*PUSH* Arcane Hydra build - Diablo 3 Season 20 patch 2.6.8 Typhon's Veil

[@christopherhoff7336]

A few little tips for Typhon set users pushing into the low 120 GRs. 1) For Gearing, be mindful of all your percentage buffs and your important stats: You want 20% elemental damage on Bracers and Amulet, 15% Hydra Damage on Chest, Shoulders, and Off-Hand, and Crit Chance/Crit Damage wherever you can get it. You will want enough Attack Speed to hit your target 6 frame Hydra Attack Speed breakpoint. After that, look to get Area Damage roll on some pieces (Shoulders for sure and wherever else you can get it without sacrificing your other DPS stats). As for Defensive stats, Vitality and Life% are good defensive stats as they make your shields beefier and scale with Ashnagarr. Get Armor in the places that you can get it without sacrificing Vitality and Life% - consider getting more Armor off Strength gems on your chest and pants. Stats you don't want: Regeneration and Life Per Hit (Deflection/Galvanizing Ward with Ashnagar is the Wizard's true regeneration), Cooldown Reduction, and Resource Reduction. 2) You can play the Typhon set as a ranged damage dealer instead of a close-range teleport/black hole/audacity wizard that the Icy Veins guide recommends. At the high level GRs, mobs simply do too much damage to safely teleport into a group of mobs. If you want to continue playing close in at higher GRs, just having Karini, Set Bonus 80%, Flame Ward, and Safe Passage is not enough - you would need to get a 3rd level of damage reduction like Unity or Esoteric Alteration, which represents a huge damage loss because you would need to drop Convention of Elements or a Damage Gem. Instead you can choose to play at long range. This build switches out Audacity for Power Hungry and uses Zei's Stone of Vengeance. You can also switch out Teleport for another damage buff like Familiar or Slow Time Exhaustion. I like this variant because it plays more to how Hydra is meant to be played: evasive and kiting when necessary. Now, this build is a bit more plodding and slow on trash because you can't group as many mobs and getting the big 10+ Absolute Zero buffs will happen much less often, but you will die a lot less and have max DPS for Rares and Rift Guardians. 3) With the long range damage build, consider switching out Bane of the Trapped and playing with BOTH Taeguk and Zei's Stone of Vengeance. The reason is that these gems scale faster than Bane of the Trapped in damage, although they take time/distance to hit their maximum efficiency, and you can get the nice little Armor buff from Taeguk. With both working, you can get a nice little 20% damage buff over Bane of the Trapped when channeling on Rares/Rift Guardians. I'm not a fan of Bane of the Stricken for Typhon build, as the build has more than enough damage to take down Rift Guardians when playing the max DPS variant. 4) The damage type on your damage roll for Death Wish matters. The reason is, at the high GR levels, you want to take Elemental Exposure as an additional damage buff. So, you would have 3 DPS passives like Power Hungry, Unwavering Will, and Elemental Exposure and the essential defensive passive Galvanizing Ward. To maximize Elemental Exposure when playing Frost Hydra, you need Lightning (conveniently supplied by Storm Armor), Cold (your main damage, so not an issue), Fire (Flame Ward, Sparkflint, or Death Wish), and Arcane (Death Wish or switch out Absolute Zero for Spellsteal - not ideal). Generally, you want to roll Arcane damage on your Death Wish for Frost Hydra. You can also go with Cold Blood over Elemental Exposure as well - it works well on trash, but starts turning off on Rift Guardians and Rares because of CC diminishing returns.

[@DaintreeRogue]

Such an awesome resource, and plenty of good info that applies across classes too. Thanks for sharing your hard work! I've pinned this comment :)

[@ethereal4k]

A nice change of pace. I tried it on some 124s and I had one run that was somewhat close. Wasn't running Stricken and the RG took me too long. Frost Hydras have less range, but better AoE. I don't know about sacrificing CoE for OoID. No teleport or Illusory Boots makes it more difficult to gather large groups, get to occulus rings, and sometimes you'll die from getting stuck. I also tried this build with Flame Ward and Arcane Attunement (replacing Spell Steal) which worked out alright. Of course, Arcane Attunement is only going to be good on high levels with large packs.

