S3 Wizard Team Progress

[Zwizm]

Finally made some progression this week as GR's 55 and 56 went down tonight. I am really enjoying the play style as it's a cross between melee when necessary and extreme range. The main change was swapping out my Strongarms bracers for APDs. Initially I was worried about a huge DPS loss but after un-scientifically observing my numbers I didn't notice much of a difference at all. This leads me to wonder if my round-robin handling of Black Hole with a new cast every 1.5 seconds, never actually lets the mobs "land" and start taking the increased damage from Strongarms for 5 seconds. Hmmm.

In any case, running around with the APD's have enabled me to handle the dreaded "reflect" packs much better than before. Normally these packs would eventually somehow worm their way out of my max range BH and if one casts reflect, they all do and down I would go. Now I have about an 85 percent chance of success by running into Frost Nova range, letting the APD's proc so I can soak up the initial barrage, waiting until the reflect wears off then locking them up with FN and BH and taking them down. This is much, much easier than trying to take them out at range.

Outside of the reflect packs, I kill everything at the edge of the screen where possible, if not possible, I kill them in melee range using Event Horizon to remove all elite ground effects. Most of the time it works nicely.

I also removed Blizzard/Frozen Solid for Meteor/Comet. The CC from Blizzard turned out to be overkill after I fixed some skill casting and character control issues I was having. Meteor, coupled with the AP return of Electrocute/Surge of power on big packs adds so much damage to the beginning of meaty pulls by letting me just hold down Meteor for the first few seconds and mopping the floor with 'em. The damage of Meteor should not be overlooked.

The one main drawback of this build is movement speed. Since I'm running Frost Nova to help lock things down I don't have room for Teleport. The only skills I could remove for it would be Meteor and a primary spender but F/R needs the spender and clear times need the Meteors, so Teleport is out. If I get sprawling maps with mobs well spread out in clumps of 10 or less, it's a horribly slow nightmare and unfortunately this is very common. If I get a map packed with mobs, it'll be a 12 minute clear even up to GR 58 I believe. So much fun.


Current build....swap in elemental exposure and cold blooded over conflagration for two of the party:
http://www.d3planner.com/225879298

The 55/56 clears both went down in 12 something minutes due primarily to mob density. I was also 5 minutes ahead of a 57 when I got Anarch/Exarch/Winged Assassins and those phantom blue archer guys ....game over. RG's at 57 die between 2.5 and 3 minutes so it's all about everything leading up to the RG making the RNG for Floor/Desnity/Mob types a pretty big deal at that level.

With a few more upgrades I believe consistent 5-6 minute GR50's are possible for speed runs and maybe even a GR 59 for the high end. This is my favorite and most successful multi-boxing class by far. Next up: Defensive Gem tests.