Not a huge fan of your build in-particular, I'd much rather just go with an off-hand that is just a stat-stick, stack more CDR, and only use EQ/leap, and I'm not sure who is saying barbs are bad at T6, but given the correct gear I actually believe they are on of the strongest classes for solo-play, mainly because of their ability to move so quickly.
I have a 2483 TF and a 2230 Gesture with 20% Arcane, and the TF comes out ahead, even without factoring in the fact that I get cold and lightning damage from my TF to proc EE (the damage is rolled to cold). The short answer is that it depends on the rolls, but a very top-end TF will always beat a Gesture, but if you have a poorly rolled TF the Gesture is most likely going to come out ahead.
Not having elemental exposure and strongarm\ bracers is 40-50% less damage for your entire group. What do you think is better, taking glass cannon, or your entire group doing 50% more damage?
You should be able to average 300-400 mil dps with a standard MM/Archon build in group play. This build is nothing but a scumbag DPS build, and in actuality you're maybe gaining 5% additional personal DPS because of the burst, at the cost of 40-50% group damage and loads of survivability.
I'm not Jaetch, but you're missing a lot of toughness that is crucial when doing higher torments. Your pants don't have Vitality (400-500), your Mirrorball doesn't have Vitality (626-750), and you're using a level 60 Witching Hour, and while it has nice damage stats on it, is giving you little to no toughness. If you upgrade those items, you're looking at 1500-1750 vitality, and potentially some amount of All Resist, Armor, and/or Life % on the Belt if you choose to go for a Harringtons over a Witching Hour. These items could literally double if not almost triple your toughness while doing nothing to, or even improving your damage.
I would also attempt to get Vyr's boots, and replace the Vyr's Gloves with Magefists in addition to rolling % fire damage on your SoJ over the Crit Hit Damage you currently have it rolled to. You will keep 4 pc Vyr's, get 30-40% more fire damage, and lose absolutely nothing except the passive on your Ice Climbers.
Additionally, you can try to get a Vyr's Chest with Int/Vit/11% Reduced Elite Damage or Armor. It will add to your toughness considerably, especially the 11% elite reduiction, and losing 1-2% crit when you already have so much crit isn't that big of a deal. Finally, you can craft new Aughilds shoulders that don't have 15% Hydra Damage on them, which is obviously a wasted stat.
Hope this helped. Obviously all those changes will take time, and is not an easy task, but I promise that if you do those things you'll be able to mop up T5, and easily do T6. With the current state of Wizards, it unfortunately requires a lot more effort in terms of gearing to do higher torments, than say, a Witch Doctor that essentially needs Tasker and Theor and Mask of Jeram to wipe up T6 with ease.
Both Hilbs17 and Jaetch have very valid points about the specs and end game. WoH creates a spec just like Mirrorball, these two items are pretty much the only two items that truly does that for the Wizard class. Each class has items or sets that create very powerful specs. What makes WoH stand out is a nostalgia feeling of how powerful EB was in Vanilla D3. The major difference between the two specs is not so much how powerful they are but the fun factor difference. True enough every spec will get boring after long use but the WoW-type (one button) spec are quite boring.
The problem with the Wizard class is they bring nothing to the table in a group. The other classes has something, some more than others, Wizards are the only class that brings nothing truly useful to the table. This creates a divide between the classes that makes Wizard players want to play solo most of the time. While playing solo there are challenges that has to be dealt with. The major challenge is the lack of support from the other classes. Wizards make up for that with powerful solo specs. (I.E. Fire/Archon and WoH)
Furthermore, while in group Archon is superior to a non-archon fire spec because of the AoE capabilities of Archon form. This is why players focus on the non optimal CDR because lets face it the power of the Archon explosion in groups is worth it for faster group clearing. This shows the divide between the classes because a standard Fire DH which is extremely powerful can spec for a wolf which trumps the power of Archon via the group buff it provides. *End Rant lol*
I completely disagree about Wizards bringing nothing to the table in groups. With this spec wizards bring:
- CC in the form of Black Hole on an extremely low cooldown
- 20-30% Damage for the entire group via Strongarm Bracers with an almost 100% uptime, as it is activated by Black Hole.
- 20% Damage from Elemental Exposure for the entire group (cold damage + lightning on Thunderfury, Fire, and Arcane from Spellsteal Black Hole).
- Extremely High Burst Damage on Elite Packs, especially in very dense rifts with lots of trash mobs surrounding the elite packs, allowing you to stack the Archon buff very high. In certain situations, it's not uncommon for me to 2 or 3 shot elite packs in a four person group.
