Noob Wiz here. Which do you think is better in terms of constantly available resource; APoC or RCR?
APoC for most situations. RCR can work too, but generally APoC is going to be more effective. Particularly in high density situations. More enemies hit = more arcane power from APoC. RCR doesn’t scale like that.
There’s also a couple belts that can help with arcane power management: Shame of Delsere (mostly used for Frozen Orb builds, or also for other off-meta generator + spender builds) and Hergbrash’s Binding (for channel builds).
Magic Weapon: Conduit is also really strong, particularly for lower content. But Magic Weapon: Deflection is a massive defensive bonus and that tends to win over in higher content. You don’t see a lot of high tier builds running Conduit anymore, Deflection is just too strong.
Ideally it’s a bit of a combination. APoC should be on the source and, depending on the build, you may want to have some RCR as well, especially if you want to include AP hungry items like Aetherwalker or stuff that depends on full resource like Aquila Cuirass in your setup. But stacking RCR everywhere is bad for other things, like dps or toughness, depending on where you roll it. Not to forget you have some from paragon and you may always socket a topaz in you head gear.
In that regard, we should not forget to mention Storm Armor / Power of the Storm here. It may not look that strong but reducing the raw cast cost by a flat 3 AP can have a huge impact depending on the skill, especially for channeling.
Not to mention there is also Pride’s Fall (30% RCR after not taking damage for 5 seconds) helmet or Cindercoat (30% RCR for fire skills), but those two are items you might only be able to use in LoN/LoD based setups where you can equip legendaries in slots usually occupied by set items.
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Yeah, that’s one I forgot to mention. There’s an interesting mechanic worth pointing out here too: the flat reduction applies AFTER RCR. This makes it kind of middling if you don’t have much RCR, but very powerful if you have a decent amount of RCR.
Let’s say a skill costs 16 AP. With no RCR, Power of the Storm brings it down to 13 AP. That makes Power of the Storm equivalent to 18.75% RCR for that particular skill.
Now imagine you have 50% RCR. That 16 AP skill is down to 8 AP with your RCR. Then Power of the Storm brings that 8 AP down to 5 AP. That makes Power of the Storm equivalent to 37.5% RCR in this case.
Power of the Storm can be very strong when combined with some RCR.
Hey, thanks for the replies…I will see where I can get at least a little APoC from. I now have only CDR and RCR…
By the way, I killed the Wiz ten minutes after finally getting the Crimson plan…
Just roll the RCR on your source to 4 APoC. Source and wizard hat (and only wizard hat, not regular helm) are the only two places you can get it. So in any builds that don’t use a wizard hat, source is the only place you can pick it up.
In my opinion, it’d be nice if sources could roll more than 4 APoC like they did in the past.
Wait you cant get 10 apoc anymore? I didn’t even think crit was a thing these days anyway. I remember doing heavy rcr with lots of arcane refill boosting + skills. I would say it was super competative though.
Oh, they nerfed APoC hard quite a long time ago… not 100% sure, but I think it was way back in 2014, with Patch 2.01, the nasty one that took Critical Mass from us (wizards) and introduced stuff like RCR and CDR to make up for that. But I still remember when APoC could roll on wands, hats and sources and it had a range up to 10, for a total of 30 APoC. Oh, Chantodo sources could roll Attack Speed in those days, but then they completely stripped APoC from wands and dwarfed the range to 3-4 on the other items. That leaves us with the meager 3-4 APoC (from the source) we have today - not that most wiz builds could afford to wear a wiz hat… and even if, who would roll APoC there? Not to mention on the weapon slot…
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Wow i have been gone a long time. I must have gotten confused, i just felt like 10 apoc on source was never removed.
Would that really break the game? If you could have 10 apoc on a source it would make your head choices less of a pain for build fluidity, i dunno.
Is higher than 4 APoC really necessary? With some RCR thrown in the mix does AP ever run out with mere 4 APoC?
Depends… it would be great for channel builds if you want to deal damage with the channel skill itself. Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate and Ray of Frost have no dedicated legendaries, so normally channel builds do the brunt of their damage with autocasts from Etched Sigil or other means. Attack Speed will boost the channel skill, but also increase the AP consumption. In that regard having more APoC on the source would be great, because more attack speed means faster ticks and as a result APoC can trigger more frequently.
For me, getting APoC removed from hats would be okay. They don’t need to bring back the old 9-10 range, but 6-8 APoC would be nice, if it is a source only affix. But I don’t think they’ll do this.