Actually, come to think of it, my wizard uses Evocation with only one cooldown spell, but that’s a bit of a niche case.
If you rely heavily on images, then consider Illusionist. This lets you relax your crit numbers and take Force Armor instead of Pinpoint Barrier. You will always have an image up when you need one (i.e., when you get hit), and Force Armor will make it possible to do some fighting without having 100% uptime on Diamond Skin. Those crit numbers are great if you get a lot of AP on crit so you can spam Arcane Orb, and they are certainly wonderful if you invest heavily in crit damage.
If you are just using high crit to keep Diamond Skin up, I would humbly submit that there are more efficient ways of surviving inferno. Diamond Skin does not scale all that well, as you will soon see.
ETA, high crit with a fast cast signature and Arcane Dynamo is sexy as hell. I had monstrous orb crits very regularly when AD was fully charged.
So last night in a public game, someone in my party posted in the chat window a rare he picked up, asking if anyone could use it. How in the world did he do that?
Open your inventory. Open the chat box. Mouse over the item you want to link. Shift-click.
At this point, I’m sufficiently all-in on the crit plan that I’m going to keep going with it. A few questions:
1 - What slots can give AP on crit? I’m getting 9 each from my hat and my (one-handed) weapon at the moment.
2 - Do hydra crits count for AP on crit/CM procs?
3 - Also with the hydra - do hydra shots use up the AD bonus? That could actually be either good or bad, as I will cheerfully abuse the AI when I can by shooting my missiles & hydra around corners at bad guys who can’t quite figure out how to walk through an open door.
Oh, I love crit and stack it via gear, myself. I was just making a few skills suggestions that might fit into a crit build.
- Hat, weapon, and offhand. I got to 30 AP on crit between three items, and I found it pretty satisfactory with Orb and my attack speed. Orb (Tap the Source) has a coefficient of 33%, so I could refill my AP fairly consistently. I had MM (Seeker) as a backup if I started to get unlucky. That has a 100% coefficient, so it was very easy to refill and charge up AD. I ran a lot of lph with this build, too. If I needed to refill my life and AP, I just ran around a corner and spammed MM.
I did not have enough firepower with this build to carry on past A1 inferno, but it was incredibly fun to play. Perhaps I will try it again when I can afford better gear.
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Hydras don’t do anything. Only the DoT on Venom Hydra can actually crit. Hydra has a coefficient of 0%, so you get no life per hit, no AP per crit, no life steal, nothing from hydra strikes.
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In my observation, Hydra discharges the AD stack but does not increase damage. I’ve only really tested with Venom, though. It should be easy to experiment with if you turn the damage numbers on.
These coefficients you speak of: What do they apply to, and where can they be found?
Skill coefficients apply to any and all all effects that are triggered when the skill strikes a mob. For instance, if your weapon is +500 life on hit, then it is really +500 life on hit for a skill whose coefficient is 1.0.
Actual Effect = Base Effect * Skill Coefficient
Suppose you are running the Paralyze passive for the 8% stun chance. But you run it with Living Lightning, whose coefficient is a miserable 2%. Then you really only have a .16% chance to proc a stun per attack. Of course you want to run it with Lightning Hydra. But the Hydra’s coefficient is 0%, so it has no chance to proc anything at all. Hence people who keep thinking that Paralysis is broken.
Coefficients are meant to reduce the effectiveness of large AoE spells for obvious reasons. A Blizzard that hits five or six mobs would return thousands of life with every tick. This clearly does not happen. As you can see, Blizzard has a frightfully low coefficient.
The Wizard table can be found here. These are very easy to verify with a little testing.
I’ve got a quick question. Does anyone know why every time you log into a different computer that Blizzard requires you to change your password (I realize it’s security oriented btw, but why a password CHANGE, instead of just a verification??)…and, more importantly, is there any way to get around it (other than not loading it on a new computer)? I borrowed a friends laptop yesterday so I could get my Diablo fix while on the road, and it wouldn’t let me log in until I went through a password change. That’s a pain in the ass, since the password I use is one I have memorized, as I use it for other things, and if I take off for a couple of weeks or whatever I’ll almost surly forget it (thus necessitating a password recovery and change).
Also, if I got one of those security authenticator fob thingies would I still have to do this whenever I change machines or use a new machine? I’m sure this isn’t a problem for most people, but I actually change machines fairly often, especially when I’m on the road, since I don’t have a gaming laptop anymore.
