TLDR
- Get aether walker, twister pulls, slow times and black holes for support wizard: maxroll.gg/d3planner/198184512
- Get a zdh and a bone spear necro or two.
- Farm GR115-GR130 in 3-4min.
Intro
Rat runs is the XP meta by some margin in S22. (Does not include wizards)
There are some DH variations that are also good XP. (Does not include wizards)
Pushing 150s is also decent XP. (does not include wizards)
See the pattern?
As a wizard in S22, the best way to get XP is to roll a necro or a barb, or you have to ask your friends of a big favour and let you in on group runs on your wizard.
This is a guide for a 3-4 person group XP run that includes a support wizard that can run GR125 around 3 minutes at 2000 paragon, which is a bit above half of rat runs in XP/h, not bad.
Much credit to Dieoxide (twitch. tv/dieoxide) that made me believe in this build being more than a meme, would not have happened without him!
Gameplay video
GR125 zwiz, zdh, 2x BS in 2:24 with dps at 2k paragon: Diablo 3 zwiz, zdh, Bone Spear sub 3min GR125s - YouTube
The group includes:
- Support wizard (zwiz): Leads the way, pulls and adds damage as a well as damage mitigation.
- Support demon hunter (zdh): Push meta build, but swap turrets for smoke screen displacement. No bolas, it’ll ruin the zwiz pulls. So entangling with oddyseys and mark for death, grim reaper with calamity are key.
- Bone Spear DPS (BS): Most flavours work, but I’d suggest blighted marrow (pixel pulls will give you +damage) with cpt crimsons (resource reduction keeps you going) and a generator (or you might have to suicide for essence at RG). Stuarts greaves is mandatory though, or you’ll fall behind, which unfortunately rules out aughilds.
We’ve used this build with success lately: maxroll.gg/d3planner/689043168 - Optional second DPS, which can be another BS or a Gears of dreadland deamon hunter (GoD). Ideally a GoD should dual wield (due to +24% crit chance between zwiz and zdh) and wear aughilds for the elite damage. Squirts necklace is a better option than usual due to black hole and slow time from zwiz preventing hits.
Zwiz mechanics
This is my build right now: maxroll.gg/d3planner/198184512
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Mobility
teleport with aether walker, powered by IAS on gear and echoing fury. Move speed from illusionist. If you want further move speed you can swap belt into krelms buff belt, or a gem into wreath of lightning, but you’re quite fast already. -
Pull
The main CC is the pull from the twister with ranslors folly. It’s a 30 yard pixel pull at your mouse cursor without cool down, which is better than any other class and is the main reason the zwiz belongs in this group. Downside is that it only pulls trash mobs of course. However you can use this to your advantage with the blighted marrow rune of the bone spear (deals +15% damage for each pierced enemy) by pulling trash mobs in front of elites, and the piercing bone spears will hit the elite last with lots of extra damage. -
Other Crowd control:
Slow time with all runes from the crown of the primus and cooldown reduction from the Delsere 2-piece bonus will keep every from moving much at all until CC-resistance kicks in, but they should be dead before that.
Black hole is a second pull with smaller radius that does pull elites, and can be used as second pull if the twister pull didn’t work well, or to group and lock down champions or elites.
Frost nova is a 2-second freeze that should be used as follow up after a pull to lock the pixel pull into place until dps arrives.
Cord of the Sherma provides a large circle that blinds and slows for 4s. -
Damage team buffs:
The slow time bubble has all runes, one of which is all enemies inside takes +15% damage.
The slow time bubble has all runes, one of which is allies in the bubble get +10% attack speed.
Frost nova provides +33% damage while frozen.
Strongarm bracers +30% damage 6s after knockback (triggered by pull)
Conflagration give +6% crit hit chance for 3s after taking fire damage (from twister)
Black hole event horizon doesn’t change anyones sheet dps, but removing walls allows the BS and GoD to actually attack. (Which is infinite % damage increase compared to bone spears hitting a wall, nerf zwiz pl0x blizz
)
ice blink: +10% crit hit chance on freeze (triggered by frost nova)
Gem of efficacious toxin: +10% damage for 10s on hit (triggered by everything)
The two gems are duplicated with the zdh but ensures that the pull always have these buffs. Can be difficult for zdh to keep up with multi-shotting every pull you make for ice blink. If you have a quick zdh (or don’t need the extra damage) you can swap out for more defense or speed (wreath of lightning). -
Defensive team buffs:
Allies in slow time takes 30% less damage. (4-set Delsere)
Slow time slows projectiles by 90% making them likely to miss and give you time to absorb them with block hole).
The slow time bubble has all runes, one of which is all enemies inside deal 25% less damage.
Black hole, event horizon doesn’t add sheet toughness, but can absorb projectiles (including many rift guardian attacks) and items, such as molten explosions, arcane sentries, and many more.
Gem of efficacious toxin: 10% damage decrease on hit (zdh also has this so will add little in practice) -
Survival:
4-piece Delsere gives you 60% damage reduction. (cast one first thing each level)
Halo of karini with storm armour gives you 80% damage reduction. (Beware of this dropping of, especially start of floors, and at rift guardian spawn)
Cpt Crimson 3-piece (damage reduction equal to resource cost reduction) together with RCR on as many pieces as you can get, I have 54.9% total.
