Fun with Meteor Shower in S24: infinite resource!

We’ve all wanted to try it: playing that archetypal elemental wizard with a big staff, raining down meteors from the sky.

Well I’m here to tell you it can be done for cheap. Free even. Costs practically nothing, you make more passively than it costs to run the build.

Arcane Power I mean.

This build can make use of a TON of cost reduction. Grand Vizier gives 50% RCR to meteors, you can run Cindercoat and Pride’s Fall for another 30% each. And there’s an interesting trick with the -3 AP cost from the Power of the Storm rune for Storm Armor: the cost reduction is applied after resource cost reduction. This makes it extremely powerful when you stack a lot of RCR. I was able to get the cost of my meteors down to only 4 Arcane Power! When you consider that you generate 12 AP/sec (10 baseline + up to 2 from the Mang Song’s affix), your meteors are free! You actually generate resource while spamming meteors. And even better, you can work in teleport w/ Aether Walker for farming and your teleports are basically free too! My arcane power bubble barely moves.

I will say the build feels a bit clunky for farming because of meteor cast delay and the low attack speed on the 2-handed staff. The casting animation is fairly long, and it’s a pretty stark contrast compared to playing something like Frozen Orb or Hydras with Wizardspike. Those builds feel a bit more fluid for farming because with higher attack speed you can teleport sooner after you cast your skills.

But with the big damage on Mang Song’s, your meteors hit like trucks. I was one-shotting one-shot elites in T16. Meteor builds don’t need a weapon + source (RIP Etched Sigil) + cube combo for maximum DPS like most of our builds, so it’s the perfect opportunity to make use of a big 2-handed staff. I ended up using Aether Walker for T16 and Orb of Infinite Depth for GRs. The build is a bit squishy so the extra toughness helps a lot in GRs.

The build was surprisingly decent! Actually a little stronger than I thought it would be, I cleared a GR115 with plenty of time to spare. That would have put me in the top 100 on the solo wizard no six piece set board (if I didn’t already have a higher clear with Frozen Orb). Could probably go up to GR120 with some optimization too.


T16


GR115


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Well, the sad thing is that Mang Song has a built-in expiration timer as is will vanish into the void when season ends. They should just leave that staff in the game, like seriously. An item like that is pretty much the only option for wizards to play a 2H build. Mang Song with its four element % buffs is a nice pairing for Tal Rasha, now - think about what could be done with it, if Grand Vizier staff was like Mang Song, I’d argue that’s bare minimum we need to make self cast Meteor enjoyable unless they hopefully rework Tal Rasha.

But before I would consider playing it, the damn annoying cast delay has to go or Smoldering Core gets some kind of Ranslor Treatment (~500% Meteor damage + enemies are pulled to the impact zone - affecting all enemies like a Black Hole would, so certain elites included)… or make it so that Meteor and Black Hole are tied. Casting Black Hole pulls Meteors and casting Meteors drops a Black Hole - would be the picture perfect affix rework for that abysmal eyesore of a belt that is called Jang’s Forgotten Soul.

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