Explosive Blast Farming Wizard Greater Rifting Variation

The 'Flashfire' Explosive Blast Wizard has limited ability to progress into high end Greater Rifts, falling off heavily around GR75. Fortunately, this is also the highest point generally required for Seasonal Journey completion, so you can easily complete the Season's checklist by making a few variations on the farming build.

Considering the scaling difficulty of Greater Rift levels (about 18% per tier), you will need to introduce means of damage and protection that do not hinge on quick kill speed, as it invariably slows down.

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

Since you will be pushing your damage output limits, a primary will be necessary to trigger half of the Focus and Restraint set damage bonus. In GRs specifically, the rune Surge of Power will also be necessary as a generator to keep up the damage reduction from a cubed Aquila Cuirass.

When pushing the limits of the build in GRs, one of your utility slots will be taken by Magic Weapon for the hefty shield provided by the Deflection rune, in turn doubled by Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer. The other will be taken by Diamond Skin Enduring Skin for the additional protection, reaching near perfect overlap with the Cooldown Reduction focus of the build.

In Greater Rifts, take Galvanizing Ward over Elemental Exposure: amped by Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, this passive doubles your toughness with an absorption shield every time you stay unharmed for 5 seconds — a generously low requirement that you will refresh often as you maneuver through a Rift.

When pushing this build to its GR limits, you will attain the full power of Tal Rasha's Elements set by equipping 6 of the 7 available pieces (preferably skipping Tal Rasha's Unwavering Glare). The CDR breakpoint you will be striving to reach with perfected gear is 59%, which offers the best balance between Toughness and Diamond Skin availability in Greater Rifts (at this breakpoint, your Enduring Skin downtime will be less than a second).

If you followed the skill recommendations above, you have also dropped Unstable Anomaly's cheat death. You can make up that drop of toughness by introducing two pieces of the Firebird set that do not conflict with Tal Rasha, Firebird's Pinions and Firebird's Tarsi. Their combined power adds the missing cheat death to the build.

In non- Goldwrap content like Greater Rifts, it is recommended to take Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer to double the potency of your shields — a great addition to the fragile Tal Rasha builds. This bracer allows the overlap of Enduring Skin, provides twice the shield from Deflection, and doubles the absorption from Galvanizing Ward.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	Tal Rasha's Guise of Wisdom	Socket Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Vitality
Shoulders	Firebird's Pinions	Intelligence Vitality Cooldown Reduction Explosive Blast % Armor
Torso	Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit	3 Sockets Intelligence Explosive Blast % Vitality Armor
Wrists	Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer	Fire Damage Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Vitality Armor
Hands	Tal Rasha's Grasp	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction Vitality
Waist	Tal Rasha's Brace	Intelligence Vitality Armor Life %
Legs	Tal Rasha's Stride	2 Sockets Intelligence Vitality Armor Single Elemental Resistance
Feet	Firebird's Tarsi	Intelligence Vitality Movement Speed Armor
Amulet	Tal Rasha's Allegiance	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Fire Damage Intelligence
Ring #1	Focus	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction Intelligence
Ring #2	Restraint	Socket Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Cooldown Reduction Intelligence
Weapon	Wand of Woh	Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Weapon Damage % Weapon Damage Intelligence Cooldown Reduction Vitality
Off-hand	Orb of Infinite Depth	Damage Range Intelligence Crit Chance Cooldown Reduction Vitality

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 Stricken will replace Boon of the Hoarder in the Greater Rift setup. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Flashfire Wizards can be considered part of that group, making the inclusion of this gem necessary.

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Bane of the Powerful Bane of the Stricken
Helm	Flawless Royal Diamond (Cooldown Reduction)
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Topaz (Damage and All Resistance)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

In the weapon Cube slot, In-geom should be replaced by The Furnace as soon as you stop chaining the cooldown reduction bonus from one elite to the next (usually shortly after GR65). The Furnace provides 50% additional elite damage which speeds up higher GR clear times greatly, as Champion and Rift Guardian fights are the usual bottleneck.

Since gold does not drop in GRs, Goldwrap is out of the armor Cube slot. In its stead, Aquila Cuirass will halve incoming damage as long as Arcane Power does not dip below 90% of its reserve, which has a very high uptime in the non- In-geom GR variation.

In Greater Rifts, your jewelry slot will be best taken by Convention of Elements; the ring rotates through all elements available to Wizards, not only thematically matching the Tal Rasha set, but also providing a massive bonus to your main damage dealer during the Fire proc (which you will need to learn and time to maximize your damage).