wizard team opinions/advice

[djeayzonne]

Well, without gizzard makes things just a little tougher so far (meaning up to 41).
But honestly, what gets me is projectiles and gizzard doesn't help that much with that as well.
Part of the problem is that once all the hydras get going and meteors drop, and I can't really see what is going on, if there are any projectiles to avoid and whatnot.
I have started casting a bubble on my team as well to help with that and trying to look for projectiles with more effort.

What defensive gem would work best for defending against projectiles?

I don't really have any interest in going higher in rifts at the moment as I want to experiment with different items, gems, and skills at the 38-40 level.

Seriously thinking about getting rid of teleport and using something that can create the arcane stack more reliably as/when needed.

[djeayzonne]

Oh, I did try going pure 6-piece delsere with triumverate and switching between shock pulse ball and frozen orb.
Even with convention of elements while casting frozen orb with the 3 stacks from triumverate was only criting for 35 or so million.

The 4-piece del and 4-piece tals using mammoth seems to work better

[Devile]

So low? U sure the target was inside a bubble?

[Cmoidudu]

If you are getting hit by missiles, you are too close. If you have one (or more) active Slow Time bubble(s), you might be able to see them coming. Another good protection is Energy Armor + Force Armor. And, I don't use Teleport.

About your dps, I don't know. I ran some simulations in Character Planner and it showed that a Delsere's template is vastly inferior to a Tal Rasha template (at least in terms of dps).

What I did in my team is sacrifice the dps of one character, so that he can wear 2 pieces of Delsere's, and he can spam Slow Time bubbles with all runes (see template below). The three other characters are basic Tal Rasha dps.

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/c.../hero/31711726

[djeayzonne]

Well, i got enough gear yesterday to make the delsere wiz a 6-pc tal and 4-pc del, but the tals ammy is terrible.
This was just before finishing for the night, so I have not used him yet.

However, on one of the other wizards, I have a near perfect ancient tal glove with 5% attack speed, 9% CHC, and 45% CHD. Then a crappy TnT dropped with just 7% attack speed, 44% pet speed, and I think I added just CHC. Which glove would you use?

Dev, the 35 million was probably not in bubbles. Kind of forgot about that criteria.

Cmoidudu, do you use that same skill setup for the other ones?
If so, please tell me your reasoning why you use a fire electrocute, a lightning blizzard, and a frost mammoth???

I got the tear gem up to 25-27 and replaced pain enhancer with that.
Then I changed skills to the arcane magic missile that tracks enemies and replaced teleport with lightning arcane torrent.
For the del wiz, replaced telport with arcane orb (an arcane rune).

Still keeping F+R on 2 of the wiz, convention of elements on the other 2, arcane dynamo, and mammoth with TnT, this setup really hits like a truck when I have enough time to ramp it up. Arcane dynamo is much slower with magic missile though, so not sure if that is really worth keeping or not. Once a couple of bubbles are down, the mammoths are going, and then start in with the arcane torrent, it just wrecks everything, even the rift guardian goes down in seconds at around 40-42.

Three problems though, one is that everything dies so fast, I don't actually get a chance to use the torrent/arcane orb skill much, even on champion packs.
Second is that increasing attack speed for hydra conflicts with using a channeling spender like torrent.
Third is that I am certainly squishy, which makes it hard to channel. However, before I was using chain lightning, which is basically a free channeling spell. I don't know, but it seems like chain lightning activates the paralysis passive much better.

Anyway, without gizzard, I still have between 15-25K life regen, so I am not sure gizzard is the answer. Although the shield is certainly useful.

I will spend a few days with this spec to see how far I can go.

I got 2 halo rings, so I want to try that once I get two more.

I also got an ancient rhineheart last night. I am not sure if I should use that in place of an average non-ancient SS, but I am testing with it.

[Cmoidudu]

If so, please tell me your reasoning why you use a fire electrocute, a lightning blizzard, and a frost mammoth?

You think it's stupid? Well, you are not wrong, it seems that the system memorized a setup when I was trying different combinations... Anyway, the point is,

- I have to cast all 4 elements to have that nice +600% damage bonus up as fast as I can... but also, I need to channel either Magic Missile or Shock Pulse so that I can recast Slow Time again and again with 2p of Delsere's.

- Also I wanted to benefit from +15% Lightning Damage from every 1 out of 4 Meteors that hit the target.

So at the moment I'm using :

- Shock Pulse + Fire Bolt (Fire and reduces Slow Time cooldown)
- Blizzard + Lightning Storm (Lightning and +15% lightning damage)
- Hydra + Frost Hydra (Frost and speed debuff)
- Magic Missile + Seeker (Arcane and reduces Slow Time cooldown)

Those spells never miss their target and I don't have problems casting them. You should record one of your Greater Rifts and replay the video for yourself and you'll be shocked by the time you spend with F+R not being up, or only 3/4 Tal Rasha elements. Some combos work nice when theorycrafting but are a disaster when you really play them.

Plus, you need to consider that you gain a Tal Rasha stack when you CAST an elemental spell, but you you trigger a meteor when you HIT a target. Also F+R are triggered on HIT so you need to hit something with a signature spell and a spell that uses resource as often as possible.

The other 3 Wizards are basic dps with the usual 4-elements combination :

- Electrocute + Surge of Power
- Blizzard + Frozen Solid
- Hydra + Mamooth Hydra (some people prefer frost Hydra and fire Blizzard)
- Magic Missile + Seeker as arcane spell because like I said, it never fails.

And then :

- Energy Armor + Force Armor, mandatory above GR 45. Below GR 40 you can probably replace this with Magic Weapon + Force Weapon for a nice damage boost.
- Black Hole + Event Horizon that I round-robin within the 3 dps Wizards.

[djeayzonne]

Cmoidudu,

No, I think it is probably a good idea to do that with one of your wiz while sticking with the more normal setup for the others.
I think I might even give that a go.

Although I think I will skip black hole and do the ransors with wicked wind inside the bubble strategy.

45-48 seems to be my limit regardless of whether I use 3 offensive gems or 2 + 1 defensive gem simply due to not enough CC.

Also, seems like dsyncing is even worse than I remember it being before.

[Cmoidudu]

I don't play seasonal so I don't have the bracers. If I did, I would only play one character with the Wicked Wind thing, because it costs a lot of mana and when I recast spells in battle, I'm not always paying attention to my ressource level...

Also Black Hole and Slow Time is a good combination because Slow Time will slow missiles, then Black hole will absorb them (since you mentioned earlier that you had problems with missiles)...

About my "casting-slow-time-dude", maybe I'll have him wear that 4p Delsere's and 6p Tal Rasha combo, it seems to work nicely as I saw on some videos. I just wonder if 3000% weapon damage per second from the bubbles is better than meteors with F+R buff.