Vyr Archon Wizard Skills and Runes

Table of Contents

• +Introduction
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Video Guide
  • 3. Quick Reference
    • 3.1. Skill Setup
  • 4. Builds
    • 4.1. Gear Setup
    • 4.2. Legendary Gems
    • 4.3. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Role in the Current Meta
  • 6. Reading Further
  • 7. ChangeLog
• ×Skills and Runes
  • 1. Rotation
  • 2. Skills, Runes and Passives
• +Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points
  • 1. Best in Slot Gear and Alternatives
  • 2. Paragon Points
  • 3. Gems
  • 4. Kanai's Cube
  • 5. Follower
• +Speed Farming Variation
  • 1. Speed Farming
  • 2. Adapting Skills
  • 3. Adapting Gear
  • 4. Adapting Gemming
  • 5. Adapting Kanai's Cube

General Information

Below, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Vyr Archon Wizard in Diablo 3. Updated for patch 2.6 and Season 11.

The other pages of our Vyr Archon Wizard guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the right.

Active Skills
Arcane Torrent Static Discharge Teleport Safe Passage 1 Archon No rune chosen 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Ice Armor Crystallize 4 Frost Nova Bone Chill
Passive Skills
Evocation Audacity Unstable Anomaly Power Hungry

1. Rotation

The strategy of this build revolves around the in- and out- of Archon dynamic, trying to conserve and increase power as much as you can outside your alternate form and unleashing the built up damage potential during the Archon uptime.

Once you return to regular form, The Swami helm in the Cube will ensure you keep the positive effects of your Archon stacks up to 20 seconds; this enables you to survive and efficiently reset your Archon cooldown through Arcane Torrent and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. You have another important task in regular form: each of your attacks will increase Chantodo's Resolve set pulse power, stacking up to 20 times — a stack that needs to be maxed out before the next Archon activation. Besides Archon and Arcane Torrent, your normal form abilities comprise of passive buffs ( Magic Weapon and an Armor spell — to be kept up permanently) andutility skills ( Teleport, Frost Nova — used defensively). Regardless of your current survivability and defensive cooldowns at your disposal, always strive to build bigger fights and find new enemies, as the interaction between your Halo of Arlyse and Ancient Parthan Defenders depends on the number of frozen enemies, and ones you have already frozen get progressively resistant to it.

2. Skills, Runes and Passives

Its presence in the build is pretty self-explanatory, but Archon should be on your skill bar. You have a degree of freedom with your element of choice, as you receive the benefits of all the runes through the Vyr 2-piece set bonus. You should however match the Archon rune elementally with the elemental damage you stack on gear, as the Wave of Destruction AoE from Chantodo's set and the explosion upon transforming (coming from the Combustion rune) use your Archon rune to determine their own elemental damage. It goes without saying, but pop this form as soon as your Chantodo set is stacked and stay in it as long and as frequently as you can.

Your trusty tool for cooldown resets, Arcane Torrent will be used with the projectile splitting Static Discharge rune to bring you fast and reliable Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs and Chantodo set stacks. Depending on your positioning, confidence and leftover Archon stacks, you can either remain stationary and channel it for optimal damage output, or kite and hope for a fast enough reset.

Your biggest moment of weakness comes when Archon falls off, and immediate repositioning will often be in order — evading a bad situation, engaging fresh enemies for Ancient Parthan Defenders procs, or simply moving ahead to a new area. Teleport will be instrumental for all these purposes, along with the damage reduction of the Safe Passage rune.

The independence of Halo of Arlyse procs might discourage you to take Frost Nova at first — after all, the ring will cast a generic Frost Nova regardless of you slotting the skill or not. The reason to include it in the build is that the Halo of Arlyse spam will inherit the rune from your skill bar, and Bone Chill will essentially provide you with a permanent 33% additive damage increase. Note that using Frost Nova yourself in normal form is not only redundant, but also hurtful to your Archon reset, because Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac will have more downtimes to go through — so keep it for emergencies and generally stick to the Halo of Arlyse proc.

Fighting at a closer range than most Wizard builds can afford, the Archon build exposes itself to regular danger; thus, a source of defense and minor damage amplification will be found in Magic Weapon Deflection. This long lasting steroid remains quietly in the background and procs consistently off your Frost Novas, Arcane Blasts and Arcane Strikes, bringing a nice damage buffer on top of your health and mitigation.

For additional protection, we will be using Ice Armor with the massive bulwark of Crystallize. The short reach of the build will inevitably put you in melee brawls, refreshing your Crystallize stacks constantly. The added value from Halo of Arlyse will bring excellent crowd control on top of the mitigation, solidifying Ice Armor as the defensive spell of choice for Greater Rifts.

This concludes the overview of the Active Skills, now let us look through the Passives.

Reworked into a comparable function to other cheat deaths, Unstable Anomaly gives you one shot at dodging a lethal situation. Operating on a standard 60-second cooldown and adding a 3-second stun to nearby enemies — plus a solid, 400% max life shield for 5 seconds — it will become a constant companion to your Greater Rift pushes.

Audacity gets a chance to shine in this dominantly melee range build by bringing an impressive 30% multiplicative damage increase against enemies within 15 yards.

Evocation rounds out the passive choices with its solid chunk of 20% Cooldown Reduction. With the overarching goal of the playstyle to bring your Archon downtime as low as possible, Evocation becomes a natural fit.

Your final passive slot is flexible between offense and defense. To focus on the former (likely necessary in high-end pushing, especially for Softcore characters), take Power Hungry — it is the mirror of Audacity, reworked into a multiplicative damage increase against enemies further than 30 yards. This allows the ranged half of the build ( Arcane Torrent, Disintegration Wave) to catch up damage-wise to the melee range potential. Alternatively, Blur can be included if you feel you are lacking Toughness; the passive brings a sizable, unconditional 17% decrease in damage taken.

About the Author

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.