Diablo® III

The previous thread has reached the post limit; I'm creating a new one in order to keep the discussion on melee Wizards open. The previous thread still has a lot of useful information in it, so here's the link for the people that want to catch up with everything that's been said:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5589541421

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DISCLAIMER: No, I don't think the 1.0.3 nerf on Attack Speed will hurt this spec. I am somewhat sure that 1.0.3 will be a buff for us, actually (thanks to the other changes, specially the nerf on co-op damage (already LIVE) and the nerfs to Act 2-4);

EDIT: Nerf on IAS is live and it definitely didn't hurt the viability of the spec and the patch is definitely good for us, farming Act 2 is now Viable and the jump to Act 3 should be smoother than before, enjoy!

When I wrote this thread I was still progressing through Act 3 (patch 1.0.2), so keep that in mind. There is plenty of useful information written on the thread itself, if you're willing to build a Melee Wizard and are willing to spend a lot of gold on gear then you might as well do some reading! Some questions you might have may already be answered.

Viability: I have long cleared Inferno using this very same build. I now currently farm Ponyland (solo and co-op); this build is amazing for Whimsy and I hardly ever have trouble (no suicide bombing, ever). It has plenty of utility for co-op and is not slow at all for Soloing. Gear might be expensive, but this should be true for every single spec in the game. In fact, as long as this build is not the mainstream build, perfectly rolled stats for it will still be cheaper than perfectly rolled stats for the mainstream (DPS with no Resists) Wizard build.

Why am I not a Barbarian or Monk?: Why would I have to be? The spells were there, it's viable, it looks badass... It's definitely intended, don't get caught by prejudices, in a game where all you do is farm, just play what you think is funner. Besides, I think tanking as Wizard is cheaper than tanking as a Barbarian.

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Before I just shoot a skill list I'll try to do a quick explanation about why and how this build works, here it is:

This is a Critical Mass build (passive that reduces our cooldowns when we land Critical Hits) that relies on Nova/Diamond Skin up-time in order trivialize incoming damage. It uses Life on Hit in order to heal any damage that you might have taken when nova/diamond skin are up.


Skills:

MOUSE 1 - Spectral Blade (Deep Cuts):

It has an 88% coefficient on life per hit per cast (so almost 30% per blade). It is amazing for cleave and heals a lot when there are multiple targets in front of you; Since Life on Hit and Critical Mass both use the same coefficients, this is procs CM quite a lot.

Q: Why Deep Cuts over Healing Blades?

A: The percentage life leech numbers are just too small. Not only are they small they are further divided by five in the Inferno difficulty. Therefore, at least on current gear levels, life leech is just pretty bad (same thing goes for the life leech Enchant Weapon).

Q: But it still heals for a little, why not just take it over a silly bleed anyways?

A: Well, in fact Healing Blades (ironically) heals for less than Deep Cuts in this current patch. Deep Cuts benefits more from your Life on Hit than Healing Blades (88% vs 66%). So even without the bleed "Deep Cuts" would still be ahead anyways. This very same coefficient is used for Critical Mass procs, so Deep Cuts is superior then the others by far (Thrown Blades has really low coefficients due to higher AoE).

For more information on Life on Hit coefficients for your theorycrafting needs, check this thread out:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149154265?page=1

IMPORTANT: Spectral Blades does elemental damage based on your weapon. If your weapon has Cold Damage, Spectral Blades WILL apply the on-hit slow and will get benefits from Cold-Blooded, same thing for a Fire Weapon and Conflagration.

MOUSE 2 - Meteor (Star Pact):

With a 50% coefficient on life per hit per target on initial cast and another 25% per tick on the dot, this is too good to pass on. Another reason this is so important is that the dot crits have a 100% chance to proc Critical Mass, which leads to Diamond Skin/Nova Spam with enough crit;

EDIT (Patch 1.0.3): A lot of readers are pointing out that Wicked Winds Procs Critical Mass faster than Meteors (which I'll assume also means more Life on Hit, due to the coefficients being tied together). I currently am missing some gear on my Wizard so I can't try it out myself, but keep it in mind as a replacement. Try both and use whichever feels the best (I can imagine Wicked Winds + Explosive Blast being an amazing combination with some AP on Crit).

Force Armor (Prismatic, Force or Pinpoint):

The bonus armor is too good, so are all of the rune bonuses this skill can provide. More crit helps on Diamond Skin/Nova uptime as well as increases DPS, I would choose pinpoint if my crit rate was too low. Force is amazing for a build that focuses on resists and not so much on vitality, it scales amazingly well with life per hit and Diamond Armor. Prismatic is the one I use the most, still, the increased resists (specially physical and fire, since molten/fire chains are one of the hardest packs for me) are simply amazing.

