Help me with improving my wizard please :)

[altima]

I have been enjoying my hydra/orb/blizzard wizard for quite some time now. I am at a point where I can run act 1 without any kind of difficulties even when if I stack a bit more mf. I can even tank some hits and still be fine. But the act and the build are starting to get boring to me. Some days ago I played thru some of act 2 and I was amazed how much harder it was. I could not afford to take many hits and enemies were much harder to kill, and get near me with much greater ease.

I guess its time to improve my gear a bit. But I want to switch my build to something that can take a bit more hits but still dish out a lot of damage. Something around critical mass and archon sounds a lot of fun, so I want to buy gear that will be good for such build. I understand that the key points are critical hit chance/damage and attack speed, but since its much harder to get very good (not top of the line) items in d3 than d2, I need some help and advice.

Here are my equipment, stats (not buffed and buffed) and build.
I also have 120mf, and 12 movement speed.









The thing I dont want to do at all is cut on my attack speed, I hate, no I despise casting slowly. Actually I would like to go up to 2 attacks per second.
I would also like to keep relatively good mf 100-120 base if possible.

So I have just a bit over 5mil gold and I want to spend it on a single slot gear such that it will boost a bit my current build and compliment well my future archon/crit mass build. So I need alot of crit chance.
Im not sure, but maybe the source slot will be best to upgrade at the moment. But I dont know what type of stats to search besides the crit. Im adamant on high damage (as much as my current), but should i compromise on intelligence and/or vit ? Maybe I should upgrade another slot or even wait to gather more gold ?

Plase advise me on how to proceed

[Omelet]

Unfortunately I'm not sure the problem you've presented and the listed constraints has a viable solution.

For act 2 I would suggest replacing Diamond Skin with Teleport (Wormhole or Fracture).

To have gear that is viable for act 2 that has a base MF of 100-120 (i.e. good stats and MF on 5-6+ pieces) is extremely expensive. I don't think there is a magic bullet here... I would suggest replacing your gear piece by piece and focusing on the following; Armor, Res All, Int, Vit, Life Regen. You'd like to have close to 750 life regen unbuffed for a kiting build and between 350-500 resists is sufficient for Act 2. I would focus on increasing your armor and life regen.

I wouldn't worry too much about your base MF... with the NV buffs and the way the system works, it can often be more efficient to kill twice as fast with zero MF vs. half the speed with 100% MF. Worry about being able to farm Act 2 and then swap in MF gear... If you try just to move right into Act 2 with that MF, youl will probably find yourself stuck in Act 1 for quite some time.

[psyadam]

You have damn good resists and gear already. I use arcane orb also and I'm a kiter, but I use a 2-handed weapon that gives me 1200dps that I bought on gah for only 700k (I think it was a good deal). I'd try that out.

edit: you and I have very similar stats--I have 1592 intelligence, 26k life and 26k dps. However my resists are only half as good as yours. I also have similar armor- I have 4785 after force armor.

Feel free to friend me. It seems there are very few wizards out there. I'm Balthazar#1650.

edit: out of curiousity, how much mf do you have?

[altima]

Thanks for the replies.

I have anywhere between 100 and 160 base mf depending on the gear. Also 2-hander is out of the question cause It will greatly slow my casting speed and lower my critical chance. I managed to get a nice source with comparable int and damage plus 8 crit chance and some ap on crit. Its not amazing but I got it for next to nothing. Still it bugs me that my wiz can stomp a1 but dies so easily in a2, not that I cant progress, that I can, but I thing it should be easier than it is.

Im starting to think that with the guaranteed drops, it may be better to be as powerful as possible but with less mf. I will start switching my gear for such without mf in order to boost stats. Will also try to add some loh and life regen.

Btw is it just me or are resists giving less dmg reduction after about 700 ?

[psyadam]

I'm still not convinced that your weapon with 1.5 attack speed is superior to my 2nd hander. How much arcane power do you have? With increased attack speed, you would run out of mana super fast, I would think? Also, loh is not really worth anything to wizards unless you're trying to make a tank wizard which I think is stupid. Life regen is a much more important stat.

It would make since that you get diminishing returns on resists, just like you get diminishing returns on anything else (life, armor, etc).

[altima]

I have 120 arcane power, 100 when Energy armor is casted. I never run out of AP cause blizzard is not main dmg source, I just use it for the snare effect. For dmg I spam piercing orb and hydra. So attack speed >>>> huge weapon dmg for me.

Also I have read on numerous sites that cold blooded rises ANY kind of damage to frozen/chilled enemies. Is that true or does it rise ONLY cold damage ? Cause if it is only cold damage that passive is next to useless for me and should be switched.

[LeminaAusa]

Also I have read on numerous sites that cold blooded rises ANY kind of damage to frozen/chilled enemies. Is that true or does it rise ONLY cold damage ? Cause if it is only cold damage that passive is next to useless for me and should be switched.

Yes, it affects all damage. Just go ingame and fire magic missle on an act 1 inferno mob with and without blizzard on it. The difference is quite obvious.