Wizard DMO Frozen Orb Build

Calling back to powers as ancient as the Sorceresses in Diablo II, the Frozen Orb Wizard emerges as one of the strongest builds in Patch 2.6.1. Using the powers of Delsere's Magnum Opus set, this build bends and slows time itself, while hurling devastating orbs of arctic destruction. This bursty, control-heavy spec is strictly oriented at Greater Rift progression.

The basic skill setup of the DMO Frozen Orb Wizard is displayed below. Read the dedicated Skills page for detailed information on choices, alternatives and build customization.

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Barrier Blades Arcane Orb Frozen Orb 1 Teleport Wormhole 2 Energy Twister Wicked Wind 3 Slow Time Time Warp 4 Storm Armor Shocking Aspect
Passive Skills
Power Hungry Elemental Exposure Galvanizing Ward Blur

The required gear setup for the DMO Frozen Orb Wizard is listed below. Check the Gear page for detailed information on choices, alternatives, gemming, Kanai's Cube and Paragon distribution.

• Helm: Shrouded Mask
• Shoulders: Dashing Pauldrons of Despair
• Gloves: Fierce Gauntlets
• Chest: Harness of Truth
• Belt: The Shame of Delsere
• Pants: Leg Guards of Mystery
• Boots: Striders of Destiny
• Bracers: Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer
• Amulet: Squirt's Necklace
• Ring 1: Unity
• Ring 2: Convention of Elements
• Weapon: Unstable Scepter
• Offhand: Triumvirate

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: Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage: Allocate points so they are as close to the desirable 1:10 ratio between the two stats, as displayed in your Character Details sheet. For weapon-and-offhand builds, this is usually achieved with the full 200 points spent into Critical Hit Damage.
• 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.

• Legendary Gem 1: Bane of the Trapped
• Legendary Gem 2: Zei's Stone of Vengeance
• Legendary Gem 3: Bane of the Stricken

• Weapon Slot: Wizardspike
• Armor Slot: Ranslor's Folly
• Jewelry Slot: Halo of Karini

In this section, we will briefly go over how to kickstart this build into reality; which items you should aim for with priority when farming and gambling, and what is their relative priority for the functioning of this spec. Note that these suggestions are exclusively aimed at getting you up and running into endgame farming, and might not reflect the gear you need to wear for high-end Greater Rift solo or group pushing. This section also assumes a fresh Season's start, which usually is the point where most players work on assembling their first build with a particular set.

If the DMO set is part of the Haedrig's Gift for the Season, your simplest and most straightforward path to assembling the build is to complete the Seasonal Journey chapters up to Chapter IV. The Seasonal Journey chapters will gradually give you a complete class-specific set, giving 2-3 pieces for Chapters II, III and IV.

From the pre-game menu, choose and do this week's Challenge Rift. When successfully completed, this weekly event will grant you 5,1 million Gold, 475 Blood Shards, 370 Reusable Parts, 350 Arcane Dust, 125 Veiled Crystals, 35 Death's Breaths, and 15 of each Bounty cache material: Khanduran Rune, Caldeum Nightshade, Arreat War Tapestry, Corrupted Angel Flesh, and Westmarch Holy Water. This will allow you some early Seasonal leeway to extract and reforge items in Kanai's Cube, speeding up the assembly of this build with the items recommended below.

Having some materials at your disposal, either from farming or the Challenge Rift, is particularly important when you get duplicate pieces of your desired set. When you do, you can use Kanai's Cube Skill of Nilfur recipe (10x Forgotten Souls, 10x Death's Breaths, 1x Set item) to convert into another item from the same set. You should never salvage duplicate pieces of a desired set before you have it assembled.

In order to assemble a DMO Frozen Orb Wizard, you should to the following.

• Gather the full 6-piece DMO set using the advice above, or by spending Blood Shards at Kadala. In order of gamble chance, you should spend for: Shoulders, Boots, Pants, Gloves, Chest, and Helm. A trick you can also use is to gamble for duplicate pieces with an easier gamble chance (i.e., Shoulders) and convert them into another piece from the same set using the Skill of Nilfur recipe in Kanai's Cube.
• Gamble Off-hands or upgrade rare (Hope of Cain recipe in Kanai's Cube) Wizard Sources for Triumvirate. This source will be a tremendous damage increases to the build.
• Gamble or upgrade rare Belts for The Shame of Delsere; attack speed is a major source of damage in the build, while resource stability will help you maintain skill spam and possible buffs like Aquila Cuirass.
• Gamble or upgrade rare Bracers for Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, a solid protective piece for the build. Gambling/upgrading rares in the Bracer slot can also net you other valuable pieces like Nemesis Bracers or Ranslor's Folly.
• Craft lvl 70 Wands at the Blacksmith and use the "upgrade rare" recipe to obtain Unstable Scepter, one of the biggest damage pieces in the Frozen Orb build. Gambling is also possible, but undesirable due to the high Blood Shard costs of weapons.
• Craft lvl 70 Daggers at the Blacksmith and use the "upgrade rare" recipe to obtain Wizardspike, the other cornerstone damage piece in the Frozen Orb build. Gambling is also possible, but undesirable due to the high Blood Shard costs of weapons.
• Do Act I bounties to attain the act-specific Ring of Royal Grandeur from Bounty caches. This will be helpful either in completing the basic set bonus, or mixing other helpful sets in (Cpt. Crimson, Aughild...) as described in the DMO Frozen Orb Wizard Gear page. Bounties will net you the craftable set recipes to begin with, so you will be killing two birds with one stone. Bounties will also net you Avarice Band (Act III), another farming-oriented staple for most builds and classes, this one included.
• While largely undesirable due to high costs, gambling or upgrading rare Jewelry is also possible; the Endless Walk set ( The Traveler's Pledge and The Compass Rose), Convention of Elements, Unity, and Squirt's Necklace will all bring massive damage bumps to the build, with other standout pieces like Oculus Ring and The Flavor of Time for your Follower.