S3 Wizard Team Progress

So I finally picked up 6p Tals on my main with an ancient tal orb and a crap Serpent Sparker. My others are wearing mixed sets. 2 have 2p tals, 1 has 4p firebird's and another has 4p Delsere's.

Last night I cleared GR 32 with around 6 minutes to spare. My main is basically carrying the team in damage.

My limiting factor right now is toughness. I am working on getting the gear to survive. I haven't leveled any legendary gems yet, so I am thinking of going for toughness gems like Esoteric and Mutilation Guards first. Slowly building up to the 6p Tals on all my guys heh.

I'm around the same place u are right now. 1 more piece and I'll have my second full set. No Serpent Sparker, no F&R yet. And yes, toughness is the issue too. Not doing any GR right now. Just T6 to gear them all. The new bracers are AMAZING for clearing trash fast. 1 cast and a meteor obliterates the whole pack.

PS: LOVE 2.2! It's running SO smooth. I'm getting 60fps pretty much constant even with all the wizard spells going on.

OK, so I went for wizard in S3 as well.

Man, I'm really enjoying wizards - I just dinged 70, have ~280k sheet dps and 4mil toughness and can efficiently farm T4. Just in case, I'm running Zwizm build (http://www.d3planner.com/557051093 with some small modifications and different key bindings). Basically, I have Frost Nova and Black Hole on round-robin with appropriate step cooldowns in ISBoxer, rest of the skills are broadcasted. Yes, I mostly have yellow gear and whopping 20% CDR (from the skill).

Play style is very simple: cast Hydra somewhere in front, stand still and spam Black Hole and Meteor behind Hydra, but in front of me. Black Hole sucks monsters and most of the projectiles. Is something gets close - I use Frost Nova, Hydra finishes them off.

For elites - I'm casting Black Hole on myself (to suck in whatever they might shoot) and Frost Nova with some delay. Most of the elites get affected by Black Hole (even with diminishing returns they're still CC'ed for a bit of time) and then Frost Nova locks them in place.

RG - just spam Frost Nova and Meteor. Even with pretty bad CDR I can manage RG without any problems.

Anyway, I'm just having fun, that's for sure. I didn't imagine wizard team would be so effective without proper gear. Can't wait to get real set items and see how far I can push it.

P.S. Yes, I don't know what they did, but now I have stable 60 fps on both foreground and background characters with ~60% GPU load (but I have cards in SLI).

Count me in for the Wiz love. Decided to do Era this time around but I had never collected Tal Rasha gear so I had to get that out of the way. I've also been pretty lucky getting CC and CHD on all of my F&R rings and I've only have one great Tal Rasha ammy. In any case, you guys have some good times ahead. I was able to complete GR 50 today and had two close fails at 51 (39 and 50 sec over time limit) where I died too many times from lack of skill LOL! I was also able to get up to GR 53 keys in trials so I'm sure some of you guys will be at 55+ once fully setup. So much fun!!!

P.S. Next up, getting my T6 Explosive Blast setup going with at least 75% move speed. 4 Woh's dropped this week so I'm feeling lucky.

RNG is treating me really bad. No Serpent Sparker, not a single F&R and no more Tal pieces so far. Got 1 helm which is the only part all 4 wizards already have :/ Doing bounties now to get RoRG for all and FFS, 1 wizard got like 4 already while the others NONE! Really bad luck.

That sucks Devile.

I just completed 6p Tal's on 3 of my team. The 4th is missing several pieces yet. Two have gotten lucky while gambling gloves and have TnT's though they aren't great (one is 46% the other is 48%). I have had two non-ancient SS drop, but they are far from good. I still have a long way to go in my gearing process that is for sure, but I am getting most of the basics out of the way.

I think I need one more Halo of Arlyse and maybe one more Convention of Elements to deck out all my guys with them. I have FnR on two of them, but toughness is my primary issue, not damage currently. So I am working on building up the teams tankiness. I can do low to mid 30's if I play somewhat cautiously. Deaths are what slow me down more than anything. Once I get Halo+APD's on the entire team and get some defensive gems leveled, I should be doing a lot better.

