LoD Energy Twister Wizard BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

This Energy Twister Wizard build is based on the Legacy of Dreams power, which offers significant flexibility when it comes to item choice. Stat-wise, focus on pieces where Energy Twister skill damage is a possible roll — helm, boots and source, as well as spreading Area Damage wherever possible.

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combination while not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the older way is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer (and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry) method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two best rolled rings and cubing the third between Convention of Elements, Unity, and Halo of Karini. Convention of Elements simply provides a massive damage increase during the Arcane cycle of its rotation. Halo of Karini will greatly supplement your defenses, providing a massive damage reduction bonus for the modest requirement of keeping your Storm Armor active. Unity further reduces incoming damage when paired with another on the follower, along with an immortality relic for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor).

Aside from Halo of Karini, Squirt's Necklace will also incentivize you to keep track of your enemies' positioning — it rewards the evasive playstyle of an Energy Twister Wiz with a massive damage bonus, but also punishes the unwary with an amplification of damage taken. To encase you in at least a measure of protection before you lose that valuable DPS buff, you will be wearing the Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer for the doubled shield potency (consult this build's skills page to see where the shields should come from). Note that this slot is interchangeable with Ranslor's Folly, which is an Energy Twister-specific item that both increases the skill's damage considerably (up to 300%) and introduces a powerful monster-pulling mechanic to the tornados. There is a considerable disparity between a low and high roll of the unique property, so barring an exceptional roll, we recommend cubing it to maximize its benefits.

Blackthorne's Jousting Mail provide an elemental damage increase, which is fairly unique for the slot — as long as it does not form its set bonus with another Blackthorne item, thus breaking the LoD bonus, this will be your best-in-slot item.

Four more armor slots will be occupied by protective legendary powers, with the combo of Ice Climbers, Mantle of Channeling, Aquila Cuirass and Stone Gauntlets each bringing their own angle of value to the build. Stone Gauntlets are one of the most effective protective pieces in the game, bumping your armor in 50% increments as you get hit, but with a similarly stacking mobility penalty — a downside you will be completely negating with the unique property of Ice Climbers, which make you immune to immobilization effects. Mantle of Channeling is a build subtype staple, offering a substantial 25% damage increase to channeling specs, along with an equal amount of damage reduction while channeling. Aquila Cuirass is simply a defensive cornerstone, cutting incoming damage in half if you maintain above 90% of your resource.

You have two remaining armor piece slots, and you can adapt those according to your familiarity with the build.

• When starting out and as you get acquainted with the playstyle, you can use pieces dedicated to resource management. Your helm should be Leoric's Crown, which can roll up to a 100% increase of the effect of its socketed gem — in this case, you should go with Flawless Royal Topaz for the resource cost reduction. In accordance with your considerable focus on channeling skills, you will be equipping Hergbrash's Binding — a dedicated legendary belt that reduces the strain on your Arcane Power reserves while holding down the Arcane Torrent barrage. Note the considerable range of the unique bonus, and strive to attain as close to the maximum 65% as possible.
• When you grow familiar with how the build handles, you should adapt to more offense-oriented legendaries, with glass cannon choices like Andariel's Visage (increased attack speed and elemental damage) and The Witching Hour (increased attack speed and critical hit damage), both of which will provide a straight DPS increase and take the build further in GR progression.

The remaining item slots — weapon and offhand — will be occupied by dedicated channeling legendary items that enable the playstyle interactions in the first place and increase the build's damage output. Etched Sigil is a build-defining legendary source that augments and casts Energy Twisters for free, with an internal cooldown of 59 frames — meaning an Energy Twister will only spawn when your channeled skill ticks for damage, and the item is off its ICD. Note that Twisters spawned by Etched Sigil obey the standard Diablo 3 law of "procs cannot proc", and will not trigger Area Damage. They will, however, consume Arcane Attunement stacks, ruining your potential to properly buff up the initial Twister; this is the exact reason why you should be careful with your buff management and manually cast the initial Twister for a pull. The aptly named The Twisted Sword increases the skill's damage by up to 150% for each tornado you have out on the battlefield, up to a maximum of 5; it also nets you the strongest rune, Raging Storm, for free. Note that the initial cast of Energy Twister snapshots additional damage amplifiers (such as Arcane Attunement), and Twisters that follow it up and merge via The Twisted Sword mechanics also receive said amplifiers. These additional Twisters, stackable up to 4 times, also reset the duration of the initial cast.

