Diablo® III

It's common knowledge that melee wizards are awesome now, but when I first started out the general consensus was that they did too little dps. I aimed to prove that wrong and successfully did so in the videos below. I don't play d3 anymore but by the end I was pushing nearly 1 rare/champ pack or boss per minute at about 2 rares per pack, which is extremely efficient farming.

If you have any questions please read through this thread as they are almost all answered within.

Videos:

NEW 7/31/12: 275k+ DPS Boss Kills: http://youtu.be/y-rKZbL853o

4m30s Whimsyshire Run (Uncut): http://youtu.be/z-btToPtYus

4m10s Siegebreaker Run (Uncut): http://youtu.be/Txe8E7kg_Ck

Act 3 FULL CLEAR in 57m (Uncut): http://youtu.be/D8j2fEjSCw0

Act 4 19m full clear (Uncut): http://youtu.be/5PQg97voEL8

Act 3 1h clear for the "swift descent" achievement (Uncut): http://youtu.be/44ySkFJ4LGA

Act 3 FULL 52 pack/boss clear in 1h24m for 93 rares (Uncut): http://youtu.be/gvtSap_f-hI

200k+ dps proof- All Act 3+4 Boss Kill video: http://youtu.be/tv75oZHpHqE

5m7s Siegebreaker run: http://youtu.be/AwjoWLHKRi4

Melee wizard in act 3/4 Co-Op: http://youtu.be/dxhilvjkhw0

Challenging act 3/4 packs for melee wizard with tips: http://youtu.be/Iw4xRKrh0jQ

6m Siegebreaker run in 1.0.3: http://youtu.be/10nIK7WDRC4

4m Diablo face tank kill in 1.0.3: http://youtu.be/XXxKKPNqu68

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Final gear: http://imgur.com/G4CAB
Final upgrade: http://imgur.com/xQTQH
Final build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#VQXYOh!agW!YZaccc

My gear and spec evolved over time, check the youtube description of each video for links to my gear/build at the time of filming.

How much did your Wand run you?

Only 1.5m. When I decided to try melee spec a couple days ago it was the best in the AH at the time. No where near the damage of my 900dps 11IAS socket main weapon but I needed something with LoH so I nabbed this. Apparently 1.5m is a great deal. ;)

STILL THINK WIZARDS SUCK? JUST GET SOME REALLY GOOD GEAR GUIS! NOW THE GAME IS EASY WIZARDS ARE OP.

Couple of questions:

1. Does ET>WW crit and proc CM similar to how meteor does? Same with Explosive Blast?

2. Do you find that Explosive Blast > Venom Hydra?

With your gear pretty much any of the other specs will work just as well. Grats though, was quite an eye opener.

Explosive Blast with Chain Reaction creates for more damaging attacks, i.e. more abilities going off that have a chance to crit thus proc'ing CM and keeping him alive and doing more damage.

No pun intended, Chain Reaction literally sets off a chain reaction of more chances to get crits enabling him to survive better and dish out more damage.

Compiling gear then can't wait to try this!

Who the !*$% wants to mash 124124124214244214212114214142142144124 all day long? That's what I saw...

This has to be one of the best gear sets I've ever seen.

how are you regening your AP so fast? I don't any pieces with AP on crit. does prodigy really
keep ur AP up that well?

Yeah, Prodigy is pretty solid in conjunction with Spectral Blades. I've been using it for a while now with the meteor version of this build and I can usually non-stop cast meteors.

Couple of questions:

1. Does ET>WW crit and proc CM similar to how meteor does? Same with Explosive Blast?

2. Do you find that Explosive Blast > Venom Hydra?

1) No it procs CM much much more, especially since you can stack WW. Pretty sure explosive blast does as well, but I haven't tested.

2) Infinitely better. It's like having 10 venom hydras. You get the CM procs, the AP on crit procs and against large packs such as rare/champs and in coop inferno you can start numerous explosions every second just further ramping up the damage. In addition, you get 11% LoH per explosion per target with explosive blast. Consider that you can hit 10-15 targets at a time and chain up to 5-6 explosions a second in ideal situations... This is the reason why I can stand in plague/molten/arcane stacks (all of that together) and not have to worry about health, and while standing still I can chain nova as well. Any movement at all really messes this build up, whether on your part or the mobs part which is why a monk is so pro in coop to pull them all in repeatedly.

how are you regening your AP so fast? I don't any pieces with AP on crit. does prodigy really
keep ur AP up that well?

In the video I am using my source, not my shield, which has 10 AP/crit. I'm hunting for a weapon or hat with AP/crit so I can switch to shield which boosts my EHP by 40% from 308k to 431k. Pickings are slim however, at least without downgrading my current gear significantly.

06/22/2012 11:13 AMPosted by ZOMGDURRRR

With your gear pretty much any of the other specs will work just as well. Grats though, was quite an eye opener.

No they don't, that's the whole point. I've done orb/archon and even made a couple threads about how awesome ray of frost is (with videos) but NOTHING can compare to this build. I never die and everything is super fast and easy.
"bad luck" isn't an issue for this build like it is for others and the all too frequent lag spike doesn't affect anything either where it often means death for a kiting build.

Is it at all worth considering Healing Blades over Deep Cuts? Given that you want to stack crit chance for critical mass anyways, does enough of the builds damage come from WW and EB to compensate for the reduced damage on spectral blades? Having not yet attempted a melee spec I don't know whether the life-steal is at all significant.

Likewise, what's your position on Deep Freeze vs. Bone Chill? 15% less damage but more crit chance and thus more CM procs.

I'm very interested in trying the build, but im new to the class so excuse me if those are totally noob questions.

Seems nice, but how well does it do with multiple mobs/elites at the same time.

I've been using a similar build, but without ET/WW. I only have 25% crit rate at the moment, but it's nice to see we don't need IAS much anymore. This just shows me what I anticipated when they nerfed IAS - crit chance and damage would become king. My biggest bane has been vortex/firechains/arcane.

I'll try out ET/WW later. I love EB/CR. Thanks for the post.

06/22/2012 01:01 PMPosted by Vuffy

Seems nice, but how well does it do with multiple mobs/elites at the same time.

Watch the vid, near the end.

The wizard coefficient thread: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149154265
Lists ET as having only a 10% chance per tick to proc Critical Mass. Is that wrong?

Gratz on killing diablo. And the effort you put into this post; however, a wizard is still a wizard. I boil this build down to the max damage archon build. The archon build is good for farming certain places in Inferno with mass packs, just like this build is good for single bosses. Doubt this build stands up to tanking elite packs...you would lose diamond skin instantly and die in probably 3-4 blows.

I have a 60 wizard with some pretty high end stuff too and I'm regretting it. The character is just not good "all around." They are awesome in certain situations (depending on build) but lack versatility 80% of the time.

Bottom Line: Good thinking, interesting build but just another attempt to make a wizard appear overly powerful when, in fact, they are one (if not the most) weakest all-around character.