Diablo Immortal Wizard Players Say the Class Is Breaking

 

Wizard players in Diablo Immortal are having one of those weeks where every new thread feels like a fresh little insult. First came the backlash over the Wizard mobility change tied to Terminus Facade. Now the mood has shifted from “this feels worse” to “is the class actually breaking in multiple places?” New forum posts are piling up around reduced Disintegrate range, broken essence interactions, and fresh complaints that some boss fights now feel flat-out miserable on Wizard. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}

The sharpest new complaint comes from a fresh bug report on Blizzard’s Diablo Immortal forum, where a player says Disintegrate’s range feels massively reduced after recent changes. They specifically mention no longer being able to refract the beam properly on certain dungeon bosses because they have to stand too close, which in practice means getting punished harder and dying more often. That is not just a balance gripe. That is a class-feel problem, and players usually notice those faster than almost anything else. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

It is not just one thing anymore

That would already be enough for a decent frustration story, but Wizard players are not stopping there. Another new bug thread says the Mask of Many essence is not working properly, with one player reporting that the supposed instant full-charge behavior does not correctly apply to Meteor when paired with Binding Forces. Then a separate follow-up post, Wizard bug after essence change, claims the recent changes now stop Wizards from using Ice Crystal and Disintegrate properly against certain bosses, including Pit of Anguish’s last boss and ledge-style encounters. :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

That combination matters. One awkward change can be debated. A cluster of fresh complaints touching range, essence behavior, and encounter usability starts to look less like whining and more like a class going through a rough patch in public.

Wizard players are hearing the same bad song again

The wider context makes the reaction louder too. Blizzard’s own latest Diablo Immortal bug listings show both the Disintegrate and essence reports surfacing together on April 15, while the broader forum feed also shows the still-active discussion around Terminus Facade’s speed boost removal and another complaint that Binding Force Meteor now feels clunky and unusable. That is a lot of smoke around one class in a very short window. :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}

It also lands in a game that was already fighting for patience. We have already covered how Diablo Immortal’s Battlegrounds refresh is trying to calm PvP nerves, and how players are raising fresh progression alarms over Leviathan Surge. Against that backdrop, Wizard players are not exactly in a forgiving mood.

Fun is still the first stat people notice

Maybe Blizzard sees some of this as tuning. Maybe some of it really is bug-related collateral damage. But from the player side, that distinction only goes so far. If your class suddenly has less range, worse flow, broken essence interactions, and more annoying boss encounters, the experience is simple: the class feels worse than it did a few days ago.

And that is the danger here. A live-service class does not need to be mathematically dead to start feeling dead. It just needs enough friction piled on fast enough that players stop trusting it. Right now, that looks uncomfortably close to where Wizard is headed. :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}

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Diablo Immortal Players Are Already Furious About a Wizard Mobility Change, and Honestly It Is Not Hard to See Why

 

For once, Diablo Immortal players are not mainly yelling about crashes, disappearing menus, or the shop falling through the floor. This time the heat is on class feel, and the target is Wizard. More specifically, players are arguing over the apparent removal of the speed boost tied to the Terminus Facade essence, and they are not reacting like this is some harmless little tuning pass.

The spark comes from a fresh thread on the official Diablo Immortal forums, where one player argues that removing the movement boost guts both the fun and the viability of the setup. A matching Reddit discussion is carrying the same mood: less speed, less flow, less reason to keep playing Wizard the same way.

Not every nerf is just numbers on a spreadsheet

That is the real hook here. Players can live with damage nerfs. They can even survive the usual live-service ritual where something fun quietly gets dragged into a back alley and rebalanced. What they do not take lightly is when a class suddenly feels worse to move, worse to route, and worse to enjoy moment to moment.

And that is what makes this more interesting than a simple balance footnote. If the speed boost really is being stripped out of the Terminus Facade setup, players are not just losing power. They are losing rhythm. In an action RPG, that matters a lot more than some developers seem to think. A build can survive lower numbers. It is much harder to survive feeling clunky.

Wizard players are hearing a familiar Blizzard sound

The tone of the backlash is also revealing. A lot of the frustration is not really about one essence in isolation. It is about the old Blizzard problem of taking a setup people actually enjoy and “fixing” it in a way that makes the game feel flatter. That does not always kill a class, but it can absolutely make people stop loving it.

It also lands at a time when Diablo Immortal has already been in one of those classic messy stretches where the conversation keeps drifting back to system friction and player trust. We recently covered how Blizzard is reshaping Battlegrounds with a much bigger PvP refresh, and how the shop loading bug has been hanging around far too long. Against that backdrop, even a class-mobility change starts feeling less like isolated tuning and more like another reason for players to stay annoyed.

Fun is the stat players notice first

Maybe Blizzard sees this as a reasonable correction. Maybe it is one. But players almost never experience these things as clean design philosophy. They experience them in the gut. If a build suddenly feels slower, stiffer, or more annoying to pilot, the spreadsheet explanation does not save it.

That is why this story has legs. It is not just about Wizard balance. It is about whether Diablo Immortal is once again shaving off the part of a class that made people actually want to log in. And in a game built on repetition, fun is not some bonus stat. Fun is the whole engine.

Right now, the argument is only getting louder

As of now, the forum thread is still live, the Reddit discussion is active, and there is no visible Blizzard response attached to the complaint yet. That does not automatically mean the sky is falling. It does mean Wizard players think something that felt good has been made worse, and they are making that point with the usual subtlety of a hammer through stained glass.

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Wizard Set Idea - Mirror Mage

I made this post in the Wizard segment of the official forums, but wanted to submit here as well as I'm excited at the prospect of new sets coming in the future and figured there would probably be more visibility here, so here we go:

I’m fully aware that the primary iterations of the sets coming in a future season are set and underway, but I’d like to throw an idea in the ring anyway, in hopes that one of my favorite skills could be utilized in a versatile and flexible way. My idea is for the Mirror Mage.

Keep in mind, this is a concept idea, not a comprehensive iteration with any particular multipliers in mind for the set itself.

Mirror Mage:
2 set) Mirror Image gains the effect of the all runes.

4 set) For each active Mirror Image, gain X% Damage Reduction. Damage received by the Wizard is shared to their clones (But not from their clones).

6 set) Your Mirror Images assume the form of each of the 4 elements at the Wizard’s disposal (Fire, Cold, Lightning, Arcane), firing an elemental copy of the ability used by the wizard (If the element is not available for this spell, it will use a random rune instead). The damage of the Mirror Mimics rune is increased to x% of the damage of your own spells. Black Hole, Blizzard, Energy Twister, Hydra, Wave of Force, Magic Missile, Shock Pulse, and Spectral Blade, can be cast by your Mirror Images.

The goal here was to realize the fantasy of a wizard as a master of illusion combined with the force of their elements. While Tal Rasha forces you to cast a skill of each element to maintain the buff, I rather like this iteration instead. Tal Rasha basically asks you to cast 2-3 of your skills as a courtesy to maintain the buff, while all of your damage is funneled into one skill rune (usually from meteor). This allows an element of randomness, by selecting a random rune from the available elements, or a random rune of the skill when the element isn’t available.

Arcane Orb and Meteor were intentionally left off of the list, as they already have sets that clearly encourage the use of those abilities, and thus have established identities. I’m very open to feedback and discussion, and would like to know if there are other set ideas you have as well!

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After a long struggle, I've finally achieved a solo GR70 with my LoN Wizard!

Just for fun, and since I play very casually, I wanted to tell you guys about my achievement!

I got a Legacy of Nightmares set when playing through the main campaign with friends a year ago and decided I'd stick with it in the post-game for my Wizard, because I liked mixing and matching legendaries, and because I'm a contrary bastard.

Lots and lots of grinding and farming, fitting every Ancient going into a build, refining it over and over, incidentally building full sets of every other Wizard set along the way, and cubing almost every item in the game in my spare time, I decided my ultimate goal was to get this guy over the line of a solo GR70 and unlock primals.

Once I heard about the upcoming buff to Legacy of Nightmares, this became far more urgent! Where's the fun in achieving it after the huge damage buff? No, I had to get this locked down now!

I got GR69 weeks ago, with 6 seconds left. I knew it was time for the final push.

Was farming today, did a bunch of rerolls. No joy getting Ancient versions of the final few bits I wanted (in a perfect world).

I walked my way up again. First a 67. Then a 68. Took a look at some advice online. Flipped back and forth between Arcane Torrent and Disintegrate - again.

