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I am currently running a level 39 wizard on NA and i have to say: BEST CLASS EVER xD Share your build below so i could copy and goes through inferno in the near future
My current skill set up: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#WkXTQb!cXb!bZZZZb
Explanation: The build is focusing on using a huge nuke on Force as your primary dmg dealer. Reducing its arcane cost by Diamond skin and storm armor. Passive arcane regen and passive Prodigy help you regain arcane even faster. In the end you could nuke your meteor ~10 times while being protected by diamond skin. Once done nuking, ice freeze people and hit them with pimary, then double teleport away, cycle repeate.
This build gives a decent mobility overall with teleport and freeze for such glass cannon and also give you a lot of control to gather all the monster and nuke the to death. Could be tweaked with a few diff runes, change force and pimary spells to adapt to situation like boss(single target requires) or AoE to farm mobs.
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Ooh, I have questions for a high level wizard. When you get to level 45, can you let me know if the decoys created by the fracture rune on teleport get the explosive effects from mirror image's mocking demise?
Also at 45, you get temporal flux. Any chance you could check to see what happens if you have arcane damage from a weapon, whether that makes the slow proc? In case that isn't clear, temporal flux makes things slow, but only when you do arcane damage. However, lots of weapons have +arcane damage. So the question is, if you do damage with something like spectral blades (which is normally physical) but have a +arcane damage weapon, will that trigger the slow effect from temporal flux?
Thanks! Looks like a good build. Have you thought about spamming arcane orb with the casting cost reduced to 20 rune? (that's also at 45, geez, everything is!) Might actually have higher DPS than spamming meteor, and you'll be able to keep spamming it longer.
I'm just a level 12 wizard at the moment, but very curious about some later builds.
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I hope someone can answer these in detail. I have a lot of other technical questions like this and really would love to see some kind of website that indexes these tricky mechanic interactions.
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Just entered act 3 and unlocked meteor, so i'm working on new variations.
For anything non-boss, this build gives you a really easy time and is accessible really early. It's straight-forward damage enhancing and cooldown reducing, but is rather suited for groups. It's very spammable.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#acYdSh!bY!aaZZ
The standard combo is: + Show Spoiler +- run into a group of enemies. - use ice nova. - spam arcane orbs on the clumped up meat, unless you have lots of arcane power, they won't unfreeze until it ran out. - use explosive blast. - time wave of force to knock them back when you please. - while recharching resources, use your magic missile.
Gonna check out builds for higher levels when i'm there.
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Australia7069 Posts
This is the one i used to finish normal when i was feeling lazy
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UiXQSj!cYX!ZZaZaa
basically just buff the shit out of my damage and spam disintegrate. Have diamond skin and teleport for survival and forked lightning is nice ranged dps for when you run out of arcane energy. easy. pretty fucking powerful too. run around corners and let the mobs run into the beam. not really ideal for bosses but i was too lazy to change, obviously that will not be the case for nightmare, but disintergrate is just so efficient aoe if used correctly especially with the damage buffs. i tried picking up blizzard/meteor etc but they just dont compare. only thing that comes close is arcane orb but it's so expensive until you can rune it down 20 energy, and even then it's really dependant on hitting the inside of a group, which means you really need nova to use it effectively, which means dropping teleport or diamond skin.
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On May 16 2012 23:58 alQahira wrote: Ooh, I have questions for a high level wizard. When you get to level 45, can you let me know if the decoys created by the fracture rune on teleport get the explosive effects from mirror image's mocking demise?
Also at 45, you get temporal flux. Any chance you could check to see what happens if you have arcane damage from a weapon, whether that makes the slow proc? In case that isn't clear, temporal flux makes things slow, but only when you do arcane damage. However, lots of weapons have +arcane damage. So the question is, if you do damage with something like spectral blades (which is normally physical) but have a +arcane damage weapon, will that trigger the slow effect from temporal flux?
Thanks! Looks like a good build. Have you thought about spamming arcane orb with the casting cost reduced to 20 rune? (that's also at 45, geez, everything is!) Might actually have higher DPS than spamming meteor, and you'll be able to keep spamming it longer.
