[Guide] Knowing your Caster Wands

2.0 Update: The guide is pretty dead now, but for a look at comparing the new "adds x damage to spells" mod to the "%inc spell dmg" mod, go here. For a more detailed explanation of the sheet here

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Throughout this guide I will try to determine the relative strengths of caster mods - like Spell Damage, Cast Speed or Spell Crit -, look at the relative value you can get out of them through Master crafting, and finally focus on specifically what wands you should look for when buying them, selling them, crafting them, or, indeed, vendoring them, all with their respective builds in mind.

Also, anything mentioned here applies to Scepters as well (they can have exactly the same caster mods as wands*), and also, this guide is not gonna be half as detailed, long and grandiose as that intro just made you believe. Sorry (muhaha).


Basics


Let's start with some very basic things. Namely what the values for all the caster mods would have to be for them to be equal.

Mods considered:

%Spell Damage
%Cast Speed
%Critical Strike Chance for Spells
%Critical Strike Multiplier
%Fire/Cold/Lightning Damage

The testing for this was done in an excel sheet emulating a lvl90 life based Crit Arc Witch, using the following tree and having these items equipped.



The reason I chose this tree and this character in particular is because: 1. Arc is one of the most (if not the most) popular spell gems; and 2. The tree for it follows what is by now a fairly traditional self-caster tree pattern, and so will keep differences to the majority of other caster builds to a minimum. Similarly, I believe that the gear equipped, while being fairly solid, is in line of what most people would get, could get, or try to get, on their casters as well. Finally, while the testing is done on a crit character, it doesn't affect the Spell Dmg vs Cast Speed considerations of a non-crit character at all.

What will affect the final result though, is the choice of support gems. I ran the following:

[Arc(lvl20)]+Spell Echo(lvl20)+Light Pen(lvl20)+Faster Casting(20/20)+ICD(20/20)

While Lightning Pen doesn't matter here in the slightest, if you aren't using either Faster Casting or Crit Dmg in your setup, you need to be aware that your dps will vary from mine, and that in general - as a result - in your mind you should add a greater weight to those attributes on your wand that fill the gap left by the missing support gem (i.e. if you are not using Faster Casting gem, faster casting on your wand is gonna be more valuable than what I am about to show you). And that of course is also true if you are missing some stats on gear pieces as well.

Lastly, Crit Multi and Crit Chance are irrevocably linked. The more Crit Chance you have the more effective Crit Multi is, and the more Crit Multi you have the more effective is to add Crit Chance. The main reason I mention this is because Arc is a 5% base crit spell. Had the testing been on a 6% crit chance spell, or even a 7%, Crit multi would be more effective for the same amount of Crit Chance added (the differences would be almost negligible, though).

But finally, the results:

Base damage: 20004 dps (with listed tree, gear, 7 power charges and lvl20 Heralds of Thunder and Ice)

With extra 20% spell dmg: 20956 - the same dps that can also be achieved with:

70% crit chance, 19% crit multi or 9.5% cast speed

So now you know. Or do you? The problem here is that all the values change slightly depending on how much of whatever stat you already have. Let's look at how the situation would look if I had two wands already equipped:



Base: 40276 dps

41590 dps = extra: 20% spell dmg, 53% crit chance, 13% crit multi or 7.5% cast speed

Oh wait, does that mean that those Witch 3% Cast Speed nodes are actually worse than the 10% Spell Damage ones? Yes, it does. Yes, it does. Those nodes would need to be 3.75% to be equal. What about without Faster Casting, though? Alright:

20% spell dmg = 32652 dps = 5.9% cast speed

Well, seems like the common wisdom of taking the Witch cast speed nodes instead of the spell damage ones has been partially restored.


Now let's take this knowledge and apply it to the wands themselves. We know that the maximum values are:

Prefix: 74% spell dmg
Prefix: 108% spell dmg (with 34% spell dmg hybrid mod)
Suffix: 109% spell crit
Suffix: 38% crit multi
Suffix: 22% cast speed
Suffix: 30% fire/cold/light dmg

On a 20004 dps base those would result in:

74% spell damage: 23528
108% spell damage: 25147
109% crit chance: 21508
22% cast speed: 22204
38% crit multi: 21912
30% light damage: 21339

On a 40276 base:

74% spell damage: 45139
108% spell damage: 47373
109% crit chance: 43024
22% cast speed: 44162
38% crit multi: 44118
30% light damage: 42118

Although the results vary slightly between the two extremes, there seems to be a pretty clear answer for what the best mods are:

1. Spell Dmg
2. Cast Speed
3. Crit Multi
4. Crit Chance
5. Fire/Cold/Lightning

The differences between Cast Speed and Crit Multi are quite small though, and - as mentioned earlier - the absence of either Faster Casting or ICD will swing the victory into the missing stat's favour.

