Unlike Shard season I think wizard has a lot of desirable builds for this seasons Echoing Nightmare game mode. Firebirds in general works very nice with it’s combo of high toughness builds and stationary channeling with manual blades, eb, twister pulling but so does our seasonal starting set DMO (finally a use!) since builds with more set up time and dott but less movement really shine here.
Twister builds with DMO or LoD are very desirable in here with Ranslors. I was paragon 50 (course won’t be that low live) with full set of firebirds doing blades with twister pull and got to Tier 143 were I instantly went to paragon 600 (601 to be exact) just 25 level gems!
And no, PTR currently doesn’t have exp boost so these values will apply to live. Wizards that are deemed too slow besides Typhon bounty builds catch a nice advantage with high toughness but ‘clunky’ builds in this mode.
Going to experiment with Reverse Archon Twister builds, the ‘overwhelm’ is very generous with slowly chipping away at mobs but then suddenly doing a lot of area damage I’ve noticed, so naturally WD is going to be great here too.
Digging it so far! Think they might need a bit of loot boost though. Anyone other wizards hop on now that it’s working and test?
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Only tried typhon hydra so far, and it’s a bit squishy at this low paragon, especially with ranslors, unrerolled gear etc. Think i died in mid 120s or something. I want to optimise build a bit more as well, drop teleport etc.
If bursting every 32 seconds is enough for overwhelm, then reverse archon builds might be very strong, twister or others. And toughness of LoD will be handy, and you wont have problems dropping stone gauntlet stacks I think.
I think it depends exactly how many monsters you can get into a twister pixel before being overwhelmed.
Looking forward to see what comes out!
Yes it’s very set up friendly, depends on the map though too…the one where the center is clear is the best by far for the Reverse Archon set ups. Just cleared Tier 154 with a LoD Twister Archon Paragon 841 with > 100 level gems (one 25 still) lol but 100 augs everywhere of course which for this season isn’t going to be hard.
Idk maybe I should have tempered my expectations but getting that high really seemed like the benefits fell off, in fact the way it is might be better to not even push that high so I’d definitely say the rewards need to be looked at.
Either way though, those builds are looking nice for Echoing Nightmare
Unrelated question, but in your “hipster typhoon build” the twister doesn’t do any damage right? Just there to group, so I dont need to worry about the roll on ranslor’s?
As far as the actual topic here, I think I hit 154 with firebirds, level 25 gems, mostly augmented with 100s.
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Correct. Just there to group. It’s also used for flame blades Firebirds in that way. Note that the ooid version of Typhon only makes sense on S25 with the helm shard. S26 will be back to winter flurry and karini.
154 is a good clear! Did you try reverse archon yet?? There is no reverse archon version of Firebirds right?
Yeah I figured, but both you and lebron had nicely rolled orange text, so wanted to make sure I wasnt missing smth. Yup, going to try a 150 push on typhoons for s25.
Not sure on reverse archon I’ve only done flame blades and EB, was just using an EB build on the PTR.
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It can push GR 150 but usually isn’t worth it because of the difficulty, might be more appealing with the map changes though.
I just wanted to specifically highlight group AoE skill/build/classes with some CC are much more desired here than say zdps, especially with shield pylon timing. I think the highest group pushes will actually be with classes like wizard, WD that maintain their massive AoE dps with some CC since it’s basically all trash mobs that can be CC’d and there’s no elite damage or RG to worry about, just timing with the shield pylon and whenever the conduit actually works in anything higher than Tier 50.
Reverse Archon Twister builds or AO will definitely come to light when doing this in a group since you don’t have to worry about the timing of overwhelm while in archon and living as much as in solo, for now just sounds competitive.
For me, I found a good one with element reroll, so I could re-use it for a twister build without re-augment. I never did, but that was the plan. lebron might’ve just borrowed it from a LoD twister build already set up. Good luck on the 150! Extra credits if it’s your top clear and you put it on overall front page to represent! 10 min clear gogo! Btw, do check attack speed break points in D3 planner, they are huge for frost hydras. I’m not 100%, but I think the current 150 clear has one ias roll more than needed for the 2.01 breakpoint, which could’ve been 20% AD more.
For the nightmares, I’ve been playing a bit with a zwiz, pixel pulling for a marauders, and black hole, slow time frost nova and all that. You’re quite tanky so you can old-school aggro monsters and act as tank as well. But maybe just the pixel from a LoD twister is almost as good support, and also deals damage…
Haha, I’ll be happy with a 150 clear, I very much doubt I’ll be able to 10 minutes. My best wiz clear this season was 10:12 with FB EB, I was going to try rank one with that build since I didn’t get a condi so it could be improved for sure, but then eggman came in at 8 min and I gave up lol. Any wiz 150 is front page right now though lol, so few people played them this season so Ill get another typhon on the front page for you (I hope). Ill send you a link so you can check out the build this afternoon, make sure I’m not making any big mistakes. Add me in game.
zwiz is interesting for sure, I know wudi was experimenting a bit with it in s25 and said it was quite good. Haven’t tried it myelf.
I played a lot of zwiz S22 I think, with bone spear. Very strong in that group. I tried to make wudi try it, but he just laughed it off, only to play it himself later that season in hardcore for fun. 