I'm just a level 12 wizard at the moment, but very curious about some later builds. still at school so i cant grind to 45 yet, its pretty hard to grind alone and the entire sever has like 30 people playing at my speed ...
the problem with arcane orb is that it goes in a line while meteor is positional casting (sometime it got stuck in the wall though ~_~). This mean that you could stay really far away and target the stuff you need to kill first instead of waiting for the projectile of arcane orb to slowly fly and got stuck with some random mob. I also change meteor into the tornado thingy when i fight melee range with a narrow space. It scales pretty nice bc tornado deals a shit load of dmg while staying on the field.
cant test stuff on weapon bc i simply dont have the resources to .
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I'm liking the wizard, although the majority of the skills seem really useless. I'm at level 26 and on hardcore so I play fairly defensively. Here are my thoughts. I'd love to know if you guys have found uses for some of these skills that seem bad to me.
Primary Magic Missile: Boring, but good against bosses and big enemies you don't want to get near I guess. Shock Pulse: Awful. Maybe the orb rune is good? Spectral Blade: Pretty good, but does put you in melee range. Electrocute: Not terrible, but not great either.
Secondary Ray of Frost: You have to stand there and use it. Useless. Arcane Orb: Amazing. High damage, huge area, travels fast, fire and forget. Arcane Torrent: Doesn't go far and projectiles are really slow. Maybe the mines or cascade save it, but otherwise sucks. Disintegrate: Same problem as Ray of Frost. If you're channeling, you're not moving or doing damage with a primary.
Defensive Frost Nova: Not terrible, but as an escape mechanism, it's not too great either. Diamond Skin: Best wizard skill? Slow Time: Might be good on some boss fights, haven't really used it much. Teleport: You travel like 1/3rd of a screen and can't go through walls. Very disappointing compared to D2.
Force Wave of Force: Awesome escape spell and does good damage. Energy Twister: Super slow and very lame animation. Good for bosses maybe? Hydra: Well, there are worse skills you could use in a boss fight... Blizzard somehow made hydra even worse than D2. Meteor: Why would I cast this over Arcane Orb? It's expensive, slow, and doesn't do a ton of damage either. Blizzard: Don't have it yet, but numbers look awful.
Conjuration Ice/Storm Armor: Useful if you disconnect in the middle of some enemies? Magic Weapon: 10% extra damage on your weapon is a big damage boost. It's a lot better than it looks. Familiar: I've never even tried this. Looks like a huge joke to me. Energy Armor: Don't have it yet, but it looks like it puts the other armor skills to shame.
Mastery Explosive Blast: Why would I ever use this over Wave of Force? Mirror Image: PvP-only ability? Archon: No clue, not 30.
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Australia7069 Posts
On May 17 2012 08:22 ShadowDrgn wrote: I'm liking the wizard, although the majority of the skills seem really useless. I'm at level 26 and on hardcore so I play fairly defensively. Here are my thoughts. I'd love to know if you guys have found uses for some of these skills that seem bad to me.
