Spark / Scorch
How well do they work? Do they explode twice?
I’ve been theory crafting an Electrocute / Spark Orb build for funsies. But I do not have a lot of Wizard gear atm. Had to salvage a lot of it due to stash constraints.
Kind of crazy how Frozen Orb does so much more damage compared to the other runes…
Yeah, they explode twice, the damage is still a bit negligible, especially in comparison to frozen orb.
Not too crazy considering blizzard literally chose to buff only frozen orb while leaving the rest of the runes to collect dust.
patch notes of 2.6.1
Wizard Skills
- Arcane Orb
- Frozen Orb
- Create an orb of frozen death that shreds an area with ice bolts, dealing
393%950% weapon damage as Cold- Increased projectile travel distance from 30 to 40
Personally I would like for scorch to pack a lot more punch than it does now.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know they purposely buffed FO to be numero uno (they most likely wanted that D2 angle). Just kinda crazy how much stronger they made it in comparison to the other runes. Very similar to Limitless and Blessed Hammer for Crusaders.
I’d like to play with a Electrocute - Lightning Blast and Scorch Orb combination, cause that would be very similar to the WoW Ele Shamy play style with Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst 
They explode twice. But only the explosion part, not the damage before the explosion. This is easiest to see with Scorch, the 734% damage from the trail gets buffed by Triumvirate + the 450% from Unstable Scepter, but not the double explosion part. And overlapping trails don’t stack. It would be much better if the damage stacked. The explosion part is very weak, at 221%. That’s the only part you get double explosions on.
So Scorch is basically a 221% Orb with double explosions, and then what is essentially a 734% non-stacking DoT.
The skill description for Spark is kinda misleading. IIRC, it zaps for half the tooltip damage, then lands and explodes for the other half the tooltip damage? That means the explosion part only does 174.5% WD. Very mediocre.
Obliteration and Arcane Orbit are pretty self-explanatory. There’s something weird with the Arcane Orbit mechanics and having multiple ones go off at once spamming the skill or something, when it was popular it actually was better in practice than it was on paper. I’ll just ignore that one for now, but know that even with the spam mechanics it’s still not as good as Frozen Orb.
Then the tooltip for Frozen Orb is pretty misleading too. There’s three components to Frozen Orb damage: the ice shards (315% WD), the projectile (635% WD), and the explosion itself (950% WD). The double explosion part only applies to the explosion damage. If you get it aimed right at the sweet spot, you can hit a single enemy with the shards, the projectile, and the explosion.
So with a double explosion, you’ll get 950*2 + 315 + 635 = 2850% WD.
Compare this to Obliteration, with a double explosion you get 700*2 = 1400% WD.
And with Scorch, 221*2 = 442% WD from the explosion with a non-stacking 734% DoT.
And with Spark: 174.5 + 174.5*2 = 523.5% WD.
Frozen Orb is just way stronger than all the other runes.
EDIT: That’s not to say you can’t fart around with Spark in T16 for funsies, but if you want to do GR100+, you’re probably going to want to go with Frozen Orb.
Eesh, FO has an even larger advantage than I thought if what you say is correct. Even if I go Lightning/Electrocute and just use AO for single target damage, I should still go with FO since it is so much stronger.
For quite some time one of my favorite Wiz builds was DMO with Arcane Orbit. I personally do not like Frozen Orb. I like melee gameplay and to be tanky. You can do it pretty well with Arcane Orbit. Arcane Orbit seems to fully benefit from Deathwish (activate AO then use channeling skill, and I tested it a million times so it does work pretty well). So, equip a good Deathwih or Unstable Scepter (cube the other), equip Triumvirate, Hergbrash´s Binding belt, cube Mantle of Channeling. Use Endless Walk set, CoE and Halo of Karini (cubed). I think I used something like that and with some area damage rolls. That build was very fun to play, very tanky and I was able to do GR105 with it quite easily a couple seasons and patches ago. I´m pretty sure no one will play DMO this patch/season but it may be a interesting choice for some who want to try melee-tanky wiz and DMO set.
Ya I was looking at Arcane Orbit and Obliteration too. But ultimately I want to focus on Electrocute - either Chained Lightning or Forked Lightning. So that’s why I was mostly curious about Spark or Scorch.
Maybe Arcane Orbit could be a fun Blade build combo though.
Yes it is a fun build. And it works well with Spectral Blade (Barrier Blade rune), always used it with it. Obliteration works too, but after testing it, arcane orbit does more damage and plays more fluidly.
Lightning? Planning to use Manand Heal? Spark does like no damage and not fun to play at all. MH makes no noticeable difference in my experience.
I extensively tested Electrocute/Spark with DMO and LoN and LoD variants (with and without MH and Squirts ammy) but it wasn´t fun at all. Scorch is better, explodes twice, and explodes where you want it to explode. Frozen Orb does good damage with DMO set and its even better with Reverse Archon builds. But the gameplay is not for everyone.
I would normally never choose FO over Arcane Orbit. But it probably only me. I like a tanky and melee approach and facetank-kill everything. FO requires much more strategy compared to AO and its not as tanky. In my personal opinion, between FO and AO the difference in damage is not as abysmally big as most belive.
If you are curious bout DMO and Arcane Orb builds and just do not want to play Vyr-Chantodo (or bored of it) - it may be an interesting experience.