Last night I almost got my Gizzards to 25. After that I will start on Esoteric. With both of those leveled I will then start leveling my damage gems probably in this order Trapped -> Toxin -> Zei's -> PE. I plan to level all of them to 25 just to swap them in and out for testing to see what works best with my play style.

I had considered Mutilation guard, but we already get a large melee damage reduction with Halo ring. Not really sure if it is worth a jewelry socket spot.

I went with Gizzard first because it just gives a lot of toughness for low to mid GR's, but I feel Esoteric will eventually outstrip it especially once I have Halo and APD's on the entire team. Once I am to the point of just running Esoteric for defense, I will probably run Trapped and Toxin as my dps gems. Zei's could work but that requires perfect Hydra placement to maximize it and with 4 characters to controls I just don't see that happening. Besides 4x Toxin provides a larger buff than Zei's anyway and comes with a DoT which gets nicely boosted by Tal's 6p to do decent damage as well. I think Toxin will be our best second gem.

I don't plan to use PE much to reach crazy ias breakpoints on Hydra. I am shooting for the 3.07 breakpoint for the Hydra and that only takes 38% ias if you have a 7% roll on your SS and a 50% TnT. That can be reached with IAS on rings, gloves, paragon, chest all perfect rolls. I may end up using Slow Time with the attack speed buff rune to make it easier to hit the BP's.

I have also toyed with the idea of dropping one of the Wizards for a Tiki WD. The WD could provide elite affix lock as well as constant BBV for 20% attack speed (assuming I can get an SMK). Dropping a wizard would be made up for by the Doc providing a large amount of damage buffs to the wizards (30% BBV, 20% poison haunt, 15% piranhas).

The other option is to drop a Wizard for a ZDPS crusader. Laws of Valor would cover the attack speed buff and the sader could also bring 20% crit and 20% damage from Shield Glare. This option is more appealing because Shield Glare can be put right in the round robin rotation with Frost Nova to maintain boss stunlock, whereas the WD has to actually cast his stun (Black Blood Sacrifice).

I don't normally play mixed teams, but I could see those swaps being pretty easy to manage and they could bring a lot to the table.

I played like 6 hours yesterday and didn't get a single important upgrade. Hopefully today things will be different.

As for wizards, I'm not liking much all the dsyncs caused by certain elite affixes. There's no way to lock the whole elite pack before they cast something. Fear, knockback, vortex and wormhole are my biggest pains and that's gonna be a LOT worse in higher GR where u rely completely on your nova rotation ... 1 dead wizard and that can mean full team wipe. I wanna try something something else to initiate (moba/dota term) on elites. Dunno, maybe Teleport Calamity to jump/stun a pack before they can do anything, or be able to escape and then reinitiate where there are no ground effects, or even fully skip the pack ... I dunno. Maybe higher movement speed with a Crusader buff. Most, if not ALL my deaths come from letting elites cast those initial ground effects and 1 or several wizards end up running around the screen or die.

If I don't go with F&R, I'll prolly go with Unity + Halo of Arlyse and Illusionist + Teleport. Yeah, I know is a TON of dps loss but that won't matter if u fail the rift. DPS will kill faster but if u spend minutes facing the ground, it wont really matter at the end. I've seen plenty of GR50+ without F&R so it may work.

I find that round robin blackhole fixes most of the desync problems due to elite affixes. Using event horizon lets me get rid of any ground effects that do go off.

I'd be interested in seeing how a 3wiz+x team would go, definitely potential there. As long as they can help perma cc the RG then I'd be happy, because making the RG a snoozefest is one of my favourite things about 4wiz.

I'm building towards an exp set on each wiz to farm paragon from ~GR35. It's possible to get ~170% increased exp and still have Tal6, which should be more than enough DPS for GR35.

That is the beauty of the Sader. He can use Divine Verdict Shield Glare and join right in the nova rotation with the wizards to keep the stun lock up. Monk or DH could do this as well, but they don't provide nearly as much to the group as Sader.

