure why your build has it since your only sources of arcane damage come from Archon.

I went from confusion to laughter...the link is old and some of the skills are wrong, so of course temporal flux makes no sense in my build. I think that archon used to cost 50 AP, so it made a little bit more sense to not have an AP spender. I also like the build just for the potential of abusing stuns even in single player (making a cycle out of impactful wave->nova->diamond skin). I didn't use prism, I used crystal shell for hopefully a reasonable absorption even in the toughest game areas. I probably would end up picking an AP spender though, in which case, our builds are the same but for the choice of signature skill and AP spender.

[ElementEight]

Hydra is fire and forget. I think it would have fairly good synergy with critical mass. Question is how many times it will hit over the duration it is active. As a bonus arcane torrents disruption boosts arcane hydras damage. Another option i see viable could be using blizzard with cold blooded in the place of hydra. Still i think on average combination of hydra and arcane torrent will give you the most projectiles per second, which in turn translates to max amount of critical mass procs (if it's not normalized somehow).

That's certainly right, but then, one must go to ask themselves if it is better to have more cooldowns so that you get more bang for your crits, or if it is better to have a higher potential to crit by firing more stuff at the bad guys. I'd certainly love to incorporate arcane hydra instead of a generator if Prism makes this possible. Hydra shoost pretty fast from what we've seen, so it's a good idea.

As for critical mass it's very likely normalized. When Blizz has been using the wording "a chance to..." in their WoW games, we're looking at a PPM (proc-per-minute) system. Most on-cast or on-attack stuff (buffs, special attacks or abilities...) use such a system, proccing once or twice per minute to control how often these occur.

If Critical Mass uses such a mechanic, then that explains why some other person saw a 10% proc rate, which was capped by a PPM system rather than just a flat, lowly %.

[Elfik]

So you're saying, the game will "remember" how many procs have occurred in a certain period of time and adjust the proc rate accordingly, possibly even capping the max number of procs per minute?

If critical mass procs only twice per minute, it would be vastly inferior to evocation. It would more likely be something like 10 times per minute, which would be more or less in line with what evocation does. If reflexii got about 100 crits per minute, that would be the case, but then, it seems unlikely that he did. He probably got fewer crits per minute, maybe he got 60? That would mean 6 procs per minute, which isn't terrible, but still significantly inferior to evocation.

[HardRock]

So you're saying, the game will "remember" how many procs have occurred in a certain period of time and adjust the proc rate accordingly, possibly even capping the max number of procs per minute?

This is a common misconception about a PPM system, but it's not true. I blame the name. A PPM system adjusts the proc chance of something based on your weapon speed, but it still remains a chance, not a guarantee.

[ElementEight]

This is a common misconception about a PPM system, but it's not true. I blame the name. A PPM system adjusts the proc chance of something based on your weapon speed, but it still remains a chance, not a guarantee.

Kinda. Still, if something is set to proc once per minute, and you have a 60 sec swing, you'll get 1 proc on that swing. If you have a 30 sec swing, you'll proc once out of two swings. If Critical Mass is set to proc at, say, 10 ppm, then using a 2 hit per sec arcane torrent will see procs occur at an average rate of 1/12 (assuming crits).

[Karpalo]

It would be terrible shame if critical mass or demon hunters night stalker were to be normalized. I kinda doubt it since even in WoW rogues poisons and combat potency were just flat proc rate which meant that you could up the proc chance by increasing attack speed.

There is also another system in place in wow. It's the hidden cooldown one. I could imagine that these passive might have some kind of hidden cooldown present. Like 1 or 2 seconds to prevent absurd proc chains.

[Elfik]

This is a common misconception about a PPM system, but it's not true. I blame the name. A PPM system adjusts the proc chance of something based on your weapon speed, but it still remains a chance, not a guarantee.


Kinda. Still, if something is set to proc once per minute, and you have a 60 sec swing, you'll get 1 proc on that swing. If you have a 30 sec swing, you'll proc once out of two swings. If Critical Mass is set to proc at, say, 10 ppm, then using a 2 hit per sec arcane torrent will see procs occur at an average rate of 1/12 (assuming crits).

Ah ok, I just wasn't sure what elementaleight meant by normalized. Basically, it's just a different unit of measurement, so it's easier to compare and discuss balance with procs per minute than with proc chance per (critical) hit. So normalizing is just converting the proc chance per (# of attacks) into a proc chance per unit time, based on an attack speed (or an attack speed * crit chance), then normalizing for a one minute time span.

