Diablo 3: Inferno - A Wizards story

Currently reading a thread on Critical Mass:
http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?834642-Has-anyone-experimented-with-a-Critical-Mass-build/page10

With it, if you have high enough "crit chance", you can permanently stun groups of monsters and not run out of Arcane Power.

I tend to run out of AP pretty often since I use Blizzard and Disintegrate. With high enough "AP on crit" I should be able to stun/disintegrate without running out of power.

I'll have to check out the AH when I get home to see how much this type of an upgrade will cost.

Currently I have:
crit chance 22%
AP on crit 0

I'll need:
crit chance 35%+
AP on crit 20+


One of the guys running a Critical Mass build showed a screen shot. I was surprised that I have higher health, Int, armor and DPS than him. But he has a much higher crit chance, crit damage, resistances (~1000 in everything). He also has around 55M in the bank to afford the better toys...

I've been using a Crit Mass Build and it's been working for me.
I'm not even equipment spec'd for it yet.

Didn't get a chance to play much yesterday but I did spend 200k or so on the build.

I haven't tested it out yet, but have 33% crit chance, +208 crit damage, and +19 AP on crit (giving up about 7k DPS).

Should be enough to give it a go in inferno...

The build I'm currently looking at includes:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ViXRYO!fgW!YZabcc
Energy Twister (Wicked Wind)
Disintegrate (Chaos Nexus)
Diamond Skin (Crystal Shell)
Hydra (Venom)
Frost Nova (Bone Chill)
Energy Armor (Prismatic)

Galvanizing Ward, Critical Mass, Cold Blooded

Close to mine.

I was using
-Hydra(Lightning), instead of Venom
-Blizzard(Snowbound) instead of Frost Nova
-Electrocute((Lightning Blast) instead of Energy Twister

I'll try Venom and Energy Twister and see how I do. I really like the damage output of Energy Twister.
Frost Nova seems like too long of a cool down right now. I'm only at Crit Chance of 21%, so I don't get the quick recharge that you get.
I'm a 56 Wizard, with 6,033 DPS, but only +50% damage for Crits.

Hey, are "tombs of secrets" common drops in Inferno? If so, save a few dozen for me. I ain't beating Hell anytime soon...

I just buy them from the Auction House if I need them.

Yeah, but I have no cash in my stash, and your computer doesn't crash immediately upon entering the AH...

Did you ever rebuild your computer? That should fix it.

"Rebuild my computer"? Me?? You know how silly that question sounds, don't you? I gotta be the most technoilliterate geek around...

If you have all of the disks and stuff that came with the computer bring it over one day and I can do it up for you, or I may be at my parents tomorrow and I can get you started.

You'll want to back everything up though, as far as files you want to save.

Still plugging away...

Got stuck in the water tunnels in Act II. After a couple of days of not making any progress I opened a game up to the public. Within a few minutes we had a full party and completed Act II (still died a lot, but at least I'm out of Act II.

I'll probably go back to farming Act I until I can afford better equipment. Probably about 3-4M way.

Tried Act III, briefly... didn't go well.

After a lot more farming I hit a mini Diablo lotto. I found a really nice rare item that I was able to sell for 4.5M.

With the sudden increase in gold I started bargain hunting and item flipping. I was able to buy a few weapons and armor with empty sockets, add a gem or two and re-list them. Made another 1M with that so far.

Inferno Act III:
After upgrading several items I can now kill most of the normal monsters. Having a rough time with the elites, but can kill some (after a death or two...).

I've noticed repair costs are steadily increasing, may need to stick to Act II a bit longer...

Keep saving your handmedowns for us! My wizard is strugling with Act 1 of Hell 53rd level, my monk with Act 4 Hell (60th). They are both in desperate need of item upgrades...

bradly wrote:Keep saving your handmedowns for us! My wizard is strugling with Act 1 of Hell 53rd level, my monk with Act 4 Hell (60th). They are both in desperate need of item upgrades...

Oh...

I've been selling/dusting quite a bit of stuff lately...

I've only been keeping stuff that is level 60+ (still have a couple of pages of stuff though).


Also, is your laptop still crashing during the game? I had several crashes over the weekend which I think were due to the system overheating. I had to start putting a book under my laptop and leave room under the vent for air to circulate.


Ross, if your wizard still needs a wand I'll have to find a new one for you. I ended up going back to the one I was saving for you. After changing my build again I couldn't find anything better for less than 6M.

Tried the Critical Mass Melee Wizard build for a bit yesterday... I'm very surprised Blizzard hasn't nerfed it.

It usually takes me 45-60min to do a Cemetary/Butcher run, with the melee build it took 25min with no deaths.

To use the CM melee build you need:
35% or better crit chance
15 or better Arcane Power on Crit
Frost Nova (Cold Snap)
Energy Twister (Wicked Winds)
Critical Mass passive
Evocation (optional)

In Play:
Move up to a group and use Frost Nova (freezes the monsters)
Repeatedly press Energy Twister and Frost Nova

ET has a high critical modifier and will reduce your cooldowns. With a high crit chance Frost Nova will be ready to use again in 1-2 seconds so as soon as they're thawed, you freeze them again. The more monsters around you the better and you get more criticals and can keep them frozen.

I'd say about 50% of the wizards I've seen in Act III are using this build.

Note:
There are several monster types this build doesn't do well against.
Shielding, Arcane (if you can't keep them frozen), Molten (have to watch where you stand), Electric (will do damage to you even when frozen).

Getting closer...

Made it to Diablo in inferno, but am so far 0 for 10 in attempts to finish the game. A few were solo attempts, the rest coop. Stage one is pretty easy, but the shadow clones in the second stage always wipe out the party.

One odd thing is that for Act 3 & 4 I had to swap out my weapon and powers. The CM/Melee build is much more effective, but lowers my DPS from 48k down to 28k.

Dwarmaj wrote:Getting closer...

Made it to Diablo in inferno, but am so far 0 for 10 in attempts to finish the game.

Churchill said, "If you find yourself going throug Hell, keep going." 'Hell'... When you reach Inferno, you can stop whenever! :-)

Got some advice on one of the Diablo 3 Wizards forum.
1. run away from the clones, they'll despawn after a bit
2. change out weapon for something with Life on Hit and a Socket (put in gem for 300 Life on Hit) for a total of ~800 LoH
3. Changed the rune on Energy Armor from Prismatic to Force to negate the auto kill shots.


Result:

Nice. Now you can join me and Mick on Guild Wars 2.

Congrats! Great end to the Wizard's story...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97bggI_GY64