Blizzard / Hydra (and Siegebreaker farming)

[melianor]

And this goes sticky, sticky and right into the library.
Thanks for the lengthy and conclusive write up MRR!

I still not really used to Teleport. Seems i have lost my D2 Teleporting skills. I switched to a similiar build last night and died a lot at training to use Teleport again. But just concerning damage, i feel that Hydra/Blizz kills faster in the end than Hydra/Arcane Orb.

[ursustas]

I still not really used to Teleport. Seems i have lost my D2 Teleporting skills.

I put teleport on my right click .. it sucked for about half an hour, then when I was used to it .. I never looked back Definitely an advocate of teleport on right click. While you are messing with your keys, try swapping shift/stand still to use tab .. again takes a bit of use but is pretty awesome once you get used to it .. I moved map to shift Only problem is .. now all my characters need their movement / leap / vault / etc. on the right click :P Because I rarely play alone I use disintegrate and prefer Fracture for Teleport for survivability. I use Power Hungry Passive and Prism on Diamond Skin to offset the fact that I don't use a signature spell. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#iQXlRO!ZXd!cYZbbY edit: forgot to say, awesome op .. thankyou!

[Deced]

I do believe people have done tests, and Arcane Dynamo does NOT work with Hydra? Google tells me this, I'll test it later.

konfeta is correct. Arcane Dynamo does not work with (Venom) Hydra. Arcane Dynamo does work with Blizzard.

Quick set of Blizzard ticks with super low damage weapon:
84 70 79 64 70 67 90 58 70 64 87
Set of Blizzard ticks with same setup using five Flashes of Insight:
127 102 122 122 102 127 102 102 112 138 122 41

Quick set of full Venom Hydra ticks with super low damage weapon:
104 145 122 186 244 329 311 326 425 397 358 485 415 326 355 374 349 355 367 429 393 405 369 379 385 345 353 341 295 257 218 198 144 104 65 46 5
Set of full Venom Hydra ticks with same setup using five Flashes of Insight:
92 129 115 208 244 230 311 295 410 334 346 363 336 327 350 450 407 456 485 372 334 359 333 331 369 367 295 387 215 213 175 138 113 94 46

Personally, I find Shock Pulse Piercing Orb to be far superior a sig spell to use in a Blizzard/Venom Hydra build. MM is superior for one on one boss encounters, but the vast majority of the game is spent fighting groups of monsters, and Piercing Orb tends to fair far better in my opinion. Especially on Siegebreaker runs where almost anywhere you go hunting for Valor has terrain you can utilize to line up monsters (Ice Caves, Keep, Stonefort, Underbridge, Rakshii Crossing all come to mind as having relatively narrow areas you can funnel monsters easily to maximize damage).

[magicrectangle]

Removed arcane dynamo.

As far as piercing orb, it is certainly a valid choice, but "far superior" is not a fair judgement. As I said in the guide, pretty much any long-range signature is viable. Piercing orb will certainly do more damage against big groups of trash monsters than seeker - but you already kill these very fast just with blizzard and hydra. The focus should be on making yourself more efficient against elite packs. The amount of times you actually manage to hit 2+ elites with piercing orb are not that substantial, and missing entirely isn't uncommon either. Seekers do more single target damage, which is what you generally want vs elites. Seekers also let you dumb-fire and hit stuff, which is of particular benefit so that you can keep your focus on avoiding incoming missiles/mortars, ground effects, etc, rather than looking at the enemies. You can shoot around terrain also, another great benefit.

I've played around with both, and found seekers to be both more convenient (yay, dumbfire) and let me kill elites faster. The end result is I die less often with seeker, and my runs are shorter. Your mileage may vary, but give seekers a try before you dismiss them.

[PhoeniX Skye]

I use practically the same build, however, I've switched to Astral Presence from Ward after I got enough regen from my items. Without AP I felt like I could not re-cast Blizzard as often as I like/need due to the reduced mana pool from FA.

[Creqaw]

This build does wonders, I always thought that the temporary clones were way too weak for anything and used Diamond Skin. However, I got destroyed by fast minions and tried the duplicates and I must say that I never expected so much difference... The mirrors take most hits and when they're gone and I get hit, cooldown is instantly gone so I can recast it. I still need to get used to the use of several hotkeys (whole time I played with just the mouse and armor every now and then) but it works well.

//edit Fire Chain teleporters, however, seem to 1hit kill all clones and then instantly teleport to me to kill me with a few teleporting plague hits >_>

[galzohar]

What % of the damage you'd say Blizzard does vs the venom hydra? Is it really negligible damage or is it just not very high?

[magicrectangle]

Depends on the geometry of the situation, spread of mobs, etc, but I'd say probably three times as much damage from venom hydra as from blizzard.

[darkstarhub]

Going through Hell I started using Magic Weapon/Force Weapon and Venom Hydra which helped alot. I really like Ray of Frost/Cold Blood, and it was hard to give it up for Blizzard, but the only time I miss RoF now is for Treasure Goblins as it would keep them from moving and I could generally kill one with a full AP bulb. Moving into Inferno has really been an eye opener. I was melting everything in Hell, even killed Diablo the first time I went against him. Inferno brought me down off that cloud really fast. I really hate invulnerable minions, and I cant say that enough. Some of the Elite packs are not that bad, and I guess it just comes down to what 4 affixes they spawn with. There are some combos that I will park out of the way, and once the kill me, I will just go around them. I really hate doing that as it goes against my philosophy of killing everything. I dont like having a 5 stack of NV and running out trying to kill one of these packs, so I will let it go. I will change Cold Blooded passive for something else, as a previous post mentions, Blizzard damage is not that good, and the 20% dont really help. It did seem to help on Ray of Frost though.

Also, another post mentions the Magic Weapon/Force Weapon numbers not being correct, and are inflated. Is this true? I notice a really big increase in the DPS number when its active, and I always wondered if this was right. Kinda like the LCS of D2. I really need some resist all gear, as my resists are not that good. The weapon I am using is a little pitiful as well, at only 478 DPS(190 Int, 199 Vit). I guess I can hit up the AH and see what I can get. Probably not much since I havent done any gold farming. Hopefully in the next patch, Venom Hydra will not be touched, and they will not nerf IAS to much.

[Cebo]

You can cast two snowbound blizzards for less AP than one stark winter, cover more area, and more importantly have more control over the area that is covered - IE cast a blizzard on top of the monsters, and then one directly between you and the monsters for them to walk through.

Particularly with faster monster types, snowbound is just great. You have to recast blizzard quite frequently as they keep moving out of it.

This is true, but I think you're also neglecting opportunity cost. For each additional Blizzard you're laying down, it's a cast that could've been used for a signature spell instead. Generally, I haven't had a problem with AP (even at only 80 with Force Armor) using Stark Winter, especially for Siegebreaker runs since you're mostly dealing with slow mobs or ranged attackers. Although I do have about 20% crit and 10 AP on crit, so that probably helps. Snowbound was more useful in Act 2 actually, rather than Act 3, with all the leapers, wasps, invis naga, and the like.

Also for Siegebreaker runs specifically, I find Piercing Orb to be better than Seeker missiles, simply because the nature of the bridge has a lot of enemies end up in a line while kiting. Plus it's more useful to deal with Invulnerable minions. I usually prefer Piercing Orb as the signature spell of choice in open spaces/fields, while Seeker missiles in dungeons/caverns where I can abuse LoS as much as possible.