Legendary Items

• Delsere’s Magnum Opus (Shoulders, Gloves, Chest, Legs, Boots, Helmet)
  • (2): Casting Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Magic Missile, Shock Pulse, Spectral Blade, Electrocute, Meteor, or Arcane Torrent also casts Slow Time at a target. This effect will not trigger if the target is already inside a Slow Time bubble. The cooldown of Teleport will reset while you’re inside bubbles generated from this set or cast by you. – This is a huge change. First, rather than reducing the cooldown of Slow Time, Slow Time will be auto-cast on a target which pretty much means you can place these almost anywhere. The other part that is a major change is resetting the Teleport cooldown. So now this set should become competitive with Firebirds in terms of speed without forcing one to use Illusionist as a passive to gimmick Teleport’s reset.
  • (4): You take 75% reduced damage while you have a Slow Time active. Allies inside your Slow Time gain half benefit. – This is a pretty nice boost in damage reduction and may make Delsere’s Wizards desirable in group play in helping parties create a defensive buff.
  • (6): Enemies affected by your Slow Time and for 5 seconds after exiting take 12,500% increased damage from your Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Explosive Blast, Magic Missile, Shock Pulse, Spectral Blade, and Wave of Force abilities. – No real change here. Arcane Orb will probably be your main source of damage especially with the Sanctified Power related to Arcane Orb.

• Crown of the Primus (head/cube): Slow Time gains the effect of every rune and permanently follows you. – The major change here is that Slow Time will be around you at all times. This will be pretty big as you almost can teleport as often as you have Slow Time up. In this case, that means, you’ll have 15 seconds to be able to zip around the screen.

• Unstable Scepter (weapon/cube): The damage of Arcane Orb is increased by 378% and its explosion triggers an additional time. (Wizard Only) [350 – 450]% – Boosts your Arcane Orb damage and causes it to explode twice.

• Triumvirate (offhand): Your Signature Spells increase the damage of Arcane Orb by 375% for 6 seconds, stacking up to 3 times. (Wizard Only) [300 – 400]% – You’ll probably be using an ability like Magic Missile to help auto-cast your Frozen/Arcane Orb.

• The Shame of Delsere (belt): Your Signature Spells attack 50% faster and restore 9 Arcane Power. (Wizard Only) [9 – 12] – Since you’ll be using a Signature Spell to bolster your Arcane Orb damage and possibly help auto-cast Frozen Orb, you will want this belt to boost the rate of casting your spells and to help restore Arcane Power.

• Ashnagarr’s Blood Bracer (bracers) – Increases the potency of your shields by 85%. (Wizard Only) [75 – 100]% – More defense for this build.
• Focus/Restraint (rings): You’ll probably be casting a Signature Spell and periodically your Arcane Orb in some combination. So these rings make the best pairing for this build.

• Squirt’s Necklace (amulet): While not taking damage, damage dealt is increased by up to 100% and damage taken is increased by up to 50%. – I can’t see any other amulet in this spot. You could use the Endless Walk set instead but I think you’ll have enough defense and your shields should prevent the downtime on the damage boost here.

• Wizardspike (weapon/cube): Performing an attack has a 25% chance to hurl a Frozen Orb. Arcane Orb deals 329% increased damage. (Wizard Only) [300 – 350]% – Boost the number of Arcane Orbs you can hurl effectively.

• Halo of Karini (ring/cube) – You take 74% less damage for 5 seconds after your Storm Armor electrocutes an enemy more than 15 yards away. (Wizard Only) [60 – 80]% – Another defensive item that synergizes well with this build.

Sanctified Power

You have two choices here.

Arcane Orb now periodically spawns up to four orbiting charges that will generate an additional orb when cast. All charges from the Arcane Orb rune now detonate at the same time.

This one seems like the natural choice since you will gain more Arcane Orbs. I’m not sure if the ones spawned by Wizardspike also will influence this ability. But I think this power will be quite good for this build. The other power is:

Magic Missile fires 20 missiles and gains the effect of the Seeker rune.

