Critical Mass: Build or Exploit?
#1
I saw this video linked on the Blizzard forums, showing a Wizard Frost Nova locking Inferno difficulty Diablo:

http://www.justin.tv/zytrug/b/319194200

Looking at his skills, he's basically trying everything to spam as many attacks as possible. He uses Shock Pulse as his main attack (3 charges fired per attack), a Sparkflint familiar (1 more attack), and some kind of Storm Armor to add another attack. He then has a lot of fast cast gear, and I assume a lot of +crit% chance gear as well. He's trying and succeeding at getting a ton of crit hits so that Critical Mass quickly lowers the cooldown on his Frost Nova, which he spams as quickly as he can.

Now, the question I have is: Is this a build or an exploit? It obviously looks exploitish versus a single target like Diablo. However, I've seen Frag chain stun lock boss mobs all the time with his Barbarian, and he doesn't need to completely alter his whole skill build and equipment to do it.

In the meantime, I'm trying to think about how this build would work in the open field where you have groups of bosses and champions, many of which have ranged attacks that could destroy such a Wizard. A Wizard trying to farm Diablo would have to change specs and equipment just to face Diablo, losing any Nephelem Valor buffs he or she might have gotten. And Diablo doesn't drop the best loot anyway.

So, I'm not convinced that this is a problem that really needs to be solved. I say grats on the Diablo kill, but if you want to kill champion and boss packs, I don't think that this is really as overpowered as the video makes it out to be.
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#2
All the same, didn't this just get nerfed thanks to that video? I think I overheard Skandranon say so last night.
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#3
(05-25-2012, 01:41 PM)Bolty Wrote: All the same, didn't this just get nerfed thanks to that video? I think I overheard Skandranon say so last night.

From http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5235398345#1

Quote:Fixed an issue with certain powers that had a higher than intended chance to trigger Critical Mass
--Mav
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#4
Yes, it did. So, I guess there was some bug or unintended ability that was being used.

This does leave open a huge area for possible Lurker research. That is, on abilities like Critical Mass that say "chance to do X," what are the exact percentages? Does the proc rate go down if you're using an aoe spell like Arcane Orb versus a single target spell like Magic Missle or Ray of Frost?
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#5
What was corrected was the number of hits that the the "living lightning" rune of Shock pulse gave. It was giving lots of small hits rather than a few larger hits.

This was also a central component to the force armor exploit. So many hits with lots of "+x life per hit" items.
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