Diamond Skin (Crystal Shell):

This one is easy, with the cooldown reduction thanks to Critical Mass this thing is spammable, along with a lot of armor/resists it gets impossible to even measure how much effective health (healing) this is. Also, 50% life -> Diamond Skin and you're full after a few Meteor Ticks/Spectral Blade hits.

Frost Nova (Cold Snap):

Well, another easy one, build is based around keeping things CC'd for a long time. This makes you virtually immune to infinite normal adds (since you can perma-freeze them, pretty much) and helps kiting/healing on champion packs.

Some other runes are also viable, specially the Crit and Increased Damage one (specially good for Co-op, along with Slow Time (Time Warp)).

Last Skill:

Depends on the situation, really. There are several options for different purposes, here's some of them:

Venom Hydra: amazing dps increase as well as good range ability for Zoltun Kulle runs. Unfortunately it doesn't crit nor does it heal with life per hit, but it's still my favorite pick for soloing;

Magic Weapon (Force): well, another flat DPS increase, it's good but I don't think this beats Venom Hydra for the sheer fact that Hydra can DPS while you run.

Archon: gets you ton of resistances while it's up, the coefficient on the melee attack isn't too bad (50% per target), the cooldown runs fast thanks to Critical Mass. and the spike DPS is good for a lot of packs.

Slow Time: Good for a more tank'ish/co-op build. Increases the damage you and your party deal as well as decreases incoming damage. Can use either the bonus attack speed one or the increased damage one. This slow all animations, not just attacks, so it decreases the damage done by bosses by a lot, too.

Explosive Blast (Chain Reaction): I haven't personally used this (since I was fond of using all my AP on meteors alone), but several people vouch that this is the way to go if you have AP on crit gear.

Teleport and Mirror Image have also been cited several times throughout the thread and are definitely viable options.

Passives:

Blur - Critical Mass - X

The third passive really depends on your gear/playstyle, I am currently using Prodigy over Evocation because I believe the extra meteor casts end up decreasing my CDs a lot more than just 15%.

- Conflagration (for even more co-op damage increase goodies);
- Prodigy;
- Evocation;
- Astral Presence;

And some people even theory-crafted Paralysis/Cold-Blooded with Lightning/Cold damage weapons, but I can't say I've tried those.

Follower:

Enchantress, no contest. 15% armor is amazing, 3% attack speed is great and she hurts. Give her a lot of intelligence gear along with a decent DPS weapon and she'll be almost as strong as a venom hydra ;).

Stats:

Weapon: find one with a lot of life per hit and make it a fast one. DPS is good but there is no use to 40k+ dps if you still die, hitting fast with good LPH is the key for this to work.

Armor and Resistances: look for these whenever possible, these are the key for higher Inferno tiers (Act 3 and 4, specially). Stacking these makes Diamond Skin a lot stronger as well as your healing. Ideally you should look for Resist All wherever you can find.

(Normally 10 armor would equal 1 resist all. That's not entirely true since we get 65% more armor and only 40% more resists, but this should be a good guideline for when you are choosing between different pieces of gear)

Attack Speed: Your best DPS stat will be attack speed, since it increases not only your DPS but also your Healing per second (thanks to life per hit).

Critical Hit: Get something close to 15 at least, shouldn't be too hard, just look for an intellect shield with crit (which shouldn't be too expensive since not a lot of Int users wear shields). Critical Mass + Meteor Ticks = Win.

Try to find Life per hit on rings and amulets, if you get LPH + IAS you're set.

Intellect is still amazing, ideally you'd still want it in every single piece of gear you own. DPS is good and so are the resists it gives you.

GAMEPLAY:

Depends on your gear, if you outgear content you completely trivialize it. The stronger the mobs are the more perfectly you'll have to execute your rotation, if they are too strong you might have to kite a little.

Use meteor whenever able, the passive healing/cd reduction thanks to the dot is amazing, the initial damage is great and so is the healing. Try to get mobs to stack in front of you, the more mobs you hit, the faster you heal and the faster your cds refresh. Diamond Skin is off of the "Global Cooldown", use this whenever yours goes down (it refreshes FAST, sometimes you'll even overlap it). Keep normal minions nova'd 100% of the time.