So that's 40-50% damage for the entire group, excellent crowd control, and high burst damage. That being said, of course an Archon Wizard isn't going to out-damage a fully-geared Jade WD, but I believe that stacked up against any other similarly geared class/spec, that Wizards do just fine. Lately, I've been running T6 RiF groups with a Jade WD, and an EP Monk. I also personally have my own fully-geared Jade WD, and I duo quite often with the same EP monk. When we are playing as a group of three, all the extra damage to the group that my Wizard provides cuts down on clear times drastically, and generally makes the ability of the Jade Doctor to one shot packs more consistent. Personally, I believe that Wizards and Barbs need a slight damage buff across the board to bring them in-line with other classes, and possibly open up options for other specs, but I don't believe the damage gap between Wizards, and say a Demon Hunter or Crusader is as large as people might think given end-game gear.
The issue at hand isn't one of solo play versus group play, or nostalgia versus ease of play. The issue is what is better, and MM/Archon is better. Archon does more damage than Explosive Blast with Wand of Woh, I've personally tested it and I know it to be true. One spell simply doesn't match the damage output of the other. If someone wants to use a Wand of Woh build, that's great and it's certainly their perogative, and they can certainly clear T6 with it. However, any assertion that it can clear faster than an MM/Archon build given similar conditions is simply false.
Quote from Hilbs17
I regularly play Mirroball/Fire Archon in T6 without Unity. I normally only swap to a Unity against annoying Act 5 mob types such as Corrupted Angels. I disagree with the assertion that any other spec is better on T6, because I have all the gear and I've personally tested them. Wand of WoH requires too much CDR and sacrifices way too much damage by using sub-optimal weaker pieces of gear to remain competitve damage-wise.
I don't stream, but all you need to do is go fire up Avoid's stream and watch him play. There isn't another Wizard that streams clearing T6 as fast as he does, and if you think you can with another build as consistently as he does I would love to see it. Anyone talking about using Born's or Captain Crimsons set pieces needs to look no further than GoodIdeaGaming, who dies in T4 with his 70% CDR setup and takes 15-20 minutes to clear T6 rifts, so much so that he quit playing the class in favor of easy-mode Witch Doctor.
It's really incredible how much misinformation is being spread in this thread and many others. Blizzards casualization of this game is really starting to shine through.
Not sure who you're directing your words toward, but I never said any of those builds are tops for anything. Favor lies in Conflag-Fire Archon, of course, I used that build for a while myself and finalized it right when 2.0.5 launched. There are various builds you can use for T6 and much of anyone's success lies in density, mob types, shrines/pylons, and map layouts. Clear times really don't say much. One Rift may take 6 minutes to clear while another takes 10. Someone else may take 10-15 with slightly inferior gear with the same build all because of what he/she rolled for a Rift (no Conduit, took a wrong turn in one level, got Infernal Maiden while another guy got Stonesinger, etc.). As a side note, when I personally time my runs, I do not activate any shrines or pylons and clear with just my character alone.
There are pros and cons to every build. There are some things Conflag builds and their variants are good for and some situations where the builds are just meh at best (e.g. terrible for organized party games). There are some things any Archon-based builds are good for and some situations where the builds blow (terrible against single targets). WoW-based builds can be exceptional for certain situations and perform poorly in others.
Wasn't directing my comments at anyone in-particular. I'm not sure I understand your comment about Conflag/Archon builds not being good in organized group games unless I'm misunderstanding you, as it is the best in that situation.
However, you do bring up a good underlying issue. I believe that Wizards are quite underpowered in groups compared to most other classes. Sure, we bring a lot of damage buffs via strongarms, black hole, elemental exposure, etc, but so do other classes. I truly believe that Wizards need a damage buff across the board to bring them in line with other classes. I'm also hopeful the future change to Firebirds will be good enough to encourage Wizards to do something other than play Archon, which is currently the one and only viable end-game option.
Truth-be-told, the only reason that people believe that Wand of Woh is an end-game weapon is because it is incredibly rare and overhyped. There doesn't exist a manner in which you can construct a gear-seat where an Explosive Blast build can out-damage a Fire Archon/MM build in t6, it's really just that simple. Sure, it's fun on t4/t5, but I'm the type of player who likes to optimize for end-game, and I understand the definition of end-game is different for everyone. For me, end-game is doing T6 as efficiently as possible, and for doing that, the Wand of Woh stays in my stash.
You'll be moving around quite a bit using the MM/Archon build, making Audacity the clear winner over Unwavering Will. You can easily stay within the 15 yards while still kiting mobs, and oft times you will blink out of melee in archon form to avoid stuff while spamming your laser to build stacks, rendering Unwavering Will useless. Elemental Exposure is also a clear winner over Conflag, and if you need to use dominance there's in an issue with the way you've geared yourself in terms of defense.
Hey Kams, what's up man, it's Lupita. I've been playing this build since before you were as you know and I just wanted to make a few comments about it.Here's my diabloprogress for reference: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/lupita-1542/Heylia/17671528
The only thing I'm really missing is a fire trifecta amulet, better RoRG, and Witching Hour instead of Harringtons, and I believe that the setup I'm using is the absolute most optimal one, and I'm fairly certain it's the same setup that you are using. I see some Wizards using Tals, or using Vyr's Gloves instead of magefists, and while if you need to do those things because you don't have the gear that's certainly fine, it's going to nerf your damage with this build considerably.
