Tal Frozen Orb Wizard BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
Below, we detail the items and gems that you should use for your Tal Frozen Orb Wizard in Diablo 3 and why. We also list your paragon points and Kanai's Cube items. Updated for Patch 2.7.6 and Season 29.
Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
With the flexibility afforded by the seven available pieces of the Tal Rasha set and the
Ring of Royal Grandeur, you will be able to take five Tal's set pieces,
mix two additional sets into the build, and still enjoy their full bonuses. In
Greater Rift speed farming, the two additional sets will be Aughild's
Authority (via
Aughild's Power and
Aughild's Search and Captain
Crimson's Trimmings (via
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and
Captain Crimson's Waders). Note that both of these are craftable at the
Blacksmith, making perfecting their rolls a somewhat easier task. A suggested
split between the three sets is listed below, though you can vary the pieces
according to your preference and best rolls, as long as you maintain the
required 5 Tal's — 2 Aughild's — 2 Cpt. Crimson's set pieces
split, along with RoRG in the Cube.
Rolls-wise, this precise, AoE-oriented build will benefit greatly from
Skill Damage and Cooldown Reduction affixes, with a recommended CDR baseline
of 50%. High Crit Chance and Crit Damage are needed on the gloves, alongside
Intelligence and Cooldown Reduction. Arcane Orb % damage can roll on
helm and boots, so obtain it on both; the former should also include a
Critical Hit Chance roll. The pants, belt and boots should be largely
Toughness slots. Cold damage, double Crit stats and an open Socket are BiS on
the amulet. Finally, seek high Damage range, Intelligence, Crit Chance, Skill
and Area Damage on your source.
With your amulet slot occupied by Tal's, your best way to finish off
jewelry is to split between offense and defense in the rings with the
combination of Convention of Elements and
Halo of Karini.
Convention of Elements boosts your elemental damage in cycles according
to the elements available to your class, so you need to internalize its
rotation and be ready with your pulls for the Cold cycle, when you should
burst enemies down.
Halo of Karini offers massive damage reduction that
is just about non-negotiable, and has the modest requirement of keeping your
Storm Armor active and keeping distance from the enemy. Note that if
you want to introduce more tankiness to the build, either due to playing
Hardcore or inexperience with the playstyle, you can drop CoE for the added
safety of
Unity, coupled with another on the follower plus an
immortality relic for them (i.e.
Enchanting Favor). This will cut
incoming damage in half. Another option for the
Unity is to
replace
Halo of Karini, if you dislike the proc-based protection of the
latter; this will cost you some toughness, but will repay you in reliability.
This option is mostly applicable if you want to go heavy on shield-based
defenses, by using
Magic Weapon
Deflection over
Storm Armor and
running with
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer in the Cube.
The mandatory weapon for the build is the Unstable Scepter, a
legendary wand that not only increases Arcane Orb damage, but also has a
unique property that detonates
Arcane Orbs twice — effectively
doubling the spec's damage output. Pair it with the other
Arcane Orb-dedicated legendary, the
Triumvirate source. Its
unique bonus stacks
Frozen Orb damage in three increments, achieved by
an easy triple cast from your primary attack(s).
Desired Stats, Breakpoints and Other Notes
For Offense stats, try to obtain Arcane Orb % bonus on the helm, boots and off-hand (maximum of 45%), Cold elemental damage on the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 60% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 150%+.
For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 700k+; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through your follower, so you will not be focusing on regenerative rolls on gear.
All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.
Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
---|---|---|
Head |
|
|
Shoulders |
|
|
Torso |
|
|
Wrists |
|
|
Hands |
|
|
Waist |
|
|
Legs |
|
|
Feet |
|
|
Amulet |
|
|
Ring #1 |
|
|
Ring #2 |
|
|
Weapon |
|
|
Off-hand |
|
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.
Paragon Points
In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness. Investing into Max Arcane Power should not be necessary.
In the Offense section, max out Crit Damage, Crit Chance, Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.
Slot | Paragon Points |
---|---|
Core |
|
Offense |
|
Defense |
|
Utility |
|
Gems
Bane of the Trapped is the staple gem of the build; a potent source of
additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage
calculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property, as well as
various other sources of crowd control in the build — i.e., the
Frozen Orb slow, the stun proc of
Zei's Stone of Vengeance, and
others. The latter is another separate damage multiplier, basing its bonuses
off distance from the enemy — a powerful reminder to keep your distance
while playing this build.
Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and
final jewelry socket. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged
fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this
gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single
target, high HP enemies during Greater Rift progression attempts.
When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the
highest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally,
these will all be Flawless Royal Topaz as soon as possible. As you grow
in Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim for higher
tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive
Flawless Royal Ruby (Intelligence-based classes such as the Wizard are
naturally high in Resistances, so their protection scales better with
improving Armor instead). There is no specific breakpoint where you do that;
the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of
toughness impede your progress. Since this is both a Cooldown and a
Resource-intensive build, we recommend a
Flawless Royal Diamond in the
helm, but you can also viably take
Flawless Royal Topaz here. In your
weapon, use
Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.
Slot | Gems |
---|---|
Jewelry | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Kanai's Cube
The revised powers of Wizardspike make it a mandatory inclusion in
a
Frozen Orb build, albeit tucked away in the Cube. This unassuming
dagger now provides both a proc-based chance to hurl an additional
Frozen Orb (which does not proc Area Damage, but will benefit from all
other damage multipliers), as well as a massive damage multiplier for the
skill itself.
You have reasonable flexibility in the armor Cube slot during Greater Rift
progression. Our default recommendation is Aquila Cuirass, which cuts
incoming damage in half as long as you maintain your resource reserves above
90% — usually active in the periods in between your burst window, which
is long enough to warrant its inclusion. Another viable alternative is to slot
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer here, if you opt for a shield-heavy variation
with
Magic Weapon
Deflection and
Galvanizing Ward.
For the jewelry Cube slot, you will need to use the
Ring of Royal Grandeur in order to tie the Tal Rasha, Aughild and Cpt.
Crimson sets together. This cache legendary ring from Act I bounties reduces
the number of worn items required for set bonus completion by one, allowing
for the set amalgamation described above.
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.
Follower
For Greater Rift progression with this build, we recommend the Templar for his essential heal and cheat death abilities. The Templar is a preferable choice due to the lacking sustain in this build, as well as the overall lackluster cheat death passive that Wizards have.
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.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 06 Dec. 2021: Added Season 25 Soul Shard recommendations.
- 30 Oct. 2021: 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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