Guide to the Sorcerer. Part I: introduction, DPS, armor, a bit about bonuses
Hello everyone! Yes, I am still alive (O_O).
It's been about a month and a half since the game was released, many have already dissected the mechanics into tiny artifacts and filled the relevant topics with their own opinions. I decided to follow the example of these comrades and sat down to write a guide for the wizard. As usual, I couldn't stop on time (oops! _), so here's the first part for now. An introduction, so to speak. There are a lot of various musings here, walls of text, opinions (some of which are mine), and other calculations. I partially relied on useful posts from our forums and others.
Let me clarify right away, the guide is more useful for beginners than for veterans, there are some personal opinions here, but I think you'll find something useful for yourself. For a number of reasons, I am not providing build options here, as analyzing skills and their possible (and effective!) combinations with party considerations is a topic for another conversation. Therefore, this guide does not cover a deep detailed breakdown of skills (but that is planned for later).
What’s included:
- an introduction to the class and its features;
- DPS analysis and damage calculation breakdown (there's also a calculator!);
- a bit about armor and resistances and how they work;
- general information about bonuses that will be useful on gear.
Consider this a basic guide for newcomers.
So, let's go!
0. ENGLISH - FREELY, OR SOME THINGS ABOUT SLANG
"And then they vortex me, break my skin, and take all my HP. An ideal one-shot, those guys!"
No laughing, please. This is a necessary part of the guide, I believe, as not one thread on the forums tells about who one-shots are, what AoE is, why DPS isn’t a road patrol service, etc. Briefly summarize the main points, memorize them, as they will come in handy.
Int (Intelligence) - intelligence, the main stat for the wizard.
Vit (Vitality) - survivability.
AP (Arcane Power) - arcane power, our energy resource.
HP (Hit Points) - health points.
Armor - defense.
Resists (Resistance) - resistances to a certain type of damage.
AS/ASP (Attack Speed) - attack speed, also known as Haste.
Melee - a fighter/skill/weapon/must add something about close combat.
Party/Cooperative - party, co-op, in short, those three noobs who run along with you. _
Kite - "kiting" mobs with subsequent gradual shooting. Essentially, it’s the same hit and run, hit and retreat. The wizard doesn't stand still and keeps moving.
DPS (Damage per Second) - the damage dealt per second.
Crit (Critical Hit) - a critical hit characterized by dealing additional damage to the enemy.
CD (Cooldown) - cooldown, or the skill recharge time.
AoE (Area of Effect) - used to denote skills that hit not a single target, but an area. Useful for exterminating crowds of enemies.
One Shot (One Shot) - killing with one hit. In the context of Inferno - you by the monsters. _
Loot (Drop) - loot that drops from monsters and chests.
MF/GF (Magic Find/Gold Find) - bonus (%) for finding magical (as well as rare, legendary, and set) items and gold.
NV/Valor (Nephalem Valor) - the effect of "Nephalem Valor," which is available at level 60. Every time you kill a pack of elites/champions, 1 stack of NV appears, enhancing MF and GF stats for 30 minutes. A total of up to 5 stacks can be accumulated. After death, stacks do not disappear. The countdown timer resets with the kill of each new pack.
Potion - potion, also known as health potion.
Wand/Staff - the weapon you use.
Off-hand/Source - an item you hold in your other hand with a one-handed weapon (orb, skull, book, or something like that).
Wand/Staff - a wizard's wand/staff.
Elective Mode - dive into gameplay settings and check the useful box to collect the build YOU need.
DoT (Damage over Time) - a skill whose damage is dealt not immediately, but over a period of time.
Channel - a skill whose damage flows continuously. Usually referred to as beams.
Signature Skill - a skill that does not require energy costs; there are only 4: Magic Missile [Magic Missile], Shock Pulse, Spectral Blade, and Electrocute.
Pack - champions/elites/uniques, i.e., several mobs combined with increased thickness, affixes, and meanness.
Mortars - "mortar throwers," hurl fiery projectiles from a distance.