I also want to mention that I've been paying a lot of attention to Avoidlol, who is a twitch streamer, and the only twitch streamer other than yourself that really knows what's up on a Wizard. If you want to see a streamer that plays at the same level as Kams with this build I highly recommend checking him out.
You've pretty much nailed everything here, but I disagree with some of the paragon stat allocations, that being offense and defense. I firmly believe through extensive testing that these are the most optimal settings for those, taking into account a high end gear-set:
offense: critical hit damage > attack speed > crit hit chance > cooldown reduction
explanation: I firmly believe that attempting to stack cooldown reduction with this spec is a mistake. You want to get CDR on shoulders, Mirrorball, and the gem from your helm, and obviously Evocation. This gives you around 48-50% which gives you more than enough sustainability in T6. Attempting to get 60-70% CDR nerfs your damage too much. I believe that setting your gear up in this manner makes you just as powerful out of archon form (in terms of damage, not survivability) as you are in archon form. Additionally, there's some things you can do to help cheese CDR which I'll discuss in a second. On the topic of attack speed versus crit chance, it's pretty negligible to me, but the reason I like attack speed is because of Jade Witch Doctors in group play. They kill things so fast, you need to be attacking and stacking conflag as fast as you can if you want any chance of keeping up with them, and I truly believe the Jade set is overpowered in that regard. This is combined with the fact that we already should have 55%+ crit on gear, which should be more than enough.
defense: Armor > Life > Life Regen > All Resist
explanation: We don't need paragon points into all resist. I have zero points in it and I'm rocking 1600-1800 all resist, which should be pretty typical for this gear setup around paragon 400. Armor is the best stat for T6 as we are frequently in melee range trying to maximize damage from Audacity as well as meleeing in archon form, and life provides us with the buffer we really need when we get some of those awful act 5 mobs, triple packs, or bad affixes. The life regen is also very nice when combined with your templar when soloing.
This brings me to one last thing that I want to discuss, which is the follower that you want to use when soloing T6 with this build. You absolutely want to use a templar, nothing else. I had a pretty rough time getting the correct templar relic for it, but once I did, it was a complete game-changer in terms of solo play.
Gear for your templar:
Relic: The one that makes it so he cannot die, which synergizes with Unity.
Main hand: Strength Thunderfury (rolled to cold damage) or Strength Azurewrath
You wan't this to be as high damage as possible. If you use a Thunderfury on him, make sure you reroll the damage roll to cold damage, as it will proc elemental exposure.
Neck: The Ess of Johan
This is an absolute game changer for solo play. It essentially turns your templar into a pull monk, as the passive on Johan gives him a chance on hit to pull all enemies into him and slow them by 60%. Get one with Strength, and try to get as much damage on it as you possibly can.
Rings: Unity and Bul-Kathos Wedding Band
For solo play, you want to replace your SoJ with a Unity with crit and chd. The lost 15% elite damage and elemental damage is well worth it to be able to take 50% less damage on T6. Bul-Kathos makes him drain life from enemies, which is great since he is constantly pulling enemies in with The Ess of Johan. I'm not really sure how much damage Bul-Kathos is actually doing here, so you could replace this with a MF ring, Leorics, or a Puzzle ring if you wanted, it probably doesn't matter that much.
Shield: I'm open to suggestions for this. Currently I'm just using a level 60 stormshield because I just put my templar together and I don't have anything. I'm inclined to think that you just want any shield with giant strength + 10% crit chance + a socket, but if there's any shields out there with sweet passives I'm open to suggestions for sure.
Skills: Heal, Loyalty, Charge, Guardian.
I can't tell you how many times he has topped me off with a heal, or guardian has gone off and saved me on a bad pack. These are definitely the skills you want, the other skills are useless.
Before I end my little rant here, I also want to mention some items that you want to keep in your inventory to swap to in certain situations.
Trang-Ouls Coils: Has a passive that lowers the duration of your cooldowns by 50-60 seconds depending on the roll whenever you use a health shrine. You can frequently use these to reset your archon cooldown during rifts, allowing you to play much more aggressively.
Warzuchan (sp?) Armguards: The ones that give you a stacking speed buff when you destroy a breakable object. Pop these on when you hit a conduit shrine and have fun killing everything on the level.
Nemesis Bracers: everyone knows about these, but I thought I'd list them anyway.
Mara's, Talisman of Aranoch, Countess Julia's, etc: These things can be so good against rift guardians and shitty packs. For example, the tentacle rift boss that shoots out poison literally can't do damage to you if you put a Mara's on. Hold onto these, even if they are bad rolls. Ideally you want to get a fire trifecta Countess Julia's and use that as your main neck. It seems to me that Arcane is the most common monster affix, and when you stand on the ball of a arcane beam with countess julia's on, your health won't move. no matter how many mobs are on you.
Homing Pads: Slap them on whenever you need to get back to town and toy have stuff on you obviously.