The 'Reverse Archon' variant (outlined in its variant paragraph in the skill page) requires several changes to the gear described above. The head slot needs to be occupied by The Swami in order to maintain Archon stacks outside that form, and Fazula's Improbable Chain is required in order to kickstart any Archon stacks at all, since the build revolves around Energy Twister damage, not Archon (the latter is treated strictly as a buff). Altering to this setup requires perfected cooldown across most of your gear (shoulders, hands, both rings, and off-hand, Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm), as well as Paragons and an Enchantress for the cooldown reduction buff. Missing any of the pieces will land you short of the 61%+ sheet CDR breakpoint.

An extra step further in gear alteration is to drop Aquila Cuirass for Shi Mizu's Haori, which guarantees Critical Hits below 25% life. Since the build runs several shields and is quite tanky in general, it will be able to sustain even at that low health point. This alteration allows you to drop all Critical Hit Chance rolls on gear, and replace them with Intelligence and Area Damage rolls for even more damage.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Energy Twister % bonus on both the helm, boots and source (maximum of 45%), Arcane elemental damage on the helm, amulet, wrists and pants (maximum of 80%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideally over 60% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 130%+. In terms of breakpoints, you should note the 59 frames internal cooldown of Etched Sigil, which forces you to optimize around frames per animation breakpoints that are divisors of 60. In practice, this is easily and optimally achievable for the 12 frames per animation breakpoint, reached by a 1.4 Attacks per Second weapon base (which matches the sword subtype of The Twisted Sword) and the 10% increased attack speed from Paragon points.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 800k+; 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. For this build, we recommend aiming for the Storm Armor Sanctification, which adds the following power to your build:

• Storm Armor Sanctification: Your Storm Armor charges over 30 seconds. Casting Storm Armor at full charge releases a powerful thunderbolt, instantly killing a random enemy within 30 yards. Bosses and Elites are not killed but take significant damage.

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). In the case of this build, good candidates for Sanctification are your weapon ( The Twisted Sword) and your off-hand ( Etched Sigil).

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 is up to personal preference.

In the Offense section, max out Attack Speed, Crit Damage, Crit Chance, and Cooldown Reduction 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 Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. Bane of the Trapped procs itself with the level 25 property, and is otherwise procced by crowd control skills and stats on your gear. In this particular build, it will fall in line with its melee-oriented playstyle, matching the range for the damage amplification from Audacity and forcing you to all but point blank drop the Wicked Winds.

Bane of the Stricken builds up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and has a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians; this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Energy Twister Wizards are no exception.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem, which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as you have no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primal quality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares ( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. This potent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergistic legendary powers at the cost of a gem slot.

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 Topazes as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Ruby, scaling the lacking Armor of an Intelligence-based character (Intelligence scales Resistances). There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Since this build is free of CDR concerns (at least in its non-Reverse Archon, base version — see the paragraphs above), you can pick between Flawless Royal Amethyst for the extra health or Flawless Royal Topaz for the Resource Cost Reduction as befits your needs and playstyle. In fact, when using Andariel's Visage, the optimal roll will not have a helm socket at all! 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.

Your weapon Cube slot should be taken by Valthek's Rebuke, another Energy Twister-specific legendary that amplifies the damage of the skill. There is an additional, path-straightening effect, which will be ignored in a setup with Wicked Wind as the Twisters will remain stationary as priority.

As previously mentioned, you will equip your better rolled item between Ranslor's Folly and Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, and simply cube the worse one in this slot.

Your jewelry Cube slot will be occupied by your worst rolled item between Halo of Karini, Convention of Elements and Unity.

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 solo GR progression is the Scoundrel due to his powerful damage and crit buffs: both passive in nature (with Piercing Shot and Anatomy), as well as the brief but battle-turning window of guaranteed crits from Night's Veil.

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 Kulle-Aid (allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede Energy Twister DPS), Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (giving you a brief window of CC immunity to counter your lack of CC-breaking or immunity skills), 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.