Spectral slicing through hell... and beyond? (Melee Wizard discussion)

[yamyam]

Hello, and welcome. I'd like to share with everyone an exciting, fun-to-play melee wizard build that got me through hell & inferno act 1, and also to provide a place for dedicated discussion of Melee Wizard builds. Also, check out these totally awesome wizard gifs.

I do think my build uses a clever combination of skills and is really fun to play. However, please note that although there exists potential for other interesting melee-oriented builds, I really doubt any melee wizard build is viable past act 1 of inferno. The main issue being survival, especially because Diamond Armor does not scale with gear.

Without further ado, here's a guide I wrote to my build:

SKILLS:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WhXZYQ!Wbg!ccaYca

• Ray of Frost, Sleet Storm
• Spectral Blades, Thrown Blade
• Diamond Skin, Crystal Shell
• Explosive Blast, Chain Reaction
• Frost Nova, Bone Chill
• Teleport, Safe Passage
• Cold-Blooded
  
• Evocation
• Critical Mass

HOW IT WORKS:

Critical hits reduce the cooldown of your 4 main spells, allowing you to constantly have either enemies frozen and/or diamond armor up. In the meantime, your ray of frost (and spectral blades if you have a cold-enchanted weapon!) benefit from 35% extra damage. The build becomes potent at about 20% crit, but it really doesn't become the cow's bowels until about 30% crit on your gear. The build becomes exponentially stronger based on how many monsters you are fighting, allowing you to demolish gargantuan mob packs at the speed of wizard.

GEAR:

For Hell you want about 20-25k life and 20% crit. To start A1 inferno you want at least 30k life, 30% crit, and 300 resist.
Use a shield and a fast weapon. 3% extra crit can be obtained from the Scoundrel.
A means of restoring life is also really good, whether it be life on hit, regeneration, or lifesteal. Regen is pretty much the only viable option for inferno.

WHY EVERY SPELL I CHOSE IS THE BEST THING EVER:

Spectral Blades- Very flexible spell. Can go with range, healing, or arcane power (if you lack +AP on crit items) to suit your fancy. Hits three times and casts pretty fast--many chances here to reduce the cooldown on your spells. What's more is that Spectral Blades does damage in your weapon's element. Spectral Blades will benefit from 20% more damage from Cold-Blooded if you have a cold-enchanted weapon...

Explosive Blast- When's the last time you saw this crappy spell in somebody's build? I bet you thought this spell was more useless than a dried-up tortoise. WRONG. Adds THREE more chances to crit on everything around you, and nearly 300% weapon damage. An amazing offensive spell, it becomes a defensive one too because it does such a good job of lowering the cooldown on your next diamond armor. What's more is you don't need to stop casting or moving to use this spell. Explosive Blast devours giant mob packs whole.

Frost Nova- Everything around you takes 35% more damage while being totally unable to hurt you, for the cost of 0 arcane power? Uh, yes please. Use this spell to interrupt annoying abilities, bosses' big hits & perma-stun inhumanly huge mob packs.

Teleport- Use this to jump in the middle of mob packs, run away, get a better position for ray of frost, avoid hits, abuse terrain... oh, and it increases the effectiveness of your diamond armor by 30%. WTF.

Diamond Skin- Double your HP at a cost of 0 AP. Should be off cooldown whenever frost nova isn't. 'Nuff said.

Ray of Frost- Amazing amount of DPS at an extremely low cost.. haven't tested, but I think only beat by OP venom hydra.

Hope you appreciated my guide. Please let me know what you think in the comments.

[melianor]

Kudos to the guide Love the layout!

So there are actually feaseable melee wizard builds out there.
Would be interesting how your build fairs in Inferno Act 2.
I would also like to know how you are doing against especially nasty mobs of elite/unique packs. Have you had the experience of beiing one-shotted, or is your HP, Armor, resistance and regeneration setup preventing this?

