Typhon Frost Hydra Wizard Nephalem Rift Speed Farming Variation

The Typhon Hydra Wizard can deal reasonably well with Nephalem Rift Speed Farming, mostly thanks to overwhelming damage potential offered by Hydras that allows you to include Aether Walker in the build. 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
Familiar Arcanot Hydra Frost Hydra 1 Teleport Wormhole 2 Blizzard Apocalypse 3 Black Hole Absolute Zero 4 Energy Armor Pinpoint Barrier
Passive Skills
Galvanizing Ward Unstable Anomaly Elemental Exposure Power Hungry

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 vital duality of your rotation from the GR setups — dropping Blizzard on top of enemies to get the Winter Flurry buff going and summoning two Hydras to obliterate the pull — is still the bread and butter of the build. In T16 farm, said pulls will be assisted by two skills; Teleport Wormhole to move across the map, and Black Hole Absolute Zero to draw enemies into a clump for the Hydra's ease. Since you can easily overkill on defense, you will drop the Storm Armor and Halo of Karini combo and Magic Weapon Deflection for a more tame, utility-driven combination of Familiar Arcanot (to make up for the loss of a generator skill, which is too slow to use in T16s), and Energy Armor (for a reasonable protective layer in combination with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, plus a smattering of extra damage with the Pinpoint Barrier rune).

In the passives, you will maintain Galvanizing Ward to safeguard your Squirt's Necklace bonus, and Elemental Exposure for the decent damage bonus to this varied elemental build. However you should swap Audacity for its distanced counterpart Power Hungry, and ditch the Arcane Dynamo buildup bonuses (too slow for T16 farm) for a safety net against burst damage in the form of Unstable Anomaly.

Active Skills
Familiar Arcanot Hydra Frost Hydra 1 Teleport Wormhole 2 Blizzard Apocalypse 3 Magic Weapon Deflection 4 Storm Armor Scramble
Passive Skills
Galvanizing Ward Unstable Anomaly Illusionist Power Hungry

During Bounties, your utmost priority is the ability to cross over great distances, while maintaining some safety in a group game where everyone splits to do different tasks across the map — the so-called "split bounties", which is the optimal behavior for Bounty farming.

Pre-casting Blizzard on enemies' heads to trigger Winter Flurry damage buff and casting the two Hydras to demolish your enemies remains the core of the rotation. It should be noted that in Bounties, you can viably alternate to Lightning Hydra, trading off the Frost's AoE for improved single target damage (arguably good for Act Bosses during bounties). As a Wizard, a measure of defense is still required even in T16 bounties, so Magic Weapon Deflection is kept from the progression build, and Storm Armor still makes an appearance — although with the speed-oriented Scramble rune. The need for speed is also reflected in Teleport Wormhole, as well as the exclusion of a primary attack in favor of the passive Arcane Power gain from Familiar Arcanot.

In the passives, you will maintain Galvanizing Ward to safeguard your Squirt's Necklace bonus, but should exchange Audacity for its distanced counterpart Power Hungry. Illusionist will replace Elemental Exposure to further improve your mobility. Unstable Anomaly takes the place of Arcane Dynamo (note the lack of a primary skill in the setup) to offer a last line of defense in unlucky, lethal circumstances.

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).

Jewelry will largely match the GR progression setup, with Squirt's Necklace offering a ubiquitous damage bonus for the slot that is too hard to ignore. In T16 Nephalem Rift farm, you should pair it with a pure DPS combo of Convention of Elements and a Cold damage Stone of Jordan, while in Bounties it is better to balance defense and offense with a Halo of Karini and a Cold SoJ.

Your utility slots offer the greater variance, with some ability to mix and match according to your needs. In general, for T16 we advise that you stay on the craftable Guardian set, which provides the universally useful doubling of primary stats. You can, however, optimize further for T16 rifts and wear a Goldwrap, which synergizes nicely with a socketed Boon of the Hoarder legendary gem and an Avarice Band worn by your follower to extend your pickup radius; a combo that can render you practically invulnerable and offers a steady stream of gold. For Bounties, you should consider Krelm's Buff Belt to further improve your run speed.

If you opted to use Goldwrap or Krelm's Buff Belt, you will need to adjust your bracer as well. This is where the old favorite, Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, shines — as it offers synergy with Galvanizing Ward and your shield spells. If you are confident with your power and handling the build however, you can alter this slot to the speed buff of Warzechian Armguards, or to Nemesis Bracers in groups.

In a supremely optimized setup, you can consider dropping Winter Flurry for the craftable Cosmic Strand. This allows you to alter Teleport to the Calamity rune, and drop Blizzard for Black Hole Absolute Zero. This alteration will be extremely mobile and flashy, but will be greatly taxing on your Arcane Power resource management, and will require that you have a separate gear set for farming with maxed out Resource Cost Reduction across the board.

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 T16 and Bounties. Within the limited challenges of T16 and Bounties however, 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, you can stick to the GR progression staple Fragment of Destiny and maneuver considerably slower through T16 rifts, or insert Aether Walker in the weapon Cube slot for unlimited Teleport potential. Note that this alteration should be made sooner than later, especially if you plan on doing Bounties with the build.

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 T16 and Bounties 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.