Crit / meteor build

[Concillian]

discussion in one of the general discussion threads kind of branched into a discussion of this build. I thought I'd consolidate my experiences here. I know Quark is playing a similar build at a higher level and I'm sure others are interested too.

My interest in this started with an interest in a melee wizard. Variant type material, I thought. I was wrong. It starts out slow, but with gearing it becomes a very powerful, high DPS build with good soloing and group options.

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Spec
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The lynchpins of the spec:
Passive -- Critical Mass
Skill -- Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell or Prism rune
Skill -- Frost Nova - Cold Snap, Deep Freeze, or Bone Chill are all usable
Skill -- Meteor - Star Pact rune is a must
Skill -- Energy armor - Pinpoint rune initially when leveling, prismatic or force armor once you're geared into enough crit.
Skill -- Spectral blades (mandatory when leveling, but you can outgear the need for this skill) - Deep cuts rune seems to work the best.


Optional skills:
- Slow Time (usually used in place of spectral blades when adequately geared with high enough crit and adequate Arcane Power per crit)
- Familiar / Ancient Guardian for added defense
- Magic Weapon for added offense
- Venom Hydra or Blizzard for faster moving / erratic movement ranged monsters.
Note that I don't think Hydra crits count towards critical mass.
- Teleport is useful to get out of tight spots. A good defensive alternative to buffing your damage with magic weapon. However, you can't use it often, because when you teleport, everything runs out of your meteor puddles, and you start losing your cooldown reductions, which kills your defensive options. This becomes a skill of last resort when you're in a tight spot. Most runes have good uses, but wormhole or fracture are probably the best. You can use this some offensively, but the AP cost usually means one less meteor on your frontloaded damage. I think it's best left as your Oh Crap! skill if you choose to take it.
 - Explosive Blast gets an honorable mention. It's usable but you may as well just go with magic weapon and buff your other skills. If there were some form of utility on one of the runes, it might be a real option, but it's only really usable on the initial frontload if you pick it up.


Optional Passives:
- Evocation (absolutely necessary when leveling, since Critical Mass isn't available until 50)
- Blur (soloing when undergeared)
- Glass Cannon (grouped or soloing in areas you outgear defensively)
- Galvanizing Ward (some health regen)
- Power Hungry (decent AP regen in groups, especially at lower levels)
- Prodigy (decent soloing AP regen)
- Astral Presence (again, AP regen)
- Unstable anomoly can work to get you out of a tight spot if you don't have teleport, but has a LOOOONG cooldown.

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Play
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Basic concept:
Meteor puddles stack and can crit. Critical mass lowers cooldowns per crit, more meteors = more cooldown usage.
Diamond Skin and Frost nova appear to be able to cast without triggering the cast animation, so these can be spammed. Large groups of whites will never come out of frost nova. You can Diamond skin, cast a meteor, run in, frost nova, and continue meteor spam / spectral blades and Frost nova will be up again well before they're out of it if your crit is high enough.
Meteor targeting is difficult due to the delay between cast and landing. The frost nova helps IMMENSELY with actually hitting stuff when you have to wait for the meteor to land. It's also a huge help on keeping you alive, since you're gonna be near the melee monsters.
To help with meteor targeting, you will often be getting hit. This is why energy armor and defensive gearing is necessary unless in a group with a class who is able to group monsters for you.


Advantagees:
- Melee mobs of any kind.
- Large groups MELT. Not only that, you are in no danger when you are presented with a large group. There are so many crits, you can keep most boss packs in Hell 100% frost nova frozen until the minions are dead (unless invulnerable minions, but what spec deals well with invulnerable minions?)
- At high levels of gearing, DPS skyrockets. High crit with high crit damage and +AP on crit can result in virtual chain cast of meteor. at 200% weapon damage + Puddle damage ticks.
- REALLY high frontload of damage. As I mentioned, 1 meteor in place where you think they'll be when it lands, frost nova, 2 more meteors. 600+% weapon damage (plus big crits) before they're even out of the first frost nova. If you have Prism, you may have enough AP for 4 early meteors. Nice frontload really helps clear stuff out when you're playing with other people.

Weaknesses:
- Fast moving / erratic moving ranged monsters (bees, fallen shaman, spear throwers, etc...) -- These are where hydra or blizzard can come in handy instead of magic weapon.
- It sucks to see treasure goblins. If you can reliably target meteor on treasure goblins, my hat is off to you, because I cannot. They get away 90+% of the time when soloing.
- Getting boxed in on bad melee affixes. You give up a lot to get teleport, and you can get surrounded without it. Usually getting surrounded is good, you are activating diamond skin multiple at least once every 1-2 seconds, but if you are stuck in multiple desecrates or have some arcane beams comin' at you, you have no tempest rush / charge / leap / dashing strike like a monk or barb does. If you're stuck, you're stuck unless you pick up teleport.
- Single monsters are a small problem, but not a big deal if they can sit still. If they're in the puddle, you can keep your cooldowns rolling. If they move a lot, then you have real problems.