I definitely won't play on S3 but I'm starting a Wiz team too, I have seen how it works. I have the same problem as you guys, which is, Tal Rasha seem to be VERY hard to drop. I have a complete Firebird set on all my characters, plenty of Vir's, some Delsere's, and... Maybe 4 pieces of Tal Rasha overall. That's going to be a long way.

Also i'm pretty sure that you know it, the #1 Paragon dude (non-season) is a multiboxer, and he uses that same setup at the moment (1x zDPS Crusader with all the XP stuff, and 3x Tal Rasha Wizards), and what he does all day is chaining GR41 in about 3 minutes.

He has a Twitch stream with a very bad image quality and it's in french (which doesn't bother me since I'm french), but you can see what he does and how.

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_

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yelgis

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

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

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.

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+ :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZD1Dh5fefI

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.

I like the Dual Hydra build. All my damage comes from Hydra and the meteors from the set. I use Wicked Wind just to proc the arcane meteor and I use Blizzard with the rune that stuns on cast and setup a macro for my 3 wizards to cycle through skills so one is always casting Blizzard while the others are using different skills.

This allows me to stunlock most things at range. Only some elites and rift bosses can't be stunlocked by this. For that I run Nova and Shield Glare on my team in round robin to lock them down. I am still in the process of finalizing my CDR gear on the sader to get able to keep a proper round robin going.

Other skills might be better clearing T6, but the damage of Hydra can't be touched. I am only using non-ancient Sparkers between 2100-2300 dps. All three characters are at the 2.5 attacks/sec BP on hydra because of the Sader running Laws of Valor. That is 2.5 Hydra attacks/second and the Hydras on my main do around 60 million dmg/tick. With them attacking 2.5 times a second and having two of them out, the damage is pretty crazy.

I would gladly use Wicked Wind too but since I'm non-season I don't have the pull-stuff-bracers. Also the cost (35 Arcane Power) is a little expensive IMHO since you need to cast Blizzard too for another 40 Arcane Power...

I tried to switch my set of random ancient weapons for a set of non-ancient sparkers (I have 4 of them). Theorycrafting shows that it's a decrease in Meteor damage (obviously), an increase in Hydra damage (obviously), but overall DPS should be higher with the non-ancient sparkers...

However theorycrafting and testing are 2 different things. I like the setup with ancient weapons better: it's hard to have all 8 Hydras to do their job at the same time, because some of them might be blocked by obstacles, etc. when in the meantime Meteors are computer-generated so they don't fail (unless the target is already dead).

Of course, a set of ancient sparkers would do well, but I don't have that yet ;)

Finally got my last F&R on Season 3. Tried a GR42 for kicks and finished it very fast. Upgraded key to 46 and this is what I got on first try ... didn't have any higher keys:

http://youtu.be/LLsQFO5EFyo

Granted, it was the perfect rift with good density and red zombies, but even then, I'm pretty sure I can push it a little higher without problem. Frost Hydra + Black Hole + Slowtime + Paralysis gives me all the CC I need. Even the RG slows down drastically.

I round robin Black Hole in just 2 wizards. Every time I cast a Black Hole it will cast Energy Twister Wicked Wind and Slow Time (if available ... need to get Ancient Gesture of Orpheus) which will pull almost all screen to my Black Hole and the bubble (if not on cooldown), all locked in place for my meteors. That pretty much gives me the Strongarm, Cold Blooded, Bane of the trapped and Slow time debuffs on every cast ready for my meteors to strike on all mobs. Wizard #2 uses a Crown of the Primus so I have all runes for Slow Time. With a Diamond on Helm and a Gesture of Orpheus I can spam those bubbles and make it even more efficient and safe.

Profiles dont seem to be updating at all, but anyway:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/D.../hero/60277963
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/B.../hero/60278009
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/T.../hero/60278185
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/F.../hero/60278330

Blizzard Apocalypse is very nice to cover large areas, but I don't think it will be enough for GR50+. For now is fun and I can play ranged from VERY far away without much risk. Right now this build will let me farm pretty fast.

Nice job Deville and yes you got a great rift heh. Grats on 46.

