Bows with intellect are just as good as two-handers with int on them... which CAN be great, with the right stats. Hell, I usually use a 2-hander on my Wizard because it keeps me from using up all of my Arcane Power to do damage.
[Gaming] Diablo 3 : Ser Farm-A-Lot
- Thread starter Jay
- Start date
It's the same reason I use a two-hander on my wizard instead of a wand and a focus: resource management. Two-handers fire slower, but do comparable damage to one-hander +focus... and don't use up nearly as much mana/arcane power a hit. So if I'm blasting things with my wizard's disintegrate, I want to be able to keep it up as long as possible and use a two-hander. WDs have the same issue with Spirit Barrage: firing it off as fast as you can with a one-hander drains mana fast, but using a bow keeps it manageable.
because enchantress and property shift enchant.[DOUBLEPOST=1399129053,1399128907][/DOUBLEPOST]
with demon hunters its similar with quivers, the normal and blue quivers are junk if you have fast hand crossbows. the yellow rares are ok, THE ORANGE LEGENDARYS ARE BROKEN AS SHIT! I have something duffel, it makes bolos explode on contact, if I find the level 70 version its all I will ever use.
I get that, and understand well the benefit of slowing down the resource drain. But with so many good maces/axes/etc out there, I'm always surprised that, specifically for WD's, the 2H of choice keeps ending up being a bow.
--Patrick
I've yet to see a two hander that compares yet. I'd love to find one and try it out! I use my zombie bears and anything that would let me use them more often can't be bad.
Let me see if I can show when a 2H would be really advantageous. You know there's skills that say things like, "Does xxx% weapon damage as fire," right? Well, you might wonder why a dagger that says 2000dps doesn't do as much damage as a 2H axe that says 2000dps. That's because the big number at the top of the weapon isn't an accurate measure of the damage the weapon deals, it is an estimate of how much damage per second it can do.
That bow up there shows that it does 1511.3 dps, but this isn't really the number we're looking at when deciding whether to use it with a WD. Instead, look below to the damage number, the one that says "929-1400 Damage." When comparing weapons, you really want to use the average of these two numbers, so (929+1400)/2=1164.5 average damage for this weapon.
If you are using a lot of direct damage skills (like the blowgun), then none of this probably matters to you, since the slower "1.30 Attacks per Second" of a 2H weapon like this will offset the lower damage of a faster weapon like a dagger. You'll notice that 1164.5 * 1.3 does in fact = 1513, which is where you get the big number at the top of the stat box. For a dagger (with an attack speed of 1.50) to do the same amount of dps (big number), it only has to have an average damage of 1511/1.5=1007, and this is actually the direction you want to take if you are using a lot of skills/items that say things like "Chance on hit to xxx," or "+yyy life per hit" (i.e., proc-based effects).
However, if you are using skills that say things like, "Does 1500% weapon damage as poison over 5 seconds: Cooldown 15 seconds,"
then you really don't care what the attacks per second number is, because you're only going to be able to cast it once every 15 seconds anyway. And in a case like that, especially with the WD (whose style of play is usually "stand out of the way and let your minions do the work"), then you just want to maximize that average damage by whatever means possible (boosting your prime stat, wearing items that add add'l base damage, etc.). This is especially true since your minions' attack damage is directly based on the same number.
(Disclaimer: This is how I think it works, at least it sure seems to)
Again, though, I'm not sure why people choose bows as opposed to 2H maces, etc., unless the reasoning is that if you're out of mana then you can at least shoot at the enemy from afar as opposed to having to go toe-to-toe.[DOUBLEPOST=1399141182,1399141123][/DOUBLEPOST]
--Patrick
That bow up there shows that it does 1511.3 dps, but this isn't really the number we're looking at when deciding whether to use it with a WD. Instead, look below to the damage number, the one that says "929-1400 Damage." When comparing weapons, you really want to use the average of these two numbers, so (929+1400)/2=1164.5 average damage for this weapon.
If you are using a lot of direct damage skills (like the blowgun), then none of this probably matters to you, since the slower "1.30 Attacks per Second" of a 2H weapon like this will offset the lower damage of a faster weapon like a dagger. You'll notice that 1164.5 * 1.3 does in fact = 1513, which is where you get the big number at the top of the stat box. For a dagger (with an attack speed of 1.50) to do the same amount of dps (big number), it only has to have an average damage of 1511/1.5=1007, and this is actually the direction you want to take if you are using a lot of skills/items that say things like "Chance on hit to xxx," or "+yyy life per hit" (i.e., proc-based effects).