Molten - leave a fiery trail; explode upon death.
Jailers - jailers, lock you up (do not be a newbie!!).
Wallers - trap you with walls (do not be a newbie-2!!).
Vortexes - pull you back into the crowd (do not be a newbie-3!!).
Fast - fast creatures. And if any zombies are still manageable (since they are originally slow), against fast "slime creatures," it can get very interesting.
Reflect Damage - reflect the damage you deal to them. A remake of the Iron Maiden, but not as fatal.
This is just the basics.
1. WHAT IS A WIZARD AND WHAT DO YOU CATCH IT WITH
A little homeless wizard.
A wizard (also known as a sorceress, sorc, or enchantress; just add whatever is needed) is a good, interesting character. Young, talented, confident, which, as you can understand, can sometimes lead to it being beaten (_). If you love mages, dynamic combat, the feeling of universal power - this is your character. Especially if you loved the mage in Diablo and the sorceress in [Diablo II](/games?search=Diablo II). However, unlike them, a wizard sometimes fights at a much closer range and generally behaves more recklessly. However, she has every right to do so.
The little wizard begins the game with a magic wand and Magic Missile.
The ability to take new active skills is available at levels 2, 4, 9, 14, and 19.
Runes can be used starting from level 6 (each skill has its own runes).
The ability to take passive skills becomes available at levels 10, 20, and 30 (one slot opens at each level).
For each new level, we receive 1 point of Strength and Dexterity, 3 points of Intelligence, and 2 points of Health.
At level 1:
- strength - 8
- dexterity - 8
- intelligence - 10
- health - 9
At level 60:
- strength - 67
- dexterity - 67
- intelligence - 187
- health - 127
Approximate calculations by levels:
- normal ends at level 30;
- nightmare - at level 50;
- hell - at level 60 (by about the fourth act you already have maximum experience).
I repeat, the layouts are approximate, but my characters follow this graph plus or minus a couple of levels.
Although after patch 1.0.3, many characters got hit hard (a number of hunter friends complained after the nerf to attack speed), I believe that wizards were affected to a lesser extent. There are many builds and plenty of options. Let's figure it out.
I’ll start with what all wizards chase after - it's DPS.
**2. DPS. EXPENSIVE WEAPONS SAVE
(DAMAGE IS USEFUL FOR SORCERES)**
Ordinary and extraordinary weapons.
A very popular question on the forums (and despite all the detailed answers to it, there are still confusions) - how to dress our lady in pursuit of ideal DPS.
Let's start with the fact that DPS largely determines our wizard's survivability. After all, if you incinerate everyone in the fray, then no one will reach you, and thus, no one will kill you. This, of course, is ideal and depends on several parameters. But in general, there is never too much DPS, and if you have the opportunity to increase it (especially without sacrificing anything else) - max it out. And I will now tell you how exactly. :)
The following parameters affect DPS:
- damage on the weapon (this is the main thing that determines your damage, the starting point for all calculations)
- damage from the off-hand (if there is one)
- damage from rings and amulets (if available)
- intelligence
- attack speed
- critical damage
- active and passive skills
• Damage on the weapon - let’s start with it.
Damage on the weapon is our everything. Every wizard, while clearing an area, secretly hopes to find a powerful weapon so that all enemies die from just its sight, and other heroes from envy. And here we get something. For example, Vasya's Epic Wand, Filled with Power.
We examine the wand and see:
1200 DPS
700-900 damage
+150-350 lightning damage
1.5 attack speed
+100 to intelligence
0. How does this translate to English and what needs to be taken into account?
You need the number DPS (1200) and int, all other details from the breakdown can be omitted. 1200 - the final damage of your weapon taking into account the bonuses and its attack speed. The only thing not considered in this number is the bonus to intelligence. Don't try to add other bonuses to the 1200 DPS (for example, 150-350 lightning damage); they are already accounted for. If in doubt, check: under the DPS parameter on the weapon, the damage range is indicated (the average will give us the average damage) and speed of attack.