The Burning Axe of Sankriss: Depending on the roll you get, this weapon is much better than Thunderfury on a single target (i.e. a Rift Guardian). Thunderfury is definitely the way to go for all aoe packs though.
I hope you guys found some of this information useful, and thanks for this thread Kams. I truly believe this is the best end-game spec for Wizards. I've stopped trying to explain to people why Wand of WoH is bad. Eventually they will get one and see for themselves how slow and un-survivable it is on higher torments compared to this build.
Your logic on paragon point allocation on defense is flawed. Armor does not affect melee dmg only, which is what you make it sound like. If you are trying to say that because we are in close range we take more damage, then whether you should put points in armor or resistances first depends on their current level. You will gain different % of dmg reduction from either given the diminishing returns, so go for what is most efficient. Always taking synergy from other skills/passives into account.
Also the enchantress is quite a sweet follower as well if your surviviability is good. Give her a furnace CDR items and an Ess of Johan and she can work wonders; the armor buff which slows melee attackers is also great for high torments. Wish they would fix her AI so she runs around less though. Also easier to gear her since you ll have loads of int items :p. Items with sockets are ideal for followers since they gain a huge effect from the main stat btw.
I'm talking about end-game gear, and when considering the correct end-game gear for this spec my paragon allocation is 100% correct. I'm quite aware that armor is flat damage reduction, not just melee. The largest problem that a Wizard has is actually when in archon form with slow time up against Electrified, and armor will actually do more for you against that than lightning resist.
I have a geared enchantress and the Templar is miles better, mainly because he throws tons of healing at you, it isn't even close. Against Rift bosses i personally equip a Furnace with a diamond in it, there's no need to have an enchantress with it when you could have a Templar that is better in every other situation.
Yes, MM/Conflag works. Yes, it works on T6. No, it's not the best build (especially if it uses/relies on Unity; I do not consider any build "best" when Unity tricks are involved). It could be the best in terms of being simple to arrange. It gets the job done and that's about it. Likewise, MM/Conflag with Archon works, too. Concept is the same. Cast, cast something else with the situation calls for it.
Many experienced wizards who regularly run T6 already agree that Mirrorball is basically a simple "jumpstart" item for anyone looking to break into higher difficulty levels. Same with the Unity trick. Great, you get the MIrrorball, all you need is fire/MM gear and get that MM stacking going. Great, you get two Unities and any one immortal follower item and there's 50% mitigation right there without any additional damage reduction gear. Simple. Anything beyond that is min/maxing like any other spec.
All other T6 viable specs require sets of items, insanely rare ones (e.g. Wand of Woh, RoRG), a mix of CDR and/or RCR all over the place, which usually require substantial paragon points included to make up for lost stats on gear. Once properly set up, though, those types of build are far more bursty and powerful than simple straightforward Conflagrate (see arcane variants of WoW builds with Time Bomb, AT-Archon specs, etc.). Speaking of Time Bomb builds... I need to set one up. With Harrington, that's constant 90-100M crits per Explosive Blast alone with sufficient elite bonus, arcane and EB bonuses on gear.
But if you want something relatively easy to set up and straightforward to play, then go with a MM-Conflag build. That's what this is.
Edit: Simple/easy to set up and play for solo, I have to add. Relatively nonexistent in organized group play where things die before you can get any respectable amount of Conflag stacks up. Archon helps then, because you don't need to make the kills; just as long mobs die around you, you'll get the bonuses.
I regularly play Mirroball/Fire Archon in T6 without Unity. I normally only swap to a Unity against annoying Act 5 mob types such as Corrupted Angels. I disagree with the assertion that any other spec is better on T6, because I have all the gear and I've personally tested them. Wand of WoH requires too much CDR and sacrifices way too much damage by using sub-optimal weaker pieces of gear to remain competitve damage-wise.
I don't stream, but all you need to do is go fire up Avoid's stream and watch him play. There isn't another Wizard that streams clearing T6 as fast as he does, and if you think you can with another build as consistently as he does I would love to see it. Anyone talking about using Born's or Captain Crimsons set pieces needs to look no further than GoodIdeaGaming, who dies in T4 with his 70% CDR setup and takes 15-20 minutes to clear T6 rifts, so much so that he quit playing the class in favor of easy-mode Witch Doctor.
It's really incredible how much misinformation is being spread in this thread and many others. Blizzards casualization of this game is really starting to shine through.
I love this build,i can do solo play t6 no problem BUT at the moment i have a farm group with 2 friends of mine, Jade WD and pet WD, i will not lie i fell so useless compare with them, yes its nice when your Archon explode for 150mill or your doing 40-60 mill crit in archon but damn the numbers don't even compare with 300-500 mill my friends are doing, do we still use the same build in group play or we change something, at the moment im using meteor over black hole and honestly i don't see any different, the moment i get my harington im going for Harington+Strongarm+blackhole combo.
