I have come back to D3 after many months (back then when inferno was really tough) wanting to take a break from WoW raiding and the commitment that goes with it.
I started reading (this is almost a new game with all these changes) and I am info overloaded at the moment so I write this to ask some things or let you make comments in general.
First thing I did was switching to US servers (I am EU player) since the EU auction house has outrageous prices. That meant starting from zero with zero funds etc. My first thought was to make a character as a starting point to collect money and items and then make the character I like most (wizard and WD as I am a caster type). I did make a WW barb farming some MP 4-5 and I really quickly got tiered of it. So I leveled a wizard. ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Rayaleith-1454/hero/36313437 )
I started with Archon (the long video a guy made about it was so good. Maybe the best video guide ever seen) at 60 and farming Mp1 was really easy (I was wearing a Tal Rasha helm for it with gem for XP boosting). But it required really specific places to farm in order to have high uptime of my archon (Field of misery) and I felt somewhat vulnerable sometimes. In general although I enjoyed and felt powerful at times (this beam really rapes) I really dislike to die (one of the reasons I prefer warlock to mage in WoW for the people that can understand). I know gear is not great but I stayed mostly to MP1. I did not die THAT much but I realized that I want to kill elites as well and not destroy whites only.
So I decided to try CMWW by only changing the head (limiting funds, remember?) in order to find out if I like it. I also read the excellent comprehensive guide at the stickies and fired up. Have to say that it not as powerful as archon but man... it really does the job very easily especially to elites. And my gear is really not optimized at all to this build.
Now, I will try this build but I really want to know some things.
Spec specific
1. In the guide you mention Chanto many times. I searched for it and although the background is black it says fire damage, So... I guess this is not a black weapon. I know that we want the other stats on it, but does it worth it to have a non-back weapon? Especially with the offhand that give so much elemental damage and the Zuni boots that is mentioned?
2.
General
1. Do you feel that it will get nerfed? Does it worth it the effort and gold it requires to be spent (and farmed since as a EU player I have no access to US RMAH if I wanted it to)?
2. Can it be my "starting point" for my migration instead of my WW barb? (it is not the place for barbs but in my link above you can check my barb as well)
3. I read in official forums about "melee" sorc (I prefer the D2 name ). Do you feel I should take a look there according to my style?
CMWW is an ideal starter spec. When running a more defensive version you can kill elite 2 MP higher than what your archon spec does.
In general this spec avoids the entire black weapon bonus magic damage thing. When playing archon, damage is everything. You melt stuff in seconds. When playing CMWW you don't care about damage that much. Why? Because you can start playing CMWW with force armor, crystal shell and teleport safe passage, then when slowly upgrading your defensive stats you can swap force armor for lightning armor, crystal shell for diamond shards and teleport for timezone.
Your damage doesn't come from damage items, your damage comes from swapping out your defensive spells.
PS: I honestly hope they nerf CM into oblivion and adjust all others wizard spells making them viable. The current playstyle feels kinda silly and broken.
If you wanted a char to provide everything for your account, you were right playing the WW Barb first, it's the best xp-farming char right now and as a consequence gains the most loot (mf % relative to plvl).
Playing a Sorc, you're -in my opinion- best off with the Archon spec for farming purposes. Yes, it's limited to the effective zones like FoM or the Weeping Hollows, but why would you farm ineffective zones anyway? It's also the easiest spec to play imo. You just move around and right-click everything to death.
CMWW is meant for tackling challenges, your "raid spec" if you like WoW terms. Farming with it is rather slow compared to Archon but you simply do not die, which enables you to kill much stronger mobs (like those Ubers, which you'll like, coming from WoW).
About future nerfs: Don't bother.
Archon and Wrath of the Berserker are officially on Blizz's radar and subject to change at some point in time (read: 2014 ).
CMWW also needs a fix imo, but there's no reason not to enjoy it while it lasts. My personal idea would be to make all purple mobs immune to Frost Nova (or CC in general) and give other Elites the possibility to have an affix which makes them CC-immune, either permanently or temporarily like Reflect Damage.
