Wizard build?

[Linthirri Ravensong]

Hi!

I don't get to play much but when I do I love my Wizard. I am only 67 I believe, but I am wondering what spells would be best to use when I do manage to hit 70 (and even when I am leveling)

Thank you for any tips you can give =)

[Vakna]

There are various and vastly different Wizard builds out there each suited to a different type of gameplay. You have to consider though that your build as a Wizard will likely be bound to the type of gear you get, and a specific drop could define your entire skillset.

I'll give you the one I'm using, though it's designed mainly for group play with the idea that someone else is going to be tanking the vast majority of mobs as it lacks some of the control you might need in singleplayer at higher torment. It is also designed around the idea of having at least some bonus Arcane Damage on your gear, along with 2 pieces running AP on crit.

Magic Weapon - Force Weapon
Energy Armour - Pinpoint
Teleport - Wormhole
Blackhole - Spellsteal (switches out for Archon - Improved Archon in single target encounters)
Electrocute - Surge of Power (switches out for Magic Missile - Charged Blast in single target encounters)
Arcane Torrent - Cascade

Passives

Glass Cannon
Dominance
Unwavering Will
Unstable Anomaly


I plan to switch out Dominance for Elemental Exposure once I get the new Hellfire Ring and Tal Rasha 4p, the weapon I'm currently using is Wizardspike (has a 24% chance to fire a free Frozen Orb upon casting an offensive ability, extremely good wep and works very well with Elemental Exposure and TR 4p, but I'd prefer Thunderfury as it does the same job but it's damage is more reliable). You could also switch out Dominance for Prodigy if you want some higher single-target dps uptime.

[Deleted]

http://www.diablofans.com/news/48005...ael-kill-level

there's a frozen orb build at the bottom which is similar to what i use atm. i currently have switched out energy armour for acharon, specifically using it when dealing with elites. the main reason i like it is the bonus frost damage from black hole, can be really useful, and then magic missile freezes tougher enemies when black hole is on cooldown. also, frozen orb is fired, then you can move again, so no standing still and channeling.

also with that build i switched around the passives, taking out elemental exposure and dominance in favour of the arcane power regen one and glass cannon, but that will likely change when i get better geared and go to higher difficulties

[Dakara]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jm!ZXSi!YbZcYc

This is what I run at the moment with +Arcane and +Disintegrate damage. I only have 4 Arcane Power on Crit, so don't have room to move talents. I was using the Templar for more Regen, but got a few Legendaries for my Enchantress and she's doing respectable DPS so it's worth the trade. I do occasionally run out of Arcane Power, but very rarely and if I do I just pop Archon or kite for a few seconds.

With more Arcane Power on Crit, can change Familiar to Sparkflint for more DPS and maybe even the Armor. Deflection is a must imo, as I generally stand still and face tank everything (hence even horizon to mop up elite affixes). Disintegrate rune is flexible. Volitility can be great for a chain reaction in groups, Entropy is more DPS at the cost of range, Volitility can hit all around you and Intensify I use for bosses.

[Lothrik]

This is the build I use currently:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Nj!ZcSi!cZZcbc

I facetank T4 elites with this build and my gear is nothing particularly amazing, just random horribly mismatched level 70 legendaries.

During group play when you're not getting melee'd very often you can (and honestly probably should) swap Ice Armor for Prismatic Armor. If you're farming stuff you massively outgear I'd suggest using Storm Armor.

If you don't need the survivability you can also swap Unwavering Will for Arcane Dynamo. Arcane Dynamo is actually slightly more DPS (2-3%) than Audacity with this build, unless you have a Moonlight Ward (in which case Audacity is 2-3% better than Dynamo).

Cannoneer adds an absurd amount of eDPS, easily 25%+ more than Force Weapon with decent +% Arcane Skill Damage -- it's just stupid not to use.

If you have high (40%+) Arcane Skill Damage on your gear Spectral Blade can potentially be better than Arc Lightning, though it has a lot of issues (it gets interrupted very easily for example) that make me avoid it.

[Not Againnn]

build your own. theres literally millions of combinations so the best thing to do is to experiment and make your own that works with how you play.

[Simulacrum]

The best 'fresh lvl 70' build, in that it doesn't rely on any special items to use, is almost certainly a frozen orb build.

There are some variations on it, but the core is using arcane orb - frozen orb as the AP spender, while buffing its damage as much as possible through magic weapon - force weapon, familiar - sparkflint, and energy armor - pinpoint barrier. Then you use electrocute - surge of power when you don't have the AP to cast frozen orbs, to generate more AP to spend on more frozen orbs. Then you add a 4th spell of your choosing, usually black hole - absolute zero, for the crowd control and buffs it provices to frozen orb.

Personally, I swapped out energy armor with archon, because I feel the archon's single-target damage is needed for bosses and elites.

For passives, it depends a little on how confident you're in your kiting, but personally I went with glass cannon (15% more damage is always worth the cost), unwavering will (because with black hole I can just stand there and spam frozen orbs, as can I with archon active), dominance (the shield means you should *never* die to normal monsters pre-torment4, which in turn means you can just casually stroll past all of them in your search for elites to fight, tossing out the occasional frozen orb to kill a few and refresh your shield), and unstable anomaly (lets me play more recklessly, and allows me to stand there channeling archon safely in situations where I'd have otherwise died).

There's an argument to be made for cold blooded instead of unstable anomaly, or unwavering will, but personally I don't feel like I need more aoe damage anyway, and most of my single-target damage comes from archon, which doesn't benefit from it.

