LoD Energy Twister Wizard Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Energy Twister Wicked Wind Arcane Torrent Flame Ward 1 Teleport Safe Passage 2 Wave of Force Arcane Attunement 3 Magic Weapon Deflection 4 Storm Armor Power of the Storm
Passive Skills
Galvanizing Ward Elemental Exposure Audacity Illusionist

Your DPS mechanic comes from the interplay between channeling Arcane Torrent (which casts Energy Twisters via the worn Etched Sigil) and their merging and damage improvement via the rune Raging Storm (granted by the sword), and precise timing with your burst period which comes at the Arcane cycle of Convention of Elements (CoE).

Your main tactic during fights will begin by attracting the attention of enemies. Try to do so simply through movement and without attacking, since Energy Twisters (either manual or spawned by Etched Sigil) will proc Ranslor's Folly and ruin a pull. Then, cast a Wave of Force in the biggest density pull you can form, and do a MANUAL Energy Twister in the center of the fight. This will result in the highest possible Arcane Attunement stack, and the buff getting applied to the correct (the manual) Energy Twister cast, which — due to its self-casted nature — will be able to proc Area Damage. The manually cast Energy Twister will ideally be spawned with 2 seconds remaining on your Lightning CoE rotation, so the skill will be fully buffed for the entirety of the following Arcane cycle.

Then, begin to channel Arcane Torrent; ideally just for the period in between the end of the Lightning CoE cycle and just before the Cold CoE cycle. This will net you the ideal amount of automated casts by Etched Sigil. Ideally, you will have formed the maximized Twisters exactly prior to the Arcane rotation of Convention of Elements, and will enjoy the fully buffed devastation throughout the cycle.

This playstyle only slightly alters at single target Rift Guardian fights, where you can continuously channel Arcane Torrent without fear of losing out on Area Damage procs. On Guardians with adds, try to adhere to the rotation above.

Always maintain the passive buffs of Storm Armor and Magic Weapon, and reposition smartly around the battlefield with Teleport.

Your primary damage dealer is found in Energy Twister, a former group favorite that, while under the radar of many, retains most of its monstrous AoE DPS properties. You will be getting the rune with the most damage potential, Raging Storm, for free from the updated The Twisted Sword powers — empowering and enhancing the number of twisters that are able to collide and converge. To ensure you will not need to focus on manual collision of Energy Twisters, you will take the rune Wicked Wind and leave the Arcane Torrent- Etched Sigil combo to produce them automatically. With that said, other rune options for Energy Twister are certainly viable — experiment as you see fit, and do not forget to adjust elemental damage on gear as you do so.

As mentioned above, you will need to take Arcane Torrent, as its channeling mechanic interacts directly with the free Energy Twister spam of Etched Sigil. Rune-wise, take the damage reduction of Flame Ward, as damage output will not be the focus of this skill slot — simply the automated production of your main damage dealer, Energy Twister.

Wave of Force will be taken in the build as a damage amplifier for Wicked Wind, since the rune Arcane Attunement provides an immensely strong, independent damage multiplier to Arcane spells. This skill forms the basis of your burst rotation, so be very careful in its application (see the Rotation section above).

Magic Weapon offers an attractive, long-lasting damage buff by default, which branches out even more nicely into defense via the rune Deflection — highly desirable in order to safeguard your Squirt's Necklace damage buff. Note that this protective effect is doubled via the worn Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, if you choose to wear it.

As consistent means of protection, you will be adding Storm Armor to the build. With a fire-and-forget duration of 10 minutes and a negligible damage proc, it can be easily overlooked if not for the massive damage reduction properties of Halo of Karini (see this build's gear page for more information). You will be taking the rune Power of the Storm for the Resource Cost Reduction, but you can also consider alterations such as Shocking Aspect for the superior uptime of the procs for the Karini buff, or Scramble for the additional movement speed.

Last but not least, Teleport will round out your skill selection with valuable maneuverability across the battlefield; either to engage, reposition, or simply move away from an unfavorable fight. The preferred rune is the protective Safe Passage, which — coupled with the cooldown-resetting powers of the Illusionist passive — allows you to make use the damage reduction effect with great frequency.

Added with similar reasoning to Magic Weapon Deflection (mainly Squirt's Necklace buff maintenance), Galvanizing Ward introduces a solid damage buffer that benefits from the doubled effectiveness via Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer.

Audacity brings a sizable 30% multiplicative damage increase against enemies within 15 yards — a near-melee range prerequisite that you fulfill naturally through the playstyle of the build, as enemies close in on you while you channel.

Elemental Exposure rounds out your passive selection with a final, decent damage increase. Notice that the passive bumps damage in 5% increments per element used; you fulfill the fire with Flame Ward, lightning with Storm Armor and arcane with Wicked Wind. The final bump will come from the damage type of your weapon, The Twisted Sword — a lucky roll (or reroll) of the base damage from another type (i.e. physical or arcane) into cold will bring the last piece of the damage buff. If you are playing in Hardcore, this would be the passive to switch out for a cheat death from Unstable Anomaly, as it arguably brings the least benefit of the four.

Another powerful survival tool is hidden in your Illusionist passive, feeding additional CDR into your Slow Time and turning Teleport from a strategic cooldown into a constantly available asset. The requirement of 15% life taken per hit is calculated prior to mitigation and translates into “any hit taken” in high Greater Rifts. The additional 30% movement speed after using some of the build's core abilities is just icing on the cake. If you feel that the additional movement speed does not bring enough value to the build, you can swap this passive out for additional tankiness from Blur or Unwavering Will, or buff up your damage via the interaction between Conflagration and Flame Ward.

Active Skills
Energy Twister Wicked Wind Arcane Torrent Flame Ward 1 Teleport Safe Passage 2 Archon Teleport 3 Magic Weapon Deflection 4 Storm Armor Power of the Storm
Passive Skills
Galvanizing Ward Elemental Exposure Audacity Illusionist

Another option for this build is the so-called "Reverse Archon" playstyle, which takes advantage of Archon skill simply as means of a powerful damage buff for your main nuke, Energy Twister. While there is no focus on Archon damage, or indeed any expectation to kill monsters during Archon uptime (it is strictly treated as a buff), you will generate Archon stacks due to the Fazula's Improbable Chain mechanics. The Swami keeps your Archon stacks for 20 seconds outside of Archon form, meaning every second Convention of Elements full cycle (16 seconds in total per full cycle, 4 seconds per element) you can be supremely buffed by these temporary bonuses. With optimized cooldown reduction (see this variant's paragraph in the gear page for more information), you will be able to enter at the Cold CoE cycle and exit at the Fire CoE cycle, giving you a few seconds to prepare the Energy Twister pull as described in the general build above (you spend your time in Archon drawing monster aggro and setting up the fight). You then have one burst cycle on the Arcane rotation and one Arcane rotation without Archon stacks, and re-enter Archon at the next Cold cycle, repeating the process all over again (this is the so-called 48 second cycle).

The remainder of your skill usage is identical to the base build: keeping up the shields ( Storm Armor, Deflection), grouping monsters with the manual cast of Energy Twister, and channeling Flame Ward once the fight is set up. Note the change in the passives from Illusionist to Evocation.

It goes without saying, but this timing-intensive, high skill cap alteration is only meant to push this build to the outer limits of its power, and is not recommended for casual play.