[yamyam]

Actually whats great about the build is that way less elite combos seem to really screw you over. In my experience the only really bad elite packs are shielding monsters who try to run away from you. It's so hard to hit 2-3 of them at once to get your necessary CD reduction. Besides that, with good play, most combo seems pretty manageable. Unkitable stuff like jailer/waller/vortex/etc combos not such a big deal at all. Your goal should be to manage your spells well to teleport/armor/freeze at the correct times, and always do damage on as many targets at the same time as possible.
I'm making my way through A1 now, however to my knowledge it is not possible to survive in A2 without a ranged, kite-oriented build. I'll try to make a gameplay video soon.

[Snerra]

Those wizard pictures are brilliant I also used Spectral Blade/Thrown Blade in A1 inferno, but my build didn't work very well. Too low damage output. I also didn't have very much crit chance, so it wasn't all that effective!

Never thought about Spectral Blades and Cold Blood. Equip a shield with +Spectral Blade damage, and it would do 160-169% weapon damage. Not bad.

A few questions:

1. Are you usually able to reduce the CDs by a good amount with Critical Mass? I mean, is it reliable?
2. Despite the penalty to Healing Blades in Inferno, wouldn't it be a decent pick with all that crit? Seems like you'd almost always be in melee range anyway.
3. The range of Explosive Blast is really short. Great damage, seems awesome with Critical Mass, but when I tried it, it often didn't hit any/very many enemies. Have you tried Wave of Force instead? Still good damage, knockback (Forceful Wave rune if you don't like that), and it can reflect projectiles which is actually pretty useful (pro tip: works on the annoying wasps in Act2).
4. I wish Thrown Blade was 25-30 yards. 20 yards really isn't much.

[cheerupemokid10]

I have a very similar build in mind, but have been thinking about using slow time with +%damage rune instead of frost nova. It's been working pretty well so far, but I also haven't made it far into NM. Frost nova might be essential for using sleet storm without getting mobbed later on.

You choose not to implement any armors? For me so far, cold armor with the chill cloud around you is helpful against those fast moving melee mobs (again when not using frost nova or wave of force). I also dabbled into using storm armor with power of the storm to be able to continuously use sleet storm longer. Seems to help a little on those channeling spells.

[yamyam]

1. Are you usually able to reduce the CDs by a good amount with Critical Mass? I mean, is it reliable?
2. Despite the penalty to Healing Blades in Inferno, wouldn't it be a decent pick with all that crit? Seems like you'd almost always be in melee range anyway.
3. The range of Explosive Blast is really short. Great damage, seems awesome with Critical Mass, but when I tried it, it often didn't hit any/very many enemies. Have you tried Wave of Force instead? Still good damage, knockback (Forceful Wave rune if you don't like that), and it can reflect projectiles which is actually pretty useful (pro tip: works on the annoying wasps in Act2).
4. I wish Thrown Blade was 25-30 yards. 20 yards really isn't much.

1. Reducing the CDs really depends on your skill. If you're able to hit at least 3 monsters reliably, your Diamond armor will be up whenever your frost nova isn't. If you can't get your cooldowns up, what I do is kite for a while with cold-enchanted spectral blades. If kiting doesn't seem like an option, I will try to flash away and avoid damage until cooldowns are back up.
2. The regen from Healing Blades is decent, but in Inferno it's definitely not enough to tank anything. The build relies on taking 0 damage through use of diamond armor and nova. In my opinion range is a better option because it makes it easier to hit monsters. Think of the utility of spectral blades as being an "uh oh I'd better have my cooldowns reduced really fast" button.
3. Explosive blast is used in conjunction with ray of frost. If you're hitting something with ray of frost, you'll hit it with explosion. It's true that Wave of force is really strong against wasps, but in my opinion it is a weak "all-purpose" option for the build. Wave greatly reduces the number of opportunities to crit, deals less damage, and has a longer cooldown. The knockback is actually a huge downside. You will always want monsters in a big clump, close to you, which is the opposite of what knockback does.

