Icy Lawn Mower - S20 Only Wizard build

[Drem 0]

The is a semi-joke name coined by a friend, via the corruption LoD => LoN => Lawn, plus the visual effect of the frozen orb skill mowing down everything.  Hence the name Icy Lawn Mower.  (I'd been calling it the Winterfell Wizard before that, but his name is even more colorful.)

The critical combination/idea to the build is a set of 4 weapon powers, hence only working with that seasonal buff.  These 4 are the Deathwish + Etched Sigil combo, as well as Unstable Scepter + Triumvirate.

I'll discus primarily it's Solo Push configuration, in no small part because I lack useful experience to make judgements for group play.

The easiest way to think of this in most ways is to convert the (non-starpact) meteor tals wizard into a LoD version (a strong variant already I think) and then swap from the two meteor buffs to the two orb buffs.

As a LoD build vs. a DMO or Tals setup, there is significant freedom in skills, which will prove important as the critial damage loop comsumes 4 skill slots already.  Specifically, we require a signature spell that gets cast 3 times if the stacks have fallen off, and at least once every 6 seconds otherwise, to power up the Triumvirate to its 13x multiplier.  We then use a channeled skill to trigger Etched Sigil copies of the slotted Frozen Orb skill.  The final item is storm armor for the masive defense buff from Halo of Karini.

The other 2 skill slots are open, but have at least 3 strong contenders - Teleport, Slow Time, and Magic Weapon:Deflection.  I think Deflection is the least important, especially when solo and able to use a Unity.  Side note for a faster semi-speed build, Aether Walker in cube halves defense and so probably pairs with Deflection - but going fast means you didn't bother with bubbles anyway.

Pasives only really have one true requirement: Galvinizing Ward, to allow Squirts Necklass.  A special note for passives, I do not beleive Arcane Dynamo works if you are using the Etched Signal casts, as you'll waste the buff on your beam, not the Orb that does the damage.  I definitly don't know enough to comment on a group, manual cast, area damage (reverse archon?) useage, but any variant using manual cast should consider Arcane Dynamo.  (I think the frozen orb moves slowly enough you can "bazooka" style back into channeling in time for at least the second explosion, maybe both, even with the new 1 second delay.  If you want the archon it has to be off the last activation though.)

Now, to put my current (theortical) solo push build/gear down in full, in loose order of importance:
Weapons: Deathwish + Unstable Scepter (cube weaker)
Offhands: Triumverate + Etched Sigil (cube weaker)
Rings: Halo of Karini + Unity + Convention of Elements (cube weakest)
Neck: Squirt's Neckless 
Helm: Crown of the Primus (Leoric if no slow time)
Bracers/Wrists: Ashnagarr's Blood Bracers
Gloves: Frostburn
Armor: Aquila Cuirass
Shoulders: Mantel of Channeling
Belt: Witching Hour (Hergbrash's Binding maybe)
Boots: Illusory Boots (critical if no teleport version)
Pants: Swamp Waders or best stat stick

Gems: Legacy of Dreams, Bane of the Stricken, Iceblink (unsure except LoD)

Magic Missle: Glacial Spike
Ray of Frost: Cold Blood
Teleport: Safe Passage
Arcane Orb: Frozen Orb
Slow Time: (any)
Storm Armor: Power of the Storm

Playstyle:
Ideally you'll hold enemies at the range for the stronger explosion, but you lack grouping so your only tool for this is slow time - at least it is soft CC.  Remember to get a signiture spell in often enough - to stay aligned with CoE you probably want one every 4 seconds even though you have up to 6.  Speaking of the CoE alignment - I'm not sure if it helps or not, but maybe after refreshing triumverate in arcane, one manual cast at half done will get a big boom at the start of cold.  Similarly, very close enemies sometimes seem to die to a manual cast orb - I think the chaneling state still has the funny rounding behavior.

Despite the preference to range, it often doesn't make sense to drop the channeling even if the enemies close - the build it quite tanky with 52% from LoD, 80% off the ring, and two 50%s as long as your arcane power is up.  Taking only 2.4% base damage, with a doubled shield and maybe further buffs from passives makes for a very durable build.  If you see your life go down though, back off (and bubble), as your've already lost your squirts and have more than half your life pool missing for at least the next 5 seconds.

Repositioning for Oculus from your follow is probably worth breaking your channel except in cold (refresh triumvirate while you're at it), but I'm not very good at that so I'm not totally sure.

Rift Guardians are particularly hard because they tend to bounce around a lot, and are less impacted by the slow time even when they are in it.  Also, you must open 15 yards separation every 5 seconds or you lose the Karini buff, and taking 5x normal damage makes almost any hit a 1-shot.  This is part of why I've found stricken to pace trapped so far - Guardian tends to be hard.

