Diablo 3 Wizard Archon Speed Farming Build Guide

Diablo 3 Wizard Archon Speed Farming Build Guide by Tdime

Hi there,

since 1.04 came out I have been playing with different builds trying to optimize farming/paragon leveling speed. Pre 1.04 I have been running a WW/CM speed and reached farming speeds with it that could rival WW barbs. The WW/CM spec with slight modifications is definitely a good choice today, but I prefered using it as a spec to only kill elite mobs and skipping white mobs with perma teleport wormhole. With paragon levels out and increased drop rates on white mobs this farming style is more or less obsolete. Dont get me wrong it is still a very good spec and probably one of the best wizard specs for group play.

Now for those that have been following wizard paragon leveling progress will have noticed that (almost) all are running with archon builds ( http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/yrn0e/wizard_top_skills_used_by_25_highest_paragon/ ). The reason beeing that with archon one not only gets great killing speed but also the most experience bonus for killing streaks and killing multiple mobs at once.

I took a look at some of these playes profiles and played around with some builds. But to be honest, each and every build had some sort of flaws. Most commonly they had problems related to too little archon uptime, too long archon downtime, too little mobility and better in solo play than in group play.. just to name a few. I tried to come up with a spec that adresses these issues.

I know this is a very bold statement to make, but I believe I might have just found the currently best high end archon spec.

1.04 High End Archon Speed Farming Build:

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#VmXjST!gZf!ccZaZY

Proof of Concept Vid

Skycrown + Stonefort 7min clear:

Explanation of active skills used:

Energy Twister – Storm Chaser: Simply the best skill to proc critical mass and reduce your archon cooldown.

Archon – Improved Archon: Since this build revolves around maximum archon uptime, this rune is the best choice.. +25% dmg > rest

Diamond Skin – Prism: You wont be gearing for (much) AP on crit, so your Energy Twisters will benefit alot from Prism. You can spam more Twisters and reduce your Archon CD faster.

Familiar – Sparkflint:DPS

Magic Weapon – Force Weapon:DPS

Storm Armor – Scramble: That skill may seem like an odd choice to some people. But let me tell you this skill is amazing and once you learned to use it for your advantage you will never think about using Energy Armor again. Ever.

First off let me say that I think Storm Armor in generaly is a very underrated skill. Storm Armor – Shocking aspect is probably the greatest dps boosting skill in the game for high crit wizards running WW or Meteor builds. So what Shocking aspect does for these type of builds, Scramble does for the Archon build. Let me elaborate. Scramble in this build has 3 major uses.

1. Increase Archon uptime
You want to kill as much stuff as fast as possible to keep your archon buff running. Now I often run into situations where there are no mobs around and my archon buff is about to run out. Scramble will help you deal with this issue. Not only will you move around faster but you can abuse this to you advantage.

For example.. You only have a couple of secs left on your archon, you move to the next room only to find a single monster there. Killing this monster will only give you 1 sec more uptime, but letting it hit you to increase your movement speed allows you to travel to the next room where you find a large spawn of mobs. You just refreshed your archon to full and can keep going.

Another example:
You have just killed an arcane enchanted champions, your archon buff is about to expire. NP.. run into the arcane lasers and boost your movement speed to reach the next group in time.

There are LOTs of other situations you can exploit to increase your movement speed on demand. I have now developed the habit to always leave one mob alive just so that it follows me and hits me every now and then.

2. Increased Mobility
Assuming you already have 24+% movement speed from items, you will be running around with close to 50% movement speed ALOT. Not only is it fun, but this just helps on so many levels. It lets you reposition faster, it lets you kite better , it lets you outrun Fallen Maniacs :) , it lets you keep up with WW barbs, vaulting DHs etc.

3. Finishing off low hp mobs
Like I stated before, I like to leave atleast one mob alive and follow me around to provide a continous movement buff. I dont need to worry about this mob because after a while it will die due to the 70% wpn dmg from Storm Armor.

Explanation of passive skills used:

Blur: Since you are not using Energy Armor, Blur is nice to have. If your defences are sufficient you may also think about using Glass Cannon.

Critical Mass: Reduce Archon CD

Galvanizing Ward: Pure laziness. I dont want to switch out of archon every 2 mins to refresh Storm Armor. With Galvanizing Ward the duration lines up with Magic Weapon and Familiar.

Alternatives:
Evocation – I believe its not worth it because even if Archon runs out, Energy Twister refreshes it very fast (asuming 35%+ crit)

Glass Cannon – Without Energy Armor its difficult to reach the neccessary defence to justify using Glass Cannon.

Gear Requirements:
50k dps – mandatory
+35% Crit – mandatory
24% movement speed – mandatory
2,5% lifesteal – mandatory
500+ Unbuffed All Resistances – mandatory
5+ AP on Crit – optional
500+ Life reg – optional

Follower:
Enchantress – without Energy Armor the Armor buff from the Enchantress almost becomes mandatory. Ofcourse this depends on the gear level.
Try to get your hands on a new Maximus legendary sword. The demon that spawns has a very high uptime and tanks! Very helpfull to distract champion packs while you burn them down.

Try this build and let me know what you think!