Typhon Frost Hydra Wizard Greater Rift Speed Farming Variation
Greater Rift Speed Farming
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 |
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Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
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.
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 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.
Adapting Gear
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 |
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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 |
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|
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: 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.
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
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 |
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Jewelry | |
Helm |
|
Torso and Pants |
|
Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
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.
Follower
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.
Legendary Potion
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.
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.
- 22 Oct. 2021: Variation added.
More Wizard Guides
Builds from Other Classes
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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