Explosive Blast Farming Wizard Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Explosive Blast Farming Wizard in Diablo 3. Updated for Patch 2.7.3 and Season 26.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
Two background buffs play a quiet, but very impactful role in the Flashfire
Wizard build; most notably Diamond Skin, which acts as a resource
management skill with
Prism, and
Magic Weapon
Deflection for
the easily stackable shield buffer from your constant barrage of explosions.
Spam
Diamond Skin on cooldown, and only reapply
Magic Weapon near
the end of its 10-minute duration. The most dangerous time in your farming run
is at the exact start of the Rift, when your
Orb of Infinite Depth is not
yet stacked and the
In-geom bonus is not yet active.
Find a low danger trash mob close to the entrance and move into them with a
pre-cast
Explosive Blast to build up your damage reduction. Your next
priority is to find and focus down the first Elite in the Rift; once you
(carefully) take them down,
In-geom will trigger and your true damage
potential will begin. Your utmost priority in this build is to hunt down elites
and chain
In-geom effects, killing trash as collateral damage along the
way. The actual skill management is minimal and extremely spam-heavy; just
mashing your cooldowns will pretty much be optimal. The "mastery" of this build
lies in movement, positioning and knowing your
In-geom proc limits.
The actual Flashfire Wizard "rotation" is fairly standard for
Tal Rasha setups, using
Explosive Blast
Chain Reaction as the major damage dealer and proc of the
fire element (and spender for the Bastions of Will set),
Frost Nova
Frozen Mist for cold, and
Electrocute
Surge of Power for
the lightning proc and AP maintenance. Your mobility skill will also cover for
the arcane proc, as
Teleport gains a minor damage component from
the
Calamity rune.
Skills and Runes
To streamline the build, you will use a primary that will count towards one
of the Tal Rasha elements, in this case lightning with Electrocute. The
particular rune has varying importance depending on the content you clear and
your own playstyle, but in general we recommend
Surge of Power for the
Arcane Power generation. Other Lightning runes are also viable.
The build's major damage dealer and the skill whose damage you will gear
around is Explosive Blast: a low-cooldown explosion that releases a 12
yard radial wave of energy, emitting from the character without the need to aim.
With its additional detonations,
Chain Reaction is the strongest rune,
and you will further augment it with the powers of
Wand of Woh and
Orb of Infinite Depth. As a fire skill, it will take care of yet another
element in the Tal Rasha rotation.
Usually perceived as a utility cooldown or part of Halo of Arlyse,
Frost Nova takes a firm damage spot in the Flashfire Wizard spec. Leaving
its usual crowd control duties to
Calamity,
Frost Nova brings
a Tal proc of its own, counting as a cold damage dealing skill with the
Frozen Mist rune. Similarly to
Explosive Blast, its effect is
centered on the hero, making it more suitable to speed farming than other cold
skills.
Mobility is a cornerstone of any speedrunning playstyle, and Wizards are no
exception. Either through a cubed In-geom in rifts,
Aether Walker
in bounties, or simply through
Illusionist resets in GRs, you will
overwrite the standard cooldown of
Teleport into a reasonably
spammable state. You will be taking the rune
Calamity, whose minor
arcane damage will trigger the fourth elemental requirement of the Tal Rasha set
bonus, as well as deliver a helpful 1-second stun.
In most builds, you should dedicate at least one slot to defenses, and
Magic Weapon
Deflection is a very popular choice for Wizards for a reason.
While it provides a decent damage buff as a base effect, the rune effect adds
tremendous value with the shield it provides, consistently stacked by your
unyielding barrage of attacks. The skill sports a generous 10-minute duration,
making it simple to refresh in between runs.
The final slot will be taken up by Diamond Skin with the resource
management-oriented
Prism rune. Achieving permanent uptime through
In-geom procs, this utility cooldown will reduce costs of all skills by
the whopping 9 AP, single-handedly making the signature explosion spam of the
build possible.
This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.
Passives
Evocation offers a simple, but powerful effect: 20% additional
cooldown reduction; a natural inclusion in a cooldown-dominant build.
Audacity is a natural inclusion in a melee range spellcasting build
like this one, bringing an impressive 30% multiplicative damage increase against
enemies within 15 yards.
Elemental Exposure offers yet another damage increase, tying into the
multi-element theme of Tal Rasha nicely. Notice that the passive bumps damage in
5% increments per element used; you fulfill the fire with
Chain Reaction,
cold with
Frozen Mist, lightning with
Electrocute, and arcane
with
Calamity. In Hardcore, you can consider dropping this passive
for
Unstable Anomaly.
You have some variance and freedom in the fourth passive slot. A consistently
useful inclusion would be Galvanizing Ward, which puts up a solid damage
buffer that recharges in between fights. If you focus on GR levels that you
largely overpower with sheer stats, slotting
Dominance here would
snowball your defenses better, and is another viable choice. Once you grow
confident with the build, we recommend
Illusionist — a deceptively
potent speed farming tool. For Flashfire Wizards specifically, it resets the
Teleport cooldown when receiving a damage spike, and by working
with a pre-mitigation calculation, it gives you near infinite mobility. The
additional 30% movement speed after
Teleporting makes the passive
attractive even when doing non-threatening content.
Changelog
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021: Reviewed for Season 25.
- 23 Oct. 2021: Revised skill and passive recommendations for the current state of the game.
- 22 Jul. 2021: No changes required for Season 24.
- 02 Apr. 2021: No changes required for Season 23.
- 20 Nov. 2020: No changes required for Season 22.
- 01 Jul. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 22 Nov. 2019: Reviewed for Season 19.
- 23 Aug. 2019: Reviewed and approved for Season 18.
- 17 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 18 Jan. 2019: Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
More Wizard Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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