This one might not seem as good but I’m wondering if the additional missiles cast here will help produce more Frozen Orbs. If that’s the case, then this will be a really solid Sanctified Power to use too.

Legendary Gems

• Bane of the Trapped – No surprise here given that you’re already employing CC everywhere.

• Zei’s Stone of Vengeance – You’re mostly going to be doing ranged damage. But the stun from the secondary will also help trigger your Bane of the Trapped damage.

• Bane of the Stricken – To help with your single target damage.

Active Skills

• Magic Missile: Glacial Spike – You’re going to be doing primarily cold damage and this helps add to the CC effect of everything else you’re doing. Also, with Time Stop and The Shame of Delsere, you should be attacking quite rapidly to frequently trigger more Frozen Orbs.
• Arcane Orb: Frozen Orb – You’ll be throwing one in on your own to help trigger the Focus/Restraint damage boost.
• Slow Time – You gain all Runes once you obtain Crown of the Primus but Time Shell or Time Warp might be good starter runes until you can obtain the Crown.
• Teleport: Safe Passage – Since Slow Time will be resetting Teleport for you, you just need to make sure you arrive safely.
• Magic Weapon: Deflection – For your shields
• Storm Armor: Power of the Storm – Boost your defense from Halo of Karini

Passive Skills

• Galvanizing Ward – More shields that augment your Magic Weapon: Deflection buff.
• Audacity – Since your Slow Time will follow you around, you can effectively teleport onto packs of mobs and explode them within your bubble while this increases your damage.
• Evocation – Slow Time is still on a cooldown so you probably will want to use this to help cast it in empty areas to keep your teleport up.
• Unwavering Will – Decent boost to resistance and damage.

Followers

I think Enchantress is the best choice here for her cheat death, increased armor/attack speed and cooldown reduction.

Final Thoughts

Really looking forward to giving this build a try. I’ve stayed away from Delsere’s Magnum Opus for a long time because every change seemed awkward after they shifted Slow Time from a damaging ability. I think these changes will make this build a lot faster and less squishy. It’s less about doing damage with this build but survivability in the way the changes are being presented.

The post Diablo 3: Patch 2.7.4 PTR Delsere’s Magnum Opus Slow Time/Arcane Orb Build for Season 27 appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Legendary Items

• Armor of Akkhan (Helmet, Chest, Gloves, Shoulders, Amulet)
  • (2) Judgment has no cooldown and gains the effect of every rune. – This is a drastic change from the current 2 piece bonus as you now will be using Judgment as part of the build.
  • (4) Attacks from Phalanx Avatars reduce the cooldown of Akarat’s Champion by 0.5 seconds, and also apply Condemn when attacking enemies that is affected by Judgment. – Another massive change since you rely more on your Phalanx Avatars to drop your cooldown on Akarat’s Champion rather than having a flat 50% cooldown reduction. This part will probably kill the existing hybrid Invoker’s + Armor of Akkhan build.
  • (6) While Akarat’s Champion is active, you deal 2000% increased damage and take 50% less damage. – Nothing has changed here. But this does mean you will rely on your Phalanx to both keep you alive and improve your damage. So in a way these changes will be similar to how Rathma’s functions in that you will be relying on your pets for the cooldown reduction.

• Blade of Prophecy (2H Sword/weapon slot) – Two Condemned enemies also trigger Condemn’s explosion and the damage of Condemn is increased by 674%. (Crusader Only) [600 – 800]% – Pretty much this is a must have. But since Judgment will help trigger your Condemn, you might be able to use a different rune for Condemn (more on that later)

• Frydehr’s Wrath (Shield) – Condemn has no cooldown and has its damage increased by 727%, but instead costs 40 Wrath. [600 – 800]% – Another must have item to boost up your Condemn damage as well as converting it into a spender ability.

• Messerschmidt’s Reaver (weapon/cube) – Reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your skills by 1 second when you slay an enemy. – I chose this item to help ensure 100% uptime on Akarat’s Champion as well as Falling Sword. Having this item also means you won’t need the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac.

