S3 Wizard Team Progress

[Devile]

Very nice setup he has going there. These are his profiles:

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/A.../hero/46686501
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/A.../hero/51807201
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/S.../hero/51807189
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/M.../hero/51807199

Nothing too fancy from what I see. He doesn't seem to be using round robin at all. Focusing mainly on raw damage from Wizards and huge AoE of Blizzard Apocalypse + Tals buff + F&R buff. The zDPS sader is not boosting DPS at all, is just used for the movement speed and going thru mobs. He doesnt CC that much, since the damage is so high, he 1 shots everything, even elites. No nova rotation, just Shield Glare + Black Hole and elites are dead. It looks like T6 speed farming :S

http://www.twitch.tv/Angband_

[Yelgis]

I just started leveling my Sader for the group. I plan to use him for damage boosting and extra attack speed while I am pushing greater rifts, but when I am just doing bounties and normal rifts I plan to use wings of the angels for the speed buffs.

That guys profiles are odd. He is using EE on all his wizards and that makes no sense since it does not stack at all. T6 probably doesn't even matter so I guess it isn't a big deal.

[Cmoidudu]

He is using EE on all his wizards and that makes no sense since it does not stack at all.

You sure ? Good to know... So I need to have that on only one Wizard ? So I can pick another passive for the others ?

[Yelgis]

Yea basically. I tested it during the PTR and couldn't see it stacking at all across wizards. Everyone you ask on official forums will say it doesn't stack too, so I tend to feel that is the case. I also tested Cold Blooded and couldn't get it to stack either. It really sucks that none of the Wizards buffs stack, but you have WD's that have cold Zdogs, Piranhas, Posion Haunt, and Mass Confusion and they all stack. Seems a little unfair considering.


That means I only run EE on a single and Cold Blooded on a different one. My third wiz in the team might run Glass Cannon, Audacity or the one dmg buff where you stand still to get it. Haven't really settled on which one yet. My 4th character is now a Zdps Sader. I am still gearing him up (only ni the mid 60's for CDR atm). Having the run speed of Wings of Angels is amazing for my clear times in T6 and I can swap it to the crit Valor when pushing harder grifts. His shield glare damage buff and the crit from Judgement are also very nice and almost makeup the damage loss from not having a 4th Wizard. Overall group damage will be higher when running the Valor Law with the CHD buff both because of the 100% CHD and because of the 23% attack speed it gives (which scales crazy with dual Hydra).

Running the sader allows me to gear for attack speed easier and not have to run Gogok or too many ias rolls to reach the 3.07 breakpoint. I still need to map out how much cdr I would need to get the next breakpoint above that.

[Devile]

Finally I got a bit luckier and finished 6 sets for all my wizards. Well, not quite, but at least a couple RoRG helped. I won't be leveling a sader in S3. I'll try the zDPS sader on non season since I have all the gear to do it there instead of farming mats forever on season.

Will start pushing GR now to level my gems to 25+

[Devile]

Yea basically. I tested it during the PTR and couldn't see it stacking at all across wizards. Everyone you ask on official forums will say it doesn't stack too, so I tend to feel that is the case. I also tested Cold Blooded and couldn't get it to stack either. It really sucks that none of the Wizards buffs stack, but you have WD's that have cold Zdogs, Piranhas, Posion Haunt, and Mass Confusion and they all stack. Seems a little unfair considering.

After reading about this, what I understand is that BUFFS with different runes can stack, but EE and CB are debuffs and that will only get REFRESHED and not stacked when another party member applies that same debuff. Just like Monk's Mantra of Conviction, it's a debuff and it won't stack with other monks. That's why EE and CB don't stack and make's no sense to have them as passives for all your chars in the party. Have EE in 1 char, CB in 1 and that's it.

There seems to be very few debuffs that can actually stack and basically just from items (Strongarms, Gem of Efficacious Toxin, etc.). Are u sure WD debuffs stack??? IE: Barb hits a mob and does X damage. WD1 casts Haunt Poisoned Spirit on that mob and applies the 20% damage debuff. Same Barb hits the mob and does X + Y damage cause of the debuff. WD2 casts Haunt Poisoned Spirit on the same mob and applies 20% additive damage debuff. The Barb hits the same mob and does X + Z (where Z > Y) because the 2 WD debuffs stacked???

That seems very strong IMO, even if the debuffs are additive and not multiplicative, that's a TON of %damage.

[Yelgis]

Yes I tested the debuffs for WD and they almost all stack. The only exception is BBV which doesn't and maybe Hex since I didn't test that.

Piranhas, Poison Haunt, new cold Zdogs and Mass Confusion all stack.

[Yelgis]

I just completed GR 41 tonight with 19 seconds to spare. I had plenty more time than that but had several nooby deaths against the Fire winged boss that wasted a lot of time.