On Champion Packs that are too strong to straight up tank do the following:

Get them to chase you, throw a couple meteors at your feet -> Diamond Skin -> hit them with Spectral blade until Diamond Skin wears off -> Frost Nova -> Run -> Repeat;

More information:

What makes us unkillable:

Control over the enemies. Aside from just taking little damage (thanks to Prismatic, Blur, Gear, etc.), we can avoid damage completely if our rotation is executed perfectly.

Assumptions we should have: mobs in Inferno hurt.

I know, I know, Act 1 mobs don't hurt you anymore with your good gear, but Act 2 hurts you. The same happens in the later Acts.

So, since we know Inferno hurts and I still don't have enough gear to simply sit in the middle of mobs and destroy them while sipping tea, what can we do?

Some people play as if they had gear in content they don't outgear, this leads to people poorly playing this spec to its limits. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is possibly the melee spec in the game that requires less gear! We need less vitality, dodge, block and life on hit than any other melee spec in this game. Some of our best defensive stats increase our damage output (such as IAS and Crit). People that are complaining they aren't doing well would be doing worse as a Barbarian with equivalent money spent on gear.

Getting back on topic; How you should play in content where a single slip means a death? Keep trying until you get used to this (not so) simple rotation:

When executed perfectly, as long as your Diamond Skin survives 3-4 hits, you'll still be able to kill any champion pack that stacks on top of each other (as in, not a runner/teleporter) and does not crowd control you (nightmarish, jailer, knockback, vortex...).

The rotation should go as follows:

Step 1: Aggro the mobs. Unless they are fast they'll take a while to get to you.

Step 2: Venom Hydra at your feet (if you have it).

Step 3: Meteors at your feet (ideally two). Even if you miss the initial land you won't be missing much, most of the CM procs come from the DoT.

Step 4: Diamond Skin (preferably before Meteors land, so there is a chance that this will instantly refresh).

Step 5: Spectral Blades away (using meteor as Arcane Power permits) until your Diamond
Skin is breaks AND is not refreshed. So, only jump to step 6 if your Diamond Skin breaks AND is on Cooldown. If it refreshes just use it again and keep dropping meteors/spectral blades.

(Mobs usually follow some sort of line, so only one mob will get to you first, so you won't be taking a lot of damage and Diamond Skin shouldn't break. Shortly after the rest of the pack will be swinging away at you, here is when Diamond Skin should break (and you probably take a few hits to your "real HP bar", even if you drop to 30-40%, as long as your Life on Hit is good, you won't even have to pot, just jump to Step 6).

Step 6: Frost Nova. If Diamond Skin refreshes during Nova's duration, go back to Step 5 (pound away mobs). If Diamond Skin is broken and there are still a few seconds of waiting on its cooldown go to step 7.

Step 7: RUN! This is where your life would be in danger. Any damage you take here can escalate to death. Don't worry, this is one of the shortest steps, just wait for Arcane Power/Diamond Skin to recover and go back to step 3 (drop meteors at your feet followed by Diamond Skin).

So, basically whenever your Diamond Skin is up your health should quickly go back to full (and this is exactly why you don't need a lot of Vit for this build). In content you overgear you can afford to sit in middle of mobs and Diamond Skin won't even break, but when playing against stronger mobs Diamond Skin is your real health and you should care for it as much as you care for your health bar!

So, basically, by executing this perfectly, even in content that you don't outgear, you should still trivialize more than 60% of the champion packs.

Always farm places with few running mobs, few ranged mobs, few mobs with inherent crowd control, etc. This further increases the chance that your fights will all be manageable.

ALERT:


I am not saying this is the best spec of all, what I'm saying is: this build is fun, it's steady, you can take a lot of hits, you don't need potions in order to heal, you use Spectral Blades (it looks awesome), you use Star Pact meteors (also looks awesome, I love it) and you get to wear a Shield + Sword (come on, wizards with shields are badass, remember those D2 Sorcs?).

reported for spam

jk

wish i had the gear for this build

Thinking about renaming this thread "Melee Wizard Discussion". Maybe I should index the useful information of the previous thread and post it here.

I am in the process of gearing up to try this build out since I just dinged 60 and have been saving my money like a good lil boy.