Then I tried for 69 again; I'd only beaten it through sheer luck last time. I got murdered. Absolutely pasted. Died about a dozen times. Nowhere near within time. Realised I had to tighen the build up even more.

Switched my Magic Weapon rune to Deflection. Switched my Disintegrate rune to Intensify. Switched my Meteor to Star Pact: I was using Lightning Meteors because of the lack of delay, but didn't realise the delay only applied to the firstMeteor!

Then 69 again, and I beat it with over 2 minutes to spare. The boost from Intensify and the Star Pact Meteor was huge. That's when I knew I had a real shot at cracking 70.

I went for it. And ... it was one of the smoothest runs I've had at high level. Didn't even die as I ground through it (...let's not count Unstable Anomaly).

Got to the Rift Guardian with just under 2 minutes left on the clock. It was Stonesinger, so a huge massive pile of HP. I was literally watching the bar whittle down and counting the seconds. Once I had 30 seconds left I knew I'd make it.

And I got it! Squeaked over the line with 16 seconds remaining!

I took a screenshot to remember it:

So there you go! I hope you enjoy my saga; I know it's not much of an achievement for people who really play high level rift content, but it's the best I've ever done in this game and it was so much fun to do it with the self-imposed handicap / "unique playstyle" of Legacy of Nightmares.

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I have to get this off my chest

Have been reforging my wizards death wish for about two weeks now and finally got an acient. 

Its sheet damage was almost 1000 above my last one so was very exited. Gifted it to add a free slot and was just about to remove my gem from my current to place in my shiny new one.

Now his is where it gets hazy. Out of sheer muscle memory I walked to the blacksmith and bloody salvaged it without thinking. 

This could be because I was at that book that identifies so naturally I usually go straight to blacksmiths. This was almost 24 hours ago and I'm still thinking about it. 

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Wizard: Found a super easy Firebirds Set Dungeon Mastery Build

So after struggling with a few different builds I saw in videos, I decided to try the best stuff of each build. I'm 644 paragon with 3 ancient firebirds pieces. Here's what I did:

Took off both rings and amulet. I didn't reroll any item to optimize. Items I used:

• Firebird gloves
• Firebird source
• Firebird feet
• Firebird pants
• Firebird shoulders
• Firebird head
• Aquila Cuirass
• Hergbrash binding (need this for aquila)
• Ranslor's folly
• Non-ancient Twisted sword

Cube:

• Etched sigil (crucial)
• Nilfur's Boast
• Convention of Elements

You don't actually need the nilfur's anymore because you just have to hit a buncha mobs when you die, not kill them. It might have helped w/ my meteors though.

Skills:

• Teleport - Wormhole
• Diamond Skin - Crystal Shell
• Energy Twister - Gale force
• Energy Armor - Prismatic armor
• Disintegrate - Convergence
• Meteor - Molten Impact

I liked molten impact better due to it doing a buncha damage and not spamming meteors while you are trying to get the 20 enemy burn.

Paragon stats (order of importance):

• Move Speed, vita
• Remove all offense stats
• Armor, AR, Life, LR
• AD, RCR, LoH

Now, here is the reason why this build works so well. You are able to use disintegrate to burn down the little guys for the burning goal. Then, when you need to kill non-elites, the tornado spam from etched sigil does a buncha damage. That's basically it. I tried this without etched sigil and I couldn't burn down non-elite packs fast enough. I finished with 1 min 15 seconds left using this method.

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You Should Probably Avoid Playing Wizard

First of all, I love playing as a Wizard. I've been playing Wizard since before 2.0. I like the class' background lore and their personality of a young and powerful sorcerer who may be too proud of their own skills. I also love it because she is voiced by Azula. Although the class has been fun, I feel like this class has been left out over the years since Reaper of Souls was first announced. Problems with other classes have mostly been fixed while Wizard's have mostly been unchanged. Developers are spending way too much time adding more Monk legendaries.

The class has a lot of problems that the developers need to address to make the Wizard great again. I am not going to assume that other classes don't have problems themselves. Most of these problems are really causing the Wizard to go against it's supposed "play style"

The Wizard skills have erratic skill mechanics that other classes simply don't have. While DH can just pew pew at stuff or Monks, Barbs, Crusaders just smash everything in their way, Wizards have to deal with more complex mechanisms. We have problems like:

• Random pathing (Shock Pulse, Energy Twister, Death Blossom). Shock pulse is obviously made to be a close range skill but what is the point if Spectral Blade already exists to fill this niche? If you want to hit a ranged enemy, Magic Missile and Electrocute can fill those gaps. The only good rune it has is Piercing Orb which deals considerably more damage in a defined path. Energy Twister and Death Blossom have tempting damage potential but if they don't hit enemies, they're not really so useful at all. Energy Twister is already expensive to cast by itself and ticks a few before it leaves the target. The only way to make it useful is to use Ranslor's Folly. DH can just fire Multishot and hit everything in a cone, and WD can hit everything in a well-defined Area. Wizards can do this too, with the Blizzard spell but the area it covers is way too small but costs way too much and it doesn't even hit as hard. I am aware that ETs shine against large groups on enemies in tight quarters but it is pretty much useless against bosses and RGs.
• Delayed casts (Meteor, Explosive Blast) which most of the time causes most of them to miss or your party has already killed the monsters you're trying to hit. Imagine having to stack all the way to 100% Arcane Power only for the monster to move out of the position and waste your nuke. Explosive Blasts should just explode on cast and that's it, you're already risking yourself by staying in melee-range, you should be compensated for it.
• Unused and overnerfed runes: Examples include all Hydras except Mammoth. This is a matter of balance. I've read a blog post about different runes serving different purposes and Mammoth Hydra is best used in tight corridors but it is doing way more damage than other Hydra runes. Shock Pulse - Living Lightning must be the Wizard's single-most unused skill in the history of Reaper of Souls. In the crazy days of Critical Mass, this skill shined the brightest for being the skill used to proc the now-removed passive skill. In the age of where monster CC immunity exists, it deals a really underwhelming damage and really low range unsuitable to fit in with any build. Frozen Orb is another overnerfed skill rune which now has a really low range and has problems with Delsere because it puts the Wizard at risk being near the monsters. Arcane Orb - Sorch might be good but people are avoiding using it because the fire trails is bugged and for some reason the developers don't want to fix it. You can't also control where it explodes so there's that. Black Hole - Absolute Zero and Spellsteal overlap each other. Except Spellsteal is better because it adds a debuff an enemy. The only reason to use Absolute Zero at all is because you have a lot of bonus damage to Cold skills.
• Teleport's cooldown is way too long. Monk's Dashing Strike has 2 charges and achieves the exact same thing with an added bonus which damages enemies along the way for all runes. DH's vault uses a secondary resource you can spam travel fast. Witch Doctor has a movement skill that makes them invincible for a few seconds to allow them to reposition. The only way to make Teleport even worth it is use Aether Walker or Cosmic Strand or The Oculus which causes you to trade off a lot of damage in favor of more build enabling legendaries.
• Mirror Images. I think the developers behind this is that they're supposed to be decoys to taunt enemies so you can put yourself in a better position. The way they behave right now is that they're the first to run away from enemies before you do.
• Having "Passive" skills on the Action Bar. Monks have Mantras, Crusaders have Laws, Barbs have Shouts. Wizards have 3 types of Mage Armors, Familiar and Magic Weapon. Mantras, Laws and Shouts are buffs that allow more lively playstyle by having active and passive skills. Many Wizard builds use 1-2 of these "Passive" skills that you have to tap once every now and then. I do not understand Blizzard's philosophy behind these skills. These skills need redesigns the most. The cost of activating Energy Armor (-20 to total Arcane Power) is way too much punishment which doesn't even directly reduce damage compared to the melee classes default 30% damage reduction.
• Channeling spells are getting really nice buffs in the coming patch. They got a lot of supporting legendaries and they are certainly more powerful than ever before. However, channeling is channeling. You have to stand to deal damage. You have to soak a lot damage and god knows how much you can take it even with the Channeling shoulders. Not everyone likes this playstyle. The amount of power creep in damage may make it a mandatory playstyle and kill off the traditional kiting builds and knowing Blizzard, this resulting imbalance will probably be ignored for another patch. I fear that during PTR testing, the new channeling buffs are only widely acclaimed because people are seeing bigger numbers but turn out incredibly difficult play.
• Wizard sets are weird. It's all about starting with nothing then having to manually ramp up damage. Archon, Tals and Firebird's are all about this. Why can't we have a straight damage buff like Unhallowed Essence? Even 2-pieces of Hellooth does 1500% weapon damage per second just for hitting with a spell. Then WDs get straight up 900% increased damage for applying a DoT. Most other sets are, cast a specified spell and get a straight up damage multiplier for X seconds.
• Vyr's is probably the worst. The 6-piece set by itself cannot stand on its own. The Chantodo's set is mandatory for any build using Vyr's. Half the time you're being useless (stacking Chantodo), and half the time you're overpowered. Damage scales extremely well against groups but falls short against single target. Archon overrides your keybindings which means you are effectively playing 2 different characters.
• Tal Rasha's also got a buff in 2.4. We get more damage but the playstyle is still the same. It still retains the same active playstyle but you have to juggle between using 4 different skills to trigger meteors. The chunk of the damage are probably not coming from your own spells but from your meteors which also have problems themselves (see above). The 2-piece buffs your Resists which you already have so much from stacking intelligence. It doesn't buff your resist against Physical (most incoming damage) and Poison (most of the RGs' elements). Overall, Tal Rasha has been you-one-shot-or-you-get-one-shotted kind of builds since its major change 2.2 and shines really well in groups.
• Firebird's is OK in the PTR and clears fast but who knows what we are getting for in the Live servers in the end. Its playstyle remains the same DoT application and wait for things to die.
• Delesere's is probably going to be alright but it is highly limiting your build options because of the mandatory listed skills.
• Wizard passives are underpowered. Note how the top players are more likely to use an immunity amulet or Tals neck over an HF amulet. That's because mos of the Wizard's passives aren't all that worth it. Glass Cannon is another strong punishing skill just like Energy Armor.