I keep reading from WD forums how wizards are so strong they don't even have time to put the dots on mobs, is that overexaggerate from them or just they play with super gear wizards, because the moment im out of my archon my dmg drop a lot, hell even in archon i still behind dmg compare with my jade WD friend
Those witching doctors saying they barely have time to put dots up are just doing it wrong. Witch Doctors are OP, you won't out DPS a Jade Witch Doctor in t6, and you will probably match the Pet WD. You have to remember that a Wizard brings a lot utility to the group. Blackhole on a very low cooldown brings crowd control and about 15% more damage to the group, and procs Strongarm Bracers which add another 20-30% damage to the group. You then have elemental exposure adding 20% damage for the entire group. That's 65% more damage for the entire group, plus you can do very competitive damage at high gear levels. People don't don't normally think this way in diablo though (critically), they just want to see huge numbers, and seldom understand where those huge numbers are coming from.
witch doctors are extremely annoying to play with especially the ones that hit shit and quit it...making the entire rift a royal pain in the ass for the rest of the group... i don't care if you are in full jade, run with 1mil dps and 1 shot every elite boss on the level. i seriously hope they get the nerf bat in the next patch.
strongarm bracers does not apply a buff for the entire group, it's just a 5 sec buff for yourself... i could be wrong but i've been reading a lot of conflicting reports about it. i have them but i prefer aughilds because rolling a perfect aughilds helm sucks with the 90 veiled crystal requirement in the mats
blackhole doesn't either, read the tool tip more carefully...only the damage reduction helps the party
Strongarm Bracers most certainly apply the damage bonus to the entire group, you're misinformed, they also stack so you want everyone to have them.
May I ask why you have a Burning Axe in your mainhand and a Devastator in your off-hand in your profile?? I was under the impression that earthquake damage scaled off of main hand weapon damage, meaning you should have the Devastator in your main hand.
I love this build,i can do solo play t6 no problem BUT at the moment i have a farm group with 2 friends of mine, Jade WD and pet WD, i will not lie i fell so useless compare with them, yes its nice when your Archon explode for 150mill or your doing 40-60 mill crit in archon but damn the numbers don't even compare with 300-500 mill my friends are doing, do we still use the same build in group play or we change something, at the moment im using meteor over black hole and honestly i don't see any different, the moment i get my harington im going for Harington+Strongarm+blackhole combo.
I keep reading from WD forums how wizards are so strong they don't even have time to put the dots on mobs, is that overexaggerate from them or just they play with super gear wizards, because the moment im out of my archon my dmg drop a lot, hell even in archon i still behind dmg compare with my jade WD friend
Those witching doctors saying they barely have time to put dots up are just doing it wrong. Witch Doctors are OP, you won't out DPS a Jade Witch Doctor in t6, and you will probably match the Pet WD. You have to remember that a Wizard brings a lot utility to the group. Blackhole on a very low cooldown brings crowd control and about 15% more damage to the group, and procs Strongarm Bracers which add another 20-30% damage to the group. You then have elemental exposure adding 20% damage for the entire group. That's 65% more damage for the entire group, plus you can do very competitive damage at high gear levels. People don't don't normally think this way in diablo though (critically), they just want to see huge numbers, and seldom understand where those huge numbers are coming from.
Hey Kams, what's up man, it's Lupita. I've been playing this build since before you were as you know and I just wanted to make a few comments about it.Here's my diabloprogress for reference: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/lupita-1542/Heylia/17671528
The only thing I'm really missing is a fire trifecta amulet, better RoRG, and Witching Hour instead of Harringtons, and I believe that the setup I'm using is the absolute most optimal one, and I'm fairly certain it's the same setup that you are using. I see some Wizards using Tals, or using Vyr's Gloves instead of magefists, and while if you need to do those things because you don't have the gear that's certainly fine, it's going to nerf your damage with this build considerably.
I also want to mention that I've been paying a lot of attention to Avoidlol, who is a twitch streamer, and the only twitch streamer other than yourself that really knows what's up on a Wizard. If you want to see a streamer that plays at the same level as Kams with this build I highly recommend checking him out.
You've pretty much nailed everything here, but I disagree with some of the paragon stat allocations, that being offense and defense. I firmly believe through extensive testing that these are the most optimal settings for those, taking into account a high end gear-set:
offense: critical hit damage > attack speed > crit hit chance > cooldown reduction
explanation: I firmly believe that attempting to stack cooldown reduction with this spec is a mistake. You want to get CDR on shoulders, Mirrorball, and the gem from your helm, and obviously Evocation. This gives you around 48-50% which gives you more than enough sustainability in T6. Attempting to get 60-70% CDR nerfs your damage too much. I believe that setting your gear up in this manner makes you just as powerful out of archon form (in terms of damage, not survivability) as you are in archon form. Additionally, there's some things you can do to help cheese CDR which I'll discuss in a second. On the topic of attack speed versus crit chance, it's pretty negligible to me, but the reason I like attack speed is because of Jade Witch Doctors in group play. They kill things so fast, you need to be attacking and stacking conflag as fast as you can if you want any chance of keeping up with them, and I truly believe the Jade set is overpowered in that regard. This is combined with the fact that we already should have 55%+ crit on gear, which should be more than enough.
defense: Armor > Life > Life Regen > All Resist
explanation: We don't need paragon points into all resist. I have zero points in it and I'm rocking 1600-1800 all resist, which should be pretty typical for this gear setup around paragon 400. Armor is the best stat for T6 as we are frequently in melee range trying to maximize damage from Audacity as well as meleeing in archon form, and life provides us with the buffer we really need when we get some of those awful act 5 mobs, triple packs, or bad affixes. The life regen is also very nice when combined with your templar when soloing.