Thinking about evocation, 15% of one minute is 9 seconds. Thus, I think critical mass should be balanced around ~9 procs per minute. It seems obvious that most people would not choose only critical mass without also taking the evocation passive. Thus, it should require some specialization of skills and gear to reach that 9 ppm for critical mass, however, given all that effort, critical mass has to be at least comparable to evocation or else it's a waste of a passive slot and you may as well take glass cannon, arcane dynamo, astral presence, or what have you. On second thought, with maximal "effort" critical mass *should* be balanced to outperform evocation, don't you think?

[Karpalo]

Normalization in WoW terms meant that virtual attack speed sweet spot. Applied to both attack power and weapon enchants. Say you would do an instant attack with a sword that's speed was 2.9 seconds, attack power which added 1 dps per 14 units used weapon speed of 2.2 attacks per second with damage calculation. So instead of 2.9 damage attack power only added 2.2 damage to that instant attack. With enchants it meant that 3.0 AS weapon would have double the proc chance that 1.5 weapon would have.

I don't think critical mass is normalized in that sense. If i would have to guess the mechanics involved of that passive skill i would say that it might have hidden cooldown limit which means that it can only proc once per second or something like that and possibly it could have AoE penalties where criticals from AoE abilities would have notably reduced chance to proc the skill.

[Elfik]

Normalization in WoW terms meant that virtual attack speed sweet spot. Applied to both attack power and weapon enchants. Say you would do an instant attack with a sword that's speed was 2.9 seconds, attack power which added 1 dps per 14 units used weapon speed of 2.2 attacks per second with damage calculation. So instead of 2.9 damage attack power only added 2.2 damage to that instant attack. With enchants it meant that 3.0 AS weapon would have double the proc chance that 1.5 weapon would have.

I don't think critical mass is normalized in that sense. If i would have to guess the mechanics involved of that passive skill i would say that it might have hidden cooldown limit which means that it can only proc once per second or something like that and possibly it could have AoE penalties where criticals from AoE abilities would have notably reduced chance to proc the skill.


Well I have never touched or read about WoW so I have no idea what you just said, other than, there are discrete intervals involved and some kind of truncation? I think we can agree that critical mass procs won't work that way. There's no real reason for them to make it complicated like that. I don't even see why they would cap the number of procs per second, given that individual proc chance will be low anyway. Sure, sometimes you'll get lucky and proc a lot of critical mass. It's not game breaking, and probablilities always even out for longer times, when it might be game breaking, such as reducing the cooldown of archon skill.

[syntaxbad]

So here I was, all excited to post the build I'd come up with, only to log on here and find that the same thought had already occurred to you clever kids. Its scary how close my thinking was to the build posted by ElementEight above. Mine differs very slightly:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UXYeZm!Ugb!aZYZbc

The idea, as above, is to get surrounded, then fire Deep Freeze and Prism in rapid succession, leaving you with a 15% crit bonus, frozen enemies, over 10k of protection, and most importantly, the 15 point reduction in casting costs. The difference is that I would use Death Blossom as the attack while in diamond mode. Why? The massive damage of death blossom is as obvious as its massive downside, non-targetability. However, if you think about how this build plays, you will be running into the middle of packs to activate your combo AND freezing them for a few seconds: ideal circumstances to use a "spray everywhere" skill like death blossom. Furthermore, Temporal Flux just seems to incredibly useful not to use. Even if you haven't slaughtered everything on the screen by the time the freeze wears off, you will be slowing everything in sight by 30%.
Like most people, I see Chain Lightning as the best utility signature to use as a backup. As for Ray of Frost, I picked that to use against hardened targets like bosses, where spewing your death blossom is less than ideal. At first I thought of a varient of disintegrate to take advantage of Temporal Flux. Then I realized that ray of frost has a built in 30% slow AND a rune effect that boosts it to 280% against a single target.
Archon is present because, as noted, Archon is insane. I opted for the increased damage version over the cooldown decrease because I figured that killing your way to an increased duration is more fun than waiting slightly less time between activations. The way I see it, during regular mob-killing play, you follow the Freeze-Skin-Blossom combo path for each mob, chipping away at the Archon cooldown with each crit. You then go on an Archon rampage and make it last as long as you can. Rinse, repeat. Ray of frost helps against single bosses (or maybe is more effective in Archon mode).

Finally, you will notice that the armor skill is gone. Frankly, given that your basic combo involves 1) freezing everything around you, 2) giving yourself a huge damage shield, and 3) quickly killing everything while slowing it with death blossom, I didn't think the extra defense was worth the trade off. As for the 5% crit bonus, having looked through the datamined affix list, it seems like there will be plenty of opportunity to buff your crit chance further with gear. 5% just doesn't seem worth it.

Thoughts?

[ElementEight]

It would be terrible shame if critical mass or demon hunters night stalker were to be normalized. I kinda doubt it since even in WoW rogues poisons and combat potency were just flat proc rate which meant that you could up the proc chance by increasing attack speed.