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An in-depth guide on how Vyr's Amazing Arcana wizards work

This is a guide for greater rift gameplay for Archon wizards using the reworked Vyr's Amazing Arcana set. I consider this guide to be for advanced players.

If you have not read my in-depth guide on Bane of the Stricken yet, I highly suggest doing so before reading this guide.

This guide will explain the Archon wizard and its mechanics in detail and will hopefully clear up some of the partially false rumors I have seen spreading on the forums.

Archon wizards have little gear choice, so here is what you need.

Itemization

The mandatory items
Vyr's Amazing Arcana (6 pieces)

Stack gain rate is limited to 3 stacks per cast and only works with the Archon Strike and Disintegration Wave abilities
You still gain 1 stack per kill, which is not limited at all
Chantodo's Resolve (2 pieces)
Your main damage dealer of up to 7,000% weapon damage per second
Stack gain is limited to 1 stack per attack, so even with capped attack speed at 5 attacks per second you still need at least 4 seconds to get to 20 stacks
Ancient Parthan Defenders
Freezes count as stuns, so this offers isane survivability with Halo of Arlyse
Fazula's Improbable Chain
Halo of Arlyse
Jewelry Slot in Kanai's Cube: Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
Armor Slot in Kanai's Cube: The Swami
Stacks can overlap into Archon form and are additive with normal Archon stacks
Weapon Slot in Kanai's Cube: Aether Walker
Also works in Archon form, where Teleport then does have no cooldown or Arcane Power cost at all

The optional items
Either Unity for a more defensive setup or Convention of Elements for more damage
Eye of Etlich is preferred as an amulet, but immunity amulets like Mara's Kaleidoscope or The Star of Azkaranth also work

Legendary Gems
Bane of the Stricken
Helps you against the boss and works very well with high sheet attack speed, especially when snapshotting the internal cooldown to a lower value using a potion
Bane of the Trapped
Best damage gem in the game, since it is in its own damage buff category
Enemies get slowed by the Archon Slow Time ability when inside of Archon and by the slowing aura of the gem when outside of Archon
Pain Enhancer
Highest damage proc off all legendary gems, considering most wizard skills have bad proc coefficients
The additional attack speed helps with Archon stack gain before you are capped at 5.0 attacks per second

Stat priority

To see the stat priority on the items, check out the build on d3planner.com.

I prefer Attack Speed over Cooldown Reduction or Damage Increase on weapons because attack speed on weapons is multiplicative with attack speed on gear and thus allows you to get more value out of Archon stacks and Pain Enhancer, but you are goig to reach the cap of 5.0 attacks per second faster with this.

Paragon priority
Core: Intelligence
Offense: Cooldown Reduction > Critical Hit Damage > Critical Hit Chance > Attack Speed
Defense: Life > Armor > Resistance to All Elements > Life per Second
Utility: Life Per Hit > Area Damage > Ressource Cost Reduction > Gold Find

Yes, you actually do not need any movement speed. Because why walk when you have teleport without cooldown?

Skills

Active Skills
Arcane Torrent - Static Discharge

• Spender for Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac with an internal attack speed scalar of 3.0 for faster reset of Archon cooldown
• Has the best proc coefficient of all usable channeling spells, so 4 Arcane Power on Critical Hit is enough
• The delay on the bullet allows you to gain 1-2 more Chantodo's Resolve stacks after you enter Archon

Spectral Blade - Flame Blades

• Insane temporary fire elemental damage increase
• Scales well with your attacks per second

Archon

• You gain all runes from the Vyr's Amazing Arcana set
• Obviously used in an Archon based build

Frost Nova - Deep Freeze

• Halo of Arlyse uses the Frost Nova rune on your bar, so this is permanent 10% Critical Hit Chance
• Do not ever use this skill yourself, since doing so will lower the amount of Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs going towards the Archon cooldown

Teleport - Safe Passage

• Provides 25% damage reduction when outside of Archon
• Insane mobility without cooldown because of Aether Walker (also works when in Archon)

Ice Armor - Crystallize

• Ice Armor is needed for Halo of Arlyse
• Crystallize rune provides 60% armor, which is a needed defensive boost
• Passive Skills

Blur

• Extra damage reduction, needed so you do not die

Evocation

• 20% free cooldown reduction which are definitely needed in a cooldown-based build

Unstable Anomaly

• Dying sets you back quite a bit, so this cheat death helps you not to

Audacity

• Audacity is one of the strongest damage buffs in the game, because it is in its own buff category and thus multiplicative with every other buff

Gameplay and Mechanics

The rest of this guide is done in my usual Q&A style, which should hopefully make this guide easier to follow.

What does the set even do?

I suggest you to read the item descriptions.

What does the gameplay look like?

If you want to see high-level wizard gameplay, I highly suggest checking out Quin69's GR70 clear.

Archon gameplay consists of six phases. After phase 6, go back to phase 3. If you die (which is basically game over), go back to phase 1.

1. Build up 20 Chantodo's Resolve stacks
2. Enter Archon form and try to get as many stacks as possible
3. Reset Archon cooldown using Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
4. Build up the remainder of the 20 Chantodo's Resolve stacks using Flame Blades
5. Enter Archon form with still overlapping stacks from The Swami, this is where your damage is the highest (since you have overlapping stacks and for part of this phase also the Flame Blades stacks)
6. Remaining time in Archon without overlapping stacks from The Swami is spent trying to group up mobs while still trying to damage them, may also be spent for going to the next group of mobs

What exactly does one Archon stack give me?

Every Archon stack is equal to 1% to all resistances, 1% to armor, 1% to attack speed and 6% damage in the DIBS category (Damage Increase By Skill).

What is the DIBS category?

Damage buffs in Diablo III are sorted into categories. Buffs in the same category are additive with each other, while the sums of all categories get multiplied with each other.

Archon being in DIBS is bad, because most damage buffs are in the DIBS category. This makes Archon wizards benefit less from group buffs or certain skills, since they diminish in value. It also makes power pylons have almost no effect for Archon wizards.

When do I use either Arcane Strike or Disintegration Wave in Archon

Arcane Strike freezes enemies, which makes enemies resistant to crowd control even faster. There is no value in using Ancient Parthan Defenders if all enemies around you are resistant to crowd control, so you should use Disintegration Wave when enemies are not yet crowd control resistant.

If you intend to ramp up Bane of the Stricken stacks, you should use Arcane Strike, since it hits more often (and also does slightly more damage most of the time, depending on the attack speed breakpoint you hit).

