5221

I killed the last boss on normal, is it a spoiler to say who it is? Well anyway, I’m ready to play nightmare as soon as the maintenance is over. Level 33 and I’m a shade under 20 hours of play time. I was more like 16.5 when I first reached [the last boss] but then I decided to play through the entire act IV again. Archon is amazing for trash clearing.

5222

As stated above, make sure you’re maximizing Soul Harvest. I’m not making this up, but my L24 Wizard just finally caught up to the damage output on my L17 Witch Doctor. They are sick!

5223

Again, I can’t stress enough how much I hate this excuse. Yes, we knew that it was an online-only game. I have internet access. I have a $60 copy of Diablo III installed. I have a valid serial number, user name, and password. I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain.

Blizzard has still screwed up this launch. They have a decade of online gaming experience. They have experience rolling out massively popular games to a hyped audience. They have a worldwide server infrastructure. They had a beta. They knew how many digital copies were preordered and how many physical copies were pressed.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect better from Blizzard. There’s a middle ground between shrugging and saying “you knew the deal, dude” and raging with one-star Metacritic bombing.

5224

So WDs do more damage than Wiz? I’m working on my Wiz now (Lvl12) but not totally sold. Thinking of trying a Barb as a second class to compare.

5225

I honestly didn’t really like soul harvest. You have to get in really close to use it and the majority of the time you can kill the mobs quicker by other means. Maybe it’s just a difference in play style, but I find sacrifice to be more useful, especially against elites and bosses whereas soul harvest becomes useless.

5226

It did for me, by a large margin, until just now. I’ll lay out briefly what I was doing with each.

Witch Doctor (L17) is using Firebats (often with the rune for a single, large bat) and either Toads (explosive rune) or the starter attack with Splinter (3x projectile). Soul Harvest is constantly running and I try to keep it maxed whenever feasible.

Wizard (L24) was kind of feeling a bit meh to me, especially compared to the WD. I tried all sorts of builds and wasn’t finding much “cannon”, even while running Glass Cannon as a passive. He was easily outclassed by my WD… until I hit L20. That level felt like I suddenly hit four new levels for some reason, and now I can say I am very, very happy with the class. It just felt, to me, like a bit of an awkward stage up until then. I felt like I was missing pieces, and I think a big piece for me was the Passive skill you unlock at L20 that grants you 4 arcane power every time you use a signature spell. Prior to that, I felt like I had less effective AE than the WD, especially since arcane power would deplete so quickly. My WD conversely would kill things so fast that mana was never an issue.

So yea, my poor Wizard suffered from the low teens to 20 but I felt like he really took off at that point. I was always trying to keep him equipped with the highest DPS weapon as well, so it wasn’t a gear issue that changed things. Anyway, YMMV (and probably will) but that was my feeling after playing both classes.

5227

+150% damage is never useless! :D Hell, even on a single target it’s still +30% which is nothing to sneeze at in the teens. That’s what’s great about the game, though, there’s a lot of builds for a lot of playstyles. Soul Harvest + Toads + Firebats = nothing lives long enough to do any damage to me.

5228

Has anyone had much luck with that cycle of life power that generates zombie dogs? I have had it slotted for a while but I never managed to get a single dog out of it.

Also the templar’s final ability, Inspiration, is supposed to generate rage / mana / etc… I have him with my barb and I can be standing right next to him and my rage drains out just as fast as it did before I selected that power. Is it busted or are there some rules for seeing it working?

5229

I didn’t find it effective at all in the little time I tried it. I was using Fire Bats and Soul Harvest, so I was often in close. I even picked up a couple pieces of gear with +range to pick up health orbs, as that helps it. In that time, I only ever saw one single dog get raised.

It was probably just bad luck, but it seriously felt more like a 1% chance rather than a 5% chance in the limited time I tried it. With the hordes of guys coming at you I would have thought it would have been more than that, but I opted for the damage reduction to myself and minions instead. I’m planning on trying it again a little later in the game.

5230

Well yeah, I can totally seeing it more viable on harder difficulty levels. It just feels like to me that you don’t need that damage boost on normal when everything already dies so quickly. And I’m still very much in the learning stages with some of the skills. I want to see if I can make that big toad that swallows things useful! :D

5231

I am in, game is up.

5232

I honestly didn’t really like soul harvest. You have to get in really close to use it

Which is why you combine it with Spirit Walk, which is great to have anyway in case you get swarmed or stunned. Rush in, SH, SW, then get the hell out of there and nuke them with your firebats or toads or whatever.

Maybe it’s just a difference in play style, but I find sacrifice to be more useful, especially against elites and bosses whereas soul harvest becomes useless

WD seems to need very different skills/runes against elites and bosses than in general. Haunt, which is normally not worth the bother, is amazing against bosses and elites.

