I jumped on to the PTR this morning and didn't change anything except throwing on a stormcrow to get myself up to 17 APOC (and losing the crit on my andy's at the same time so dropping down to only about 40% crit) and I was able to kill elite packs on monster power 10 using this build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#PhSYXO!YgZ!ZccZZY
This was with like 20k HP and 375 resist all, so basically total crap EHP. But with about 160k DPS, 4.2 lifesteal (including blood magic), 400ish LOH and 40%ish crit. I definitely did die some, mostly to ranged attacks, so obviously more EHP would be necessary, but I found it very encouraging because I was able to (actually fairly quickly) kill MP10 elite packs that had HP around 25-35mil per mob. Even with just 40% crit I was able to keep them stunlocked with star pact + explosive blast. I used blur and force armor just for the occasional hit that might slip out, but with better defensive gear I am pretty sure I could use pinpoint barrier and cold blooded and really do a lot of DPS.
I found all of this really encouraging because I dont think there is going to be any other way for wizards for kill the Ubers on MP10, and MP10 has guaranteed organ drops from the Ubers.
Regarding other builds, I'm pretty confident that Archon is the fastest spec to farm with. No other build can compete with a 375% weapon damage ranged aoe for both single target and aoe packs. It takes one right click to kill an entire pack of mobs. What other build does that?
Really this new monster power just adds more complexity to farming efficiency. Each person will need to determine what level is best for them because we all have different MF levels. For example, at 0 paragon level, monster power 0 means you have 75% MF because of NV. Changing to power 1 means you have 100% MF, so you raise the number of legendaries by about 14% (200/175=1.14). If it only takes you 10% longer to farm power level 1, then it's worth it. However, if you have maxed power level then you go from 375 MF to 400 MF, which is only a 5% gain, so a 10% increase in farming time means less efficiency so you're better off staying at power 0.
For Archon, it seems that whatever power level lets you kill all white mobs in 1 sec or less would be most ideal, both for run speed and for ability to keep arcon active. I was expecting to farm somewhere between 2 and 4 when it goes live because my MF is going down as I swap from MF to dps to make Archon more efficient but I might end up just doing 0 or 1 if it is that much more efficient. Also Act 3 is hands down the best act to farm for an Achon wizard because of mob density. The other acts might have good elite density but Archon efficiency is all aout killing everything and keeping Archon active.
One thing I'd note here is that Act 3 mobs on MP0 have incredibly low health right now on the PTR. I mean absurdly low. One way to look at this is that you can use Archon on higher MP levels without losing much farming time, because you will mostly be limited by movement speed. Another way of looking at this is that you can use builds that do less damage than Archon on MP0 without losing any killing speed but gaining movement speed in order to increase farm times. I made another post about a build using this concept, but I'm not sure whether it's worthwhile or not yet.
EDIT: Took out specifics about the % change between monster power levels, because I am not entirely sure yet that they are accurate. The basic point still stands.
This should be more than just pure archon build utilization on various MP settings. There are other builds, even archon builds can take a step back to the old blizzard kite builds and do MP10. The question is whether it is actually really worth it in terms of quality of loot. I don't really know how do you quantify that because a good rolled item vs a bad rolled item is a massive difference yet both of them can be ilvl 63. Probably the most accurate way to really quantify this would be by simply comparing the number of legends / set items you obtain per hour on various MP levels. That would require a solid amount of data to be even decently accurate.
If you are looking purely at amount of kills you can do vs time - then surely MP0 is the most efficient, however at various levels of DPS there will be a huge difference between the speed on MP1, MP2, etc. That is basically what you are saying, but how exactly did you account for the quality of loot between those? Quantity =/= quality after all, getting 5000 junky ilvl 58-62 is far worse than getting even 1 ilvl 63 legendary item.
I think there are some misconceptions here. At MP0, Act 3 mobs are still level 63, and in 1.0.5 affixes are determined by monster level, so every single rare that drops can roll level 63 affixes. This means that every single rare is essentially ilvl 63 except for its base stats.
On top of that, increasing monster level does not change anything about loot quality EXCEPT for increasing your magic find. So MP0 and MP10 are the same loot table, you will just have 250% extra magic find. So the only thing that needs to be measured is rares per hour. The increased magic find from higher MP levels will increase the percentage of your drops that are rares, but the increased health of the mobs on those levels will mean that you will get fewer drops per hour. The question is, at what point does it balance out? Like the title of my post says, I am pretty sure that it doesn't balance out at all after MP0 or, at most, MP1, but I am compiling data to show this and will post it when I have it.
