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Hellforge: The Wizard of Wohz

by - 10 years ago

One of the most epic parts of being a nephalem in Sanctuary is that there are so many of us! On a daily basis, players are wracking their brains, stashes, and forums for new ideas on how to build a better demon slaying machine. The Hellforge is an iconic location steeped in lore and visited briefly in Diablo II – it is a place for getting dangerous deeds done. We wanted to bottle that same ethos and create a compendium of possible builds for players new and old to research, test, and iterate upon. We will scour the community’s offerings to bring you some of the more intriguing entries in celebration of innovation and inspiration for new creations.


 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s Hellforge where we will take a look at a rather suicidal Wizard. This particular Wizard will fly into Melee range to obliterate champion packs in one short burst of Damage, and thanks to a hefty amount of Cooldown Reduction we will be ready to jump into the fray again in no time.

 

Skill Build:

WizardWohzSkills

 

Actives:

Spectral Blade – Flame Blades: You need a Primary for Arcane Dynamo and this one fits the bill as it further increases your Fire Damage.

Explosive Blast – Short Fuse: A great burst ability, removing the delay makes chaining the combos much more manageable.

Mirror Image – Duplicates: What’s better than 1 suicidal explosive mage? 5 of them. They will cast all of your skills and since you are using long CD skills that hit like a truck you will get a lot of return out of these Images. Enough to compensate the fact that you will look terrible.

Black Hole – Blazar: Crowd Control? Check! Fire Damage? Check! Pulls enemies together so you can chain your combos easier? Check! This skill is just super perfect for this build.

Meteor – Molten Impact: The Knockout Punch of this build, the 1648% Weapon Damage on this baby hits like a truck to boot. When you boost it with Arcane Dynamo, and +Meteor% and +Fire% Gear you will be critting everything to death.

Frost Nova – Bone Chill: With all the Melee’ing you will be doing, you are going to need all the CC you can get to stay alive. But you’ll also get an offensive benefit out of this deal, 33% more damage for 2 seconds is nothing to sneeze at, specially when your abilities already hit like a truck. Since this is a burst based build, 2 seconds will be more than enough to devastate everything.

Passives:

Arcane Dynamo: Boosting up your hard hitting skills is the name of the game for this build, Arcane Dynamo fits like a glove.

Audacity: You are going to be in Melee range when you are dealing damage, this is just too convenient.

Evocation: The problem with our abilities is that they have long cooldowns, this helps to fix that problem.

Unstable Anomaly: Ok, you might be a suicidal pyromaniac but you still need to be alive to pump out that DPS. This will make sure your combo isn’t disrupted by little execution mistakes.

 

The Burst Combo:

FireBurst

 

Before the fight, build 4 stacks of Arcane Dynamo. When you see a tasty pack of enemies you want to burn then you throw a Black Hole at them to pull them in together as you walk into melee range, Spectral Blade once and immediately cast your Meteor and follow it up with your Frost Nova. If your timing is good, your Black Hole will explode onto the Frozen enemies and the AD powered Meteor will fall down on their Frozen faces at the same time you Explosive Blast them to bits. If they happen to stay alive, just hit your Duplicates so they replicate this deadly combo and allow you to maneuver out of the way unscathed.

On the Image Above, I just froze the enemies and both Meteor and Black Hole are about to explode for about 45 Million Combined Damage, the follow up Explosive Blast should do 15 Million on a Crit. If my gear was really good for this build the whole combo should be doing upwards of 200 Million, but that’s just a rough estimate.

Stats Priority:

firewiz

 

Intelligence: Never neglect it. Dumb Wizards are dead Wizards.

Cooldown Reduction: Get it to at least 35% so you can make the build work, I’ve found that 50% can be good enough to play at a decent level but if you continue to add more your survability will go way out because of the increased crowd control.

Crit Chance and Crit Damage:  This stat you want everywhere you can get, getting hard crits often will make your burst insane.

Area Damage: The splash effect from area is a key component of this build, since you are putting everything together a good amount of Area Damage can sometimes more than Triple your DPS output and reduce everything to Cinders. Going from 0% Area Damage to 100% was the biggest upgrade I ever did to this build.

Gearing up your Wizard of Wohz like a legend.

wandofwoh

Weapon: [d3item name=”Wand of Woh”], there’s no other weapon that even begins to compare. This item alone turns this build from good to killer.

Off Hand: [d3item name=”Firebird’s Eye”], 20% extra Fire Damage is beast for this build.

Helmet: [d3item name=”Archmage’s Vicalyke”], you might be tempted to go with a Fire [d3item name=”Andariel’s Visage”] but what you want is Socket, Crit, Intellect and Meteor Damage. A set Helmet is also an option.

Chest: [d3item name=”Cindercoat”], even when you won’t take full advantage of the RCR provided by this wonderful item. +Fire% still makes it BiS for this build.

Pants: [d3item name=”Pox Faulds”], extra AoE Damage never hurts, a set Pants is also an option you could use this to complete the 2 set of Firebird’s Finery.

Boots: Captain Crimson’s Waders, 10% CDR easily for this set is too hard to pass on.

Belt: Captain Crimson’s Silk Girdle, see above

Hands: Gloves of Worship and [d3item name=”Magefist”] are the two options here, you want Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, Int and either Area Damage or Cooldown Reduction. The forced IAS on Magefist will make a bit hard to find a good pair of them for this build.

Bracers: [d3item name=”Strongarm Bracers”], they should make Black Hole increase your damage as it is supposed to count as a knockback (please correct me if I’m mistaken) this makes them a no brainer.

Neck: [d3item name=”The Ess of Johan”], this can prove super useful but you can never go wrong with an elemental absorbing amulet. Look for Fire Damage, Intellect, Crit Chance and Crit Damage.

Ring 1: [d3item name=”Stone of Jordan”], this is a big part of what melts Elite Packs. A Fire SoJ will do wonders for your build.

Ring 2: Ring of Royal Grandeur, can prove useful to get the Firebird’s Finery 4 set (Helm, Pants, Source), otherwise just look for Crit Chance, Crit Damage, Intellect and CDR/Area Damage depending on your needs.

Shoulders: Any Legendary will do, but you want CDR, Area Damage, Intelligence and +ExplosiveBlast%

 


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


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