Vyr Archon Wizard BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points

The build incorporates the complete Vyr's Amazing Arcana set bonuses, taking all six available pieces and leaving the jewelry to balance defense (with Halo of Karini) and offense (with Squirt's Necklace and Convention of Elements). Rolls-wise, this Archon-centric playstyle takes good advantage of Cooldown Reduction and Crit-based affixes. Vyr's Sightless Skull, Vyr's Astonishing Aura, Vyr's Fantastic Finery and Vyr's Swaggering Stance can all be dedicated to Toughness, as Archon abilities are not possible skill damage rolls on gear. Cooldown Reduction should be the fourth primary alongside Toughness stats on the Vyr's Proud Pauldrons, and is also taken on Vyr's Grasping Gauntlets alongside an ideal trifecta of Crit Chance and Crit Damage.

The scaling difficulty of Greater Rifts forces you to split between offense and defense in the jewelry slots. The timing-sensitive elemental boost of Convention of Elements and the evasion-dependent bonuses of Squirt's Necklace will serve to amplify your damage, while Halo of Karini will layer you with a massive damage reduction bonus via the Storm Armor proc.

Spending a lot of time in the crowd control-immune Archon form, you will find yourself at your weakest and most susceptible to deadly affixes in your regular form. To counterbalance the loss of survivability, you will do well to wear Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer, which doubles the effectiveness of your Deflection and Galvanizing Ward shields.

Fazula's Improbable Chain belt is tailored after Archon builds, with a BiS roll giving you up to 50 automatic Archon stacks when entering Archon form. Aiding you in your most vulnerable moments, this belt gets your damage and Toughness off the ground quicker, making it vital for the playstyle. Seek the highest possible number of stacks in the legendary property as a priority for the slot.

Your weapon and offhand slots will be occupied by Chantodo's Resolve set, Chantodo's Will and Chantodo's Force. This set combo received a massive buff in Patch 2.6.5, marking their return as the favored setup for the Vyr Archon.

Mechanically, this set has a stacking bonus that, for every hit outside of Archon form, increases the Wave of Destruction effect that your character expels while in Archon form. The waves' damage scales with the various damage bonuses across your gear, including Attack Speed, up to the 5 APS equivalent. It is important to note however, that Chantodo's Resolve only receives benefits from elemental damage bonuses on gear if the element of the selected Archon rune on your bar matches the element on gear, despite the Vyr 2-piece bonus granting you "all the runes".

The Chantodo damage scaling is dynamic in nature, so you need not trouble yourself with concerns about snapshotting mechanics; stacks can also be acquired post-activation of Archon if the skill was cast prior to that activation, so delays in re-entering the Archon form are also not necessary.

There are certain details in your gear rolls that you need to pay attention to if your goal is to maximize the damage of your Archon Wizard for the purposes of pushing the highest tiers of Greater Rifts.

First up, it is important to understand the mechanics of the passive Elemental Exposure. This passive rewards you with a 5% additive damage buff for each additional element that you use in the build, stacking up to 4 times. The passive is quite unique in that the weapon elemental damage roll — the one that reads, for example, 1560-1940 Lightning (or Cold, or Fire...) Damage — counts towards the requirements of the passive. In practice, this means that a Double Element variation (as explained in the Skills page) should aim for a Cold or Lightning damage Chantodo's Will.

As for the elemental damage rolls on your amulet and bracer in a Double Element variation, you need to have a maximized (20%) roll on your Lightning piece, and just-below-maximum (19%) on your Fire piece (i.e. a 20% Lightning amulet, and a 19% Fire bracer). Note that the Double Element variation is also extremely demanding on CDR, and you will need perfect rolls across all pieces outlined below to have a chance to pull it off. Consult the Skills page in order to learn how this variant affects your rotation.

Gear-wise, there is a shift you need to make in your jewelry. First off, this timing-sensitive variation drops Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac as it needs to sync its important cooldowns very precisely. In its place, you will be using the Endless Walk set, The Traveler's Pledge amulet and The Compass Rose ring. CoE is obviously retained in the build, while Squirt's Necklace moves to the Cube.

Due to the 4th Kanai's Cube slot in this Season, you can use an additional set power (i.e. the craftable Guardian's Jeopardy set, via Guardian's Aversion and Guardian's Gaze) in the setup. Complete its power by cubing a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the 4th Kanai slot. These extra set bonuses will more than make up for the loss of our traditional wrist slot recommendation, Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer.

