Great frost wizard build

[Rhaide]

Hello all. I thought I'd share this build here. I rocked a triple buff disintegrate/black hole build for a long time, but upon switching to a harder difficulty and reaching level 70, I found that my build (which largely consisted of buffing myself and holding down the right mouse button until everything was dead) wasn't working anymore.

I read up on current theory for wizard builds and found them all bland at best. They were either variants of my (then) current build, or fire stacking via heat wave and wormhole teleport, so I set out to discover a new build.

Enter frost build.

Magic Missile (Glacial Spike)
Arcane Orb (Frozen Orb)
Magic Weapon (Force Weapon)
Frost Nova (Frozen Mist)
Blizzard (Snowbound)
Black Hole (Absolute Zero)

Passives: Cold Blooded, Glass Cannon, Prodigy, Audacity

The concept is simple, buff youself with your Magic Weapon, drop a black hole in the middle of the enemy group followed immediately by a blizzard, then start spamming those arcane orbs. The damage output is incredible, if you're not too scared of the damage of your enemies, the frost nova can be used offensively with the rune I listed above; alternatively, the rune can be replaced to repurpose the spell defensively. With negligible arcane power regen via gear, I've still found that with this build, I rarely have to toss more than 3-4 magic missiles into the fray in a fight to replenish enough power to toss the orbs needed to finish the fight. Against stronger elite packs, the added bonus of the extra freeze via glacial spike is more useful than it originally appears.

This is a first draft and the Magic Missile and Frost Nova are the weakest links and may be replaced, possibly as my gear improves. For the moment however, this build has increased my damage output immensely and packs and bosses alike fall to my icy onslaught in no time.

I've found the pros and cons of this be as follows:

Pros:
High burst damage output (enough to finish most fights quickly)

Good battlefield control without the use of damageless gimmicks like teleport

Most every spell in the build has a high damage output, so you're never 'just buying time' no matter what you're casting.

The "Audacity" passive finds great use here because being close to an enemy isn't as dangerous due to their constant slow speed.

Cons:
Weak to teleporting elite packs, you lose your battlefield control, and with little in the way of defense otherwise, you can die quickly if your toughness is lacking. In this case, consider switching out audacity or glass cannon as they require you to remain close to the action and take more damage respectively.

May not be great if you're ON THE BORDER of a new difficulty, this build loses effectiveness if you're not able to burst things down within a short time of your arcane power running out. If you're just switching to a new difficulty, this may not be the build for you.

Related to the prior con, elites with the 'Extra Health' affix can pose some difficulty if they are a particularly high damage mob because you can't kill them as quickly as you otherwise would with this build. Couple this with the 'waller' affix and you can have some troublesome packs.

Hope this helps someone.

Also, feel free to give your own input here, I'd love to try out some suggestions for slight alterations. As I said, this is a work in progress, very much still a first draft.

[Valeron]

what about using electrocute with lightning blast as your AP builder, it has a higher dps than magic missle

[S7orm]

prepare getting obliterated by the first fire chain + any slow combo without OhShit skills and low toughness (+ Glass Cannon - blur)

[Fencers]

I use this build for a Frost Wiz: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...fN!WRXY!ZcZYcZ

Using a unique fires 2 magic missiles at once which effectively doubles the DPS output. Allowing me to lock down almost anything threatening if my Ice Nova is on CD or am out of AP. It's a mid range spec when played at it's best- so that everything is constantly ticking damage on the mobs. If enemies are too dangerous you can drop blizzard and fire off frozen orbs till you AP meter is dry (very powerful) and just cold snap to safety (granting a mild invulnerability window every 5/secs).

Black Hole, Blizzard, Frozen Orb and Magic Missile as needed. Can shred mobs and CC nearly the entire screen.

I take a lot of +blizzard and +arcane power on gear with my double magic missile gloves. Paragon points on resource cost reduction and crit.

[Valeron]

I use a frost build as well but it is a bit more defensive with energy armor (prismatic armor). Plus I have teleport as one of my skills as well.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...ON!WVcY!bcYZcZ

I like paralysis with electrocute as I can get quite a few stuns in.

[Rhaide]

prepare getting obliterated by the first fire chain + any slow combo without OhShit skills and low toughness (+ Glass Cannon - blur)

Unless the fire chain is coupled with a teleport or waller affix, ive had no trouble with 'slows' coupled with fire chains, usually packs die too quickly for it to matter, also, they rarely move much.

- - - Updated - - -

I use this build for a Frost Wiz: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...fN!WRXY!ZcZYcZ

Using a unique fires 2 magic missiles at once which effectively doubles the DPS output. Allowing me to lock down almost anything threatening if my Ice Nova is on CD or am out of AP. It's a mid range spec when played at it's best- so that everything is constantly ticking damage on the mobs. If enemies are too dangerous you can drop blizzard and fire off frozen orbs till you AP meter is dry (very powerful) and just cold snap to safety (granting a mild invulnerability window every 5/secs).

Black Hole, Blizzard, Frozen Orb and Magic Missile as needed. Can shred mobs and CC nearly the entire screen.