-XT
Weapon, OH, helm, bracers, gloves, jewelry.
And moving on to coefficients, here’s a fascinating tidbit from a Reddit talk with some of the D3 devs.
I think this is absolutely fascinating, especially since LS is considered virtually worthless by the marketplace. I’ve been meaning to do some back-of-the-napkin numbers on how much LS is needed for it to actually be useful, but if someone beats me to it, well, I’m not going to complain. 
As for me, I hit act 2 inferno last night. It’s a gear check, and boy did I fail. Time to go shopping for a 1h that has at least 800 dps, a socket, and some combination of crit, crit damage, 100+ int, or AP on crit. Not looking forward to paying for this…
This cannot be right. Only wizard-specific gear returns AP on crit. And only wands, sources, and wizard hats are wizard-specific. You cannot filter for AP on crit for any other items. Perhaps some set items have it unexpectedly, but that would be about it.
And moving on to coefficients, here’s a fascinating tidbit from a Reddit talk with some of the D3 devs.
I think this is absolutely fascinating, especially since LS is considered virtually worthless by the marketplace. I’ve been meaning to do some back-of-the-napkin numbers on how much LS is needed for it to actually be useful, but if someone beats me to it, well, I’m not going to complain.
As for me, I hit act 2 inferno last night. It’s a gear check, and boy did I fail. Time to go shopping for a 1h that has at least 800 dps, a socket, and some combination of crit, crit damage, 100+ int, or AP on crit. Not looking forward to paying for this…
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Life steal is not affected by coefficients, no. But it is affected by a global 80% haircut in Inferno. Hitting a mob for 50k at 50% mitigation, 2.5% life steal, and the Inferno haircut yields 125 life. You have to stack quite a lot of it to notice.
Confirmed this for Arcane hydra, at least. Unfortunate, as the hydra and temporal flux are a match made in heaven; I tried replacing my hydra with the arcane meteor but things did not go well in testing. I think Hydra is probably more important to me than AD would be.
Temporal Flux works with Arcane Hydra just fine. Ditch the AD and try Arcane Torrent (Disruption) instead. Arcane Torrent takes a little getting used to, but the 15% bonus to all Arcane damage after you land the Torrent is absolutely huge.
Whoops, I was thinking of just crit. Don’t mind me.
Sure, but the dev in question seemed convinced that sooner or later that players would see the value of LS. And, hey, pretty much any stat needs to be stacked to be noticeable. Maybe LS is no different even the inferno nerf.
It doesn’t, so yes. Look again, there is an option to “answer your security question” from the login screen itself, without going to battle.net. Took me several strings of curses before seeing it and facepalming myself face-backwards, it’s not obvious.
I can’t use group channels and suspect it may be due to playing across the pond. Anybody else having this problem? The message I get is along the lines “you can’t use that when you’re not ingame.”
Sure, you have to stack any stat that you want a build to turn on. But LS is still a ba deal. The amount of LS per item you can get is too low. And LS is too situational, to boot. The amount of life you can steal is limited by the amount of life the mob has left. Life on hit will return everything it is supposed to return even if the struck mob is down to a hair of life, but this obviously reduces the utility of LS.
Right now LS is too small, you need to collect too much of it to hit equivalence in lph, and it is only situationally useful even once you do. The only advantage it has at the moment is that it is very cheap.
I’m stuck and I am not sure how to advance at this point.
I just got my monk to Inferno and can still do okay with most of act one, so far. However, I have trouble with elites. I can’t really buy any upgraded equipment since I only have 101K in gold. I just replayed act four in Hell but didn’t get that much money from it.
What is my best bet for farming some good gold?
I’ve been able to make some pretty decent cash runs doing the last half of act 3 in hell difficulty. I forget the exact waypoint but it’s the one that starts you on the battlefield (outside the keep). Or you could start on the bridge itself. I run up to azmodan himself and usually do about 150-200k per run. Plus theres lots of elites for Nephalem valor stacks, which is why I like it more than act 4. Also its pretty straightforward, unlike the mazes of the keep itself.
Jeez - how much gold find do you have on?
A quick tip: Never vendor anything that’s item level 61 or higher. The essence you get for smashing them beats the vendor price.