Two wizards, both alike in xp,
In third Diablo where we grind our loot...
Sorry, Shakespeare.
Okay. Enough coat-tailing and click-pandering.
Diablo 3 season 1 is a whopping three days old, and pretty much all the good stuff has already happened. The world firsts have come and gone (I was online and like...level 17 when the first NA T6 Malthael kill happened. I believe I said something like "holy monkeyfuck, Cookie, we're doing it wrong"), the leaderboards are topped, and Twitter is full of screenshots of the phat lewtz people are getting from greater rifts and Greed. It pretty much seems like in three days, I've gone from "Oh this is going to be soooooo cool" to "Welp. Everyone else has already been there and done that... Better than me."
Being a casual makes me sad.
But on to the titular purpose of this post: Wizard builds.
My girlfriend and I both run Wizards, and we usually duo on Torment 3 or so, because speed is good and not having to pay attention is important when you are constantly under siege by kittens. On our non-season mains, we both run disintegrate builds, but since she's a cheating whore and has four pieces of Tal'rasha's, she runs with a four-element setup while I run pretty much exclusively arcane. Both builds put out a LOT of damage, but my build especially lacks for survivability. Since we just run on T3, it doesn't really matter too much, but it's the biggest thing keeping us out of higher torment levels and higher rank greater rifts. So, being the experimentally-inclined bitch that I am...
I went all mad scientist on my seasonal wizard. And I've had some if not surprising, at least entertaining results.
See, when I started playing Diablo, Cookie was already 70. I pretty much modeled everything I did after how she'd built her wizard, so I only looked at one playstyle: cone-based, melee, glass cannon builds. I basically grew up thinking of sets like frost and lightning as subpar to arcane and fire. What little experimentation I did only narrowed my build rules even more: everything I put together had to have Energy Armor/Pinpoint Barrier, Magic Weapon/Force Weapon, and Familiar/Sparkflint. Because crit, damage, and more damage. That didn't leave much room in my build for mobility, debuffing, or cooldowns. Over the last few months, Cookie and I converged on the One True Build: Three buffs, Arcane Orb/Arcane Orbit, Spectral Blade/Thrown Blades, and Disintegrate/Entropy. Passives: Glass Cannon, Blur, Dominance, and the 15yd damage bonus.
Then the update happened, and we rerolled, and suddenly I was stuck with Magic Missile and Ray of Frost for twenty-odd levels. I had no choice but to experiment, because let's face it- I am used to driving a Mazerati and someone dumped me in a Vibe. Cookie's done the same thing, and we've ended up with a really fun, surprisingly beefy duo.
I'm ice. She's fire. Hence the title.
Everything I do is PBAOE. I've got Ray of Frost, Ice Armor, Frost Nova, Magic Weapon, Familiar, and Spectral Blade. She's got Blizzard/Apocalypse, Hydra/Mammoth, Energy Armor/Pinpoint, Magic Weapon, Familiar/Sparkflint, and Spectral Blade. It's very I hold, she punches.
What I really like about the frost setup I've got right now is that everything serves to up my damage in some way. Frost Nova debuffs mob damage taken by 30%, the ice armor aoe debuffs everything MORE with Cold Blooded, and the ray of frost storm makes everything pretty much melt. Adding the squishier damage from Cookie's fire build, and it's taken us from having a hard time on Master to probably bumping up to Torment. And we're level 53 right now.
Doesn't sound like a big deal, but I'm pleased with it, dammit.
I'm really excited to see what we're able to do with these characters once we hit 70. It's funny, how two characters of the same exact class can play so differently, but my seasonal wizard is a completely different experience from my main.
I'm going to be spending my time between D3 and Champions for the foreseeable future, and you can catch me as @ScarletShrike or Roxina#1469. Catch you ingame!
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