My stance on expected nerfs is to ignore them until you actually know what they're planning. It could be months before anything is even announced, so what's the point of worrying about it now? If you like a certain build or spec, play it, and if it changes later down the road, then you can decide what to do.
Regarding the black weapon and CMWW, for most gear levels it's not worth worrying about bonus damage like zuni and triumvirate. The build is based around high APS and high CC so you're better off raising your CC as high as you can. I also don't recommend zuni for CMWW until you can get a tripox because you lose out on IAS or CC from the ring slot. If you take IAS, you can't make up the CC very easily, which results in less effective dps. If you take CC, you're likely adding IAS to another slot that you're better off ignoring, like ammy for a high CC+CD dps piece, or bracers where you could use crafted to pick up extra DPS and/or EHP. Note: the reason for high APS is primarily due to the large improvement in survivability you get from extra WW tics, which procs more LoH, and the ability to cast more WWs, which gives more CM procs for faster DS refresh. It also improves your freezing strength against elites, which makes the fights much easier since they won't be able to cast much. If you also have really good latency you can practically prevent elites from doing anything at all with high enough APS and CC.
As for WW barb vs wizard, I can't say because I've only played my wizard. If you like the wiz, play it, imo. If you like the barb, play it. If you like both, play both.
As for the melee wizard builds, you can try it if you want, but they're nowhere near as efficient as the SNS variant of CMWW, and even Archon is more efficient at lower MP.
Atm, I am trying to reach the first breakpoint of APS. It is, without doubt, very nice spec. I switched to MP3 from MP1 and I am not dying that much and dps seems ok. I mostly do Act2 Vaults and then go out to kill the keymaster.
I feel very dependent on teleport though. I use storm armor and I switched to Deep Freeze (maybe I should try Bone Chill). I also switched my MH and OH to Chanto set.
I might write here as I progress since I like to read the comments.
Keep deep freeze for solo play. You can switch to bone chill for group play since it is a group buff if you want. Otherwise DF basically gives you 15% dps boost from the crit, which also reduces your CDs by a fair amount, so it's like rolling evocation and bone chill into one rune. It's also fairly easy to keep active with the large mob density areas and by making good use of teleport.
I have come back to D3 after many months (back then when inferno was really tough) wanting to take a break from WoW raiding and the commitment that goes with it.
I started reading (this is almost a new game with all these changes) and I am info overloaded at the moment so I write this to ask some things or let you make comments in general.
First thing I did was switching to US servers (I am EU player) since the EU auction house has outrageous prices. That meant starting from zero with zero funds etc. My first thought was to make a character as a starting point to collect money and items and then make the character I like most (wizard and WD as I am a caster type). I did make a WW barb farming some MP 4-5 and I really quickly got tiered of it. So I leveled a wizard. ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Rayaleith-1454/hero/36313437 )
I started with Archon (the long video a guy made about it was so good. Maybe the best video guide ever seen) at 60 and farming Mp1 was really easy (I was wearing a Tal Rasha helm for it with gem for XP boosting). But it required really specific places to farm in order to have high uptime of my archon (Field of misery) and I felt somewhat vulnerable sometimes. In general although I enjoyed and felt powerful at times (this beam really rapes) I really dislike to die (one of the reasons I prefer warlock to mage in WoW for the people that can understand). I know gear is not great but I stayed mostly to MP1. I did not die THAT much but I realized that I want to kill elites as well and not destroy whites only.
So I decided to try CMWW by only changing the head (limiting funds, remember?) in order to find out if I like it. I also read the excellent comprehensive guide at the stickies and fired up. Have to say that it not as powerful as archon but man... it really does the job very easily especially to elites. And my gear is really not optimized at all to this build.
Now, I will try this build but I really want to know some things.
Spec specific
1. In the guide you mention Chanto many times. I searched for it and although the background is black it says fire damage, So... I guess this is not a black weapon. I know that we want the other stats on it, but does it worth it to have a non-back weapon? Especially with the offhand that give so much elemental damage and the Zuni boots that is mentioned?