30% Fire/Cold/Lightning Dmg mod is roughly equal to 30% Spell Dmg for most purposes, only slightly worse when you are using Heralds since Spell Dmg affects those as well, while the Elemental Dmg will at best affect only one of them, and at worst neither.

In the end, what this all means, is that the wand with the highest dps value is one with Spell Dmg (+Hybrid Spell Dmg), Cast Speed, Spell Crit and Crit Multi, with the Elemental Damage sadly having no slot left, being it is a suffix as well (although it still has place on a non-crit build). It also means that when evaluating a wand, you should prioritize higher tiers of better mods - obviously :-). As in, when seeing a wand with a T3 Spell Dmg and one with a T3 Cast Speed, you should chose the Spell Dmg one. When comparing different tiers, use the conversion values I provided. It's up to you whether you decide to use the "both hands empty" ones, double wand ones, or make an average between those two.


Master Crafting/Crafting


To make your choice a little bit harder, or maybe more interesting, you can now master craft mods on your wands as well. To make it even more interesting, not all the master crafted mods are equal with respect to how many percent of the maximum normal mod value you can get out of them. To make any sense of what mods you should craft or buy "as is", and which you should master craft, you now need to take that into consideration, as well as the relative power of the mods themselves.

Here are the highest possible Master Crafted values and their strength compared to the parent mod:

Spell Dmg: 44% 44/74 59%
Cast Speed: 11% 11/22 50%
Crit Multi: 27% 27/38 71%
Spell Crit: 69% 69/109 63%

What does that mean? It means that by extraordinary luck (although some say it's by design) the two strongest mods - Spell Dmg and Cast Speed - that you would want the least to lose on by master crafting them instead of having them as a full mod, are also the ones with the lowest efficiency compared to the parent mod.

In case you wanted to craft a wand from scratch then, your pre-regal state should be:
Prefix:[Highest Tier Spell Damage]
Suffix:[Highest Tier Cast Speed]

What to hope for on a regal, though? Spell Crit or Crit Multi? Master Crafted Crit Multi is more efficient, but the Crit Multi mode itself is stronger and therefore less desirable to lose on by not having it in full. To decide we need to look back at our conversion values.

70% Crit Chance = 19% Crit Multi 70/19 = 3.68
53% Crit Chance = 13% Crit Multi 53/13 = 4.07

We are missing 11% Crit multi and 40% Crit Chance on the master crafted mods.

11*3.68 = 40.48
11*4.07 = 44.77

In both cases we lose slightly more by having Crit Multi master crafted. On our regal we should then hope for the Crit Multi mod and finally master craft Spell Crit for our perfect wand. However, this is a good time to clarify something. We are talking, and have been, about DPS only here. There is a lot more to a wand than just pure dps and really the only reason I am covering dps is because it is the only stat that can be determined absolutely. Any other considerations you might have, such as consistency, clear speed or fun, cannot be determined in general by just looking at the respective mods, and will vary greatly from build to build - which is something I will cover in the last section, so hurray!

That said, if it was me crafting or buying a wand, I would - just in general, for spells like Arc, Freeze Pulse, Fireball or Glacial Cascade - look for consistency first and choose Spell Crit as the full mod, and then master craft Crit Multi later (apart from consistency, highest spell crit also allows us to apply status ailments more often and refill our flasks faster).

Before we get into more detail on that, though, there is one more thing we need to cover - which is the Spell Dmg Hybrid mode. It gives up to 34% Spell Dmg (and 25 mana) and, in theory, it should be what we really want as our first prefix, not the regular Spell Dmg, because it cannot be master crafted. However, being as we need all three suffixes for maximum dps, and therefore cannot use Elreon's Multi Mod, we will always be left with just one mod we can master craft. That effectively puts it in competition with full Crit Multi and full Spell Crit.

Because we are looking at best possible end game crafting option here, let's use the full gear values only:

1% Spell Damage = 2.65% Crit Chance = 0.65% Crit Multi

34% = 90% Crit Chance = 22% Crit Multi

Meaning Hybrid Spell Dmg isn't as good an option as normal Spell Dmg when crafting a crit wand. When crafting a non-crit wand it is a decent option, albeit still one that will leave you with slightly less dps should you not hit Spell Dmg on regal.

