It looks like cold archers mages can do more damage than physical mages, even if their shots look much slower. Is it the only reason behind the fact that for speed grift physical mages are preferred over cold ones?
Thanks
d3planner shows me 2x more damage with “Skeleton Archer” (cold) but I do not know why. Is it because mages do 400% dmg in 2 shots but archers 400% in 1 shot?
https://ctrlv.cz/shots/2020/09/02/Xj2P.png
I looked again in d3 planner. Mages have a higher attack speed than archers but not twice. The archers do a little more damage but the mages last longer.
https://www.d3planner.com/688792026
I have tried my build with both physical and cold and what I found was that I much prefer the archers with Avarice Band, Goldwrap, and Boon of the hoarder in T16 rifts for invincibility and crazy speed while still maintaining way more dps than physical at that point, and for GR I switch those to Dayntee’s, CoE, and Bane of Trapped and I can speed 105s in 2 to 2.5 mins or 110s in about 5.
So Cold imo is just better in every scenario I’ve used it in except to get the Curses conquest, physical helped there mire. I def recommend sticking with Cold Archers all around as its always been the faster clear build for me 
Physical mages lasts longer and they shoots much faster, so it looks hard to say which one is better to me. 4 group rat runs uses just physical, I suppose it is for above reasons, but sometimes also high paragon players are just stick on a build because they don’t want to try changes. Cold build will let cube/wear frostburns for a 20% more elemental damage and more cc.
I briefly explained the difference between archers and mages, and why archers are better here.
Cold Skeleton Archer’s super fast for low gems up, also reminds us Diablo 2 feeling, Frostburn on cube makes them really powerfull.
Frostburn actually works very poorly with Skeleton archer to Freeze enemies. The proc rate from my quick test is about 1 in every 10 attacks from a single archer, and the duration of the Freeze is only .6s. That leaves very little time for follow up attacks.
Granted, if you have 8-10 archers the chance increases significantly that a proc will occur vs. low target count, however, if your archers are all attacking different targets, then the freeze likely won’t be taken advantage of, as often.
At least with Dizzying Curse (also a very low proc chance), the duration of the stun is 2s, much longer than the .6s freeze of Frostburns.
EDIT: after testing Zei’s, it appears skeleton mage doesn’t proc the stun from this item. Not Simulacrum cast or player cast.
EDIT2: More testing; Damage increase from Krysbin’s Sentence also does not occur until after the Freeze. This means your initial hit with Frostburns that freezes won’t benefit from Krysbin.
At the end of the day though, I suppose it comes down to: Do you feel this low of proc chance is worth the extra item slot? Stacking a lot of these random chance to proc items and skills may allow more consistent, albeit random, Krysbin damage coming through without LoTD.
In my own non-LoTD archer version it appears I stacked slightly higher CDR with Leoric’s + Shoulder+Weapon affixes to increase the frequency of Dislocation.
I’m not sure if many people know this, if you play solo Dizzying Curse can let mages proc your follower’s Oculus Ring. Normally pet killing blows don’t proc Oculus Ring if it’s on follower.
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Thank you for the detailed reply. And do you think that the extra attack speed from archers is better than extra duration and faster shooting of physical mages?
It depends on the level and type of content. Having 10 mages consistently is very nice over having only 8. However, the attack speed bonus from the Archers is a straight DPS increase.
For solo content where you’re pushing the limits of xp/hr, while still getting some decent gem upgrades, Archers will be better. They hit hard, and have nice synergy with Lost Time for the extra movespeed, slow proc.
For other levels where you’re speed rifting for quicker gem ups, solo or group, Life Support is the better option. They lock onto targets more reliably (no issues with waller), and deal quicker damage instances. The extra duration is nice because you can support 10 mage uptime more reliably, even on somewhat mediocre rifts.
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Do you have a good link for a znecro build? I’m not understanding very deeply why is so important to cube ahavarion lance, I have read that its proc rate is very low.
There’s not too many good choices for a ZNec in the weapon slot.