[@DaintreeRogue]

Thanks for the feedback, this is really useful! Would love to know if you manage to get a 124 down - let us know! I like the idea of using CoE over the Orb of Infinite Depth - that way we can use Teleport instead of EB. Arcane Attunement is an interesting idea too - thanks for the tip :) Although I think the Arcane Hydras will need Black Hole due to the smaller AOE.

[@christopherhoff7336]

There are also some gimmicks that you can experiment with, like combining Spellsteal with Wave of Force Arcane Attunement. Not sure how it would work, but there is some theory craft potential for combining multipliers.

[@DaintreeRogue]

Great point. ethereal4k suggested something similar, but I was thinking of swapping it out for BH, which ofc doesn't make a whole lot of sense! Thanks :)

[@kimkoning2243]

Nice alternate build! Keep up the good work! Ive experimented with typhon set a lot this season. Seems like going from tasker and theo to captain crisom works beter in terms of damage done and damage reduction which this set lacks compared to LoD countrrpart. As I play on hc, that damage reduction feels really good. For hc you shoul put topaz in helm, more damage reduction and less arcane power hammering, but for sc you can go diamond in helm, would do even more damage, and you dont need to manually cast 2nd black hole as well, cdr takes care of it

[@DaintreeRogue]

Thanks Kim! I used Captain's Crimson on the speed version but didn't think to swap it out here. Great idea. I am a HC player at heart so I do prefer my builds to be on the tanky side of things, but it's a little bit easier to test things in SC - maybe next season haha. This sounds great, will give it a go - thanks :)

[@Marcoffs83]

So nice to see people experimenting with Wizards in such a terrible season for us. If only this build was better than LoD hydra I would go for it instantly.

[@DaintreeRogue]

Yeah it has been fun! Can't wait for something to take down Archon - might be waiting a while, ha. LoD is definitely the strongest though, I agree. Thanks for the comment :)

[@spare97]

If you were to try using this in non-season what would you put in the cube and how would that change the gear setup?

[@DaintreeRogue]

@spare97 Good question! I think I would go back to something similar to the pre-season build ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/eJmplp5nZsp2j8U ). It would be a bit squishier so instead of COE we might have to try Unity, depending on your preference for dodging, ha! Cube: Orb of Infinite Depth --> COE -or- Orb of Infinite Depth --> Unity (or wear it and cube Halo of Karini) Spells: Explosive Blast --> Slow Time, Time Warp (Time Warp great for survivability) -or- Explosive Blast --> Familiar, Sparkflint (to make sure we get that Elemental Exposure stack from fire) Passives (same as the video above): Audacity (although if using Slow Time you might be able to keep more distance and switch to Power Hungry) Galvanizing Ward Unwavering Will Elemental Exposure I believe the above build would still cruise through GR110 and be plenty of fun :) Would you do it any differently?

[@spare97]

@@DaintreeRogue I'm gonna play around with it and let you know. My current setup is for the frost hydra, and just hit Paragon 950 and GR106. One thing I like about unity in addition to the benefit on the follower is the 14% extra damage to elites. It helps on boss/guardian fights. I use unity/CoE atm with RoRG in the cube. HoK would make me less squishy. I don't have an ancient one yet, been farming for one since seeing your video. I do use arcane hydras for lower levels to just clear in a more fun way. It isn't actually that much faster than frost but it feels way more fun :)

[@DaintreeRogue]

@@spare97 Good point about damage to elites! HoK is so strong - I ended up preferring that over Unity in the end, although sometimes Storm Armor falls off and that's less fun :/ Glad you use Arcane Hydras! Totally agree that they're more fun. Even if it just comes down to the animation :P Speed run wise, I think for dense levels, Frost and Arcane are similar speeds, but I did find Arcane to have the edge when mobs are sparse. Although I do admit hunting elites is the best strategy anyway.

[@josemanuelalcalde9236]

Hmm I like the theory. But 2 things: 1: If stricken doesnt affect the hydra atacks, then why don't we have a choice? Get that enforcer in. 2: You said we only get 3 stacks of elemental exposure, but i'm counting 4. Doesn't storm armor damage count as the lightning stack? (then frost with the novas from magistrate, fire from explosive blast and arcane.. duh). Tell me your thoughts (all this would make the build even better than you say it is).

