LoD Star Pact Wizard BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

As this is a Legacy of Dreams-based spec, you have a degree of freedom in picking out your gear (though you certainly have optimal choices, outlined below). As a rule of thumb, focus on improving elemental damage (Arcane), Cooldown Reduction and Area Damage, and remember the setup's requirements for ancient items, as well as its restriction on other set bonuses. You can run individual set pieces with beneficial stats, as long as they do not form any set bonus. Keep in mind the scaling of Star Pact with Arcane Power, and try to obtain a Maximum Arcane Power increase on any slots you can — in this case, your worn Wizard Hat and Source Off-hand.

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two best rolled rings and cubing the third between Convention of Elements, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, and Halo of Arlyse. Halo of Arlyse acts as a protective powerhouse during your solo progression attempts through its interaction with Ice Armor; if you are playing this setup in groups however, you can replace this ring with an Arcane damage Stone of Jordan. Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac will greatly assist with your Archon downtime and eases the valuable overlap of its buffs. Convention of Elements simply provides a massive damage increase during the Arcane cycle of its rotation. Rounding out the jewelry, the recommended amulet is The Flavor of Time, whose revised legendary power now doubles the duration of Pylons — an extremely potent power that, with careful timing, can turn the progressively harder fights in Greater Rifts greatly in your favor.

Roughly half of your gear will be dedicated to non-class-specific items, bringing either protection or utility to the build. The duo of damage reduction powerhouses — Aquila Cuirass and Ancient Parthan Defenders — will greatly improve your survivability through the limited and timed AP spending of the build, as well as the massive amounts of crowd control at play in groups. Note that you can viably alternate to Strongarm Bracers for a source of additive damage, if you are confident in your toughness. The Act 2 bounty cache legendary Illusory Boots brings unparalleled mobility by allowing you to pass freely through mobs — an indispensable bonus to a DPS build that hinges on dropping Meteor on the largest stack of monsters possible (see this build's skills page for more information). Lastly, you can use whatever ancient legendary glove you find with the appropriate stats — double Crit stats, Cooldown Reduction and mainstat rolled off to Area Damage — but St. Archew's Gage can bring a useful toughness bonus during elite engagements, and comes as a minor recommendation.

The other half of your legendaries serve to amplify your overall damage, and are either Wizard-specific items or other synergistic legendaries. Swamp Land Waders notably require that you gamble them on a Witch Doctor alt, and then use them on your Wizard main; while the pants' legendary bonus will be entirely ignored, their unique ability to roll elemental damage (which you will reroll to Arcane on your Wiz) is a great boon to the build. The Swami and Fazula's Improbable Chain are necessary inclusions in any Archon-reliant build, prolonging your Archon stack bonuses and making said bonuses easier to stack, respectively. Deathwish, Mantle of Channeling and Etched Sigil form a chain of interactions with an overall similar goal — amplifying the damage of your manually cast Star Pact while you are channeling.

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.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. You will benefit from it naturally, due to the close fighting range of Metor Wizards as a whole (in conjunction with the Level 25 property of the gem, which ensures it procs itself), as well as the myriad of sources of crowd control when playing in a group.

In solo play, you will have to take down the Rift Guardian by yourself, which all but necessitates the inclusion of Bane of the Stricken. In group play, this jewelry socket will have to be dedicated to Esoteric Alteration; this gem is included in the build simply to bolster the survivability of an otherwise frail DPS build in the thick of fights, where it is inevitably exposed to elemental damage from elite affixes.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot; in the older LoN setup, this socket would be occupied by Gogok of Swiftness.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Your weapon and armor Cube slots will be taken by Meteor-dedicated legendary powers. In this 4-man, AoE-oriented build, both The Grand Vizier and Nilfur's Boast are taken to strengthen your overall Meteor damage, foregoing their resource cost reduction and single target damage bonuses respectively.

Convention of Elements is a vital part of the build, as its timing sensitive empowerment of elemental damage necessitates that you pay close attention to its cycles. The burst damage of the build should strictly be used during the Arcane cycle of the ring.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.