DPS of the weapon = 1/2 * (Minimum damage + Maximum damage) * Attack Speed
Don't confuse the average weapon damage with DPS! DPS is precisely how much damage the weapon does per second!
1. Spell selection. How it works.
Moving on, we have weapon DPS, and we want to know how much damage we can deal with such a weapon. Here everything comes down to your playstyle and how you kill mobs. Accordingly, we’ll divide all our spells into three big piles.
Pile number 1. Skills that act instantly.
This includes everyone's favorite Arcane Orb. One orb - one damage, all damage is dealt at once and is not spread over time. The damage here entirely depends on the average damage on the weapon (1/2 * (Minimum damage + Maximum damage)) and doesn’t depend on speed at all. It’s calculated by the formula:
Damage = [Average weapon damage] * [% ability damage in fractions **]
** - for 100% it’s 1, for 120% - 1.2, and so on.
The formula makes it clear that the damage from one orb is the higher, the higher the average damage on the weapon itself. The highest average damage is usually found on two-handed weapons, but we’ll cover that later.
However, it’s worth remembering that the higher the speed of the weapon, the more of such spells you can cast per second.
Pile number 2. Skills whose damage is dealt over a limited time.
This includes our beloved DoTs, such as Blizzard. The damage from these spells also depends only on the average damage of the weapon.
Damage = [Average weapon damage] * [% ability damage in fractions **]
** - for 100% it’s 1, for 120% - 1.2, and so on.
Attack speed can be ignored since the duration of the spell and effects are specified for each skill separately. The base duration of Blizzard is 6 seconds, and, roughly speaking, it doesn’t matter whether your weapon is fast or slow.
Pile number 3. Channeling skills.
Their damage is dealt continuously as long as we have energy. These are the so-called channels or beams, a classic example is Disintegrate. Turn it on, burn, turn it off. Repeat as necessary. The damage here is calculated a bit differently and is limited by "ticks" per second. A "tick" is a conditional unit of the spell.
Damage = [Damage of 1 tick] * [Number of ticks per second] * [Number of seconds]
**Damage from 1 tick = [Average weapon damage] * [% damage from the spell in fractions **]
*\* - for 100% it’s 1, for 120% - 1.2, and so on.
Number of ticks per second = Attack speed (taking into account bonuses)
Number of seconds = As you wish (limited by energy supply)
2. Speed or damage?
We have figured out the mechanics of the calculations, now let's see how it works in conjunction with spells and how we will fight. Everything boils down to your playstyle and preferred spells. Let’s take two different weapons with the same DPS and three different spells with roughly the same damage percentages relative to weapon damage.
Weapons:
• Weapon One:
DPS - 1000
Damage - 500-750 (average - 625)
Speed - 1.6
• Weapon Two:
DPS - 1000
Damage - 1000-1500 (average - 1250)
Speed - 0.8
Spells:
• Pile One: Magic Sphere (Destruction) - 228% damage (2.28)
• Pile Two: Blizzard (base) - 210% damage (2.1) over 6 seconds
• Pile Three: Frost Beam (base) - 215% damage (2.15)
And we start to calculate and figure it out.
For Magic Sphere (instant):
Damage 1 = 625 * 2.28 = 1425 per sphere
Damage 2 = 1250 * 2.28 = 2850 per sphere
If your tactic is to throw one sphere so that everyone around dies and never moves again, look for a weapon with the highest average damage; that will give you the highest damage from one sphere.
If you plan to throw several spheres and run away, look for a weapon with speed; the higher the speed of the weapon, the more spheres you can throw in a unit of time.
For Blizzard (DoT):
Damage 1 = 625 * 2.1 = 1312.5
Damage 2 = 1250 * 2.1 = 2625
Blizzard doesn’t care about weapon speed; it has its duration (6 seconds). Therefore, for DoTs, thick, heavy grenade launchers will come in handy; small fast weapons won’t change the weather for them, so we invest in average damage.
