Whilst Soren cries that he has no healing abilities other Wizards are running around ACTIII Inferno saying lolz eazy mode.

One problem Winkle: The major point of that build is the Force Armor rune which isn't available until level 54. Guess what, I'm not level 54!

That aside, I agree that this build is borderline OP, because it trivialises a lot of boss abilities. You can still be raped by, ranged mobs, reflecting champions/elites and swarms of mobs - basically anything that can hit you in rapid succession, but I think that's a problem for all classes.

Am I going to use this build? Fuck yes! Finally an ability that will save me from dying every time I as much as look at a champion/pair of elites!

On a side note, I figured out I've been doing it very, very WRONG. Thought it wasn't possible to use severals skill from one category. I only just found out today that it is... No more shite skills on my actionbar, woo!

my current wizard build since lv 35 (im 45 now and used this through act2 and halfway into act3):
Diamond skin with crystal shell rune
ice armor with chilling aura rune
force weapon with magic weapon rune
hydra with venom hydra rune
arcane orb with tap the source rune and before that as its a high lvl one obliteration rune
electrocute with surge of power rune or lightning blast(basicly to regen the purple orb in notime)

passive skills
galvanizing ward
prodigy
astral pressence

works great on bossfights and works even better on aoe fights
tactic: try to stay at range but when shit hits the fan use diamond skon and run away as enemies near by are slowed or stunned. just keep casting arcane orb untill u can cast it no longer and use electrocute afterwards ofc takes like 4 or 5 hits to fully regen

the build in the video seems OP idk how i will survive in hell or inferno but for nightmare my build seems pretty OP alot better then having no hp and regening it xD

edit: allmost forgot using the enchantress with the knockback skill is just pure win imo saved me alot of death

On earlier levels you can pretty much tank shit with diamond skin - was kinda awesome, but in late nightmare/start hell difficulty a champion/boss/pack of elites will remove it in 1-3 hits.

im not soaking any attacks just kite around killing packs elites rareelites without a scratch

In nightmare you can basically use any build you like.

In hell and then of course especially in inferno you just die to quickly to elites/champions, even if your kiting like a pro mobs with teleport or jailer or vortex etc are just going to wreck you regardless.

EDIT: Looks like Blizzard have nerfed mage armor so you can no longer use the low hp/regen build anymore.

I will see when i can nolonger fight with my build sofar im only getting stronger
Fgured working with vitality and crit seems awesome in nightmare xD

Looks like the Force Armor nerf only affects certain abilities or now has a maximum damage reduction effect - seems like they're trying to target extremely high damage, but easily avoidable abilities, but as a side effect general hard hitting mobs (elites, champions) will also one-shot wizards again (and thus make force armor semi useless).

How force armor was nerfed

That's pretty much the spec I was using when I got to act II (with a few minor changes). Here's my experiences with it:

Versus slow mobs/mobs with low health it's great - lay down a bunch of blizzards + hydra and watch stuff die before it even gets to you. The problems start when you meet mobs that can avoid your attacks (the invisible snakes in act II for instance)/fast mobs (sand leapers in act II, soul lasher act III) - in particular champion/elites because they are naturally fast.

Those mobs will just plain ignore your blizzard and run up to you and eat your face - that's when teleport/diamond comes in the picture. They'll save you countless time, but the retarded cooldowns of those abilities mean you are going to die a lot of times when they're on CD. Illusionist - reset teleport cooldown you say? Getting hit for 35% of my health to reset my cooldowns - I think everyone can see the obvious issue here for a glass cannon class. That said, illusionist WILL be a life saver.

So why do things seem pretty easy for this guy? He only spent 500k - 700k gold, should be pretty easy to get similar gear, right?

Well, his DPS numbers are obviously before the IAS nerf, so it's pretty damn hard hitting the same numbers now especially without using force weapon (+15% damage). That said, attack speed doesn't have any real effect on the actual damage of seeker magic missile/blizzard/hydra, so at least in that sense it's not much of a nerf - but it does have a much slower animation, which WILL get you hit when you turn around to cast while kiting anything that isn't slow by default.

Oh and also, he said that his gear cost 500k - 700k gold outside of his (I'm guessing 50 million) weapon (1446 DPS with +100 int and +40% crit damage).

TL:DR

• Is this build viable? Yes, definitely. In fact, it is THE build for wizards in inferno (with some modifications possible).
• Is it fun? That depends on whether or not you like kiting almost everything for long periods of time. Personally I find this type of play to the most boring piece of shitty ass shitty shit shit fuck. And it doesn't even save me from dying to mobs that aren't champion/elite packs with retarded affixes.
• Can it be done with gear that doesn't cost 465293478562347895 gold? Yes, it just takes even longer to kite kill and you will die more.

I think wizards have some great potential at high gear levels (archon farming pretty fun for instance), but at lower levels they just feel stupid.

This thread is probably the best I've read detailing the issues wizards have (compared to Diablo III's real glass cannon, the demon hunter).