Tal Frozen Orb Wizard Greater Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Tal Frozen Orb Wizard can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, with the ability to create massive pixel-tight pulls with the power of Ranslor's Folly. 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.

During lower tier Greater Rift farming, the balance between defense, damage and utility can be shifted to favor the latter two aspects of character building.

Active Skills
Shock Pulse Piercing Orb Arcane Orb Frozen Orb 1 Energy Twister Gale Force 2 Magic Weapon Deflection 3 Teleport Calamity 4 Storm Armor Power of the Storm
Passive Skills
Illusionist Galvanizing Ward Power Hungry Dominance

When you are Speed Farming Greater Rifts, your playstyle should at least partially reflect the circumstances by focusing on massive pulls, generic bonuses against enemies and chaining pylon effects.

The build will maintain the vast majority of the GR progression playstyle (four stacks of Tal Rasha from four skills of different elements, stacking Triumvirate with Primary skills before bursting enemies down, etc.), but shifts to a faster and more aggressive mindset. You will run with two defensive background buffs, Storm Armor Power of the Storm and Magic Weapon Deflection, needed to keep you alive for a more daredevil playstyle. You will aggro monsters from far away with Shock Pulse Piercing Orb and position yourself with Teleport Calamity, ideally at the 40 yard distance necessary for optimal Frozen Orb damage. Place Energy Twisters right on top of elite packs, if such are present; Ranslor's Folly pulls only affect trash enemies, and stacking them on top of the elites will optimize the devastation of your Area Damage potential. Naturally, your damage will come from Arcane Orb Frozen Orb, which you need to hurl with precision to maximize their damage — highest at the point of detonation.

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 burst down enemies quicker takes precedence.

• Your main damage dealer remains Arcane Orb, taken with the highest damage potential of the Frozen Orb rune. As a Cold skill, it will take care of 1/4th of the Tal Rasha requirements by itself.
• The Lightning Tal Rasha proc will still come from a Primary Skill, as they are also needed for Triumvirate stacking and lightning primaries are most convenient for the task. Keep Shock Pulse Piercing Orb from the GR progression build.
• The Arcane Tal Rasha proc will be taken care of by Teleport Calamity, which also doubles as a mobility tool.
• The Fire Tal Rasha proc will come from Energy Twister Gale Force. While the rune effect is lost to the build and is only taken as a Tal proc, the skill itself is still a very convenient, on-demand Crowd Control tool with the power of Ranslor's Folly.
• A duo of protective skills will be taken to keep you alive throughout the run. Storm Armor is taken largely for the massive damage reduction of Halo of Karini, but you can assist your frivolous resource spending in speed GRs with the Power of the Storm rune. Magic Weapon Deflection will provide an additional shielding buffer, necessary to safeguard your Squirt's Necklace buff (see Cube section below).
• In the passives, you should keep both Power Hungry (distance-based damage multiplication) and Illusionist ( Teleport resets) from the GR progression spec, as they retain their usefulness. Cooldowns are a lesser concern in speedruns so you can drop Evocation, and you should avoid overkilling on damage by dropping Elemental Exposure. In their stead, use shielding passives that lend themselves well to overpowering the content in GR speeds — Galvanizing Ward and Dominance.

The Tal Rasha's Elements set remains gloriously adaptable in GR speeds, and you should largely keep the same split between pieces as you do in Greater Rift solo progression: 5 pieces of Tal's, plus utility inclusions. It is recommended that you keep wearing the 2 pieces of the craftable Cpt. Crimson set ( Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and Captain Crimson's Waders), as they still produce valuable damage increasing and damage reducing properties that scale off your cooldown- and resource cost reduction, respectively.

Utility slots will vary according to solo or group play, as you have to take care of certain bonuses that are usually relegated to the follower yourself when partying up. The bracer and shoulder slots that are occupied by Aughild pieces in the GR solo progression variant are better taken by Ranslor's Folly (for supremely strong, pixel-tight pulling effect you can exert over trash mobs), and either the Act I bounty cache legendary Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (for the extra cheat death proc in solo play), or Homing Pads (for the safety during town portal when partying up). Note that you can still use Aughild's set from the progression build if you do not feel confident enough in your damage and/or survival; simply switch Energy Twister out for Black Hole Blazar to maintain some form of crowd control. You will lose out on the speed and on-demand CC of Ranslor's Folly pulls, but will gain considerable extra damage and survivability instead.

You should keep Halo of Karini for the ubiquitous damage reduction it provides, but you can safely drop the timing-based excess damage of Convention of Elements. In its stead, equip a Ring of Royal Grandeur in order to maintain the full Tal Rasha and Cpt. Crimson set bonuses; this frees up a jewelry slot in the Cube for Squirt's Necklace.

Similarly to the Greater Rift solo progression setup, your weapon and offhand need to stay on the Arcane Orb-dedicated legendaries Unstable Scepter and Triumvirate.

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.

Both Zei's Stone of Vengeance and Bane of the Trapped still bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build in speed farming. Within the limited challenges of Speed Greater Rifts, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by either Bane of the Powerful (a well-rounded damage increase and damage mitigation bonus with a timed element), or Esoteric Alteration (pure damage mitigation).

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

Considering its massive damage multiplication and skill proc bonuses, Wizardspike is still a mandatory inclusion in Greater Rift speed farming as well.

The quicker, spammier nature of GR speeds demands more resources, and you can mitigate that bottleneck with the Arcane Power generation engine of The Shame of Delsere. Alternatively, you can use Electrocute Surge of Power as your lightning Primary skill, and get additional safety in this Cube slot from Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, which further enhances your shields.

Due to the neck slot occupation of the Tal Rasha amulet, you are forced to slot Squirt's Necklace in the Cube and equip the Ring of Royal Grandeur. Despite the tradeoff, this necklace more than makes up for it with a massive doubling of your damage; you will offset its "damage taken increased" drawback with a plethora of shields in your skill and passive selection.

The recommended follower for this build during GR speed farming is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction bonus (cutting down Teleport downtime) and elemental damage increase. Note that this requires that you run Hand of the Prophet and optimize her survivability, as per our guide.

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 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.

This Season, your helm and weapon sockets will be taken over by the supremely powerful Soul Shards. For this variant, we recommend the following:

• Helm — Shard of Hatred with "Your movement speed is increased by 50%" as its Rank 3 power. For optimization benefits, aim for Intelligence or Melee/Ranged Damage Reduction on its Rank 2 roll.
• Weapon — Essence of Anguish with "When you deal Poison damage to an enemy, they receive 50% increased Poison damage from all sources for 10 seconds" as its Rank 3 power. For optimization benefits, aim for Cold Skills % Increase or Weapon Damage Increase on its Rank 2 roll. Note that Essence of Anguish requires dealing Poison damage to trigger its Base Power; in this build, you accomplish this either by re-rolling the weapon damage range (the two numbers displayed just under the big total DPS number; the first Primary stat roll of any weapon) of your own weapon to Poison, or doing the same to your follower's weapon.