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Gearing:
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This build is not possible without twink gear or AH gear. The spec depends on a reasonably high level of +crit% on gear.

Fast weapon seems to be better to me than slow, but I suppose there is some debate on this, especially once you gear enough AP on crit to not absolutely need spectral blades.

Early gearing pre-50 is typical melee gearing:
- Life on Hit
- Primary stat
- Defense (usually 1H + shield)
- Increased Attack speed
- (minor, if you can get it) life per second

Below level 50, this plays like a melee character that has good cooldowns, but NO escape / mobility. You rely very heavily on Life on Hit and even potions at this level.

Once you hit 50, gearing switches towards crit
- Crit % adds safety by reducing your cooldowns more reliably. It adds flexibility in allowing you to rune into more interesting options on frost nova and potentially prism on diamond skin for more DPS. It's your everything stat. Offense and defense and utility all rolled into one. This becomes your #1 priority. 15% is workable at 50, but you really want to be shooting for at least 25% crit. There's no "magic number" but the whole build revolves around critting reliably, you need this number as high as reasonably possible.

- - - Crit% can show on:
Rings
Amulets
Off-hands (including shields)
Helm
Bracers
Gloves

Rings and amulets with high crit% are EXPENSIVE. Shields with high crit are relatively cheap, and this is the slot where you want to start looking for very near the top range crit% numbers.
I think these are the top ranges for crits for a given shield level. I'm not 100% on these numbers, but they're close:
lvl 50 req. = +4.5%
lvl 54 req. = +5.5%
lvl 58 req. = +6.5%
lvl 59 req. and higher = +10%

Shields with good defensive bonuses are expensive, but without great defense, a high INT, high Crit% shield can be a cheap way to get your crit % up quick.


- +Crit Damage%
With so much crit%, crit damage% becomes your best offensive stat.
at 25% crit, +50% crit damage is worth about 7-11% total damage increase (returns diminish some, 11% is going from +50% to +100%, 7% is going from +300% to +350%)
- - - +Crit damage% can show on:
Pretty much anything except for off-hands / shields.


- +Arcane Power on Crit
You want at least one item with +Arcane Power on Crit. This adds a lot of synergy and flexibility. Even only 5-7 AP on crit helps a LOT.
I am not 100% on this, but I think AP on Crit can only show on Wizard specific items (Wiz hats, off-hand sources, wands).
Since limiting yourself to wands and sources can be restricting, you really want this to be from a Hat.

- CC duration reduction
Your offense is your defense. Being stunned or frozen leaves you VERY vulnerable. You can activate diamond skin, but if you're not casting, you're not critting and your cooldowns will end up going too long. Consider this as a defensive alternative to +crit damage%, because you can get really screwed when you're CCed (stunners in Act IV, frozen any boss / champ pack.)

- Life on Hit
Some baseline level of Life on hit is good, but not strictly necessary. Weapons with Life on Hit command a premium, even if they have INT and no VIT. There is the option of using a socket for Life on Hit instead of +Crit Damage%. Diamond skin absorbs much of the damage done, and health globes heal most of what you take, however, Life on Hit is still an excellent stat.

- Life steal%
This is one spec where it may be possible to make good use of life steal. However, when you're doing the most damage (large groups), you're the safest. I haven't done too much testing on this.

- Beyond this, it's the typical wanting primary stats of VIT and INT plus defensive stats like +resist and + armor. Inferno will likely force you into prismatic armor unless you have extremely deep pockets. Force armor may be required in later acts, but you have high enough usage of diamond skin that prismatic armor works reasonably well in Act I Inferno.

In general, watch the AH before reaching your level to scan for deals on important upgrades (crit% shields and weapons). There seem to be AH bots that pick up cheap +crit% jewelry VERY quickly (literally... seconds after being posting), don't even bother looking for cheap jewelry with high crit%, it doesn't exist. You can get some with like 1-1.5% without too much difficulty, but looking for 3% or more will quickly send you into 6, 7 and 8 figure territory on gold prices, depending on other stats.

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My opinion
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This is a very spammy build. It feels a lot like playing a prot warrior in WoW, where you're constantly pressing and releasing that hitting heroic strike button... except you're doing it to three buttons ( nova, Diamond Skin and Meteor or spectral blades)

I'm having fun with it in public games, where you can run straight into a big pack and keep them frozen until you only have a few left. This is a little bit Banzai style of play, and not suited to hardcore, I do die sometimes doing this on champ packs. But it's exceptionally fun on white packs where you can jump in and spam and they stay frozen until they die.

Hardcore play would take a different approach. I haven't put a lot of thought into how I'd approach it. The issue with very mobile ranged monsters is a real problem in Act III and IV, and probably requires a partner to handle with complete safety. IMO it's way too fun to play this guy banzai. I don't see myself playing this build hardcore. Especially given the gearing necessary and questionable escape mechanisms.

Good complementary partners are:
- barbs and monks built to move monsters around (for the ranged ones)
- high single target piercing / DPS builds to complement the strong AoE by focusing on the most dangerous monsters (ranged and bosses)
- buff / debuff builds to amplify already high damage.