When using the Disintegration Wave ability, make sure to describe a cone with the beam that hits as many monsters as possible within one attack cycle. Since Disintegration Wave is a channeling ability, you can animation cancel it with a non-channeling ability like Teleport to move around without wasting any attack cycles you could have gained archon stacks in. This is not possible when using Arcane Strike, since it is not considered a channeling spell.

What about the other Archon abilities?

You enable Slow Time once you enter Archon form and you use Arcane Blast as often as possible. I highly suggest numlocking the latter.

Teleport is used for mobility, survivability and gathering mobs. It can also be used to skip bad maps completely when used in conjunction with Aether Walker, which makes you need less Greater Rift keys when fishing for the perfect rift.

Why do you suggest using Aether Walker over The Furnace or other items?

• Fishing for the perfect rift: More mobility means you need less rift keys
• Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs are not being wasted on Teleport when outside of Archon
• Being able to constantly teleport around allows you to control what mobs get resistant to your freezes and reposition yourself better and more frequently to adjust to their crowd control resistance

Crowd control resistances? What is that?

As explained by Wyatt Cheng in this post:

When monsters are CC'ed, they get 10% CC resist for every second they are CC'ed. If you CC them for 2.5 seconds, they gain 25% CC resist.
Prior to 2.3.0, this capped out at 65%, so if a monster had been CC'ed for 8 seconds, it would still only apply 65% of it's CC resist. As for 2.3.0, this now caps at 95%. In other words, monsters can reduce the effectiveness of your CC abilities to 5% of their full duration IF they had already been CC'ed for 9.5 seconds or more prior to that.
This CC resist naturally decays at a rate of 5% per second while the monster is NOT CC'ed and free to act.
Note 1: soft" CC's such as movement speed slows are not affected by, nor do they effect, this CC resist in any way.
Note 2: When CC resist was initially implemented it decayed by 10%. This was changed to 5% in Reaper of Souls Note 3: We experimented with a 20% minimum during PTR but did not like it, so that change did NOT go live.

This means that your survivability is based on your constant repositioning and that you will have to gather new mobs all the time using teleport, because you will at all times want mobs around you that are not resistant to crowd control yet.

What is animation cancelling channeling abilities?

Wizards channeling abilities can be cancelled by some spells, so you can effectively cast two spells in the same attack speed cycle.

This can be abused so you can gain Archon stacks while teleporting and using Disintegration Wave at the same time.

In an alternate version of this build where you swap Frost Nova for Blizzard - Snowbound, you can spam Blizzard while channeling Arcane Torrent to animation cancel it so you get two Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs in only one attack cycle.

What do I do with each pylon?
Channeling

• Allows you to recover from death more easily by resetting Archons cooldown
• Allows you to get more Flame Blades stacks

Conduit

• Gather density, take conduit, kill stuff

Power

• More damage, but value diminishes the more Archon stacks you have
• Best to take in phase 6, because you will then have the most uptime on it when you have no overlap

Shield

• Very good in phase 1-5, when you are the squishiest
• Good to kill mobs that are fully resistant to crowd control

Speed

• Movement speed effect is basically useless, because you ever only move using the teleport skill
• Knockup effect counts as crowd control, and thus makes mobs become resistant to crowd control faster
• Only take when fighting bosses, because the knockup hits count as hits for Bane of the Stricken

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Delrasha GR53: 12 mins 9 seconds clear with a Stun build, making use of Moratorium, Gizzard, APD bracers and stun skills.

Greetings, fellow Wizards!

This is a variant of the Delrasha build, using the 4pc Delsere's Magnum Opus and 6pc Tal Rasha's Elements sets.

A defensive approach can often be a good choice - you get to engage more mobs than you'd otherwise be able to with a "glass cannon" build, not to mention it's safer and gives you a sense of stability. One problem with a lot of builds is that they're only situationally good - you need a certain Greater Rift RNG for it to really shine. This is a build that always performs well.

In this video, I'm swapping Slow Time's Time Warp rune for the Point of No Return rune, using 2/3 Defensive gems - Moratoriumand Molten Wildebeest's Gizzard and having Ancient Parthan Defenders (APD) as a trade-off for the lack of Unity, enabling the usage of Convention of Elements for that damage boost which still is sort of needed in a build like this.

One great thing about the Delrasha build is that there's a lot of room for variety. You don't really need a specific ancient weapon for it for example, and you can pretty much swap skills/runes/gear around as you please, depending on what you'd like to try out. Of course, you'll still have to make sure that you're using 4 different elements, the 4pc Delsere's and the 6pc Tal Rasha's - + an RoRG isneeded. I do recommend you try a variant with Mirror Images though.

Again, I'd like to direct you to the Diablofans Build Guide for more information, as I do keep updating the guide and having to keep the same information in more than one place is a little counter-productive (there's a lot of it!).

Have fun!

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Wizards: Ancient SS is not necessarily the end all be all.

I will admit that using an ancient SS with Tals is incredibly powerful. But is it so much more powerful than others as some people say? I wanted to weigh in because I just do not agree with SS being incredibly more powerful than other builds. I have tested and cleared with multiple builds in grift 60+, and I have also tested in solo rifts 52+.

First lets talk about groups because that is where most of my time has been spent in S3. I have used 3 different builds in groups. One is centered around meteor shower with GV, another around a devastator with star pact, and the last with SS/tnt and star pact.

• My meteor shower build is by far the best for trials. Getting keys in the low to mid 60s is the easiest with this build. You must use an ancient GV for this though and it is very rare. You also need loads of resource cost reduction and AP regen. I used reaper wraps for some extra ap as well. You pretty much go through to your 4th stack asap and hold down meteor shower until the stack is 3/4th done. Each individual crit is roughly 3-4 billion with around 20 -25 crits per rotation. This build has great single target damage as well. I have clocked 9.8 billion damage per second with a stopwatch on a stunned RG.

• Next is the Devastator star pact build. With this build I max out attack speed on all my gear (TR arms, Steady strikers, TR chest, WH, and paragon) and use a witching hour as my free slot. Arcane dynamo is key for this build. I go through my stacks quickly until 3 (not forgetting to put arcane dynamo on mammoth hydra), then at 3 I use electrocute surge of power to build up 5 AD stacks and then immediately fire star pact taking me into my 4th Tal stack. I then fire electrocute for another 5 AD stacks and you should have enough attack speed with electrocute that with prodigy, you regain all of your arcane power back around 3/4th the way finished with your 4th tal stack and again fire star pact. Then start over. This build gives MASSIVE crit numbers. 50 billions on a good crit with big bad voodoo and 40 billions regularly. It does not discriminate either, it crits these numbers on trash as well as elites. On a perfectly stunned RG and flawless rotations, I have clocked it in at very near 14 billion dps, but 10-11 on average. And don’t get me started on the numbers during power pylon.... 60+% crit chance is a must with this though as it relies heavily on star pact crits.

• The last one is of course SS. With this build you must use pain enhancer instead of BotP (Botp, BotT, Zei's in the other builds) and TnTs instead of WH. Otherwise it is much similar to the devastator build revolving around arcane dynamo, attack speed, electrocute with prodigy, and star pact. Downside is that star pact has less than half the power of the devastator build, hydra rivers cannot be everywhere at once across a mob pack, and hydras miss a lot when you get a moving RG. Upside is that the dps is barely, but still never the less best against a non-moving target compared to the other two. It has been clocked in at over 14 billion dps against a stunned RG. But probably half that against a moving RG. It is more of a sustained dps similiar to that of a Krider DH and much less bursty.

In my opinion with the hundreds of hours spent with these three builds in very high rifts, I prefer the devastator build. The main reason behind this is that it has the most burst damage of anything I have ever seen in Diablo this side of sever. In a grift, I can get set up and clear off small trash packs much faster and keep moving, freeing up our sader to focus on grouping up near elites. It also isn’t as detrimental to my damage if the RG cannot be tanked, or perma stunned. And finally because there is still room for improvement because an ancient sunkeeper will do a lot better than a devastator and I do not have one yet.

My gosh this has gone on much longer than anticipated, so here are my toon:

I will have to talk about solo another day. Would you guys let me know if you have any tests that conflict with what I have found, so that we may compare? My best group clear is 61 in season 3 with some time to spare. I have not cleared higher yet because I simply have not attempted it with my team.... Yet

Edit: An honorable mention must go to the ancient furnace in the devastator star pact build. My brother was kind enough to give me his drop today, but in my limited testing, it only barely hits harder than my devastator set up on elites and causes some AP problems due to its speed. More testing is required....