The passives are pretty contested so I play without a cheat death, also because the wiz cheat death is bad and it completely messes up any pulls and cc-resistance. I do die every now and then, but it’s always my own fault due to not having buffs up and/or not teleporting out of announced big hits. You can swap into cheat death for conflagration at the cost of damage (then change twister rune to wicked wind), or astral presence at the cost of resources. -
Resources:
You go through quite a lot of resources, but it should be pretty rare that you run out once your build is complete. Biggest spenders are teleport and twisters, so you run out when you go very fast through the teleport-pull cycle, or when you spam twisters to trigger ring of the zodiac.
Try to get resource cost reduction on all the pieces where you can (note, this also gives you damage reduction, so don’t worry about rerolling defensive stats): neck, rings, off-hand, gloves, shoulders. Weapon as well if you can, but IAS and CDR are more important, so only if you find a trifecta.
Try to get maximum arcane power as secondary (Weapon, off hand, helm)
Astral presence passive.
We have storm armour for defense, so we get the power of the storm rune, which reduces arcane power cost by 3. -
cooldown reduction:
Very important of course, mainly for black hole to keep up with arcane sentries and other elite affixes, but also for frost nova (especially at rift guardian). slow time will get reset by Delsere 2-piece, but you need to have enough CDR for it to reset.
Get max rolls on every item that can have it.
Captain crimson gives you further +20%. (also increases your damage for when the BS isn’t keeping up )
evocation passive gives you +20%.
Diamond in helm +12.5%.
Should put you at more than 70% CDR total.
Then obsidian ring of the zodiac (triggered by twisters and black hole) further helps us get the CDs up asap. If you want more, you can swap a gem into gogok of swiftness instead of toxin (I am planning to do that actually), or you can swap echoing fury (giving up speed) into leorics crown.
Playstyle
You have 5 buttons that you need to actively press at the right time (well 6 with force move), and you need to do it fast, so it’s a pretty busy build and requires some muscle memory to be played well. But you wouldn’t be playing a wizard if you don’t want to press buttons, so that is good news, right? If not, go make a pur zbarb and drink tea while getting XP at almost twice the speed.
I put storm armour on left click (clicked once per rift), teleport on right click and force move on mouse side button, so that the mouse is used for moving. Then the active abilities on 1-4.
- At start of each rift, cast storm armour for surival.
- At start of each floor, cast a bubble for survival.
- Teleport ahead and cast a twister for pull on any group of monsters.
- After a trash only pull
As you teleport/run past, cast frost nova to freeze the pull and to activate all the damage buffs, as well as triggering Krysbins sentence (increases damage by a lot whn CC:ed by anything else than slow) and bane of the trapped for your dps. Note that this freeze only lasts 2 seconds, so important to not be too far ahead of your dps, about 1 screen ahead is good. If you have time, also cast slow time on the pull for further damage buff, but this depends on your pacing. Note that frost nova is not a cast (so doesn’t slow you down), while slow time is. If you go super fast, you may not even have frost nova on CD, but hopefully the necro will have enough damage to kill the pull anyway. Don’t stop and wait for cooldown if it means the dps is catching up to you. - At an elite/champion:
Try to make a trash pull so that the necro can easily hit the elite through the pull. So ideally the pull will be in front of the elite in the direction the necro is coming from, but communicate with the necro (in or between rifts) how you prefer. Make the pull decently close to the elite so that you can go in between and freeze both the pull and the elite in place for max damage buffs on the elite. Add slow time bubble as well. Optionally cast black hole to keep the elite in place as it unfreezes. If the pull and bone spears line up, the elite will be killed instantly, but sometimes it’s not feasible due to terrain or just lack of trash mobs, or sometimes it fails due to mistakes by players or in communication. You will then have to stop a little longer. (Juggernauts typically requires a longer stop as well, but don’t need to be skipped) Then soak up any affixes you can with black hole, and in particular look at the necro (that may move to an oculus ring) and try to keep posion/lasers/fire/wandering goo/projectiles/etc away from your dps. Try to keep the freeze on the elite as much as you can, by casting twisters on the elite to trigger ring of the zodiac. Twisters also triggers conflagration, and pulls in any trash that is not yet cc-immune on top of the elite for that pierce damage and AD. Throw a slow time bubble on the dps to increase attack speed and keep them safe (both from projectile-slow and 30% damage reduction from Delsere 4-piece). - At the Rift Guardian:
Before spawn, put a bubble over the spawn location, cast a twister to reset, but a second bubble over where your dps will be. Freeze it on spawn, or you can delay slightly if you don’t see any bone spears coming in. After freeze, quickly cast two twisters that will reset the frost nova CD with ring of the zodiac, and repeat. Don’t cast more bubbles unless they expire as they may take zodiac procs. Do use black holes on any affixes that may interfere with your dps though, such as lasers or fire-breaths. I’m not going to go through every RG and what you can absorb, test and try. If you struggle with the RG, ask your necro to call the CoE damage cycle and make sure to have the RG frozen, and you can leave it to reset CC-resist in between.
Summary
This group allows you to run GR115 in 3min average, or GR120 below 4:00 (videos to come). It’s less XP/h than a rat run, but it allows demon hunters and wizards to join in the fun. Maybe it can be a nice change for people bored of rats and hipsters that like a little of-meta builds like the zwiz!
It’s very much work in progress, and I don’t know anyone else doing these runs, so very much welcoming any feedback, suggestions or questions.