I have a very similar build in mind, but have been thinking about using slow time with +%damage rune instead of frost nova. It's been working pretty well so far, but I also haven't made it far into NM. Frost nova might be essential for using sleet storm without getting mobbed later on.

In my experience, slow time doesn't have very good synergy with the build. Frost nova can prevent damage (as opposed to reduce it), keeps enemies in place better, can benefit from %damage skills, has a shorter cooldown, and costs no ap. Basically Frost nova can save your life where slow time simply helps your death come a tiny bit slower!

[magiz]

isn't arcane orb with orbit rune will be a more viable option in comparison with explosive blast as it has issues we need to get very close to the enemy to be able to hit it and slightly longer cast time?

[RedMandrake]

Nice gifs . I am using a melee wizard as well -in hell at the moment- slightly different from your build, Level 59 closing to 60.

Using Spectral Blade and Venom Hydra as damage dealing skills. For support, Diamond Skin, Frost Nova, Power Weapon (Force Weapon), Force Armor. Passives are Blur, Evocation, Critical Mass. Not sure if she will be viable in Inferno but is quite fun in Hell so far. The trick is to be a little strategic when attacking groups, i.e. try to go for the ranger in the group first take him out and then focus on the rest. Otherwise if you attack with guns blazing then you are toast. I am concentrating in IAS gear and 'chance to increase critical'. I am missing teleport and hoping to be able to swap later on with force weapon or force armor if I can improve either my damage or defense. My weapon is not that great at 170k dps but has some other nice mods so am keeping it until I find something better. Life however is at 30-33k which is nice. The damage in the character box post-force weapon is 5k.

My gear overall are quite average so by improving damage, resistances and critical chance it should be viable later on as well. Love how this build is going so far, couldn't really make a "normal" wizard work.. got tired of running...

Oh..., also.. first post! - excellent site too

[PhoeniX Skye]

Nice gifs . I am using a melee wizard as well -in hell at the moment- slightly different from your build, Level 59 closing to 60.

Using Spectral Blade and Venom Hydra as damage dealing skills. For support, Diamond Skin, Frost Nova, Power Weapon (Force Weapon), Force Armor. Passives are Blur, Evocation, Critical Mass. Not sure if she will be viable in Inferno but is quite fun in Hell so far. The trick is to be a little strategic when attacking groups, i.e. try to go for the ranger in the group first take him out and then focus on the rest. Otherwise if you attack with guns blazing then you are toast. I am concentrating in IAS gear and 'chance to increase critical'. I am missing teleport and hoping to be able to swap later on with force weapon or force armor if I can improve either my damage or defense. My weapon is not that great at 170k dps but has some other nice mods so am keeping it until I find something better. Life however is at 30-33k which is nice. The damage in the character box post-force weapon is 5k.

My gear overall are quite average so by improving damage, resistances and critical chance it should be viable later on as well. Love how this build is going so far, couldn't really make a "normal" wizard work.. got tired of running...

Oh..., also.. first post! - excellent site too

170k DPS???? That's ridiculously good! No wonder you only have to rely on two attack skills...

[chenw]

I used Spectral during Hell and it worked for me reasonably well, but probably because I hit level 60 around the middle of act 3, and got a medium dps weapon (totalling around 11k w/o Force weapon).

The skills I used were:

Spectral Blades + Thrown Blade
Blizzard + 22 yard radius
Magic Weapon + Force Weapon
Mirror Image + Duplicate (5 Images).
Energy Armor + Prismatic Armor (I didn't need force armor in hell)
Diamond Skin + double skin health

Passives:

Galvanising Ward
Cold Blood
Blur

Galv ward is purely a convenience passive, I switched for Illusionist in Inferno.

I used 5 Images because it gave me the max amount of time where I would not be attacked (monsters have a better chance of attacking the images), and it also gets me out of Jails. Frost Nova's 3 second is far too short in respect to its CD, and it doesn't affect units outside of Frost Nova's range. Should I have used Teleport with Mirror image? Probably, going to try that next.