P.S. Loroese, if you got a moment, could you add the paragon level to your calculators, i was wondering today why my INT / VIT do not match the calculator... rofl
Added, with a couple other minor changes.
<3 thanks
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I've read that crits done while in archon form have a chance to proc critical mass to lower its cooldown before it even wears off....can you confirm this?
Actually i cannot confirm or deny this, what i can confirm is that CM still functions while in archon, for example the archon skills can off CD faster when CM procs, that is quite visible, whether it affects the CD of the actual archon itself, that i have no idea, gotta time that up a fair bit to test it.
Two-handers are an excellent option if you don't have a high crit. chance or Attack Speed increase from gear. Because they use up Arcane Power less slowly for roughly the same amount of damage, Astral Presence and +Max Arcane Power become incredibly good.
With a wand and a OH i have nearly 50% crit and 26 APoC, that's nowhere near low, it is simply a different playstyle that is alternative to the very common and abused CM build, simply because APoC is stupid expensive. For example if you do a search for a helm with 4% CC, socket 100+ int, and 8 APoC you will be amazed to see the results, may be a dozen helms are up, 1 was for 155 mil, the other 11 were 1 billion. That was the picture yesterday. A price of a helm with 6% CC 180 int, vit and all resist is starting from 10 mil... for a very strong helm, the only difference is APoC.
As a matter of fact, 2 handers with high crit dmg RELY on high crit to do big fat numbers, so it is quite logically exactly opposite to what you just said.
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I bought a 2-hander that i am using right now for 3 mil and using the archon spec http://us.battle.net...9/hero/18485873
That was probably the easiest, least clicking clear of A3 i've ever had, and it was pretty damn fast as well. The best part about this kind of build is you do not need APoC or LoH, just gear for stats and crit, get a fat 2 hander with 5-6% LS and you're golden to stand face-tank champs while beaming away.
What i did with this build is basically try to maximize the archon up-time. Surely you can find videos of where archon goes on forever, surely you will have a couple of those situations, but you are also going to have situations where you archon runs out because you have to make a u-turn and run thru a cleared area, the next unexplored room has a champ and you've got 1 min+++ on archon CD, which happens more often than you think.
So i took both true power on archon and evocation to reduce the CD, piercing orb has a decent proc coefficient to make it reasonably usefull to reduce the archon cd via CM another 5-10 seconds easy. If you are soloing, the key is to get a cold damage bow/xbow and give it to your scoundrel, that gives you a perma slow, so you do not need to get a slow skill of any sort yourself.
With my DPS, piercing orb oftenly one-shots white trash mobs, as for the rest after being slowed, they stumble a lot because of my big hits / crits, all in all, it's rather difficult to get any mob to actually catch up with you, unless it's a teleporter / phase beast.
One big improvement i think might be worth making to it is getting more movement speed, because, simply put it will increase your archon uptime via less time spent running around looking for stuff to kill.
I needa properly try this in a group play as well to see how well it does there, but in solo i melted any champ within a few seconds easily, came close to death a couple of times simply because my EHP is rather... wdf
P.S. Loroese, if you got a moment, could you add the paragon level to your calculators, i was wondering today why my INT / VIT do not match the calculator... rofl
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Also, one thing i forgot to mention, before this patch using a 2 hander was a trade-off of up to 10% CC and up to 10 APoC for nothing, now, it's a trade off for extra 3% LS and 100% Crit Damage.
So basically with a 2 hander build you have to be less reliant on APoC, but rather on much larger single hits. Additionally, if you have enough resists / armor you can just stand there and tank absolutely anything with archon and 6% life steal
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It's quite funny that you've posted this question now as well as the people replying to it, right at this moment in this forum the second thread to it is a build that uses a slow 2 hander with vids of the boss kills http://www.diablofans.com/topic/62429-video-inferno-bosses-crit-spec/
The 2 handers are not really less viable, it depends on the build. If you are skilled / practiced enough to use meteor a slow 2 hander with 1200-1600 damage (not DPS) is going to produce insane crits as compared to a 400-800 damage wand when doing 300%ish of weapon damage.
Surely if you are going for CM build - you would benefit from speed, if you are going for a kite build and you have enough slows to keep stuff off you, or you can simply take the hits you can go disintegrate or frost beam and melt stuff.
Personally i wouldn't suggest using archon with anything below 50k ish dps and life steal of your weapon.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
<3 thanks
With a wand and a OH i have nearly 50% crit and 26 APoC, that's nowhere near low, it is simply a different playstyle that is alternative to the very common and abused CM build, simply because APoC is stupid expensive. For example if you do a search for a helm with 4% CC, socket 100+ int, and 8 APoC you will be amazed to see the results, may be a dozen helms are up, 1 was for 155 mil, the other 11 were 1 billion. That was the picture yesterday. A price of a helm with 6% CC 180 int, vit and all resist is starting from 10 mil... for a very strong helm, the only difference is APoC.
As a matter of fact, 2 handers with high crit dmg RELY on high crit to do big fat numbers, so it is quite logically exactly opposite to what you just said.
That was probably the easiest, least clicking clear of A3 i've ever had, and it was pretty damn fast as well. The best part about this kind of build is you do not need APoC or LoH, just gear for stats and crit, get a fat 2 hander with 5-6% LS and you're golden to stand face-tank champs while beaming away.
What i did with this build is basically try to maximize the archon up-time. Surely you can find videos of where archon goes on forever, surely you will have a couple of those situations, but you are also going to have situations where you archon runs out because you have to make a u-turn and run thru a cleared area, the next unexplored room has a champ and you've got 1 min+++ on archon CD, which happens more often than you think.
So i took both true power on archon and evocation to reduce the CD, piercing orb has a decent proc coefficient to make it reasonably usefull to reduce the archon cd via CM another 5-10 seconds easy. If you are soloing, the key is to get a cold damage bow/xbow and give it to your scoundrel, that gives you a perma slow, so you do not need to get a slow skill of any sort yourself.
With my DPS, piercing orb oftenly one-shots white trash mobs, as for the rest after being slowed, they stumble a lot because of my big hits / crits, all in all, it's rather difficult to get any mob to actually catch up with you, unless it's a teleporter / phase beast.
One big improvement i think might be worth making to it is getting more movement speed, because, simply put it will increase your archon uptime via less time spent running around looking for stuff to kill.
I needa properly try this in a group play as well to see how well it does there, but in solo i melted any champ within a few seconds easily, came close to death a couple of times simply because my EHP is rather... wdf
P.S. Loroese, if you got a moment, could you add the paragon level to your calculators, i was wondering today why my INT / VIT do not match the calculator... rofl
So basically with a 2 hander build you have to be less reliant on APoC, but rather on much larger single hits. Additionally, if you have enough resists / armor you can just stand there and tank absolutely anything with archon and 6% life steal
The 2 handers are not really less viable, it depends on the build. If you are skilled / practiced enough to use meteor a slow 2 hander with 1200-1600 damage (not DPS) is going to produce insane crits as compared to a 400-800 damage wand when doing 300%ish of weapon damage.
Surely if you are going for CM build - you would benefit from speed, if you are going for a kite build and you have enough slows to keep stuff off you, or you can simply take the hits you can go disintegrate or frost beam and melt stuff.
Personally i wouldn't suggest using archon with anything below 50k ish dps and life steal of your weapon.