Season 3 Tal-rasha Wizard Team discussion

[Yelgis]

4x Wizards is another team I am contemplating for season 3.

The main reason for going with wizard is Frost Nova Col Snap only needs about 54% CDR to reach freezelock with. This can be reached with 12.5 gem in helm, 8% on shoulders and gloves, 10% paragon and then you need at least two more 8% sources or Gogok. I tend to like constant CDR so I avoid Gogok, so you can reach the mark with rolls on either a vigalante betl or use ring slots or even your source or weapon as sources of CDR. There is a lot of flexibility here and it doesn't require perfect CDR rolls on every single slot like some other stunlock multbox combos.


The new tal rasha set looks to be the easiest to use and highest damage potential set for multibox wizards. 600% damage buff for cycling through 4 elements for 6 seconds is pretty nice.

I don't play wizard much, so I am curious what people think will work better.

There are two ways I can gear for this tal's setup.

The first way is as follows:

Tal Helm, Neck, Belt, Pants, Source and Chest for 6p
TnT Gloves
Any shoulder (since none really standout in tals builds)
Focus and Restraint for rings
Ancient Parthan or Ransors Folly bracers
New Meteor boots
Serpent Sparker

The second way is:
Tal Helm, Neck, Gloves, Pants, Source and Chest for 6p
Vigilante Belt
Any shoulder (since none really standout in tals builds)
Focus and Restraint for rings
Ancient Parthan or Ransors Folly bracers
New Meteor boots
Wand of Woh


Obviously way 1 is using serpent sparker for double Hydras and then using TnT to make the hydra's better. This seems to be the way many solo and group Wizards on the 4 player boards at high ranks are going. The reason for the second gearing options is because as a multibox team I will be playing closer intentionally than solo or group single wizards want to because I am relying on freezelock from frost nova which is short range.

The second option allows me skip needing a good TnT glove for each character and opens up other gearing options. It allows me to replace any one Tal piece with something else. In my example above I chose swapping belt for Vigilante in order to meet CDR reqs easier, but there are many other options like Neck for Immunity amulet or Helm for Leorics for even easier CDR (a 90% or greater leorics allows you to hit over 53.5% CDR with just 8% CDR rolls on gloves and shoulder with a max diamond in the helm along with paragon and evocation).


The other big decision is APD's versus Ranslor's Folly. Ranslor's allows for easy pulling of mobs in with wicked wind and WW also procs your arcane portion of tals so is a common skill to use. APD's provide crazy amounts of toughness for every frozen mob within 25 yards.

If you don't use Ranslor's you can always pull decently with something like Super Massive blackhole, but if you are relying on that as a proc vehicle for your Tals you would need to cast it probably in broadcast instead of round robin in order to get the buff up all at the same time.


Finally the meteor boots may not be ideal for multiboxing. If you do not use meteor as a spender skill in your build you only gain benefit from it on the meteors procced from the set and that only happens once every 8 seconds per element. So not sure how big a difference the boots would make. Since tal set doesn't include boots you can run something like Illusory Boots for utility. Illusory would work very well for the WoH build for positioning and keeping your team in sync.



One final option is to wear Tals Head, Gloves, Neck, Pants, Belt and Chest for the 6p then use the Grand Vizier staff to make meteor your primary spender. The problem with this setup is you would have to sacrifice some dps stats on jewelry or weapon to hit the CDR mark for freezelock. Or you have to give up FnR to wear Rorg to be able to get the CDR easier.

Dropping the meteor boots for Delsere or Firebird sets (using the shoulders) doesn't seem appealing as the 2p bonuses don't provide much to this set. FB's could give you an extra free death now and then though, but then so can Skeleton King shoulders.


So I am looking for opinions on this. Skills aren't set really for any of the builds options. I am still trying to find a comprehensive list of what skills actually work with the 6p bonus of Tals. Apparently not everything that triggers meteors from the 2p bonus works with the 4 and 6p bonus. Since I don't have a Wiz in ful Tals I can't really test it myself.

So what do you guys think?

[Magicme]

I've been messing around with Wizards at the moment in preparation for 2.2, running Firebirds instead of Tals.

ATM I'm hitting the CDR with Leorics/Shoulder/Gloves/Evocation/Paragon. As you said that means I can't use FnR, but I'm planning on trying Halo+RoRG w/ APD. The Arcane Dynamo/Spectral Blade build that is seeing use in Season 2 at the moment is essentially what I'm going for, adjusting to Tals instead of FB. I've tried it in non season w/o Halo, and survivability in melee is a bit sketchy even at GR35. It's fine when a bunch of things are CCed, but when everything's dead I'm pretty squishy. That's trying the Spectral Blade build - usual kiting w/ blizzard and blackhole round robin is safe and of course the RG is perma-cced in both cases. Haven't tried higher than 35 yet.

