LoD Meteor Wizard Trash Killer Variation

The LoD Meteor Wizard can fit into a high-end Greater Rift group in the role of a Trash Killer. Trash Killers focus the character entirely into Area of Effect damage, eschewing any consideration for single target or Rift Guardian damage. Your skill and gear choices will reflect that.

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Thrown Blade Meteor Star Pact 1 Storm Armor Shocking Aspect 2 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 3 Wave of Force Arcane Attunement 4 Arcane Torrent Static Discharge
Passive Skills
Elemental Exposure Arcane Dynamo Galvanizing Ward Audacity

Apply Storm Armor at the start of the run, and keep it active throughout the run. At regular intervals, you should be using Explosive Blast Chain Reaction and Meteor to keep the bonuses of Orb of Infinite Depth and The Smoldering Core stacked up. Once you and your group has settled on a pull, use Spectral Blade four times, follow up with Wave of Force Arcane Attunement during the Lightning cycle of Convention of Elements to gain its buff, and do a fifth Spectral Blade to get the Arcane Dynamo buff. Then, just as the Arcane CoE cycle starts, pop the Meteor Star Pact on top of the pull and immediately start channeling Arcane Torrent; this will net you the Deathwish buff before the projectile has landed. You have time to do that rotation once more during the 4-second Arcane cycle of CoE.

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. Maximizing the damage you can deal to large groups of enemies is your top priority.

• Your main damage dealer remains Meteor, taken with the highest damage potential of the Star Pact rune.Make a point to always cast Star Pact after you fully stack Arcane Dynamo, and always during the Arcane rotation of Convention of Elements.
• You will keep Spectral Blade in the build, both as a source of Arcane Dynamo stacking and AP restoration via The Shame of Delsere. You will have to swap the solo-appropriate (but Arcane element-based) Barrier Blades rune for the Lightning element-based Thrown Blade — in order not to consume the Arcane Attunement buff during your pre- Meteor buff rotation.
• The combo of Storm Armor and Halo of Karini remain your stalwart sources of protection, coupled with the superior proc rate of the Shocking Aspect rune. You will supplement your protection with a second combo: Explosive Blast Chain Reaction with Orb of Infinite Depth.
• You will trade the maneuverability of Teleport for the additional damage buff of Wave of Force Arcane Attunement. The mobility loss will be made up through gear.
• Your passives revolve almost entirely around buffing up damage: Audacity, Elemental Exposure, and Arcane Dynamo all bolster your damage. Galvanizing Ward, on the other hand, provides a sizable shield on a regular basis.

This is still a Legacy of Dreams build, so you run legendary items instead of set pieces and obtain the necessary damage amplification and reduction associated with the traditional 6-piece sets. This will cost a legendary gem slot, but will net you all the jewelry slots for powerful jewelry options. Similarly to the GR setup, you should wear a Squirt's Necklace for its massive damage boost; its "damage taken increased" downside is negated by your various shields. For rings, wear an Arcane-damage Stone of Jordan, and pair it with your better-rolled item between Halo of Karini and Convention of Elements (and Cube the worse rolled one). Convention of Elements provides a cyclical damage buff; you burst down enemy packs during the Arcane cycle. Halo of Karini provides you with massive damage reduction from Storm Armor procs.

Mempo of Twilight, Nilfur's Boast and Arcane-damage Blackthorne's Jousting Mail remain universally useful for increasing your damage, and so do Stone Gauntlets and Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer — but for your toughness instead. (Note that you negate the Stone Gauntlets downsides via Crowd Control immunity granted by your support teammates.) The Shame of Delsere is vital in building your Arcane Power back up, as you dump your reserves via Star Pact.

Since you'll be aiming for the Deathwish buff — extra damage while channeling — you should also wear Mantle of Channeling to double down on those benefits.

Another option for this build is the so-called "Reverse Archon" playstyle, which takes advantage of Archon skill simply as means of a powerful damage buff for your main nuke, Star Pact. While there is no focus on Archon damage, or indeed any expectation to kill monsters with your Archon skills (it is strictly treated as a buff), you will generate Archon stacks due to the Fazula's Improbable Chain mechanics. The Swami keeps your Archon stacks for 20 seconds outside of Archon form, meaning every second Convention of Elements full cycle (16 seconds in total per full cycle, 4 seconds per element) you can be supremely buffed by these temporary bonuses. With optimized cooldown reduction (see below), you will be able to enter right at the start of an Arcane CoE cycle and exit after a second Arcane cycle, giving you a few seconds to prepare the Star Pact nuke as described in the general build above (you spend your time in Archon drawing monster aggro and setting up the fight). As you exit Archon form, you have a few seconds to execute the following rotation:

• Use Meteors to proc Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to lower your cooldowns and stack up The Smoldering Core and Gogok of Swiftness;
• Intersperse with Spectral Blade usage to get 4 stacks of Arcane Dynamo;
• Use Wave of Force Arcane Attunement to gain its damage buff, and follow it up with one more Spectral Blade for the 5th stack of Arcane Dynamo;
• Throw out a supremely buffed Meteor Star Pact and immediately enter Archon (it should exactly line up with the Arcane CoE cycle), attaining both buffs right before the Meteor projectile lands;

Then, repeating the process all over again (this is the so-called 32 second cycle).

The remainder of your skills are fairly close to the base build. Note the change from Illusionist to Evocation to improve your Archon uptime.

It goes without saying, but this timing-intensive, high skill cap alteration is only meant to push this build to the outer limits of its power, and is not recommended for casual play.

For your gear, 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 Meteor damage, not Archon (the latter is treated strictly as a buff). Altering to this setup requires perfected cooldown across ALL of your gear (shoulders, hands, both rings, and weapon, Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm), maxed out CDR in Paragons, fully stacked Gogok of Swiftness at all times, and it still needs 10+ Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac procs from careful use of your AP spenders.

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.

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.

Most of your legendary gem selection from GR solo progression retains its value in a GR group trash killing setup. Legacy of Dreams forms the basis of damage reduction and damage multiplication in non-set wearing setups, while Bane of the Trapped brings excellent damage multiplication value to the build. Use Zei's Stone of Vengeance as your final gem; this is a positioning-based damage multiplier that brings excellent value even at minimal distances (though you can certainly optimize it with careful movement).

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

The Greater Rift staple The Grand Vizier moves from a worn item to a cubed power in the group TK setup, freeing up a slot for the Deathwish buff. Nevertheless, it should still be present in the build for its ubiquitous damage multiplication and resource cost reduction bonuses.

The Act II bounty cache-specific legendary Illusory Boots will add much needed maneuverability to a setup that drops Teleport from its active line-up. Note that these boots can be worn and you can cube Nilfur's Boast instead, depending on your better-rolled item.

Your jewelry Cube slot will still be occupied by your worse rolled item between Halo of Karini and Convention of Elements. Stone of Jordan is a waste to cube, since you lose the elemental and elite damage bonuses of the item — they are innate rolls but are not part of the legendary power, and are thus not extracted in the Cube.

In Season 33, where you get a 4th slot for the Kanai's Cube, you can introduce additional damage and utility to the build by slotting The Smoldering Core there.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid (allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede Frozen Orb 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.