Explosive Blast Farming Wizard Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Electrocute Surge of Power Teleport Calamity 1 Frost Nova Frozen Mist 2 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 3 Diamond Skin Prism 4 Magic Weapon Deflection
Passive Skills
Illusionist Elemental Exposure Audacity Evocation

Two background buffs play a quiet, but very impactful role in the Flashfire Wizard build; most notably Diamond Skin, which acts as a resource management skill with Prism, and Magic Weapon Deflection for the easily stackable shield buffer from your constant barrage of explosions. Spam Diamond Skin on cooldown, and only reapply Magic Weapon near the end of its 10-minute duration. The most dangerous time in your farming run is at the exact start of the Rift, when your Orb of Infinite Depth is not yet stacked and the In-geom bonus is not yet active. Find a low danger trash mob close to the entrance and move into them with a pre-cast Explosive Blast to build up your damage reduction. Your next priority is to find and focus down the first Elite in the Rift; once you (carefully) take them down, In-geom will trigger and your true damage potential will begin. Your utmost priority in this build is to hunt down elites and chain In-geom effects, killing trash as collateral damage along the way. The actual skill management is minimal and extremely spam-heavy; just mashing your cooldowns will pretty much be optimal. The "mastery" of this build lies in movement, positioning and knowing your In-geom proc limits.

The actual Flashfire Wizard "rotation" is fairly standard for Tal Rasha setups, using Explosive Blast Chain Reaction as the major damage dealer and proc of the fire element (and spender for the Bastions of Will set), Frost Nova Frozen Mist for cold, and Electrocute Surge of Power for the lightning proc and AP maintenance. Your mobility skill will also cover for the arcane proc, as Teleport gains a minor damage component from the Calamity rune.

To streamline the build, you will use a primary that will count towards one of the Tal Rasha elements, in this case lightning with Electrocute. The particular rune has varying importance depending on the content you clear and your own playstyle, but in general we recommend Surge of Power for the Arcane Power generation. Other Lightning runes are also viable.

The build's major damage dealer and the skill whose damage you will gear around is Explosive Blast: a low-cooldown explosion that releases a 12 yard radial wave of energy, emitting from the character without the need to aim. With its additional detonations, Chain Reaction is the strongest rune, and you will further augment it with the powers of Wand of Woh and Orb of Infinite Depth. As a fire skill, it will take care of yet another element in the Tal Rasha rotation.

Usually perceived as a utility cooldown or part of Halo of Arlyse, Frost Nova takes a firm damage spot in the Flashfire Wizard spec. Leaving its usual crowd control duties to Calamity, Frost Nova brings a Tal proc of its own, counting as a cold damage dealing skill with the Frozen Mist rune. Similarly to Explosive Blast, its effect is centered on the hero, making it more suitable to speed farming than other cold skills.

Mobility is a cornerstone of any speedrunning playstyle, and Wizards are no exception. Either through a cubed In-geom in rifts, Aether Walker in bounties, or simply through Illusionist resets in GRs, you will overwrite the standard cooldown of Teleport into a reasonably spammable state. You will be taking the rune Calamity, whose minor arcane damage will trigger the fourth elemental requirement of the Tal Rasha set bonus, as well as deliver a helpful 1-second stun.

In most builds, you should dedicate at least one slot to defenses, and Magic Weapon Deflection is a very popular choice for Wizards for a reason. While it provides a decent damage buff as a base effect, the rune effect adds tremendous value with the shield it provides, consistently stacked by your unyielding barrage of attacks. The skill sports a generous 10-minute duration, making it simple to refresh in between runs.

The final slot will be taken up by Diamond Skin with the resource management-oriented Prism rune. Achieving permanent uptime through In-geom procs, this utility cooldown will reduce costs of all skills by the whopping 9 AP, single-handedly making the signature explosion spam of the build possible.

Evocation offers a simple, but powerful effect: 20% additional cooldown reduction; a natural inclusion in a cooldown-dominant build.

Audacity is a natural inclusion in a melee range spellcasting build like this one, bringing an impressive 30% multiplicative damage increase against enemies within 15 yards.

Elemental Exposure offers yet another damage increase, tying into the multi-element theme of Tal Rasha nicely. Notice that the passive bumps damage in 5% increments per element used; you fulfill the fire with Chain Reaction, cold with Frozen Mist, lightning with Electrocute, and arcane with Calamity. In Hardcore, you can consider dropping this passive for Unstable Anomaly.

You have some variance and freedom in the fourth passive slot. A consistently useful inclusion would be Galvanizing Ward, which puts up a solid damage buffer that recharges in between fights. If you focus on GR levels that you largely overpower with sheer stats, slotting Dominance here would snowball your defenses better, and is another viable choice. Once you grow confident with the build, we recommend Illusionist — a deceptively potent speed farming tool. For Flashfire Wizards specifically, it resets the Teleport cooldown when receiving a damage spike, and by working with a pre-mitigation calculation, it gives you near infinite mobility. The additional 30% movement speed after Teleporting makes the passive attractive even when doing non-threatening content.