I take a lot of +blizzard and +arcane power on gear with my double magic missile gloves. Paragon points on resource cost reduction and crit.

I like the sound of that, my gear is LOADS of +arcane orb and some arcane power. I'm still relatively low, gearwise, but my orbs each crit (often btw) for about 2.5M, which more than does the trick on master, not quite to torment yet though. I may try your build if i can get enough +blizzard and some more AP.

- - - Updated - - -

what about using electrocute with lightning blast as your AP builder, it has a higher dps than magic missle

I had thought of that as it was my go-to builder for a long time (until I got a wand that increased spectral damage by 25%), now I don't use either anymore. The main reason I decided to go with missile is for the freeze, I find it really useful against enemies that manage to slip through if I misplace a hole or blizzard, the damage isn't really a huge factor in my builder. However, if I end up losing any +AP on my gear, I may indeed switch over to electrocute since I'll be using it more.

[Zeddicious]

Have you tried sparkflint instead of Blizzard?
I run:

Chain Light - Surge of Power
Frozen Orb
Sparkflint
Magic Weapon - Force Weapon
Teleport - Wormhole
Black Hole - Spellsteal

Glass Cannon, Prodigy, Cold Blooded and Elemental Exposure.

From what i understand, frozen orb doesn need blizz to get the + damage from cold blooded because of its aoe before explosion.

[Lysah]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/S.../hero/34749471

I also use a frost build...with only one frost spell. Honestly, elemental proliferation sounded awful to me at first, but it's actually quite easy for a wizard to get every element in her spell kit. Frozen orb is easily good enough by itself to lock down mobs and black hole takes care of elites, I don't think it's really necessary to stack multiple ice spells just for extra CC. You also only need one source of cold damage for cold blooded to take effect and buff everything.

Well that's just my two cents.

Also, looking at my own armory it appears that it doesn't show enchants at all - well played Blizzard =p

[Dakara]

Not a Frost build, but I don't think we need a new thread for every "X Wizzard" spec...

Running a "Tanking Arcane" build at the moment:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...jm!bZXh!bcZcYb

Only doing Torment 1 at the moment, just over 200k DPS and 4mil Toughness. When I get more Arcane Power on Crit and/or cost reduction then I'll be able to move some/all of the Arcane power runes into more DPS. Using Templar for regen/heals. I need a decent amount of regen due to my attack speed with a 1h.

The idea behind the build, is get into Melee with as many mobs as possible, drop black hole on them and get a 10-30+ stack of spellsteal then laser them to pieces with Entropy. Arcon is my "Oh Shit" and Elite killer. Running Evocation to keep the CD low on Black hole + Arcon.

Tried a few other passives, such as glass cannon, Dominance, Unwavering Will, and do still swap them in/out from time to time.
Entropy (Disintegrate) can be swapped for Chaos Nexus if you want range with AoE... works well against ranged attacks. Group em up with black hole and range laser them.

I don't change too much for bosses. Just Black Hole with Spellsteal is pretty useless single target so run with Even Horizon to pick stuff up. Disintegrate goes to Intensify for more range (if I need it) and if there's lots of movement (i.e. I cant just face tank) then I drop something for Hydra.

[Valeron]

speaking of Hydras, just got a legendary wand that lets me have two hydras out at a time. Anyone have a good build focused on Hydras?

[Deleted]

Everything with Frozen ORb and sub Zero is very powerfull - not unusual you get 50-60% frost dmg lasting until Black hole is off cd again. I hope it wont get nerfed. Another even more op build imo, is Disintegrate Volatility + Black Hole spellsteal. If you can get a rare mob Black Holed up together with a dozen normal mobs you can pop him in a few seconds (every mob have a chance to blow up for 750% wep dmg, starting a chainreaction).

[Dakara]

Everything with Frozen ORb and sub Zero is very powerfull - not unusual you get 50-60% frost dmg lasting until Black hole is off cd again. I hope it wont get nerfed. Another even more op build imo, is Disintegrate Volatility + Black Hole spellsteal. If you can get a rare mob Black Holed up together with a dozen normal mobs you can pop him in a few seconds (every mob have a chance to blow up for 750% wep dmg, starting a chainreaction).

That's pretty much what I'm doing, but with Entropy. Volatility sounds interesting so must give it a go! I do like Entropy for those moments when the Elite doesn't have adds as it's a higher DPS on the beam... but admittedly, that's what I've got Arcon for.

[Djuntas]

Best build is: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...Sm!cSWY!YcZZZZ Change teleport out, and passives as you like.

I feel like Archon is super good to have - Unless you already good geared for torment1 farming, or if you aint farming torment. Archon is 100 million damage done inn the 20 sec's if you get to use it well. Rift bosses, etc has 300-400 million dmg on torment1. Malthea has 750 million hp on torment1 I belive and archon can be used 2-3 times inn that fight.

[Deleted]

Im running a similiar build:

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/f...4/hero/8595485

Armory doesnt seem to show rerolled stats.. I also have an Azurewrath with 20% increased frost damage, trying to reroll a socket on it.
need to reroll neck for frost damage and head/boots to arcane orb damage. If i manage that it will be brutal!