After playing on the PTR, I am starting to think it might be possible to improve on the farming efficiency of Archon by using a build that maximizes mobility by using Storm Armor - Scramble and resetting the cooldown of Teleport as quickly as possible. I think this is possible because at Monster Power 0 Act 3 mobs have very, very low levels of health. I have not crunched the numbers exactly yet, but they feel like they have less health than mobs in Act 1 Inferno on live, and more on the level of mobs in late Hell.
Storm Armor - Scramble which should allow very high uptime of 49% runspeed,
Using Teleport as often as possible. Teleport is refreshed through Critical Mass as well as Illusionist. Note that you will need to have low enough EHP such that mob hits reliable do more than 15% of your HP in damage to proc Illusionist.
Killing through abilities that do not require a cast time - Hopefully the majority of trash mobs are killed instantly through Teleport - Calamity and Explosive Blast.
Meteor is there to kill mobs that are at range without having to physically move to every one, as well as to proc critical mass.
Diamond skin is to protect you while jumping in to large packs and should be refreshed fairly quickly through critical mass.
The idea is that you just run at 49% speed and teleport constantly, hopefully killing most things without stopping.
Gearing should be similar to current Archon builds - very, very high DPS to ensure that everything is getting 1 shot, or as close to it as possible. Also, EHP needs to be fairly low to make sure Illusionist procs. Lifesteal will be essential to keeping you alive.
Potential downsides/problems that I see are that the risk of death might be unacceptably high since the build relies on you actually getting hit.
MP0 is not worth it over MP1 because at MP1 all items have affixes of lvl 63 items and you can farm act 1/2 (if one is bored of act 3) because at MP1+ all mobs are lvl 63
In act 3, all the mobs are already lvl 63 at MP0. I'm not talking about farming Act 1 or 2, I'm talking about doing high density efficiency runs in Act 3 at MP0.
Yes, I've considered MF. The point is that you are killing things much quicker at lower MP levels and therefore are getting a higher quantity of loot drops, which is very likely to offset the slightly higher quality from higher MF and less drops on the higher MP levels.
For a super simplistic example; 10 opportunities to get something with a 25% chance of getting it on each opportunity is worse than 15 opportunities to get something with a 20% chance of getting it on each opportunity.
I've been playing on the PTR for the last couple of days with my Archon wizard that has 182k buffed DPS. I've come to the conclusion after trying the various monster power levels that in nearly all circumstances MP0 will be the most efficient or, at most, MP1. I am in the process of collecting data such as XP per run/hour at the various MP levels, but what I've collected so far is definitely favoring the lowest MP levels.
Basically, the reason for this is the fact that wizards actually have to stop moving to DPS, unlike barbarians, and elite packs and the mobs with slightly more health such as phase beasts and golgors. At MP2 the regular trash mobs are melting nearly instantly, and at MP3 they are quick, but Elite packs still take several seconds. At MP0 even elite packs die nearly instantly, probably just as quickly as regular white mobs on MP3. So do the higher HP mobs like phasebeasts and golgors. Basically, this means that even with elite packs you are really only limited by movement speed, whereas at even MP3 you have to actually stand around quite a bit to kill things. Also, MP0 makes it significantly easier to use Storm Armor - Scramble instead of an energy armor, which I think can have a very big impact on run times.
I think at slightly higher DPS levels, 200-225K, MP1 might be worth it over MP0 for Archon. I think you will need truly astronomical DPS numbers for the higher MP levels to be worth it in terms of item or XP efficiency.
EDIT: Also, the tooltip on the items appears to work correctly for relative dps comparison. However, I noticed that the tooltip doesn't seem to take the set bonus into account, but that's a little off topic.
If you are talking about the set bonus on Tal Rasha's, notice that it is "Fire skills deal 3% more damage," as opposed to "Adds 3% to Fire damage". The second affix adds damage in the way you described. The first one, on the set bonus and also on items like Frostburns, actually makes your Fire skills do 3% more damage and doesn't change your overall damage.
If infernal machine is really that much harder, than I'll just keep using force armor like I do now. I'm not worried about this at all. Either I can give up force armor for storm armor, or I can't and I just keep force armor.
