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 2.7.3 and Season 26.
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,
prepare the pull with a
Black Hole to clump them up, then close the
distance — either by walking or engaging with
Teleport —
in order to trigger the bonuses of the
Audacity passive. Then, 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. Re-buff and re-cast
Hydras manually as they expire. In the ideal case scenario, you will
have the
Black Hole cooldown up 1 second into you Cold CoE rotation, so
you can affect the pull with the
Spellsteal debuff prior to your burst
period during the Fire
Convention of Elements cycle. Your
Blizzards should be cast at 8-second intervals, lining up with the
start of the Lightning and Cold CoE cycles. If you get an
Oculus Ring
proc (the ring is worn by your follower), quickly
Teleport to it
for the potent damage buff.
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. Note that
Hydras are an extremely attack speed
breakpoint-dependent skill, and refer to the Gear page for additional details on
the advised breakpoint. Mechanically speaking, the
Mammoth Hydras target
the nearest enemy to their spawn point and cast their "river of flame" effect,
extending at a 50 yard range in 10 yard increments over a 1.8-second period,
lasting for 3 seconds per line. The linear AoE effect has a tick rate of 0.3
seconds and deals its damage instantly as it reaches the monster. In practice,
this means that placing the
Mammoth Hydras point blank to the enemy is
optimal for your damage potential, and every meaningful distance you create
between the Hydra and the target (5 yards+) will cost you substantial damage.
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. In order to cover
the entire duration of a
Convention of Elements cycle (16 seconds), you
will only need to cast it twice. Another viable rune for the slot is
Apocalypse, which trades duration for a wider area of effect —
also quite useful in the right scenario. Note that alternating to
Apocalypse all but invalidates
Elemental Exposure as a passive
choice, but other options exist, as noted below.
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. Additionally,
Spectral Blade is also your
main means of stacking
Bane of the Stricken on the Rift Guardian.
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
Spellsteal, as it offers a good balance between additively increasing
damage against, while also decreasing damage from, enemies that are afflicted by
its radius.
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. Note
that other non-Signature skills in the build, such as
Blizzard or
Black Hole, can consume the buff — so you need to be careful with
the sequencing of your skills.
Added with similar reasoning to Barrier Blades (mainly
Squirt's Necklace buff maintenance),
Galvanizing Ward introduces a
solid damage buffer that benefits from the doubled effectiveness via
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer. Note that in the order of shielding buffs, the
Barrier Blades layer will be consumed first. It is quite important to
refuel that temporary, smaller shield through
Spectral Blade attacks in
order to give time for your bigger damage buffer,
Galvanizing Ward, time
to rebuild.
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 slash away with
Spectral Blade.
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. Note that this is
also the least valuable passive in the build, so you can adjust according to your
preferences; if you value extra mobility,
Illusionist is an excellent
addition for the slot. If you require additional safety, swap out for a defensive
staple like
Blur.
Changelog
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021: Reviewed for Season 25.
- 26 Oct. 2021: Enriched the guide with additional information.
- 22 Jul. 2021: No changes required for Season 24.
- 02 Apr. 2021: Revised skill and passive recommendations.
- 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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