General stats notes:
I'm no expert on optimizing this, and don't play enough (or well enough) to get to deep into it.  As constructed though, cooldown is pretty useless, and attack speed is actively detrimental to your AP management even as it helps get the signature off a tiny bit faster.  If you're on the Hergbrash's version you won't care at all, but the Witching hour version (I got a primal, so that's where I am) has to watch it or you'll drop the Aquila quickly.

Area damage also doesn't help any as it won't proc off sigil casts.  Again feeding the theory of a manual cast then channel concept, but I'm not good enough for that (if it even works).

With all those out though, your helm gem is best as Amethyst, and you'll really lean in to Crit Chance/Damage.  With Int, Skill damage, Cold damage and often falling all the way to Armor and Vit following that, you should end with very pretty sheet numbers.  (Hence the iceblink - I'm 501% Crit hit damage, so I think I'm getting +50% damage from that gem.)  Vit and Life% are nice because of getting more than dooubled up from the shield.  (100 points life per Vit, and another 120 in shields.)

All in all, I've found this a very fun build.  Speeding it up with an Aether Walker lets me cruise a 90 even with 4 non-anchients, one of which is my weapon.  Due to the channeling delay it can't go pure speed build, but is fairly snappy still.  I tried it with DMO very early in the season and got overwhelmed by all the moving parts (bubble, 3x MM, then channel and wait for orb, ack!) but with practice it gets less intensive.  I do recommend working it with the Aether Walker + MW:Deflection to start as it is one fewer skill to think about.

I've seen a version near the bottom of the solo wizard leaderboard, though I think it has since fallen off.  I'd love to know what more skilled players can do with this, and how strong the legs are under it when not handicapped by my lesser skill.  In comparison to a LoD or Tals Meteor, it seems to be packing stronger multipliers, so on paper it sounds great - but maybe hydra has outrun it still.

 

Finally, Frozen Orb is visually quite fun, and the season power lets us push much further with the channeling meta.  And as my friend that named it noted, the build has a built in targeting laser too!
 

[Drem 0]

Icy Lawn Mower is back with only small changes needed in S22!

It also now has non-season compatible versions, but those mostly look like updates to the old DMO versions.

 

Due to the change to etched sigil, you can no longer get auto-cast orbs, but replacing it with the new wizard spike gives a 4.5x multiplier instead of a 2.5x multiplier, so those 10 Trillion+ hits are going to go even higher.  Also, though a manual cast has new problems, it also gets to use the area damage effectively.

 

The big problem for the high powered version of this built within the season is that you need to get the deathwish buff applied to the manual cast orbs.  As I'd mentioned above, the second explosion of an orb (from the Unstable Scepter) is slow enough you can maybe make it back in - although it is possible that it duplicates the first explosions damage, which might be too fast.  However, there is another direction I've since learned - the channeling buff apparently stays up for the full second after you stop channeling, and so you can fire an orb (or a few) at close range while still having all the buffs up.

This is a fairly intensive playstyle compared to the S20 version that could just point the targeting laser and let etched sigil do all the work.  With +10 GR coming from Deathwish however, the high push version has to find the way to get it all working.  Even compared to the S20 version this is able to do around 80% more damage, and my sub 1k paragon S20 version was the only time I've ever seen the "T" of double digit trillions showing in game, so I think this is a pretty serious contender with those extra buffs this time around.

 

A few other notes:

Season 22 gives a whole extra 4th cube slot, while S20 only let us steal one from another category.  So you can get one more armor item into the build.  Stone gauntlets + ice climbers makes this super tanky, or staples such as Nemies will speed you up.

DMO now has a higher raw multiplier, and fits with the bubble versions naturally.  Once gear is nearly perfect though, a 125 vs. 97.5 via LoD is only a +28.2% bonus for consuming 6 item slots.  The frostburns alone make up most of the loss of damage, so the final state is still going to use LoD.  Also with everything else going on in the build, having to also bubble every enemy is a big QoL hit to the player.

I now see why iceblink isn't so great - trapped is better for solo.  (I mention it in passing in the first writeup, but my reasoning was too simple on that.)  While the +50% (or +0.5x) is "right" since it is 10% of 5x on crits... half the time you crit already, so your average is already at 3x.  Going from 3x to 3.5x is only going to get you about 15-20% based on the exact crit stats involved, while trapped is solidly twice that.  Might be worth it if you don't have supports that can bring it for you though, but do have other DPS (aka, off meta "but I want to do damage too!" playing).

Finally, note that arcane power is going to be a problem with the manual casts.  RCR and APOC can only do so much, so Hergbrash's Binding is probably needed to allow some recharge while channeling.

 

As a (semi) channeling build, I know a lot of wizards are pretty done with the same old same old.  But if you've been away from frozen orb for a while, there is something immensely satisfying about a screen full of swirling ice mowing down everything in sight.  Behold, the Icy Lawn Mower!