Explosive Blast Farming Wizard Skills and Runes

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Video Guide
  • 3. Quick Reference
    • 3.1. Skill Setup
  • 4. Builds
    • 4.1. Gear Setup
    • 4.2. Legendary Gems
    • 4.3. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Role in the Current Meta
  • 6. Reading Further
  • 7. ChangeLog
• ×Skills and Runes
  • 1. Rotation
  • 2. Skills, Runes and Passives
• +Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
  • 1. Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
    • 1.1. Adapting to Bounties
  • 2. Paragon Points
  • 3. Gems
  • 4. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Follower
• +Greater Rifting Variation
  • 1. Greater Rift Variation
  • 2. Adapting Skills
  • 3. Adapting Gear
  • 4. Adapting Gemming
  • 5. Adapting Kanai's Cube

General Information

Below, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Explosive Blast Farming Wizard in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6 and Season 11.

The other pages of our Explosive Blast Farming Wizard guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

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

1. Rotation

A few background buffs play a quiet, but very impactful role in the Flashfire Wizard builds; most notably Diamond Skin, which switches between a resource management skill in regular Rifts with the Prism, and pure protection in GRs and bounties with the rune Enduring Skin. The second background buff varies between Storm Armor Scramble for the additional movement speed in normal rifts and bounties, and Magic Weapon Deflection in mid-to-high tier Greater Rifts. Regardless of the adjustments, spam Diamond Skin on cooldown, and only reapply Storm Armor or Magic Weapon near the end of their 10-minute duration.

The rest of the 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, 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.

2. Skills, Runes and Passives

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 inclusion of a primary skill has varying importance depending on the content you clear. In normal rifts the importance of the particular skill and rune selection diminishes, and as long as you maintain the lightning proc you can toy around with the various options.

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 lower difficulties — Torments and sub-60 GRs — your first utility slot should be taken up by Storm Armor. While its damage proc will be negligible, it offers a consistent movement speed increase through the Scramble rune, as you invariably get hit in this melee spellcasting build. Both skills sport a generous 10-minute duration, making it simple to refresh them in between runs.

The final slot will be taken up by Diamond Skin, a versatile utility skill that you will mold according to the content. In the In-geom-focused normal rifting builds, you will be taking the resource management 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.

Two utility picks provide the foundation of the passive choices. Evocation offers a simple, but powerful effect: 20% additional cooldown reduction. Illusionist is a passive with a lot of depth and nuance; it serves the Flashfire Wizard specifically by resetting the Teleport cooldown when receiving a damage spike, and 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.

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.

The final passive slot will be adjusted according to your needs. When farming keystones or Death's Breaths in normal rifts, use the standard Elemental Exposure — the total 20% damage increase is additive in nature and is a small increase overall, but any additional DPS is welcome.

About the Author

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.