Why is everyone always disregarding the fact(?) that getting your AP out fast is actually a good thing in 9 out of 10 cases. Maybe not against white mobs but who cares about those, right.
I want to get my AP - and thus damage - out fast so I can go back to kiting quicker and maximizes my DPS in the little time where I can actually stand there and channel spells.
Every time you use only half your AP because you shoot so slowly and have to move again you effectively lose damage.
The weird thing with this also, is that no one ever quotes me on this or responds to me. Am I really the only one thinking that way?
If you are kiting properly you should almost always have enough distance to stop and spam a few spells before your AP reaches max. Plus most skill drain your AP in a few casts, for example Arcane Orb drains my AP in 3 casts if I'm full. Now I have the choice of getting those three casts out a little faster, or I can choose to stack crit and crit damage. Crit damage scales incredibly well at the end game, Right now I'm at 34.50% crit and 142% crit damage which means my crits deal 242% extra damage (a multiplier of 2.42).
Given that you can only have 3 Arcane Orbs in the air at a given time would you rather that they come out a half second faster or have a chance to hit for x2.5 the damage? That is why I think IAS is a wasted stat (for wizards), and you'd be hard pressed to convice me otherwise.
I posted this on another site where there was a debate going on with IAS and wizards:
The thing is IAS gear was never great wizards in the first place besides inflating your damage stat. The reason IAS is amazing for monks/barbs/DH is because they have resource generators so attacking faster means more resources, that translates into more resource spenders (which deal the most damage). Wizards regen AP passively so our spenders are limited mainly by time; sure with Prodigy and certain runes on signature skills you could say that our sig skills are our generators. However for that to really work we need to be able to plant and chain cast (burn your AP, spam sig skills to quickly regen, repeat), but it doesn't work like that in-game because you got a horde of angry demons wanting to smash your face in. Thus in typical gameplay you are often forced into kiting which means instead of casting your signatures to regen AP you get it while you are running around trying to stay alive. These mechanics means that IAS just isn't that attractive for wizards as it is for other classes.
Chaos Nexus and Volatility can crit and their crits produce the larger yellow crit font. I'm saying the beam itself can crit, it just doesn't look like it does because of a display bug.
It is important to point out that Disintegrate itself cannot crit, but Chaos Nexus rune can. This is important because a lot of abilities and some items have stuff that works "on crit" so the main beam of Disintegrate won't ever proc those.
I used to think this was true until I did some experimenting myself and found out it's completely false. I've tested Ray of Frost, Disintegrate (without the Chaos Nexus rune), and Blizzard with crit damage and the Critical Mass passive. You see bigger numbers with more crit damage and you can proc Critical Mass with all three abilities; both of these outcomes points towards critical hits happening. The problem is that there is a display bug with these skills which causes their crits to show up as white text.
The only skill so far that I'm 100% sure cannot produce crits is Venom Hydra.
Illusionist only procs if you get hit for 15% of your life. How much damage is on your character sheet and how much HP do you have? Also Diamond Skin is horrible in inferno due to lack of scaling, drop it for something else.
Diamond skin is hardly horrible, it sounds like your defensive stats just aren't high enough. With 7k armor and 500+ all resists I easily get 4+ hits out of it.
7k armor means you are using a shield which sacrifices damage for survivability, couple that with those resists and either you've spent a ton of gold on the AH, got extremely lucky with drops, or your damage is terrible. Also even with those stats you'd only get 4+ hits on DS in a1, you'd be lucky to get 2-3 hits on it in a2, and those stats aren't viable for tanking anything in a3.
Nothing wrong with playing that way, but honestly it's not viable in inferno unless you are dropping millions on the AH; decent resist all gear is very expensive. If someone isn't exploiting a chest/treasure goblin and playing casually that isn't going to be an option for awhile.
Illusionist only procs if you get hit for 15% of your life. How much damage is on your character sheet and how much HP do you have? Also Diamond Skin is horrible in inferno due to lack of scaling, drop it for something else.
For the record Disintegrate doesn't crit either. Chaos Nexus' little beams will, but the main beam does not.
