Tal Meteor Wizard Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Tal Meteor Wizard can deal reasonably well with Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to overwhelming damage potential offered by Meteor that allows you to include Aether Walker in the build, and versatility of the Tal Rasha set allowing for multiple utility legendaries. 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
Diamond Skin Prism Meteor Thunder Crash 1 Explosive Blast Chain Reaction 2 Familiar Arcanot 3 Teleport Wormhole 4 Ice Armor Frozen Storm
Passive Skills
Audacity Unstable Anomaly Illusionist Elemental Exposure

When you are speed farming regular rifts, parts of your playstyle will adapt to the lowered challenge and focus more on speed and utility.

The T16 key farming build will mimic the GR speed farming rotation, but sped up one step further: with extremely aggressive Teleports on top of enemies and their subsequent decimation with Meteors, made immediate with the rune Thunder Crash. Diamond Skin Prism and Explosive Blast Chain Reaction are cast on cooldown throughout the rift; the former to cut down Arcane Power costs, and the latter — to trigger the Fire element of the Tal Rasha set bonus. Ice Armor Frozen Storm, Familiar Arcanot and Magic Weapon Deflection will keep your resources and survivability stable as you recklessly port around the rift in search of the next big fight; just do not let their 10-minute duration distract you from refreshing them in between runs.

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 Lightning proc for Tal Rasha and your main source of damage comes in the form of Meteor Thunder Crash. The rune's immediate effect fits right in with the blistering pace of standard Rifts.
• The Cold proc for Tal Rasha comes from the persistent AoE effect of Ice Armor Frozen Storm.
• The Fire proc for Tal Rasha should come from Explosive Blast Chain Reaction; the multiple, staggered detonations of this rune will ensure at least one hit lands on an enemy as you maneuver in a fight, keeping up the necessary elemental bonus.
• The Arcane proc for Tal Rasha comes from Familiar Arcanot; a utility-driven choice, which also nets you the lucrative 4.5 Arcane Power regeneration per second. You will further strengthen your resource management by taking Diamond Skin Prism, and casting it on cooldown.
• Of course, during speed farming you will need to include a mobility skill; for Wizards, this means Teleport. Take the Wormhole rune, which gives you an extra use of the skill within 3 seconds of the first cast. In T16 keyfarm, Teleport will be completely spammable due to the cubed Aether Walker.
• Passive-wise, the proximity-based damage multiplication of Audacity, the element-based damage multiplication of Elemental Exposure, and mobility value of Illusionist remain core to the setup. Supplement them with Unstable Anomaly; this cheat death failsafe lets you move and loot with no regards for your safety, and to pull some truly reckless moves — like staying inside Molten explosions to loot, etc.

The Tal Rasha's Elements set remains gloriously adaptable in T16 farming, and you should largely keep the same split between pieces as you do in Greater Rift speed farming: 5 pieces of Tal's, plus utility inclusions. It is recommended that you wear speedfarm-oriented legendaries like Goldwrap, Warzechian Armguards and Pauldrons of the Skeleton King when you farm on your own, since your follower can wear the craftable sets Sage's Journey (doubled Death's Breath drops) and Cain's Destiny (chance for extra Greater Rift Keystones) and emanate their power as if you were wearing them yourself. When you farm in groups however, consider dropping Goldwrap and Nilfur's Boast from the standard setup for Sage's Ribbon plus Sage's Passage, as you will have no follower and have to take care of the extra Death's Breath drops yourself. Ideally, you will also carry 2 pieces of Cain's set (i.e., Cain's Habit and Cain's Insight) in your inventory and right before the Rift Guardian kill, you will swap to them for the chance of additional GR keystone drops.

Utility slots also 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 speedfarm variant are better taken by Warzechian Armguards (for environment destruction-based movement speed increases), 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). When partying up, you might want to be able to proc the extra elite spawn at Pylons yourself (usually done by the follower in solo play); this means either cubing Nemesis Bracers, or equipping them over Warzechian's to keep the Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan resource bonuses in the Cube.

Jewelry-wise, you should swap progression-oriented rings like Halo of Karini and Convention of Elements for more well-rounded bonuses. Our base recommendation is to wear a Lightning damage Stone of Jordan and a Unity (paired with another Unity on your follower, plus an immortality item like Enchanting Favor, this ring reduces incoming damage in half). In groups, use Avarice Band instead of Unity.

Unlike Greater Rift-oriented setups, your weapon needs to be altered to Aether Walker in T16 farm. This legendary wand turns your Teleport from a cooldown to a spender, and allows for near limitless mobility.

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, a good candidate for Sanctification is your weapon, The Grand Vizier.

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.

Either Zei's Stone of Vengeance or Bane of the Trapped can bring excellent damage multiplication value to the build in T16 keyfarm. Within the limited challenges of T16 keystone farming, Bane of the Stricken should be replaced by Bane of the Powerful for a well-rounded damage increase and damage mitigation bonus, with a duration-based (but very generous and manageable) limitation. Lastly, Esoteric Alteration from the GR progression build should be swapped for Boon of the Hoarder. This gem increases your movement speed and provides near-infinite Toughness through its interaction with Avarice Band (either worn by you during group play, or worn by your follower in solo play), and the equipped Goldwrap.

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 T16 farm, freeing up a slot for Aether Walker mobility. Nevertheless, it should still be present in the build for its ubiquitous damage multiplication and resource cost reduction bonuses.

Hexing Pants of Mr. Yan increase resource generation and damage dealt while moving — and decrease them while stationary. In the breakneck pace of T16 farm, this legendary should always provide its positive powers as you relentlessly move forward.

In order to maintain the amalgamation of the Tal Rasha and Aughild sets, as well as a slew of synergistic legendary items, you need to keep the Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot of the Cube.

The recommended follower for this build during T16 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.