[@DaintreeRogue]

Thanks for the questions, José! Hydras don't stack Stricken but they DO get the damage bonus from it. I'm finding that the RG fights are going on for a long enough time that Disintegrate stacks Stricken enough to outweigh the flat damage from gems like Enforcer. I'll try again without Stricken but it's the reason I made the switch in the first place (I used Enforcer until about GR112 ish). For your second thing, Frost Nova doesn't do any damage and Elemental Exposure only stacks off damaging spells :( Maybe this would be a good thing for Blizz to change to give it that extra boost?

[@josemanuelalcalde9236]

@@DaintreeRogue Lol I was wrong about everything. Thanks for that intel. I'll think of other ways to push higher with this build and let you know if I come up with something!. (At last I can use desintegrate on a pushing build lol)

[@DaintreeRogue]

@@josemanuelalcalde9236 Disintegrate ftw!

[@Marcoffs83]

just use a weapon with cold damage and you get the whole benefit from Elemental Exposure.

[@DaintreeRogue]

That’s a really good tip - thanks for pointing it out!

[@ricflair4052]

Non Season and Season which is more powerful? Arcane vs Frost?

[@DaintreeRogue]

Great question! tl;dr is technically Frost. Long answer below. I've been using Orb of Infinite Depth in the cube but it is probably not the best setup - check out the pinned comment by Christopher Hoff. He's done some awesome theorycrafting that shows Arcane can get really close to Frost, but you do have to sacrifice some stat rolls... so a fully min/maxed Frost build should beat Arcane. However, I will add that there is a slight playstyle preference as well - I find the slow on the Frost Hydras annoying and worse for AOE and grouping. But that might just be me :)

[@ricflair4052]

@@DaintreeRogue Arcane might be better at clearing mobs but weaker than frost at clearing GR guardians. It's a shame that Mammoth Hydra didnt benefit much from it . what BS logic is blizzard thinking .. sad ..

[@christopherhoff7336]

I've been doing a lot of experimenting, and I've come to this conclusion: The best way to maximize Arcane Hydra is to hit the 24 frame Hydra Attack Speed Breakpoint and drop Disintegrate for Ray of Frost Cold Blood. This is a shame because Arcane Hydra is definitely cooler than "puff the magic dragon" frost hydra, and Disintegrate is my all time favorite wizard spell. Unfortunately, you can't get the 24 frame Hydra Attack Speed Breakpoint without Witching Hour unless you make major tradeoff sacrifices. To hit the breakpoint with Max Tasker and Theo (50%/7% Attack Speed), you need 2.035 Attack Speed. With Death Wish at 7% Attack Speed, both Rings at 7% Attack Speed, and Enchantress Focused Mind, you can only get to 2.01 Attack Speed - falling just short. The only way to get to 2.035 Attack Speed is to do one of 3 things: Witching Hour, Lacuni Bracers, or Amulet 7% Attack Speed. Of these 3, Witching Hour is by far the most palatable as it involves only the resource trade of Hergbrash and represents a very significant DPS increase all on its own. Rolling the Amulet Attack Speed is close to a 1 to 1 tradeoff, so it isn't even worth it. Trading Ashnagarr for Lacuni is suicidal. I've tried to make Disintegrate work with Power of the Storm, Arcane Power on Crit 4 off hand, Templar Regen, Familiar Arcanot, Tetc. Disintegrate is simply to mana hungry without Hergbrash, and obviously your DPS falls off a cliff when you start sputtering. Hitting the 24 frame Hydra breakpoint is more important than Disintegrate as it represents roughly 25% damage buff vs 15% for Disentigrate. Therefore, my recommendation is to run Ray of Frost Cold Blood, which is sustainable with Witching Hour, Arcane Power on Crit offhand, and Templar. Witching hour gives you some attack speed padding, so you don't need perfect rolls on all your gear to hit it. Ideally, you would like near perfect attack speed rolls as you don't want to be dependent on Enchantress Focused mind, allowing you to bring beneficial buffs from Templar or Rogue. At 24 frame Hydra Attack Speed, Arcane Hydra matches Frost in DPS even without Disintegrate. It has longer range with more functional AOE. It lacks the Frost Hydra breath CC, but that may actually be an advantage in groups - less CC diminishing returns and interference with mob grouping. Speaking strictly from a min max standpoint, I think ultimately Frost Hydra beats it, because you can reach the 30 frame breakpoint (in the 1.8s) with minimal compromise and you can stack more Area Damage % in the slots you were putting in Attack Speed to hit 24 breakpoint with Arcane Hydra.