For Frost Beam (channel):
Damage 1 = 625 * 2.15 = 1343.75 per "tick"
Damage 1 per second = 1343.75 * 1.6 = 2150
Damage 2 = 1250 * 2.15 = 2687.5 per "tick"
Damage 2 per second = 2687.5 * 0.8 = 2150
In the case of beams, it seems, what’s the difference? In one second, we deal the same DPS. However, the trick lies in the speed of energy drain.
Using Disintegrate on very fast weapons drains energy in seconds.
A slow but heavy weapon allows you to deal damage more controllably since energy depletes more steadily!
In general, assuming other factors are equal, weapons with equal DPS but different speeds will yield you roughly the same damage over the same period of time (this is evident from the examples above; the clearest example is the beams). Thus, it all comes down to your favorite skills and playstyle; more on that later.
3. One-handed + off-hand or two-handed?
Given what has been said, look at your playstyle. If you need damage and control, it’s better to opt for a two-handed weapon since the average damage will be significantly higher.
On the other hand, if you have a good off-hand, it will help if not surpass, at least reduce the difference. Also, don't forget that you can gain useful bonuses from off-hands, and the final DPS will depend on them too! In total, based on bonuses, one-handed + off-hand is better than two-handed.
This is regarding weapons and damage dealt with them.
• Damage from off-hand, rings, and amulet
Adds to the base damage from the weapon, so it will never be superfluous. The formulas for calculating average damage here are the same as above.
Suppose, you have:
- a weapon with 300 - 700 damage (speed 1.0),
- a sphere with 50 - 130 damage,
- a ring with 10 - 20 damage,
- an amulet with 10 - 30 damage.
On the weapon, we have 500 average damage, on the sphere - 90, on the ring - 15, and on the amulet - 20.
So, the weapon gives us 500 DPS, and all the rest give an additional 125 DPS. Of course, this is a conditional example, but you got the point. Don’t miss the opportunity to get damage from non-weapon gear; it’s useful. However, not at the expense of everything else, of course.
In fact, rings and amulets can also provide other bonuses, for example:
- +10 minimum damage,
- +20 maximum damage.
Suppose, you have the same weapon and two rings with these bonuses.
Then your damage changes to 310 - 720, and the average damage will no longer be 500 but 515. Other factors considered, these bonuses are less valuable than "raw" damage bonuses (for example, 10 - 20), but here, of course, they need comparing.
• Intelligence
Definitely useful!
Firstly, for each point of intelligence, we increase damage by 1%.
Secondly, we increase resists by 0.1%. Of course, this percentage will not be as high as with items, but even a bare wizard with 1500 int will fare better than a bare barbarian (exaggerating). Moreover, it will be easier with 150% of all resists. Of course, we need to earn those 1500 ints, but we are wizards, we’ve got this.
• Attack speed
Is it useful or not? On one hand, yes, attack speed allows you to rapidly increase DPS. On the other hand, it’s important to understand the mechanics and how it works. For a Monk and, say, a Barbarian, the more speed, the more hits and thus, more spirit/anger. For us, the faster the attacks (i.e., the more happen per second), the faster energy depletes. I explained this above.
In principle, don’t get too carried away with this parameter. For a sorceress, it’s important to increase the real attack i.e., "meat" damage, while attack speed gives a somewhat fictitious boost to DPS. Therefore, it’s more effective and beneficial to increase damage through better weapons and off-hands, int, and crits (which I will discuss later).
Perhaps, the only exception to this rule would be signatures. They do not require energy costs; accordingly, they can be boosted by speed. However, in 1.0.3, the effect from this bonus was significantly nerfed, so if you’ve been playing with those skills, you might want to switch to something else.
• Critical damage
Let’s take it! It’s essential to understand that we have two parameters affecting it:
- critical hit chance,
- increase in critical hit damage.
Critical chances that we can collect from items are usually low: on average, they are around 5% (but depend on items; for example, on rings you’ll usually see a 2.5 - 3% increase in critical chance, on an off-hand, you might catch 7-8%, for example).
