Tal Frozen Orb Wizard Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Tal Frozen Orb Wizard can deal reasonably well with Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to overwhelming damage potential offered by Frozen Orb that allows you to include Aether Walker in the build, and the monster pulling capabilities of Ranslor's Folly. 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
Shock Pulse Piercing Orb Arcane Orb Frozen Orb 1 Energy Twister Gale Force 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Teleport Calamity 4 Storm Armor Power of the Storm
Passive Skills
Illusionist Galvanizing Ward Power Hungry Dominance

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 into fights, using Energy Twister right on top of the nearest Elite pack to cluster enemies in one spot and decimating them with Frozen Orbs — ideally still using the optimal 40 yard range for the peak detonation damage, but not nearly as important as in GRs. Of course, you should not forget to stack up Triumvirate with Shock Pulse Piercing Orb, but this will come naturally through gameplay as you draw monster aggro prior to the Ranslor's Folly pull. Storm Armor Power of the Storm and Magic Weapon Deflection will keep you safe as you recklessly port around the rift in search of the next big fight; just do not let their 10-minute duration distract you from refreshing them in between runs.

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.

• The Cold proc for Tal Rasha and your main damage dealer remains the namesake of the build: Arcane Orb, taken with strongest Frozen Orb rune.
• The Lightning proc for Tal Rasha is consistent throughout the variants: Shock Pulse Piercing Orb for its massive range and AoE aggroing potential. Its Primary Skill nature is also important for Triumvirate stacking.
• The Fire proc for Tal Rasha should come from Energy Twister Gale Force; while the rune is strictly taken for its element and its properties are lost on the build, the skill itself brings massive Crowd Control value through Ranslor's Folly.
• The Arcane proc for Tal Rasha comes from your mobility skill, Teleport due to the rune Calamity. In T16 keyfarm, it will be completely spammable due to the cubed Aether Walker.
• You will take two shields in the build: Storm Armor (combined with Halo of Karini) and Magic Weapon Deflection. Their powers combined will allow you to throw yourself from fight to fight with reckless abandon.
• Passive-wise, the distance-based damage multiplication of Power Hungry and mobility value of Illusionist remain core to the setup. Supplement them with the protective powers of Galvanizing Ward and Dominance, which safeguard the Squirt's Necklace bonuses.

The Tal Rasha's Elements set remains gloriously adaptable in T16 farming, and you should largely keep the same split between pieces as you do in Greater Rift speed farming: 5 pieces of Tal's, plus utility inclusions. It is recommended that you keep wearing the 2 pieces of the craftable Cpt. Crimson set ( Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and Captain Crimson's Waders) when you farm on your own, since your follower can wear the craftable sets Sage's Journey (doubled Death's Breath drops) and Cain's Destiny (chance for extra Greater Rift Keystones) and emanate their power as if you were wearing them yourself. When you farm in groups however, drop the Cpt. Crimson's pieces for Sage's Ribbon and Sage's Passage, as you will have no follower and have to take care of the extra Death's Breath drops yourself. Ideally, you will also carry 2 pieces of Cain's set (i.e., Cain's Habit and Cain's Insight) in your inventory and right before the Rift Guardian kill, you will swap to them for the chance of additional GR keystone drops.

Utility slots also vary according to solo or group play, as you have to take care of certain bonuses that are usually relegated to the follower yourself when partying up. The bracer and shoulder slots that are occupied by Aughild pieces in the GR speedfarm variant are better taken by Ranslor's Folly (for supremely strong, pixel-tight pulling effect you can exert over trash mobs), and either the Act I bounty cache legendary Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (for the extra cheat death proc in solo play), or Homing Pads (for the safety during town portal when partying up). When partying up, you might want to be able to proc the extra elite spawn at Pylons yourself (usually done by the follower in solo play); this means either cubing Nemesis Bracers, or equipping them over Ranslor's to keep the Goldwrap toughness in the Cube. If you choose the latter, swap Energy Twister for Black Hole Blazar to maintain some form of Crowd Control in the build.

From the base GR progression setup, Halo of Karini maintains its massive defensive relevance, but the timing-based damage boost of Convention of Elements does not. Replace it with Ring of Royal Grandeur to maintain your full Tal Rasha and Cpt. Crimson set powers, allowing you to adapt either Squirt's Necklace (in solo) or Avarice Band (in groups) in the jewelry Cube slot.

Similarly to the Greater Rift solo progression setup, your weapon and offhand need to stay on the Arcane Orb-dedicated legendaries Unstable Scepter and Triumvirate.

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.

Both Zei's Stone of Vengeance and Bane of the Trapped still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build in T16 keyfarm. Within the limited challenges of T16 rifts, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Boon of the Hoarder. This gem increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with Avarice Band (either slotted in the Cube during group play, or worn by your follower in solo play), and the cubed Goldwrap.

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

In the limited challenges of T16 keyfarm, one legendary weapon damage multiplier should be enough; thus, we advise you to stick to an equipped Unstable Scepter and replace Wizardspike in the Cube with an Aether Walker. This legendary wand turns your Teleport from a cooldown to a spender, and allows for near limitless mobility.

When you solo T16s for keystones, no other source of damage mitigation will be quite as effective as the triumvirate of Boon of the Hoarder, Avarice Band (worn by the follower and emanated), and Goldwrap in the armor slot of the Cube. In groups, you might want to take Nemesis Bracers in this slot to allow you to proc extra elites, but wanting to Goldwrap is understandable — if so, equip the Nemesis on yourself and swap Energy Twister for Black Hole Blazar.

Due to the neck slot occupation of the Tal Rasha amulet, you are forced to slot Squirt's Necklace in the Cube and equip the Ring of Royal Grandeur. Despite the tradeoff, this necklace more than makes up for it with a massive doubling of your damage; you will offset its "damage taken increased" drawback with a plethora of shields in your skill and passive selection.

The recommended follower for this build during T16 rift 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.

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.