Glass Cannon Wizard Build

Glass Cannon Wizard Build (Hell and Inferno) submitted by cdxliv.

Like many fellow wizard players, I blasted through nightmare feelng pretty good spamming arcane orbs and blizzard.

However as soon as I hit the first rare mob in Hell, I died 40 times, bashed my face against the desk and contemplated rolling a monk or barb.

I messed around with a variety of builds, including crit cd reduction, freeze/paralysis run and gun, some of these strats worked but they took an insane amount of kiting for hell mobs.

So after a lot of tinkering and optimization, I present to you, the spelless pure dps wizard. You will melt through everything in Hell and have a pleasant time soloing in inferno.

The Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UZXOSj!YWf!YbabZa

Basic concept: Focus on raising Intelligence only, and maximize dps output with a high damage 2 handed weapon. Using Familar [10% buff] and Magic Weapon [15% buff] to further increase damage output and Energy Armor + Dimond Skin to defend. Damage output is done through Ray of Frost, or Disintegrate.
Here's my damage before and after Familar and Magic Weapon A difference of 12000

Here's my damage before and after Familar and Magic Weapon A difference of 12000:




Gear:

Prioritize: Raw Damage> Intelligence> Attack Speed%>Vitality Consider getting a helm that increases maximum AP so you can output damage for longer. Every socket (besides weapon and helm) should be filled with the highest topaz you can afford. Do not craft, just buy them at the AH, much cheaper than combing them yourself (Flawless Square and below)

Variants: There are two variants to this strategy, one is with disintegrate, the other is with ray of frost. It depends on how lazy you are, disintegrate is more AOE focused with the use of the Chaos Nexus rune, whereas Ray of Frost has higher damage+a slowing effect but requires some amount of effort in aiming. Personally I would run disintegrate in Hell and Ray of Frost in Inferno.

If you choose disintegrate, swap out the cold blooded passive ability, for astral presence to gain some extra AP and regen. With Ray of Frost, the Cold Blood rune lowers the Arcane cost of casting to 12 so you can spam it for at least a good 30-40 seconds before you are drained.

Strategy: Every 4 minutes you engage your three buffs, Energy Armor+Familar+Magic Weapon, you can see Energy Armor's countdown, so that will be you gage of when to rebuff pressing 2/3/4. For regular mobs, you don't even have to move, just stand at one place spam Disintegrate/Ray of Frost until they are all dead. If there's a big group, just diamond skin and keep on spamming.

For rare mobs, you can choose to focus on the small guys first, or just diamond skin in and target down the big boss, run a little and kill the small guys. When you run out of AP, get some distance, use electrocute to regain AP with the surge of power rune, you should be maxed and ready to spam very quickly. This build is beautiful against boss fights, with around 8000 dps in Hell you should be able to focus down the third act
Boss in around 30 seconds.

Rare mobs are much tougher than boss fights depending on the nature of the mob, but I have yet to face any mobs that took more than 3 death to kill in inferno.

DPS DPS DPS: Get yourself the highest damage 2 handed weapon you can afford at the AH for your level (a piece of level reduction gear can save you a lot of gold and increase the damage ceiling), Focus on only damage raising attributes for your gear, intelligence, attack speed% and +dmg, vitality is a plus. Instead of mutiple damage output spells, focus only on Disintegrate or Ray of frost, using your skill slots for damage buff abilities. For this build to be viable, you should aim for a minimum of 12000 unbuffed damage, which translates to around 20000 dps after buff.