[Wizzard] What Hydra do you use, and why?

[Vynistra]

Totally Venom.
It ate Diablo up in Hell using this build - Wizard! as it gets the 20% buff from Cold Blooded long as you pop Ray of Frost on him even momentarily.

[Danish]

Awesome, thanks for the info! <3

[Bigtimmy]

Venom Hydra is fantastic when you get the opportunity to cheese mobs into standing in the venom pool, which includes many bosses, and the occasional slow and/or trapped elite pack. It does not scale at all with crit from what I have been reading (though it does scale well with attack speed). Even in optimal situations, its effectiveness can depend on your particular setup.

Arcne Hydra scales well with crit and crit bonus damage, and is vastly superior in many situations for inferno simply because mobs move way too fast to stand in venom pools. This is most of what I'd consider the "real world" of Diablo. And that is totally not even taking into account the optional passive for a very mediocre 30% slow (Once you have a decent amount of HP, the heal from the Templar is garbage, and the Scoundrel applies a 60% slow in addition to boatloads more dps).

[jamlol]

Totally Venom.
It ate Diablo up in Hell using this build - Wizard! as it gets the 20% buff from Cold Blooded long as you pop Ray of Frost on him even momentarily.

Doesn't Cold Blooded only give extra frost damage? shouldn't affect the venom hydra at all

[Chrispotter]

Doesn't Cold Blooded only give extra frost damage? shouldn't affect the venom hydra at all

Frozen or chilled targets take 20% more damage.

Dosnt say it does 20% more cold damage.

[Stormgnoef]

i'am only 42 with my wizard but i use arcane hydra for the aoe

[Vynistra]

Doesn't Cold Blooded only give extra frost damage? shouldn't affect the venom hydra at all

It says cold dmg done is increased, but for some reason it does affect Venom Hydra.

[Deleted]

Lightning purely for aesthetic reasons, but to be fair I don't use Hydra at all. If you're playing solo in inferno you're best off investing in a decent weapon and killing things fast, yes it's pay to win but that's the nature of the beast unfortunately.

[Newbryn]

Venom hydra is obviously the only choice.

[YersiniaPestis]

I don't get it. How do people stick to venom hydra? Nothing stands still in Inferno. Everything just runs after you trying to kill in a few hits. I farm act1 at ease and progress in act2 somewhat with some struggle. I use Lightning hydra because it just hits stuff and I don't have to worry about projectile travel time while kiting the stuff around.

[Vulturia]

OP. Why is your name not Rincewind. Why. The heck. Is it not Rincewind??

[Lysah]

For those of you who have experience with the poison hydra..

Would you consider it being too powerful? Not in line with other abilities, etc?
I'm mainly worried that the hydra will get a nerf, a spell I found to be very cool back in Diablo 2.

If you don't know yet, you can only have one out at a time. Kind of killed the spell for me when I learned that. Instead of being a primary AP dump it's just a side pet now, though still a very awesome spell.

[Deleted]

Lightning purely for aesthetic reasons, but to be fair I don't use Hydra at all. If you're playing solo in inferno you're best off investing in a decent weapon and killing things fast, yes it's pay to win but that's the nature of the beast unfortunately.

Umm, almost every single wizard in inferno uses hydra, because it's just too good to not use it..

[Vanero]

In Act 3 inferno, I feel as if venom hydra is clearing out the elites/bosses and he summons a wizard to run around and hold the mob's attention.

[Taia]

Venom Hydra, it's just an insane amount of damage

Pretty much this.

[Deleted]

Venom of course:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...OlS!XYf!bbaYbZ

Act 2 inferno, pretty solid build I think

[kumduh]

In Act 3 inferno, I feel as if venom hydra is clearing out the elites/bosses and he summons a wizard to run around and hold the mob's attention.

Well put! It does more damage than I do!

[Konik]

venom hydra + blizzard = only way I found to progress through act2 inferno so far..neither illusionist nor arcane builds worked for me well

[Aernath]

philosophically I say best defence is offence, hence if you kill someone fast enough you don't need that much defensive abilites.
so I push my unbuffed 5,5k dps to 8.2k with this spec:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jSR!XfY!YZZaZa
and from hydra point of view, arcane hydra becomes a fast spamming long range aoe and single effective sentry gun with this.
incredible with aoe, i just swap glass cannon to temporal flux if i need some kiting with extremely powerful elite packs,
again arcane hydra is damn useful with the temporal flux, arcane slowing thingy.
normally i don't need that either and stick with glass cannon thanks to scoundrel's multishot dazing ^^
(so use an attack speed bow with scoundrel for faster effect applications)
also i strongly recommend using some heal when hit items at least 3-4 of them, damn useful when fast kiting and your arcane sentry gun spamming while you're running ;b

ps: lvl54, hell, act 2

[Deleted]

(Once you have a decent amount of HP, the heal from the Templar is garbage, and the Scoundrel applies a 60% slow in addition to boatloads more dps).

The heal may me small but the templar also gives taunts, passive heal and a stun if you specc him right