Typhon Frost Hydra Wizard Greater Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Typhon Hydra Wizard can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to the near-autonomous damage output of the Hydras and the option to include Aether Walker in the lower tiers of GR farming. 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.

During lower tier Greater Rift farming, the balance between defense, damage and utility can be shifted to favor the latter two aspects of character building.

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Barrier Blades Hydra Frost Hydra 1 Teleport Wormhole 2 Blizzard Apocalypse 3 Black Hole Absolute Zero 4 Storm Armor Scramble
Passive Skills
Galvanizing Ward Elemental Exposure Arcane Dynamo Audacity

When you are Speed Farming Greater Rifts, your playstyle should at least partially reflect the circumstances by focusing on massive pulls, generic bonuses against enemies and chaining pylon effects.

You will maintain the vast majority of your GR progression rotation; Storm Armor should be activated as soon as you enter the Rift to enable the Halo of Karini procs, and you should summon two Hydras to kickstart the Typhon 4-piece set bonus protection. Maneuver throughout the Rift with Teleport as much as possible, drawing enemy attention and building up big fights with aggroing casts of Spectral Blade. This will also serve to stack up your Arcane Dynamo, and you need to make sure you have built up its Flashes of Insight prior to casting Hydras and obliterating the screen from enemies. Another helpful damage buff will come from Winter Flurry, so make sure to spread Blizzard over the heads of enemies targeted by the Hydras. Keep up the GR progression strategy of trying to force fights in close quarters and casting Hydras against walls and corners to ensure all their attacks will be focused in one direction.

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 burst down enemies quicker takes precedence.

• Hydra remains the main damage dealer of the build, and retains the Cold rune Frost Hydra for its AoE convenience.
• Spectral Blade is also kept in the build as an all-in-one tool for Arcane Dynamo damage buffs and Barrier Blades damage mitigation.
• Although still viable, Magic Weapon Deflection diminishes in usefulness for your "utility" slot as it can be overly protective for speed GRs. In its place, we recommend that you take a monster grouping tool in the form of Black Hole Absolute Zero.
• Means to maneuver throughout the Rift remain paramount, and even more so, in Greater Rift speed farming. Thus Teleport remains in the build, and you can opt for the multiple charges of the Wormhole rune over the protective Safe Passage. Note the option to take Aether Walker, which allows you to keep the protective rune while maintaining superb mobility, at the cost of a substantial damage decrease.
• Storm Armor should remain in the build for the protective procs of Halo of Karini, but you can alter the rune from Shocking Aspect to the movement speed buff from Scramble.
• Blizzard is still required in the build due to the increased Hydra damage dealt to enemies caught inside its radius, thanks to the Winter Flurry unique power.
• All the passives from Greater Rift progression maintain their tremendous value during GR speed farming as well: Audacity, Arcane Dynamo and Elemental Exposure for the damage buffs, and Galvanizing Ward for the protective utility.

You will maintain the five worn pieces of the The Typhon's Veil set, and wear your better roll between The Magistrate and Tasker and Theo (and cubing the worse one, along with Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube in order to maintain the 6-piece Typhon bonus).

The remainder of your gear should also match the GR solo progression counterpart; your weapon and off-hand stick to the Hydra-dedicated Serpent's Sparker and Winter Flurry, while your utility slots (belt and bracers) maintain the valuable Guardian set bonus. Note that the former favorite for the belt slot, The Shame of Delsere, has more value in a GR speed farm setup due to the possible alteration to Aether Walker in the Cube, which will tax your Arcane Power resources greatly and might need the belt to compensate. The bracer slot can be altered to Nemesis Bracers if you are farming in a group, so you can independently spawn the extra elite at every Pylon.

Your jewelry will mostly match your GR progression setup, with Squirt's Necklace providing too valuable of a damage buff to disregard, and with similar defensive value coming from Halo of Karini. You can viably alternate Convention of Elements in lower tier Greater Rift speed farming to a Cold damage Stone of Jordan to enjoy the consistent elemental damage bonus and remove the CoE timing element.

Slot	Pieces	Stat Priority
Head	The Magistrate (Best in Slot) Typhon's Frons (Alternative)	Intelligence Socket Critical Hit Chance Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat)
Shoulders	Typhon's Tibia	Intelligence Area Damage Hydra % Damage Life % or Vitality Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Torso	Typhon's Thorax	Intelligence 3 Sockets Vitality Hydra % Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Wrists	Guardian's Aversion (Best in Slot) Nemesis Bracers (Alternative)	Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Cold % Damage Life per Hit or Vitality Reduced Damage Melee Attacks (Secondary stat)
Hands	Typhon's Claws (Best in Slot) Tasker and Theo (Alternative)	Intelligence (or Area Damage at high Paragon) Critical Hit Chance Critical Hit Damage Attack Speed Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Waist	Guardian's Case (Best in Slot) The Shame of Delsere (Alternative)	Intelligence Critical Hit Damage (if The Witching Hour) Attack Speed (if The Witching Hour) Vitality Armor Life % Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Life per Kill (Secondary Stat)
Legs	Typhon's Abdomen	Intelligence 2 Sockets Vitality Armor Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Feet	Typhon's Tarsus	Intelligence Vitality Armor All Resistance Pickup Radius (Secondary Stat) Health Globe Healing Bonus (Secondary Stat)
Amulet	Squirt's Necklace	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Cold % Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat) Melee or Missile Damage Reduction (Secondary Stat)
Ring #1	Halo of Karini	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Attack Speed or Area Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Ring #2	Convention of Elements (Best in Slot) Stone of Jordan (Alternative)	Socket Critical Hit Damage Critical Hit Chance Attack Speed or Area Damage Physical or Lightning Resistance (Secondary Stat)
Weapon	Serpent's Sparker	High Weapon Damage Socket (preferably from Ramaladni's Gift) Intelligence Attack Speed Area Damage
Off-hand	Winter Flurry	High Damage Range Cold % Damage Intelligence Critical Hit Chance Hydra % Damage

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 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: Attack Speed: 200 points.
• 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.

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.

Both Enforcer and Bane of the Trapped still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build in speed farming. Within the limited challenges of Speed Greater Rifts, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by either Zei's Stone of Vengeance (stronger damage increase, but positioning and range dependent) or Bane of the Powerful (a well-rounded damage increase and damage mitigation bonus with a timed element).

Slot	Gems
Jewelry	Bane of the Trapped Enforcer Zei's Stone of Vengeance Bane of the Powerful (alt)
Helm	Flawless Royal Amethyst (Toughness)
Torso and Pants	Flawless Royal Topaz (Damage and All Resistance)
Weapon	Flawless Royal Emerald

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

Depending on how confident you are with the rest of your gear and how high you plan on doing speed GR runs, you can either stick to the staple Fragment of Destiny and maneuver a little slower throughout the Rift, or insert Aether Walker in the weapon Cube slot for unlimited Teleport potential.

The remainder of your Cube choices should mimic the GR progression setup, with your weaker item between Tasker and Theo and The Magistrate in the armor slot, and a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot.

The recommended follower for this build during GR speed farming is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction bonus (cutting down Teleport downtime) and increased attack speed bonus (helping your Hydras reach attack speed breakpoints easier).

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 Hydra 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.