Build Guide
Important notes:
1. BUILD NEEDs LIGHTNING % DAMGE ROLLED ON BRACERS OR AMULET, OR WILL IT NOT WORK.
2. Rings are interchangeable. Cube the lowest rolled ring between the 3 and wear the other 2.
Build description:
This is a great build for speed farming with the wizard and probably one of the fastest speed farmers out there. It is a ton of fun to play and relatively easy to learn. Easily clears grs and T13s.
Basic games play:
The basic game play rotation involves getting into archon and killing as many enemies as possible. Each kill gives us a single archon stack and adds 6% weapon damage bonus plus 1% attack speed, resist, and armor. One we pop out of archon, the swami lets us retain our archon stacks for 20 seconds. During our time out of archon we want to find enemies and hit them with arcane torrent which works well with the zodiac ring. This will reduce the cooldown of 1 random skill by 1 second every time we hit with a spender. We also want to gather 3 tals stack by casting 3 separate elemental skills. Each one of these adds an additional 750% weapon damage bonus.
If all of the is done right, we will only be out of archon for a few seconds. Once we pop back into archon, we should have our stacks from last cycle, the automatic 50 stacks granted to us from Fazula's, and the damage bonus from the tal rashas stacks. This is the time where we got the peak of our damage potential.
It is important to maintain tals and vyrs stacks as much as possible. In-Geom helps with cool down reduction and speeds up clear times tremendously.
Check out the video for more information.
I think you should have in cube, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac as you are already wearing Manald Heal. Also you can also cube the belt to make sure you get the max stacks, and wear the swarmi with Tal'Rasah's belt.
Why do you run Bane of the Trapped when all your damage is almost further than 30 yards? Aka Power Hungry? I swapped Bane of the Trapped to Bane of the Stricken/Bane of the Powerful and it's way better.
"(Tal chest/amu/offhand is a must)" Tal Chest is not a must but you do miss out on AS roll.
Bane of the trapped also procs if you have +cold damage on your weapon. Our main wand (starfire) happens to always roll cold damage so every attack even outside manard procs will be effected by trapped.
On another subject, I dont see the use in having 2 AP spenders in this build. When speedfarming you're never outside archon, and for the rare situations where your rift sucks so hard that you don't reset your cooldown 1 spender is more the sufficient. I personally run with Ray of frost as spender and with either with the slow time attack speed rune or with familiar arcanot.
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the build is slow at the start, you need to make sure you stack archon because each one give you +1% armor as well as other buffs. This should enough to keep you alive at the lower grs when farming.
Nice guide, probably one of the more detailed ones I have seen. However, I do have one tidbit to share, The archon ability itself will count as both fire and lightning procs for tals set bonus. That is why there are a few builds that do have a lightning ability at all.
Faythe, as far as having the Obsidian ring in the cube, that is probably the worst ring of the three to have in the cube. Manald heal has a range from 13,000 - 14,000 % weapon damage. and unless you get incredibly lucky, it will be hard to find a well rolled one with the right stats AND a high range. Since you can actually farm the RORG you should wear that with obsidian ring.
RoRG can't roll crit damage, which is a HUGE damage loss.
why it wont work without %dmg on bracers?
What purpose does running Blizzard - Snowbound over Cold Snap - Frozen Mist serve?
If Blizzard is only there to trigger TalRasha set bonuses: Cold Snap does the exact same thing without wasting Arcane Power, interrupting Arcane Torrent, or even requiring brain activity as you can just autocast it with numlock. In a build focused around speed, choosing Blizzard over Cold Snap just seems silly -- that spell is the complete opposite of speed.
My guess would be because it adds another CD for Archon to contend with. Not to mention Blizzard is able to hit multiple targets from range and not just on top of you. Granted FROST NOVA may yield better results with surviving...I would think using it, especially on auto cast would play havoc on getting Archon off of cd quicker.
Again, just my guess. Though I do know some people have been using it.
BTW, just want to say thanks for this build. Pretty decent once you get the hang of it. Cleared up to 86 so far. Though I'm not sure how much farther I'm going to try to push it. I have huge problems killing the RG's in a timely manner. Many times I got to them with 5+ minutes left and still end up needing another 5-10 because Paralysis doesn't proc what so ever. Not sure if it's something I'm doing or just bad RNG, but gets quite annoying.
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one more thing i was wondering so i can play better like you
1. why do we keep Slow Time up when in Archon form ?
2. when we get out of Archon form in what order do we use Arcane Torrent , Blizzard and Teleport to get back into Archon fast ?
and thank you so much for the video and great guide
Is this one good or http://www.icy-veins.com/d3/wizard-manald-archon-hydra-build-patch-2-5-season-10 this one's better? I don't know which one to choose. Atm I have arcane orb + delsere build but I can't even do 60grift with that...
The archont lasts for 20 seconds and the tal rasha buff only for 4 secs because you can't extend it while being an archont... that sucks.
You have to ramp Tals buffs right away. Once you get into the archon rhythm you're toughness skyrockets.
If you do die do t jump into the fray immediately, make sure to move away and ramp again. That's really it. I dropped unstable passive for galvanise. For 65-70 speeds it's way better IMO since you can take glancing hits. Hope that helps.