My gear can definitely get way better though, but I'd expect to run into the same problem again higher up with better gear. So I figured I'd start really defensive and work from there.

My first thoughts on gear are this: http://ptr.d3planner.com/703190639 (shoulders can be whatever)

Can swap WH out for Tal belt to run a 2h, and can swap Illu boots to Meteor boots if the damage is needed (I'll probably do this on the Season 3 team).

Regarding skill setup, everyone seems to have their own ideas. I'd like to run Flame Blades + Arcane Orbit + Flash w/ Frost proccing from Armour/Frost Nova, but I'm not sure if that works or if it will drain too much AP. Maybe Calamity instead of Arcane Orbit.

As for Serpent Sparker vs Wand of Woh, no idea what Hydra is going to end up like on live after the 49x multiplier shenanigans so that's a tough call to make. At the moment (live) Hydra is a large % of Wizard DPS and I'm expecting it will stay that way, so SS will probably be the way to go.

It's hard to find decent info at the moment, all the Wizard forums are just filled with tears. I didn't actually try this build out on the PTR but I did see variations of it which looked promising. Most were before the first Tal nerf though, so I'm not sure what the DPS will be like w/o FnR.

[Devile]

I haven't played Wizards for a while now, but something I don't like about this Nova build is that u need to be at melee range. Wizards are very squishy and nova has no range. Don't know how this is gonna work.

[Yelgis]

True wizards are pretty squishy, but if you do swap out FnR for Halo and APD's like MagicMe was mentioning they are actually pretty tough. You can see plenty of videos of a wiz on youtube tanking GR50's pretty well. That combined with freezelock from Cold Snap Frost Nova makes RG's easy to fight.

MagicMe, you can't proc tal 6p from Frost Nova because you need to use Cold Snap if you want to be able to perma freeze bosses. Also at the target mark for CDR for freezelock (53.5%) the cooldown of teleport is between 7 and 8 seconds. That is too long to reliably use it for triggering arcane with Tal's.

I was banking on using WoH so I would use the fire version of Explosive Blast, the cone aoe version of the lightning generator, the arcane blackhole that buffs spell damage for number of mobs hit and then running Blizzard or Frost Hydra for cold. The rune that makes Blizzard only cost 10 is appealing to me.

I want to stick to using FnR if at all possible because the damage bonus is just so high from it, but if toughness is an issue I can swap to Halo I guess. Just not sure how I will fit Ice Armor into my build. There is also the Mutilation Guard which has a near identical effect, but I would have to give up Taeguk or Toxin gems so I don't know if it is worth it. I am kinda banking on the constant spamming of Cold Snap freezing targets + APD's to provide the toughness the wizards will need. That and the armor buff from Taeguk should be pretty helpful (Woh build with explosion refreshing Taeguk stacks is another reason to run that build 20 AP every 2.5-3 seconds is sustainable... my only other spenders would be Black Hole and 10 AP cost Blizzard with Lightning generator filling the gaps to keep up FnR).

Btw does anyone know if Halo uses the rune of Frost Nova you have on your skillbar? I don't really play wizard much so my only one on non season has been neglecting and barely has firebirds gear. I don't have one on S2 so no Halo heh.

[Yelgis]

I just looked at your build Magicme on d3planner. Looks fine and a like you said everyone will have a different idea of what skills to run. I caution you agains't Elemental exposure though. It doesn't seem to stack. By that I mean, 4 Wizards using it with 4 elements each doesn't lead to an 80% damage buff like almost every skill for the WD does. Even with 4 running it the highest you can get is 20% damage.

The effect does work for the party it just doesn't stack from multiple wizards. Not sure why that is the case for EE when for WD pretty much every damage buff they have but BBV stacks. I've tested the new cold zdogs, piranhas, posion haunt rune and mass confusion and they all stack. The only one I haven't tested yet is Hex but I have a feeling it will work too (as long as multiple shamans can all hex the same target... not sure one this one).

I also tried testing Cold Blooded passive and it doesn't seem to work either. It seems to increase all the damage the wizard him/herself does, but doesn't seem to work across the party properly. Wizard got kinda of short changed on their group buffing potential compared to other classes. WD seems to be the king of damage multipliers atm, Crusader has a nice dmg buff + a large crit boost and can spawn globes, Barb has movespeed buffs and Ignore Pain that can work for the party and can also be a globe machine., and Monk has Forbidden palace and the physical rune on EP that buff damage and palace also offers mitigation (even if it is a small area). Wizard really seems left behind in the group support roll heh kinda like the DH..