This brings me to one last thing that I want to discuss, which is the follower that you want to use when soloing T6 with this build. You absolutely want to use a templar, nothing else. I had a pretty rough time getting the correct templar relic for it, but once I did, it was a complete game-changer in terms of solo play.
Gear for your templar:
Relic: The one that makes it so he cannot die, which synergizes with Unity.
Main hand: Strength Thunderfury (rolled to cold damage) or Strength Azurewrath
You wan't this to be as high damage as possible. If you use a Thunderfury on him, make sure you reroll the damage roll to cold damage, as it will proc elemental exposure.
Neck: The Ess of Johan
This is an absolute game changer for solo play. It essentially turns your templar into a pull monk, as the passive on Johan gives him a chance on hit to pull all enemies into him and slow them by 60%. Get one with Strength, and try to get as much damage on it as you possibly can.
Rings: Unity and Bul-Kathos Wedding Band
For solo play, you want to replace your SoJ with a Unity with crit and chd. The lost 15% elite damage and elemental damage is well worth it to be able to take 50% less damage on T6. Bul-Kathos makes him drain life from enemies, which is great since he is constantly pulling enemies in with The Ess of Johan. I'm not really sure how much damage Bul-Kathos is actually doing here, so you could replace this with a MF ring, Leorics, or a Puzzle ring if you wanted, it probably doesn't matter that much.
Shield: I'm open to suggestions for this. Currently I'm just using a level 60 stormshield because I just put my templar together and I don't have anything. I'm inclined to think that you just want any shield with giant strength + 10% crit chance + a socket, but if there's any shields out there with sweet passives I'm open to suggestions for sure.
Skills: Heal, Loyalty, Charge, Guardian.
I can't tell you how many times he has topped me off with a heal, or guardian has gone off and saved me on a bad pack. These are definitely the skills you want, the other skills are useless.
Before I end my little rant here, I also want to mention some items that you want to keep in your inventory to swap to in certain situations.
Trang-Ouls Coils: Has a passive that lowers the duration of your cooldowns by 50-60 seconds depending on the roll whenever you use a health shrine. You can frequently use these to reset your archon cooldown during rifts, allowing you to play much more aggressively.
Warzuchan (sp?) Armguards: The ones that give you a stacking speed buff when you destroy a breakable object. Pop these on when you hit a conduit shrine and have fun killing everything on the level.
Nemesis Bracers: everyone knows about these, but I thought I'd list them anyway.
Mara's, Talisman of Aranoch, Countess Julia's, etc: These things can be so good against rift guardians and shitty packs. For example, the tentacle rift boss that shoots out poison literally can't do damage to you if you put a Mara's on. Hold onto these, even if they are bad rolls. Ideally you want to get a fire trifecta Countess Julia's and use that as your main neck. It seems to me that Arcane is the most common monster affix, and when you stand on the ball of a arcane beam with countess julia's on, your health won't move. no matter how many mobs are on you.
Homing Pads: Slap them on whenever you need to get back to town and toy have stuff on you obviously.
The Burning Axe of Sankriss: Depending on the roll you get, this weapon is much better than Thunderfury on a single target (i.e. a Rift Guardian). Thunderfury is definitely the way to go for all aoe packs though.
I hope you guys found some of this information useful, and thanks for this thread Kams. I truly believe this is the best end-game spec for Wizards. I've stopped trying to explain to people why Wand of WoH is bad. Eventually they will get one and see for themselves how slow and un-survivable it is on higher torments compared to this build.
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You should be able to average 300-400 mil dps with a standard MM/Archon build in group play. This build is nothing but a scumbag DPS build, and in actuality you're maybe gaining 5% additional personal DPS because of the burst, at the cost of 40-50% group damage and loads of survivability.
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I would also attempt to get Vyr's boots, and replace the Vyr's Gloves with Magefists in addition to rolling % fire damage on your SoJ over the Crit Hit Damage you currently have it rolled to. You will keep 4 pc Vyr's, get 30-40% more fire damage, and lose absolutely nothing except the passive on your Ice Climbers.
Additionally, you can try to get a Vyr's Chest with Int/Vit/11% Reduced Elite Damage or Armor. It will add to your toughness considerably, especially the 11% elite reduiction, and losing 1-2% crit when you already have so much crit isn't that big of a deal. Finally, you can craft new Aughilds shoulders that don't have 15% Hydra Damage on them, which is obviously a wasted stat.