Ty :) Btw, have u tested Frozen Solid round robin to stun lock elites and RG? Isn't there any timing that works on them? I will switch to Mammoth Hydra and Blizzard Frozen Solid after I hit 500 or so to push 50s. Until then, I'll just work on my gear to be able to do fast GR40 for exp/shards.

You need to have 53.5% CDR or more on 4 wizards to do a stunlock with nova. I swapped to a Sader to alleviate that gearing requirement. A full CDR geared Sader with Fervor and Towering Shield Passives have a 1.96 second cooldown on Shield Glare. So my plan is to do a round robin with Sader and 3 wizards.

The wizards only need 20% cdr with Cold Snap to have a 6 second cooldown. The rotation would be Glare -> Wiz 1 Nova -> Glare -> Wiz 2 Nova -> Glare -> Wiz 3 Nova and then repeat.

Since Cold Snap last .9 seconds at full resist and Glare lasts 1.2 seconds you have a 2 second period for each Glare+Nova rotation so cycling between three wizards for the rotation gives a total time of 6 seconds. Plenty of time to keep that rotation going forever.

I am missing 1% CDR on my shield and neck right now on my Sader and my leorics is only 88%. Once I get a better leorics and get Gogog leveled. I should be able to keep it up.

I need to test how the new Zodiac ring works with Glare as well. It might be possible for the Sader to keep up stunlock entirely by himself with that ring and if so, I can swap nova for Force Weapon on my Wizards and change their evocation passives to something else to pick up more damage. That would be the ideal situation. I need a Gyrfalcon's Foote to see if Zodiac still works with the spender if it is free. If so I will change weapons to that isntead of the Involiable Faith I am using currently.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Devile

Upgraded key to 46 and this is what I got on first try ... didn't have any higher keys

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Very impressive, congratulations, specially since you are only in the early 300's of Paragon :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yelgis

You need to have 53.5% CDR or more on 4 wizards to do a stunlock with nova. I swapped to a Sader to alleviate that gearing requirement. A full CDR geared Sader with Fervor and Towering Shield Passives have a 1.96 second cooldown on Shield Glare. So my plan is to do a round robin with Sader and 3 wizards.

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I really don't like the idea of being so close to elites. I rather lose permaCC but play safe a mile away, than have permaCC at melee range. With a melee char, u have no choice, but ranged chars? meh. Sure wizards can tank much more now, but I trully hate dsyncs caused by elite affixes. It's so annoying to get knocked back or feared cause u are at range of lightning or other affixes and have full team wipes. Besides, unless u initiate with teleport to be right on top of the pack FAST, sometimes they are able to cast something and that's never good. At GR50+, I'm pretty sure 1 mistake will mean 4 dead wizards since u are so close to everything.

I think using Frozen Solid in round robin + 1 wizard casting bubbles + paralysis will give me enough CC. Maybe I can even drop Gizzard gem for Zei depending on how much I'm getting hit.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cmoidudu

Very impressive, congratulations, specially since you are only in the early 300's of Paragon :)

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ty :D

Really impressed it's already hit grift 46. I think it could definitely take it to the next level.
Messing around with the Wizards as well, working on not feeling so squishy still.

I'll be far from a keyboard during the next days, what I should have tested is :

- Have one character use Slow Time + Time Shell and then Tal Rasha amulet + Crown of the Primus + Gesture of Orpheus (like Devile did).
- Have one character use Frost Hydra(s) with Tal Rasha amulet + Frostburn gloves for the freezing thing.
- Definitely switch to Energy Armor + Force Armor for higher Greater Rifts...

Have fun guys :)

Being too close is a valid concern Deville. I am building the permanent CC for bosses only, so I only have to be close for them. Once you can keep the RG locked that portion of the GR become trivial.

For everything else, Blizzard Frozen solid in my attack rotation round robin I have going keeps most everything else frozen permanently. I still play at range because frozen solid can just lock stuff down well at range and you are right it is much safer. My freeze lock is primarily just for the Guardian.