Increase in critical hit damage can be significantly higher, and we might catch, say, 40-50% increase in damage (again, depending on the items).
Experts recommend maintaining a critical chance to critical damage increase ratio of 1:10 (i.e., for every 1% increase in critical chance, there should be 10% increase in critical damage). If you maintain this ratio of parameters, damage grows more balanced. Just plain numbers, you can verify.
I recommend you check out the “Critical” tab in the calculator at the end of this section; the graph above is extracted from it.
• Skills, our active and passive abilities
What skills will be helpful for increasing damage? I will give you several universal options that any sorceress can take, regardless of spells and type of damage she specializes in. Remember, she can - but is not obligated!
First, it’s the passive Glass Canon. It reduces our resistances by 10% but grants a 15% increase to damage. We can take it at level 16. How critical losing 10% of our armor is against a 15% increase in damage is for you to decide. If you have lots of armor and resists but lack damage, it might make sense to sacrifice some for the sake of DPS. Some sorceresses purposely sharpen for damage when there are good tanks in party. If you are such a sorceress - once again, take it.
Secondly, there are active skills. The first is Magic Weapon, available from level 20. It increases your damage by 10% for 5 minutes. This is without runes. With runes, it can rise to 15% (for example, I use the rune for Mighty Weapon, alongside 15% damage, it grants a 2% chance to push an enemy back, which is useful because they are a bit stunned after landing). I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that the skill previously worked with a bug, and in fact, the damage increase was higher (30%, if I’m not mistaken). In patch 1.0.3, this was fixed, so some wizards decided to abandon the skill in favor of something else.
The second is Familiar. In its basic variant (available from level 22), it summons a companion who's around for 5 minutes and deals 20% of your weapon's damage to enemies. I like the Fire rune, which gives us a 12% increase in damage.
I love Archon in early May... I mean, I love it, yes..
The third useful skill is Archon, available from level 30. It’s not exactly the same as various familiars, but I also consider it an increase in damage. For 15 seconds, we transform into an entity of pure energy and increase armor and resistances by 40%. In its improved form, we can deal 25% more damage with archon abilities, meaning we disintegrate anyone (well, almost anyone). Archon is good in battles with elites and champions. Archon has saved me more than once or twice. Importantly, each enemy killed in archon extends the form by 1 second, so if, against a thick pack there are tons of small ones (and die from "ricochet"), you’ll be stuck in archon for a long time, and that’s exactly what we need.
There are also a number of other abilities, but they are more specific and geared towards a particular type of damage. So decide for yourself what exactly you should take. I repeat, I will discuss builds separately later.
Summing up everything mentioned earlier, I conclude: there are many factors, and it is important to consider them all. The formula for calculations:
DPS = [Average Damage] * [Attack Speed] * [Intelligence] * [Critical Hits] * [Skills]
Breaking down each component again:
• Average Damage = 1/2 * [Minimum damage from gear1 + Maximum damage from gear1] + 1/2 * [Minimum damage from gear2 + Maximum damage from gear2] + etc. for all items with damage.
• Attack Speed = [Weapon's attack speed] * [1 + speed bonuses in decimals]
• Intelligence = 1 + 1/100 * [Intelligence points]
• Criticals = 1 + [Critical chance in fractions] * [Increase in critical damage in fractions]
• Skills = 1 + [Skill bonus in fractions**]
** - specified in the character's attribute window. It’s important that it changes depending on whether you have activated the skill or not. Without activation, only the effect of passives is displayed.
If you want relatively accurate numbers, check out this **calculator**.
It’s very relevant; everything is taken into account, from passives to intelligence bonuses. The only thing that is not entirely correct there are the values of Magic Weapon bonuses (it was fixed in 1.0.3). They are not included in the formula and are given for information only.
Calculate - and may you find, and no longer ask questions like "How much will a weapon with 1005 DPS give me if it has no int and only AS?".
Also, pay attention to other tabs; they show the dependence of damage growth based on crits and attack speed.