• Sacred Harness (Belt) – Judgment gains the effect of the Debilitate rune and is cast at your landing location when casting Falling Sword. – Basically, this is a free Judgment cast when you land from Falling Sword. Also, with the new seasonal Sanctified Powers, it will synergize well with Falling Sword.

• Captain Crimson’s Trimmings (boots, pants) – Mostly for the cooldown reduction which will compliment your damage reduction. Even though Phalanx is helping to lower your cooldown, the 50% reduction from the old set is gone so you still need to get cooldown from as many sources as possible to make up for the removal.

• Strongarm Bracers (Bracers) – Enemies hit by knockbacks suffer 25% increased damage for 6 seconds. [20 – 30]% – There’s not a lot of options here so these are your best choice since you’re pulling your opponents around anyway.

• Warhelm of Kassar (Helmet/Cube) – Reduce the cooldown and increase the damage of Phalanx by 49%. (Crusader Only) [45 – 60]% – This is an option for helping to boost your Phalanx damage. The cooldown aspect will become irrelevant once you obtain an Eternal Union ring but this is a good starter item.

• Eternal Union (Ring/Cube) – Increases the duration of summoned Phalanx Bowmen and Bodyguard indefinitely. – Pretty much this sounds like your Phalanx soldiers (Bowmen and Bodyguard) are made permanent additions.
• Ring of Royal Grandeur (Ring/Cube) – Must have to enable the Captain Crimson’s Trimmings.
• Convention of Elements (Ring/Cube) – Bonus damage
• Unity (Ring/Cube) – If you find that you’re still too squishy
• Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac – Last resort item if you find that your Akarat’s Prophet still is facing cooldown issues. Also, this can help with keeping your Falling Sword active.

Sanctified Power

For your Sanctified Power of choice, you will want:

After casting Falling Sword, you descend from the sky with two Archangels that wield immense holy skills and benefit from your holy damage skill modifiers.

The reason is that your movement skill of choice will be Falling Sword so that it helps auto-cast your Judgment ability where you want to land. If you want to keep your Falling Sword active, you can further compliment it with the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac.

Legendary Gems

• Enforcer – This will be a pet build. I’m not sure if Phalanx soldiers have life but at the very least you will want the bonus damage from this gem. Otherwise, the 90% damage reduction to pets will become a must have.
• Bane of the Trapped – This will help trigger the bonus damage from your Strongarm Bracers if no other CC is available
• Bane of the Stricken – Condemn isn’t the best single target ability. So you need to use this gem to help with bosses.

Active Skills

• Judgment: Any Rune – This will become the equivalent of a generator skill except you won’t receive any more Wrath from casting it. Also, because you get all runes as a result of the 2 set bonus from Armor of Akkhan, you will be gathering up enemies through Judgment.
• Condemn: Unleashed – Normally, people use Vacuum to gather up enemies. But with the change to Judgment getting all runes (Mass Verdict in particular), you won’t really need Vacuum to collect your foes, which frees up this rune. I chose Unleashed because your Phalanx soldiers will be also casting Condemn on enemies affected by Judgment. So I’d prefer have Condemn go off quicker.
• Falling Sword: Rapid Descent – If you go with an Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac and Falling Sword, you should be able to frequently move from spot to spot as long as they’re enemies. But you will need to cast Condemn more frequently to help bring down Falling Sword.
• Phalanx: Bodyguard – The other star of the show. I chose Bodyguard since this rune seems to do more damage. But Bowmen will have some range.
• Akarat’s Champion: Prophet – Cheat death and increased armor. There’s nothing better.
• Iron Skin: Steel Skin – Just another way to increase your defense. This is an optional slot and can be filled with a different skill.

Passive Skills

• Heavenly Strength – You will be using a 2-handed weapon so this is a must-have ability.
• Lord Commander – Increases your Phalanx damage.
• Holy Cause – Increases your damage and heals you.
• Insurmountable – Blocking generates wrath. You’re going to need a way to rebuild your Wrath from Condemn.