34% Spell Dmg + 44% Spell Dmg (master crafted)

vs

74% Spell Dmg + 19% Elemental Dmg (master crafted)

There are two cases when this doesn't hold true: 1. You use EK and don't care about Elemental Dmg (even with Hatred or Added Fire the Ele Dmg would only apply at roughly 26-7% efficiency); 2. You want to multimod your wand which would lead to:

34% Spell Dmg + 44% Spell Dmg (master crafted) + 19% Elemental Dmg (master crafted)

Needless to say, that is probably not worth it and there are other suffixes that you might want to use.


Wands for their respective builds (mostly applies to Softcore)


For the majority of spells now-days you want to go crit and for the majority of those crit builds you want to use a wand with simply the most dps, perhaps with a prioritization towards the consistency and utility of high spell crit. That will also be the majority of wands you see today. Like the one I use on my Crit Arc Witch who served as a template for my calculations:



With a wand like this (or simply any that has all four stats) you can't go wrong with for any crit spell build - or any spell build for that matter. Moreover, should you get your hands on one with an open prefix and suffix, you might consider spending extra for the flexibility that such a wand provides. In case I didn't, for example, need any more damage, I could remove the Crit Multi mod and replace it with 1% Lightning Leech for more survivability.

That said, while the aforementioned wand would be very good for any caster build - and excellent for the majority of crit spell builds -, there are many outlier spells that have specific needs - that in turn require a specific wand. And although this is not a trading guide, knowing what types of wands people might want should help you quite a bit in that regard. Let's look at them now:

Cold Snap

-Cold Snap has a fairly long cool-down and so 99% of Cold Snap builds use Romira's Banquet to bypass it. That in turn means 99% of Cold Snap builds are non-crit.
-Best wand: Max spell Dmg + Max Cold Dmg (longer freeze), some Cast Speed
-Competition: Doryani's Catalyst, Taryn's Shiver

Example wand:

Freezing Pulse

-Both the range and the damage scale with projectile speed
-Best Wand: Sacrifices Crit Multi for Projectile speed
-Projectile speed is a suffix that can be master crafted, with the max value being 30 (out of 41 for the full mod). Also, scepters (and daggers) can't have Projectile speed, leaving wands as the best option.
-Competition: N/A

Example wand: Just imagine it has Projectile Speed instead of Crit Multi ;)

Ice Spear

-Thanks to its incredibly high crit chance in the second form, it is very possible to cap your crit chance without any Spell Crit on the wand. Relying only on the second form might not be the best, although some people think it is and will consider wands without Spell Crit, but with Crit Multi, close to best in slot.
-Still a good wand: Spell dmg, Cast Speed, Crit Multi
-Competition: N/A

Example wand:

Flameblast

-Is mostly played non-crit and with burn prolif. While Spell Dmg does scale the original hit (which scales the burn), Elemental or Fire Dmg scale both the original hit and the burn. It is therefore preferable to use the highest amount of Fire Dmg even at the expense of some Spell Dmg.
-Best wand: Spell Dmg, Cast Speed, Max Fire Dmg
-Competition: Doryani's Catalyst is by far the best in slot

Example wand:

Flamedab

-Crit Flameblast that only ever uses one stack to kill mobs. Immediate cast can be achieved by simply moving the character: doesn't require cast speed at all. Crits shock mobs thanks to Herald of Thunder, making the burn do 50% more damage, so it doesn't require any special boost to Burn Dmg either. Crit consistency highly improves clear speed.
-Best wand: Max Spell Crit, Spell Dmg, Crit Multi
-Competition: Any spell dagger, 60+80% implicit daggers are the best in slot, Divinarius

Example wand: Oops

Discharge

-Same story as Flamedab: doesn't require cast speed + values high crit consistency, high implicit daggers are the best in slot
-Best wand: Max Spell Crit, Spell Dmg, Crit Multi, Ele leech?
-Competition: Spell daggers, Divinarius

Example wand: Yes, I know that's not a wand!

Incinerate

-Cannot crit. Requires a very high cast speed to get the final stage as quickly as possible. Will very likely be used with Added Chaos which only scales from Spell Dmg, but not Fire or Elemental Dmg. Also needs a very high projectile speed to achieve fast clear times.
-Best wand: Max Cast Speed, Spell Dmg>Fire Dmg, Projectile Speed
-Competition: Apep's Rage (Doryani's Catalyst isn't bad on RF Incinerate, as RF scales off of Fire and Elemental Dmg, but not Spell Dmg)

Example wand:

Ethereal Knives

-Physical spell, doesn't care about Elemental Dmg. Projectile Speed helps with clear speed. A lot of EK builds are not crit.
-Best wand: Spell Dmg, Cast Speed, Spell Crit, Projectile Speed
-Competition: N/A

Example wand: For non-crit EK anyway

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Oh yeah, and I guess there is one wand that is always in competition when it comes to crit spell builds:


If you have the money, that is. For the maximum effect (and fun), you want to get two of them as well. However, apart from the fun aspect, they are currently, in my opinion, a bit overpriced as you can get withing 2/3rds of their damage with just 1/10th of the price and are not constantly under pressure to keep your power charges up at all times, which is sometimes - like when fighting separate room bosses - flat out impossible without PCoC.


