Vyr Archon Wizard Greater Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Vyr Archon Wizard can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to the great mobility offered by the Teleport rune of Archon gained via the 2-piece bonus. 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
Arcane Torrent Static Discharge Magic Weapon Deflection 1 Archon Slow Time 2 Explosive Blast Flash 3 Black Hole Absolute Zero 4 Storm Armor Shocking Aspect
Passive Skills
Evocation Audacity Unstable Anomaly Galvanizing Ward

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.

Before starting the farming run, apply the two protective buffs — Storm Armor Shocking Aspect and Magic Weapon Deflection. For your first Archon rotation, get some Chantodo stacks (10 should be more than enough, no need to fully stack) via Explosive Blast and Arcane Torrent, then enter Archon form. Focus on trash enemies on your first rotation; while elite kills are nice, you depend on the Messerschmidt's Reaver for cooldown resets, and its power hinges on number, not power, of monsters killed. For subsequent Archon re-activations, you should get to the 20 stack cap of Chantodo's set. This will be assisted by both Explosive Blast and Arcane Torrent, as their effects persist between forms and still get you stacks for the next activation.

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.

• Archon naturally stays as the focal point of the build, taken with the Cold rune Slow Time.
• Explosive Blast Flash will take the place of the GR progression-oriented Slow Time to build you up Chantodo stacks faster. This goal will be shared by Arcane Torrent Static Discharge and Black Hole as well, with the latter adding a decent damage buff via the Cold rune Absolute Zero.
• Magic Weapon Deflection and Storm Armor Shocking Aspect will remain at the core of your defensive setup, each bringing its own flavor of damage mitigation to the build — the former in combination with Galvanizing Ward, and the latter — through its interaction with Halo of Karini.
• The core of your passives, the multiplicative close range damage buff of Audacity and the Cooldown Reduction of Evocation, remain part of your passive lineup. Galvanizing Ward adds a hefty shield to protect you and your Squirt's Necklace from unlucky bursts of damage, while Unstable Anomaly will grant you a cheat death whenever something punches through said defenses.

You will still be taking all six pieces of the Vyr's Amazing Arcana set for its immense Archon-related bonuses, and you will keep the Chantodo's Resolve set — Chantodo's Will and Chantodo's Force as your main- and off-hand. Stat priorities will remain largely the same, with a focus on Toughness stats across gear, cooldown reduction wherever possible, and eschewing all Area Damage bonuses, as they do not work on Archon skills. With the opportunity to equip The Flavor of Time and Nemesis Bracers on your follower and use their powers via the Emanate mechanic, you can still maintain the valuable bonuses of Squirt's Necklace and Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer from the progression build.

Equip The Swami on your character in order to free up Cube space for other utility legendaries.

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 still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build in speed farming. Gogok of Swiftness is helpful in ramping up Chantodo bonuses and keeping your CDR sky-high in order to return to Archon form as soon as possible; if you are well-optimized on CDR on gear however, you should use Zei's Stone of Vengeance to maximize damage.

Within the limited challenges of Speed Greater Rifts, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Bane of the Powerful for its well-rounded damage increase and damage mitigation bonuses; its limited duration should be of no consequence when you are demolishing the difficulty.

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

Messerschmidt's Reaver is a cooldown reduction powerhouse that allows you to reduce the perilous Archon downtime through trash kills — a trivial task once you get stacks going inside lower tier Greater Rifts. An even more daredevil, but nevertheless viable alternative for this slot, is the attack- and movement speed amplifier Echoing Fury.

Storing Frostburn in the armor slot of the Cube nets you another source of additional elemental damage and, more importantly, a powerful crowd control effect for your Cold skills (synergistic with this Cold version of Archon).

In order to complete the 6-piece bonus of the Vyr set, you will have to use a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot of the Cube.

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.

The recommended follower for this build during GR speed farming is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction- and increased attack speed bonuses, both of which are helpful to the needs of an attack speed- and CDR-heavy build such as this one.

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.

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Wizards (due to Intelligence scaling resistances) for optimal survivability.