[Guide] Knowing your Caster Wands

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Cabesi wrote:

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SainteVermine wrote:

What about the +1/+2 to gem level?

Sadly you can't achieve anything with a 3L. Both Faster Casting and ICD give you about 25% more damage each. +3 would give you, in the best case, 30% more.

+ to lightning gems is helpful for the classic Lightning Warp/RD/FC setup, as the extra levels will reduce LW's duration still further. It's nice to have, but for pure DPS on your main damage skill, other stats are more relevant. Likewise, +2cold, +1all for Arctic Armour with Empower (max L26? AA with corruptions).

I think Searing Bond totem is about the only interesting damage use of a +2 fire/+1 all wand/sceptre (ideally a sceptre as the implicit on a wand doesn't benefit Searing Bond). SB only really gains from Increased Burning Damage, Empower, and increased elemental/fire damage, so the lack of sockets isn't a hinderance to its damage.

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Merneith wrote:

What about Kinetic Blast wands?

That'd be for the "Knowing your Attack Wands" guide. ;)

Thank you Cabesi for such a thorough guide.

edit: Wouldn't this be better off in the General Gameplay forum?

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Norky wrote:

edit: Wouldn't this be better off in the General Gameplay forum?

Maybe. Maybe not. I feel most at home at the Witch forum :-).

Hi, nice guide, but not everyone goes crit. I might try crit arc one day but my non crit arc Templar kicks ass. Lightning penatration is great along with conductivity. With crit arc you get more multi damage than lightning damage so you dont penatrate as much? I have 65% shock chance on my arc and 50 something on my totem. How much crit chance can you get with arc, how much do you actually crit? I shock right away with my non crit. Just some food for thought..thanks.

Didn't read through all the responses, but regarding this section:

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Cabesi wrote:

While Lightning Pen doesn't matter here in the slightest, if you aren't using either Spell Echo, 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.

Spell Echo doesn't actually have any impact on stat value (well aside from mana implications of course), the cast speed and damage multipliers are equally effective regardless of what modifiers to cast speed or damage you have on your character.

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Fearmonger wrote:

Spell Echo doesn't actually have any impact on stat value (well aside from mana implications of course), the cast speed and damage multipliers are equally effective regardless of what modifiers to cast speed or damage you have on your character.

You are completely right. I knew that the 0.9 damage multiplier didn't make any difference, but the way I calculated Spell Echo (%inc cast speed*spell echo multi+%spell echo increase) while leading to the correct final cast speed, kind of made me not realize that it can also be expressed as ((%inc cast speed+100)*spell echo multi-100) and there is no actual %cast speed increase coming from Spell Echo at all (which would obviously did affect the results).

Either way, thanks for pointing this out. Will correct that in the guide.

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also, this guide is not gonna be half as detailed, long and grandiose as that intro just made you believe. Sorry (muhaha).

This is deceptive as the guide is pretty in-depth and wonderful, thanks!

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Saskyou wrote:

This is deceptive as the guide is pretty in-depth and wonderful, thanks!

At least for a week or two more :o

But thanks <3

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

Which one is better for my minion build?
The crafted modifier on the wand to the right is temporary.

I know there are better wands, I just want to learn from the above comparison.

-- TKMantis