There are some other things to be aware of:

-1% Ele Leech master crafted mod is a prefix. If you manage to find a good Spell Dmg, Cast Speed, Spell Crit, Crit Multi non-master crafted wand, don't forget to check if it has a prefix open.

-2x1% Ele Leech on wands + 1% Ele Leech on Doryani's Invitation means you can use Vaal Pact.

-Wands with +1 to gems and especially +2 to cold gems are worth more to builds that use AA. +X to gems mods are prefixes as well.

-Some other that I forgot, although I have a strong belief someone will remind me of them.

EDIT: And there we go :-) (thanks to Odoakar): - While Cast Speed gives you relatively less dps than Spell Dmg, it helps you - especially when using Spell Echo which locks you up in place for 2 successive casts - reposition yourself quicker and be more responsive in general. That in turn helps your survivability as well as fun.


Bonus: Wands vs Scepters vs Daggers


-Daggers can't have Cast Speed, Ele Dmg or Projectile Speed. You can't Master Craft Spell Dmg on Daggers
-*Scepters (and daggers) can't have Projectile Speed.
-Wands, Scepters and Daggers can have (and can have mastercrafted) Mana regen!

Battle of Implicits:

20% Spell Dmg = 53-70% Crit Chance

At base 20004 dps:

17% spell damage: 20813
18% spell damage: 20861
19% spell damage: 20909
20% spell damage: 20956
60% crit chance: 20832
80% crit chance: 21108

Implicit on Demon Daggers is - on average - roughly equal to the highest possible implicit on wands. Only Prophecy and Opal wands can have 20% implicit, and only Imbued and Tornado wands can have 19%. Only Quartz, Crystal and Opal scepters can have 20% Elemental Dmg implicit.


And that is all from me. Now go play the actual game, you nerds!

Just wow. We really need more guides like that! Thank you very much

can you give us a example wand for spell with totems?
thanks in advance for the guide is cool

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Skip511 wrote:

Just wow. We really need more guides like that! Thank you very much

You are welcome, babe <3

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Zergei wrote:

can you give us a example wand for spell with totems?
thanks in advance for the guide is cool

What? There are spell totems in this game? :o

Seriously though, I don't know. Spell totems have 50% less Spell Dmg and 30% Less Cast Speed multipliers on them, so that changes everything. Beyond saying that this probably means they favor Cast Speed, I have nothin'.

EDIT: Actually changes absolutely nothing, but, eh... -_-

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Cabesi wrote:

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Skip511 wrote:

What? There are spell totems in this game? :o

Seriously though, I don't know. Spell totems have 50% less Spell Dmg and 30% Less Cast Speed multipliers on them, so that changes everything. Beyond saying that this probably means they favor Cast Speed, I have nothin'.

Flame totem.

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Tai wrote:

Flame totem.

As far as I know, the Flame Totem (as well as the Shockwave Totem) use any stats your self casted spell would use, so there would be no difference - at least with regards to the mod power equivalence.

If you are asking me for anything specific on Flame Totems, like what exact wand you would want and so on, then I have no clue, never having played Flame Totem myself - or any Totem build for that matter.

Sorry to crush your notions of my greatness :(

oh, bad luck for me :(

With your big knowledge about wands, could be a good "help" for me to build my future flame totem whit your maths on wands!

Amazing Guide for "Wand" newbies (like me).
Thank you very much

It's not all about the dps. Cast speed in my eyes will always be the n1 stat to get, due to immense increase in your character's 'responsiveness', fluidity of character animations and just overall feel of being more fast in clearing packs, repositioning, kiting etc.

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Odoakar wrote:

It's not all about the dps. Cast speed in my eyes will always be the n1 stat to get, due to immense increase in your character's 'responsiveness', fluidity of character animations and just overall feel of being more fast in clearing packs, repositioning, kiting etc.

Yes, that is actually one of the things I forgot to mention. I wouldn't really call it number one stat - as the difference just from the wand won't be that great, but it is something to consider for sure.