Primary Magic Missile: Boring, but good against bosses and big enemies you don't want to get near I guess. Shock Pulse: Awful. Maybe the orb rune is good? good on big aoe packs Spectral Blade: Pretty good, but does put you in melee range. being in melee sucks imo, but the damage is great Electrocute: Not terrible, but not great either. this one rocks, the range is huge, has aoe and cool runes
Secondary Ray of Frost: You have to stand there and use it. Useless. the charge up glyph is fucking insane on bosses Arcane Orb: Amazing. High damage, huge area, travels fast, fire and forget. can be shit if you hit a mob on the outside of the pack Arcane Torrent: Doesn't go far and projectiles are really slow. Maybe the mines or cascade save it, but otherwise sucks. lol agree suxxx Disintegrate: Same problem as Ray of Frost. If you're channeling, you're not moving or doing damage with a primary.i spammed this skill since i got it. it's amazing. you kite mobs away (teleport/nova), go round a corner and pewpew. better still if you have a templar, he gets some aggro whatever, the aoe is nuts, this is by far the best sorc skill
Defensive Frost Nova: Not terrible, but as an escape mechanism, it's not too great either. this is a great aoe setup Diamond Skin: Best wizard skill? yep Slow Time: Might be good on some boss fights, haven't really used it much. this is a good aoe setup skill especially with the +dmg rune Teleport: You travel like 1/3rd of a screen and can't go through walls. Very disappointing compared to D2. it's still a teleport, great for kiting, especially with wormhole
Force Wave of Force: Awesome escape spell and does good damage. long cooldown makes it meh imo, nova does a better job here, and explosive blast does better damage Energy Twister: Super slow and very lame animation. Good for bosses maybe? this is great on indoor sections, spam a bunch into a room and everything dies, runes are great for it too, SUPER TORNADO OMFG Hydra: Well, there are worse skills you could use in a boss fight... Blizzard somehow made hydra even worse than D2. hydra is great for kiting, drop it while getting in position, i used this along with disintergrate to great effect until i replaced it with teleport. the runes make it better too, first rune makes it aoe orbs shot Meteor: Why would I cast this over Arcane Orb? It's expensive, slow, and doesn't do a ton of damage either.you can cast this better from range. does aoe after the fact, if you can nova/slow some mobs down, drop a meteor in front of them it's great damage Blizzard: Don't have it yet, but numbers look awful. good for kiting, needs runes to be good tho
Conjuration Ice/Storm Armor: Useful if you disconnect in the middle of some enemies? didn't really use this, because i was building low vitality getting hit wasn't on my to-do list Magic Weapon: 10% extra damage on your weapon is a big damage boost. It's a lot better than it looks.this is amazing, runes only make it better <3 Familiar: I've never even tried this. Looks like a huge joke to me. first rune gives +12% damage (better than magic weapon) and they stack. not a joke Energy Armor: Don't have it yet, but it looks like it puts the other armor skills to shame.didn't use this because getting hit is dumb
Mastery Explosive Blast: Why would I ever use this over Wave of Force?6 second cd. rune it to make it go off where you cast it, infinite kiting pewpew Mirror Image: PvP-only ability?i used this to bring down diablo lol. Archon: No clue, not 30.you get a aoe damage ability with low range, a signature skill which is low right high damage single target, and a disintergration beam type thing with a slightly shorter range i think, and 300% damage. if you get a bunch of kills it lasts for fucking ages. not bad. kind of hard to use and situational because it doesn't have an escape, but a butload of damage, especially on packs of mobs. wouldn't use it on bosses tho, diamond skin etc too important my thoughts on your thoughts
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level 30 wizard, playing with elective mode on and focusing on AOE.
Skills: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UcXYdk!cYb!ZaZaZa
Itemization: Full intellect.
Damage Bonus from intellect: %710 Current HP: 850.
Getting hit = death I've done this intentionally as I want the game to be challenging. So far, I've died twice in Act 3, and 5 times in total. I cast diamond skin, cast meteor (I know explosive blast is better, but come on, its a #!$%ing meteor!!!), run to the middle of the mobs, cast frost nova, and cast wave of force as meteor impacts, finish remainders with arcane orb. for smaller packs, arcane orb + electrocute works like wonders.
can anyone confirm if prodigy procs off multiple hits with electrocute? and does anyone have an idea about trade off between DPS and intellect on weapons? Since there are no training dummies it's extremely hard to tell which weapon to equip. I mainly hover over a weapon and if it says +dmg on tooltip, I equip it. Oh and, are there any downsides to equipping shields as wizard?
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On May 17 2012 08:22 ShadowDrgn wrote: I'm liking the wizard, although the majority of the skills seem really useless. I'm at level 26 and on hardcore so I play fairly defensively. Here are my thoughts. I'd love to know if you guys have found uses for some of these skills that seem bad to me.
Primary Magic Missile: Boring, but good against bosses and big enemies you don't want to get near I guess. Shock Pulse: Awful. Maybe the orb rune is good? Spectral Blade: Pretty good, but does put you in melee range. Electrocute: Not terrible, but not great either.
