Hey guys, I need a little help figuring out what to do. I Don't have a single piece of gear that adds crit chance or crit damage. I can destroy Act 1, but I can't really do much good in Act 2. I am trying to just get through the quests at this point without dying so much I use all my gold. Is added crit chance/damage mandatory at this point?
My build is Blizz, Hydra, Magic Weapon, Energy Armor, Shock Pulse(piercing orb), and Tap the Source Arcane Orb. My Passives are Glass Cannon, Galvanizing Ward, and Astral Presence. My HP are 46k, 28k dmg(buffed), 4200 armor(buffed), and my resists range from 400-500 unbuffed as I use Force Armor and not Prismatic. I realize I don't have an escape skill, which the lack of is really showing in Act 2. 5 active offensive skills and 1 active defensive skill is probably not going to cut it. I am trying to piece together some crit gear, as I am not rich enough with gold to buy anything good with crit on it, and there is no way I am going to pay 500$ real money to do it either. My weapon could be better, as it is at 787 DPS/228 Int/271 Vit/1784 life per kill. I guess it's like I said: Am I going to have to Crit or go home?
You can input your stats in and it'll tell you how much damage each point of crit/attack speed/crit damage/int/etc will give you. You should probably focus on the stat that adds the most damage, and using the calculator you can tell adjust your stats so that you can see how much damage you'll get from an item on the AH.
Cool, I will check it out. I wish the weapon I am using had a socket, then I could add some crit damage there. I do have an amulet with +20 max damage, 60 Int, 4.5 crit chance, and 46% crit damage. I would lose over 2,000 damage with it cause the amulet I am using now has 7% IAS and almost 200 Int. Maybe Blizz will let us socket things in the future, but hopefully I can find a better weapon soon with a socket. Thanks for the link.
Crit is tricky, since the more crit and crit damage you have, the more crit and crit damage is worth having. To be more precise, the more crit damage you have the better crit is, and the more crit you have the better crit damage is. Think about it as a (1+A*B) multiplier to your damage.
If you go to the calculator you might notice that crit is very weak for you and so is crit damage, because just getting one of them is indeed weak when you have neither, but once you start getting some you will notice their values go up. In short term you might lose damage compared to gearing up with pure int items, but in the long term you will do a lot more DPS when you stack a significant amount of both. Having 1600 int with 40% crit and 270% crit damage bonus using a 800 (or even 750) DPS weapon should be much better than having 2700 int with a 1000 DPS weapon, and also most likely quite easier to get. In the end, though, it's very hard to do a real comparison, because on one hand the value of each stat is highly dependent on your current stats, while on the other hand the optimal gear setup may be have very different stats than the ones you currently have thus changing the values of everything.
In short - Get crit. In the long run it'll pay off. Just don't totally lose all your int or weapon DPS while getting it and you should be fine. Once you have a decent amount, use a DPS calculator to further optimize your gear to get proper relative values of int/crit/crit damage/weapon dps/offhand damage/etc.
Hate to be picky since your concept is right galzohar, but I don't agree with your example.
(.4x2.7 + 1) x 17 x 800 = 28288
(.05x.5 + 1) x 28 x 1000 = 28700
Unless you meant 270% on top of the base 50% totalling 320% ?
Personally I find crit gear so expensive it's cheaper bulk up primary stat instead. If you have the money though crit is king.
And on top of gear choices, I'd say get rid of either blizzard or Arcane Orb and get Teleport or Mirror Image as a defensive spell. Can't really support 2 ap spenders anyway...
I have been checking the GAH for some crit gear and everything that is good is outrageously expensive. I would have to do warden/butcher runs for a month to get anything that I need. I do great in Act 1, and the Butcher is very easy. I can do Act 2, but not efficiently, and some of the packs in the sewers are near impossible. That's where I am going to have to trade out Arcane Orb for something like Teleport for a way to get out of those 3 sided wallers that don't leave you a way to get out. I really like Arcane Orb, it reminds me so much of Frozen Orb, and I hate to get rid of it, as I use it alot. But Shock Pulse with Piercing Orb is great for getting a little damage through invulnerable minions and Arcane Orb is a huge spender, so I guess it's gonna have to go if I want to progress through the game. I might be able to drop Astral Presence for something else. I would have to keep Blizzard, as a Hydra/Blizz build has to have it!
Is it just me or is the GAH going crazy expensive? I can't find any deals now. My wife raised hell with me over putting money on my actiblizz balance so I don't want to deal with that, but I might have to fork over some money to get it done. I have been so close to getting a good armor, it's either good stats and no sockets or bad stats and 3 sockets. I have found no less than 5 rare Archon armors, but they all have sucked. I think my resistances are good enough for act 2, and I know people have done it with less DPS than I have. My vitality is high enough that I could give up a little bit, but I don't want to go below 40k. My armor needs to be higher for sure, but my pants and chest armor need upgraded so I could gain some there.
Gakky, you must also take the offhand into account. That gives the lower DPS weapon the (big) edge it needs to be an obvious win in this example. At least as long as you're not using a really terrible offhand (and if you do, you might as well use a 2h weapon until you can afford 1-2 mil for a good offhand and at least 1-2 mil for a good 1h).
As for deals, you can't expect to always find them. You must search again and again and again. Do a search or 2, then go do a run (don't just kill butcher, kill all elites in act 1), then go back to do another search. Then pricecheck+sell the stuff you found during your run. Then do another search. Then go do another run. etc etc... Eventually you'll have a good enough idea of what the prices should be and spot the good deal when that does eventually show up on the AH with 1d12h or 1d11h time left. And of course, if you're looking for deals, don't even look at items that don't have 1d12h or 1d11h time left! They're NEVER good deals. At best they would be reasonably priced, and even that is rare. Of course just because an item has 1d11h/1d12h doesn't mean it's a good deal, just that it has a chance somewhat greater than 0 to be a good deal, unlike the items that have less than 1d11h left.
Keep in mind you must be very knowledgeable about prices for the kinds of items you're looking for (which will require performing many searches before even thinking of buying anything), as you must buy the item the second you see it. If it's a good deal, spending 2 additional seconds thinking whether that item is good or not will likely mean someone else will buy it first. And if you think too much see that nobody bought it yet, then it's probably not as good of a deal anyway. Basically if you stop to think it's a lose-lose situation, and the only thing you gain is the lesson learned for the next time you see a similar item.
Bulking on primary stat is only cheaper for very low-end gear setups and/or for those only looking at the effect of a few items, which indeed will be small since you need to have some crit and crit damage for additional crit and crit damage to become effective.
What's a good offhander ? Can't seem to search by damage on GAH.
I have a magic with 104-390, and a rare with a bit less and other stats.
I can't find any info on the range of damage on Wizard offhand.
Max is 110-405, so yours is pretty damn high. However, without any stats at all it's really not all that great and I'm not even sure if it'd sell for 10k. Once you have a high damage offhand with some kind of stats (say 6% crit or 50 int), or a lower damage offhand with enough additional stats to compensate (at least with my gear 1 int is about as good as 1 minimum or 1 maximum damage, and 1% crit is about as good as 22), then a 1h+offhand becomes far better than a similar 2h alternative. Even an offhand like yours, though, will probably at least break even with 2h weapons and maybe even slightly surpass them.
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