Inferno Melee Wizard - Guide

[Glurp]

This is a build I picked up from a friend, it is basically a Melee Wizard tank.

Abilities
These are the abilties you will be using in this build. This build requires a minimum level of 60.

RMB: Spectral Blade - Deep Cuts
This is your main ability. You will generally be spamming this. Deep cuts is used rather than Healing Blades as Deep Cuts provides more effective healing due to the tiny healing returns in Inferno difficulty. Deep cuts also does more damage (duh).

LMB: Meteor - Star Pact
You generally want to use Meteor as much as you can without starving yourself of AP for other abilities. This spell has a very good proc rate of Critical Mass and LoH, which is a key part of this build. Some people prefer to use Energy Twister with Wicked Winds as it also has a high return of Critical Mass and LoH

1: Diamond Skin- Crystal Shell
This one is a no brainer for a melee tank build. You will generally be spamming this ability as with good procs the cooldown can range from 3-5 seconds.

2: Frost Nova - Bone Chill
As this Diamond Skin you will generally be spamming this, it will have a very short cooldown due to the nature of the spell. A good idea if you are using Meteors to attempt to have the Meteor land as you Frost Nova the enemies to get the most out of Bone Chill. As Bone Chill is just a damage increase you could consider using Deep Freeze, Shatter or even Cold Snap as your rune for this ability.

3: Energy Armour - Prismatic Armour
Another no brainer for this build. Extra Armour and resists.

4: Explosive Blast - Chain Reaction
This is what I use. I tend to use it on cooldown as it has a nice return of Critical Mass and It works best if you have Arcane Power on Crit gear but other people use different abilities such as;
Magic Weapon - Force Weapon / Familiar - Sparkflint
Hydra - Venom Hydra
Mirror Image - Duplicates

Passive skills

Blur
20% Damage Reduction on melee, mandatory for a tank build.

Critical Mass
The heart and soul of this build. Crits reduce cooldowns on your abilities, namely Diamond Skin, Frost Nova and Explosive Blast.

Prodigy
Arcane Power return from your signature spells, this isn't mandatory and can be swapped out for another passive of your choice. Astral Presence is also a good option and I highly recommend Illustionist if you're using Mirror Image instead of Explosive Blast


Gear
Gearing in this build is fairly straight forward. You want Resist (mainly physical) to reduce damage taken, but you also need high Critical Chance for Critcal Mass procs, this then makes Critical Damage your best damage stat.

There are a few rules to follow when looking for gear.

- Look for a weapon with high damage, critical damage, life on hit and a socket.
- Look for a shiled with high armour, block chance, critical chance and intellect (Intellect shields are usually fairly cheap)
- Look for rings with critical chance, critical damage and life on hit
- Look for a neck piece with high critical chance, critical damage and intellect
- Look for gloves, helm and bracers with high critical chance, intellect and critical damage
- Chest armour, pants, shoulders, belt and boots can only have intellect for a damage stat, therefore it is best to look for as much resists as possible on these pieces of gear. 12% Movement speed to boots can also come in very useful.


Follower
The most popular for this build is an Enchantress, she gives a nice 3% Attack Speed boost, Buffs your armour, can disorient enemies and can Charm or Push enemies. You can also use a Templar if you wish for Arcane Power regen and a Heal cooldown, however these are fairly small buffs and the Enchantress will outperform the Templar on most occasions.

What can it do?

I originally started using this build about 30 minutes after I hit level 60. I was originally using the same build I used all through Hell (Blizzard, Venom Hydra) and I got slaughtered at my first champion pack. I went to the AH, spent 400k on a shield and about $15 in the RMAH on other assorted gear (including a weapon) and started using this build. It was AMAZING. I was literally able to tank most champion packs and world bosses with ease. The only time I have died so far was from a Fast - Arcane Enchanted - Molten - Plagued spider pack that I encounted in a small area. I was able to stand face-to-face with the Skeleton King and just stand there attacking, the lowest I dropped was about 30% life during his charging cleave ability.
My stats were (and still are);

(with Energy Armour and Enchantress)
Damage: 14659.47
Health: 20891
Physical Resist: 718
Other Reists: 482-522
Armour: 8139
Block Chance: 18%
Dode Chance: 14.5%
Critical Chance: 22%
Critical Damage: 50%
Block Ammount: 3706-4704
Life per Hit: 1042
Max Arcane Power: 94
Movement speed: 12%

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Feel free to ask any questions. If you've tried this build tell me what you think of it. I myself have only used it in Act 1 as I only got level 60 yesterday but I have a feeling I will continue using it through all of Inferno.

[Creotor]

Enchantress also dies a lot less often due to not being in melee range and not standing in plague pools, arcane rays, desecration and all other good stuff.