However, if you are using skills that say things like, "Does 1500% weapon damage as poison over 5 seconds: Cooldown 15 seconds,"
then you really don't care what the attacks per second number is, because you're only going to be able to cast it once every 15 seconds anyway. And in a case like that, especially with the WD (whose style of play is usually "stand out of the way and let your minions do the work"), then you just want to maximize that average damage by whatever means possible (boosting your prime stat, wearing items that add add'l base damage, etc.). This is especially true since your minions' attack damage is directly based on the same number.
(Disclaimer: This is how I think it works, at least it sure seems to)
Again, though, I'm not sure why people choose bows as opposed to 2H maces, etc., unless the reasoning is that if you're out of mana then you can at least shoot at the enemy from afar as opposed to having to go toe-to-toe.[DOUBLEPOST=1399141182,1399141123][/DOUBLEPOST]
There are quite a few WD skills that say things like, "This effect is extended by your gold/health pickup radius," so that item gets to be pretty handy in those cases.
--Patrick
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would you reforge anything on the frog or leave it as is? The only thing I would consider is the mana regen.
My toughness is crazy high now but my dps hasn't jumped up as fast. I just did a set of bounties on T2 and it was slow but it went well other than arcane sentries. Those suck.
Welcome to Torment, kid.
Also, finding that legendary amulet can help you with the arcane sentries. Otherwise there's Spirit walk, Zombie Dogs, Soul Harvest, Sacrifice, Big Bad Voodoo, Blood Ritual, Spirit Vessel, Grave Injustice, or Haunt to help keep you alive.
--Patrick
No, Wizard stays super-duper easy up until about Torment 1... where suddenly the lack of survivability becomes an issue against wallers and pullers.
My current build?
Storm Armor - Power of the Storm (Though I'll eventually be putting Force Armor on instead)
Magic Weapon - Force Weapon
Familiar - Sparkflint
Archon - Improved Archon
Disintegrate - Chaos Nexus
Electrocute - Surge of Power (I may be switching this out with Teleport though)
Basically, I buff with the Storm Armor, Magic Weapon, an Familair for extra damage and reduced Arcane cost. Then I just sit there an shoot my laser beam until everything is dead. If It's a boss/rare monster, then I go Archon and melee/laser it to death while firing off AOE explosions. Couldn't be simpler.
Frozen Orb used to be super cheap too but they nerfed it a bit ago.
Except that build gets old real quick. There's plenty of other variations of it to switch around with, luckily...Black Hole has some nice potential.
Still the Wizard only really shines by putting 3 of your hotbar skills as "passive" skills you fire off every 10 minutes, and the fourth as Archon. Meaning your basic play style only uses the mouse buttons, Disintegrate on one side, and some signature skill on the other. Depending on your set-up, you can just skip the signature skill, or replace your laser beam with another damaging skill for fun and dicking around.
Still the Wizard only really shines by putting 3 of your hotbar skills as "passive" skills you fire off every 10 minutes, and the fourth as Archon. Meaning your basic play style only uses the mouse buttons, Disintegrate on one side, and some signature skill on the other. Depending on your set-up, you can just skip the signature skill, or replace your laser beam with another damaging skill for fun and dicking around.
all you need is a tank or two to draw agro and you never have to worry. our current four man team for rift runs are 2 wizards, a demon hunter, and a monk. we can run a rift in 10 minutes on torment one.
I have played about 10 minutes of multiplayer with my brother, and that's it. Ewwww random strangers and why play together with friends when they'll just humiliate me and make me feel inadequate? (What? I played DI and DII single player too and got every character over level 75! They're not MP-er-se games!)
I agree that random games are likely to be full of nasty/rude/impatient people but with friends it would be bad?[DOUBLEPOST=1399312356,1399312217][/DOUBLEPOST]Does anyone else play WD here? I would love some advice on raising my dps.
Bones showed me that using Spirit Barrage - Rush of Souls + the Rush of Essence trait basically means that you have an infinite cast, multi-target attack that also slows. Combine that with Mass Confusion - Paranoia and Big Bad Voodoo - Slam Dance and you'll be doing alright damage. Drop Acid Cloud - Acid Rain whenever you have spare mana for the acid pools and AOE damage.
