While reading forms and searching youtube on diablo specs i came across a Barbarian ranged spec. This made me wonder if Wizard melee spec would be viable to play as. When i look at our specs we have ( From what i can see) enough abilities to make it possible. http://us.battle.net...XdOh!afT!Yaaccb
This is a link of what i can come up with for what i would use for my spec. U would want to make sure to stack armor also for the energy armor to increase ur armor evan more. What do u guys think?
The +6% to element damage affix apparently adds 6% to your total damage as that element, so if you have the 4 piece bonus, your unmodified attacks will do cold, fire, and lightning damage. You can buff this tremendously by using cold blooded and conflagration together for a 30% damage increase to spectral blades... Seems a bit broken to me.
This most important thing for a meele wiz is critical mass (has a chance to reduce your CDs by 1 second per crit) and your defensive skills. Diamond skin - crystal shell and frost nova are probably the best ones. As far as the rune for frost nova there are a few that aren't too bad. Deep freeze, shatter, and my personal favorite bone chill. Deep freeze is really good for obvious reasons but you won't always be able to freeze 5 mobs at once therefore not being able to benefit from it everytime.
Next you'll want two spells that hits lots of times for more crits. Spectral blades - Deep cuts and Meteor - Star pact seem to be pretty popular. Star pact has a pretty high LoH coefficient and is easier to spam. I am guessing that the bleed effect from deep cuts can crit. Thrown blade would be good if you don't have enough defensive stats or crit chance and find yourself kiting inbetween CDs. Healing blade would be good if you already have some life steal and have crazy amounts of dps and you find yourself in huge aoe situations often.
As for the two remaining skill slots I'd say force armor is completely necessary. The last one is more up to you. I would use wave of force with the 260% rune for crazy amounts of AoE damage (frost nova with bone chill then WoF for insane aoe damage). If you want another defensive move I'd go with slow time with the 20% damage increase to mobs inside.
As for passives (other than CM) I would strongly recommend Blur. I suppose you could out gear needing this, but it's an easy way to up your EHP. The 3rd one is up to your choice as well. There's plently of useful ones to choose from here, so it's more so up to the gear you have. If you don't have much max Ap or Ap on crit you'll want arcane presence. Arcane dynamo would make your meteors hit hard but you'd have to kinda get into a rotation. Evocation if you are low on crit chance.
As for gear the most most important stats are your tanky stats and crit chance. You'll need high resist all, vita, armor, and life on hit. Life regen helps too. To up your dps you'll want lots crit damage and int. Ap on crit and max AP are both very important too. More meteors means more LoH, more crits, and lots of damage. I do not know what the stat threshold is for the acts though.
To actually answer your question though... Any class, any build is viable with good enough gear and the right gear setup.
I'd think I'm one of the most successfull melee wizards out there, rocking a4 farms on my wiz, 1.1k all resistances with prismatic armor up, + with 1.5k LPH I'm virtually unkillable. In earlier acts there are a couple bosses where I need to swap some dps gear on (Belial a2 for example) to meet the enrage timers,
just wondering but why use explosive blast over star pact? I do not have a geared wizard for actual testing the meele build, but I have done my research on the build because I am very interested in using it one day. But as far as I see explosive blast does 91% more damage if the target is hit by all 3 blasts. The LoH coversion for explosive blast is 11% per tick(max of 33%per cast) where as star pact has 25% per tick (max of 100% per cast). Plus star pact hits more times therefore more chances to crit. But I suppose you don't really have very many CDs abilities. What is your dps, crit, and crit damage at?
There's a lot of melee/tank wizard information floating around the wizard forums. I recommend checking those out since there's a lot of discussion about specs and stat priorities, as well as a guide or two with vids.
This is a link of what i can come up with for what i would use for my spec. U would want to make sure to stack armor also for the energy armor to increase ur armor evan more. What do u guys think?
The +6% to element damage affix apparently adds 6% to your total damage as that element, so if you have the 4 piece bonus, your unmodified attacks will do cold, fire, and lightning damage. You can buff this tremendously by using cold blooded and conflagration together for a 30% damage increase to spectral blades... Seems a bit broken to me.
Next you'll want two spells that hits lots of times for more crits. Spectral blades - Deep cuts and Meteor - Star pact seem to be pretty popular. Star pact has a pretty high LoH coefficient and is easier to spam. I am guessing that the bleed effect from deep cuts can crit. Thrown blade would be good if you don't have enough defensive stats or crit chance and find yourself kiting inbetween CDs. Healing blade would be good if you already have some life steal and have crazy amounts of dps and you find yourself in huge aoe situations often.
As for the two remaining skill slots I'd say force armor is completely necessary. The last one is more up to you. I would use wave of force with the 260% rune for crazy amounts of AoE damage (frost nova with bone chill then WoF for insane aoe damage). If you want another defensive move I'd go with slow time with the 20% damage increase to mobs inside.
As for passives (other than CM) I would strongly recommend Blur. I suppose you could out gear needing this, but it's an easy way to up your EHP. The 3rd one is up to your choice as well. There's plently of useful ones to choose from here, so it's more so up to the gear you have. If you don't have much max Ap or Ap on crit you'll want arcane presence. Arcane dynamo would make your meteors hit hard but you'd have to kinda get into a rotation. Evocation if you are low on crit chance.
As for gear the most most important stats are your tanky stats and crit chance. You'll need high resist all, vita, armor, and life on hit. Life regen helps too. To up your dps you'll want lots crit damage and int. Ap on crit and max AP are both very important too. More meteors means more LoH, more crits, and lots of damage. I do not know what the stat threshold is for the acts though.
To actually answer your question though... Any class, any build is viable with good enough gear and the right gear setup.
just wondering but why use explosive blast over star pact? I do not have a geared wizard for actual testing the meele build, but I have done my research on the build because I am very interested in using it one day. But as far as I see explosive blast does 91% more damage if the target is hit by all 3 blasts. The LoH coversion for explosive blast is 11% per tick(max of 33%per cast) where as star pact has 25% per tick (max of 100% per cast). Plus star pact hits more times therefore more chances to crit. But I suppose you don't really have very many CDs abilities. What is your dps, crit, and crit damage at?
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard