Wizard thoughts

[Skandranon]

Skandranon, can you summarize the skill combinations you are using right now that you have found effective in hell against champion and boss packs?

From around levels 51-60 I've been running:

1) Archon-Slow Time, and then Archon-Improved Archon

I used Slow Time to buy myself more time to burst with it, but especially duoing with another Wizard, Archon was getting me killed a lot. Last night I found openings to cast it in a 3-player game with a barbarian, but those openings were very brief and still resulted in blaze of glory deaths a couple of times.

I think I still use this just because I love seeing big numbers, not because it's a better choice. I would probably live a lot more and be more effective if I had Frost Nova or Diamond Skin instead in this slot.

2) Familiar-Sparkflint

I stll run the entire damage tripod although I think this is the leg that it can most afford to lose. In Inferno boss videos (although these are not a good predictor of generalized builds since they're usually customized for the encounter, like WoW raid specs), nobody uses this.

For me the reason is simple: things need to die quicker, and more damage does that. If I were to put something else in this slot it would be Frost Nova or Diamond Skin.

3) Energy Armor-Energy Tap

I like the generalist ability of this combination to both boost your defenses and raise your Arcane Power so it's useful on both offense and defense. At least in many cases this also let me take something like 4 hits from minions and 3 from bosses when without it I'd probably die in one fewer hit in each case.

I'm likely to be changing this to Force Armor soon as boss and mob hits are ramping up. A normal, non-minion, non-boss Act 4 Hell mob hit me for 32k in one shot yesterday, even with this up.

4) Magic Weapon-Force Weapon

Same damage theory as Familiar-Sparkflint except this is better. Even the people running Inferno squeeze this into every build they can. Magic Weapon seems to have a greater effect than 15%, and I'm now thinking that it is not the multiplicative interaction of effects but just Magic Weapon which is the source of most Wizard damage.

For example, with just Glass Cannon I have 13200 displayed DPS. Sparkflint alone at a nominal value of 12% takes it up to 14600. Magic Weapon alone at a nominal value of 15% takes it up to 17200.

LMB) Magic Missile-Split or Magic Missile-Charged Blast

I've been going both ways on this. Split is more theoretical damage, especially against very large mobs. It also lets me spam missiles in the general direction of the enemy and get hits, especially if I am trying to shoot offscreen. Of course, Charged Blast is also very good.

Shock Pulse-Piercing Orb is another option for this slot. I've experimented with dropping the Signature but I still use it too often for that to work.

RMB) Arcane Orb - Celestial Orb

Tap the Source would probably work just as well, but I prefer the giant-sized orb since it is an excellent AoE answer and is also great in running battles since the giant radius means I'm far less likely to miss/the mobs are far less likely to avoid it. It also seems to have longer range than the standard Arcane Orb which means I can pitch it from really far away which is a good bonus.