Arcane kiting, an alternative to Blizzard/Hydra

[PhoeniX Skye]

I'm still trying to upgrade my 891 dps weapon, but so far Im at heart of sin act 3 and this build is super effective. hardest part was soul rippers.

got 29k hp, ~4000 armor buffed, ~390 all res, 18% movement, 29% crit chance, 150% crit dmg, ~800 life regen. everything is so much smoother.

What is your total DPS? Did you solo Belial with this build? I'm kinda stuck on him and was wondering if giving up Venom Hydra is ok against that huge stationary target. Thanks!

[reetz]

unintended post, plz delete admin

sorry!

[reetz]

You will have some pretty large difficulties with disintegrate once you reach a3 hell or so. Unless you have a consistent good party to run with. The only time I ever put disintegrate back on for inferno was my first inferno glutton kill - he's easy with disintegrate, but you can't farm valor with that build in keep depths.

Don't let me discourage you, though, keep trying to make it work!

It's just that there are certain things you really need when content gets difficult. Force armor becomes a must until you outgear act 4 completely. Having force armor mostly forces you into astral presence, unless you rune into AP reductions (which aren't optimal for kiting solo). temp flux is a must in any arcane build. Very difficult to eliminate the need for illusionist - in almost every case finding a way out of it involves giving up an active skill. MW is the only thing left to give or take, and that's a tough give-up. You quite simply need the DPS. Some people opt to drop their sig, but that causes its own problems.

Wizard builds are pretty rigid when you're progressing inferno. Eventually we'll break free from those restrictions though, after we've all been farming a3/a4 a while.

I'll have to disagree with you on disintegrate.

First, I've been running it since it was available and it's working until now (Act2 Inferno). With a 5 AP reduction helm, my 80 AP pool seems infinite. And since kiting and stuff gives me time to regen, I even swapped Magic Missles for Wave of Force. More damage and no projectiles.

Second, I can't believe no one mentioned the Volatility rune for Disintegreat anywhere. 395% damage crits beyond the skies (some 200k for my MF build with no crit damage, can make it go over 300k with little effort) and crit-explosions seem to proc quite often. I kill weak mobs with ease and use them to reduce the bigger guys to ashes.

I say wiz was built around the concept of arcane damage, so most spells for this element should be viable with the correct build

[peret]

What is your total DPS? Did you solo Belial with this build? I'm kinda stuck on him and was wondering if giving up Venom Hydra is ok against that huge stationary target. Thanks!

Hey there, I used a different build with different stats when I did belial and i still remember him being tough. I did not solo him, I had a monk who tanked. I was at about 30k dps, but didn't go force armor route. I had high armor/high resist using prismatic armor rather than force.

take out teleport for mirror images.

my build was arcane orb, force weapon, energy armor, hydra, mirror images, and diamon skin w/ the snakes. right after, when you are about to get to the 1 on 1, dont skip the event, but change mirror images to familiar (either sparkflint or arcanot).

monk was in the middle & i was on the right most of the time. whenever he unleashed his meteor like green things, monk would run left (now would be at the further left), then i'd also run left (now in the middle). this ensures that we have plenty of space to run instead of being both in the middle and scrambling like ants when he did his attack. when you are about to get hit, diamond armor. then potion right away.

[Kinmaul]

@Pheonix Skye
Belial is extremely rough solo because of the adds in p1 and p2, at least in my opinion. Those stupid cloaked snakes are the bane of ranged classes because they are so hard to control and you have almost no room to kite. Going in with a DH who can drop some traps or a melee who can keep the adds off you makes a world of difference. The fight is definately doable solo as a wizard, but expect to be frustrated unless you have enough defense so that the snakes don't insta-gib you.

@Reetz
Volatily is a great rune for solo play (I love how hard it hits as well), but it loses effectiveness in groups. It only has a 35% chance to proc when you land the killing blow; so you are not only fighting the low proc rate, but you also have 1-3 other people taking procs chances from you as well. Will you still see procs in team games? Sure, but not near as many as when you are solo. If you enjoy using disintegrate and are making it work for you then great, personally I don't like how it plays in inferno but to each his own.

[ByShine]

This build is not effective against speedy elite packs

[Kinmaul]

Yeah Blizzard (with the chance to freeze rune) is about the only thing that really gives you any control vs packs like that. However, unless you get really unlucky you shouldn't be getting those groups too often.

[ByShine]

Um with bllizard i am able to kill them. Why would i chose an another build that allows me to kill less packs?
I kill them nearly the same time with both builds
Still would prefer blizzard/hydra build

[reetz]

@Pheonix Skye
@Reetz
Volatily is a great rune for solo play (I love how hard it hits as well), but it loses effectiveness in groups. It only has a 35% chance to proc when you land the killing blow; so you are not only fighting the low proc rate, but you also have 1-3 other people taking procs chances from you as well. Will you still see procs in team games? Sure, but not near as many as when you are solo. If you enjoy using disintegrate and are making it work for you then great, personally I don't like how it plays in inferno but to each his own.

I see your point now, since i play solo 90% of the time and the other 10% with low dps tanks... so disintegrate seems awesome

Thanks for the tip, though, i'll try Torrent/Orb when into a more dmg-oriented group!

[Kinmaul]

Um with bllizard i am able to kill them. Why would i chose an another build that allows me to kill less packs?
I kill them nearly the same time with both builds
Still would prefer blizzard/hydra build

Then don't use the build? I got tired of blizzard/hydra so I played around with different skills to come up with this combo. It lets you kill almost any pack solo and it is a superior choice in team games because the dps is a lot better. If you enjoy blizzard/hydra then by all means keep using it. Personally I prefer swapping things around because playing the same build all the time gets boring. I still use blizzard/hydra from time to time, and I'm working on getting a melee wizard build to work in inferno but it seems like it's going to be very, very gear dependant. I've cleared a1 as a melee wiz, but that doesn't mean squat considering the jump in damage past a1. I've seen a few wizards pull it off in later acts, but the gear they have is ridiculous and isn't something 99% of the playerbase will have access to.