The best 1hand for Wizards - Inferno and onwards

[konfeta]

%leech is pretty much worthless for wizards, so crit damage.

Besides, crit damage on a weapon is an amazing stat. If you have ~33% crit chance (simple to reach), 50-100% crit damage affix about 16.5%-28% increase in your overall damage output. If you also get an open socket and stick an emerald in it (50-100% crit damage), those 2 affixes together can end up giving you as much as +56% damage (assuming both perfect rolls). Practically, the damage increase will fall between 28% and 56%, but still, getting good crit damage is a major boon to your DPS.

Some guy crunched the numbers (sorry I cannot remember the source anymore), but from the evidence given, even a moderate damage offhand is enough to make faster 1h + offhand superior to slow 1h + offhand.

I did something like that myself, the hierarchy seems that Sword > Wand > Mace/Spear > Dagger. Blizzard really overcompensated on making the dagger base damage low and its highest flat damage affix has notably less damage on it. Maybe with +flat damage jewelry it actually catches up. That said, the difference between all three weapons is basically within 10% variation. It's not enough to worry about unless you are going for a best in slot purchase for your weapon slot somewhere down the timeline.

[ADest]

What about increased Arcane Power? Aside from SoJ Legenedary Rings (as far as I know) Only Hats, Sources, and Wands can have increased AP on them. The only other ways to increase AP is with Astral Presence passive, and Energy Armor Rune. (+20 each) I think the level 60 Wands can provide +15 AP, so having that on a wand could potentially free up either Energy Armor, or Astral Presence Passive slot?

[magicrectangle]

That's true Nibilly. People also forget about +damage on rings and amulets; it will scale better on faster weapons, too, and with high ilvl gear those affixes can become fairly significant.

The amount that you can get on rings and ammy is pretty small compared to offhand. When your offhand is giving 100-400 and your ring is giving 22-44... yeah. Rings and ammy on their own probably aren't going to be enough to tip the scales much on weapon speed. Besides, unless you're super rich and able to get all the desireable stats on each slot, it is better to prioritize attack speed, stats, and resists on your rings, rather than +damage. If you get +damage so much the better, but a nice chunk of int will give you more damage than +damage on your ring slot, assuming a high base damage weapon.

[NBarnes]

The thing about weapon speed/IAS is that it's mostly interesting when you have the chance to stand in place and dump your arcane power or spam basic attacks. I don't find that this happens terribly often in the higher difficulty levels. And the value of faster casting goes down dramatically if you have to move at all between casts. I use a gigantic damage range staff and mostly ignore IAS because I want to maximize the casts I get instead of trying to pump out more damage over time.

[konfeta]

Honestly, I am starting to think that the "when you have the chance to stand in place" isn't as rare as people claim it to be. If you at all use mirror images (whenever the skill or teleport), it actually happens often.

[magicrectangle]

The thing about weapon speed/IAS is that it's mostly interesting when you have the chance to stand in place and dump your arcane power or spam basic attacks. I don't find that this happens terribly often in the higher difficulty levels. And the value of faster casting goes down dramatically if you have to move at all between casts. I use a gigantic damage range staff and mostly ignore IAS because I want to maximize the casts I get instead of trying to pump out more damage over time.

Attack speed benefits hydra, so it is fine for kiting. In fact it is just the opposite situation where I don't really like attack speed.

If I'm going to be doing a stand and burn spec I tend to like arcane orb, and with fast weapons arcane orbs just chew up the AP in no time at all. Fast weapons may get you better damage per second, but they get you worse damage per arcane power, and that's the more important metric for a build using arcane orb.

Maybe with enough crit and AP on crit gear one could get to the point of just spamming arcane orbs, but I'm not there yet.

[konfeta]

That would be hard.

Tap the Source Orbs, with 30 AP on crit need to crit 3 targets to refund their cost. That said, if you use Magic Missile in addition to Orbs, you get a lot of freedom to spam orbs. I can already make a stream of those with just 1.6 APS, 35% crit rate, and 19 AP on Crit.

[ysuol]

I find this interesting, using arcane orb AND a signature spell. I never have enough skill slots to waste for skills that seem quite redundant in many situations, considering I need the 2 buffs and 2 defensive spells (and hydra for bosses). But I guess for fast weapons you need to do something to compensate for the damage loss from fast weapon.

[konfeta]

It's... the basic design of the Wizard class (hell, every class). Generator + Spender. Why does this surprise people -_-

Look at it this way - you could take Magic Weapon and buff your Arcane Orbs/Hydra by 15%, or you could take Magic Missile and eliminate the concept of downtime all together - you are always stutterstepping now, and you shoot hell of a lot more orbs. Also, Magic Missile really helps against enemies who dodge.