I am wondering what improvements I can make in the defense department… I can solo 100-105 rifts in under 4 minutes, but I have trouble with T16 bounties / normal rifts sometimes as I just get 1 shot… even in archon form I will die sometimes. What improvements can I make to my gear?
I was following the build wizard-vyr-archon-build on icyveins (#1 wizard build)
Swap Elemental Exposure to Galvanizing Ward. That change alone will be a huge boost to your survivability.
You’re also missing Vit on your helm. Get a helm (even non-ancient) with int-vit-chc-socket. That extra vit will help as Vyr’s is a naturally low vit build. Your shields (Deflection and Galvanizing Ward) scale as a percentage of your health pool, so more vit both boosts your HP and your shields. With a Vyr’s build, there’s nothing better to grab than vit in that slot on a helm (don’t need skill damage) so you really want the vit there. Since you’ll tend to be giving it up on some other slots, e.g. CDR on gloves. 750/1000 vit on helm is pretty significant in an otherwise low vit build.
I see you don’t have any APoC. I imagine you run out of arcane power out of Archon a lot, which makes it harder to stay alive. Even in Archon. Running out of AP means you take longer to get back into Archon, which means you have less overlap, which means you are more squishy.
Get a source with APoC on it. Chantodo’s sources always roll APoC, which means you rolled the APoC off of yours. I really wouldn’t recommend doing that. Get a new source with APoC and trash that one.
You’ll also want a belt with a higher stack count. 41 is just way too low. Having more starting stacks will really help your survivability.
And finally, for T16 bounties and rifts I’d really recommend running something like Messerschmidt’s Reaver (or In-Geom, or even Aether Walker). You don’t need Furnace at all for T16. You also don’t need 20 Chantodo’s stacks to kill stuff on T16, so you might as well just get back into Archon ASAP. Something like Messerschmidt’s is a far better option for T16.
Since this is a great reply I’d like to ask if you could look over my wiz as well (Xanta). I can do GR80 rather comfortably but GR90 are a real pain and I have to skip in 9 out of 10 cases. Shouldn’t my gear allow me to get close to GR 100? Maybe I’m also not good enough at playing the build (yet…)
Your biggest problem is lack of CDR I think.
The build plays poorly if your CDR is too low.
You are out of Archon for longer, and that is when you are most vulnerable. But it goes deeper than that, because if you can’t get back into Archon as quickly, you have less Swami overlap, which means less stacks on average. And your stacks are where most of your toughness comes from, so with too little CDR, you are both more vulnerable since you are out of Archon for longer AND also more vulnerable because you are running fewer stacks on average.
I would pick up CDR on your shoulders and gloves at a minimum. Shoulders are easy, just roll your current ones from armor to 8 CDR. Gloves you’ll need a new pair. Aim for gloves with int/CHC/CHD/CDR.
I think 2-3 extra CDR rolls should make a big difference for you. There is such a thing as too much CDR, so I wouldn’t take more than 2-3 additional CDR rolls. If you have too much CDR it’s just wasted because you still need time to stack Chantodo’s. But you definitely don’t have enough right now. Aim for around 51-55% in your sheet details in game before you have Gogok stacked. That should take paragon (max out CDR here before anything else for Archon builds), Evocation, Diamond in helm, and 3-4 rolls on gear. 3x8% rolls should put you around 51%, and 4x 8% rolls should put you a bit shy of 55%. So I find 3-4 rolls total on gear is ideal. The three obvious spots are source, shoulders, and gloves. I’d recommend starting with that.
Outside of that, there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with your build. It actually looks pretty solid for your paragon level.
Couple minor changes I would make after you fix the CDR issue:
You should absolutely be able to clear GR100 at your gear/paragon, but I’d expect it to be a bit slow at your level. In the 600-800 paragon range I’d mostly be sticking to GR90s for farming runs until you get a few more ancients etc. and then you can bump it up to GR95-100.
Awesome! Thank you so much! That really helped.
My gloves and shoulders are not ideally rolled yet but I could certainly notice the difference with the additional CDR. Getting back rolling faster and the increased time of Swami overlap make playing the spec much more enjoyable. I always felt tempted to increase my sheet DPS and therefore neglected CDR a bit.
Rolling vit on my bracers gave me a huge bump with sheet toughness as well. The youtuber Raxxanterax always talks about stacking armor instead of vit for wizzards. Not sure what actually improves survivability but for now I go with your suggestion.
Farming GR80 feels great now but I still died 5 times in a row on GR92.
I spent the blood shards of the last 100 paragon on sources but never got an ancient source. I’ll keep trying.
Thanks again!
That might make sense if you have 5000+ paragon and allocate some paragon to vit. If you have lots of vit from paragon, you get less value from the vit on your gear. So taking armor on gear makes more sense.
But at lower paragon, you just want to choose whatever gives you the highest toughness. Shields from Deflection/Galvanizing Ward etc. scale with your max life, so whatever gives you the highest toughness also gives you the highest mitigation from shields. And vit will tend to give more toughness than armor on gear, unless you have an obscenely high base level of vit (e.g. from paragon).
For armor pieces, you generally want to take int + vit first, then armor if there is still a roll left for it.
So your ideal stat rolls for a low to medium paragon Vyr’s wizard should look something like this:
Helm: int/vit/CHC/socket
Shoulders: int/vit/all res/CDR. Eventually int/vit/life%/CDR, but that’s a very difficult roll to get, so start with the all res roll. Can also take armor instead of allres/life%, but life% is best here.
Chest: int/vit/armor/3 sockets. Can take life% or elite reduction instead of armor here, but if possible, get life% on shoulders + armor on chest. For a typical gear setup, of all the possible roll combos for the third roll on shoulders + chest, life% on shoulders and armor on chest is the combo that will maximize your toughness.
Pants: int/vit/armor/3 sockets
Boots: int/vit/all res/armor. Can do int/vit/armor/regen or int/vit/armor/movement speed, but particularly at lower paragon, taking int/vit/all res/armor will maximize your toughness.
Gloves: int/CHC/CHD/CDR
Belt: int/vit/life%/armor
Bracers: cold%/int/vit/CHC
this build requires a min of 58% CDR without Messerschmidt’s Reaver and without Gogok.
https://www.d3planner.com/311343669