Wednesday 26 September 2012

[Wizard] Rainbow Showers (1.0.5 PTR)

Wednesday, September 26, 2012  sQren  

Playing on MP3 I did find a Meteor build I was very happy with. I originally posted this in a 1.0.5 PTR Wiz impressions thread but thought I would make it its own post here.

Build:
  • Meteor / Meteor Shower
  • Teleport / Fracture
  • Explosive Blast / Unleashed
  • Frost Nova / Cold Snap
  • Diamond Skin / Prism<--this is actually great
  • Storm Armor / Shocking Aspect
  • Critical Mass
  • Astral Presence (this could be Cold-Blooded)
  • Evocation (this could be Cold-Blooded too- I'm just being conservative at the moment)
Gear. My source cost me 69m and is my most expensive piece of gear. All others can be had for 10-15 mil or less, and you can do even better without the MF I have on some 7 pieces.


My Stats:
  • 2.04 APS (always want more)
  • 48 crit chance (stack as high as you can obviously)
  • 26 APoC (wouldn't run this with less than 20, not sure how 21-25 is)
  • Meteor cost reduced by 3 (nice little bonus and easy to get on at least one piece of gear)
  • 780 LoH (could have used a bit more but it was sufficient)
  • 3.8k Armor/675 AR (again, always want more)
  • 30k HP (wouldn't do too much less because single champs can break you out of permaskin)

With Prism up and my Meteor reduction, Showers cost 40 AP. Explosive Blast/Unleashed cost 3AP. Astral Presence gets you an extra meteor on rotation startup and helpfully increases your AP regen rate, which may or may not be necessary and further testing will help me out here. And of course that APoC is just vital as it constantly refills your globe while you are dropping Meteors.

Anyway, get up Prism, cast some Meteor Showers, port in and freeze to refresh your cooldowns, and faceroll 1-2-3 while holding the left mouse button. I was even able to take out single champs with this spec pretty well and I just melted any mob that numbered 3 monsters or more. The reduced delay on Meteor from 2s to 1.25s is HUGE and it makes the spec much more viable when you aren't standing there waiting 2 seconds for a shower to drop. As for permafreezing, packs are absolutely permafreezed but sometimes Champions (yellow guys) who live longer than their adds can get a few hits off. The new CC mechanics are a huge boon to Frost Nova because that first freeze lasts for a whole 3 seconds and really lets you get wound up if you know what I mean. Fracture every now and then for elites is a nice single player survival buff which I need because of my resists and armor not being where I want them (and because of lack of Crystal Shell) but you can run what you're comfortable with. In group play I will probably run Safe Passage.

I haven't had this much fun on D3 in ages. I did die a few times because I was rushing and ended up porting into packs with molten or without any AP (elite Winged Moloks suck as usual, I'll take Phasebeasts any day), but mostly I was able to keep up with MP3 without too many issues. I could maybe go higher but I think I'll be up against a gear check pretty soon if I do.

I did also try Star Pact and Liquefy. Star Pact I couldn't spend my AP fast enough because Frost Nova takes up an attack turn in the rotation. This could be offset by trading APoC in your build for IAS. Liquefy just didn't have the AOE I wanted. Both could be viable but I found them rather clunky.

You can make budget changes to this build and it will definitely work for lower difficulties and/or kill monsters slower, but it still functions well. Storm Armor is a pure DPS choice and Energy Armor/Pinpoint Barrier raises your crit chance and your armor, making it very helpful on those fronts. To increase your IAS, run Slow Time/Stretch Time over Teleport. If you lack the necessary APoC, try out Star Pact over Meteor Shower.

You can also make powerful changes if your gear is better than mine. If your Crit and IAS are high enough, run Cold Blooded over one of the two non-CM passives, and run Bone Chill over Cold Snap. You could also try Chain Reaction over Unleashed but that might be dicey. If you want to farm faster, you should probably play Archon but if you are tired of that, try Wormhole over Fracture if you don't need it.

I'm so glad to see Meteor get these buffs and turn into a viable CM proc spell. Anyone else?

I will say again, the reason I don't like Spectral Blades paired with Meteor is that blades take up attack turns in your rotation, while Explosive Blast lacks a casting animation and is basically a free cast in terms of AP and spell rotation. Blades really slows you down in this way while EB lets you spend your attack turns on just Meteor and Frost Nova.

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