Explosive Blast Farming Wizard Greater Rifting Variation

The Tal Rasha Explosive Blast Wizard is pretty good at Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, thanks to the versatility of the Tal Rasha set that allows you to mix and match helpful bonuses during farming. We have solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.

Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.

Active Skills
Electrocute Surge of Power Teleport Calamity 1 Frost Nova Frozen Mist 2 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 3 Diamond Skin Prism 4 Magic Weapon Deflection
Passive Skills
Illusionist Elemental Exposure Audacity Evocation

You will maintain all the skill and passive selections from the Greater Rift speed farming build — as all the skills chosen, as well as the general playstyle will be identical in standard T16 Nephalem Rifts; they will simply go even faster, due to the smaller enemy health pools. One small change you can consider is to alter Magic Weapon Deflection to Storm Armor Scramble, if you feel that you comfortably overwhelm the content and would like to include even more movement speed into the build.

The rotation stays the same; refresh Magic Weapon (or Storm Armor) at their 10-minute cooldowns, and re-apply Diamond Skin Prism as soon as it comes off cooldown — meaning to spam it, as In-geom procs will ensure you can constantly abuse its potent Arcane Power reduction. Spamming is par for the course for the remainder of the build, as Explosive Blast Chain Reaction will be your main damage dealer, and Frost Nova Frozen Mist needs to be cast regularly to maintain the Tal Rasha / Elemental Exposure buffs. Zap left and right with Electrocute for Tal Rasha and Bastions of Will set maintenance, and Teleport Calamity from fight to fight with reckless abandon.

The Tal Rasha's Elements set remains gloriously adaptable in T16 farming, and you should largely keep the same split between pieces as you do in Greater Rift speed farming: 5 pieces of Tal's, plus utility inclusions. It is recommended that you keep wearing the 2 pieces of the craftable Cpt. Crimson set ( Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and Captain Crimson's Waders) when you farm on your own, since your follower can wear the craftable sets Sage's Journey (doubled Death's Breath drops) and Cain's Destiny (chance for extra Greater Rift Keystones) and emanate their power as if you were wearing them yourself. When you farm in groups however, drop the Cpt. Crimson's pieces for Sage's Ribbon and Sage's Passage, as you will have no follower and have to take care of the extra Death's Breath drops yourself. Ideally, you will also carry 2 pieces of Cain's set (i.e., Cain's Habit and Cain's Insight) in your inventory and right before the Rift Guardian kill, you will swap to them for the chance of additional GR keystone drops.

Utility slots also vary according to solo or group play, as you have to take care of certain bonuses that are usually relegated to the follower yourself when partying up. The bracer and shoulder slots that are occupied by Aughild pieces in the GR speedfarm variant are better taken by Warzechian Armguards (for the speed boost), and either the Act I bounty cache legendary Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (for the extra cheat death proc in solo play), or Homing Pads (for the safety during town portal when partying up).

The jewelry can stay on Bastions of Will set, Focus and Restraint when you solo. When grouping up however, you need to equip Avarice Band yourself for its valuable interaction with Boon of the Hoarder and Goldwrap. Pair it with a Fire damage Stone of Jordan for a steady source of additional damage.

Similarly to the Greater Rift speed farming setup, your weapon and offhand need to stay on the Explosive Blast-dedicated legendaries Wand of Woh and Orb of Infinite Depth.

While we do not recommend this build for Bounties, it can be worked with, if you desire to. Note that many bounty objectives will have too few elites to justify In-geom in the weapon Cube slot. It is best replaced by an Aether Walker, which turns Teleport into a spender and allows near infinite mobility. To accommodate the AP spending of Teleport, you can also swap Elemental Exposure from the standard setup for Astral Presence's passive AP regen.

You can also cube Krelm's Buff Belt over Goldwrap in the armor Cube slot. Its movement speed bonus will be frequently triggered during the long distance runs associated with Bounties.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

Bane of the Trapped still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build in T16 rifts, and remains in the build. Bane of the Powerful can also remain from the GR speed farming build if you feel the need for its toughness and damage boosts, but once you grow comfortable with the build, you should take Wreath of Lightning in this slot for its movement speed bonuses, and lightning procs which decimate nearby destructible environments, and trigger your Warzechian Armguards constantly.

Round out your standard Nephalem Rift farming gems with Boon of the Hoarder, which increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with Avarice Band (either worn by yourself in groups or by your follower in solo play), and the cubed Goldwrap.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Both In-geom (for its tremendous cooldown-resetting powers) and Ring of Royal Grandeur (for its set piece requirement reduction) are invaluable for this build and remain in the T16 farming variant as well. If you desperately want to take this build into Bounties, either communicate with your group that you want to take high kill count, elite-heavy bounties, or — as a last resort — consider taking Aether Walker in In-geom's place.

When farming normal rifts, the preferable item for the armor Cube slot is Goldwrap. Synergizing with Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band, Goldwrap will render you practically invulnerable and allow you to focus on killing and looting without regards for your safety.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during standard T16 rifts farming is the Enchantress due to her vast array of bonuses that complement this build; most notably, Prophetic Harmony for the Cooldown Reduction and Amplification for the elemental damage increase, both of which you can attain by using a Hand of the Prophet.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (giving you a brief window of CC immunity to counter your lack of reliable crowd control breakers), or Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Wizards). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.