Hope this helped. Obviously all those changes will take time, and is not an easy task, but I promise that if you do those things you'll be able to mop up T5, and easily do T6. With the current state of Wizards, it unfortunately requires a lot more effort in terms of gearing to do higher torments, than say, a Witch Doctor that essentially needs Tasker and Theor and Mask of Jeram to wipe up T6 with ease.
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- CC in the form of Black Hole on an extremely low cooldown
- 20-30% Damage for the entire group via Strongarm Bracers with an almost 100% uptime, as it is activated by Black Hole.
- 20% Damage from Elemental Exposure for the entire group (cold damage + lightning on Thunderfury, Fire, and Arcane from Spellsteal Black Hole).
- Extremely High Burst Damage on Elite Packs, especially in very dense rifts with lots of trash mobs surrounding the elite packs, allowing you to stack the Archon buff very high. In certain situations, it's not uncommon for me to 2 or 3 shot elite packs in a four person group.
So that's 40-50% damage for the entire group, excellent crowd control, and high burst damage. That being said, of course an Archon Wizard isn't going to out-damage a fully-geared Jade WD, but I believe that stacked up against any other similarly geared class/spec, that Wizards do just fine. Lately, I've been running T6 RiF groups with a Jade WD, and an EP Monk. I also personally have my own fully-geared Jade WD, and I duo quite often with the same EP monk. When we are playing as a group of three, all the extra damage to the group that my Wizard provides cuts down on clear times drastically, and generally makes the ability of the Jade Doctor to one shot packs more consistent. Personally, I believe that Wizards and Barbs need a slight damage buff across the board to bring them in-line with other classes, and possibly open up options for other specs, but I don't believe the damage gap between Wizards, and say a Demon Hunter or Crusader is as large as people might think given end-game gear.
The issue at hand isn't one of solo play versus group play, or nostalgia versus ease of play. The issue is what is better, and MM/Archon is better. Archon does more damage than Explosive Blast with Wand of Woh, I've personally tested it and I know it to be true. One spell simply doesn't match the damage output of the other. If someone wants to use a Wand of Woh build, that's great and it's certainly their perogative, and they can certainly clear T6 with it. However, any assertion that it can clear faster than an MM/Archon build given similar conditions is simply false.
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However, you do bring up a good underlying issue. I believe that Wizards are quite underpowered in groups compared to most other classes. Sure, we bring a lot of damage buffs via strongarms, black hole, elemental exposure, etc, but so do other classes. I truly believe that Wizards need a damage buff across the board to bring them in line with other classes. I'm also hopeful the future change to Firebirds will be good enough to encourage Wizards to do something other than play Archon, which is currently the one and only viable end-game option.
Truth-be-told, the only reason that people believe that Wand of Woh is an end-game weapon is because it is incredibly rare and overhyped. There doesn't exist a manner in which you can construct a gear-seat where an Explosive Blast build can out-damage a Fire Archon/MM build in t6, it's really just that simple. Sure, it's fun on t4/t5, but I'm the type of player who likes to optimize for end-game, and I understand the definition of end-game is different for everyone. For me, end-game is doing T6 as efficiently as possible, and for doing that, the Wand of Woh stays in my stash.
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I have a geared enchantress and the Templar is miles better, mainly because he throws tons of healing at you, it isn't even close. Against Rift bosses i personally equip a Furnace with a diamond in it, there's no need to have an enchantress with it when you could have a Templar that is better in every other situation.
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I don't stream, but all you need to do is go fire up Avoid's stream and watch him play. There isn't another Wizard that streams clearing T6 as fast as he does, and if you think you can with another build as consistently as he does I would love to see it. Anyone talking about using Born's or Captain Crimsons set pieces needs to look no further than GoodIdeaGaming, who dies in T4 with his 70% CDR setup and takes 15-20 minutes to clear T6 rifts, so much so that he quit playing the class in favor of easy-mode Witch Doctor.
It's really incredible how much misinformation is being spread in this thread and many others. Blizzards casualization of this game is really starting to shine through.
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The only thing I'm really missing is a fire trifecta amulet, better RoRG, and Witching Hour instead of Harringtons, and I believe that the setup I'm using is the absolute most optimal one, and I'm fairly certain it's the same setup that you are using. I see some Wizards using Tals, or using Vyr's Gloves instead of magefists, and while if you need to do those things because you don't have the gear that's certainly fine, it's going to nerf your damage with this build considerably.
I also want to mention that I've been paying a lot of attention to Avoidlol, who is a twitch streamer, and the only twitch streamer other than yourself that really knows what's up on a Wizard. If you want to see a streamer that plays at the same level as Kams with this build I highly recommend checking him out.