[@DaintreeRogue]

Firstly, haha @ puff the magic dragon... so true! And agree on Disintegrate - it's the best spell by far :) This is an amazing summary, thank you! I am surprised Arcane comes so close and for the most part only loses out due to gear itemisation. That's a good point re Disintegrate vs the Hydra breakpoint. I also couldn't find a way to get Disintegrate to work, sadly. Will give it a go with WH and RoF. You make a good point as well about the Frost Hydra CC; I actually dislike it and it feels harder to group mobs. And again, great point about the DR on the CC. Thanks again for the update... maybe I will do another vid demonstrating your hard work :)

[@neilsteel22]

May I verify if Hydra stacks Stricken? I read that pets do not stack Stricken and channelling skills only stack 1 per second regardless of IAS. I even tried to just let my Hydra do damage on RG and observe if it will slowly get stronger. After 30 seconds, it is still the same damage range. With this, I guess its better to use Taeguk, Enforcer and Trapped? Unless I'm using the Stricken wrong then kindly inform me how to. Its hard to push higher GRs without Stricken

[@DaintreeRogue]

Hey @NeilSteel, great questions! Sadly, pets do NOT stack Stricken (and Hydras are considered pets). I wish they did. The answer to channelling skills is more complicated. tl;dr is that Stricken should be much better than flat damage bonuses like Enforcer/Trapped etc for GRs over 115ish - because the RG fights are so long. - Long answer - Blizz may have normalised Stricken stacking to once per second for channelling skills, but afaik it's still based on the skill's Proc Coefficient and Attack Speed - meaning IAS WILL affect Stricken stacking for skills that have a Proc Coefficient greater than 0 (i.e. Hydras have PC = 0, therefore don't stack). There is an Internal Cooldown too, or ICD, but ultimately this is designed to stop DOTs from stacking Stricken many times per second. RG fights are one of the reasons I like the range on Arcane Hydras. You don't have to recast your Hydras as much when you re-position so you can channel more, and therefore stack Stricken more. I am finding that boss fights are taking at least 2 minutes and usually more (at T116+), and I am able to channel for the better part of that time. This means that whether Stricken is stacking at AS or once per second, Stricken should still far out-dps the flat damage bonus gems for these longer fights. This is old, but gives you an idea of what has a PC of zero, or not: www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-forums/theorycrafting-and-analysis/73358-skill-proc-coefficients-complete-list

[@neilsteel22]

@@DaintreeRogue Thank you for your response! It actually discourged me to continue on maining Hydra Wiz due to this restriction where Hydras and Channelling Skills doesn't really do well with Stricken. Especially you're pretty much stucked with Channeling Skills with Hydra Build. (unless they buff the Typhon Set). Anyways thank you for your ideas! I'll try to experiment abit. I'm pretty much stuck at 114 GR (my best clear is 12mins and 30secs) rn with 1164 Paragon and 14.4k INT using Frost Hydras with Taeguk, Trapped and Enforcer.

[@DaintreeRogue]

@@neilsteel22 I hate being locked into channeling skills too. I think it is cool to have a channelling option, but it being the only VIABLE option is too restrictive and a bit repetitive at times. Good luck with the experimenting - let us know if you get any further with Typhon's!

[@Bififress0r]

​@@DaintreeRogue Especially cause it is the only option for ALMOST any build. One exception being Vyr Archon (only cause they can't properly make use of the channeling items), the other being Delsere with Arcane Orb. Everything else pretty much uses these channeling items (regarding push, excluding here T16 farming builds). Btw. Stricken is always capped "very close" to the time between your hits - regarding your APS (attacks per second). Non-channeling already kinda are capped to their APS due to those not having channeling-ticks. "Very close" also being designed that way so the game does not accidentally munch Stricken stacks due to for example slight server lags, an attack hitting the enemy again but the server accidentally still counting as "Stricken on ICD". => Stricken ICD is a bit less than the time between your character's attacks. ( Example: 2.50 APS => 1sec : 2.5 = 0.4sec // -> Stricken ICD close to, but slight less than 0.4sec in that case).