Secondary Ray of Frost: You have to stand there and use it. Useless. Arcane Orb: Amazing. High damage, huge area, travels fast, fire and forget. Arcane Torrent: Doesn't go far and projectiles are really slow. Maybe the mines or cascade save it, but otherwise sucks. Disintegrate: Same problem as Ray of Frost. If you're channeling, you're not moving or doing damage with a primary.
Defensive Frost Nova: Not terrible, but as an escape mechanism, it's not too great either. Diamond Skin: Best wizard skill? Slow Time: Might be good on some boss fights, haven't really used it much. Teleport: You travel like 1/3rd of a screen and can't go through walls. Very disappointing compared to D2.
Force Wave of Force: Awesome escape spell and does good damage. Energy Twister: Super slow and very lame animation. Good for bosses maybe? Hydra: Well, there are worse skills you could use in a boss fight... Blizzard somehow made hydra even worse than D2. Meteor: Why would I cast this over Arcane Orb? It's expensive, slow, and doesn't do a ton of damage either. Blizzard: Don't have it yet, but numbers look awful.
Conjuration Ice/Storm Armor: Useful if you disconnect in the middle of some enemies? Magic Weapon: 10% extra damage on your weapon is a big damage boost. It's a lot better than it looks. Familiar: I've never even tried this. Looks like a huge joke to me. Energy Armor: Don't have it yet, but it looks like it puts the other armor skills to shame.
Mastery Explosive Blast: Why would I ever use this over Wave of Force? Mirror Image: PvP-only ability? Archon: No clue, not 30.
Funny to read this as I agree with most of this. I'm lvl 39 at the moment and after trying lots of stuff I just realised arcane orb is the best spam spell so far. Good damage, aoe and you can click and run. The primaries all kind of stink as their damage output is just really low and the runes don't do much. I'm considering just running without a primary when i get the cost reduction on arcane orb as with a slow weapon you can practically spam them nonstop anyway. Frost nova, diamond skin and wave of force are all pretty awesome. Diamond skin especially rocks early on but I feel it will be outclassed soon and will become pretty worthless. Life totals and damage from mobs grow harder then the diamond skin absorption it seems. Frost nova and wave force just rock for control. Teleport is alright when you get a rune as picking up life orbs is pretty sweet, I think it will become pivotal later when diamond skin won't cut it anymore. The entire conjuration stuff is all lame but using one may not be too bad. Familiar is ok as it actually stays active when you go archon which is just awesome. Archon is by far the coolest thing there is and is just a must when you get it even alone for the leveling speed it gives. Damage output easily doubles with it on and staying alive is not hard. Overall there seem to be too many crappy skills though and some indeed just outclass others as far as i can tell. Like arcane orb > meteor, wave force > explosive blast etc.
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Oh and, I wish we could save templates in game and hotkey them. The cooldown after switching a spell sucks so bad
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On May 17 2012 08:22 ShadowDrgn wrote:
Familiar: I've never even tried this. Looks like a huge joke to me. .
Agree with a lot of your analysis. However, Familiar with Sparkflint rune is actually worth using, specifically non-hardcore. It's a baseline 12% damage increase. I'm on non-hardcore, I'm using both Familiar(sparkflint) as well as magic weapon(force weapon), which takes my baseline "Damage" from 1246, to 1820, a pretty substantial increase. The Familiar's damage itself is decent enough, when I'm hitting for 3-4k a pop, it's hitting for like 5-600 most of the time. Note: all these stats taken from level 43 wizard in NM A3, pretty much average (I'd say bad, but I guess it's average for a first playthrough all solo) gear.
However, as far as hardcore goes, it's a little iffy having two +dmg passives equipped, I'd think.
edit: Most definitely agree about one thing... Way too many abilities that I just don't see myself ever using. It was like that in D2 as well, but D2 had much more abilities, sooo... I'm curious if other classes have the same number of throw-away abilities.
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The setup I'm using at the moment is Nova + Shatter, Diamond Skin + Crystal Shell, Arcane Hydra, Archon, Arcane Orb + Obliteration, Shock Pulse + Explosive Bolts with Blur/Glass Cannon/Prodigy as passives.