Edit 2: Arcane damage is preferred on bracers and the devastator is used primarily because it is an easy to roll hard hitting mace rather than for its fire damage. Although my hydra still does a sustained 1.5 - 2.5 billion per second all by itself with the 18% fire dmg and no tnt/pain enhancer. :)

Edit 3: This is not a post arguing against the SS build, but rather a post stating that there are other options that brings dps so close to a SS build that it comes down to player ability and preference. Also, that you can still push top 100 on the leaderboard without it because I have been in the top 100 4 man for a lot of the season with a devastator.

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Deadset's Guide to: Tal Rasha Wizard (GR50+)

Happy Season 3 to you all, and may RNGsus bring you all the right loot (and Unburied, and Stoneboy...)

Much like in Patch 2.1.2, I have set out to explore all the classes and provide a guide from personal experience, in the highest gameplay environment I can accomplish at the time. The first one is dedicated to the Tal Rasha Wizard, one of my favorite reworks in S3.

VIDEO GUIDE // FULL WRITTEN GUIDE

Key points of the guide:

• The suggested build can easily tackle GR50+, as evidenced by the demonstration - completing GR51 in sub-optimal gear.
• While focused on Serpent's Sparker and Hydras to deliver the majority of the non-Meteor damage, the guide outlines a key variation into pure Meteor / semi-melee gameplay, if you don't enjoy being a summoner.
• The build takes advantage of the seasonal bracer Ranslor's Folly for Energy Twister crowd control, but can deviate into Ancient Parthan Defenders / Halo of Arlyse combo if you prefer tankyness over glass cannon gameplay.
• The guide mentions the flexibility of the shoulder slot and suggests either the consistent (but close range) damage of Death Watch Mantle, or the RNG cheat death of Pauldrons of the Skeleton King.
• The utility of Pain Enhancer for Hydra attack speed is mentioned in the Legendary Gem section, alongside the usual suspects BotT, Zei and Toxin.

I hope you enjoy the guide and have as much fun as I did on Tal Rasha! The set is in my top revamps of 2.2, alongside Immortal King, Natalya (the next guide!) and Zunimasa.

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Great night for my Wizard.

I've had amazing luck these past two nights. Started with just running up some spare Greater Rift keys from 35/36 towards tier 40. In one of my tier 36 rifts, the RG dropped this for me:

Considering that this was the only item in the game I hadn't found a GG version of, and this one rolled amazingly well for me, I was ecstatic to finally have such a strong Furnace. My previous 2 were rerolled to reach 3400 and 3550 DPS, and the latter was donated to me by a friend that found three in two days.

Then in the very next tier 36 rift that I did, this dropped:

My amulet before this was a BT Cross with 6xx INT, 99 CD, 9 CC, and OS, so I gained a better CC roll which is critical while using a Furnace, and a little extra CDR placing me at 44.96% with a free roll.

So used these two new items, and switched over to a dull DPS spec, then ran the seven Greater Rift keys I had up to tier 39 last night. Starting again tonight, I carefully went through all seven keys successfully (though by as little as 5 seconds one time) giving myself another seven attempts at finally beating tier 40, which is where I lost interest after failing by a few seconds to Saxtriss a few months ago.

So I started running my tier 40 keys, but with poor luck. Very minimal density with Winged Assassins the first time, then more Winged Assassins with archers on a high density, but long single level for rift 2.

Then on my third try, I got a nice density rift without any severe threats:




I finally cleared tier 40! and still had 4 attempts to do even better. The next rifts was bad. I had three floors that were almost completely empty, but the fourth floor was heavy zombies. Too late though as I lost the rifts by about 15 seconds on the RG. The next rift also didn't go well due to a death on a very long first floor, causing me to kill the RG 5 seconds too slowly. Then this:



 I got another successful tier 40 clear! Great density the whole way through, though it got a little messy a few times with dangerous elites, though spawning Stonesinger at the end saved more than enough time.

So after quitting any attempts at solo Greater Rift ranks several months ago, I came back from rank 480 with an average tier 39 clear, and jumped to rank 132 thanks to my Furnace (also after having given up hope of getting a good one before the new patch)

So a few tips to anyone that is struggling to clear a new tier: 1) Keep trying. The randomness to map and monster spawn makes a huge difference the higher the tier gets. 2) Know when to stop kiting forward. Most of my deaths at tier 39 and 40 were from getting too agressive. 3) Be aggressive anyways. You won't make a new personal best by over cautious. 4) Don't waste time trying to clear a bad rift. Once it is obvious you won't finish in time, just leave the game and try again. 5) In some rifts, you may have to skip a floor. A low density rift or Morlus and bugs will kill the run if you try to fight it anyways.

Here is my profile. It has the exact gear and skills I used tonight.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Enremeit-1915/hero/32329467

The only change is that Paragon points place me at roughly 600k Life and 12M Toughness.

Good luck to anyone that is still trying to increase their solo rank.

Update:




Officially in the top 100! A clan member got me three 41 keys and four 42 keys. That was the third of 41's, and the other two were also fairly close. The tier 42 attempts went very poorly. I skipped the first two after running into elites that I could neither kill nor skip, and the other three started out strong, but I couldn't spawn RG with enough time remaining. I'll try again tomorrow.

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New Wizard (Experienced Player) - Some advice, if you will.

Hi Wizzies. I'm paragon 560, all of which on DH. After picking up some Firebirds pieces on DH (RNG) I decided to spend shards at Kadala to complete the set with some other lolRNG items I've accumulated.

I've scoured the sidebar, read every Bnet page of the Dot mechanics and read most of the posts in this subreddit. However, there's one or two things I'd like clarifying if you will:

Is there a be all end all specific variation of Firebirds? I understand that it's highly customisable based on your RNG, but if you could hand pick an optimum skillset and equipment - what would it be?

Secondly, wouldn't a two-hander (Furnace, Maximus) automatically mean more damage on your Dot, if rolled well? Or is Serpent Sparker/Sunkeeper FB Source equally effective?

Slow time - better to self cast and run Teleport with Illusionist or run Mirror Image for Slow Time proc?

How do you approach a pack of mobs? Elite or otherwise? From the few hours I had with the build today I casted Slow Time > Black Hole > Apocalypse > Teleport > Black Hole > Slow Time.

Any other tips that would help me out in transitioning from the repetitive Sentry spec, as I'm genuinely excited about playing wizard and the options available to the build.

Many thanks!

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Wizards: Advanced Firebird Guide - Solo and Group Build for GR 35+

Introduction
This guide is aimed at people that are already confident in clearing T6 with ease, and know the basics behind the build. It is meant to be a guide at what worked best for me in clearing lvl 35+ Greater Rifts. *There are of course other ways to do this, but this is simply the way I have found to be the most effective.

In this guide, I will cover gearing, skill choice relative to gear, spell placement (please read the guide linked at the top for a more in depth look), and general GR 35+ rifting strategy (yes, there is strategy) for Wizards.

I am (barely) in the top 100 for seasonal solo Wizards, and most recently cleared a 39, which took me two tries (missed first by 10 seconds). I have not died once in a solo Greater Rift over 35. I have not tried 40, which would push me into the top 30 or so, but I am confident at being able to clear it given good enough density and not a rift of Executioners and Imps.

For 4 mans, our group most recently cleared a 42 with a makeup of 2 DH, Wiz, and ZDPS Monk.

Anyways, enough credentials, lets get started.

Basics
So before we get into specific builds - lets cover the basics.

Like I mentioned earlier in the guide - this guide is meant for Wizards which can already clear T6 in their sleep, and have kind of reached a soft cap at GR 35.

This means you already have near optimal...

Gear
The following is a list of the gear you need for this to work.

Ideally, none of your gear will have any wasted rolls. The following are considered wasted rolls.

• Life Regen (unless your boots rolled a single resist)
• Area dmg
• Resource Cost Reduction
• ANY % SKILL DMG
• Increased Attack Speed
• Life Per Hit (keep this for RoRG - it at least benefits you a little)

Secondary rolls are actually extremely important as well. Obviously, monster XP, reduced lvl req, and Dura loss negation are useless. Health Globe bonus, single resistances, and melee or ranged reduction all quickly add up to considerable bonuses.

Bolded Items are what I consider to be best in slot. Please read after the items for ideal rolls on them, and general notes.

