20M Budget 100M+/Hr Blizzard XP Farming Wizard Guide submitted by Chaz.
Overview
This is a guide to making a ~20M budget (I got lucky on a lot of pieces. Going to be tough to reproduce because items at this budget level move very slowly) blizzard XP farming wizard to hit around 115 M XP/hr (Got around 38.5 M in 20 min of continuous play). This build and route will not net you any demonic essences and probably low loot too so if those are your goals this is not the right build.
Very similar to the normal blizzard build that’s been circulating around but with 1 major change. Frost nova with deep freeze takes the place of spectral blades because we’ll be skipping elites. Frost nova provides some protection for you against tougher mobs and best of all gives you 15% CrC to generate more CM procs and more APoC procs.
As for the passives I ran astral presence since the density of crater 2 isn’t always as good as shown in the video. For the less dense runs the extra AP regen and ability to store more AP after encountering a mob (you tend to overfill you AP on the scorpion swarms) to increase the consistency of the run. If I had max AP on 2 items and more CrC I would probably go for GC (if I had enough EHP) or blur (if I was lacking EHP).
Playstyle
Very similar to normal blizzard except you’ll be skipping elites. Crater 2 runs work best for wizards since KD2 doors and pathing is too annoying.
Here’s a peak 160M run as an example of it in action. It also includes the gear and my AH tab to show you what I paid for it at the end. Note that in that video I forgot to actually equip my scoundrel which is why he died instantly so I actually missed out on another 3% CrC and 12% XP bonus.
There’s a bit of a learning curve to using frost nova properly, but you shouldn’t have too much of an issue keeping the buff up most of the time whenever you actually have mobs to hit.
Why not SoJ? Yes it has up to 2 blizzard duration, but 1 sec is only an 11% increase and 2 is 22% increase in DPS if you have a 3 oculus and by 9 seconds a lot of mobs start moving out of your blizzards AoE already. It also has 6% elemental, but we can easily make up for that with other stats. Most importantly it doesn’t provide EHP!
Here’s a peak 160M run as an example of it in action. It also includes the gear and my AH tab to show you what I paid for it at the end. Note that in that video I forgot to actually equip my scoundrel which is why he died instantly so I actually missed out on another 3% CrC and 12% XP bonus.
There’s a bit of a learning curve to using frost nova properly, but you shouldn’t have too much of an issue keeping the buff up most of the time whenever you actually have mobs to hit.
Gearing
This is where it differs from the standard blizzard build the most.
General Idea: Don’t worry too much about sheet DPS. Get a hard hitting spear or mace. Stack Int, CrC, ChD and %Elemental. Don’t waste money on IAS unless it’s free. Generally speaking EHP will be more of a limiting factor than DPS since we plan on scaling the damage of blizzard up a lot.
I have 53k sheet with scoundrel. Buffed I’m 91k with 1.2 APS which means my weapon dmg is 76k. 9 s Blizzard will deal 765% dmg and is multiplied by 20% for cold blooded and 29% from frostburns. The total damage from blizzard is 900k or 1035k to demons over 9 sec. Of course mobs won’t always stand in your blizzard the full 9 sec so to determine your max MP you need to cast it on some blood clan dudes and see if they die or not.
I could actually kill stuff on MP6 but the problem was getting enough EHP to match that! I managed to get to 350k within this budget and dropped down to MP5, but I would actually prefer going a bit more since I have to be extremely attentive with this EHP. If you want to play a bit more comfortably I would suggest maybe spending a bit more and hitting 450k+ EHP.
I could actually kill stuff on MP6 but the problem was getting enough EHP to match that! I managed to get to 350k within this budget and dropped down to MP5, but I would actually prefer going a bit more since I have to be extremely attentive with this EHP. If you want to play a bit more comfortably I would suggest maybe spending a bit more and hitting 450k+ EHP.
Here are my following gearing choices:
- Shoulders: I went for EHP rares on this piece, getting All res, High Vit, High life% with a bit of int.
- Gloves: Frostburns. Dirt cheap for what they do. If you’re patient you can find 6/30 ones for ~50k. I ended up getting 5/29 for that price.
- Rings: One is going to be your hellfire ring. The other is probably going to be one that provides CrC, ChD and some All res or armor. CrC because we need more procs, ChD since it’s one of our best damage scalers (with the 15% buffed CrC) and defense because we want EHP.
- Weapon: This piece is pretty important and investing a lot of gold into it pays great dividends. Make sure you get a slow black damage mace or spear. The base damage scales great with the % elemental we’re going for. You also want to get as much ChD as well on here. I wouldn’t search for int, but for me this one just happened to have it. I found that going skorn is not worth it. You need the APoC, CrC, blizzard duration and tele reduction on oculus. LoK is a GREAT way to get life return since LoH and LS are both expensive.
- Helm: I went balanced for this piece. Ideally you’d want max AP, APoC, CrC and a socket. APoC is mandatory here. Max AP is great because the density in Crater 2 isn’t always that consistent. Without max AP you only have enough AP for 4 teleports and 1 wormhole. Max AP gives you enough AP to cast your frost nova as well, but I went for astral presence at this budget level to make up for my lack of Max AP and lower CrC. After getting those stats get more defense.
- Chest: Tyreals all the way. The bonus vs demons is nice but we’re mainly going for the MS boost. You want to get as much EHP as you can after that.
- Belt: I also go defensive on this piece. I originally went Innas but felt that the extra DPS wasn’t worth it since hitting the EHP requirements was too hard.
- Pants: Definitely go defensive here. Tons of vit since pants roll up to 300. Try to get All res and armor too.
- Boots: I went for Zunis here. Try not to be noob like me and get yourself an 8% one (d’oh!). All res is too expensive here so I went for armor instead. In retrospect getting ice climbers is a better choice because I still want more EHP and can sacrifice a bit of damage.
- Amulet: Tals is great. We don’t need to get anything other than 6% and high Int/Vit. All res or armor is also needed to help boost EHP Bracers: Another EHP item (seeing a trend here?), but with the caveat that we want 4.5+ CrC.
- Oculus: Not an EHP piece! You want to get pretty good avg damage. Elite dmg means nothing here. Blizzard duration of 2-3 is needed. Teleport reduction of 3+ is needed. It always rolls APoC so yay!
Why not SoJ? Yes it has up to 2 blizzard duration, but 1 sec is only an 11% increase and 2 is 22% increase in DPS if you have a 3 oculus and by 9 seconds a lot of mobs start moving out of your blizzards AoE already. It also has 6% elemental, but we can easily make up for that with other stats. Most importantly it doesn’t provide EHP!
So what’s the message here? Get a good offensive weapon, offhand and frostburn. After that get EHP, APoC and CrC. In terms of EHP the one thing that I didn’t get that I wanted to was %melee and ranged reduction on chest, bracers and amulet. Those pieces are extremely cost effective at mitigation but are pretty rare.
Conclusion
With proper gearing and not worrying too much about sheet DPS, blizzard wiz can get very competitive XP/hr on a budget.
Happy farming!
PS. Don’t worry though fellow barbs, I’m in the process of writing up a guide for my 20M budget barb (video) which I’ve found to net around 120M Xp/hr, so we’re still on top ;).
PPS. Sorry for doubting you about blizzard enfrost I just never tried optimizing it before. I just grabbed normal CM/Archon Gear and put on an oculus in the past.