In general the zwiz is the best support, replacing the zbarb, in the niece of very quickly creating great pixels. So it shines in speed runs, 2-3 min range, with a dps that scales well with density. Much slower and you’re often better off with a zbarb with ancient spear instead. So old GoD was a perfect fit, and Bone spear as well with the increasing damage for each pierce. But as both of those builds are gone, zwiz isn’t very useful these days. Not sure how nightmares fit in here, but probably a zbarb will be more useful.
I tried to push it onto a few other streamers as well, but they didn’t get the limited niece you need to be in for it to shine. Like some said they had tried it with rats and it was bad (yeah of course, rats don’t benefit much from density) or pushing 150 together with a zbarb (what does the zwiz add there??). Don’t think this season will be great for zwiz either, but worth some more testing. I think we’re waiting for another density scaling dps build with good mobility to be fotm, then zwiz might be back in.
Eh, zBarbs most useful skill is spear. With such a small area to fight, the usefulness of rage flip goes down tremendously IMO. I was already thinking zB may be out of groups for nightmares. Something like zdh, typhons (or whatever TK you can find with a good grouping skill), and 2 marauders makes much more sense to me, when all you have is trash to kill as quickly as you can.
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Yep gotta think outside the meta box for this one which is nice, I think for sure 2 zdps is out for these, especially if the rewards are going to cap. It will be all about what can blast fastest to 150.
Typhon seems to really be in the lead here because the monster spawns are further out than I’d anticipated making Twister actually a bit more difficult even with Ranslors to go efficiently, so I’m going to dig out my old Reverse Archon Typhon build and mess around with it. Features no teleport (no need), Blackhole, no TNT, PE to make up for no TNT.
But meh they really need to raise the incentive after 150 or it will really be all about what can do burst dps like marauder rather than Dott like Wiz / WD.
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Early on typhon is great for quickly leveling up to 110 or something, but for 130-150 you wont deal enough damage to single targets running in, and you need to get them into the twister pull to kill them. LoD twisters might be more dps for that part. But typhon enough for 150 for sure.
For my solo 2-min glass cannon typhon build I did:
- focus restraint, COE in cube (no rorg or tnt, although that flavour would also work, same average dps)
- Ranslors and witching hour.
- As I can drop storm armour, there is space for both twister and black hole, so I can keep teleport (wormhole ofc) which allows me to be much faster at going to grab the power pylon at halfway shield mark, and teleport into occys. I guess you could go force weapon (right?) over teleport, but not sure that’d make up for the slow walk to he power pylon and missed occy time.
- I still have barrier blades, because you lose hydra heads through the shield pylon (seems a bug…) if you don’t have any shields protecting you, and you need a signature spell for fragment anyway.
- Passives, I went audacity, arcane dynamy and elemental exposure. Those three are mandatory imo. I took prodigy as fourth because I was running low on resources without delsere and spamming blizzards and twisters. Maybe rolling RCR or apoc will allow you to go glass cannon or something instead?
- Didn’t bother with all-skills follower, don’t need the cheat death or the CDR, and the charm could be annoying. Just got 25kint, FoT and occy. no nems.
- gems I run enforcer trapped and pain enhancer. Might be possible to play ranged with power hungry and zeis, but with lvl 25 gems on ptr, pain enhancer is better, and I don’t have to bother with breakpoint.
That was the build I ran, but I think a lot of builds from a lot of classes can do solo 2-min glass cannon 150s even with low gear/gem/paragon level.
Reverse archon is super strong with typhon, as you dps after the transform so you get double archon stacks. You’d give up witching hour and coe for the belt rorg and equip the hat. Would you do coe and ring of the zodiac to reset cooldown? Or nevermind zodiac, just grab the channeling? 
Idk, haven’t played RA much, but I can see it being the strongest flavour of typhon for going beyond 150. Probably to slow and bursty to be great for speed 150s? Or maybe you can play it non-bursty for 150s, drop coe and zodiac for focus restraint or something and just have 100% archon uptime with channeling? 
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Anyone tried with the second iteration of the nightmares? The 2min glass cannon typhon is no longer viable I think.
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Most reverse archon builds no longer nearly as effective or even viable either, you cannot really afford to do no/low damage for 20 seconds anymore, you’ll easily get overwhelmed. The update really sucked for most wizard builds unfortunately, a bit better for Firebirds since that’s more elite/RG friendly. Typhon is probably still best though. Twister really loses edge since you cannot pull mobs, yeah the whole No CC update is really unfavorable.
All that being said I cleared about 5 GR’s lower with Typhon, much lower with Reverse Archon Twister as I usually get overwhelmed far before I’m actually damage capped due to the speed changes being bad for stationary skills. Arcane Orb likely better for this, haven’t tried.
Ok so third iteration that will go live. Biggest difference: no shield pylon. How did that change things? Not sure Typhon will stay alive until 150. Lod something for toughness? Frozen orb maybe to agro early on, then just live and condi the last bit to 150? Firebird? Mobility and laser will be good for aggro i guess?
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It changes to: ‘this didn’t age well’ 
Honestly not excited for this one at all, probably be a 1-2 weeks max and done season for me. I think somewhere along the New year way they’ve lost touch for what makes seasons fun and worth playing.
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