S3 Wizard Team Progress

[Ellay]

Tested out both last night, hilariously while switching out of Hydra build an Ancient Serpent Sparker drops.

The Meteor build is much easier to manage, but felt the Hydra build burns through the Boss much smoother.

[Devile]

I think it's more than 1, but I don't bother much about it. Obviously attack speed will help with that, but your AP regen will have to be higher to sustain your AP. Magic Weapon Conduit helps with that for big groups but not much for single target.

I gave Zwizm's build a try and it worked very nice. Quite a change of pace from what I was doing which involves kiting a lot. Not maxing CDR at all, just using Evocation and 90%+ Leoric's Crown with a Diamond for 1 sec Frost Nova round robin. Nova lockdown is not perfect for RGs but good enough for me. I did some small changes to it tho:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...YO!iShb!YZccZY
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...YO!RShb!YZccZY
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...YO!eShb!ZacbZY
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...YO!WShb!YZcaZY

My 2 highest dps wizards use Black Hole Spellsteal to boost their dps a lot more. The other 2 use Event Horizon and Supermassive to deal with some annoying ground effects and pull even more mobs. They all have roughly the same CDR and casting Black Hole at the same time, so no point on having more than 1 Event Horizon.

The 2 highest dps wizards use Meteor Comet to proc cold but the 4th uses Blizzard which is instant and Frozen Solid freezes which helps me initiate from long range. 1 Wizard will use Blizzard Lightning storm which adds a 15% lightning debuff. I still need to test if this debuff means from ALL sources but regardless, it's still a nice debuff for a single wizard. That wizard will replace Electrocute with Magic Missile Glacial Spike which also freezes. My last wizard uses Magic Missile Seeker just to proc Arcane since it uses Black Hole Supermassive.

Passives are straight forward, but I went with Audacity for my main for higher dps. Since I'm already fighting at melee range, Audacity is a multiplicative buff which adds more dps than Glass Canon. I'm using Unstable Anomaly since my Esoteric Alteration is at rank 1 and I'm getting raped by ground effects.

With this setup, is easier to get close to a pack to freeze lock them. Blizzard from range to freeze, Black Hole and then move right next to them to finish the combo.

[Zwizm]

Devile, I like it! I must admit, I'm addicted to at least 53.5% CDR that guarantees a fast RG kill. I think I'll also give Audacity a try today instead of Unwavering Will since most of my Elite fights are close range.

I've been messing around with testing BoT, as suggested, and it looks like its ~31% multi bump is at least equal to the 40% add bump from Toxin. Somewhere during testing I decided to drop Esoteric and run Bot, Toxin and Gizzard which got my Hydra ticks maxing at 110 mil per, up from 77 mil. This chopped a full minute off my RG kills at GR55+ and just melts Elite packs. I then went out and completed a 57 in under 13 minutes, without the defense of Esoteric, go figure.

Outside of the movement speed, or lack thereof, this build is pretty solid. Anything under GR50 feels like a GR35 now. I don't know about you guys but it feels like 90% of the rifts I get are those sprawling cave maps with lots of horrible progression mobs. On the off chance I get progression mobs with decent density, it's almost 100% success.

[Ellay]

With your Hydra's ticking at 110 mil per, and having two of them that gives you 10 hits per tick or 1.1 billion damage per tick. I find it hard for Meteor Shower to come close on a mob not moving. That's just massive damage. On top of that you're still throwing down meteors anyways.
Even better is to check your breakpoints and make sure your hydras are ticking at the best speed you can get.

[Ellay]

I've got 37% CDR and it seems sufficient to lock down a RG for about 30 seconds ~ then there is a blip, where it can move just enough to do something.
Also to note Frost Nova procs the cold meteor and if your pumping one out every 4 seconds it's sufficient enough.

[Devile]

I've got 37% CDR and it seems sufficient to lock down a RG for about 30 seconds ~ then there is a blip, where it can move just enough to do something.
Also to note Frost Nova procs the cold meteor and if your pumping one out every 4 seconds it's sufficient enough.

It does proc the meteor but not the Tal stack :/

[Ellay]

well bummer. Thank goodness I was using Meteor - Comet with my build or I'd feel silly.

[Devile]

The other thing I wanna try is ditch most of the damage reduction passives and gems and go with Halo of Arlyse + CoE. Yeah, I know F&R is a ton of damage, but I have to also add a lot of damage reduction to survive and not really doing a great job in some rifts, specially against fucking Winged Assassins, Fallen Angels and Anarchs. Just go with those 2 rings and focus on more damage on passives and gems. Maybe I can even drop APD and go with Strongarms.

Will have to see how much it hurts my dps and clearing times.

PS: Ohh, was forgetting something about the Meteor build ... Channeling Pylon = GG. Usually that Pylon is completely useless for the "traditional" Tal's build but with Meteor, u can destroy everything pretty fast with it.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

With your Hydra's ticking at 110 mil per, and having two of them that gives you 10 hits per tick or 1.1 billion damage per tick. I find it hard for Meteor Shower to come close on a mob not moving. That's just massive damage. On top of that you're still throwing down meteors anyways.
Even better is to check your breakpoints and make sure your hydras are ticking at the best speed you can get.

You guys doing any log parses (I seem to recall one of y'all linked a site that could do that for ya) to see what these builds do over an entire GR run? That's data I'd be interested in seeing.

[Cmoidudu]

(...), specially against fucking Winged Assassins, Fallen Angels and Anarchs.

This is because you use 4x Wizards. Really you should try and replace one of your Wizards with a Witch Doctor. Since you are not going to close range you don't need Horrify (and you don't need the helm), instead use Hex+Jinx and everything coming close to the team is transformed into a pig. And, most of what is not pig-ified attack my dogs or fetishes instead of my Wizards.

Note that 4p bonus of Zunimasha is mandatory for high-level GRs. Also I'm trying a Blind Faith helm for the blind effect, but so far I haven't noticed a big difference. Template and gear is here :

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Erha-2932/hero/48211560