Tal Meteor Wizard Skills and Runes

Active Skills
Spectral Blade Ice Blades Meteor Star Pact 1 Black Hole Spellsteal 2 Familiar Sparkflint 3 Teleport Safe Passage 4 Storm Armor Shocking Aspect
Passive Skills
Audacity Arcane Dynamo Illusionist Elemental Exposure

You will start runs with an activation of Storm Armor and Familiar, 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. 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 Arcane Dynamo with Spectral Blade Ice 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 Ice Blades.

Black Hole will be taken into the build as means of crowd controlling the enemy and building up large pulls. Our general recommendation is to take the rune Spellsteal, which offers a balanced split between an offensive and a defensive buff, as well as an Arcane proc for Tal Rasha.

A duo of long-lasting buffs will take care of the two remaining Tal Rasha set elemental procs:

• Fire Proc: Sitting quietly in the background, Familiar will provide a decent, 10% damage increase from the rune Sparkflint, as well as an automated proc for the Fire portion of the Tal Rasha set bonuses.
• Lightning Proc: 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 protective Safe Passage, which — coupled with the cooldown-resetting powers of the Illusionist passive — allows you to maintain distance from the enemy along with a helpful damage reduction buff on top.

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.

Elemental Exposure is taken to bolster your damage through your myriad of elemental damage sources. Notice that the passive bumps damage in 5% increments per element used; you fulfill the fire with Sparkflint, cold with Ice Blades, lightning with Storm Armor, and arcane with Spellsteal and Star Pact. If you find yourself too squishy, or want to feel safer in Hardcore, you can consider dropping this passive for Blur or Unwavering Will.