LoD Meteor Wizard Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Barrier Blades Meteor Star Pact 1 Storm Armor Shocking Aspect 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Teleport Wormhole 4 Black Hole Spellsteal
Passive Skills
Illusionist Arcane Dynamo Galvanizing Ward Audacity

You will start runs with an activation of Storm Armor and Magic Weapon, both of which are to be kept up throughout the rift. Note that Halo of Karini has a range requirement and try to keep track of your positioning relative to enemies so that the defensive buff does not drop off (more about that on the build's gear page). Scout out the rift and try to attract the attention of enemies to form a large pull; once a large group of enemies trails after you, get a 4-stack of your Arcane Dynamo passive with Spectral Blade Barrier Blades. Halfway through the Lightning Convention of Elements rotation, cast Black Hole to clump up enemies tightly; then, as the Arcane CoE rotation comes around, get a fifth stack of Arcane Dynamo with one more cast of Spectral Blade, and drop a devastating Meteor Star Pact nuke on your enemies' heads. During the 4-second CoE cycle, you can fit in another round of 5-stack Arcane Dynamo and Star Pact before CoE moves to the Cold part of the rotation.

In order to maximize your survivability, try to always position yourself at a relatively safe distance from the enemy (but not too far as to drop the Audacity bonus) with calculated Teleports around the battlefield. Ideally, in any given fight you should be able to take down a smaller enemy first, which nets you a proc of Oculus Ring to jump into, giving you yet another damage multiplier.

Meteor is the focal point of the build, taken with its strongest burst rune — Star Pact. Its Arcane Power-dependency for damage necessitates that you focus on extending your AP reserve through passives, gear and Paragon points (see this build's gear page for more information). Make a point to always cast Star Pact after you fully stack Arcane Dynamo, and always during the Arcane rotation of Convention of Elements.

To counteract the complete Arcane Power depletion of Star Pact, you will be including a primary attack in the build — adding a resource generation angle to it through the cubed The Shame of Delsere (see this build's gear page for more information). Signature spells are also important to include in order to introduce a proc for the damage multiplier of Arcane Dynamo to the build. Lastly, you will benefit from any source of protection you can layer on top during Greater Rift pushes, and a good option to fit all these purposes is found in Spectral Blade Barrier Blades.

As consistent means of protection, you will be adding Storm Armor to the build. With a fire-and-forget duration of 10 minutes and a negligible damage proc, it can be easily overlooked — if not for the massive damage reduction properties of Halo of Karini (see this build's gear page for more information). You will be taking the rune Shocking Aspect for the superior uptime of the procs for the Karini buff.

Last but not least, Teleport will round out your skill selection with valuable maneuverability across the battlefield; either to engage, reposition, or simply move away from an unfavorable fight. The preferred rune is the multiple-charged Wormhole, which — coupled with the cooldown-resetting powers of the Illusionist passive — allows for unparalleled mobility throughout the rift.

Audacity is a natural inclusion for the fighting style of a Meteor Wizard — you will be casting your burst rotation right in the thick of the fight, where you will get the most out of this damage multiplier.

Arcane Dynamo fits into the goals of the build nicely, as spamming a The Shame of Delsere-empowered primary skill is necessary for Arcane Power build-up for Star Pact anyway, and the passive's five-stack mechanic will feed extra damage to your burst.

A powerful survival tool is hidden in your Illusionist passive, turning Teleport from a strategic cooldown into a constantly available asset. The requirement of 15% life taken per hit is calculated prior to mitigation and translates into “any hit taken” in high Greater Rifts. The additional 30% movement speed after using some of the build's core abilities is just icing on the cake.

Added with similar reasoning to Magic Weapon Deflection (mainly Squirt's Necklace buff maintenance), Galvanizing Ward introduces a solid damage buffer that benefits from the doubled effectiveness via Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer.

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Siphoning Blade Meteor Star Pact 1 Storm Armor Shocking Aspect 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Archon Teleport 4 Black Hole Spellsteal
Passive Skills
Evocation Arcane Dynamo Galvanizing Ward Audacity

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 this variant's paragraph in the gear page for more information), 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:

• Teleport away from monsters in anticipation of the toughness loss from losing Archon form;
• Use Meteors to proc Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to lower your cooldowns and stack up The Smoldering Core;
• Intersperse with Spectral Blade usage to get 4 stacks of Arcane Dynamo;
• Use Black Hole to clump up monsters together, 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: keeping up the shields ( Storm Armor, Deflection), and grouping up monsters with Black Hole. Note the change of Spectral Blade from Barrier Blades to Siphoning Blade (since you lose The Shame of Delsere in favor of Fazula's Improbable Chain in an Archon-reliant setup), and 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.