[Tirilka]

Act 1 is easy with proper 61+ gear, I am more interested in your Act 2 adventures in this build. But, it looks rather promising and fun =)

[Lysah]

Seen a friend using a build like this in fairly crappy act 1 gear. Didn't even have fairly high crit and was able to keep things frozen pretty much 100% of the time. I was fan, he was able to basically be a tank wizard while I did the DPS on my wiz.

We did belial in our act 1 gear, it wasn't too bad. Mostly what would kill us is Belial's first form spell AoE that would do half of his life instantly, the snakes weren't a problem. I imagine once you get "real" gear most of these issues disappear.

[jaakkeli]

Act 2 works fine as a melee wizard. I can tank anything in Act II just fine with similar stats except more vitality (30k) and all res (800-900). Act III murders me but I'm sure that would change with better stats, I got next to no crit, really crappy armor and no proper shield or weapon for this (only 400ish life on hit).

[Deleted]

I do melee stuff in Act 1 when I'm bored even without tank stats or a special build, its just a very easy Act to outgear. I'm not so sure how well this will stand up in Act 3, but I'm interested in giving a try as soon as I have a bit more resist gear to swap to. If anyone has successfully done Acts 3 and 4 with this though let us know what your stats were and if you actually did take the hits.

[Glurp]

Just an update for people wonder how well it works in later acts.

I finished Act I with ease and have gotten up to finding Zultan Kulle's body in Act 2 without changing any gear from my original post. There were a few mobs I had trouble against (Votex, Fire Chains or Molten, Plagued) and Arcane Enchanted mobs started hurting a bit (but could still stand in the lasers) but it looks like it will work fine for the rest of act 2 once I get a bit more gear, I'm starting to hit a wall now due to a lack of gear where most Unique/Champion packs will beat me unless they are a super easy combs (illusionist is basically a guarenteed kill due to AoE crits).

Currently farming Warden/Butcher for gear, I tried messing with the build a bit and I found venom hydra to have a very low damage output due to the nature of stacking resists and other stats over damage on my gear. I tested more Energy Twister vs Meteor too, Meteor does a truckload more damage but on mobs with the Frozen affix or other things that make me unnable to attack, having Twisters up was generating a lot of crits which would in turn proc Critical Mass and lower my Diamond skin cooldown so I could continue using it while Frozen.

I am still wanting to try out Force Weapon - Venom to see if the periodical crits from that proc Critical Mass.

[Cludo]

How much crit chance would you recommend, 20% ish?

[Lysah]

I am still wanting to try out Force Weapon - Venom to see if the periodical crits from that proc Critical Mass.

My friend was using this. Doesn't prove anything, but he seemed to think it worked =p

[nightshark]

aka build most likely to get nerfed

theres a vid of a guy on youtube using this with 50k hp/20k dps/400-500 resistances/30% crit/some life on hit and regen/AP on crit and he just totally facerolls act 3 champ packs. everything is pretty much perma frozen.

[Glurp]

aka build most likely to get nerfed

theres a vid of a guy on youtube using this with 50k hp/20k dps/400-500 resistances/30% crit/some life on hit and regen/AP on crit and he just totally facerolls act 3 champ packs. everything is pretty much perma frozen.

Do you have a link to these videos? I feel that 30% crit is far too low to permafreeze mobs. I am rarely able to do that in Act 1/2 unless it's some stupid affix like Horde or Illusionist allowing me to mass AoE everything. The trouble with keeping mobs permafrozen too is that once you deal damage the freeze breaks, so frost nova doesn't stop all incoming damage as if you're keeping everything frozen then you can't attack it.

I looked around on youtube and links from the Wizard forum but the only videos I found of were people absolutely facrolling act 3/4 because they overgeared it. In particular I found 2 videos (post 1.0.3) of a person with 31k damage, 1k all rest, 1.5k physical resist, 10.7k armour, 49% crit chance and 197% crit damage

http://youtu.be/10nIK7WDRC4
http://youtu.be/Iw4xRKrh0jQ

[Chouzan]

Sme has like 4 threads on the Wizard forums all to post limit with nearly this exact same build. They also found that Chain Reaction just overwrites your current Explosive Blast, doesn't just add to it so it's a net loss compared to another substitute.

[Glurp]

Sme has like 4 threads on the Wizard forums all to post limit with nearly this exact same build. They also found that Chain Reaction just overwrites your current Explosive Blast, doesn't just add to it so it's a net loss compared to another substitute.

Thanks for this information. I guess short fuse will be the way to go then, but I'm still experimenting with other abilities in this slot.

[freelapdance]

Been playing around with this recently although I use the poison hydra rather than explosive blast atm and Jesus it is a lot of fun. Really solid spec and with some decent crit rate its insane.