Arcane kiting, an alternative to Blizzard/Hydra

**raybasto** · 07-06-2012, 00:55

When upgrading gear, how important is IAS compared to Crit? I've been going by Crit chance>Int>Resist all>Crit dmg>Vit>IAS

**Kinmaul** · 07-06-2012, 02:13

IAS doesn't really do much for this build (or any build that involves kiting) because your AP pool is depleted in 3 casts of Arcane Orb. The game itself does a decent job if telling you something will be an upgrade; the only thing that throws it out of wack is IAS because it assumes that you will be able to plant and constantly spam an ability which is almost never the case.

**raybasto** · 07-06-2012, 05:59

I figured that much. So I should be focusing on Crit chance, Int, and Resist all?

**Felix** · 07-06-2012, 18:40

Originally Posted by raybasto

I figured that much. So I should be focusing on Crit chance, Int, and Resist all?

It's correct that you simply deplete your arcane pool faster with ias, and so run into downtime faster. And thus the dps number in inventory becomes misleading, as it says that you will do for example 2000 damage in 2 seconds. But then one second where you do no damage.

And without ias you do 2000 damage in 3 seconds.

But if you also have a signature spell, magic missile for example, and take the Prodigy passive. Then the ias on the signature spell will help you regain your manapool faster, and thus use the nuke more often. So with this setup ias concentrates nuking time, and then shortens regain time.

I have been using this with Arcane Torrent and Magic Missile, and Prodigy. Constantly switching between the two to either burn or regain Arcane Power. Some Increased attack speed works very well in such a build.

**Kinmaul** · 07-06-2012, 18:53

Felix you are correct that IAS does help you regen if you have Prodigy and/or glyph your sig skills for AP on hit. However typically when kiting in inferno you do most of your regen while running and there isn't a whole lot of time to plant and use sig skills to effectively regen. Don't get me wrong, I definately end up using Magic Missle as a filler but not enough that I would take Prodigy or beef up my IAS to speed my AP regen. Thus the value of IAS is greatly diminished, I'd rather have more int/crit/crit damage so that the spells that I am casting hit that much harder.

Speaking of regen I was doing some thinking on the matter. Now that I have a decent crit rate (33%) I'm interested in 'AP on crit' as a form of regen. Before investing a ton of cash I'm going to buy some low level stuff and see how it works with AoE skills. In my opinion this has the potential to be a viable source of regen that will scale with something that increase our damage (crit) instead of something that does very little for our damage (IAS). I'll post my findings here after I do some testing.

Edit:
AP on Crit works 100% of the time with Magic Missle, but only part of the time with Arcane Orb due to it being an AoE. I played around with it for 15 minutes or so and didn't notice a significant improvement in my regen.

**ysuol** · 07-06-2012, 22:16

Originally Posted by Kinmaul

Things definately get snared, are you sure you have Temporal Flux?

Also you need to make sure you have good gear if you are trying Act 2. Clearing Act 1 once doesn't mean that Act 2 is doable. I'm at 36k damage, 25k life and I still have to be on my A-game or even trash packs can smash my face in.

Aye I have temporal flux, maybe sometimes monsters have arcane res and its effect is less, or it's just psychological.

I did a2 up to Belial with 16-21k dps (0.9 attack speed). Belial is a different story though, if I am up for a little suffering I will attempt him, otherwise will just try to take a taxi

I'm also not comfortable with the fight as it requires a build I can't create

(too few skill slots) and it's skills I did not use in a while like Blizzard... but then this is off topic a little...

**zakaluka** · 08-06-2012, 08:18

I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone try this build.

There are a few ways you can adjust it to support faster attack speeds, but all of them that I've toyed with require you to swap illusionist for a passive that adds value to your sigs. My favorite to this point was dynamo with obliterate, putting reversal in place of fracture. Currently back to using exactly the same build as the OP here, though. I severely dislike the use of Prodigy - it's just boring. Another possibility is tap the source, leaving illusionist where it is (and you actually NEED very high attack speed if you're going to kite with tap the source). Celestial orb has pretty obvious advantages. The only obvious disadvantage being its steep AP cost makes this build perform poorly against a single unique after all its minions are dead. Another reason to take seeker over any other form of magic missile.

Reversal just can't handle certain champion packs; not without adding in another momentary stun, anyway (frost nova works here, but what do you drop for that? It's rather difficult..)

**Kinmaul** · 08-06-2012, 11:24

Made a few minor updates to the guide, including a recommendation for Venom Hydra only if you are in a good group where someone else is bringing higher quality snares and crowd control.

**ADest** · 08-06-2012, 16:37

I haven't even reached Inferno yet, and probably won't for a long time, since after I finish a difficulty level, I switch to a different class and run it with them. My Wizards on Act 3 Nightmare now though, and I've found Disintergrate with the snare effect passive is pretty brutal, since it's very easy to snare the entire screen, and costs much less than Arcane Orb. Almost all versions can be runed to do much more dmg than Arcane Orb too, especially that one that fires out a second beam for 40% dmg. The Disintergrate beam is much faster. It's biggest weakness is it's NOT full screen for some reason... I don't know why, but you can see enemies at the edge of the screen, shoot at them, but the beam won't hit them, or aggro them... Anyway, I also run Slow Time with the 20% dmg increase (I find it's a good alternative to Glass Cannon), and everything's moving around reeeally slow. I also have Force Weapon, Blizzard, and the increased Arcane Power Energy Armor, that one makes it so you can spam Blizzard while keeping Disintergrate going. I'm up to 168 AP, and 42k health... I should be at around 75k HP by Inferno, but I'm not sure if I can get the DPS display to 30K (0_o) I'm at 2k now, though I'm usually doing much more dmg than that because of the Slow Time and Cold Blooded procs.

**zakaluka** · 08-06-2012, 17:15

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.