This Isn't Even My Final Form, Bro (Part 1)

Got a message from a friend who started RoS recently. It reads:

"So random d3 question, is wiz permanent-archon possible/viable? Seems like it would be fun with 4 piece vyr's. "

Vyr's, eh? Well, let's take a shot at this. The first thing you need to know is that, with good enough gear, anything is 'viable' in Torment 6. The deep GRifts (30+ floors down) are another issue entirely, requiring highly optimized gearsets and skill builds. However, perma-archon is strictly speaking impossible (more on that later), since the extended duration mechanic was reworked for RoS. But to make a long story short, yes, Vyr's is very viable in Torment 6 level play. 

How do I know? Well, I used to run a dual Vyr's/Tal's spec. In fact, it carried me all the way to GRift 27 on my first few tries solo GRifting to see how far I can go. As a caveat, though, the Vyr's was mainly 'splashed' in, providing me with a powerful long cooldown to help deal with troublesome elite packs. What we're looking for here, I believe, is a Vyr-centered build.

Ok, so to know what we're dealing with here, we need to look at how Vyr's works, what makes it good, and what makes it not so good.

You say this when you pop Archon. Admit it.

Vyr, The Other Long Cooldown - The full 4-set bonus of Vyr's reads: "Archon gains the effect of every rune." This means a number of things; an initial burst of 3680% weapon damage(!), the ability to Teleport and Slow Time with HIGHLY reduced cooldowns (3 and 1 seconds, respectively), reduced base Archon CD to 100 seconds, and an increase of 22% to the damage of Archon-only abilities (yes, this includes the initial burst). If this sounds pretty good, that's because it is. In fact, it used to be downright awesome.

With good enough gear, this potentially kills T6 elites FROM THE INITIAL BURST. I've done it before, usually by hitting an entire Health Linked pack at the same time. At the very least, you'll rip off a big chunk of their health, making them easy pickings for you and your party. Apart from the impressive abilities, you get a 20% bonus to armor, resistances, and damage (yes, Virginia, this too stacks with the Improved Archon rune), meaning that for 20 glorious seconds, you fear no evil for you ARE the baddest motherfucker walking in the shadow of the valley of Death.

But wait - if it's so damn good, why doesn't everyone use it? 

People used to - in fact, in early RoS Vyr's was considered to be the end-all spec for Wizards. Before the Meteor improvements, Tal's was a lackluster set (and still considered to be mediocre) while Firebird's was just an unfunny joke.

Then 2.1 happened.

A lot of Wizard abilities had their damage increased across the board, excluding Archon. The only improvement Archon got, CC immunity, only put it on par with the other 'godmode' skills that already granted it (Wrath, Akarat's, Vengeance, Epiphany). 3 of those skills run on 60-90 second cd's, and Wrath of the Berserker is now considered a luxury button. A side effect of this was that normal mobs were being killed at a faster rate than ever, meaning that you ran into elites faster than ever. Before, it was reasonable to fight at most a couple of packs between Archon cooldowns. Now? Forget it. Monster density and farming style being what it is now, Archon will be down during a lot of elite fights. If you're depending on Archon for the bulk of your power, you're shit out of luck.

Which brings me to the other problem with Archon - the separate ability set. There are no +skill mods to the Archon skill itself, nor to any of its abilities (no, Disintegrate and Disintegration Wave are not the same spell). You can't buff it via skill mods, which puts an obvious cap to its power compared to, say, the new Firebird's, which works with any Fire spell. In fact, legendaries that mod Teleport or Slow Time do NOT work with the Archon versions of those abilities. Bummer.

"Good, I can feel your anger... wait, what do you mean wrong franchise?"

These Are All The Fucks I Give - All right, we've established the limitations of the skill. Let's see how far we can take it, then, shall we? We'll focus on the Archon side first, and then work a non-Archon skill set around that.

Obviously, we'll need the full Vyr's set, which means chest, boots, gloves, and pants. We can shift out one of these eventually using an RoRG, but we'll factor that in later. For now, we'll try to keep those 4 slots reserved.

Stat priority should obviously be CDR, at least to a degree that it doesn't reduce damage too much. According to D3MaxStats.com the greatest amount of CDR we can get through gear affixes is 49.79%, using a one hander and an offhand, as well as the Vigilante Belt. Now, there are definitely better belts out there, but the Vig is fairly easy to find so we'll go for that in the initial build. Keep in mind though, that this number assumes god roll CDR on EACH piece that can roll it, and is probably not realistic if we want to maintain decent dps. Furthermore, remember that CDR is MULTIPLICATIVE, not additive, meaning we'll never hit 100% CDR, and the numbers we're using will turn out somewhat less in practice. Nevertheless, we'll work with this number as a guideline for now.

At almost 50% CDR, 4-Vyr's Archon has roughly 50 seconds cooldown, with a 20 second uptime. Not too bad.

We're now going to dive into sets for even more CDR. Fortunately, the 2 sets we'll want are both crafted - Born's Command and Captain Crimson's Trimmings. If we want both, we'll need to skip on the Born's chestpiece and go with the shoulders and the sword, otherwise, we'll never complete Vyr's (since 2 pieces overlap with the Captain's set). For the Trimming's, we see that we have to forget about the Vig belt if we want to use it. That at least saves us from hoping for a god roll Vigilante's, as the Trimming's set bonus is 10% CDR standard. We can swap between Vyr and Crimson pants and boots as needed.

Of course, to do all this, we'll need an RoRG. It's going to have to roll really good, because LoH and IAS are baked into the ring by default, leaving us with one discretionary primary affix. We're going to want CDR and a socket for a legendary gem, so pray it rolls at least one of those.

You really, REALLY want a Trag'Oul's for the wrists. AFAIK, Knowledge Pools count as Health Wells so they'll trigger the legendary ability as well. The Coils should go a long way towards maintaining Archon uptime when you need it.

The head slot will be probably be taken by a Swami, since it effectively increases the Archon uptime in terms of DPS. At the very least, it will smooth out the periods between Archon cooldowns. A good streak of kills in Archon form will let you rip through things easier for the next 10-15 seconds.

The last couple of slots, offhand and amulet, will depend largely on the element you'll end up using, as well as the non-Archon mode spec. We'll get to that in the next post!