wizard team opinions/advice

[djeayzonne]

Hey guys, I took a half-year off of Diablo to play Dragon's Age and then just got super busy with work, but I just picked it up again over the weekend. Being going pretty hard at it, so I already have 3 wiz with 6-piece Tal's and the last one with Delsere.

I am just wondering about build ideas, what I should do with the Delsere dude, gearing, and so on.

Tal Rasha wiz build is:
Chain lightning
mammoth hydra
blizzard
teleport-calamity
force weapon and force armor

Delsere dude:
frozen magic missile
slow time
mammoth hydra
teleport-calamity
force weapon and force armor

leg gems: toxin, bane/trapped, gizzard

Of course they are solo builds, but I saw some cool speed runs using In-Geom and somewhat like old CM used to be, but not sure how that might work with multiboxing and dsyncs.

Not sure how if the gems I am using is the optimum combo.

Not sure if I should make delsere dude tals as well. Sure like the utility and damage bonus from the bubble.

What say you?!?

[djeayzonne]

Well, I just got another piece so I could switch the wiz running Delsere to 6-piece Tals, but I would lose the 4-piece Del at the moment.
Not sure if that is a good idea or not.

Also, what do you guys think about Focus and Restraint versus Convention of Elements plus some other ring?
Hoping to get Arlyse sooner or later, but I already have 2 running F+R and one running Convention of Elements, but my main could run either (running F+R right now).

[Ellay]

Focus and Restraint is required if you want to push the grift levels. Overall though Wizards are super squishy because of it. If you can find a way to pump really good damage without it. Halo of Arlyse is amazing in combination with Ice Armor.

[Devile]

Tal's is a lot better for pure damage but Delsere is amazing for Crowd Crontol which is needed to survive. U can go with 1 Delsere but u really need Arcane Orb + Triumvirate so u dont waste the damage of Delsere's which is fairly decent. Otherwise u will not benefit from Delsere's damage bonus and will end up with a CC char which u can get with just Tal's and items to reduce the cooldown of the bubble. I'm using full Tal's on all 4 wizards and just 1 with the bubble and higher CDR. Does the job fairly well, but if u want more CC, go with 1 Delsere but don't waste the bonus damage just on Magic Missile. What I would do is have Frozen Orb on left click, Magic Missle on right click for the Delsere wizard, and Chain Lightning on left, Hydra on right for the rest. That way u spam Chain Lightning and Frozen Orb at the same time while casting Hydra and Magic Missile every now and then. That will proc F&R buff, reduce your bubble cooldown and u won't lose the Delsere's damage.

F&R is far better option than Convention of Elements which is prolly BiS if u go with RoRG, but if not, go with F&R.

[Yelgis]

Seems like you have gotten some good advice so far. I would just like to add that you can do a mixture of both. A popular build with Wiz atm for solo is what people are calling Delrasha or Talsere. It is a combination of 6p Tals with 4p Delsere. You can do this because of RoRG and the fact that Tals doesn't have shoulders but instead uses Belt+Ammy. So wear Delsere shoulder + any two other slots (you can do boots but then you lose Nilfurs which most rather not do).

The main things you lose going with this build are TnT so your Hydras won't be nearly as good and you also lose FnR. To make up for that you can use convention of the elements and since your Hydras aren't nearly as good you can swap to any other 1h ancient you have that is better (if you already have a crazy good ancient SS you can stay with that).

This build works primarily because the Tal's bonus boosts the damage from the slowtime in the Dels' set. It still doesn't do as much damage as a dual hydra Tals with TnT build, but the added CC from slowtime and the fact that it still does respectable damage evens out a bit.

The real advantage of this build is that you can use point of no return to achieve stunlock. Slowtime will stun a target if it is cast in such a way that the outer edge lands on the target. So if you can position it correctly you can stun while casting with it. Since we have 4 to rotate through you can cycle through them an achieve stunlock with about 40% CDR I think.

[djeayzonne]

Thanks for the information on build ideas. Only one wiz has TnT and in-use. Another has one, but I can't use it until a Tal belt drops.
I have only one SS, and it is not an ancient. Other characters have an ancient Sunkeeper, an In-Geom, and an ancient Burning Axe of Sankis.
So, I don't necessarily have the ability to quite do as suggested yet, but I think I might try to make the Del wiz a combo wiz.

I will give chain lightning and frozen orb a go when I can get him to 6-T, 4-D status.

What about gems?
Is the 4-toxin bonus better than each wiz having zei?
Is gizzard the best defense gem?

Is there any point to defense gems after G40?
Replace gizzard with pain enhancer?

I cleared 39 without too much trouble yesterday, though I am doing mostly 33-37 just to level up gems for now.

Just in case you are wondering and i didn't make it clear, this is a season group.

[Yelgis]

If your choice is between toxin or zei's I would go with toxin. Zei's is situational because of its distance mechanic. Toxin is a flat 10% extra damage for each member using it so overall it adds 40% to the group with a whole team using it. Not to mention the toxin dot is actually pretty decent since it gets boosted by the Tal 6p damage buff.

[Cmoidudu]

Zei's require to be very far away to be better than a good Bane of the Trapped, so overall Bane of the Trapped is better... Zei's have a Stun effect too, but I think there more efficient ways to Stun/Freeze as a Wizard.

[djeayzonne]

Hey guys, just thought I would give an update.

My basic build hasn't changed, and I still haven't been able to get the gear to make the del wiz a delrasha wiz yet.
I have been running toxin, bane/trapped, and gizzard, but I decided to level up pain enhancer to 25 for everybody and then give it a try after that. Didn't want to put it in while leveling it up.

Anyway, to my surprise, I did a 39 grift, and the lack of gizzard didn't make much difference. If anything, since I knew it was gone, I was a little more careful in my approach. I still had a couple of deaths, but that always happens, even in T6 rifts sometimes, mostly due to dsyncs.

Using toxin, bane/trapped, and pain enhancer definitely sped up killing everything including trash, elites, and the guardian.

I am going to level up tirinae to level 25 and then replace pain enhancer with that and give it a try.

I also kind of want to try a build based around the lightning rune version of arcane torrent, but not sure how that would work while trying to benefit from F+R.

[Cmoidudu]

You are running three offensive gems, and if you want to venture after GR39, I would strongly recommend that you replace one of your offensive gems by a Gizzard.

Anyway, how do you regenerate health as a Wizard without a Gizzard ?

[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/cmoidudu-2696/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.