[Magicme]

I'll need to mess around w/ my elements on skills then. Yeah the Frost Nova from Halo uses your Frost Nova rune. EE was only going to be run on one Wiz, though I'm not sure I'll even use it at all.

You're right about Wizards being lacklustre. I'm probably going to go Barb first in S3 because of spin to win nostalgia, but definitely will be setting this build up at some point too. I have a feeling that your WD build is going to be outright better in pretty much every situation though.

That being said, some guys did manage to complete GR59 (live) with a Wiz replacing one DH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sc8LzD31gg

[Yelgis]

Well I didn't say Wizards were lackluster as a whole. I just meant Wizards options for providing party buffs aren't as robust as some other class options.

I still feel wizard will be a very strong multibox option with S3. They can currently do the same thing on live right now with Halo and Firebird's, but I feel they will get stronger with the new sets.

I have another build idea I will be sharing for a wizard team in the next few days revolving around the Delsere Set, but i need to do some more testing and polishing on the idea before I put it together.

[Zwizm]

I've decided to go with Tal Rasha Wizards for the new Era/Season. Over the past 2 weeks, I've done some WD Carnevil and Jade testing and both came up short of what the wizards could produce. My only real regret was not being able to test the 6 piece Zuni, so my WD evaluation is definitely lacking.

As for the Wizards, I've been able to do trials and GR's far higher than my previous bests. For trials I have been able to grab 46 to 49 keys consistently with no Ancient weapons and with 2-3 pieces of Ancient armor per character. Today I got my first ancient Serpent's Sparker and was able to pull off a 51 key on my first try.

Once I came to grips with letting go of the Halo of Arlyse/Unity combo things quickly improved. While Halo does provide great toughness with the APD bracers, the damage output was far, far below that of the F&R ring set. With the F&R set my DPS output is such that Rift Guardians at GR 50/51 only take 2 minutes to kill. Unfortunately, my closest GR 50 clears were over by 5 and 10 seconds so I sit at 49 for the time being. Hopefully, I can clear a 50 before the PTR ends.

[Yelgis]

How were you testing the WD's Zwi? Full Carn and Jade sets? Or did you try the mixed combo in my other thread about WD's? I am also curious if you tried to play with the new Homonculus mojo at all. More actual playtesting experience would be valuable if you could share that in here or my other thread (to stay more on topic).

Anyway good news about the Wizards and having success with the FnR set. My ideas are mostly theorycraft because I don't spend a lot of time on the PTR farming gear to actually test. I mainly test skill mechanics and general feel of builds, but without full item support it is hard to really know how the builds are performing.

Anyway thanks for sharing your experiences and any more details about the Wizard skill setups you used would be great.

[Zwizm]

I'll stay on topic here and post in the other thread about the WD's.

Gear/Skills: http://ptr.d3planner.com/557051093

I'm still testing the passives so Unstable Anomaly and Prodigy aren't set in stone. In fact, for GR Key farming I highly suggest Dominance as it's always at full stacks and helps me stay alive long enough where lack of DPS is the only thing that ends the session and not my deaths.

Currently I'm running only one piece of gear with CDR (shoulders) for 42.02%. This allows 1.9 sec rotations on Black Hole and 1.2 sec rotations on Frost Nova (may be able to get those times down a bit but my PTR connection runs at 150ms versus 30ms on Live). Well placed Black Hole's grab and hold everything outside of the RG, while the Frost Nova grabs and holds anything that jumps over the Black Hole. Frost Nova at this amount of CDR allows the RG's to move for about a quarter of a sec every second and prevents 95% of their skills from firing. Black Hole - Event Horizon is also awesome for pulling in and swallowing all non-lob style range attacks and allowing you to remove most elite/RG ground effects.

The "Reflect" affix is really the only thing that will make your runs difficult at higher levels, since you usually cant survive more than a second of triggering that damage. I wish I had more movement speed or room for Teleport -Calamity so I can just move right on top of the elite pack and use Frost Nova to lock them down and Black Hole to soak up any ranged attacks until I can start applying damage. For me, that really is the only drawback to this build, movement speed to initiate without taking to much damage before you're in position.

I really enjoy running this build, especially being able to produce Keys right at or above the GR's I can efficiently clear. Going to test Arcane Dynamo among some other offensive passives for use in Trials tonight/tomorrow. Dominance seems to be bolstering my defense quite nicely so I should have some room to ramp up the damage, I hope.