Followers

Enchantress is the only choice here. You need the cooldown reduction as well as her cheat death ability. Powered Shield also is good to help increase your survivability. Ultimately, you want more cooldown wherever you can get it.

Final Thoughts

This is definitely one of the builds I’m going to try. I like the idea of Phalanx being responsibility for cooldown reduction. Also, I think when you get all the items right for this build, you should be able to zip around the map even though for the most part Akkhan’s Condemn is a slow build especially for dead maps. But the changes should make this one of the most tanky builds around and great for AoE. For bossing, I’m not sure how good this build will turn out.

The post Diablo 3: Armor of Akkhan Crusader Condemn/Phalanx Build for Patch 2.7.4 PTR appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Legendary Items

• Tal Rasha’s Elements (Helmet, Chest, Gloves, Boots, Amulet)
  • (2): Damaging enemies with Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning will grant immunity to that element and cause a Meteor of the same damage type to fall from the sky. The same meteor cannot happen twice in a row. – This is a massive change to the basics of the set as now you will be constantly auto-casting an elemental meteor as long as you damage an enemy with a different element as they removed the 8 second cooldown per elemental type. Also, you will gain immunity which sounds insane. It’s not specified how long the immunity buff last but I’m wondering if combined with an amulet or Blackthorne’s if you can achieve complete damage immunity? Also, as a 2 set bonus, the defensive buff is pretty great which could help early builds lacking a complete 6 set and/or Ring of Royal Grandeur.
  • (4): Arcane, Cold, Fire, and Lightning attacks each increase all of your resistances by 50% for 8 seconds. – This is another major change as they’ve effectively doubled your resistance from the current 4 set bonus. So as long as you’re doing elemental damage from one of the four listed, you should have good damage immunity all around.
  • (6): Attacks increase your damage by 2000% for 8 seconds. Arcane, Cold, Fire, and Lightning attacks each add one stack. At 4 stacks, each different elemental attack extends the duration by 2 seconds, up to a maximum of 8 seconds. – Nothing has changed here. But I think now that you’re constantly triggering Meteors to fall from the sky, you should be doing far more consistent damage.
    
• Captain Crimson’s Trimmings (belt, pants) – Mostly for the resource reduction which will compliment your damage boost from it.

• Mantle of Channeling (shoulders) – While channeling Siphon Blood, Whirlwind, Rapid Fire, Strafe, Tempest Rush, Firebats, Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost, you deal 24% increased damage and take 25% reduced damage. [20 – 25]% – There’s not a lot of options for the shoulder slot for Tal Rasha’s so this is one of the better options.

• Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (shoulders/optional) – When receiving fatal damage, there is a chance that you are instead restored to 25% of maximum Life and cause nearby enemies to flee in fear. – This is another reasonable option for Tal Rasha’s. The idea here is that you can take out Unstable Anomaly as a passive skill since you will be getting a cheat death through this mechanism.

• The Smoldering Core (staff/weapon slot/cube) – Lesser enemies are now lured to your Meteor impact areas. Meteors deals 40-50% increased damage on consecutive hits to the same target. This stacks up to 10 times. – This basically buffs up your Meteor attacks big time and turns this into a mandatory item to use in the Cube. Besides the buffed Meteor Damage, it’s stacking damage which means on Elites and Guardians, this will make Meteors do pretty significant damage.

• Ashnagarr’s Blood Bracer (bracers) – Increases the potency of your shields by 85%. (Wizard Only) [75 – 100]% – There’s really no other option here. But you will be gaining shields to help with your defense.

• Nilfur’s Boast (boots/cube) – Increase the damage of Meteor by 600%. When your Meteor hits 3 or fewer enemies, the damage is increased by 675%. (Wizard Only) [675 – 900]% – Pretty much another mandatory item to further boost your Meteor damage.

