Crit / meteor build

[Spangles]

It (the CM/Energy Twister build) may have been standard on some other boards, but as you can see in the history of this thread, it wasn't standard on this board.

Which is why I read this board. Pittising is my melee enchantress and Spangles is my kicksin in D2/LOD, non-standard builds that I read about here (or the Amazon Basin bulletin board, perhaps, it was that long ago).

With the 1.04 nerf to Wicked Wind and the obvious followup nerf to Storm Chaser incoming, I came here looking for a non-standard alternative to Energy Twister, and found Spectral Blade / Deep Cuts, which works very nicely on the 1.05 PTR. Using a signature spell also allowed me to replace two pieces of AP on crit gear for a large DPS increase.

I was also looking to replace Blizzard, my ranged / kiting attack and found that Meteor obliterates mobs instead of melting them away. The 2 second lead was awkward for me previously, but the shortened cast in 1.05 seals the deal.

Your gear's pretty crazy from a hardcore perspective. I get why reflect damage is hard on you, since it looks like you forgo most defense for pure unadulterated offense.

Since Energy Armor / Prismatic is also nerfed in 1.05, I was looking to replace it with Magic Weapon, perhaps, or Storm Armor, or Ice Armor.

The problem is that LoH doesn't scale with DPS, and lifesteal does, and I reached the crossover point at a time when proc coefficients that drive LoH were nerfed. So, testing on the PTR shows me that this is not the time to replace a damage reduction skill with more DPS.

The Prismatic rune increases my damage reduction from 57% to 64% in 1.05, which allows me to operate safely in MP4 and with difficulty in MP5, which is good enough for now.

I have settled on the following build:

LMB: Spectral Blade / Deep Cuts
RMB: Meteor / Star Pact
1: Explosive Blast / Chain Reaction
2. Frost Nova / Bone Chill
3: Diamond Skin / Crystal Shell
4. Energy Armor / Prismatic Armor
Critical Mass, Cold Blooded, Blur.

It is interesting how much more smoothly this build works on the PTR than in 1.04. Also, farming keys throughout the game and fighting uber bosses is more fun than running Act 3 day after day. Good reasons to "test new builds" until patch day.