LoD Frozen Orb Wizard Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing LoD Frozen Orb Wizard in Diablo 3. Updated for Patch 2.7.3 and Season 26.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
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 maintain your
Triumvirate
damage bonuses via
Spectral Blade use at least once every 6 seconds.
Teleport around the battlefield as necessary.
In order to optimize your damage, try to position yourself at a 40-yard
distance range from the enemy. This will grant you the maximum possible benefit
from Zei's Stone of Vengeance while also positioning the final
Frozen Orb detonation (its most damaging point) exactly on the pull.
Ideally, in any given fight you will be able to take down smaller enemy first,
which nets you a proc of
Oculus Ring to move into for another damage
multiplier.
Skills and Runes
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. Our general recommendation is to take the
rune
Absolute Zero for the elemental damage buff it provides to Cold
spells, synergizing with your main damage dealer. That being said,
Spellsteal is also a fine option as it offers a balanced split between
an offensive and defensive buff.
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 protective
Safe Passage, which — coupled with the
cooldown-resetting powers of the
Illusionist passive — allows you
to maintain distance from the enemy along with a helpful damage reduction buff
on top.
This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.
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. In Hardcore, you can consider dropping this passive for
Unstable Anomaly.
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.
Reverse Archon Variant
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Another option for this build is the so-called "Reverse Archon" playstyle,
which takes advantage of Archon skill simply as means of a powerful
damage buff for your main nuke,
Frozen Orb. While there is no focus on
Archon damage, or indeed any expectation to kill monsters during Archon uptime
(it is strictly treated as a buff), you will generate Archon stacks due to the
Fazula's Improbable Chain mechanics.
The Swami keeps your Archon
stacks for 20 seconds outside of Archon form, meaning every second
Convention of Elements full cycle (16 seconds in total per full cycle, 4
seconds per element) you can be supremely buffed by these temporary bonuses.
With optimized cooldown reduction (see this variant's paragraph in the
gear page for more information), you will be
able to enter at the Fire CoE cycle and exit at the Lightning CoE cycle, giving
you a few seconds to finish the pull with
Black Hole (you spend your time
in
Archon drawing monster aggro and setting up the fight). You then have
one burst cycle on the Cold rotation and one Cold rotation without Archon
stacks, and re-enter Archon at the next Fire cycle, repeating the process all
over again (this is the so-called 48 second cycle).
The remainder of your skill usage is identical to the base build: keeping up
the shields ( Storm Armor,
Deflection,
Barrier Blades),
grouping monsters with
Black Hole, and blasting away from a 40-yard
distance with
Frozen Orb. Note the change in the passives from
Illusionist to
Evocation.
It goes without saying, but this timing-intensive, high skill cap alteration is only meant to push this build to the outer limits of its power, and is not recommended for casual play.
Changelog
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021: Reviewed for Season 25.
- 30 Oct. 2021: Enriched the guide with additional information.
- 22 Jul. 2021: Added S24 Ethereal recommendation.
- 02 Apr. 2021: Skill and passive selection revised.
- 20 Nov. 2020: Guide added.
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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