So your build was pretty solid until I ran into Hell mode, not even beyond act 1 yet and already I'm finding this build almost impossible to survive. It does good if you can get into melee, but once you run into any enemy that can CC you're screwed. Example: In a cave I ran into a unique goatmen pack. They were Invulnerable Nightmarish Mortars. I literally died 5 times in a row as my male wizard ran around screaming like a little girl while he was being nuked by mortars. As I couldn't get into melee range I couldn't use my blades to heal, meteor wasn't useful as the main unique tended to just run away, and I couldn't keep up Diamond Skin and Frost Nova enough to survive due to no crits to proc critical mass. Seriously frustrating, especially when you consider the other night I was in an all wizard party and was applauded for being a "rare breed" and an "excellent tank." If you can give me any more pointers I'd be grateful. I even swapped out Venom Hydra for Slow Time which helps out w/ survival but even then I'm dying left and right and I'm not even in Inferno yet.

I got Teleport with Wormhole as the optional skill and offensively blink in to start my nova + diamond skin + meteor rotation. I can down anything in act II inferno and most affix combinations in act III inferno as a result. Without Teleport, I find waller, jailer, fast, and some forms of aoe (arcane, molten, desecration) to be difficult to play around.

Maybe you can give that a try.

sme,

Please tell me what I'm doing wrong.

My stats until now are:

270 STR
312 DEX
994 INT (I know it's low)
412 VIT (also low)
4848 Armor (7588 with buffs = 71,67% dmg reduction)
14k DPS
14,5k Life (I want more, but can't find)
2.64 Attacks per second
23% Critical chance
599 Life per Hit (can't buy rings and my weapon has only 441)
Weakest Resistance 635 ( 890 with buffs = 74,78% reduction)
Melee DMG reduction 20%

So, besides my Vitality (Life) and Int (DMG), what should i get more? Cause I'm still dying in act 2 with 3 or 4 hits from Lacunis and that godanm Bee.

If you gear up your enchantress with basic blue int + atk speed items in each slot and a cheap (100k) 800 dps 2 hand weapon with 200+ int, she can 4-5 shot bees for you with her 5.5k dps :3

Hydra or Teleport + Nova also help out a ton.

Thanks sme I was looking for this last night actually to try and see if i could find the gear to try this out

This build is sick. It tanks better than my barb and kills things twice as fast. I went from slow farming Act 1 to blazing through Act 2.

I bought a set weap/offhand that does fire damage and boosts Spectral Blades. The fire weapon damage and meteors make Conflagration a natural choice.

Question for the OP:

Do the meteor ticks stack?

First off - thanks to SME and some of the regular posters for their help with this build. Really put the fun back into Wizard for me!

Act II- Inferno is giving me grief so I want to try and improve my build/equip but cash is a bit tight and I want to be efficient in my upgrades. If anyone can give an opinion on what to focus on I would be grateful!

Here are my stats:

INT - 1524
VIT - 580
Armor - 7777 (buffed)
DPS - 14K
Crit Chance - 21.5%
Crit Damage - +75%

Health - 23K
LPH - 1233
Resists - 500-650 (buffed)

Weapon 636 DPS with 1.4 APS (and 960 of my LPH)

First off - thanks to SME and some of the regular posters for their help with this build. Really put the fun back into Wizard for me!

Act II- Inferno is giving me grief so I want to try and improve my build/equip but cash is a bit tight and I want to be efficient in my upgrades. If anyone can give an opinion on what to focus on I would be grateful!

Here are my stats:

INT - 1524
VIT - 580
Armor - 7777 (buffed)
DPS - 14K
Crit Chance - 21.5%
Crit Damage - +75%

Health - 23K
LPH - 1233
Resists - 500-650 (buffed)

Weapon 636 DPS with 1.4 APS (and 960 of my LPH)

Your LoH and crit are fine. You're probably going to have to sac some int to improve that vit to 900+... my experience if you need closer to 30k hp. You're running prismatic right? Need more HP for that or you still end up getting 2/3-shot and can't leech life from mashing on mobs. Try sniping some auctions for some 150+vit item (pants is where I got my 190 vit - took me from 23k to 30k hp). That'd be my advice.

Not to disagree with BladeKnight, but I don't know how much the extra hp will help. I'm currently in Act 2, and sitting at 25k hp and probably wouldn't mind dropping down to 23k if I could further improve my armor resists.

For a comparison, I'm currently sitting at 9k armor, ~900 resist all and 1.86 attack speed. While I can't take on every affix combination in act 2, I would say that 85% of what I encounter is easy enough if I play it right.

My main suggestion would actually be to increase your armor (maybe to 8500 buffed) and your resists (maybe to ~800 buffed). You also have a lot of LPH (I'm only at 850), and so if you could somehow stack some attack speed, it think you would notice a sizable improvement.

First off - thanks to SME and some of the regular posters for their help with this build. Really put the fun back into Wizard for me!