Rogue poisons were normalized in WotLK if I recall correctly, even though they do state a % chance. I've had a friend with too much resources and time stack a ridiculous amount of haste on his Rogue, and after something like 15-20 very quick procs, the poison numbers mysteriously lowered in occurence. Note that it was at ridiculous levels (everything was ridiculous in WotLK), something like 45% haste, today far from achievable.


There is also another system in place in wow. It's the hidden cooldown one. I could imagine that these passive might have some kind of hidden cooldown present. Like 1 or 2 seconds to prevent absurd proc chains.

Hidden cooldowns are mostly part of a PPM system, though small 1-2 sec cd as you state are often expressed in item tooltips; such as http://www.wowhead.com/item=28785

[MoUsE_WiZ]

I'm seeing some builds similar to one (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UQgYOm!abg!abcYcb) I'm contemplating. I don't think I'm going to end up using that build because I think it'll end up being infeasible, but if it turns out it works I'll be happy. First, no AP spender. This will let me skip any kind of AP management in gear and let me focus more on crit / ias. Similarly, it lets me drop diamond skin for slow time + stretch time (which is obviously useless if procs are normalized). Also, I'm thinking that slow time + teleport + frost nova are going to combine for some pretty solid herding which will let me set up a longer archon duration when it's CD is close. But we'll see.

[ElementEight]

As I've posted in that other thread, I don't think not having an AP spender is worth the extra utility. After all, the best utility... is DPS. Nothing amounts to the usefulness of a steaming corpse.

[MoUsE_WiZ]

As I've posted in that other thread, I don't think not having an AP spender is worth the extra utility. After all, the best utility... is DPS. Nothing amounts to the usefulness of a steaming corpse. Good herding is a DPS multiplier with any kind of AOE. Of course my only AOE is in Archon form, so it'll really depend on how much I'm able to drop that CD.

[Karpalo]

If it turns out that archon refreshes resource bar and has it's own generator you could possibly even scrap the signature AP generator. This planning has made wizard my favorite class tied with DH. Very intriguing.

[ElementEight]

Good herding is a DPS multiplier with any kind of AOE. Of course my only AOE is in Archon form, so it'll really depend on how much I'm able to drop that CD.

Regardless, if a signature does 150% versus a spender's 200%,

[Karpalo]

Arcane dynamo is actually pretty interesting passive ability if you will be using that arcane hydra / arcane torrent combo. Hydra has long 15 second up time and i would assume that 75% damage increase will be applied to the whole duration of the spell. Definitely something worth of testing when we can get our hands on to the game.

There also might be some added benefits with arcane dynamo when using archon form, but that's purely speculation at this point.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#aeXROm!gbT!ZaZaZb

The standard rotation without using archon would somewhat look like this. Build arcane dynamo proc ready, cast prism, cast hydra, start casting arcane torrent for the duration of prism. Prism runs out fill the void by spamming magic missiles till the prisms is up again and AP has regenerated and depending of the proc chance you could have another arcane dynamo proc ready when it's time for round 2. all this time you will have the 15% damage bonus from arcane torrent disruption rune.

[ElementEight]

dynamo with blossom. If you can somehow maintain really high AP generation (who knows, over 20 total with gear...), damn potential.

[Karpalo]

I somehow don't think that dynamo would affect the whole duration of the channel. Wouldn't make much sense, but then again i could be mistaken.

[ElementEight]

I somehow don't think that dynamo would affect the whole duration of the channel. Wouldn't make much sense, but then again i could be mistaken.

What would it effect then? Every option seems to run into issues:

1) If it affects the entire duration, it might be overpowered.
2) If it affects the first tick, it'll suck.
3) If it affects anything in between 2 and X ticks, then it just feels like an arbitrary number without any real sense. Not only does that become hard to balance (Death Blossom hits for 650% at random!?), but then, you have to somehow explain how much of every skill benefits from the bonus.

Actually, I think I've found the solution!

4) Affects channeled skill for half the listed bonus. BAM!

[Karpalo]

I would assume it would only affect the first rotation of the channel.

Anyways new brainstorm...

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#eRXOSm!bXg!aaZZbc

Magic weapon could be replaced with familiar with Arcanot rune. Choice of weapon slow 2 hand staff and you should get net regen of 7 AP per second whole channeling arcane torrent when diamond skin is active. If one can get crit high enough it's maybe possible to even get rid of the extra regen and just get more damage.

Again these old questions: Does diamond skins cooldown start from activation or from expiration? Does familiar proc critical mass? It would take 7 critical mass procs for a perfect loop, but it doesn't have to be a perfect loop since when diamond skin expires you will be full AP, which can sustain the channel the arcane torrent channel for net cost of 8 per second for around 12 seconds.

