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

[nailertn]

I have this build for my wizard, although stopped at level 60 as it's only an alt. Very high burst, which mixes well with the CD based tank.

spectral blade - thrown blade
explosive blast - short fuse
arcane orb - arcane orbit

diamond skin - crystal shell
frost nova - cold snap
mirror image - simulacrum

blur
glass cannon
critical mass

[rodge]

Mine is a bit more tanky. I'm currently tweaking it a bit so I'm not gonna post it here yet, but looking through your builds are helping me a lot and gave me great ideas to try out.I love being a melee wiz. I'm having my female wiz melee it out while my male wiz killing from afar. Since I'm using my female wiz more, it's clear it's very enjoyable.Isn't it sweet that spectral blade doesn't get affected by reflect damage? O_o

[RedMandrake]

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

oops sorry my mistake, that 'k' shouldn't be there, it's a 178.7 dps dagger but the final damage is around 5k as stated. Just got to lvl 60 now and equipped a much better dagger at 320 dps - final damage now at 7k after force weapon.

Even at 5k though I didn't miss other attacks. The venom hydra is excellent support and with critical hits triggering more often than not with a fast weapon the resulting damage is usually higher than 5k anyway. The only thing I am missing is teleport which should come handy when trapped in a corner and want to get out fast

[RoCDiablo]

Kudos for an informative guide...and some cool Wizards!

[nightbeckons]

I have had similar thoughts when leveling up. the melee skills for wizards in d3 are surprisingly good and explosive in nature

[chenw]

There is a small tidbit I want to share with the forum:

You cannot Teleport to get out of Frozen, but with Mirror Image you can, same for Jailer for the latter, although I am not certain about Teleport and Jailer.

[ZwanZigZwolf]

Yeah I noticed how amazing this is, when I used it to take down the NM Butcher: Ray of Frost, Sleet Storm

[Summoned]

There is a small tidbit I want to share with the forum:

You cannot Teleport to get out of Frozen, but with Mirror Image you can, same for Jailer for the latter, although I am not certain about Teleport and Jailer.

Teleport with fracture will get you out of jailer. Teleport without fracture will still teleport you, but will not remove the immobilize effect.

[yamyam]

Yeah I noticed how amazing this is, when I used it to take down the NM Butcher: Ray of Frost, Sleet Storm

Yeah. Its really good. Does tons of dmg, aoe, slows the attack speed of everything it hits, and has a really good life on hit/critical mass proc rate.

Teleport with fracture will get you out of jailer. Teleport without fracture will still teleport you, but will not remove the immobilize effect.

Can you Teleport with Fracture when you are frozen?
Edit: just tested. The answer is: no, you cannot teleport while frozen, even with fracture rune.

[Hurono]

I'm currently using a melee build through hell, it's slightly different though: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...SOX!agT!aZYZYa

Basicly what I do is perma freeze and perma diamond skin thanks to critical mass, the more mobs there are, the easier this tactic works.

I use star pact to be able to keep the aoe on the ground going, wich gives a lot of crits if there's a lot of mobs around, not to mention it does nice damage aswell. Yes, I'm pretty much tanking :P My killing speed isn't really good, but as long as there are enough mobs, I can stay alife.

The weakpoint of this build is invulnerable minions and shielding mobs, because I can't get enough critical mass proccs to keep all my skills up.

I geared for resistances and armor ( I use a shield for obvious reasons ).

I'll probably change the frost nova rune to bone chill when I get more crit on my gear.