You've pretty much nailed everything here, but I disagree with some of the paragon stat allocations, that being offense and defense. I firmly believe through extensive testing that these are the most optimal settings for those, taking into account a high end gear-set:
offense: critical hit damage > attack speed > crit hit chance > cooldown reduction
explanation: I firmly believe that attempting to stack cooldown reduction with this spec is a mistake. You want to get CDR on shoulders, Mirrorball, and the gem from your helm, and obviously Evocation. This gives you around 48-50% which gives you more than enough sustainability in T6. Attempting to get 60-70% CDR nerfs your damage too much. I believe that setting your gear up in this manner makes you just as powerful out of archon form (in terms of damage, not survivability) as you are in archon form. Additionally, there's some things you can do to help cheese CDR which I'll discuss in a second. On the topic of attack speed versus crit chance, it's pretty negligible to me, but the reason I like attack speed is because of Jade Witch Doctors in group play. They kill things so fast, you need to be attacking and stacking conflag as fast as you can if you want any chance of keeping up with them, and I truly believe the Jade set is overpowered in that regard. This is combined with the fact that we already should have 55%+ crit on gear, which should be more than enough.
defense: Armor > Life > Life Regen > All Resist
explanation: We don't need paragon points into all resist. I have zero points in it and I'm rocking 1600-1800 all resist, which should be pretty typical for this gear setup around paragon 400. Armor is the best stat for T6 as we are frequently in melee range trying to maximize damage from Audacity as well as meleeing in archon form, and life provides us with the buffer we really need when we get some of those awful act 5 mobs, triple packs, or bad affixes. The life regen is also very nice when combined with your templar when soloing.
This brings me to one last thing that I want to discuss, which is the follower that you want to use when soloing T6 with this build. You absolutely want to use a templar, nothing else. I had a pretty rough time getting the correct templar relic for it, but once I did, it was a complete game-changer in terms of solo play.
Gear for your templar:
Relic: The one that makes it so he cannot die, which synergizes with Unity.
Main hand: Strength Thunderfury (rolled to cold damage) or Strength Azurewrath
You wan't this to be as high damage as possible. If you use a Thunderfury on him, make sure you reroll the damage roll to cold damage, as it will proc elemental exposure.
Neck: The Ess of Johan
This is an absolute game changer for solo play. It essentially turns your templar into a pull monk, as the passive on Johan gives him a chance on hit to pull all enemies into him and slow them by 60%. Get one with Strength, and try to get as much damage on it as you possibly can.
Rings: Unity and Bul-Kathos Wedding Band
For solo play, you want to replace your SoJ with a Unity with crit and chd. The lost 15% elite damage and elemental damage is well worth it to be able to take 50% less damage on T6. Bul-Kathos makes him drain life from enemies, which is great since he is constantly pulling enemies in with The Ess of Johan. I'm not really sure how much damage Bul-Kathos is actually doing here, so you could replace this with a MF ring, Leorics, or a Puzzle ring if you wanted, it probably doesn't matter that much.
Shield: I'm open to suggestions for this. Currently I'm just using a level 60 stormshield because I just put my templar together and I don't have anything. I'm inclined to think that you just want any shield with giant strength + 10% crit chance + a socket, but if there's any shields out there with sweet passives I'm open to suggestions for sure.
Skills: Heal, Loyalty, Charge, Guardian.
I can't tell you how many times he has topped me off with a heal, or guardian has gone off and saved me on a bad pack. These are definitely the skills you want, the other skills are useless.
Before I end my little rant here, I also want to mention some items that you want to keep in your inventory to swap to in certain situations.
Trang-Ouls Coils: Has a passive that lowers the duration of your cooldowns by 50-60 seconds depending on the roll whenever you use a health shrine. You can frequently use these to reset your archon cooldown during rifts, allowing you to play much more aggressively.
Warzuchan (sp?) Armguards: The ones that give you a stacking speed buff when you destroy a breakable object. Pop these on when you hit a conduit shrine and have fun killing everything on the level.
Nemesis Bracers: everyone knows about these, but I thought I'd list them anyway.
Mara's, Talisman of Aranoch, Countess Julia's, etc: These things can be so good against rift guardians and shitty packs. For example, the tentacle rift boss that shoots out poison literally can't do damage to you if you put a Mara's on. Hold onto these, even if they are bad rolls. Ideally you want to get a fire trifecta Countess Julia's and use that as your main neck. It seems to me that Arcane is the most common monster affix, and when you stand on the ball of a arcane beam with countess julia's on, your health won't move. no matter how many mobs are on you.
Homing Pads: Slap them on whenever you need to get back to town and toy have stuff on you obviously.
The Burning Axe of Sankriss: Depending on the roll you get, this weapon is much better than Thunderfury on a single target (i.e. a Rift Guardian). Thunderfury is definitely the way to go for all aoe packs though.
I hope you guys found some of this information useful, and thanks for this thread Kams. I truly believe this is the best end-game spec for Wizards. I've stopped trying to explain to people why Wand of WoH is bad. Eventually they will get one and see for themselves how slow and un-survivable it is on higher torments compared to this build.