I have a couple of GR42 keys. I just am going to try to keep pushing them up and see how far I can go now. I swapped out one of my wizards for a Sader and it works out beautifully. When I am doing Grifts I run Valor Law with the crit damage buff and when I am doing any lower content like bounties and t6 rifts I run Wings of Angels for the movespeed buff. The team is working out really nicely.

I have crap non-ancient serpent sparkers on all 3 of the Wizards and do not have FnR on one of them. So there is a lot of room for improvement. I am also using rubies on their helms even when trying to push. Leveling paragon is going to be a bigger area for improvement than anything else atm. I am sitting in the 280's with my highest and the lower ones are in the 260's. All the way up to 600 is straight dps gain for the team so every little level helps.

Right now I am using Bane of the Trapped, Toxin and Wildebeast Gizzards for gems on the Wizards. The Zdps Sader is using Wildebeast and Toxin. I will probably level either Gogok or Esoteric for him next. Trapped gems are between 27-31 on all my guys. Toxins are all at 25. Wildebeasts are all 25 as well. So still room for bumping up my gems. Toxin and Trapped will be leveled higher first because they are both good dps gains. Toxin dot scales pretty well with Tal's.

I have considered trying to work Taeguk into my build instead of Wildebeast. My Sader provides almost 200k healing through his Consecrate skill because of his weapon so the Gizzard is kinda lagging behind. Taeguk would also give some armor so that is always nice. If I don't go with Taeguk I will probably level Esoterics for the team because what seems to kill me the most is Frost affixes and other elemental skills.

I still need more CDR on the Sader to get him able to go into a proper perma stun round robin with my wizards, so bosses aren't faceroll easy yet.

[Cmoidudu]

Ok so I finished my team, and then I have been chaining Greater Rifts to complete my stuff. I just found the last boots, so everybody has 6 pieces of Tal Rasha + Meteor boots + Focus and Restraint. DPS is very nice, however I can't really talk numbers since i'm killing off-screen like a bastard most of the time

I chose red gems in helms too, this is really significant. I did a GR39 with Amethysts, which is ~1B XP (including reward from the town dude), and GR39 with Rubies are ~1.37B XP (I checked several times). Eventually I'll try to change the Focus+Restraint for Hellfires+Leorics for another ~75% XP bonus. Maybe i'll need to go down to GR36-37 because of the DPS loss, but the XP gain will still be much higher.

About gems, I went for the Molten Wildebeest too, with Toxins (of course) and Zei's for the ranged bonus and the stun effect.

All characters have the 3 following passives : Unstable Anomaly (more efficent than Blur after testing), Galvanizing Ward and Unweavering Will. Then dude #1 has Elemental Exposure, chick #2 has Conflagration, chick #3 has Cold Blooded, chick #4 has Paralysis.

All characters have the following spells : Magic Weapon + Force Weapon (20% damage buff), Arcane Torrent + Cascade (Arcane), Hydra + Mamooth Hydra (Fire), Electrocute + Surge of Power (Lightning), Blizzard + Frozen Solid (Frost). One of the characters has Magic Missile + Glacial Spike and Blizzard + Lightning Storm for the +15% Ligthning damage. 3 characters have Black Hole + Event Horizon, the last one has Slow Time + Time Warp which is yet another +15% damage buff, and it helps greatly since some Rift Guardians send nasty missiles.

About weapons, I'm using random ancient weapons. I have non-ancient sparkers too, but I'm not sure that the 2x hydras will compensate for the dps loss...

Here's a video of a random GR39 , which I'm currently chaining for quick XP + loot + Blood Shards.

[Devile]

I have full sets on all 4x wizards and just missing F&R on 1. All have meteor boots too. I'm not focusing on Hydras, instead Blizzard Apocalypse. IMO makes no sense to me to focus Hydras for just GR30-45. I rather focus on efficiency and Blizzard is by far the best option cause of the huge AoE. Angband is living proof of that since his build is very efficient, so no point on reinventing the wheel. Focusing on Blizzard means I don't need T&T and/or Serpent Sparker. I can make it work with craftable Ancient Devastator which is very easy to get or any Ancient weapon, til I get Ancient Sun Keepers. That also means I can even use Leoric Crowns for more exp boost ... granted, need decent Tal's amulets which is not easy (got 1 only), but still it gives me a lot more freedom for a high dps build. I could even go with 2H but that makes stacking Tal's + F&R buff a little too slow for my taste.

This allows me to farm faster and get the parts I will need to push GR45+. All this on S3. Haven't done anything on non season for the past 2 weeks. Once I get all ancient armor, CC/CD F&R and decent ancient weapons, etc. I'll work on my Hydra build to push GR50+ just for fun.

About to hit Paragon 300 in S3 and farming feels very smooth now. Considering I started from 0 just a week or so ago, GR35 goes VERY fast and I'm starting to get a lot of gear. I really wanna add the "zDPS" sader tho it won't boost much the damage, 50% movement speed + going thru mobs makes a HUGE difference in your efficiency on this lower tier GR, specially when u are going for exp and shards.