Run into a pack and Nova. Hydra, and spam Orbs. Normally there are a few things in the pack fragile enough to die within the first orb or two and that causes the Shatter rune to proc and re-freeze the pack. When my AP runs out I spam Shock Pulses to get it back, that will usually kill off the enemies that have softened up from the Orbs/Arcane Hydra AoE and cause some more big damage because of the on-death Explosive Bolt explosion.
Diamond Skin for when things go wrong, or if the pack I'm getting ready to Nova is particularly large. Archon gets used whenever there are huge packs of squishy enemies (+1 second for every kill while Archon is active) and it can end up lasting quite a long time.
Things melt extremely fast like this. Alternatively, you can take teleport instead of Pulse or Hydra, and Diamond Skin + Tele in + Nova.
Storm Armor is nice, as are a lot of things, but that setup has proven best for me around 31 or 32 after having beaten normal. The later rune upgrades might change this build significantly, but for the time being that's working wonders.
I'm also thinking about Magic Weapon and my passives. Magic Weapon increases weapon damage by 10% and spells scale with weapon damage, but I can't figure out what I'd actually swap out for it. Diamond Skin is a possible candidate because I should, theoretically, be able to get myself out of danger after the nova/orbs sequence if things are still dicey, but the oh shit button is really nice to have and the trade-off is actually not that big of a boost.
As for passives, I'd love to have Evocation back, but I'd regret losing Blur even more than I would losing Diamond Skin for MW, Prodigy gives me fast AP regen for a spell (Shock Pulse) that I'd be spamming anyway, and Glass Cannon is a pretty big damage boost.
What I could do is swap Shock Pulse for MW, and swap Prodigy for Evocation. I wouldn't have the AP/free spell to kill as quickly, but I'd be hitting slightly harder and I'd have faster CDs on Diamond Skin and Nova which might make up for it. Then again, if I did get rid of Prodigy I might be better off with Astral Presence instead of Evocation anyway.
The problem with theorycrafting at half-max level is the runes that unlock later are going to throw my plans out of whack.
Also working on a melee wizard build for my Nightmare playthrough, gonna try to update this post when I get that worked out.
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archon is only good in easier difficulty. the higher you get the more burden you have with the long cooldown. Its like witch doctor zombie dog skill, you lose them extremely fast and just have to sit there wait a long time without a 3rd skill. Archon itself doesnt even do that much dmg: 2 melee range spells and 1 incineration :-/... more over there is no defensive ability that could be activated in archon mode (aka. diamond skin.). overall the spells is extremely overated but i wouldnt be surprised if people get it so they dont have to waste a slot for the teleport spell (turn into archon teleport > teleport)
Ice armor is so freaking nice, the extra stun is HUGE in boss fight and is a must. So far i know that you cant have both ice and storm on you at the same time. Since magic weapon has no debuff icon, i dont know if conjurations spells stack with each other. If they dont stack, you either have to choose between ice OR magic weapon and i would go with the ice just for the safetiness.
Hydra is the biggest joke in the world. you can only have 1 hydra at a time and it animation is REALLY slow. the hydra need to get up, then it will start to attack which then has its own projectile. the only good thing about the spells is that its positional casting which means that you could cast through wall/terrain, very supranational spell and should be avoided using in direct combat. Wave of force is a really nice escape mechanism that will push everything away from you. However if you are fighting in a team, the spell is very annoying as it scatter everything and make your teams aoe less effective. the extra stun seem to be nice but most bosses are immune to this -_-.
blizzard/twister are AoE DoT. very useless and the slow is unneeded most of the time (when facing yellow/blue in nightmare, its either stunning or not). i do use twister in narrow melee range but stay away from blizzard mostly bc my current build cant afford those 'extra' arcane and multiple blizz dont seem to stack ~_~. Meteor has a really nice dmg scale, nice casting range and totally spamable. The only down side is that you have to predict where the mobs gona move to bc there is a 1.5-2 seconds delay before the meteor lane. Most of the time you dont have to worry about it bc of the party stun All 3(blizz/twister/meteor) are spamable(0 cd) and should be spam for their huge AoE effect/dmg scale.