Do you know if reflect damage is reduced by your armor/resistances?
I am trying to estimate how much LoH I need, since I dont want to change from my wand+source combo
Get life steal if you can. It scales much better than LoH especially for Archon builds. Also the coefficient for Archon beam is 0.25 so LoH only returns 25% of your LoH each tic. For example, at ~70k dps with 1 attack per second, 2.5% life steal is about the same as 4.2k LoH, at 1.5 attacks per second it would be equivalent to 2800 LoH roughly.
These numbers might be a little off though, because that's assuming the beam tics at the same speed as your attack. Does anyone know the mechanics of the beam tic for sure? Does it tic at same speed as your attack or does it just tic a specific amount of times per second? I have been of the impression that the damage shown as tics is some averaged damage over the tic interval, which makes me think the damage is being done over discrete time periods, and the tics show up every 0.5s. As far as I know just about anything that tics shows up in 0.5s intervals (health regen, WW damage, LoH return from WW to name a few).
Don't forget that Life Steal is reduced to %20 in inferno, that or %25.
I would only recommend EXCLUSIVELY using life steal over life for someone who has a 2 hander becuase it can roll up to %6 rather than just %3.
however with some LoH %3 life steal works just fine.
I use 2.7% lifesteal and have no life on hit, but have about 1500 life regen. I hardly notice reflect damage.
You seem to have pretty low resists according to your profile. Could you please tell me how much, because you seem to roll on act3 ^^
Thanks in advance
They are about 400 right now, but that is actually slightly overkill. I am on my phone so i can't link you the thread, but look around this forum and you'll find loroese's thread on the 1.04 update to how much ehp you need for force armor, and it'll have the link to my earlier thread describing it.
I did, I reached 125K EHP, where 117.5K is required, but I still get owned on act3 pretty much every time
Like others have said, it mostly depends on your DPS. I don't run with much, but I have a good bit of life regen per second, health globes full heal me, and I have a ton of DPS so things die fast.
Also, I am just a fan of force armor and have always run a kiting spec. It's kind of just preference... I think force armor is a really fun skill and one of the only ones in the game that actually changes how you build your character (because you can juggle EHP instead of just maximizing it).
Lifesteal does not work with the archon beam. Not sure if its a bug or not. It does work with the other attacks though.
Lifesteal does work with the beam but the life steal from the Blood Magic rune of Magic Weapon does not.
Are you sure about this? I was pretty sure that lifesteal on a weapon does not work with the beam either, but if you have tested it yourself I believe you.
You seem to have pretty low resists according to your profile. Could you please tell me how much, because you seem to roll on act3 ^^
Thanks in advance
They are about 400 right now, but that is actually slightly overkill. I am on my phone so i can't link you the thread, but look around this forum and you'll find loroese's thread on the 1.04 update to how much ehp you need for force armor, and it'll have the link to my earlier thread describing it.
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This was with like 20k HP and 375 resist all, so basically total crap EHP. But with about 160k DPS, 4.2 lifesteal (including blood magic), 400ish LOH and 40%ish crit. I definitely did die some, mostly to ranged attacks, so obviously more EHP would be necessary, but I found it very encouraging because I was able to (actually fairly quickly) kill MP10 elite packs that had HP around 25-35mil per mob. Even with just 40% crit I was able to keep them stunlocked with star pact + explosive blast. I used blur and force armor just for the occasional hit that might slip out, but with better defensive gear I am pretty sure I could use pinpoint barrier and cold blooded and really do a lot of DPS.
I found all of this really encouraging because I dont think there is going to be any other way for wizards for kill the Ubers on MP10, and MP10 has guaranteed organ drops from the Ubers.
0
One thing I'd note here is that Act 3 mobs on MP0 have incredibly low health right now on the PTR. I mean absurdly low. One way to look at this is that you can use Archon on higher MP levels without losing much farming time, because you will mostly be limited by movement speed. Another way of looking at this is that you can use builds that do less damage than Archon on MP0 without losing any killing speed but gaining movement speed in order to increase farm times. I made another post about a build using this concept, but I'm not sure whether it's worthwhile or not yet.
EDIT: Took out specifics about the % change between monster power levels, because I am not entirely sure yet that they are accurate. The basic point still stands.
0
I think there are some misconceptions here. At MP0, Act 3 mobs are still level 63, and in 1.0.5 affixes are determined by monster level, so every single rare that drops can roll level 63 affixes. This means that every single rare is essentially ilvl 63 except for its base stats.