Dave
Staff member
Win Diablo 3 swag? Sure!
http://splur.gy/r/wzmdb/r/2LDxX9hm6tq
(Yes, this is shameless. Yes, you can win it. Yes, I get points from anyone doing this.)
http://splur.gy/r/wzmdb/r/2LDxX9hm6tq
(Yes, this is shameless. Yes, you can win it. Yes, I get points from anyone doing this.)
You can see my skill choices by clicking here to head over to the Blizzard Wizard Skill Calculator.
It is an arcane-heavy build, which is why I "waste" a slot just to get an extra 2/sec arcane regen with the familiar (I will change that later when I upgrade my character's gear). This character is lvl 70, of course, but there is still room for improvement. I have always been selecting gear based on its ability to increase armor/resist/vit/%life/LifeOnHit/%AtkSpeed rather than just straight damage, so I know his damage is a little lower than what it could be (only 400k right now rather than the 600-700k it could be, so T3 is about as high as I can comfortably solo), but my survivability stats are actually pretty darned solid:
These stats (and skill choices) allow me to stand in plagued/sentries, etc. and facetank if I have to, but mainly they reduce the amount of incoming damage to the point where it can't get through the shields erected by the magic weapon. If I do have to fight something tough, I will switch to the spectral blades, which stack a second shield with the magic weapon to double the amount of damage absorbed. Generally, the only trouble I have is with frozen/stunners, because then I can't attack to keep my shields up, but this will change once I find my first set of ice climbers.
Also, I want to point out that Alkaizer, the player famous for becoming the first person to hit Paragon 100 on all 5 character classes, is closing in on being the first to get to Paragon 800. As of this post, he has managed to hit Paragon 715 with a pretty awesome build.
EDIT: Rejiggered some of my items, lost about 200 armor and 100 resist all compared to the above image, but gained about 125k dps. I figure it's worth it.
--Patrick
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Paragon 800....holy crap! I'm just going for 100 
I checked out his barb and his dps is awesome but his toughness seems low. What am I missing?
I checked out his barb and his dps is awesome but his toughness seems low. What am I missing?
I'm not sure how the Unity's work, but if he's only receiving 1/3 of all damage (since the rest goes to Scoundrel and Templar), well...Does't need as much, does he? I'm just not sure whether or not it also applies to non-used followers. Then again, otherwise it'd seem a weird and useless health link item. Or he's constantly patying with 3 others who all have Unity as well, so he only receives even less damage?
Unity Ring (splits damages between ring bearers) and the fact that DPS is kind of the end all stat once you hit Torment.Paragon 800....holy crap! I'm just going for 100
I checked out his barb and his dps is awesome but his toughness seems low. What am I missing?
My dps is around 370k and my toughness is just over 8m. T1 is easy solo and I can do T2. Beyond that, things wouldn't die fast enough.
It would only affect whichever follower he is using at the time. You can only use one.
42% crit chance, 400% crit damage increase, +100% to all fire damage, his main skill is Earthquake which does 4500% of weapon damage, and his weapon damage is about 1750. I don't know how the multipliers stack, but that's still gonna be enormous. Add to that the fact that he is wearing a set which automatically does an Earthquake whenever he leaps, shoes which give him a extra free leaps, Berserker which increases his total damage +50%, multiple items which specifically boost Earthquake damage another +30% or so, and has also maxed on items which reduce the cooldown time of skills (The Berserker and both Earthquake and Leap) and increase fury generation. The set bonus also reduces the normally
--Patrick
Why use rush of essence if you're going to use spirit barrage with the manitou rune? The only benefit you'll really get then will be getting a small amount of mana back any time you spirit walk.
This is my current build, it's a summons build.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#cYlTQU!SRVW!ZcYZbc
The basic gist is to summon the dogs and gargantuan, who do pretty impressive damage with midnight feast, use piranha wave to afflict the group of monsters with increased damage, and lay into them with a never ending firebats cast with the vampiric bats rune, removing the mana cost. This summons fetish sycophants, and my gear is aimed at increased physical damage (increasing the damage of all of my summons) as well as attack speed (faster summoning of sycophants). Slam Dance is there for elite groups.
Because this build doesn't use mana outside of the initial cast of firebats, I can run pierce the veil for a flat 30% damage increase. And those little fetishes hit like a goddamn truck.