Frost nova is a must get. All boss got stunned by it. Best spells for wizard. Diamond skin(DS) is 2nd best simply bc of the stupid duration/cd on the spells. Instead of thinking about it as a normal spells, think about it as a sacred resources that you have to keep yourself alive. Lot of time you should just use potion and save DS for offensive use.
Discinerate is nice at first but then you realize that they are just 50/50: half AoE, half single target. It doesnt deal as much dmg and you can find much better AoE spells that you dont have to channel yourself. At nightmare (im on act 2 but you could see what i mean from act1), the spells deal very little dmg and unless you have everything line up, got stun 10 secs for you to just sit there and channel the spells, i recommend staying away from it. Ray of Frost very OP for boss fight, get it if you have a hard time with Pudge.
For my primary: i prefer spectral blade simply bc the dmg is much nicer. There is a rune that could provide chance to stun/knockback which make it supper for boss fight. The spell works with Diamond skin so its a great way for you to wait for your arcane to jump back up. Shockplus and electrocute are nice AoE range spells (try the ball rune on shockplus) and they are cool vs normal mob but they just deal 0 dmg in nightmare T_T.
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Australia7069 Posts
i love all the different ways people are playing their wizards. there's the freeze pack aoe type. the melee type. turret of death type. long range aoe etc
i know it all changes when we get to hell/inferno but whatevz, it's fun XD
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Do people generally shift-kite and stutterstep a lot? I find myself doing it very often, with Shock Pulse especially. Like, I'll aggro a big group of enemies with with Disintegrate, and when they get near I spam whatever AOEs I have, kite with Shock Pulse and then finish with Wave of Force. I also started like Wave Force a lot more when I realized you could deflect missiles with it
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On May 17 2012 09:09 NB wrote: archon is only good in easier difficulty. I went through parts of NM act 4 with Archon up for minutes at a time due to the sheer mass of little mobs to mow down.
Not overrated, just situational.
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http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#biYmSj!Ycb!bbcbZa
Turret of death rape machine wizard, not reccomended for solo play amazing for group play though =]. I'm 51 and these are the main abilities I use, prodigy isn't really neccessary but it's nice you don't have a huge bag of tricks but your beam of death melts things very very quickly, efficient killing machine but not much else =]
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On May 17 2012 10:44 Quotidian wrote: Do people generally shift-kite and stutterstep a lot? I find myself doing it very often, with Shock Pulse especially. Like, I'll aggro a big group of enemies with with Disintegrate, and when they get near I spam whatever AOEs I have, kite with Shock Pulse and then finish with Wave of Force. I also started like Wave Force a lot more when I realized you could deflect missiles with it
Hell yeah,Wizard micro! I can't stop stutterstepping.
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Lvl 52 wizard here. I use an elective mode frost build. The idea is pretty much get them frozen/chilled and have the +dmg aura/runes to give ekstra dmg.
My main left click dmg is Electrocute with Chain lightning. I like the skill and it's good when i'm low on mana it's also pretty good on big packs of mobs.
As my right click I have meteor with the Comet rune. Good damage (more than arcane orb with 240% weapon dmg) and it's frost.
I have frost nova as my 1. It gives +dmg to frozen targets and good to make people not hit you/your party.
2 I have Blizzard, I plan on using the storm rune for max dmg but not lvl 60 yet. So use solid for crowd control.
3 is diamond skin with max absorb. Best escape IMO.
4 is Archon. In situations with lots of mobs the right click spell just wrecks havok. Especially if they don't have lots of hp. The dmg output if actually absolutely amazing with around 4k a second right now.
I run in a group of 3-4 people with my as most damage right now with a witch doctor. Got 20k life and 2.5k damage. With meteor i crit around 15-20k depending on buffs, I think if I was solo I could oneshot or close to a lot of creeps in hell with meteor into nova while the meteor is landing into blizzard. Blizzard crit around 2k in a wave, So good damage also.
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