Firebird Explosive Blast Wizard Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation
Nephalem Rift Speed Farming
The Firebird Explosive Blast Wizard can deal reasonably well with Nephalem
Rift Speed Farming, with versatile and unconditional damage at its disposal
and great mobility offered by the Teleport-resetting powers of
the Firebird set. We have solo speed
GR rankings and solo speed T16
rankings if you want to know more about which builds are best for speed
farming.
Within the limited scope of regular difficulties, the necessary damage and toughness to triumph over the enemy is significantly smaller. Thus, your best course of action is to improve utility and speed.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Adapting Rotation
When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.
When farming keys in Torment difficulties, the Firebird Explosive Blast
Wizard abandons the prolonged channeling playstyle of its Greater Rift
counterparts and channels Disintegrate in short bursts — in
order to Ignite the enemies (the set mechanic) and pull monsters in melee
range (via the worn
Ranslor's Folly). Channeling is done to keep the
Combustion stacks topped up, which empowers the
Explosive Blast damage
and lowers the
Teleport cooldown. With no
Deathwish or
Taeguk bonuses to keep up, you can ease the strain on your resources
and channel only to Ignite enemies and to maintain stacks. The remainder of
your skillset is comprised of passive (
Magic Weapon
Deflection,
Familiar
Arcanot) and active (
Diamond Skin
Prism — needs to
be spammed) buffs.
Adapting Skills
Parts of the skill and passive selection will overlap with the base Greater Rift progression build, but others will have to change according to the task at hand. Ability to cross over great distances faster and more efficiently take precedence.
- The use of
Disintegrate is set in stone, since its powers trigger the set mechanics for both Ignition of enemies and the Combustion stacks. Use the rune
Convergence for the wider beam, which should cover the entire pull once
Ranslor's Folly procs.
- As usual across all variations, damage dealing duties fall onto
Explosive Blast, taken with the multiple explosions and Fire-based nature (tying into the Firebird bonuses) of the
Chain Reaction rune. This rune will also synergize with
Orb of Infinite Depth, if you choose to use it during farming. The cooldown of
Explosive Blast will be practically nullified as you chain Elite kills and take advantage of the
In-geom bonus, but you will also be using
Evocation in your passives to keep said cooldown naturally low.
- To keep up the considerable costs of both
Explosive Blast and
Disintegrate, you will be using
Diamond Skin
Prism for its massive, flat resource cost reduction bonuses.
- The shields from
Magic Weapon
Deflection will pair with the one from
Galvanizing Ward to keep your
Squirt's Necklace damage bonus safe from harm.
Teleport will be vital for maneuverability during key farming; during early character progression you can stick to the defensive
Safe Passage, but eventually you can adapt to the multiple charges of
Wormhole — useful in sparse and prolonged Rift layouts, an inevitability in longer farm sessions.
Adapting Gear
You will still be aiming for the full 6-piece bonuses of the Firebird set,
but you will shift pieces around to accommodate the inclusion of a craftable
set and utility legendaries in the mix: the Captain Crimson's Trimmings set,
plus the combo of Etched Sigil and
Ranslor's Folly. The off-hand
and bracer combo simply produces free
Energy Twisters as you channel,
which attain an extra pulling effect — very handy during farming.
Naturally, you will have to complete this amalgamation of bonuses with a
Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube.
Stat-wise, this variant is just as demanding on Resource Cost- and Cooldown
Reduction stats as its Greater Rifting counterparts, and you will be striving
to reach around 40% RCR and 60% CDR to maintain both consistent
Disintegrate channeling and
Explosive Blast spam. Thankfully,
you have the CDR powerhouse
In-geom to fall back on.