2.
General
1. Do you feel that it will get nerfed? Does it worth it the effort and gold it requires to be spent (and farmed since as a EU player I have no access to US RMAH if I wanted it to)?
2. Can it be my "starting point" for my migration instead of my WW barb? (it is not the place for barbs but in my link above you can check my barb as well)
3. I read in official forums about "melee" sorc (I prefer the D2 name ). Do you feel I should take a look there according to my style?
Thank you in advanced for reading
In general this spec avoids the entire black weapon bonus magic damage thing. When playing archon, damage is everything. You melt stuff in seconds. When playing CMWW you don't care about damage that much. Why? Because you can start playing CMWW with force armor, crystal shell and teleport safe passage, then when slowly upgrading your defensive stats you can swap force armor for lightning armor, crystal shell for diamond shards and teleport for timezone.
Your damage doesn't come from damage items, your damage comes from swapping out your defensive spells.
PS: I honestly hope they nerf CM into oblivion and adjust all others wizard spells making them viable. The current playstyle feels kinda silly and broken.
Playing a Sorc, you're -in my opinion- best off with the Archon spec for farming purposes. Yes, it's limited to the effective zones like FoM or the Weeping Hollows, but why would you farm ineffective zones anyway? It's also the easiest spec to play imo. You just move around and right-click everything to death.
CMWW is meant for tackling challenges, your "raid spec" if you like WoW terms. Farming with it is rather slow compared to Archon but you simply do not die, which enables you to kill much stronger mobs (like those Ubers, which you'll like, coming from WoW).
About future nerfs: Don't bother.
Archon and Wrath of the Berserker are officially on Blizz's radar and subject to change at some point in time (read: 2014 ).
CMWW also needs a fix imo, but there's no reason not to enjoy it while it lasts. My personal idea would be to make all purple mobs immune to Frost Nova (or CC in general) and give other Elites the possibility to have an affix which makes them CC-immune, either permanently or temporarily like Reflect Damage.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
My case: I don't really like CMWW THAT much but I'm addicted to how easy everything is with it.
Assuming CM isn't nerfed too, which it probably will be.
Top 10 Solo Wizard Leaderboard - North America
Highest: Rank 6 // Greater Rift 42 12m40s
Regarding the black weapon and CMWW, for most gear levels it's not worth worrying about bonus damage like zuni and triumvirate. The build is based around high APS and high CC so you're better off raising your CC as high as you can. I also don't recommend zuni for CMWW until you can get a tripox because you lose out on IAS or CC from the ring slot. If you take IAS, you can't make up the CC very easily, which results in less effective dps. If you take CC, you're likely adding IAS to another slot that you're better off ignoring, like ammy for a high CC+CD dps piece, or bracers where you could use crafted to pick up extra DPS and/or EHP. Note: the reason for high APS is primarily due to the large improvement in survivability you get from extra WW tics, which procs more LoH, and the ability to cast more WWs, which gives more CM procs for faster DS refresh. It also improves your freezing strength against elites, which makes the fights much easier since they won't be able to cast much. If you also have really good latency you can practically prevent elites from doing anything at all with high enough APS and CC.
As for WW barb vs wizard, I can't say because I've only played my wizard. If you like the wiz, play it, imo. If you like the barb, play it. If you like both, play both.
As for the melee wizard builds, you can try it if you want, but they're nowhere near as efficient as the SNS variant of CMWW, and even Archon is more efficient at lower MP.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
Atm, I am trying to reach the first breakpoint of APS. It is, without doubt, very nice spec. I switched to MP3 from MP1 and I am not dying that much and dps seems ok. I mostly do Act2 Vaults and then go out to kill the keymaster.
I feel very dependent on teleport though. I use storm armor and I switched to Deep Freeze (maybe I should try Bone Chill). I also switched my MH and OH to Chanto set.
I might write here as I progress since I like to read the comments.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard