The Delsere's Magnum OpusSet (DMO) has been introduced to Diablo III in Season 5. Energy Twister has always been the skill of choice for DMO, and still is up to this day with the Season 22 buffs and reworks to its supporting items Valtheks Rebuke, The Twisted Sword, and Etched Sigil.
The last time Energy Twister was a force to be reckoned with was in Seasons 5 and 6, where it dominated the leaderboards with Raging Stormcornerstacking and Archon Twister zET Meta. However with Patch 2.4.2, Archon and The Swami stack instances were nerfed to be additive instead of multiplicative with each other. In addition to this nerf Energy Twisters were changed to no longer stack in corners and instead despawn if they stop moving. As a result, only the Wicked Wind rune remains for Twisters to stand stationary.
After a couple absent years, Twister Wizard was reborn in Patch 2.6.10 due to the aforementioned buffed and reworked items. However, it is mainly played with Legacy of Dreams (LoD) instead of its dedicated Delseres Magnum Opus (DMO) Set. This is mainly due to DMO's restriction of Slow Time, the inherent clunkiness that comes along with the skill and the underwhelming tankiness that is imposed by equipping all six set pieces. Therefore the LoD Twister Wizard does a better job at being the go-to Energy Twister setup, which is why we highly recommend checking out the dedicated LoD Twister Wizard Guide. However if DMO is the starter set for the next Season, or you simply want to compete on the dedicated DMO leaderboard, then this is your guide!
Keep in mind that the build at hand is an Area Damage (AD) build since selfcasted Twisters can and will proc it. Yet, any Twister cast by Etched Sigil is not capable of doing so, which is why the sequence of your casted skills is of the utmost importance due to the merging mechanic granted by The Twisted Sword. This guide will go over everything you need to know to Twister successfully!
High DPS ✔ Extremely Flavourful ✔ Good Damage Scaling ✔ Easy to Get Starter Gear ✔
❌ Squishy ❌ Clunky Playstyle ❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control ❌ Very Sensitive to Skill Sequence
Core Setup
Items
The Delseres Magnum Opus (DMO) set grants 75% damage reduction to our character as well as a massive 20,000% separate damage multiplier to our Twisters.
The Twisted Sword provides us with a massive 450% separate damage multiplier and Energy Twister gains the Raging Storm rune, which can be merged up to 5 times. Keep in mind that this does not restrict you to five Twisters, it just means that the multiplier is maxed out at three.
Etched Sigil grants a 250% separate damage multiplier to our Twisters while proccing one every second when we channel.
Valtheks Rebuke is purely included for its 400% separate damage multiplier. Its passive effect that Twisters now follow a straight path is unfortunately circumvented by the Raging Storm rune granted by The Twisted Sword. When Twisters merge, the main Twister can randomly change the path it follows.
Halo of Karini is a core Wizard defensive item, providing us with a tremendous 80% damage reduction at the cost of using Storm Armor.
Ranslors Folly provides us with one of the strongest pixelpulls in the game, but does not work on elites. While in group the pull requires adaptations due to the Crowd Control Resistance added to the monsters, it is great in solo. The 300% multiplier for Energy Twister itself would have already been a reason to default incorporate these bracers.
Ring of Royal Grandeur is used to complement our set with Captain Crimson's Trimmings.
Global Stat Priorities
DMO Twister is sensitive towards Breakpoints. The overall Attack Speed you have significantly impacts your overall damage output. Etched Sigil has an internal cooldown of 59 frames, meaning it can be procced once every 60 frames exactly when a tick from Arcane Torrent, Ray of Frost or Disintegrate occurs. If you were to play 11 FPA on the channeling ability of your choice, then Etched Sigil would spawn an Energy Twister every sixth tick (66 frames) even though it would technically be possible to do so every 60 frames.
On the other hand, if you were to play 12 FPA on the channeling ability, you'd witness a Twister every fifth tick (60 frames). This would be a 9% DPS increase. Any divisor of 60 is a Breakpoint you can theoretically play on your channeling ability to maximize your output from Etched Sigil (2 FPA, 3 FPA, 4 FPA, 5 FPA, 6 FPA, 10 FPA, 12 FPA, 15 FPA, 20 FPA, 30 FPA). For the build at hand it's easiest to aim for 12 FPA on Arcane Torrent (for all runes except Arcane Mines), which is achieved by equipping a Weapon with 1.4 Attacks per Second (Wand or Sword base) with 10% Attack Speed from Paragon Points. No more Attack Speed is needed.
You want Area Damage on every piece except the Amulet. Cooldown Reduction is not needed and Resource Cost Reduction is more useful on this end; especially for Nephalem Rifts. Crowd Control Reduction is an incredibly valuable secondary Affix to roll on both Rings, Amulet and Helmet as we are very sensitive to Hard Crowd Control effects and mitigating these will ease up our gameplay significantly. Make sure to get the Primary Affixes locked in before attempting to get CCR though.
Assembling the Build
1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cubeLegendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!
2.Gather the full Delsere's Magnum Opus set. Each piece can be gambled from Kadala for Bloodshards. Do not salvage any duplicate pieces you find! Instead convert them to another part of the set with Recipe 4 in Kanai's Cube. If you have extra materials you can use Recipe 3 to craft the remaining pieces, but this is expensive and not recommended for new players.
Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
5. Do Bounties to acquire several important items for this build:
Act 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Act 2: Gloves of Worship
Act 3: Avarice Band and Pride's Fall
Act 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny (for your follower)
6. There are final required pieces that are difficult to acquire, Squirt's Necklace for farming and The Traveler's Pledge for solo push. With amulets being so expensive to gamble and craft, we'll have to search for them to drop in Nephalem and Greater Rifts. The biggest hint is to party up with other players and kindly ask them to drop any duplicates they find.
7. Use Primordial Ashes in Kanai's Cube with the new Curiosity of Lorath Nahr recipe to obtain a free Crafted Primal Ancient. Since you can only equip one of them, choosing the right item to focus matters! Great candidates are Weapons, Offhands, Jewelry or any item with an important multiplier. With that in mind, we recommend getting one of the following items:
The Twisted Sword
Etched Sigil
Convention of Elements
Halo of Karini
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
The Twisted Sword Aether Walker Valtheks Rebuke (Cubed)
1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladnis Gift 3. Area Damage 4. Damage % 5. Intelligence 6. Resource Cost Reduction
Ideally, you want a Cold Damage Range in order to get an additional stack of Elemental Exposure.
1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Arcane Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Cooldown Reduction 6. Intelligence
Belt
Captain Crimson's Silk Girdle Goldwrap The Witching Hour
1. Critical Hit Damage 2. Intelligence 3. Vitality 4. Life % 5. Armor
Potion
Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered
To avoid Crowd Control effects during your DPS phases
Gems
Bane of the Stricken helps us killing the Rift Guardian. As long as you don't need more than 2 minutes to kill it you can equip Bane of the Powerful instead.
Bane of the Trapped (BotT) grants us a nice 1.6 separate damage multiplier. We must, however, stand within 15 yards of our enemies to apply its effect if you choose to play the Arcane Variant with Wicked Wind, which is the same range we require for Audacity. On the Rift Guardian our Follower will continuously re-apply a slow for BotT. The Cold Variant has the advantage that Cold damage from Mistral Breeze will chill the target and slow it before any damage instance is calculated, meaning BotT will always be applied.
Esoteric Alteration is needed purely for survival. Unfortunately we have limited sources of damage reduction available to us.
For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always included due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band.
Lastly, Zei's Stone of Vengeance is a feasible choice, which contrary to its description grants its first stage benefit at 0 yards instead of 10 yards.
Skills
Magic Weapon Deflection grants you a Shield for 4% of your maximum Life everytime you cast an ability. The shields are protecting your hit points from taking actual damage preserving the damage buff of Squirts Necklace.
Arcane Torrent Flame Ward activates our channeling items Etched Sigil and Mantle of Channeling while granting us a decent 25% damage reduction buff.
Slow Time Exhaustion is necessary to activate the set bonus and provides us with a nice defensive buff each time we use it.
Storm Armor is needed to proc the defensive capabilities of Halo of Karini. Shocking Aspect has the best overall uptime by giving you a second chance on a crit while Power of the Storm grants a nice flat Resource Cost Reduction of 3 Arcane Power to all abilities.
Energy Twister can either be played with the stationary Arcane Wicked Wind or the moving Cold Mistral Breeze rune. The Arcane version is significantly more consistent with its DPS (specifically on Rift Guardians) while the Cold version can reach far higher DPS ceilings with amazing Twister Movement RNG. For pushing the Arcane version is recommended, whereas the Cold version should be played for Nephalem Rifts due to the flat -10 Resource Cost Reduction.
Wave of Force Arcane Attunement constitutes an incredible separate multiplier for Wicked Wind with the density-creating capabilities of Ranslors Folly.
Passives
Elemental Exposure is a separate and global multiplier debuffing each target once for each element (Fire, Cold, Arcane, Lighting) for up to 5 seconds when you hit it with said target. The elemental type of the damage range on your equipped weapon will also be applied with each ability that you hit with.
Audacity provides us with a separate 1.3 multiplier if our target is within 15 yards.
Unwavering Will for some toughness and damage which complement well Endless Walk.
Illusionist provides us with a significant Movement Speed buff after casting Slow Time. It also procs when you take 15% of your maximum Life as damage on your shields. It's common for DMO builds to utilize this passive, but if you feel like it has limited value for your playstyle feel free to take Unstable Anomaly instead.
Conflagration with Arcane Torrent Flame Ward or Blur can be used as fifth passive for slightly more damage or mitigation.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Attack Speed
1. Armor
1. Area Damage
2. Maximum Arcane Power
2. Critical Hit Damage
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Intelligence
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. All Resistance
3. Pickup Radius
4. Vitality
4. Cooldown Reduction
4. Life Regeneration
4. Life per Hit
Follower
Patch 2.7.0 revamped the follower system giving all 3 hirelings new powers and the emanate system. The first thing you should do is read our complete follower guide and remember the key takeaways:
The emanation system allows followers to share certain legendary and set powers with you. The most important ones are: The Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, Avarice Band, Sage’s Journey and Cain’s Destiny. Click the guide above for the full list.
Follower’s powers are based on their main stat (maxed at 25,000, but they have a 2.5x multiplier so you only need 10,000). This means we stack Intelligence on the Enchantress, Dexterity on the Scoundrel and Strength on the Templar.
Guardian's Jeopardy(3) Bonus works for followers by improving their inherent stat multiplier from x2.5 to x3.5, making it slightly easier to hit the 25,000 main stat threshold if needed.
Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.
Select Follower
T16 Enchantress
For T16 we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is T16 content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death. Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For extra Elites, Death’s Breaths and In-geom procs.
Avarice Band: For the insane pickup radius.
Ring of Royal Grandeur: To complete our sets.
Gloves of Worship: For 10 Minute Shrine Buffs.
Sage’s Journey: For double Death’s Breaths.
Cain’s Destiny: For 25% more Greater Rift Keystones.
For speed Greater Rifts we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction, allowing you to spam your abilities more. Since this is speed content, she’ll stay alive with Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard and use Hand of the Prophet to gain all skills. This will give us Cooldown Reduction, Elemental Damage, Reduced Damage from Ranged Attacks, Armor, Attack Speed, and a Cheat Death. Stat Priorities:Since we do not have the immortality focus, we need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence > Vitality > Life % > Armor > All Resistance > Life Per Hit > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Hellfire Ring, Leoric's Crown and Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
For Greater Rift pushing we recommend this Templar setup for the sustain from Heal, 10% increased damage from Onslaught, and the very powerful cheat death mechanic from Guardian. This is the only follower build that stacks Cooldown Reduction because it works with Heal. Since we take the immortality relic, we do not need any survivability stats. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Templar.
Strength > Cooldown Reduction > Attack Speed.
Key Items:
The Flavor of Time: For double duration on Pylons.
Nemesis Bracers: For more progression from Elites.
Oculus Ring: For 85% increased damage.
Unity: For 50% damage reduction if you're also wearing one.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Leoric's Crown and Captain Crimson's Trimmings: For more Cooldown Reduction on Heal.
Gameplay
The general playstyle for pushing Greater Rifts with DMO Twister is definitely more complicated than the average build due to some Energy Twister mechanics, but that's nothing a Wizard can't handle:
Maintain your Buffs: When you enter the Greater Rift you want to cast Storm Armor and Magic Weapon; make sure that these buffs don't time out on you. Place a Slow Time right at the entrance to gain the Damage Reduction.
Prepare a Pull: Your goal is to unleash one very large Twister (total of 5 instances) buffed via Wave of Force Arcane Attunement (WoF). To maximize your WoF stacks you should apply the following strategy:
Body pull enemies. Do not use Energy Twister due the Ranslors Folly knockback.
Cast Wave of Force Arcane Attunement such that you maximize the number of stacks you gain.
The WoF buff does not time out and it only needs to be applied to the first Energy Twister (the parent) you cast. Be careful to not use Arcane Torrent at this stage as any ArcaneEnergy Twister casted by Etched Sigil will consume your WoF stacks.
Damage Phase:
One second into your Convention of Elements (CoE) Lightning cycle place a Slow Time on top of your pull.
Immediately afterwards selfcast an Energy Twister (the parent) right in the center of your pull within your Slow Time bubble. It must be a self cast since only a selfcasted parent Energy Twister is eligible to proc Area Damage.
Start channeling Arcane Torrent on top of the parent Energy Twister, preferably beginning the channel shortly before your CoE Arcane cycle, to build up The Twisted Sword stacks, and ending with it.
Scout and Pull: Scout for Pylons, pull monsters and start repeating from step 1 until the Rift Guardian spawns.
Rift Guardian: Hold down Arcane Torrent on single target Rift Guardians. For Rift Guardians with minions you want to at least self cast the parent Energy Twister.
The playstyle is definitely something you have to get used to. It's fast paced, strategic and follows a specific rotation. Practice timing your skills with Convention of Elements in town as it is is crucial to your success. The biggest mistakes you should avoid are:
Don't rely purely on Energy Twister casted by Etched Sigil for anything - except on the Rift Guardian fight. Your first Twister (the parent) must be selfcasted.
Don't continuously DPS by simply holding down Arcane Torrent. This is a "rotation based" burst build requiring precise pixelpulling, managing Wave of Force and bursting trash with Area Damage in CoE Arcane cycle.
Hardcore
Rotate out Illusionist for Unstable Anomaly or Blur. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Push
Echoing Nightmare
Concept Delseres Magnum Opus (DMO) Energy Twister is unfortunately a very clunky Torment farming build that is not easy to gear into due to its significant dependency Resource Cost Reduction (RCR). Its clunkiness mainly arises from having to recast Slow Time every time you want to DPS. It's recommended to transition to Legacy of Dreams (LoD) Energy Twister at your earliest convenience since LoD variants omit Slow Time entirely.
DMO Twister still requires the appropriate primary rolls and good gear quality even for Nephalem Rifts. When geared this build is fast-paced and continuously moving thanks to Aether Walker and Teleport, but ultimately still feels slow since you must cast Slow Time and Energy Twister.
As usual we use Boon of the Hoarder with Goldwrap and Avarice Band to become invincible and instantly vacuum the juicy Progression Orbs from Elites.
Gameplay When entering the Nephalem Rift immediately cast Slow Time to gain 60% damage reduction and spam five Energy Twisters to gain your maximum multiplier from The Twisted Sword, otherwise you'll have trouble on the first enemies. Afterwards you simply rely on holding down Teleport and casting one or two Twisters every couple of seconds. You want to teleport on top of elites and then cast Slow Time and channel Arcane Torrent on top of them. Targeting elites one screen away and then jumping on top of them is also a valuable strategy, but diminishes the value of Audacity.
Setups While farming in group, you swap Warzechian Armguards for Nemesis Bracers and Convention of Elements to Avarice Band. If you are comfortable enough with your Resource Cost Reduction, you can consider removing Pride's Fall to cube The Flavor of Time instead of Ring of Royal Grandeur.
Concept Delseres Magnum Opus (DMO) Energy Twister is one of the strongest Wizard builds out there for solo pushing Greater Rifts, however it is incredibly squishy in comparison to its Legacy of Dreams iteration, which is why we recommend the latter. Surviving will be your major concern at all times, meaning you'll have to invest a decent amount of keys for a Greater Rift where you won't engage many Vortex, Frozen, Knockback, Nightmarish Elites at the same time.
Gameplay Your biggest enemy will be Hard Crowd Control Effects since you have no way of mitigating these except for Crowd Control Reduction roll on your Amulet, Helmet and Rings. You must always be aware of the Elite Affixes around you. For a step-by-step gameplay description on how you should sequence your skills, check out the "Gameplay" section above.
Setups The setup unfortunately does not offer much flexibility.
Swap Bane of the Stricken with Bane of the Powerful since we are fighting hordes of enemies.
Replace Wave of Force with Black Hole Spellsteal for smoother damage rotation.
Take Squirt's Necklace instead of Endless Walk and Dominance instead of Illusionist.
Cube Ring of Royal Grandeur and equip Crown of the Primus.
Gameplay
Click Speed Pylon instantly to boost your mobility and dodge Green Meteors.
Around Wave 90, click Channeling Pylon and Power Pylon.
After Wave 100, use Conduit Pylon.
At Wave 122, stop attacking and run to the corner to let the timer run out.
Use Black Hole Spellsteal with as many enemies as possible around you to snapshot its effect. Cast 4-6 Energy Twisters on top of each other. If an Oculus Ring appears, Teleport into it. Channel Arcane Torrent until the enemies are gone, your parent Twister disappeared (6 seconds later), or your Convention of ElementsArcane cycle is over.
Mechanics
The Twisted Sword
The first placed Energy Twister (the parent) snapshotsAbsolute Zero, Spellsteal, Arcane Attunement.
Any consecutive Twister, which merges into the parent, will adapt all multipliers from its parent.
It does not matter for any consecutive Twister, which merges into the parent, whether it's selfcasted or casted by Etched Sigil.
Each time the parent grows from a merge its duration is reset.
Each parent can be merged with more Twisters a maximum of 4 times.
Each time a Twister merges into a parent, the traveling direction of the parent can change even if Valtheks Rebuke is equipped.
Etched Sigil
Etched Sigil has an Internal Cooldown (ICD) of 59 frames.
An Energy Twister can only spawn when Arcane Torrent, Ray of Frost or Disintegrate ticks and Etched Sigil is off cooldown.
You can spawn one Energy Twister every 60 frames when your channeling abilities' Breakpoint is a divider of 60 (2 FPA, 3 FPA, 4 FPA, 5 FPA, 6 FPA, 10 FPA, 12 FPA, 15 FPA, 20 FPA, 30 FPA). On other Breakpoints your Etched Sigil will have a longer cooldown.
The first Energy Twister (the parent) must be selfcasted. It does not matter for any consecutive Twister that merges into the parent if it's selfcasted or not. Twisters cast by Etched Sigil cannot proc Area Damage. That is due to the fact that only a selfcasted Energy Twister can proc Area Damage.
Any Arcane Energy Twister rune casted by Etched Sigil (when channeling) will consume Wave of Force Arcane Attunement stacks.
Wave of Force Arcane Attunement
Is a separate multiplier for any Arcane ability.
Has a maximum cap of 125 targets which equals a 6.0 multiplier.
The character is buffed when the "Wave" stops traveling. Any Arcane ability casted while the Wave is still traveling will not consume Arcane Attunement. This means Black Hole Spellsteal can be cast immediately after Wave of Force Arcane Attunement without consuming the resulting WoF stacks. This needs some practice to pull off!
In combination with The Twisted Sword, only the first ArcaneEnergy Twister needs to be buffed by Wave of Force Arcane Attunement. The four additional merges will not remove the buff.
Ranslor’s Folly
Pulls normal monsters only and pixelpull them ignoring their hitboxes. Ranslor's Folly tries to pull enemies within 30 yards twice a second. This is extremely useful to benefit from Area Damage.
This will usually work best when cast on an empty spot somewhere between all of the monsters you would like to pull. Certain monsters does not stack very well when the spot you cast on is already occupied.
Due to the Crowd Control Resistance, you can't pull enemies together endlessly. Try to get everything in with a single cast.
Elemental Exposure
Each stack is a debuff for one of the following elements: Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning.
Each stack is unique and will refresh its own duration when reapplied.
Any ability with a proc coefficient greater than zero applies a stack of its respective element. This inherently means that only selfcasted abilities grant stacks.
The elemental range on the Weapon applies its respective stack with all abilities if the elemental range is of the type: Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning. This is why Item Stat Priorities state you want a weapon with Cold Damage Range.
The 5% damage from each stack is additive to each other adding up to a total of 20% separate damage multiplier.
Energy Twister on Console Version
Energy Twisters builds are a force to be reckon with for a very long time on Console versions of the game, the main reason being that channeling mechanics are very different on Console: it is possible to cast any skill while channeling without interruption.
In practice, this means one can fully maintain Deathwish, Etched Sigil and Mantle of Channeling damage multipliers while endlessly selfcasting Energy Twisters without any inconvenience, effectively skyrocketing the damage output of the build.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full Delsere's Magnum Opus set.
Be careful of Etched Sigil stealing all your precious Area Damage.
You'll need to invest plenty of keys to get a Greater Rift without many Hard Crowd Control Elite Affixes.
Cheers!
Credits
Credits to Rob and Northwar for extensive PTR 2.6.10 mechanics testing. Written by sVr. Updated by Chewingnom.