Diablo 3 Wizard Inferno Melee Build Guide

Diablo 3 Wizard Inferno Melee Build Guide by sme

So I’ve been tinkering with a Critical Mass + Diamond Skin/nova build that revolves around healing while DS/Nova is up by stacking Life Per Hit.

I had a lot of success with it and I’ll, therefore, share it for anyone out there to try out:

MOUSE 1 – Spectral Blade (Deep Cuts):

Well, this is the reason this build works. It has an 88% coefficient on life per hit per cast (so almost 30% per blade). It is amazing for cleave and heals a lot when there are multiple targets in front of you;

MOUSE 2 – Meteor (Star Pact):

Also mandatory, with a 50% coefficient on life per hit per target on initial cast and another 25% per tick on the dot, this is too good to pass on. Another reason this is so important is that the dot crits have a 100% chance to proc Critical Mass, which leads to Diamond Skin/Nova Spam with enough crit;

Force Armor (Prismatic, Force or Pinpoint):

The bonus armor is too good, so are all of the rune bonuses this skill can provide. More crit helps on Diamond Skin/Nova uptime as well as increases DPS, I would choose pinpoint if my crit rate was too low. Force is amazing for a build that focuses on resists and not so much on vitality, it scales amazingly well with life per hit and Diamond Armor. Prismatic is the one I use the most, still, the increased resists (specially physical and fire, since molten/fire chains are one of the hardest packs for me) are simply amazing.

Diamond Skin (Crystal Shell):

This one is easy, with the cooldown reduction thanks to Critical Mass this thing is spammable, along with a lot of armor/resists it gets impossible to even measure how much effective health (healing) this is. Also, 50% life -> Diamond Skin and you’re full after a few Meteor Ticks/Spectral Blade hits.

Frost Nova (Cold Snap):

Well, another easy one, build is based around keeping things CC’d for a long time. This makes you virtually immune to infinite normal adds (since you can perma-freeze them, pretty much) and helps kiting/healing on champion packs (as well as making this build incredible for Belial runs, since phase 1 is a breeze).

Last Skill:

This is a hard one and I keep changing it, having varying degrees of success with several different spells.

Venom Hydra: amazing dps increase as well as good range ability for Zoltun Kulle runs. Unfortunately it doesn’t crit nor does it heal with life per hit, but it’s still a strong choice;

Magic Weapon (Force): well, another flat DPS increase, it’s good but I don’t think this beats Venom Hydra for the sheer fact that Hydra can DPS while you run.

Wave of Force: strong and buys you time to wait for diamond skin/nova cds, sadly the healing coefficient is pretty low.

Archon: gets you ton of resistances while it’s up, the coefficient on the melee attack isn’t too bad (50% per target), the cooldown runs fast thanks to Critical Mass. It’s really good for Dragus runs (the elite Mob on Act 3) and the spike DPS is good for a lot of packs (remember you can cancel Archon by right clicking the buff so you can Diamond Skin/Nova).

Slow Time: Good for a more tank’ish/co-op build. Increases the damage you and your party deal as well as decreases incoming damage. Can use either the bonus attack speed one or the increased damage one.

Passives:

Blur – Evocation – Critical Mass

Follower:

I choose enchantress simply because she provides me 15% armor and 3% attack speed. I have never tried playing with the Scoundrel and the Templar heals for this build are pretty redundant.

Stats:

Weapon: find one with a lot of life per hit and make it a fast one. DPS is good but there is no use to 40k+ dps if you still die, hitting fast with good LPH is the key for this to work.

Armor and high resistances are mandatory. I run with 70% physical resistance and 70% armor and I can run act 2 just fine (act 3 is doable but I have to skip some packs). Vitality is less important than resists due to the fact that Diamond Skin is a hidden health bar.

Attack Speed: Your best DPS stat will be attack speed, since it increases not only your DPS but also your Healing per second (thanks to life per hit).

Critical Hit: Get something close to 15 at least, shouldn’t be too hard, just look for an intellect shield with crit (which shouldn’t be too expensive since not a lot of Int users wear shields). Critical Mass + Meteor Ticks = Win.

Try to find Life per hit on rings and amulets, if you get LPH + IAS you’re set.

Intellect is still amazing! DPS is good and so are the resists it gives you.

GAMEPLAY:

Depends on your gear, if you outgear content you are unkillable, I can kill 50 Inferno Act 1 mobs without even needing Diamond Skin and Nova, even champion packs. The stronger the mobs are the more perfectly you’ll have to execute your rotation, if they are too strong you might have to kite a little.

Use meteor whenever able, the passive healing/cd reduction thanks to the dot is amazing, the initial damage is great and so is the healing. Try to get mobs to stack in front of you, the more mobs you hit, the faster you heal and the faster your cds refresh. Diamond Skin is off of the “Global Cooldown”, use this whenever yours goes down (it refreshes FAST, sometimes you’ll even overlap it). Keep normal minions nova’d 100% of the time.

On Champion Packs that are too strong to straight up tank do the following:

Get them to chase you, throw a couple meteors at your feet -> Diamond Skin -> hit them with Spectral blade until Diamond Skin wears off -> Frost Nova -> Run -> Repeat;

It’s easy and cds should be up all the time, I could make a list of the hardests champion pack affixes but that’d take me too long, so maybe one day.

ALERT:

The meteor dot + Critical Mass thing is something that might be hotfixed/changed, so don’t blame me if you use gold and get nerfed.

I am not saying this is the best spec of all nor can I tank Act 4 with my current gear. What I’m saying is: this build is fun, it’s steady, I can take a lot of hits, I don’t need potions to heal, I use Spectral Blades (it looks awesome), I use Star Pact meteors (also looks awesome, I love it) and I wear a Shield + Sword (come on, wizards with shields are badass).

I love studying and I’ll keep tinkering around with this build for a while, let me know what you think and if anyone feels like trying it out, good luck, it’s fun!