Critical Mass Melee Wizard

**magicrectangle** · 29-07-2012, 21:40

Originally Posted by raveharu

also any packs that hit very hard (phasebeasts, malachor) or moves too fast (corrupted angels, morlu incinerators) are impossible. then again, most of other classes struggle with them too...

This post made me feel like doing an act 4 video. I normally farm act 3, because act 4 has barely any elites, but act 4 is completely doable. I didn't get any morlu incinerator elites, but I did get two different corrupted angel packs, which were not a problem at all:

<****** class="restrain" title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/K2VHHzas4qQ?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0">

All of 7 elites in the entire act, lol.

**Kyrone FX** · 30-07-2012, 00:47

Good music choice hehe

**galzohar** · 30-07-2012, 00:49

Act 4 is definitely quite lame. They really should do something about it. I played through it a grand total of 1 time (and got disconnected right as I reached Diablo with 5 buffs).

As for EHP, the more the better. Unfortunately almost no matter how much EHP you have, some stuff will still be able to kill you if enough of them hit you at the same time. The more EHP you have, the less possibilities they have to kill you and the less often you will die. But almost no EHP will save you from 15 spears thrown at you at once or from getting vortexed into 3 lasers right as they cross the spot towards which you were vortexed before you even have a chance to teleport out. The more EHP you have, the more scenarios of this nature (but less extreme, of course) that you can handle. There isn't really a black and white threshold. You can have 1k resists, over 5k armor and 30-40k HP and still on rare occasions die in act 2. I'm not even sure at what point you become better off farming act 3 than act 2, due to the totally random nature of the causes of death, and the time lost due to deaths for every different level of EHP is very hard to measure.

**magicrectangle** · 30-07-2012, 01:15

Originally Posted by galzohar

(and got disconnected right as I reached Diablo with 5 buffs).

Lol that happened to me while I was recording the above video. Actually it wasn't a disconnect the screen just went black instead of doing the cutscene, and just stayed black. That's happened to me once before at that spot too.

As for EHP, the more the better. Unfortunately almost no matter how much EHP you have, some stuff will still be able to kill you if enough of them hit you at the same time. The more EHP you have, the less possibilities they have to kill you and the less often you will die. But almost no EHP will save you from 15 spears thrown at you at once or from getting vortexed into 3 lasers right as they cross the spot towards which you were vortexed before you even have a chance to teleport out. The more EHP you have, the more scenarios of this nature (but less extreme, of course) that you can handle. There isn't really a black and white threshold. You can have 1k resists, over 5k armor and 30-40k HP and still on rare occasions die in act 2. I'm not even sure at what point you become better off farming act 3 than act 2, due to the totally random nature of the causes of death, and the time lost due to deaths for every different level of EHP is very hard to measure.

With 1k resists and 7k armor I still die randomly to stuff like that. I certainly wouldn't want to play this build hardcore.

As far as what I would consider "enough" to not die too often in a3, I'd say 800 res all and 6k armor (with prismatic) is a decent place to be. Much less than that and things like electrified will eat off your diamond skin, etc.

I've been 2-man farming a3 a bit with a ww/into the fray barb, which is pretty fun. 1400 resist all with impunity lets me stand in arcane beams, and we can both skip trash very fast. He skips it a little faster than me in keep depths (and other areas with that tile set), but I skip it faster than him in places with straight-shot lines for teleporting, which is pretty much everywhere else - he catches up quite quickly when I hit an elite though. On big open maps we'll even run opposite directions, each end up with an elite, and drag them together for mutual AoE. That can be pretty fun.

**Merle** · 30-07-2012, 05:49

Originally Posted by magicrectangle

This post made me feel like doing an act 4 video. I normally farm act 3, because act 4 has barely any elites, but act 4 is completely doable. I didn't get any morlu incinerator elites, but I did get two different corrupted angel packs, which were not a problem at all:

<****** class="restrain" title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/K2VHHzas4qQ?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0">

All of 7 elites in the entire act, lol.

Thanks for making the video. Is there any way you could make it viewable on mobile devices please?

**magicrectangle** · 30-07-2012, 06:42

I just brought it up on my iphone no problem. I don't see why it would be any different from any other youtube video. Youtube is pretty mobile friendly. Not sure how you'd see what's going on on an iphone, but you can watch it.

**galzohar** · 30-07-2012, 14:49

Actually I think I had the exact same bug with the screen going black now that you mention it. Had to to to task manager and end process and restart the game.

Oh, an apparently a very large portion of the views on my video are actually from mobile platforms, which is pretty interesting. I guess people get bored on the road so they go watch youtube videos, while at home on their PC they have better things to do?

As for barbs, they seem to skip much faster in any dungeon that has any kind of doorways, and about as fast anywhere else. If they skip and you teleport to them they also get the benefit of starting the fight with fury making it end much faster. If both are out there running around then you end up killing each other's monsters slowing each other down. I'd only do the skipping if the barb has a full inventory and needs to make space.

Having both the barb and wizard scout seems like it can be made effective but it gets tricky. There's more travel time after an elite is found, and it gets bad if you spread out too far. But you do get to cover more ground faster.

**Merle** · 30-07-2012, 23:25

oops... delete this one..

**Merle** · 30-07-2012, 23:26

Originally Posted by magicrectangle

I just brought it up on my iphone no problem. I don't see why it would be any different from any other youtube video. Youtube is pretty mobile friendly. Not sure how you'd see what's going on on an iphone, but you can watch it.

On my iPad it says User has not enabled this to be viewed on mobile devices. I haven't tried on my iPhone...

Thanks for checking.

**kwalker** · 31-07-2012, 00:45

This build looks fantastically fun and I am definitely going to try it out. Already started my wizard and he is level 22. I am fairly poor though so if any of you happen to upgrade your gear and wouldn't mind helping out another fellow critical mass wizard with some hand me downs that would be great. I am afraid that as soon as I get this build going tho that Jay Wilson is going to figure out that I am having fun and show me how I should be having fun with patch 1.04 haha!