Unless ofc there is a mechanic which removes AP regen while channeling. Then this is not a viable idea.

[melianor]

Does diamond skins cooldown start from activation or from expiration? Does familiar proc critical mass?

Diamond skin cool-down starts as soon as its activated.

[ElementEight]

I would assume it would only affect the first rotation of the channel.


What does that mean? If you keep it held down, you get th full benefit (#1 in my options)?

[HardRock]

I would assume it would only affect the first rotation of the channel.

You mean the first cycle of the spell, as Vasadan called it? If so, I have to agree, that seems the most likely, since it would be consistent with how other spells would receive the Dynamo bonus. Here's Vasadan's relevant post about cycles: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4254523807#6

Basically, a cycle lasts 1 / APS seconds. Unless I'm mistaken this also means, that the DPS for channeled skills is our DPS * skill damage.


Unless ofc there is a mechanic which removes AP regen while channeling. Then this is not a viable idea.

We haven't seen such a mechanic so far. Channeled spells spend AP similarly to how other spells do it, in ticks. These ticks happen per cycle, in other words once per 1 / APS sec. AP regen is not affected while you channel spells.

[ElementEight]

1 cycle is likely.

[Karpalo]

Then again i would assume Hydra doesn't have cycles in similar sense and it would get that 75%+ damage for the whole 15 seconds duration of the spell. That was kinda the idea behind using arcane dynamo in that build.

[HardRock]

Hmm, yeah, that would make sense for timed, fire and forget type spells like Hydra and Blizzard.

[ElementEight]

Hmm, yeah, that would make sense for timed, fire and forget type spells like Hydra and Blizzard.

Here's to hoping Blizzard won't suck so much with two passives almost dedicated to it? :p

[syntaxbad]

Note: The AP cost reduction on Prism was reduced in Beta Patch 16. It now only reduces AP costs by 7. I suppose 15 was too good to be true. The fact that I'm still thinking of Prism as incredibly powerful even after they cut its effect in half leads me to believe that this was probably a smart move, even if it makes me sad :(.

[Karpalo]

Yeah it was good move. Arcane hydra was nerffed a bit as well damage wise, but the AP cost went down by 25, which is pretty big deal with the new prism change. Big difference with the new prism is that you can't regen AP anymore by casting arcane torrent, ray of frost etc. There seem to be affix that reduces arcane torrent AP cost that can make it break even.

[ElementEight]

With a reduction of 7, plus the base regen of 10, you need what, 3 AP per sec to break even? Or is it 13? Either way, definitely achievable with gear.

[Karpalo]

3 for break even assuming you'll be using slow weapon (20 AP 1 sec cycle, 10 AP regen per second, 7 reduced cost from prism and 3 from the affix). Think that affix can be found from helms, weapons and offhands so it can go up to 9 total.

[Elfik]

3 for break even assuming you'll be using slow weapon (20 AP 1 sec cycle, 10 AP regen per second, 7 reduced cost from prism and 3 from the affix). Think that affix can be found from helms, weapons and offhands so it can go up to 9 total.

So there's an +X AP regen per second mod for gear (X is some number between a and b, a and b are what?)? I thought it was just +Y AP on crit.

But there's also the arcanot, astral presence, and power of the storm skills, which together give a reduction of 5 and +2 AP/s, essentially the same benefit as prism with respect to channeled skills, assuming 1 APS.

[Karpalo]

There is no AP regen affix for gear. This is affix that reduces the cost of arcane torrent. Then there is that AP for crit affix and there are some abilities that can boost AP regen rate.

[ElementEight]

Well then, I'll focus on finding such affixes. Then I'll be 100% badass and win the game!

[HardRock]

there is that AP for crit affix

When I last tried that affix it didn't work at all with AoE skills like Wave of Force and Arcane Orb, but it did work with Magic Missile. I didn't try every skill, but this could imply that it only works with single-target or signature skills. Just something to keep in mind while we can test it with more stuff.

[ElementEight]

When I last tried that affix it didn't work at all with AoE skills like Wave of Force and Arcane Orb, but it did work with Magic Missile. I didn't try every skill, but this could imply that it only works with single-target or signature skills. Just something to keep in mind while we can test it with more stuff.

Lame. It should at least work once per cast, given that the crit condition is met. Just as it could work once per cycle for channeled skills. As for duration skills, eh... cycles again?

[Karpalo]

Perhaps it just has a reduced proc chance with AoE?

[ElementEight]

Possibly, but we can't test that out for 32 days still ;)

[Zaventem]

Here my short ranged version.If critical mass does suck i'm sure i could replace it with something else.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZSYXmO!abg!YcZZbb

[Karpalo]

Depending whenever evocation uses the base value in it's calculation or the reduced cooldown after rune effect, i think that improved archon could potentially be better choice.