I would like to share with you, a build I've been running for some time now with great success. This is my second Wizard, and with Archon and CM/WW getting stale, I was determined to come up with something just as good, if not better than those signature builds. Thus, I came up with a build I coin "Frozen Furor". This build is viable at any monster power.
The Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bZQlST!gTW!cYZYca
Video:
Using a combination of Lighting and Ice, you become a force to be reckoned with! Dispatch large masses of mobs in seconds and burn through rares, elites, and goblins quickly!
Skills and Passives:
Shock Pulse: Living Lightning - This ability is a mid ranged attack used primarily to help generate arcane power and quickly stack up Arcane Dynamo to 5 stacks.
Ray of Frost: Sleet Storm - This is a close ranged, yet powerful 360 degree attack that deals a stream of rapid cold damage. Chills anything it touches, thus triggering your Cold Blooded passive, and does incredible damage when used properly with Arcane Dynamo.
Teleport: Wormhole - Great for traveling quickly around the map, breaking out of jailer, or avoiding any other nasty elite affix that may cross your path. Feel free to use any other rune that fits your play style here.
Blizzard: Stark Winter - Blizzard is an extremely powerful ability used at any range, especially when you extend its reach to 22 yards. This ability covers a large area and diminishes trash quickly. Added bonus of slowing movement speed of you enemies and applying a chill effect to trigger Cold Blooded passive.
Magic Weapon: Blood Magic - Increased damage and life steal. If you're using a two handed weapon with high life steal, feel free to swap the rune on this weapon, or exchange it completely. My recommendations if using a two hander... Force Weapon, Slow Time: Time Warp, Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction, or Diamond Skin: Prism.
Storm Armor: Reactive Armor - The skill that makes this build sing. Reactive armor is amazing passive damage to both melee and ranged mobs. It pairs wonderfully with life steal, especially with a two handed weapon. It procs every time you are hit, and reflects 70% weapon damage as lightning back to the attacker. You also have the benefit of Storm Armor firing off at 100% weapon damage periodically for considerable damage.
Reactive Armor also triggers when hit by Molten trails, Electrify bolts, Fire Chains, and Mortars. It does NOT however, trigger from Reflect damage, Desecrate, Plague, and Arcane beams.
Alternative Armors:
Ice Armor: Jagged Ice - Hits nearly twice as hard as reactive armor, can freeze enemies, and offers 12% melee reduction. However, it does not work against any ranged attackers.
Ice Armor: Crystallize - At 3 stacks, this increases your armor by 60%. If you like to stand in everything, this ability works great, especially against reflect, however, will not increase your damage versus many other packs that you have opportunities to reflect damage back.
No Armor Spell Option:
If you're brave, stick Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction, or Slow Time: Time Warp and drop your armor spell!
Passive: Critical Mass - Great for resetting the cool down on Teleport. Feel free to use any other passive if you do not feel the need to reduce that single cool down. Can try Blur, Power Hungry, Illusionist, or if you're brave, Glass Cannon instead.
Passive: Arcane Dynamo - At 5 stacks, this passive will increase the damage of your next attack by 75%! Paired with Living Lightning, this stacks up quickly, and when channeling Sleet Storm, as long as you channel, every tick of Sleet Storm has this amazing damage boost. This works great with Blizzard as well.
Passive: Cold Blooded - 20% extra damage against chilled or frozen targets, a must for this build.
Weapon Choices:
I would like to point out, that with this build, the lower your attack speed, the better Arcane Power management you will have. Focus on average damage, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage.
One-Handed - A slow, yet powerful one-handed weapon (Spear or Mace) with as much average damage that you can find with life steal and a socket. Any critical hit damage or main stat is an added bonus.
Two-Handed - A slow, 2 handed weapon (Skorn, or Doom Hammer with 1400+ average damage, socket, and life steal)
Off-Hand - The Oculus. Yes, this beauty of an offhand offers up incredible average damage, huge main stat roll, arcane power on crit, crit chance, up to 6% bonus damage vs elites, can increase the duration of your Blizzard ability (3 seconds max), and reduces the cool down on your Teleport ability (4 seconds max).
I try to gear for bonus vs elites, as it adds up damage quickly. I currently run with 14% bonus vs elites, though, can run up to 44% if I equip a Stone of Jordan.
A quick example: If you have 14% bonus vs elites, and 300K sheet damage, when you cross an elite, rare, or goblin, you will be damaging those opponents as if you had 342,000 sheet damage!
A few notes on gear selection...
I recommend 20 Arcane Power on Crit, if using one-handed weapon.. You can get away with 10 using a slow two-handed weapon paired with Diamond Skin: Prism, or picking Power Hungry as your a passive.
LOW attack speed. Sleet Storm shines with high average damage, crit, and crit damage, avoid attack speed if you can help it. If you're above 1.5 APS, you will start to find your Arcane Power draining too quickly.
I love a little pickup radius, never hurts to pick up all the gold, and, when you're channeling, you can just mouse over health globes to snag them if your radius is high enough.
You can use Frostburn Gauntlets with this build, as a matter of fact I recommend them! This turns Sleet Storm into 473% weapon damage as cold, and Blizzard into 663% over 6 seconds as cold. However, yes, a great pair of rare gloves will perform on par, or possibly better. I've run with Frosties for quite a while. Honestly, even with my nice crafted my gloves. I can't tell a difference in kill speed.
I enjoy farming Act 2 quite often, and I use Tyrael's Might for that reason. This allows me to do an addition 15% damage to any demons that cross me, it also supplements me with the ability to have 24% movement speed, an additional 4% vs elites, and the joy of using a nice crafted bracer.
Using a one-handed weapon and off-hand can make some reflect damage packs a touch tougher using Tyrael's instead of a 3-piece Zuni set. However this extremely easy to overcome!
I will be adding more to this guide as questions arise that I have not covered in this guide. Let me know what you think after you give it a shot.
Cheers!
