Has anyone experimented with a Critical Mass build?

[magicrectangle]

I currently have (all unbuffed): 54.7k DPS, 25k hp, 670~740 resists and 3.3k armor, of buffed: 67.5k dps, 970~1072 resists and 5.7k armor. Elite packs in act 2 in most cases take 5-15 seconds to kill.

Wow, your gear is a lot better than mine. I'm sitting at 21k dps 20k hp and 500 resists, and farming/tanking a3 just dandy. Elites do take me more than 15 seconds though. Here's a video of me killing an elite pack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVxHmJlFU0g

Just a quick side note, though: When you play in a team with multiple wizards this build becomes that much stronger. Multiple frost nova spammers is just so much better than one. Even 2 wizards can get some serious stun locking going on. Nova seems to even freeze shielded elites (or is it just my imagination?)...

It works on invulnerable minions, but as far as I can tell not on shielding. I haven't gotten to try it with 2 wizards yet, but even just myself I'm able to almost completely lock down elite packs.

[PhoeniX Skye]

I just tried a very similar build, but with Mirror Images (Mirror Mimics) instead of Teleport.

Amazingly, with the Mirror Mimics rune, and if you set Frost Nova as a left or right click skill, they too join in the fun with freezing enemies.

It just has to be on your skill bar, doesn't necessarily have to be a left or right click, from my experience.

[Cebo]

It just has to be on your skill bar, doesn't necessarily have to be a left or right click, from my experience.

You're right, thanks. Just tested it. I assumed it would work like D2's Shadow Master.

[iThinman]

I've been doing this for a week or so now and have finally gotten my gear up enough to get me back farming act2 where I was pre hydra ner...err...fix.

Love it and find the game much more enjoyable when things don't move and die when I tell them to.

[Death_StrikeR]

This CM build works great if you put it in the right buttons.

Basically, ALL spam skills should be in the skills bar, and signature/armor on the mouse.
Arranged it in a way that Energy Twister should be put at the most comfortable finger(fastest finger) of yours.
You can put extra effort on it if you notice that your AP is constantly full and cast it in other adjacent places.

It was like, casting 2 twisters, 1 Diamond Skin, 1 Explosive Blast, 1 Frozen Nova all in second span.
Then progress to 3-4 twisters, 1 Diamond Skin, 1 Explosive Blast, 1 Frozen Nova all in a second span.

Practice makes perfect, it would be too stressful at first but will get the hang of it since it's just a Tempo skill rather than timing it.
Altho as you master it, you can time when to maximize the absorption/duration of diamond skin, freeze enemies at the right time, but not really mandatory since everything happens so fast and to many buttons to press XD

This is the current action-packed arcade-style build since the IAS nerf for Monk.

[LeminaAusa]

Would cold blooded be the next best passive to take after critical mass now, since it works on all sources of damage now instead of only cold damage? Since you're pretty much permanently freezing the mobs, it should be in effect all the time.

[magicrectangle]

Would cold blooded be the next best passive to take after critical mass now, since it works on all sources of damage now instead of only cold damage? Since you're pretty much permanently freezing the mobs, it should be in effect all the time.

Well cold blooded would be the best damage passive to take, yes, if you're comfortable giving up either blur or evocation. With high enough crit giving up evocation isn't that big of a deal, so that might be where to go to pick up cold blooded.

[galzohar]

I suppose, as long as you survive well enough without blur.

[magicrectangle]

Yes yes these kinds of builds are definitely painful (and I that's with a steelseries 6gv2 which makes clicking much more pleasant than with most keyboards, especially when spamming). I've been suing AutoHotkey for other games (though for different situations, not for spamming, but then again I'm pretty sure you can use it to spam with the right script). According to the TOS I don't think it would be considered "OK" to use it in D3, since you're basically using 1 click for multiple key inputs which AFAIK is officially not allowed. Whether it'll get caught or not I don't know...

I haven't read the ToS super carefully, but I'm going to have to risk it, because my wrists are just killing me.

[Cebo]

What I do wonder is whether this can actually farm faster than a simple archon build:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jSO!YaX!aZcaZc

Basically without AP on crit I couldn't find a critical mass build variant that would allow me to kill act 2 elites any faster than the above archon build, but was wondering if AP on crit would make the critical mass builds beat the killing speed of archon. I don't farm act 3 at the moment because it seems like the need to increase my survivability reduces my killing speed so that I clear at less than 1/2 speed of act 2, which means I get more ilvl63s over time by farming act 2 anyway. However, if I can get this build to do at least equal damage to the archon build AND actually survive with it in act 3 it could double my farming rate... Even doing a bit less can still increase the farming rate, because running between elite packs takes time regardless of whether you're farming normal or act 3/4 inferno, but it's only relevant if you're killing the elites relatively fast.

Question...have you tried an Archon CM build? Instead of using Magic Missile and Disintegrate, pick up Wicked Wind and Deep Cuts. My gear isn't as good as yours, but for Act 1 farming, I find this even better than a standard Archon-focused spec, cause you have Archon up literally every 45 seconds.

Build is essentially:

Spectral Blades (Deep Cuts)
Wicked Wind
Diamond Skin (can use Diamond Shards rune for more damage)
Prismatic Armor
Force Weapon
Improved Archon

Glass Cannon
Blur
Critical Mass

You miss out on Familiar, but I think Archon every 45 seconds beats out the extra 12% damage from Sparkflint.

I mean, hell at your gear levels, it might even be worth it to swap in Teleport - Wormhole for Magic Weapon, SOLELY because your biggest downtime is runspeed, not killing monsters. edit - Or actually, keep Magic Weapon and swap Prismatic Armor for Storm Armor w/ Scramble. For Act 1, I usually don't even bother with regular mobs, except to toss out a few wicked winds in my path to reduce cooldowns. So as I'm running past them, they trigger Scramble quite a bit.