LoD Mammoth Hydra Wizard Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing LoD Mammoth Hydra Wizard in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6.10 and Season 22.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
You will start runs with an activation of Storm Armor, which is to be
kept up throughout the rift. Once you come across a decent pack of monsters,
close the distance — either by walking or engaging with
Teleport — in order to trigger the bonuses of the
Audacity passive, pre-cast a
Blizzard to trigger the bonuses of
Winter Flurry, and buff up your
Fragment of Destiny effect and
Arcane Dynamo passive with
Spectral Blade prior to summoning
Hydras. Once you place both buffed summons down, channel
Arcane Torrent for the
Deathwish damage bonuses. Re-buff and
re-cast
Hydras manually as they expire.
Skills and Runes
Your primary damage dealing skill and namesake of the build is, of course,
Hydra. In the LoD version of the build you are not constrained by the
Typhon set limitations of multi-headed Hydras, and you are free to take the
highest damage dealing rune of the bunch — the single-headed
Mammoth Hydra.
In Season 22, you will still be able to add a channeling skill to the build to
enjoy the benefits of Deathwish. The preferred skill for the purpose is
the Wizard staple
Arcane Torrent, along with the
Flame Ward rune
for additional protection.
You will be taking Blizzard by necessity due to the revised powers of
Winter Flurry — now transformed into a
Hydra-specific source
that amplifies the summons' damage against enemies within the
Blizzard
radius. To extend this benefit and minimize these supplementary casts, you will
be taking the longer lasting
Unrelenting Storm rune.
With the revised powers of Fragment of Destiny — now improving
the damage of
Hydras with a stacking mechanic depending on
Spectral Blade, you will have to include this primary attack by necessity.
The rune of choice is
Barrier Blades, which supplements the shield-based
protection of the build and synergizes nicely with
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer.
Sometimes immediate repositioning will be required — evading a bad
affix, engaging a larger pack of enemies to maximize the Mammoth Hydra
AoE, or simply to gain a temporary Toughness buff in a rough fight.
Teleport will cover you for all these purposes, along with the
damage reduction of the
Safe Passage rune.
Rounding skills out, 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
Shocking Aspect for the superior uptime of the procs for
the Karini buff. Alternatively, you can consider
Scramble for the
additional movement speed.
This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.
Arcane Dynamo offers a whopping 60% multiplicative increase of your
next spender with fully stacked Flashes of Insight, enforcing a rotation of
Spectral Blade stacking (both this passive as well as the
Fragment of Destiny effect) prior to putting a
Hydra down.
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.
Audacity brings a sizable 30% multiplicative damage increase against
enemies within 15 yards — a near-melee range prerequisite that you fulfill
naturally through the playstyle of the build, as enemies close in on you while
you channel.
Elemental Exposure rounds out your passive selection with a final,
decent damage increase. Notice that the passive bumps damage in 5% increments per
element used; you fulfill the fire with
Mammoth Hydra, cold with
Blizzard and arcane with
Barrier Blades. The final bump will
come from the damage type of your weapon,
Serpent's Sparker — a lucky
roll (or reroll) of the base damage from another type (i.e. physical or arcane)
into lightning will bring the last piece of the damage buff.
Changelog
- 20 Nov. 2020: Revision of skill and passive recommendations according to Season 22 changes.
- 01 Jul. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 11 Mar. 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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