When it comes to jewelry, our base recommendation is to split between
damage amplification and utility. For your amulet, take
Squirt's Necklace — it offers massive damage multiplication
bonuses at the cost of an increase of damage taken; a drawback that you will
strive to nullify via the plethora of shields included in the build. For one
of your rings,
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac will pick up the slack whenever
In-geom chaining does not line up, and will offer a speedy reset of
your vital cooldowns. Your final ring should alternate between
Avarice Band in group play (it offers indispensable Pickup Radius
bonuses as you gather gold), or — since this ring can be equipped on
your follower and have its powers affect you via the
Emanate mechanics — simply use a Fire damage
Stone of Jordan in solo farming. As a final hyper-optimization note, you
can consider altering the second ring slot in solo play to
Rechel's Ring of Larceny (if you find the SoJ damage excessive); Rechel's
brings another movement speed buff and can proc itself.
For early- to mid- character progression the cooldown reduction staple of
speedfarming In-geom can be your main hand weapon during standard rift
farming for keystones. This allows you to slot
Orb of Infinite Depth in
the Cube for extra defense. Once you grow confident in your character, you can
alter the main-hand to
Echoing Fury for the movement speed proc, move
In-geom to the Cube and drop the Orb. This will result in a
lightning-fast build, and should not be too hard to handle
survivability-wise.
Slot | Pieces | Stat Priority |
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Head |
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Shoulders |
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Torso |
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Wrists |
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Hands |
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Waist |
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Legs |
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Feet |
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Amulet |
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Ring #1 |
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Ring #2 |
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Weapon |
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Off-hand |
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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.
Angelic Crucible Sanctification
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.
Altar of Rites
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).
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You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powers in our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.
Adapting Gems
Bane of the Trapped still bring excellent damage multiplication value to
the build in speed farming. Another "overall value" addition to speed farming
can be found in
Bane of the Powerful, which brings a well-rounded increase
to both damage and toughness.
Round out your standard Nephalem Rift farming gems with
Boon of the Hoarder, which increases your movement speed and provides
screen-wide Pickup Radius via its interaction with the follower-worn
Avarice Band.
Slot | Gems |
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Jewelry | |
Helm |
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Torso and Pants |
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Weapon |
For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.
Adapting Kanai's Cube
Orb of Infinite Depth brings tremendous value to the build, especially
when it comes to damage reduction. Once you grow comfortable with the build and
feel like you can lose the toughness, slot
In-geom here and use
Echoing Fury in your hand.
In solo play, you can slot Goldwrap for the near-invulnerability it
provides through the interaction with
Boon of the Hoarder and
Avarice Band.
Nemesis Bracers can be worn by your follower and you
will still receive their benefits via the Emanate mechanics, which makes certain
items worn by the follower affect you as well. In group play, you will have to
use the
Nemesis Bracers in your armor Cube slot.
As previously mentioned, you will need to use Ring of Royal Grandeur in
the Cube in order to maintain the full bonuses of the amalgam of sets that you
have equipped.
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.
Follower
The recommended follower for this build during standard T16 rifts 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.
Legendary Potion
Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered, which
renders you immune to Crowd Control effects for a brief time after consuming it
— valuable bonus to a build that lacks means to break away from CC outside
of straight up evasion via teleporting.
Changelog
- 20 Jan. 2025: Added Season 34 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 23 Oct. 2024: Added Season 33 advice for 4th Kanai slot.
- 10 Jul. 2024: Added Season 32 advice for ethereal weapons.
- 10 Apr. 2024: Guide reviewed for Season 31.
- 10 Jan. 2024: Revised guide for the permanent addition of the Altar of Rites, and added Season-specific Soul Shard recommendations.
- 13 Sep. 2023: Added Season 29 Paragon Cap and Gearing recommendations.
- 22 Feb. 2023: Added Season 28 Altar of Rites recommendations.
- 26 Aug. 2022: Added Season 27 Angelic Crucible recommendations.
- 14 Apr. 2022: Guide reviewed for Season 26.
- 28 Dec. 2021: Guide added.
More Wizard Guides
Builds from Other Classes
Farming Guides
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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