• Convention of Elements (ring/cube) – Gain 179% increased damage to a single element for 4 seconds. This non-static effect rotates through the elements available to your class in the following order: Arcane, Cold, Fire, Holy, Lightning, Physical, Poison. [150 – 200]% – A perfectly aligned item for the Tal Rasha set.
• Ring of Royal Grandeur (ring/cube) – Used for doing the hybrid Tal Rasha + Captain Crimson’s Trimmings.

• Halo of Karini (ring/cube) – You take 74% less damage for 5 seconds after your Storm Armor electrocutes an enemy more than 15 yards away. (Wizard Only) [60 – 80]% – Another defensive item that synergizes well with this build.

• The Grand Vizier (staff/cube/weapon slot) – Reduces the Arcane Power cost of Meteor by 50% and increases its damage by 328%. (Wizard Only) [300 – 400]% – I imagine that along with the update to the Smoldering Core, you will be using this to further boost your Meteor damage. But to really take advantage of this weapon, you will be use Meteor as an active skill slot too.

Sanctified Power

For the Sanctified Power, you will want the following power:

Casting Storm Armor sends a power thunderbolt from the skies that instantly kills a random enemy within 30 yards. Bosses are not killed but take significant damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.

The idea here that you will be using Storm Armor naturally as part of your build. While Storm Armor is a long lasting buff, having this ability turns it into a more active/cooldown skill used to help take down bosses and elites.

Legendary Gems

• Bane of the Trapped – Increased damage all around and some CC.

• Zei’s Stone of Vengeance – You’re mostly going to be doing ranged damage. But the stun from the secondary will also help trigger your Bane of the Trapped damage.
  

• Bane of the Stricken – To help with your single target damage.

Active Skills

• Arcane Torrent: Death Blossom – This will trigger your Arcane damage and cast your Arcane Meteor
• Meteor: Molten Impact – Fire damage trigger and your main source of damage
• Teleport: Wormhole – This is not a fast build so you will need Wormhole for the double teleportation.
• Magic Weapon: Deflection – Provides your shields to work with bracers and
• Storm Armor: Power of the Storm – Your passive lightning (and occasionally active) damage. Also, boost your defense from Halo of Karini along with reducing the cost of your Meteor spell so this is indispensable.
• Blizzard: Frozen Solid – Cold damage as well as a CC to help further trigger your Bane of the Trapped.

Passive Skills

• Elemental Exposure – Pretty much a must have for this build as you are doing all elemental damage and this helps increase it.
• Galvanizing Ward – More shields that augment your Magic Weapon: Deflection buff.
• Audacity – You’re probably going to be dragging enemies towards you with the Smouldering Core and blasting them. So this will allow you to gather them up and increase your damage.
• Illusionist (optional) – Used to speed up your cooldown on Teleport since you really have no other options
• Astral Presence (optional) – In case you find yourself Arcane starved
• Unwavering Will (optional) – Defensive/offensive boost while you’re still for a second or two.

Followers

This build is a resource intensive build because of frequent casting of Meteor, Blizzard and Arcane Torrent so you want to go with a Templar. If you go with the Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, you can skip out on Guardian and pick up Inspire. If you manage to have enough Resource Reduction cost and don’t find yourself out of Arcane power all the time, you probably can just go straight to Mantle of Channeling and use Guardian. Captain Crimson’s Trimmings, a Topaz in the helmet and aiming for resource reduction cost on Shoulders, Gloves and jewelry (rings) should make your build smooth. Also, Astral Presence can help there too.

Final Thoughts

Although I have yet to give this version of the build a try, I’ve always liked Tal Rasha’s but the biggest problems I’ve had in the past were low damage and slowness. I think the boost in damage and focus on Meteors will make this build pretty fun and straight forward. There’s really no “tricks” with this build outside of potentially using Illusionist to reset your cooldown on your Teleport skill. Other than that, I’m eager to see how this build plays out on the PTR.

The post Diablo 3: Patch 2.7.4 PTR Tal Rasha’s Elements Wizard Build appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.