Act II- Inferno is giving me grief so I want to try and improve my build/equip but cash is a bit tight and I want to be efficient in my upgrades. If anyone can give an opinion on what to focus on I would be grateful!

Here are my stats:

INT - 1524
VIT - 580
Armor - 7777 (buffed)
DPS - 14K
Crit Chance - 21.5%
Crit Damage - +75%

Health - 23K
LPH - 1233
Resists - 500-650 (buffed)

Weapon 636 DPS with 1.4 APS (and 960 of my LPH)

Your comment is vague, you really need to be more specific as to what problems you are encountering. What is killing you? How is it killing you? Do you slowly die and can't heal back to full? Do you get 3 shot? Can you sustain a comfortable rotation with your crit/attack speed?

This build is all about striking a balance between stats in order to achieve an extremely subjective rotation. It really can work for you with different numbers than it does for me, if I had a slower weapon I'd probably need more Life on Hit in order to achieve the same healing output per second, for an instance.

Quick example (full of simplifications, but you'll get the idea):

Let's assume that with my stats while face-tanking a champion pack I take 2000 damage per second (after everything factored in, novas, diamond skin, resistances, etc.). In this situation it's easy to reach the conclusion that I need 2000 healing per second in order to not take any damage at all.

So if I had 2.0 attack speed I could do with 1000 life on hit, on the other hand, if I had 1.5 attack speed I would need somewhere close to 1400 life on hit to achieve the same results.

Well, what I meant by this is: in order to find out what your next upgrade should be you should do a little investigation. Just look at the reason you're dying and work from there. If you're dying because healing output is low, get life on hit or attack speed. If you're dying because the uptime on your Diamond Skin isn't enough, get more critical hit. If you're getting burst down by mobs so quickly that you can't even react, get resists, etc.

Not to disagree with BladeKnight, but I don't know how much the extra hp will help. I'm currently in Act 2, and sitting at 25k hp and probably wouldn't mind dropping down to 23k if I could further improve my armor resists.

For a comparison, I'm currently sitting at 9k armor, ~900 resist all and 1.86 attack speed. While I can't take on every affix combination in act 2, I would say that 85% of what I encounter is easy enough if I play it right.

My main suggestion would actually be to increase your armor (maybe to 8500 buffed) and your resists (maybe to ~800 buffed). You also have a lot of LPH (I'm only at 850), and so if you could somehow stack some attack speed, it think you would notice a sizable improvement.

I've been doing it with 8k armor and 800 resist, 32k hp, finished A2 can tank belial hits - about 85% of encounters are easy here as well, so I guess can do either way. I'd prefer more armor but can't get my armor/resists higher without a fortune haha, so I guess I went vit instead.

I did this build for a butcher run, just destroyed it. But I'm not geared enough for act 3, can't tank the normal mobs and not enough life per hit.

I'm having difficulty with soloing the butcher here are my stats.

1008 Intel
460 vitality (18.7k life)
4345 armor (59% dam reduction)
9549 damage
15.5% crit chance
204 all resistance
1099 LPH

these are unbuffed and yes I'm using a shield :P

I can make it to the final parts of the butcher, but when the whole floor starts to catch fire I just don't have the dps to pull him down before I die. Any tips? Did I gear horribly wrong?

I'm having difficulty with soloing the butcher here are my stats.

1008 Intel
460 vitality (18.7k life)
4345 armor (59% dam reduction)
9549 damage
15.5% crit chance
204 all resistance
1099 LPH

these are unbuffed and yes I'm using a shield :P

I can make it to the final parts of the butcher, but when the whole floor starts to catch fire I just don't have the dps to pull him down before I die. Any tips? Did I gear horribly wrong?

Your dps is just too low. You should be able to kill him before the floor turns to all fire.

I jumped into a game with a good friend of mine. Me playing Melee Wiz, him playing Barbarian. He died 3 times. Me? None. Not once. Just stood there, taking damage, diamond skinning. Was a lot of fun to kind of show him what's what, you know what I mean?

I'm having difficulty with soloing the butcher here are my stats.

1008 Intel
460 vitality (18.7k life)
4345 armor (59% dam reduction)
9549 damage
15.5% crit chance
204 all resistance
1099 LPH

these are unbuffed and yes I'm using a shield :P

I can make it to the final parts of the butcher, but when the whole floor starts to catch fire I just don't have the dps to pull him down before I die. Any tips? Did I gear horribly wrong?

There is a ledge in the extreme south section of the Butcher "arena" that one can stand on without taking any fire damage from the floor. Just lure him there and face-tank him down. works like a charm