In your Offense stats, there are no particular Cooldown Reduction or Attack Speed breakpoints to chase. You simply need to obtain CDR on close to all the gear pieces that are able to roll it (Shoulders, Gloves, Weapon and Offhand, one of your Rings) with the exception of the Amulet and the other Ring you wear. Due to the way the Vyr 4-piece bonus scales your attack speed, additional rolls on gear are not necessary, as they will be additive in nature; the only exception is Chantodo's Will, where IAS is desirable, since weapon attack speed rolls are multiplicative in nature. Skip Area Damage on gear, since your main source of damage (the Waves of Destruction) do not proc it.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of about 600-700k; dropping as much as you can for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. This build focuses on shields rather than sustain for survivability, so you can focus on general toughness stats (Vitality and Armor) across the respective pieces; you can add some Life per Hit as the 4th main stat on bracers, however.

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat, Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item with stats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are main stats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and is unable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for a stat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. Perfecting Secondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case for discarding an item, except where noted.

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.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally this is done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, but if your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that you cannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simply subtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that, dump as much as you comfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality if you feel yourself lacking in toughness, or you're playing the Double Element variation. Adding to Maximum Arcane Power should not be necessary.

In the Offense section, max out Cooldown Reduction, Crit Damage, Crit Chance and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, then Life %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. In Utility, build up Life on Hit and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finish off with Globe Radius. Area Damage does not work in this build.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damage calculation. You will benefit from it naturally, as Archon Wizards tend to fight in melee range to maximize the Wave of Destruction — Bane of the Trapped procs itself with the level 25 property within a 15 yard radius, and is also procced by the Wave of Destruction chilling effect, and the freezes from the Archon Slow Time. Note that Wave of Destruction's chilling effect is applied prior to damage calculation, allowing you to have consistent uptime of the Bane of the Trapped damage bonus on all targets.

Bane of the Stricken builds up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and has a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians; this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies. Vyr Archon Wizards are no exception.

Your final jewelry socket will vary according to your character progression and build variation. Early on in character progression, when you are still trying to attain the correct gear and rolls, it should be taken by Gogok of Swiftness, whose Increased Attack Speed, Cooldown Reduction, and scaling Dodge bonuses all bring massive value to the build. This also applies to the restrictively Cooldown-reliant Double Element Variation, which also needs all the CDR you can get. If you stick to the standard Cold build and have perfected your gear according to the table above, you should socket Zei's Stone of Vengeance in this slot. This gem provides a multiplicative damage increase and contrary to its description, provides even the baseline bonus at 0 yards, instead of the listed 10-yard requirement.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting the highest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally, these will all be Flawless Royal Topaz as soon as possible. As you grow in Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim for higher tier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Ruby (Intelligence-based classes such as the Wizard are naturally high in Resistances, so their protection scales better with improving Armor instead). There is no specific breakpoint where you do that; the rule of thumb is to make the change as soon as you feel the lack of toughness impede your progress. Since this is a Cooldown-intensive build, we recommend a Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm. In your weapon, use Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

The Furnace is a preferred piece in the weapon Cube slot, with a simple yet undeniable power — 50% increased damage against elites, assisting you in taking down the hardest fights in Greater Rifts: Champions and Rift Guardians. In the Double Element Variation, this slot should be taken by Orb of Infinite Depth instead; due to the use of Explosive Blast in that variant, you can take advantage of the substantial defensive and offensive increases from this item.

The Swami is an essential addition to the Cube for the armor slot, as the power of this Wizard Hat allows you to maintain the Archon stack benefits for 20 seconds in your normal form. That window of opportunity allows you to survive and safely wait out the next Archon.

In your jewelry slot, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac will bring you back into Archon form quickly and reliably with the consistent procs of Arcane Torrent Static Discharge. If you are using the Double Element variation, this slot should be taken by Squirt's Necklace; while its place in the worn jewelry will be taken by the Endless Walk set, you cannot afford to lose out on its massive damage multiplier, thus it ends up in the Cube.

In Season 33, where you get a 4th slot for the Kanai's Cube, you can introduce additional utility to the build by slotting Ring of Royal Grandeur there.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Please refer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is the Enchantress, due to her cooldown reduction- and increased attack speed bonuses, both of which are helpful to the needs of an attack speed- and CDR-heavy build, such as this one.

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.

Your recommended potion is Bottomless Potion of the Tower, whose Armor-increasing properties complement the shield-based defenses of this build, as well as the naturally high All Resistances stat of Wizards (due to Intelligence scaling resistances) for optimal survivability.