Typhon Frost Hydra Wizard Greater Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Typhon Hydra Wizard can deal reasonably well with Greater Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to the near-autonomous damage output of the Hydras and the option to include Aether Walker in the lower tiers of GR farming. 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
Spectral Blade Barrier Blades Hydra Frost Hydra 1 Teleport Wormhole 2 Blizzard Apocalypse 3 Black Hole Absolute Zero 4 Storm Armor Scramble
Passive Skills
Galvanizing Ward Elemental Exposure Arcane Dynamo Audacity

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.

You will maintain the vast majority of your GR progression rotation; Storm Armor should be activated as soon as you enter the Rift to enable the Halo of Karini procs, and you should summon two Hydras to kickstart the Typhon 4-piece set bonus protection. Maneuver throughout the Rift with Teleport as much as possible, drawing enemy attention and building up big fights with aggroing casts of Spectral Blade. This will also serve to stack up your Arcane Dynamo, and you need to make sure you have built up its Flashes of Insight prior to casting Hydras and obliterating the screen from enemies. Another helpful damage buff will come from Winter Flurry, so make sure to spread Blizzard over the heads of enemies targeted by the Hydras. Keep up the GR progression strategy of trying to force fights in close quarters and casting Hydras against walls and corners to ensure all their attacks will be focused in one direction.

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.

• Hydra remains the main damage dealer of the build, and retains the Cold rune Frost Hydra for its AoE convenience.
• Spectral Blade is also kept in the build as an all-in-one tool for Arcane Dynamo damage buffs and Barrier Blades damage mitigation.
• Although still viable, Magic Weapon Deflection diminishes in usefulness for your "utility" slot as it can be overly protective for speed GRs. In its place, we recommend that you take a monster grouping tool in the form of Black Hole Absolute Zero.
• Means to maneuver throughout the Rift remain paramount, and even more so, in Greater Rift speed farming. Thus Teleport remains in the build, and you can opt for the multiple charges of the Wormhole rune over the protective Safe Passage. Note the option to take Aether Walker, which allows you to keep the protective rune while maintaining superb mobility, at the cost of a substantial damage decrease.
• Storm Armor should remain in the build for the protective procs of Halo of Karini, but you can alter the rune from Shocking Aspect to the movement speed buff from Scramble.
• Blizzard is still required in the build due to the increased Hydra damage dealt to enemies caught inside its radius, thanks to the Winter Flurry unique power.
• All the passives from Greater Rift progression maintain their tremendous value during GR speed farming as well: Audacity, Arcane Dynamo and Elemental Exposure for the damage buffs, and Galvanizing Ward for the protective utility.

You will maintain the five worn pieces of the The Typhon's Veil set, and wear your better roll between The Magistrate and Tasker and Theo (and cubing the worse one, along with Ring of Royal Grandeur in the Cube in order to maintain the 6-piece Typhon bonus).

The remainder of your gear should also match the GR solo progression counterpart; your weapon and off-hand stick to the Hydra-dedicated Serpent's Sparker and Winter Flurry, while your utility slots (belt and bracers) maintain the valuable Guardian set bonus. Note that the former favorite for the belt slot, The Shame of Delsere, has more value in a GR speed farm setup due to the possible alteration to Aether Walker in the Cube, which will tax your Arcane Power resources greatly and might need the belt to compensate. The bracer slot can be altered to Nemesis Bracers if you are farming in a group, so you can independently spawn the extra elite at every Pylon.

Your jewelry will mostly match your GR progression setup, with Squirt's Necklace providing too valuable of a damage buff to disregard, and with similar defensive value coming from Halo of Karini. You can viably alternate Convention of Elements in lower tier Greater Rift speed farming to a Cold damage Stone of Jordan to enjoy the consistent elemental damage bonus and remove the CoE timing element.

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, good candidates for Sanctification are your weapon ( Serpent's Sparker) and your off-hand ( Winter Flurry).

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.

Both Enforcer 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 Zei's Stone of Vengeance (stronger damage increase, but positioning and range dependent) or Bane of the Powerful (a well-rounded damage increase and damage mitigation bonus with a timed element).

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

Depending on how confident you are with the rest of your gear and how high you plan on doing speed GR runs, you can either stick to the staple Fragment of Destiny and maneuver a little slower throughout the Rift, or insert Aether Walker in the weapon Cube slot for unlimited Teleport potential.

The remainder of your Cube choices should mimic the GR progression setup, with your weaker item between Tasker and Theo and The Magistrate in the armor slot, and a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the jewelry slot.

The recommended follower for this build during GR speed farming is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction bonus (cutting down Teleport downtime) and increased attack speed bonus (helping your Hydras reach attack speed breakpoints easier).

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 Hydra 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.