• Firebird Helm, Leorics with high %- Int, Vit, Socket with diamond, CC.
• A good amulet - bonus points for Hellfire, Etlitch, or Absorb amulets - you can also use Blackthorn with Belt. - I find Cold balls hurt the most, ideal would be a Cold Absorb Amulet with Socket, CHD, CC, Fire %.
• Firebird Chest or a good Cindercoat. Int, Life %, Armor, 3 OS. Secondary with 7% ranged reduction.
• Magefist, or Firebird Gloves - Fire %, Int, Vit, CHD, CC. You will need to roll off the inherent IAS to get these rolls.
• Strongarms - Fire %, Int, Vit, CC - secondary with 7% ranged reduction.
• Either Witching Hour, String of Ears, Blackthorns Amulet+belt. Int, Life %, Vit, either CHD if WH, or Armor
• Firebird Shoulders - Int, Vit, Life %, CDR
• Firebird Pants - Int, Vit, Armor, 2 OS.
• Firebird Boots - Int, Vit, Armor, All res.
• RoRG - Int, CHD or CC, LoH, OS
• Unity - CC, CHD, OS, Elite dmg
• SoJ - Fire %, CC or CHD, Elite dmg, OS.
• Furnace - Int, % Dmg, Vit, OS.
• Sun Keeper - Int, Vit or CDR, % dmg, Elite Dmg, OS
• Firebird Source - Fire %, Int, Vit or CDR depending on weapon
• Zei's Stone of Vengeance
• Bane of the Trapped
• Gem of Efficacious Toxin/Bane of the Powerful

There is very little room for gear variance - bear in mind that there are relatively very few Wizards that can play this high solo. This particular build requires these particular items.

I've seen the Serpent Sparker used with success, but it requires different stat rolls on gear, and different skills. I wont go into detail, but it requires TnT, a Witching Hour, and Hydra % on Shoulders, Source, Chest. It differs from the regular firebird build as its damage is split roughly 50-50 between the DoT and Hydra dmg, while most Firebird builds focus on the DoT as the main damage source.

Cindercoat vs Magefist
This is bolded because I see many Wizards uses a Cindercoat because of the RCR.

Magefists are better, they roll 5 primaries, and you dont need RCR. Done.

Templar Gear
Yes, seriously.

• Thunderfury, Ruby - Proc counts as CC
• Freeze of Deflection - More CC.
• Ess of Johan OR Overwhelming Desire. Either pulls, or charmed with extra dmg.
• Wyrdward- Proc Stuns with TF
• Unity

Bear in mind CDR does affect your Templar. You dont really have to go for damage (but its always nice), but you want to maximize all the CC and heals he does.

Prioritze IAS so he attacks more to proc TF CC and Ess pulls, and CDR so you get more heals/intervenes. Having Block % on the relic is a easy change too - more freezes from his shield.

Skills should be

• Heal
• Either, you won't need the slow, but its always helpful, as is life regen.
• Charge+stun
• Guardian - charge, knockback and heal.

Gems

Zeis and Trapped are both separate damage multipliers, and increase your damage much more than powerful, which is additive.

Toxin will also always be up, while Powerful will not help you as much vs the RG, when you need it most. Its really up to you which you choose though.

Skills

This is the build.

A couple of notes about the skill choices.

Teleport Runes

I prefer Safe Passage, as sometimes you just have to run through DoTs - it also scales nicely with high toughness/mitigation.

Calamity is another solid choice. Sometimes you make a bad teleport, and this gives you a second to plan your next move.

Wormhole I dont like - its only really useful if you die. Bear in mind that if you get hit just once, you will be able to teleport again with any other rune, effectively rendering Wormhole almost useless in combat.

Fracture - your clones' spells do NOT do damage, and do NOT proc any CC effects including Black Hole and Slow time.Useless.

Reversal - interesting Rune, but requires plenty of foresight, and doesnt help when there is just too much crap everywhere.

Energy Armor - Prismatic Vs Force

Both have their upsides and downsides

Prismatic

• Better against DoTs. Crucial vs frozen in late 30s, or 40s, when 2 frozen blobs spawning on you means death.
• Works well with String and Etlich.
• Doesnt prevent you getting 1 shot.

Force Armor

• Is better when weenies start taking away more than 1/3 your HP in 1 hit.
• Still doesnt guarantee immunity to, but offers much more protection against getting 1 shot.
• Jailers wont kill you as often.
• Terrible against DoTs. 2 Frozen Blobs = respawn.

It really boils down to two factors.

• Are you Single Player or Multiplayer? (IE are you using Unity cheese?) Unity doubles your toughness, and effectively magnifies the effect of Prismatic armor, allowing you to continue to use it to a higher level.
• Whats your toughness? If you have a good amount of toughness, you can use Prismatic until later.

Anecdotally, my wiz has 18M toughness with Prismatic.

I have run nothing but Prismatic in Single player with Unity, and my toughness still is keeping up; I have yet to die up to 40.

EDIT - I tried 40 4 times today, and died for the first time(s) in a solo GR. The closest I got was off by about 10 seconds (STONESINGER... but a shitty floor), the furthest was about 7 minutes (lolwingedassassinsfastfirechainsvortex). It really is RNG based.

In groups, I swap on Force armor starting at 37-8 because Jailers start to 1 shot me.

The toughness threshold honestly is mostly defined as - At what point am I 1-shot by Jailer/Thunderstorm?

Slow Time - Point of no Return Vs. Time and Space

Both are viable.

Point of no Return allows you to lock down a chokepoint, and gives you at least 3 seconds for your Teleport cooldown to reset. I prefer this one.

Time and Space makes all those ranged guys a joke, but will not save your life in a big fight.

Blur vs Glass Cannon

Once again, this depends on what your toughness is at.

Are you at a point where you are running force armor and the toughness loss still has you taking only 35% per hit? May be worth it to run Glass Cannon and just accept Frozen killing you.

Are you at a point where Prismatic is still viable, or Blur is the difference between taking >1/3 your HP per hit? Blur, undoubtedly.

Importance of CDR

Many wizards I see dont have Evocation slotted, or use an Amethyst in their helms. These are bad mistakes - CDR is absolutely vital for Firebird - your main damage is your DoT, and your main method of getting your DoT is your Black Hole, which is also invaluable Crowd Control. CDR also affects Teleport and Slow Time.

Illusionist and Unstable are irreplacable.

Notes about Slow Time

This skill is the core of this build. Firebird only has 1 skill slot that is swappable, the one taken by Hydra in the cookiecutter build.

Reasoning for taking Blizz over Hydra is that you are mainly using it to refresh your DoT, and draw aggro, which it is by far better at. Hydra, while more damage, is not as good at either.

Now some technical aspects of the skill Slow Time - Point of no Return.

• Beware that Slow Time actually... Slows Time. Projectiles that are already slow to begin with become much harder to make out - the human eye is attracted to movement. You WILL run into bees moving at .0001 MPH if you are not paying attention.
• Enemies are stunned when they first touch the perimeter of the sphere. This means if enemies are already within the sphere when it is created, they will be slowed, but not stunned until they exit the bubble. However,
• You can pull enemies which are inside of the bubble to the perimeter to proc the stun with your Black Hole.
• This also means that once you get used to the radius, you can put down the bubble so the perimeter stuns an enemy immediately on spawn.
• An enemy can only be stunned once by one bubble. This means if an enemy is stunned upon entering, then traverses the bubble to get to you, he is not be stunned again upon exit.
• However, you can layer your bubbles. By putting a new Slow Time several yards off center of the first one, you can effectively create Roadblocks at Chokepoints.
• Enemies which enter a bubble through means other than walking - Jumpers, Chargers, disappearing Snakes, etc, will not be stunned when traversing the plane.
• The only elite affix that is affected by Slow time is Electrified.

Elite Affixes

Elites should be the #1 cause of your very scarce number of deaths.

The main factor which determines which affixes are the most dangerous to you is your choice of Prismatic vs Force, which in turn mostly depends on whether you are running solo or in a group.

Prismatic Bad affixes

• Jailer
• Thunderstorm

Force Bad Affixes

• Everything that is not Jailer and Thunderstorm.
• Frozen and Molten at 40+ are extremely painful.

Some notes regarding Jailer

This is your main reason for using Force Armor.

Jailer requires line of sight. If you cannot see the monster, you cannot be jailed. Mostly.