More succinctly, this would be my build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Sj!YhSg!YcZcZa

Currently farming T3 without difficulty with it, in mostly rares (or crappy legendaries without special procs, but very marginally superior stats to rares), with about 5.8 mill toughness and 800k damage on my character sheet. For T4 I'd probably have to get a more kite-oriented build, but for T3 this build can just run past normal monsters, killing a few once and again to keep the shield up, kill most elites without difficulty with just frozen orb spam, and kill difficult elites (or several of them at once) with archon.

Though the lack of teleport does get me killed sometimes (usually when I'm dumb enough to get myself cornered). Still, I feel like adding it would be too big a dps loss to justify the occasional survival, when the penalty for dying now is very small anyway.

The only thing I don't think this build is amazing at is single-target damage; I've yet to be able to kill that stupid skeleton king event in act 1 in time.

build your own. theres literally millions of combinations so the best thing to do is to experiment and make your own that works with how you play.

Why are these useless comments so prevalent in topics like these? Someone asks for advice, and you drop by just to tell them that you won't give any, and that they shouldn't ask?

Really irritates me.

[Deleted]

I had fun with a build (which was mostly decided by my gear).

Spectral blades (with the shield rune)
Force armour (with the all-res rune)
Force weapon (with the 10% dps rune)
Frost nova (with the cold snap rune)
Explosive blast (unleashed rune)
And then either frost hydra/black hole/blizzard. Lot's of constant cc and quite good damage. The only problem was that I didn't really have an AP spender if I didn't take blizzard, but the tankyness was great

[Captainn]

I use Familiar - Sparkflint, Magic Weapon - Force Weapon, Energy Armor with either Prismatic Armor or Energy Tap; and then I take Black Hole - Absolutely Zero; I use Magic Missile - Glacial Spike as a Signature and Arcane Orb - Frozen Orb for a spender.

Passives I use Unstable Anomaly, Astral Presence, Prodigy, and the one where if you stand still you get a bunch of buffs


This allows me to utilize my cold skill damage % increase.

[Not Againnn]

The best 'fresh lvl 70' build, in that it doesn't rely on any special items to use, is almost certainly a frozen orb build.

There are some variations on it, but the core is using arcane orb - frozen orb as the AP spender, while buffing its damage as much as possible through magic weapon - force weapon, familiar - sparkflint, and energy armor - pinpoint barrier. Then you use electrocute - surge of power when you don't have the AP to cast frozen orbs, to generate more AP to spend on more frozen orbs. Then you add a 4th spell of your choosing, usually black hole - absolute zero, for the crowd control and buffs it provices to frozen orb.

Personally, I swapped out energy armor with archon, because I feel the archon's single-target damage is needed for bosses and elites.

For passives, it depends a little on how confident you're in your kiting, but personally I went with glass cannon (15% more damage is always worth the cost), unwavering will (because with black hole I can just stand there and spam frozen orbs, as can I with archon active), dominance (the shield means you should *never* die to normal monsters pre-torment4, which in turn means you can just casually stroll past all of them in your search for elites to fight, tossing out the occasional frozen orb to kill a few and refresh your shield), and unstable anomaly (lets me play more recklessly, and allows me to stand there channeling archon safely in situations where I'd have otherwise died).

There's an argument to be made for cold blooded instead of unstable anomaly, or unwavering will, but personally I don't feel like I need more aoe damage anyway, and most of my single-target damage comes from archon, which doesn't benefit from it.

More succinctly, this would be my build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Sj!YhSg!YcZcZa

Currently farming T3 without difficulty with it, in mostly rares (or crappy legendaries without special procs, but very marginally superior stats to rares), with about 5.8 mill toughness and 800k damage on my character sheet. For T4 I'd probably have to get a more kite-oriented build, but for T3 this build can just run past normal monsters, killing a few once and again to keep the shield up, kill most elites without difficulty with just frozen orb spam, and kill difficult elites (or several of them at once) with archon.

Though the lack of teleport does get me killed sometimes (usually when I'm dumb enough to get myself cornered). Still, I feel like adding it would be too big a dps loss to justify the occasional survival, when the penalty for dying now is very small anyway.

The only thing I don't think this build is amazing at is single-target damage; I've yet to be able to kill that stupid skeleton king event in act 1 in time.



Why are these useless comments so prevalent in topics like these? Someone asks for advice, and you drop by just to tell them that you won't give any, and that they shouldn't ask?

Really irritates me.

the advice is to not listen to anybody else. the game is so variant that literally anything is usable with a little thought.

[Gallahadd]

NotAgainnn, Was it strictly necessary to copy his WHOLE post just for a one line reply?

Here's my current build, works fairly well for farming, but I miss the old LoL crits I got when I used Explosive Blast(short fuse) as my AP spender

The basic idea is to tank ALL THE THINGS, http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jO!ZgSi!YZcccc

Black hole as you're closing to them, Arcane Orb once you're in the group then stand your ground and spam Blade to keep the shield up, refreshing Orbs and Black Hole on CD.

[Teevo]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...gk!WXcY!YcZZbZ

This is what I run.

Electrocute with prodigy passive is for arcane power regeneration, slow time is for mob cc, black hole for extra cold damage plus more mob cc, and mirror images because they cast slow time, frozen orb, and black hole. Plus they taunt for 1 sec.

I can't stand all the passive damage increases wizards have, I hope they get rid of them. I don't even like using magic weapon, but not using it is just gimping a build.

[Varabently]

You can see my build in my signature. I have a lot of +arcane orb and +magic missile and +cold damage, so it works well. I basically use three passives, wormhole, then alternate frozen orb and glacial magic missile. Works really well so far, enjoying it.