A Wizard Efficiency Build for All Gear Levels: "Spectral Blizzard"

Thus far, my blog has concentrated mostly on the economics of D3--serving as a vehicle for me to voice my outlandish ideas and help everyone lose money (you're welcome!). I kid, of course, and I still stand by my predictions thus far, but I was thinking about my next contribution and I decided I'd like to write a nice long piece about my current Wizard build, since I'm having so much fun and success farming/leveling with it.

The primary advantage the build has over other popular wizard builds is efficiency. And after all, what is economics all about if not efficiency? Making money, you say? Ok, well, you've got me there...

Reddit has a post today with updated numbers about the most popular builds for 1.0.7, found here:

Popular Skills for All Classes

It shouldn't come as a surprise that pretty much every popular Wizard skill set revolves around two ideas: CM/WW Perma-Freeze and Archon Forever. They're both awesome builds, no doubt, and they're both builds that I've utilized in the past. But for all their popularity, they do have some drawbacks.

I'm definitely not the first to use the following build, as the core idea has been around for quite a while. But I'd like to give you my take on it, with a couple original little tweaks and ideas that should help make the build accessible and enticing for Wizard players of varying gear levels and goals (i.e. farming and/or leveling).

The Skills

The whole build revolves around a few core ideas:

• Allow yourself maximum skill slots to buff your DPS and Movespeed. There is no better way to maximize efficiency than to increase your damage output and your clear speed. These are absolutely key. This rules out CM/WW--it takes too many skill slots to implement.
• Avoid using channeled spells to kill trash mobs, as they are inherently inefficient. Elites are another matter because you can't expect to dispose of them without needing to stand still for at least a few seconds (though preferably under 10). This rules out both Archon and CM/WW again--they both require you to channel and stand still in order to kill trash mobs.
• Relieve pressure from your gearing. Or, in other words, don't have some stringent metric you must hit in order for the build to work properly. Again, CM/WW and Archon require certain gear affixes  and stat minimums to work, which I'll cover in detail later on.
• Stay simple, nimble, and adaptive, allowing you to meet any champion affix combo with ease and also allowing you to carry other champs with ease. Archon has real problems here, especially in groups.

In order to meet these 4 requirements, we need two damage-dealing skills--one primarily for disposing of trash mobs quickly, the other for downing elites quickly and without possibility of death. The choices: Blizzard (Stark Winter) and Spectral Blades (Healing Blades).

Blizzard is a phenomenal skill in 1.0.7. I can't say enough about the damage buff is received (from 260% to 510%), allowing it to simply melt trash mobs like thermite melts ice. The idea is to set the MP level so that 1 click = 1 blizzard = all trash under the falling ice dies by about halfway to three-quarters of the blizzard duration. With the damage buff, this is not hard to do. Here is my rough guide to MP level by DPS, which you'll need to test on your own to make it work just right for you:

• DPS unbuffed < 100k ------> MP0 (A3, 20% Faster Alkaizer runs, great for both farming and leveling)
• DPS unbuffed = 100k - 150k ------> MP1 - MP2 (A3 20% Alk runs again, or for nice elite pack density do A2 VotA runs, which are just Vault of the Assassin to Black Canyon Mines and repeat)
• DPS unbuffed = 150k - 200k ------> MP2 - MP3 (ditto)
• DPS unbuffed > 200k ------> MP3+ (ditto)

Spectral Blades, on the other hand, is mainly there for dealing with elite packs. It delivers a healthy dose of damage and has a fantastic rune in Healing Blades, which will alleviate most if not all need for healing affixes on your gear. It gives you a 5% lifesteal on Spectral Blade attacks, which is enormous. If you've tuned your MP level correctly and you have even just mediocre EHP, this skill should be all you need in order to stay alive against any champion affix combo. Add in the 1.5% lifesteal from Blood Magic on all attacks and you should be comfortable walking right up to elites and tanking them on low MP. Just drop a Blizzard, run up for about 5 strikes of Spectral Blades, collect your loot, and move on! No need for any LoH or lifesteal on your weapon. Here's the full skill loadout I use solo, where you can fully benefit from movespeed bonuses:

"Spectral Blizzard" Build V1 - Solo

Notice those 4 damage buffs (Sparkflint, Magic Weapon, Glass Cannon, and Cold Blooded) giving you an effective 57% additional damage (37% on-sheet, plus another 20% when affected by Blizzard)! Plus, Teleport (Wormhole) and Storm Armor (Scramble) boosting your effective movespeed quite nicely. If this isn't the fastest clearing Wiz build, it's awfully close to it. Sure, you can't sit there for 5 minutes clearing a pack on MP10 with CM/WW perma-freeze, but you'll more than make up for it with sheer volume of elite packs killed at lower MP levels. MP10 isn't even offering 2x the MF/GF (375% base, assuming you're at the cap, and 625% at MP10), and you can go well over twice as fast using this build as you can with other builds at higher MP levels. The new XP bonus does offer you about 6x the XP at MP10 (assuming you're using a Hellfire Ring and with Paragon Stacks), but it has been demonstrated many times that speed runs at lower MP can be extremely efficient for leveling, and they're far less tedious and frustrating.

I'm sure I'll get some flak for this, but this build is also fantastic for multiboxing. It is far less restrictive and  more adaptable than other Wiz builds, making it easy to keep your champs coordinated and your run times down, especially for mixed-champ parties. It gives you the ability to focus all of the DPS on your main champ while simply increasing the MF/GF, pickup radius, and EHP of the others. Personally, I carry two other champs at MP2 with about 200k unbuffed DPS, where the other two contribute effectively nothing to the overall DPS of the party. The runs are incredibly smooth.

The Gear

This is usually the tough part for any build, but not here! The awesome thing about "Spectral Blizzard" is the lack of gear requirements. Namely:

• You don't need any particular Crit Chance or Attack Speed, as on-sheet DPS is all that really matters.
• You need little to no healing affixes--I personally have about 1k life regen, with zero additional LoH, Lifesteal, or Potion/Globe bonus. And I don't even really need the regen all that much.
• EHP is important, but you just need enough to stay comfortable and rarely ever die. Low MP levels relax this need quite a bit.

You don't need to worry about proc-ing anything, so Crit Chance and Attack Speed are as good or bad as any other DPS increase. You only need be concerned that you're getting enough hits/second in to heal with your Spectral Blades and enough EHP to not get 3-shot or so. Personally, I have a measly 1.2 attacks/second weapon with about 1.5 attacks/second total including buffs IAS on gear. It's plenty. My Crit Chance is high only because it's such a good way to increase DPS. My only suggestion is that you try to keep EHP to about double your unbuffed DPS, and to try and do so with as little Vit as possible. Not that more Vit is bad, but it scales poorly with all healing bonuses. Try to keep your health between 30k-40k and focus the rest of your energy on AR/Armor. This will allow you to recover a good bit of your health with each Spectral Blades attack.

I may return to add some gearing ideas in the future, but for now let me know what you think. If you try this build and it doesn't work for you, let me know and maybe I can help!