LoD Frozen Orb Wizard Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Barrier Blades Arcane Orb Frozen Orb 1 Teleport Wormhole 2 Black Hole Absolute Zero 3 Magic Weapon Deflection 4 Storm Armor Power of the Storm
Passive Skills
Galvanizing Ward Elemental Exposure Power Hungry Illusionist

You will start runs with an activation of Storm Armor and Magic Weapon, both of which are to be kept up throughout the rift. Note that Halo of Karini has a range requirement and try to keep track of your positioning relative to enemies so that the defensive buff does not drop off. Scout out the rift and try to attract the attention of enemies to form a large pull, and then group it up in a stack with a Black Hole for the convenience of your nuke. Make a point to be far enough away before you start blasting away with Arcane Orb Frozen Orb. Try to aim the Frozen Orbs directly at your enemies, since the largest portion of its damage comes at the point of impact. Make a point to maintain your Triumvirate damage bonuses via Spectral Blade use at least once every 6 seconds. Teleport around the battlefield as necessary.

The main damage dealer and namesake of the build is Arcane Orb Frozen Orb — a long range projectile attack that hurls a pulsating orb of frost, exploding at the end of its 40-yard travel distance. Do your best to internalize the length of the Frozen Orb shot to maximize the benefits of said detonation, as it is stronger than the piercing projectile while it is moving. Make a point to always cast Arcane Orb after you fully stack Triumvirate, especially if the Cold cycle of Convention of Elements is coming up.

To counteract the considerable Arcane Power spending of Frozen Orb — 30 AP per shot — you will be including a primary attack in the build, adding a resource generation angle to it through Arcane Power on Crit on gear (see this build's gear page for more information). You have a good number of viable primary attacks for the slot, including the protective Spectral Blade Barrier Blades (our general recommendation), the crowd control synergy of Magic Missile Glacial Spike, or the superior proc coefficient of Shock Pulse Piercing Orb.

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.

Black Hole will be taken into the build as means of crowd controlling the enemy and building up large pulls. You should take the rune Absolute Zero for the elemental damage buff it provides to Cold spells, synergizing with your main damage dealer.

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 multi-charged Wormhole, which — coupled with the cooldown-resetting powers of the Illusionist passive — allows you to build up distance from the enemy with great frequency.

This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.

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.

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.

Elemental Exposure is taken to bolster your damage through your myriad of elemental damage sources. Notice that the passive bumps damage in 5% increments per element used; you fulfill the cold with Frozen Orb, lightning with Storm Armor, and arcane with Barrier Blades. The final bump will come from the damage type of your weapon, Unstable Scepter — a lucky roll (or reroll) of the base damage from another type (i.e. physical or arcane) into fire will bring the last piece of the damage buff.

Finally, take Power Hungry — it is the mirror of Audacity, reworked into a multiplicative damage increase against enemies further than 30 yards. This passive synergizes excellently with the long range orientation of the build, based on the Frozen Orb mechanics.