On top of that, increasing monster level does not change anything about loot quality EXCEPT for increasing your magic find. So MP0 and MP10 are the same loot table, you will just have 250% extra magic find. So the only thing that needs to be measured is rares per hour. The increased magic find from higher MP levels will increase the percentage of your drops that are rares, but the increased health of the mobs on those levels will mean that you will get fewer drops per hour. The question is, at what point does it balance out? Like the title of my post says, I am pretty sure that it doesn't balance out at all after MP0 or, at most, MP1, but I am compiling data to show this and will post it when I have it.
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The build I am thinking of would look something like this, but it obviously will need to be tweaked/optimized: http://us.battle.net...TSQX!Ydg!ZcYZca
Purpose of skill choices:
Storm Armor - Scramble which should allow very high uptime of 49% runspeed,
Using Teleport as often as possible. Teleport is refreshed through Critical Mass as well as Illusionist. Note that you will need to have low enough EHP such that mob hits reliable do more than 15% of your HP in damage to proc Illusionist.
Killing through abilities that do not require a cast time - Hopefully the majority of trash mobs are killed instantly through Teleport - Calamity and Explosive Blast.
Meteor is there to kill mobs that are at range without having to physically move to every one, as well as to proc critical mass.
Diamond skin is to protect you while jumping in to large packs and should be refreshed fairly quickly through critical mass.
The idea is that you just run at 49% speed and teleport constantly, hopefully killing most things without stopping.
Gearing should be similar to current Archon builds - very, very high DPS to ensure that everything is getting 1 shot, or as close to it as possible. Also, EHP needs to be fairly low to make sure Illusionist procs. Lifesteal will be essential to keeping you alive.
Potential downsides/problems that I see are that the risk of death might be unacceptably high since the build relies on you actually getting hit.
Thoughts?
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In act 3, all the mobs are already lvl 63 at MP0. I'm not talking about farming Act 1 or 2, I'm talking about doing high density efficiency runs in Act 3 at MP0.
0
For a super simplistic example; 10 opportunities to get something with a 25% chance of getting it on each opportunity is worse than 15 opportunities to get something with a 20% chance of getting it on each opportunity.
0
Basically, the reason for this is the fact that wizards actually have to stop moving to DPS, unlike barbarians, and elite packs and the mobs with slightly more health such as phase beasts and golgors. At MP2 the regular trash mobs are melting nearly instantly, and at MP3 they are quick, but Elite packs still take several seconds. At MP0 even elite packs die nearly instantly, probably just as quickly as regular white mobs on MP3. So do the higher HP mobs like phasebeasts and golgors. Basically, this means that even with elite packs you are really only limited by movement speed, whereas at even MP3 you have to actually stand around quite a bit to kill things. Also, MP0 makes it significantly easier to use Storm Armor - Scramble instead of an energy armor, which I think can have a very big impact on run times.
I think at slightly higher DPS levels, 200-225K, MP1 might be worth it over MP0 for Archon. I think you will need truly astronomical DPS numbers for the higher MP levels to be worth it in terms of item or XP efficiency.
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Sorry, my fault.
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If you are talking about the set bonus on Tal Rasha's, notice that it is "Fire skills deal 3% more damage," as opposed to "Adds 3% to Fire damage". The second affix adds damage in the way you described. The first one, on the set bonus and also on items like Frostburns, actually makes your Fire skills do 3% more damage and doesn't change your overall damage.
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I use 2.7% lifesteal and have no life on hit, but have about 1500 life regen. I hardly notice reflect damage.
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Like others have said, it mostly depends on your DPS. I don't run with much, but I have a good bit of life regen per second, health globes full heal me, and I have a ton of DPS so things die fast.
Also, I am just a fan of force armor and have always run a kiting spec. It's kind of just preference... I think force armor is a really fun skill and one of the only ones in the game that actually changes how you build your character (because you can juggle EHP instead of just maximizing it).
0
Are you sure about this? I was pretty sure that lifesteal on a weapon does not work with the beam either, but if you have tested it yourself I believe you.
0
They are about 400 right now, but that is actually slightly overkill. I am on my phone so i can't link you the thread, but look around this forum and you'll find loroese's thread on the 1.04 update to how much ehp you need for force armor, and it'll have the link to my earlier thread describing it.