Tal Frozen Orb Wizard BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points (2024)

With the flexibility afforded by the seven available pieces of the Tal Rasha set and the Ring of Royal Grandeur, you will be able to take five Tal's set pieces,mix two additional sets into the build, and still enjoy their full bonuses. InGreater Rift speed farming, the two additional sets will be Aughild'sAuthority (via Aughild's Power and Aughild's Search and CaptainCrimson's Trimmings (via Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle and Captain Crimson's Waders). Note that both of these are craftable at theBlacksmith, making perfecting their rolls a somewhat easier task. A suggestedsplit between the three sets is listed below, though you can vary the piecesaccording to your preference and best rolls, as long as you maintain therequired 5 Tal's — 2 Aughild's — 2 Cpt. Crimson's set piecessplit, along with RoRG in the Cube.

Rolls-wise, this precise, AoE-oriented build will benefit greatly fromSkill Damage and Cooldown Reduction affixes, with a recommended CDR baselineof 50%. High Crit Chance and Crit Damage are needed on the gloves, alongsideIntelligence and Cooldown Reduction. Arcane Orb % damage can roll onhelm and boots, so obtain it on both; the former should also include aCritical Hit Chance roll. The pants, belt and boots should be largelyToughness slots. Cold damage, double Crit stats and an open Socket are BiS onthe amulet. Finally, seek high Damage range, Intelligence, Crit Chance, Skilland Area Damage on your source.

With your amulet slot occupied by Tal's, your best way to finish offjewelry is to split between offense and defense in the rings with thecombination of Convention of Elements and Halo of Karini. Convention of Elements boosts your elemental damage in cycles accordingto the elements available to your class, so you need to internalize itsrotation and be ready with your pulls for the Cold cycle, when you shouldburst enemies down. Halo of Karini offers massive damage reduction thatis just about non-negotiable, and has the modest requirement of keeping your Storm Armor active and keeping distance from the enemy. Note that ifyou want to introduce more tankiness to the build, either due to playingHardcore or inexperience with the playstyle, you can drop CoE for the addedsafety of Unity, coupled with another on the follower plus animmortality relic for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor). This will cutincoming damage in half. Another option for the Unity is toreplace Halo of Karini, if you dislike the proc-based protection of thelatter; this will cost you some toughness, but will repay you in reliability.This option is mostly applicable if you want to go heavy on shield-baseddefenses, by using Magic Weapon Deflection over Storm Armor andrunning with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer in the Cube.

The mandatory weapon for the build is the Unstable Scepter, alegendary wand that not only increases Arcane Orb damage, but also has aunique property that detonates Arcane Orbs twice — effectivelydoubling the spec's damage output. Pair it with the other Arcane Orb-dedicated legendary, the Triumvirate source. Itsunique bonus stacks Frozen Orb damage in three increments, achieved byan easy triple cast from your primary attack(s).

With this Season's addition of Ethereal Weapons as a theme, your idealweapon during Greater Rift solo pushing will be Wizardspike,whose unique damage stacking mechanic and unrivaled skill and pure stat bonuseswill outperform any other alternatives. It needs to be rolled with the weaponpower of Unstable Scepter, and will ideally have the Astral Presence passive. Learn more about Ethereal weapons in our Ethereal mechanics guide, and read upon how to farm them in the Etherealfarming guide.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Arcane Orb % bonus on the helm, boots andoff-hand (maximum of 45%), Cold elemental damage on the amulet and wrists(maximum of 40%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideallyover 60% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 150%+.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 700k+; dropping as much as youcan for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustainthrough your follower, so you will not be focusing on regenerative rolls ongear.

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

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

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two veryuseful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide tohelp you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear anda Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised andre-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — Forvirtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual toadvanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the pathoutlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of lifefirst, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive andedge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary PotionPowers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separateresource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Setitems of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, andin 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 Powersin our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally thisis done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, butif your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that youcannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simplysubtracting your roll from the 25% max. After that dump as much as youcomfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality ifyou feel yourself lacking in toughness. Investing into Max Arcane Power shouldnot be necessary.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Damage, Crit Chance, CooldownReduction and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, thenLife %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. InUtility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finishoff with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is the staple gem of the build; a potent source ofadditional damage, as it is its own multiplier in your total damagecalculation. The gem procs itself with its level 25 property, as well asvarious other sources of crowd control in the build — i.e., the Frozen Orb slow, the stun proc of Zei's Stone of Vengeance, andothers. The latter is another separate damage multiplier, basing its bonusesoff distance from the enemy — a powerful reminder to keep your distancewhile playing this build.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies the third andfinal jewelry socket. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolongedfights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, thisgem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against singletarget, high HP enemies during Greater Rift progression attempts.

When it comes to gear gems, you will start out progression by slotting thehighest available level of Topazes in the chest and pants sockets. Ideally,these will all be Flawless Royal Topaz as soon as possible. As you growin Paragon (bulking up Intelligence in the Core section) and aim for highertier and more dangerous GRs, you will transition those gems into the defensive Flawless Royal Ruby (Intelligence-based classes such as the Wizard arenaturally high in Resistances, so their protection scales better withimproving 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 oftoughness impede your progress. Since this is both a Cooldown and aResource-intensive build, we recommend a Flawless Royal Diamond in thehelm, but you can also viably take Flawless Royal Topaz here. In yourweapon, use Flawless Royal Emerald for the Crit Damage boost.

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

The revised powers of Wizardspike make it a mandatory inclusion ina Frozen Orb build, albeit tucked away in the Cube. This unassumingdagger now provides both a proc-based chance to hurl an additional Frozen Orb (which does not proc Area Damage, but will benefit from allother damage multipliers), as well as a massive damage multiplier for theskill itself.

You have reasonable flexibility in the armor Cube slot during Greater Riftprogression. Our default recommendation is Aquila Cuirass, which cutsincoming damage in half as long as you maintain your resource reserves above90% — usually active in the periods in between your burst window, whichis long enough to warrant its inclusion. Another viable alternative is to slot Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer here, if you opt for a shield-heavy variationwith Magic Weapon Deflection and Galvanizing Ward.

For the jewelry Cube slot, you will need to use the Ring of Royal Grandeur in order to tie the Tal Rasha, Aughild and Cpt.Crimson sets together. This cache legendary ring from Act I bounties reducesthe number of worn items required for set bonus completion by one, allowingfor the set amalgamation described above.

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

For Greater Rift progression with this build, we recommend theTemplar for his essential heal and cheat death abilities. TheTemplar is a preferable choice due to the lacking sustain in this build, aswell as the overall lackluster cheat death passive that Wizards have.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our FollowerGuide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear ofyour follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid(allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede Frozen Orb DPS), Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (giving you a brief window of CCimmunity to counter your lack of CC-breaking or immunity skills), or Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing propertiescomplement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Wizards). Pick whicheveryou feel helps you out the most.