[@DaintreeRogue]

@@Bififress0r Thanks for the detail. In other words, channelling skills have the same potential to stack Stricken as non-channelling, would you agree? Which is why @NeilSteel above shouldn't shy away from channelling builds :)

[@christopherhoff7336]

The main thing you fail to mention here is Arcane Hydra Attack Speed vs Frost Hydra. Arcane Hydra attacks faster than Frost Hydra, although there is an Attack Speed overlap due to the 6 frame Attack Speed system that Hydra uses. Early in the 6 frame breakpoint of Arcane Hydra, it actually matches/slightly exceeds Frost Hydra in damage, particularly at the 24 frame mark vs the 30 frame mark for Frost Hydra. So, with the 15% Disintegrate Intensify damage buff, Arcane hydra becomes the best overall AOE/damage combination of any Hydra early in the 24 frame range. Keep in mind that Lightning Hydra will be the single target DPS king because it attacks at the same rate as Arcane Hydra, but features the same damage as Frost Hydra. Take a look at this thread for more info on Hydra Attack Speed breakpoints: www.reddit.com/r/Diablo3Wizards/comments/2y2x9r/hydra_breakpoint_calculator_21/ This is the best spreadsheet Hydra Attack Speed calculator I've seen so far: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2DmFOFccskjfBmohPIch-YAQm8NbPxZGGRRhKb9bPc/edit#gid=0 The issue with Arcane Hydra is to maximize it, you really want the 7% attack speed/CH damage from Witching Hour to hit the Attack Speed breakpoint. Disintegrate has an 18 mana arcane cost vs 16 mana for Arcane Torrent Flame Ward, 16 for Ray of Frost Snow Blast, and 11 for Ray of Frost Cold Blood. So, it is really difficult to run it without Hergbrash's bindings. You can run 4 Arcane Power on Crit offhand, Templar mana regen, and Power of the Storm and still not have enough to sustain it, which means you may have to go Arcanot or Astral Presence passive, which is a counter productive opportunity cost tradeoff. Frost Hydra is better at CC because its breath weapon can freeze along with the Frost Nova. Arcane Hydra, you can run Temporal Flux, but slowing is nowhere near as good as Freezing against ranged mobs. However, Arcane Hydra is definitely worth a tryout if you have the gear to hit the 24 frame Attack Speed breakpoint.

[@DaintreeRogue]

Thanks Christopher, awesome info. Really, really helpful! I have played around without Hergbrash's and came to the same conclusion - Disintegrate is just too hungry. Reaching that 24 frame breakpoint is just too hard, and while you can get there, as you say, you just have to sacrifice too much damage to do it.

[@christopherhoff7336]

​@@DaintreeRogue I think this is a reasonable gear setup for the end game: Witching Hour (7% Attack Speed/Crit Damage), both Rings (7% Attack Speed/Crit Chance/Crit Damage), Amulet (Arcane Damage/Crit Chance/Crit Damage), Death Wish 7% Attack Speed/10% damage , Tasker and Theo Max Roll with 7% Attack Speed. This gets you to the 24 frame limit. That is my personal goal to make the switch from Frost Hydra to Arcane Hydra. I will probably have to sacrifice a persistent buff for Astral Presence to make Disintegrate work with Witching Hour. LOD Hydra can actually get even crazier since it has access to Andariels and Tal Rasha chest... It is actually possible to get to 18 frame attack speed with Andariel's, Amulet with Attack Speed, Gogok, Enchantress, and Stretch Time Rune,... maybe something to look at when season buff ends.

[@DaintreeRogue]

@@christopherhoff7336 Oosh I have a LOT of grinding to optimise the gear... but would love to try it. Let us know if you get there :) Maybe it is time to try LOD again too! Nuts, would like to see the Hydras at 18 frames.

[@rachelblack1864]

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[@hblax0]

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