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I was looking to create a defence-oriented Wizard, throwing in about as many slows and chills and stuns as I could manage. Working off the posts I've read, I included buffs to resistance and defence where I could. Would be interested in some critique. If I've learned enough to make a pretty-close-to-decent-build so far, might be playing with the skill calc and I can dream up some other good builds.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wi...Ufd!YZYacb
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(06-01-2012, 01:34 PM)ViralSpiral Wrote: I was looking to create a defence-oriented Wizard, throwing in about as many slows and chills and stuns as I could manage. Working off the posts I've read, I included buffs to resistance and defence where I could. Would be interested in some critique. If I've learned enough to make a pretty-close-to-decent-build so far, might be playing with the skill calc and I can dream up some other good builds.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wi...Ufd!YZYacb
Having only played a wizard into the 30s, I can only say that I hope you love death blossom
My current feeling at least for Hell+ is that defense is penalized heavily by enrage timers on bosses, but if you're taking a lot of damage in a co-op environment, this looks like a great/fun build.
-< You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever >-
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That's why I included Death Blossom. I knew the Enrage timers would require some kind of high damage skill, so that one looked like it would fit the bill. I'm mostly looking if there's enough AP generation, the cooldowns are reasonable, the effects I picked are worth it, et cetera. I've read snaring works less in the later two difficulties, so I'm not sure how good some of those skills would be.
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I've considered creating a variant using Death Blossom and Explosive Blast as primary attack skills. It should be fun. But understand that what you are creating is a variant. If this is your first time playing a Wizard, I think you'll be very disappointed with the way Death Blossom works. I don't want to discourage you too much, as I think there's a place for a variety of skills, but you might want to play a Wizard a bit and mess around with the skills to see how they actually work in game.
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This build should work relatively well up until (and possibly through) Hell mode. At that point you can rename Death Blossom to Death Wish. I predict the farther you get into the game with this build the less and less you actually use that skill. It is extremely fun, but the negatives FAR outweigh the positive of big damage. Every other skill has at least some modicum of viability in an end game build.
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I tried to make a variant around Death Blossom. I gave up. The damage is large, but it is so rare you actually hit anything that I quickly grew bored. I would have had more success playing blindfolded and using my feet.
Snaring is almost useless in Hell; I can only imagine how bad it must be in Inferno. Even Slowed, many Elites are still faster than you :\
May the wind pick up your heels and your sword strike true.
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(06-04-2012, 08:07 AM)Elric of Grans Wrote: Snaring is almost useless in Hell; I can only imagine how bad it must be in Inferno. Even Slowed, many Elites are still faster than you :\
Quite the contrary. Snaring is Necessary in Inferno. That little bit of impediment is often the difference between being able to kite an enemy and getting squashed in an instant. I played for about an hour tonight recording footage to put behind this weeks Podcast and the great majority of deaths I had were just because i got lackadaisical or wasn't paying attention *Splat*.
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Death Blossom is definitely variant material. Don't pick it for effectiveness. Actually that goes for Arcane Torrent and every single one of its runes.
The defense focus is a good idea for later Hell and Inferno difficulties; you won't need it before then. Also, with all the focus on defense, I feel like Diamond Skin is tied with Teleport as the best defensive skill and this build conspicuously lacks it.
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Skandranon, there's a name from the murky depths of the past. Good to see you're still around.
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06-05-2012, 12:42 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-05-2012, 12:47 AM by MongoJerry.)
Also, if you're going to create a Death Blossom variant, I would probably use Frost Nova instead of Wave of Force. You want the mobs frozen in place in a tight group where they would be more likely to get hit by the Death Blossom.
If you're looking to create a quirky Wizard build, you might consider building one around Energy Twister. It'll be a little more effective than Death Blossom in that you can control it better, but it'll have a lot of quirkiness surrounding it, too, in how you would place the twisters and kite mobs through them.