This is flat out wrong (although until a few days ago I would have agreed with you). I tested all of the skills that people claimed could not crit, i.e. Ray of Frost, Disintegrate, Blizzard, and Venom Hydra. I took critical mass and made sure I was not using Chaos Nexus with Disintegrate. The results were that RoF, Dis, and Blizzard can and do crit (they also proc Critical Mass when they crit which is further evidence). However there still is a bug and it's with how the crits are displayed: With these skills the crits show up as regular white txt and do not appear if you only have "Display Critical Damage" checked in your options.
I tested this by swapping a 70% crit damage gem in and out of my gear, having Critical Mass, and keeping Mirror Image and Wave of Force on cooldown while attacking a group of zombies in Act 1 Inferno (ideal test subjects because they are slow). I first ran my test without the green gem and recorded the the numbers I saw on my screen. Then I placed the green gem back in my weapon and quickly saw that I started getting numbers that were far larger than what I was getting before; this makes sense given that my crits were hitting 70% harder with the gem. These numbers also lined up with Critical Mass procs which is further proof of a critical hit.
Venom Hydra and Blizzard do not crit due to a bug with all DoT effects not critting. Blizzard (not the skill) is aware of this issue and hopefully it is resolved soon.
After reading some posts in this thread I did some testing myself and I was wrong, Blizzard does indeed crit but since the damage is spread out over time it doesn't scale very well with crit chance/crit damage. I was also able to get it to proc Critical Mass which further proves that it does crit. The bug is that the crits are in white, not yellow, and will not show up if you only have "Display Critical Damage" checked in the options menu.
Venom Hydra and Blizzard do not crit due to a bug with all DoT effects not critting. Blizzard (not the skill) is aware of this issue and hopefully it is resolved soon.
Hmm, yes I thought about experimenting with tele and illusionist. Do you happen to know a base amount of vitality that would be needed to tank 2 or 3 hits?
Not sure of my exact stats because the servers are down, but I run with around 24k life. If your armor/resistances are low run with Force Armor to make sure you are not getting 1-shot. As for how it's working for me, I've got act 1 on farm and working my way slowly through Act 2. Act 2 monsters are just brutal.
They get gear by farming gold and selling items on the AH for gold to purchase better gear. As for surviability nothing really compares to Teleport with Fracture + Illusionist (or Mirror Images depending on your preference) along with some life regen (doesn't have to be a crazy amount). The key is having enough gear to take at least 2 shots, the more the better, before dying.
All defensive skills have a long cd and typically you need them sooner than they are ready. This causes people to use multiple defensive skills to cover that gap which hurts your offense. With Illusionist every time you need it (i.e. you take a hit) your teleport comes off cd and you port away. Fracture is amazing because the images it summons are immune to damage so they tank for the full duration unlike Mirror Images which only have 25% of your max life. When you see you are about to take a hit just jam on your teleport hotkey and you port immediately after taking damage.
I believe that life leech has diminishing returns. Something like 80% less life leeched in inferno. Not sure on the info though, recall that I read it somewhere.
so healing blades is pretty much worthless? has anyone tried a critical build with healing blades?
I dinked around with one and it was semi-viable in Act 1 inferno, but there were a few holes in the build. Shielding packs or invunerable minions were impossible since you can't regen from immune hits. Frozen had the potential to be a killer since the freeze stuns you, but its avoidable. SK and Butcher were actually really easy because I had my defenses stacked up to survive in melee.
Feels completely unviable in Act 2 because the mobs just hit too friggen hard.
If you are doing more kiting than casting get a 2h weapon to maximize your damage per spell. The main thing you should be looking at is the damage range on your weapon, the bigger the better. If you run with a group that allows you to sit back and nuke then you want your damage stat to be as high as possible.
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If you are kiting properly you should almost always have enough distance to stop and spam a few spells before your AP reaches max. Plus most skill drain your AP in a few casts, for example Arcane Orb drains my AP in 3 casts if I'm full. Now I have the choice of getting those three casts out a little faster, or I can choose to stack crit and crit damage. Crit damage scales incredibly well at the end game, Right now I'm at 34.50% crit and 142% crit damage which means my crits deal 242% extra damage (a multiplier of 2.42).