The main problem I have with Nova is that u will have to sacrifice damage or toughness for it. Since u need 4 elements to get all 4 Tal's stacks and Nova doesn't add stacks, u will have to sacrifice toughness from Energy Armor or most likely 20% damage from Magic Weapon. Sure, 20% damage may not mean much damage since we are already doing a LOT, but its 20% less damage against all mobs only to stunlock the RG, at VERY close range and even then, u can still die if for some odd reason (lag, fps drops, ground effect casted before the stunlock, etc) the stunlock is not 100%. So, it's kinda a big tradeoff for a risky way to kill the RG.

Not saying is not worth it, but I don't see it like a straight trade off. Maybe if it was Bone Chill instead of Cold Snap I would like it more. Besides RG may or may not be such a problem with some CC at long range. I'll see once I start hitting 50s and RG is such a pain that needs something like this to secure success.

The CC should be permanent once you have the CDR for it. I am working on potentially being able to fully stunlock with just the Sader and if that turns out to be possible I will swap magic weapon back in on the Wizards.


I did a 44 today in under 8 minutes and got a key for 48 and got Exarchs and Anarchs in the 48 so I failed it by a good margin. I farmed up to 48 from another 42 key and failed it as well due to a bad Anarch pack about 3/4 of the way through.

Really not liking some of those mob types lol.

I took Yelgis' advice and am running 54% CDR for full stun lock on the RG's and it is pretty much fool proof on all of them except that one poison/octopus looking thing that flee's backwards upon spawning. Once you get to him it's game over like the rest. When I wasn't farming, the main issue I had was killing the RG in time without multiple deaths and this effectively cures that. Once I get back to pushing 50's I think this will be a huge help. That being said I am a huge fan of fighting everything before the RG at max range and I probably wont change that since it seems to be the most effective.

Currently I'm running an Explosive Blast build and farming 35-40 GR's in under 4 minutes. Somehow 12 Woh's have dropped since the Era began and 5 of them have been ancient (I know right?!?!) so I'm putting them to use. It's pretty crazy how fast you can fill up on Legs with the kill speed Wizards have.

I haven't had a single Woh drop in S3 yet. Only 4 non-ancient SS as well. Not having much luck with my Wizards' weapons yet lol.

No where near the same rift levels yet but the RG's are definitely the issue. It doesn't feel like Blizzard's freeze is able to lock them down well enough, and Frost Nova does decent but it sucks to have it wasted for the rest of a rift.
My thought is to try out the Delsere's set, which doesn't really lock down RG's either but it's at least a start!

S3, I've got 3 Woh's, non were ancient. 1 ancient SS at least. Since my build is focused on Blizzard, I don't care much about weapons. I'm more interested on getting Devastator plans ... missing my last one. It's amazing how fast u start leveling and get gear once u are able to do GR35-40 FAST. I think I'll go with Leoric's on all with Rubies for more exp ... my amulets suck, but with the damage I'm doing, don't think that will matter for GR35. I would love to hit Paragon 1000 with the combined exp from S3 + non season. Makes life so much easier to be Paragon 800+ and 1000 looks like a lovely number :D

Need to farm mats and also Act 1 Bounties for better Pauldrons of Skeleton King. I think I'll finish campaign mode tonight to get Templar and Enchantress quests. My immediate goal is to hit Para 400+ by the end of the week and have Ancient Devastators in all my wizards. With those weapons and better rings, I'll push 50s and see how well I do on S3. By the end of S3 I wanna be able to do GR42 as fast as I'm doing GR35 now.

Well I have completed a 45. Still no luck with the 47+ keys I keep trying. Getting some nice gem levels because of the failures heh.

Alright no jelly but I just completed GR 23 last night.. still don't have a full 6 piece tal's set on any char but once I do, I think I'll like this build a lot more. I am happy with my progress now though and RG's are more manageable.

I only got single full Tal set on my characters and finished GR31 yesterday in ~10 minutes. No decent rings, no decent weapons, crappy CDR. As others mentioned, biggest problem is survivability.

Actually, I was seriously underestimating effect of full set on my DPS. Before full set I was doing T6 just fine, but with full set on a single character RGs are just melting.