Help - crit mass wizard needs your advice

[Hookipa]

Thanks for the help guys.

I just finished Diablo and act 4 completely solo. After about 5 deaths I managed to beat him.
In the end playstyle and CPU were the problems. The tips with on how to deal with the different elites really helped. I also made some upgrades in armor and weapons. The second problem is my slow CPU (no this is not an excuse ;-)).
With a full game I lag often but in act 1-2 this was not a problem bc my resists were high enough. When I play solo I lag less and freeze lock is all of a sudden pretty easy.

@ MrNajsman: I also dont really understand the mathematics for the calculations but I usually just go by the dps numbers displayed.

Thanks,
Hookipa.

[dcorp]

magicrectangle, or anyone else - do you just keep the frost nova, DS and EB keys pressed on the keyboard (while pressing shift as well, so as not to move) and just position the WW's with your mouse or you keep hitting them all the time individually while doing a lockdown?

[MrNajsman]

magicrectangle, or anyone else - do you just keep the frost nova, DS and EB keys pressed on the keyboard (while pressing shift as well, so as not to move) and just position the WW's with your mouse or you keep hitting them all the time individually while doing a lockdown?

I just learned to keep them all pressed. As long as you keep casting WW the others will cast when they come up again.

[magicrectangle]

I guess it can depend on your keyboard and OS settings, but yeah, if you hold down diamond skin, chain reaction, and frost nova, then spam wicked wind, it should work. You can't hold down both frost nova and wicked wind and have it work though.

Also don't forget to let go of frost nova and wicked wind when you want to teleport.

[Eric Xanthu]

I would just add that there are times this technique will not help and there are times it will get you killed. Once you have a few WW up, a rapid (1-3) press is faster...some time when you are fighting stuff that's not super-lethal, just look at your cool downs while using the hold technique. You'll see that your skills have considerable down time. You can squeeze a lot more out of rapid key pressing, but it's murder on your hands. I save it for the serious encounters.

The other drawback is that this technique is ap-stupid. The ap-hog in this build is WW and there are times you really don't want to be casting it on cool down. Especially if you teleport up to something, or have to toss a lot of preliminary WW against a moving target, you'll start the battle down in ap and need to ease up on WW to get going. In that case, mix in a (1-3)x3 rapid press instead of mouse clicking. You'll see your ap shoot up assuming you have good crit and ap on crit. Then you can go back to the hold technique and save your hands.

The only time I shift-stand is when I'm fighting something where moving could get me killed insta-quick (molten, fire chains). The stutter-stepping is not usually a problem for me most of the time though.