Hi wizards!
I think we are all a bit sad that we’re not really welcome in groups this season, because we don’t have a viable support or dps build for groups.
Or do we??
I’ve just been testing a bit so far, but I played typhon hydra as trash clear in a few 150s, and honestly it seems quite strong! With both dps around 3k paragon we did 150s at around 10 minutes (had a 6min clear with a good monster type), and it felt like it was the zbarb and monk being the limiting factors. The pixel pulls from the barb were destroyed in a couple of seconds!
The build
It’s essentially the solo pushing setup (see maxroll for example https://d3.maxroll.gg/guides/typhon-hydra-wizard-guide) but with pain enhancer instead of stricken, and stack area damage everywhere you can (except ammy). I play illusionist over elemental exposure to keep up, and to dodge incoming dots asap. Don’t worry about attack speed breakpoints with pain enhancer, AD more important. Ask the zdh to roll bleed on a spare yangs to help with pain enhancer. And that’s it really.
Point is you have ridiculous density scaling: the cone hitbox, area damage, shard of hatred, pain enhancer, and absolute zero.
AD is very important in the build, even stronger than attack speed (and you don’t care about breakpoints with pain enhancer) and elemental damage (due to adding with absolute zero), so go AD over ias on gloves and rings if you have to chose, ideally even on ammy over elemental damage.
I played it with focus and restraint (karini in cube) instead of rorg (drop tasker and theo) and coe, mainly because it’s so hard to roll trifecta rorg or karini (and I had good trifecta FnRs from my monk), and because I could be more flexible with turning on damage when the pull was ready rather than waiting for coe cycles. Note average damage is the same over 16 seconds, but you get more from a coe setup if you play around the burst. But honestly the damage is quite enough even without the burst from coe. I’m sure you can play it with coe and rorg, probably stronger in theory, but less quality of life for sure, both in gearing and playstyle.
This is my build (but I obviously dont have that good rolls): https://d3.maxroll.gg/d3planner/611224677
Playstyle
First, you have a lot of cc, which will make life harder for the zbarb. Try your hardest to minimise impact by not placing hydras (or black holes) close to enemies before you’re turning on dps. So start the floor with refreshing storm armour and placing two hydras at entrance. Try to keep up best you can (you can deliberately take a small hit to refresh teleport) and stop to swipe a few times with your blades every now and then to protect your shields.
Once the barb has picked a spot and the pull is starting to form (about first stomp is usually good, try to communicate on timing), it’s your turn.
- Swipe blades to ensure 5 dynamo stacks.
- Carefully place first hydra. You want a place that will hit most of the monsters in the densest part of the pull. You DO NOT want a single mob just behind the hydras making the hydras shoot away from the pull. Corners are great, walls can be ok, otherwise a bit out from the pull in the most empty direction. They have decent range.
- Cast your black hole in the middle of the pull. Yeah it sucks to ruin the pixel, but they mostly stay within AD range of each other, and you can get 50+ stacks, giving you +150% cold damage, which is a 2x damage multiplier. Also blizzard.
- Quickly swipe blades 5 more times (pain enhancer should make this very quick) and place a second hydra. Same spot as first if you’re happy with the spot, otherwise might be good to use a different spot so that a single mob won’t remove ALL your damage. Honestly, even one set of hydras destroys a good pixel pull.
- Teleport to an occy ring while staying as close as possible to the pull (audacity and shard of hatred) and keep swiping for shields while the pixel evaporates. Blanket in blizzards. Keep doing small movements to dodge projectiles or dots on the ground. Don’t overextend and lose your shields, better to evacuate the occy if needed.
- When most trash is dead, and barb starts being impatient, move your hydras to somewhere out of the way so that mobs can recover from cc-immunity and zbarb can pull leftover elites/champions to next stop. Again, talk to zbarb and ask them to ping or type “m” when they want to move. Or better, discord.
- On RG, you won’t deal any damage (although I haven’t played saxtrix or hamelin yet…), so just don’t cause trouble. Which means keep hydras out of the way (but do refresh, they run out after 30 seconds), and stay decently close to the RG to not proc teleports or jumps. Not too close though, keep an eye on your karini timer on buff bar. You don’t want to lose your gem up!
I wish I had a video to share, will take a capture next time I play it and update!
How strong is it?
I’ve only run this maybe 5-10 GR150s so far, and with ~3k paragon dps we typically clear around or just below 10 minutes. Fastest was 6 minutes, slowest was like 13min I think? These were with people I don’t know, just from asking in community, so it’s really hard to gauge. So honestly, not sure how strong it, which is part of why I’m making this thread. I want others to try it and share experience! It’s definitely viable, but I assume not as strong as sader or marauder? It melts mobs down from 50+ to 10-5 mobs in a few seconds, but you wont do much on the leftover elites unless the zbarb can stomp trash onto it for AD. In general, the strength depends a lot on how tight and how big pulls the zbarb can do, probably even more than sader or marauder.
Do bear in mind that when you switch dps on, you often get AD lag slideshow a few seconds when playing on an americas server, until most of the trash is gone. Australian servers seem to handle AD much better though.
EDIT:
Ok, I got two games in yesterday, and recorded! 6:30 and 9:50 in pretty average rifts, with a 6k paragon monk RGK!
Second rift had hamelin, and while the AD did a couple % of damage on the RG at best, it does allow the fire allies to target the RG, as well as spawn an oculus ring. So I think on RGs with spawns, do have your hydras there to kill them.
I haven’t played marauders or sader, so would be quite interested in someone more experience to have a look at these runs and compare to how one of the meta TKs would have performed in these rifts.
One thing I realised is that mobility really is a big problem. Losing a lot of time on me running behind while the zbarb already has the pull up and waiting. Any ideas for how to add more mobility? Wormhole? Maybe try to fit in some CDR rolls somewhere for teleport? I’m running witching hour, would krelms be an option? That belt that gives CDR? All gear and skill slots are pretty contested apart from the belt (and maybe bracers?), so not sure what else can be done… 
Best drop for me this season by some margin, don’t expect to ever find an ooid like that again.
And I spammed to much tft to reach master. I hope the next season is going to be bigger for Wizards. In terms of changes. And if not I hope you can provide another excellent guide for wiz players.