Jailer is usually on a timer - You are usually safe after a round of jailing for 6-7 seconds. I say usually because sometimes for no reason you will be jailed 3 times in less than a second.

Jailer seems to have less range than Frozen.

Some notes regarding Frozen

This will be your main cause of death in a group over 40. Even one ball spawning on you will most likely drain 50%-80% of your HP, even if you reaction time is good enough to immediately teleport away.

Frozen does not requires line of sight, and will come get you even if you are in the next room over.

Depending on which affixes you are facing, your choice of place to fight is very important.

• Vs Frozen, Arcane, Plagued, Poison enchanted, Thunderstorm, you want to be out in the open. The ground effects will not stack with each other as much, and gives you a lot more room to dodge.
• Vs Jailer, Vortex, Firechains, Electrified you want to be at a chokepoint. You can completely dominate chokepoints with your Slow time - so long as you are not forced out by nasty ground affixes.

Some notes about annoying affixes for any Firebird build

• Shielding is a real pain in the ass - just like disappearing enemies. If your DoT is not maxed when the shield goes on, it will protect the monster long enough for it to drop off.
• Extra Health just takes forever to kill, especially on a Yellow that already is a monster type with super high HP (Demonic Tremor, Abbadon, etc)
• Fast+Molten/Firechains+ Vortex is an extremely deadly combo - especially on a mob type like Bees that spread everywhere.

Solo Wizardry

As with any other build, do your best to kite forward, and try to be fighting no more or less than 2 elites at once. Any more and you are prone to be overwhelmed, any less and you will not be able to beat the timer.

Don't stop for white packs that give you no progress, or small packs. Keep moving past that pack of 3 spearmen - Teleport and dodge. Do your best to keep them following you by aggroing with Blizzard until you meet another pack and can kill them all at once.

When you run into a really dangerous elite pack - IE Jailer, Frozen, Thunderstorm, Fast, you need to make a choice. Either you kite forward and try to outrange them to skip, or you kite in circles until they are almost dead, then go forward to kill. Keep in mind that if you skip a pack in the middle of a level you will most likely have to pass it again if you die.

Grabbing Health Globes with Teleports procced by Illusionist is key to survival - another reason why health globe healing bonus secondaries are great.

Don't grab health globes immediately if you don't need them!

Keep in mind you can abuse Teleport to go through walls - learn the Teleport mechanics.

Beware doing this when an elite that spawns nasty affixes (especially orbiter) has started pooping things out in the next room. Affixes in the next room will not render until after you have teleported.

Vs harmless whites kite forward. You need to kill the dangerous ones, or you will fail when they come to gank you from behind.

Abuse chokepoints, and Illusionist. Upon entering a room, cast Blizzard on all the spread out mobs, aggroing everything, Teleport back to the doorway, Cast Slow Time, then Black hole on the huge stack of stunned baddies. Teleport past them, and keep moving forward. Cast Slow Time again if you get hit, and keep moving forward.

If you get into trouble, your Slow Time plus Black Hole can often buy you enough time for your Teleport to come off of Cooldown.

Slow Time will save your life when you get cornered.

Manage your Cooldowns - don't go racing ahead in a rift full of Winged Assassins when all 3 spells are on cooldown.

Know that you need at least 2 minutes, probably 3 for the rift guardian unless you get Stonesinger.

Group Wizardry

This is where Slow Time really shines.

Your job as a Wiz is to pull anything and everything you can into the turrets, while creating a safe bubble for the DH to nuke from behind.

You should be ahead of everyone (takes 4 hits for you to die, remember). Keep moving forward until you find either an elite or a large group of whites. Draw all their aggro with blizz, kite back to the choke that your DH buddies should just be entering and set up your ST. Blizz, BH, teleport past them, rinse and repeat.

When fighting an elite, or a white mob in an open area, you should be looking around for more packs to aggro back into the guns. Run around avoiding stuff, and just aggro everything.

Vs Elite packs, bring them back to a choke, and start layering your Slow Times. Once they are almost dead, you should already be moving forward.

Spell Placement

I covered most of this in the Guide linked at the top, but when using Slow Time, this changes a little.

You want to cast your Slow Time to create a barrier between yourself and the enemy.

You dont want any baddies to already be inside, for they will be able to traverse the bubble before they are stunned.

This means that it is important to cast the spell before anything can get close to you, especially at chokes.

Sometimes, when a monster is faster than you, it is more prudent to cast Black Hole first to create space, then cast Slow Time.

Chokepoints can be held for at least 10-20 seconds with good Slow Time and Black Hole Placement. Layer your bubbles as closely as safety allows, and Black Hole things back away from you.

Kite things into your Slow Time bubble as closely as possible. Having 10 enemies spread across 180 degrees is impossible to black hole, but if all 10 are clumped into a 90 degree arc, you can get all with your Black Hole.

Keep in mind if you enter a room and are getting rushed by enemies from all angles, so long as nothing is in the bubble when you cast it, you gain a few seconds to determine your next move.

Conclusion

I hope this helped those who have been smashing their faces against mid 30 GRs without any progression. I've kind of reached that point with my group, barring super awesome RNG, I dont think we will be able to clear 43, despite being able to clear 90% of the 40s we do.

The Monster and HP scaling past 40 is just so ridiculous. Guardians have 70B+ HP solo (150B+ in a group), and affixes (Frozen especially) becomes so deadly that the slightest touch kills you. This is not a bad thing, just in general, advancement at this level becomes more and more RNG based - did we get glorious skeletons, friendly elite affixes and a Conduit/Stonesinger?

Dont get frustrated at RNG, and keep at it!

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Solution for Channeled Spells - based on history, status quo, statistics and observation.

We have a situation right now where less than 1% of the top 1000 ranked Wizard players are using the following Channeled spells - Ray of Frost, Arcane Torrent and Disintegrate.

There is a reason why most Wizards don't run with channeled spells at higher level Greater Rifts. There's no time to stand still, and even if you could, you get knocked all over the place anyway by mobs charging through CC and all kinds of stuff.

Historically, these spells were all good, viable options to a much larger degree than what we see right now. You could swap between skills in a much more casual fashion than what you can currently afford to do. And that was a cool thing.

Now, I realize that this current patch is a "first take" on things. Blizzard wanted to provide each class with 1-2 good combinations of gear/skills just to get things going, and they'll take it from there.

Yeah, make no mistake, things aren't going to stay this way. There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes when it comes to balancing things out for higher level Greater Rifts - as we speak. Expect a great patch soon. Just wanted to provide some feedback on how exactly one small piece of the puzzle as far as Wizards go could be solved.

Here is one example of a change that really made sense;
An adjustment to the way the passive Illusionist works was made at some point:

Old tooltip:
"When you take more than 15% of your maximum Life in damage *in a single hit*, the cooldowns on Mirror Image, Slow Time, and Teleport are reset."

New tooltip:
"When you take more than 15% of your maximum Life in damage *within 1 second*, the cooldowns on Mirror Image, Slow Time, and Teleport are reset."

That was changed because the first version of it just didn't make sense, basically. The game environment can overpower you with tons of small hits, or a few large hits. This change was a very good one, and the end result is now that this passive just works much more smoothly. Better.

Perhaps something similar could be done for those channeling spells? - Don't drop the increased damage immediately - but give it a 1-2 second "grace time" - that way one could do one quick Teleport, get out of harms way, and still keep the effect, still having to keep an eye out for what's going on and still having to be vigilant about choices in the heat of the moment.

Wouldn't necessarily have to be like that of course. Don't shoot the messenger here please, just some ideas; something thrown into the mix to get the train of thought going. Moving towards solutions like these might also make sense for other classes, though I dare not say much about that as I play Wizard mostly. Point is, there could be elegant solutions.

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New Wizard Channeling damage: You need to channel for 5 seconds straight to deal the same damage as on Live

Arcane Torrent Live: 573% * 5 seconds = 2865%
Arcane Torrent PTR: 370% + 475% + 580% + 685% + 790% = 2900%

This means that:

• This is effectively a nerf for anyone that channels for less than 5 seconds straight per fight. Count to 5 in your head to see how long this is.
• If you channel for another 5 seconds (for a total of 10 seconds) you deal overall 30% more damage than on Live.

Overall very disappointing.

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Wizard Frozen Furor Build Guide

I would like to share with you, a build I've been running for some time now with great success. This is my second Wizard, and with Archon and CM/WW getting stale, I was determined to come up with something just as good, if not better than those signature builds. Thus, I came up with a build I coin "Frozen Furor". This build is viable at any monster power.

The Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bZQlST!gTW!cYZYca


Video:

Using a combination of Lighting and Ice, you become a force to be reckoned with! Dispatch large masses of mobs in seconds and burn through rares, elites, and goblins quickly!

Skills and Passives:

Shock Pulse: Living Lightning - This ability is a mid ranged attack used primarily to help generate arcane power and quickly stack up Arcane Dynamo to 5 stacks.

Ray of Frost: Sleet Storm - This is a close ranged, yet powerful 360 degree attack that deals a stream of rapid cold damage. Chills anything it touches, thus triggering your Cold Blooded passive, and does incredible damage when used properly with Arcane Dynamo.

Teleport: Wormhole - Great for traveling quickly around the map, breaking out of jailer, or avoiding any other nasty elite affix that may cross your path. Feel free to use any other rune that fits your play style here.

Blizzard: Stark Winter - Blizzard is an extremely powerful ability used at any range, especially when you extend its reach to 22 yards. This ability covers a large area and diminishes trash quickly. Added bonus of slowing movement speed of you enemies and applying a chill effect to trigger Cold Blooded passive.

Magic Weapon: Blood Magic - Increased damage and life steal. If you're using a two handed weapon with high life steal, feel free to swap the rune on this weapon, or exchange it completely. My recommendations if using a two hander... Force Weapon, Slow Time: Time Warp, Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction, or Diamond Skin: Prism.

Storm Armor: Reactive Armor - The skill that makes this build sing. Reactive armor is amazing passive damage to both melee and ranged mobs. It pairs wonderfully with life steal, especially with a two handed weapon. It procs every time you are hit, and reflects 70% weapon damage as lightning back to the attacker. You also have the benefit of Storm Armor firing off at 100% weapon damage periodically for considerable damage.

Reactive Armor also triggers when hit by Molten trails, Electrify bolts, Fire Chains, and Mortars. It does NOT however, trigger from Reflect damage, Desecrate, Plague, and Arcane beams.

Alternative Armors:

Ice Armor: Jagged Ice - Hits nearly twice as hard as reactive armor, can freeze enemies, and offers 12% melee reduction. However, it does not work against any ranged attackers.

Ice Armor: Crystallize - At 3 stacks, this increases your armor by 60%. If you like to stand in everything, this ability works great, especially against reflect, however, will not increase your damage versus many other packs that you have opportunities to reflect damage back.

No Armor Spell Option:

If you're brave, stick Explosive Blast: Chain Reaction, or Slow Time: Time Warp and drop your armor spell!

Passive: Critical Mass - Great for resetting the cool down on Teleport. Feel free to use any other passive if you do not feel the need to reduce that single cool down. Can try Blur, Power Hungry, Illusionist, or if you're brave, Glass Cannon instead.

Passive: Arcane Dynamo - At 5 stacks, this passive will increase the damage of your next attack by 75%! Paired with Living Lightning, this stacks up quickly, and when channeling Sleet Storm, as long as you channel, every tick of Sleet Storm has this amazing damage boost. This works great with Blizzard as well.

Passive: Cold Blooded - 20% extra damage against chilled or frozen targets, a must for this build.

Weapon Choices:

I would like to point out, that with this build, the lower your attack speed, the better Arcane Power management you will have. Focus on average damage, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage.

One-Handed - A slow, yet powerful one-handed weapon (Spear or Mace) with as much average damage that you can find with life steal and a socket. Any critical hit damage or main stat is an added bonus.

Two-Handed - A slow, 2 handed weapon (Skorn, or Doom Hammer with 1400+ average damage, socket, and life steal)

Off-Hand - The Oculus. Yes, this beauty of an offhand offers up incredible average damage, huge main stat roll, arcane power on crit, crit chance, up to 6% bonus damage vs elites, can increase the duration of your Blizzard ability (3 seconds max), and reduces the cool down on your Teleport ability (4 seconds max).

I try to gear for bonus vs elites, as it adds up damage quickly. I currently run with 14% bonus vs elites, though, can run up to 44% if I equip a Stone of Jordan.

A quick example: If you have 14% bonus vs elites, and 300K sheet damage, when you cross an elite, rare, or goblin, you will be damaging those opponents as if you had 342,000 sheet damage!

A few notes on gear selection...

I recommend 20 Arcane Power on Crit, if using one-handed weapon.. You can get away with 10 using a slow two-handed weapon paired with Diamond Skin: Prism, or picking Power Hungry as your a passive.

LOW attack speed. Sleet Storm shines with high average damage, crit, and crit damage, avoid attack speed if you can help it. If you're above 1.5 APS, you will start to find your Arcane Power draining too quickly.

I love a little pickup radius, never hurts to pick up all the gold, and, when you're channeling, you can just mouse over health globes to snag them if your radius is high enough.

You can use Frostburn Gauntlets with this build, as a matter of fact I recommend them! This turns Sleet Storm into 473% weapon damage as cold, and Blizzard into 663% over 6 seconds as cold. However, yes, a great pair of rare gloves will perform on par, or possibly better. I've run with Frosties for quite a while. Honestly, even with my nice crafted my gloves. I can't tell a difference in kill speed.

I enjoy farming Act 2 quite often, and I use Tyrael's Might for that reason. This allows me to do an addition 15% damage to any demons that cross me, it also supplements me with the ability to have 24% movement speed, an additional 4% vs elites, and the joy of using a nice crafted bracer.

Using a one-handed weapon and off-hand can make some reflect damage packs a touch tougher using Tyrael's instead of a 3-piece Zuni set. However this extremely easy to overcome!

I will be adding more to this guide as questions arise that I have not covered in this guide. Let me know what you think after you give it a shot.

Cheers!

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Just how much resist/armor do you need to beat reflect with Lifesteal?

After getting fed up with Siegebreaker wrecking my current non-whirlwind/twister/whatever-based build, I decided to figure out just how much defense + lifesteal you need when LoH isn't an option.

From testing I found the Reflect Damage % to be 10% (not sure why the wiki doesn't mention this). With this I calculated the following values:

Lifesteal	Req. Mitigation	AR = AMR	AR = AMR (B/M)	AR > AMR	AR > AMR (B/M)
1.5	0.97	1500 / 15000	1280 / 12800	2260 / 10000	1920 / 8500
2.5	0.95	1090 / 10900	920 / 9200	1640 / 7300	1380 / 6100
3	0.94	970 / 9700	810 / 8100	1460 / 6500	1220 / 5400
4.5	0.91	740 / 7400	610 / 6100	1100 / 4900	910 / 4000
6	0.88	590 / 5900	480 / 4800	890 / 4000	720 / 3200
7.5	0.85	500 / 5000	400 / 4000	750 / 3300	600 / 2700
9	0.82	430 / 4300	340 / 3400	640 / 2800	500 / 2200
12	0.76	330 / 3300	250 / 2500	490 / 2200	370 / 1700

Where:

• AR = All Resist
• AMR = Armor
• B/M = Barbarian / Monk (due to their 30% bonus damage reduction)

So for example, a Wizard with 4.5 lifesteal would need either 740 AR and 7400 Armor or 1100 AR and 4900 Armor to fully negate reflects damage with lifesteal alone.

Some comments on the data:

• The AR = AMR columns assume you have equal AR and AMR while the AR > AMR columns assume you have more AR than AMR.
• 3 is the maximum lifesteal a 1-handed Witch Doctor can attain.
• 4.5 is the maximum lifesteal a 1-handed Wizard can attain (requires skill).
• 6 is the maximum lifesteal a dual wielding Monk can attain.
• 12 is the maximum lifesteal a dual-wielding Barbarian can attain (requires passive + belt).
• You need insane gear to break even with Lifesteal < 4.5 on non B/M classes
• Make sure to visit d3up.com to find out your current mitigation!

Depending on your skill's proc ratio you can make up for lower mitigation/lifesteal with LoH instead. The ever popular 'whirlwind' builds are prime examples of this. Note that for every 1% mitigation below the breakpoint you are, you will take 0.1% of your DPS as damage per second.

So for example, at 1 million effective DPS, 4.5 LS and 88% mitigation you will take 3000 damage/second. In this case you will need 3000/skill-proc-ratio/attack-speed LoH to negate reflect.

If I've made a mistake in these calculations please let me know.

Discuss.

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