5233

My Wizard is level 28 right now and while I didn’t feel like she ever had any problems with whatever I wanted to try out, I just wanted to express this somewhere and this seemed the best place to do it.

How awesome is Hyrdra!? SO AWESOME.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy my current set up, which I started using right around level 24.

(I mapped my key instead of 1-4 to WASD since I am more comfortable holding the keyboard like that, and I mapped the SHIFT button to Mouse4 (back button on most mice) so I didn’t have to use my WASD fingers to stand still while I attacked, which I thankfully rarely have to do).

W is set to Teleport (or Diamon Skin, but right now Teleport) to get distance or escape Waller elites.

A is set to Hydra (Arcane Hyrdra is incredible, I think that’s level 27 or something though). I love dropping this as a scout but it’s just a LOT of damage output for very little arcane power.

S is set to my armor. S being a bit harder to hit quick, I map skills that I don’t use very often like buffs, shouts, earthquake, call of the ancients, etc to it. But my Wizard has 2,000 health now so I like Storm Armor with Reflective for extra DPS.

D is set to Arcane Orb with the awesome rune that makes the orbs roate around you and explode on guys that get close. This with Storm Armor is usually enough to outright kill enemies that get near you without you having to do anything.

Left mouse is Electrocute with Chain Lighing to hit 6 guys. That’s crazy awesome.

Right Mouse is Disintegrate, because it’s disintegrate.

That set up is working really well for me, anyone doing anything different with their wizard? My passives are Glass Cannon and the one that gives 20 more AP and 2ap/sec regen boost. I found that was plenty of AP vs. Prodigy for the extra AP when I hit with Electrocute, but YMMV of course.

5234

Wizard sounds exciting, actually! :)

I was kind of meh on him, so I never tried him, even in open test. Now I have a WD to play with my friends, I have a Barb to play with my son and I was thinking about creating a char to play solo. Maybe I’ll roll a Wizard.

5235

I remapped the keys down to qwer which is what I use for LoL and find that far more
comfortable than 1234.

5236

My Monk just broke 600dps. I’d be more impressed if the damn game wasn’t scaling the power of my opponents against me. Grrrrr…

5237

Yea I’m rocking the Chain Lightning right now as well and am loving it.

Around L20 on my Wizard, I actually went with a melee setup which I found very enjoyable. I took the -20% melee damage passive, frost armor, and then went with Spectral Blade, Frost Nova, Force Wave, Arcane Orb (the damage shield one), and the Explosion mastery skill. Talk about nasty! It was a lot of fun, but when I got Chain Lightning for Electrocute I just had to switch back to a more traditional role. :P

BleedTheFreak, as far as the Wizard went I didn’t have problems getting through content or anything, but he definitely had nowhere near the firepower that my WD did. It wasn’t even remotely close until L20 where I felt a lot of pieces started coming together nicely. Normal is so bloody easy though you can go through pretty gimpy and still be fine (Edit: Not saying the wizard was gimpy, just that you can make it through normal with just about any kind of setup).

5238

I wish I’d taken a third day off from work. :)

5239

hehe I only took one day off and that was nowhere near enough. Nice to have a game come out that’s really sucked me in.

5240

I’m playing almost exactly the opposite. In the middle of Nightmare 4 person games now, and survivability is pretty key - you can be 3 shotted if you aren’t careful (1-2 shotted by some explosive on the ground crap), so positioning and staying out of melee are pretty key. I’m using arcane orbs, magic missile (looking forward to getting the homing shot for that), teleport, diamond skin, slow time, and archon. Why 3 “defensive” skills? I don’t want to die (since I played HC in D2), and slow time provides tons of utility for my demon hunter and I to have a safe zone in, while teleport (with +30% defense rune) and diamond skin (with bonus absorption) will keep me alive for 6 seconds if things hit the fan.

Generally, the tank(s) run in (warrior and monk), and the hunter and I stay most of a screen away, laying down long range orbs, setting up zones of control, etc. The hunter is good single target DPS, and I’m doing pretty big AOE damage on the tightest packs of mobs. If there is a huge pack of mobs with some boss-types, then archon is activated and the death star becomes fully operational.

I’ve tried hydra and blizzard, and they are really lackluster compared to D2. The DPS is nothing to write home about, either. I guess hydra is a nice fire and forget spell, but doesn’t seem to dent mobs in 4 player nightmare. I’ll consider swapping in a different spell for perhaps teleport as more runes open up (currently level 37), as blizzard or some other spell may provide enough utility to be worth while.

My experiences have nothing to do with solo gameplay, so your experience may be quite different. I find solo D3 to be not too much fun as a wizard.