LoD Meteor Wizard Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation
Nephalem Rift Speed Farming
The LoD Meteor Wizard can deal
reasonably well with Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to
overwhelming damage potential offered by Meteor that allows you to
include
Aether Walker in the build, and the freedom from set pieces
that allows you to spread various utility legendaries for mobility. We have
solo speed GR rankings and solo speed T16 rankings if you
want to know more about which builds are best for speed farming.
Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.
The T16 key farming build will mimic the GR speed farming rotation, but
sped up one step further: with extremely aggressive Teleports on
top of enemies and their subsequent decimation with
Meteors, made
immediate with the rune
Thunder Crash. Spam
Explosive Blast
Chain Reaction to maximize the all-around benefits from
Orb of Infinite Depth. Otherwise, maintain the trio of passive buffs in
the form of
Storm Armor
Power of the Storm,
Magic Weapon
Deflection,
and
Familiar
Arcanot.
Adapting Skills
Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.
- Your main damage dealer remains
Meteor, which rips through speed Greater Rifts due to its monstrous damage multipliers. Exchange the resource demanding, time-sensitive
Star Pact rune for the immediate effect of
Thunder Crash to avoid wasting unnecessary time in T16 farm.
- Mobility is paramount in speed Greater Rifts, so
Teleport remains a staple inclusion in your skill lineup. Use the multiple charges of
Wormhole for maximum mobility.
- The
Aether Walker you wield in your hand will find an excellent companion in the
Orb of Infinite Depth off-hand, and will need to use
Explosive Blast
Chain Reaction to trigger its effect.
- A trio of 10-minute buffs rounds out your "active" skill slots.
Magic Weapon
Deflection provides a constantly refreshed defensive buff.
Storm Armor massively reduces incoming damage from the equipped
Halo of Karini, and doubles as a resource management tool with
Power of the Storm.
Familiar
Arcanot is a fire-and-forget source of passive AP regeneration.
- In your passives,
Galvanizing Ward retains its defensive value (especially with
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer equipped).
Elemental Exposure is an easy-to-maintain damage increase, corresponding nicely to your various types of elemental damage.
Illusionist is an excellent boon to movement speed, triggered constantly from your
Teleporting. You are free to make a decision between the proximity-based
Audacity and the distance-based
Power Hungry as sources of damage multiplication.
Adapting Gear
The overall gearing philosophy will remain intact from the GR progression
setup. This is still a Legacy of Dreams build, so you run legendary
items instead of set pieces and obtain the necessary damage amplification and
reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. This will cost a
legendary gem slot, but will net you all the jewelry slots for powerful
jewelry options. Similarly to the GR setup, you should wear a
Squirt's Necklace for its massive damage boost; its "damage taken
increased" downside is negated by your various shields. For rings, wear a Fire
damage
Stone of Jordan and your better rolled ring
Convention of Elements (cyclical damage buff; burst down elites during
the Fire cycle) and
Halo of Karini (massive damage reduction from
Storm Armor). Note that the legendary power of the
Stone of Jordan will convert the Fire elemental damage stacked on your
gear to Lightning, so you needn't worry about not matching the
Thunder Crash element type. Don't put SoJ in the Cube, as you will lose
out on its elemental and elite damage bonuses.
LoD Meteor gear pieces for speed farming can be roughly divided into the following categories:
- Damage amplification items.
Cindercoat,
Magefist, and a Fire damage roll of
Blackthorne's Jousting Mail all fit this category.
Stone of Jordan (also Fire-rolled!) will convert their elemental damage type to Lightning to fit
Thunder Crash.
- Protective items. When playing solo, you should make use of the extra
safety of a cheat death proc from the Act I bounty cache-specific legendary
Pauldrons of the Skeleton King. This is because your follower can wear the teleportation utility of
Homing Pads and emanate their power to you; in groups, where you lose the follower, you should wear the
Homing Pads yourself.
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer is an all-around useful protective piece, which will double the effectiveness of shields to safeguard your
Squirt's Necklace bonus. If you find it overkill, you can alternate this slot to
Warzechian Armguards (solo), or
Nemesis Bracers (groups). The final protective piece will be
Goldwrap, which is part of the triumvirate of gold bonuses with
Avarice Band (on your follower or in CoE's place in groups) and a socketed
Boon of the Hoarder.
- Meteor-related items.
Mempo of Twilight and
Nilfur's Boast provide universally useful damage bonuses to your main damage dealer, and remain across all setups. Note that while it won't be worn,
The Grand Vizier will move to the Cube.
Aether Walker turns your
Teleport from a cooldown to a
spender, and allows for near limitless mobility in T16 farm. Pair it with an
Orb of Infinite Depth to enjoy this source's all-around useful bonuses.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
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Head |
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Shoulders |
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Torso |
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Wrists |
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Hands |
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Waist |
|
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Legs |
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|
Feet |
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|
Amulet |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
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Ring #2 |
|
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Weapon |
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Off-hand |
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To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.