Given that you can only have 3 Arcane Orbs in the air at a given time would you rather that they come out a half second faster or have a chance to hit for x2.5 the damage? That is why I think IAS is a wasted stat (for wizards), and you'd be hard pressed to convice me otherwise.
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The thing is IAS gear was never great wizards in the first place besides inflating your damage stat. The reason IAS is amazing for monks/barbs/DH is because they have resource generators so attacking faster means more resources, that translates into more resource spenders (which deal the most damage). Wizards regen AP passively so our spenders are limited mainly by time; sure with Prodigy and certain runes on signature skills you could say that our sig skills are our generators. However for that to really work we need to be able to plant and chain cast (burn your AP, spam sig skills to quickly regen, repeat), but it doesn't work like that in-game because you got a horde of angry demons wanting to smash your face in. Thus in typical gameplay you are often forced into kiting which means instead of casting your signatures to regen AP you get it while you are running around trying to stay alive. These mechanics means that IAS just isn't that attractive for wizards as it is for other classes.
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I used to think this was true until I did some experimenting myself and found out it's completely false. I've tested Ray of Frost, Disintegrate (without the Chaos Nexus rune), and Blizzard with crit damage and the Critical Mass passive. You see bigger numbers with more crit damage and you can proc Critical Mass with all three abilities; both of these outcomes points towards critical hits happening. The problem is that there is a display bug with these skills which causes their crits to show up as white text.
The only skill so far that I'm 100% sure cannot produce crits is Venom Hydra.
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Nothing wrong with playing that way, but honestly it's not viable in inferno unless you are dropping millions on the AH; decent resist all gear is very expensive. If someone isn't exploiting a chest/treasure goblin and playing casually that isn't going to be an option for awhile.
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This is flat out wrong (although until a few days ago I would have agreed with you). I tested all of the skills that people claimed could not crit, i.e. Ray of Frost, Disintegrate, Blizzard, and Venom Hydra. I took critical mass and made sure I was not using Chaos Nexus with Disintegrate. The results were that RoF, Dis, and Blizzard can and do crit (they also proc Critical Mass when they crit which is further evidence). However there still is a bug and it's with how the crits are displayed: With these skills the crits show up as regular white txt and do not appear if you only have "Display Critical Damage" checked in your options.
I tested this by swapping a 70% crit damage gem in and out of my gear, having Critical Mass, and keeping Mirror Image and Wave of Force on cooldown while attacking a group of zombies in Act 1 Inferno (ideal test subjects because they are slow). I first ran my test without the green gem and recorded the the numbers I saw on my screen. Then I placed the green gem back in my weapon and quickly saw that I started getting numbers that were far larger than what I was getting before; this makes sense given that my crits were hitting 70% harder with the gem. These numbers also lined up with Critical Mass procs which is further proof of a critical hit.
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After reading some posts in this thread I did some testing myself and I was wrong, Blizzard does indeed crit but since the damage is spread out over time it doesn't scale very well with crit chance/crit damage. I was also able to get it to proc Critical Mass which further proves that it does crit. The bug is that the crits are in white, not yellow, and will not show up if you only have "Display Critical Damage" checked in the options menu.
Venom Hydra cannot crit.
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Not sure of my exact stats because the servers are down, but I run with around 24k life. If your armor/resistances are low run with Force Armor to make sure you are not getting 1-shot. As for how it's working for me, I've got act 1 on farm and working my way slowly through Act 2. Act 2 monsters are just brutal.
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All defensive skills have a long cd and typically you need them sooner than they are ready. This causes people to use multiple defensive skills to cover that gap which hurts your offense. With Illusionist every time you need it (i.e. you take a hit) your teleport comes off cd and you port away. Fracture is amazing because the images it summons are immune to damage so they tank for the full duration unlike Mirror Images which only have 25% of your max life. When you see you are about to take a hit just jam on your teleport hotkey and you port immediately after taking damage.
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Feels completely unviable in Act 2 because the mobs just hit too friggen hard.
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