Explosive Blast Farming Wizard BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

With the flexibility afforded by the seven available pieces of the Tal Rasha set and the Ring of Royal Grandeur, you will be able to take five Tal's set pieces, mix two additional sets into the build, and still enjoy their full bonuses. In Greater Rift speed farming, the two additional sets will be Aughild's Authority (via Aughild's Power and Aughild's Search and Captain Crimson's Trimmings (via Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and Captain Crimson's Waders). Note that both of these are craftable at the Blacksmith, making perfecting their rolls a somewhat easier task. A suggested split between the three sets is listed below, though you can vary the pieces according to your preference and best rolls, as long as you maintain the required 5 Tal's — 2 Aughild's — 2 Cpt. Crimson's set pieces split, along with RoRG in the Cube.

Rolls-wise, this spammy, AoE-oriented build will benefit greatly from Skill Damage and Cooldown Reduction affixes, with a recommended CDR baseline of 50%. High Crit Chance and Crit Damage are needed on the gloves, alongside Intelligence and Cooldown Reduction. Explosive Blast % damage can roll on chest and shoulders, so obtain it on both; the latter should also include a Cooldown Reduction roll. The pants and belt should remain pure Toughness slots. Fire damage, double Crit stats and an open Socket are BiS on the amulet. Finally, seek high Damage range, Intelligence, Crit Chance and Cooldown Reduction on your source.

With your amulet slot occupied by Tal's, your best way to finish off jewelry is to include another powerful offensive combo in the rings: the Bastions of Will set, Focus and Restraint. These rings provide an unrivaled 2.25 independent damage multiplier as long as you alternate between a primary and spender attacks, which you fulfill with regular casts of Electrocute along with your Explosive Blast spam (see this build's skills page for more information).

One of the signature Wizard weapons finally takes the spotlight in this build: Wand of Woh is a dedicated Explosive Blast legendary wand that not only increases the skill's damage greatly, but has a unique property that adds 3 additional explosions per cast. Along with Chain Reaction, this produces the build's near-infinite detonations, which are perfect for speed clears. Although similar in effect, note that the Explosive Blast procs from the weapon's unique power will not trigger Area Damage, diminishing (but not nullifying) the value of the stat in the build. The ideal rolls include high Damage range, Cooldown Reduction and Area Damage. As a tip to circumvent the rarity of Wand of Woh, it is recommended that you collect and/or craft rare level 70 Wands (Sovereign Diabolic Wand) in bulk at the Blacksmith, and then using the Upgrade Rare recipe in Kanai's Cube. The Hope of Cain recipe (1 rare item, 25 Death's Breaths, 50 of white, blue and yellow crafting materials) will only produce wands, cutting out all other one handers from the RNG pool that you would have to deal with through regular gambling at Kadala.

Your offhand should be Orb of Infinite Depth for its multiplicative damage increase and (more importantly) the substantial Damage Reduction at the maximum 4 stacks; conveniently, Chain Reaction will produce exactly than many explosions. Note that even the Explosive Blasts procced from the Wand of Woh will count towards the Orb's damage reduction stacks.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Explosive Blast % bonus on the shoulders, chest and off-hand (maximum of 45%), Fire elemental damage on the amulet and wrists (maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 50% and 500%, respectively), and Area Damage of 110%+.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 600k+; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustain through Life per Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup (i.e. bracer).

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two very useful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide to help you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear and a Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

This Season comes with the theme of Angelic Crucibles — consumable items that empower Legendary items with perfected Ancient-level stats, as well as infuse them with one of three unique, powerful, class-specific abilities at random.

Unfortunately, Explosive Blast-based builds do not have a great way of utilizing the three Sanctification powers. Thus, you should simply use Angelic Crucibles on an item that crosses over most (if not all) variants of a build, and is also an item that is relatively harder to perfect than other slots (since sanctifying an item maximizes its stats). The Sanctification power outcome does not matter. In the case of this build, a good candidate for Sanctification are your weapon, Deathwish, or a jewelry piece like Convention of Elements.

You can read more on Angelic Crucibles and the sanctification process in our dedicated Angelic Crucible Mechanics guide.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised and re-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — For virtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual to advanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the path outlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of life first, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive and edge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary Potion Powers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separate resource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Set items of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, and in the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as you comfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness. Investing into Max Arcane Power should not be necessary.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Damage, Crit Chance, Cooldown Reduction and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Area Damage and Life on Hit first, then finish off with Resource Cost Reduction and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is the staple gem of the build; a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property, making it an inseparable part of this melee-range setup.

Bane of the Powerful is a speed farming-appropriate gem that provides 20% multiplicative damage increase after killing an elite pack, as well as baseline 15% damage increase against, and damage reduction from, elite enemies. The bonus duration upgrades at a steady pace with gem levels, and is usually a good indication of your power — if it falls off, you are past the limits of your current setup. If toughness feels lacking or you are playing this build in Hardcore and would like additional safety, replace this gem with Esoteric Alteration.

Gogok of Swiftness is a multi-faceted inclusion in this setup, as only its Attack Speed aspect is somewhat lost on the build. Its Cooldown Reduction stacking mechanic helps out your damage both in a straightforward manner (more Explosive Blasts faster), as well as boosting the damage multiplication aspect of the Captain Crimson's set. Its stacking Dodge mechanic assists survivability, lending a third aspect to your toughness aside from the usual Armor and Resistances stacking.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Topaz as soon as possible. Since this is a Cooldown-intensive build, we recommend a Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm. In your weapon, use a Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

In-geom shaves 10 seconds off the cooldown of all of your skills after you kill an elite pack. This effect has a generous 15-second duration, during which you are almost guaranteed to find a new elite pack and refresh its bonuses. Because of that, in all but the worst rifting circumstances, you will have permanent uptime of all your important cooldowns. It is important to note that chaining the In-geom effect is the decisive factor of your highest GR potential; you should farm at the highest tier where In-geom upkeep is guaranteed throughout the rift.

You have reasonable flexibility in the armor Cube slot during Greater Rift speed farming. Our default recommendation is Warzechian Armguards, which increase movement speed as you destroy environmental props around you — a surprisingly common occurrence, especially in an AoE and proc-heavy build such as this one. Other reasonable choices are the Nemesis Bracers (in multiplayer, where you cannot have a Follower to wear them), or Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer for extra protection.

For the jewelry Cube slot, you will need to use the Ring of Royal Grandeur in order to tie the Tal Rasha, Aughild and Cpt. Crimson sets together. This cache legendary ring from Act I bounties reduces the number of worn items required for set bonus completion by one, allowing for the set amalgamation described above.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during Greater Rift speed farming is the Enchantress due to her vast array of bonuses that complement this build; most notably, Prophetic Harmony for the Cooldown Reduction and Amplification for the elemental damage increase, both of which you can attain by using a Hand of the Prophet.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our Follower Guide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear of your follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (giving you a brief window of CC immunity to counter your lack of reliable crowd control breakers), or Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing properties complement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Wizards). Pick whichever you feel helps you out the most.