Season 29: Paragon Cap
Season 29 introduces a season-specific cap to stat benefits from Paragon levels, all while updating how Paragon point distribution is handled. For the duration of this Season, you can only assign 800 Paragon stat points to your character, removing the long-standing practice of main-stat stacking (with some gearing implications — see below) after you reach Paragon 800.
On top of that, you could only allocate 50 Paragon stat points to each of the four stats in a given Paragon category (Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility). In Season 29, you can allocate up to the full 200 points per category into any attribute, allowing you to more easily reach necessary build breakpoints (as outlined in the Gear page of the guide) for Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, etc.
With the changes to Paragon in mind, we recommend using the following Paragon distribution for this build:
- Core: Movement Speed: 200 points.
- Offense: Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so they are as close to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the two stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet. For weapon-and-offhand builds, this is usually achieved with the full 200 points spent into Critical Hit Damage.
- Defense: Life and All Resistance: Allocate points to maximize survivability; for Wizards, this is usually achieved by evenly splitting 100 points into Life (directly increasing your Health pool) and Armor (to complement the naturally high All Resistance stat of Intelligence-based characters).
- Utility: Area Damage: 200 points.
Season 29: Gearing Considerations
In terms of gear, keeping the Paragon cap in mind is paramount, as it stymies the traditional endless supply of main stat after Paragon 800. This means re-rolling mainstat off your gear is no longer desirable, and full equipment augmentation with your main stat is even more critical. Additionally, you should take a careful look at your build and consider if you can fit the following changes to strengthen your damage and survivability:
- Guardian's Jeopardy: This is a craftable armor set, and the recipe
for its creation drops from Bounty farming. Guardian's 2-piece provides a
decent damage reduction bonus, but the true powerhouse of the set is the
3-piece bonus, which nets you an additional 100% of your main stats from
equipped items. This is a tremendous benefit in an 800 Paragon capped Season.
If the Guardian set can fit into the build with minimal sacrifices (other
craftable sets, tertiary damage multipliers, etc.), consider its
implementation. The available pieces are
Guardian's Aversion (Wrists),
Guardian's Case (Waist), and
Guardian's Gaze (Head). Of course, you can wear 2 pieces of the set and complete the full 3-piece bonus with a
Ring of Royal Grandeur (found from Act I bounty caches).
- Endless Walk:This is a jewelry set consisting of
The Traveler's Pledge (Amulet) and
The Compass Rose (Ring), and is randomly found through farming, gambling Blood Shards, and/or Kanai's Cube recipes. The Endless Walk set is a nice compromise between damage bonuses (building up while stationary) and defensive bonuses (building up while moving). It can replace glass cannon choices like the Bastions of Will set (
Focus and
Restraint) and
Squirt's Necklace with acceptable losses to DPS.
Unity: A character wearing this ring, along with another
Unity on their follower plus an immortality relic for them (i.e.,
Enchanting Favor), will reduce their damage taken by 50%.
Unity can roll excellent offense-oriented stats and has an innate Extra Damage to Elites roll, which somewhat offsets losing all-out offense jewelry.
Adapting Gems
Most of your legendary gem selection from GR progression retains its value
in T16 Nephalem Rift speed farming. Legacy of Dreams forms the basis of
damage reduction and damage multiplication in the build, while
Bane of the Trapped still brings excellent damage multiplication value to
the build. While certainly not weak, you should consider dropping
Bane of the Powerful in order not to overkill on damage, and replace it
with
Boon of the Hoarder instead. Paired with a worn or cubed
Goldwrap, and an
Avarice Band worn by your follower in solo
play (or yourself in groups), this legendary gem increases your movement speed
and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with the
aforementioned items.
Slot | Gems |
---|---|
Jewelry | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
The Greater Rift staple The Grand Vizier moves from a worn item to a
cubed power in T16 farm, freeing up a slot for
Aether Walker mobility.
Nevertheless, it should still be present in the build for its ubiquitous
damage multiplication and resource cost reduction bonuses.
The Act III bounty cache-specific legendary Pride's Fall will greatly
ease the strain on your resource spending, while the bulwark of your
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer-enhanced shields and
Goldwrap armor will
protect the helm's bonuses.
Your jewelry Cube slot will still be occupied by your worse rolled item
between Halo of Karini and
Convention of Elements.
Stone of Jordan is a waste to cube, since you lose the elemental and
elite damage bonuses of the item — they are innate rolls but are not
part of the legendary power, and are thus not extracted in the Cube.
Follower
The recommended follower for this build during T16 speed farming is the
Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction bonus (cutting down
Teleport downtime) and elemental damage increase. Note that this
requires that you run
Hand of the Prophet and optimize her survivability,
as per our guide.
For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.
Legendary Potion
The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
(allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede
Frozen Orb DPS),
Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (giving you a brief window of CC
immunity to counter your lack of CC-breaking or immunity skills), or
Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties
complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Wizards). Pick whichever
you feel helps you out the most.
Changelog
- 13 Sep. 2023: Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023: Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 31 Aug. 2022: Variation added, as well as Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
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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