Frozen Orb is an iconic skill that instantly awakens deep feelings of nostalgia in every Diablo II player out there. It’s quick, impactful and the explosions are very satisfying when played correctly. Very few builds incorporate the fantasy of a spellslinging Wizard as well as this one.
The last time LoD Frozen Orb did stand out was during Season 20 with the unrestricted Kanai's Cube from Forbidden Archives allowing players to incorporate at the same time Deathwish, LegacyEtched Sigil as well as Orb of Infinite Depth into the build in order to execute a specific channeling spellweaving playstyle.
In Season 22, Wizardspike got reworked and brought a new damage multiplier to Frozen Orb while the 4th Kanai's Cube Slot allowed the build to play Deathwish again. However, as its dedicated Delseres Magnum Opus (DMO) Set comes with Slow Time restrictions, inherent clunkyness and underwhelming tankyness, Legacy of Dreams stayed the setup of choice as it is tankier, allows for more flexibility on top of enabling ReverseArchon and even Shi Mizu's Haori setups.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Frozen Orbs can and will proc it. The whole playstyle revolves around the precise use of Absolute Zero and Teleport, in order to unleash devastating icy explosions onto stacked enemies. This guide will show you the way to become a redoutable Frozen Orbs spellslinger!
High DPS ✔ Very Tanky ✔ Iconic Frozen Orb ✔ Rewards Good Gameplay ✔
❌ Difficult Execution ❌ Not Beginner Friendly ❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control ❌ Little Room for Customization
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Unstable Scepter is our core Weapon providing us with a 450% separate damage multiplier and a second explosion for Frozen Orbs, nearly doubling our total damage.
Triumvirate grants us a stacking 400% damage buff for a total 1,200% separate damage multiplier to Frozen Orb when using Signature Spells.
Wizardspike provides another 350% separate damage multiplier on top of a 25% chance to cast an extra Frozen Orb when attacking.
Squirt’s Necklace is a default inclusion for Wizards in any build due to their shield strength. Protecting our HP pool for a 100% global separate damage multiplier with continuously refreshing shields is a Wizard speciality.
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer to double our Shields, to ensure we keep the Squirt's Necklace 100% damage multiplier.
Stone Gauntlets provide an outrageous amount of mitigation and their negative effect can be fully negated by Ice Climbers.
Aquila Cuirass and Unity grant us two sources of 50% damage reduction.
The Shame of Delsere helps us by increasing the Attack Speed and Resource generation of Signature Spells.
Convention of Elements buffs our Frozen Orbs by a beefy 200% separate damage multiplier in Cold cycle.
Halo of Karini is a core Wizard defensive item, providing us with a tremendous 80% damage reduction at the cost of using Storm Armor.
Global Stat Priorities
You want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Critical Hit Chance and Damage, Area Damage as well as Cold Damage and Arcane Orb Damage. The remaining options go to Attack Speed or Damage Range (Rings) and Defense or Resource Cost Reduction whenever you can fit it in. It is required to get Arcane Power on Critical Hit (APoC) on your Off-Hand in order to keep shooting Frozen Orbs, especially for Rift Guardian fights.
For toughness, like most Wizard setups, we take advantage of Galvanizing Ward and Magic Weapon Deflection to generate Shields based on our HP pool. This means Vitality and Life % are very important as they double dip into Shields. This is why we aim for a decent HP pool in Greater Rift Solo Push.
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. This is a Legacy of Dreams build whose success is heavily dependent on this gem's rank. The first order of business is to equip a Legendary or Set item in every slot to take advantage of its power. Make sure to not have any Set Bonuses equipped or the gem will be nullified and you will deal no damage! Farm speed Greater Rifts (in under 5 minute clears) to find the items and get this gem as high as possible. Above Rank 25 ancient pieces of gear will give you even greater power.
Wands to get Unstable Scepter, Wizardspike and Aether Walker
Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
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: Pauldrons of the Skeleton King
Act 2: Illusory Boots and 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 Sage's Journey and Cain's Destiny (for your follower)
6. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. Spend your materials getting items with better rolls and/or ancient quality.
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:
1. Socket 2. Critical Hit Damage 3. Cold Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Intelligence
Belt
The Shame of Delsere The Witching Hour Goldwrap Krelm's Buff Belt
1. Intelligence 2. Vitality 3. Life % 4. Armor 5. All Resistance
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Legacy of Dreams is the Legacy of NightmaresSet in a gem, which frees up two ring slots at the cost of removing Zeis Stone of Vengeance. Due to the rings available to us this is a great trade-off to take.
Bane of the Stricken helps us kill 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 is equipped since it grants us a nice 1.6 global separate multiplier procced by default with Frozen Orb.
For Nephalem Rifts, Boon of the Hoarder is always a default include specifically due to its amazing synergy with Avarice Band.
Lastly, Zei's Stone of Vengeance is a feasible choice, which, in contrary to its description, grants its first stage benefit at 0 yards and not 10 yards.
Skills
Arcane Orb Frozen Orb is our main damage dealer.
Spectral Blade Barrier Blades is necessary for the synergy with Triumvirate. It also adds additional shields for survival.
Storm Armor is the activator for Halo of Karini. Without this buff you will be squashed like a fly, so make sure to keep it up. Typically you want to use the Shocking Aspect rune for pushing and Scramble for farming.
Black Hole Absolute Zero is used in push to group and lock monsters while granting us a huge Cold Elemental Damage buff.
Magic Weapon Deflection is a staple to protect our HP pool for Squirts Necklace.
Teleport is your mobility skill, allowing you to position yourself at the right distance or get into Oculus Rings. You can choose either Wormhole or Safe Passage.
Passives
Galvanizing Ward is a must-have for any Wizard build and synergizes with Squirt’s Necklace and Ashnagarr’s Blood Bracer.
Power Hungry provides us with a 30% separate damage multiplier which perfectly complement our ranged playstyle.
Other options can include:
Elemental Exposure for more damage.
Blur for some damage mitigation.
Illusionist and Dominance are good utility and defensive choices.
Glass Cannon and Cold Blooded are slight damage increase for speed content purposes.
Unstable Anomaly for a cheat death proc.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Critical Hit Damage
1. Armor
1. Area Damage
4. Maximum Arcane Power
2. Critical Hit Chance
2. Life %
2. Resource Cost Reduction
3. Intelligence
3. Cooldown Reduction
3. All Resistance
3. Pickup Radius
4. Vitality1
4. Attack Speed
4. Life Regeneration
4. Life per Hit
1 Aim for a decent HP pool (~800,000 Life in Solo Push) as your Shields (Galvanizing Ward and Deflection) scale with it.
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
GR Pushing Scoundrel
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.
Speed GR Enchantress
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.
GR Pushing Scoundrel
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Scoundrel setup for the Critical Hit Chance from Anatomy, 10% increased damage from Piercing Shot, and the insane Critical Hit Chance cloud from Night’s Veil. Don't choose either of the first skill options as they apply crowd controls that we want to avoid. If you accidentally select one, you'll either have to live with it or make a new character to fix it as there is no way to de-select a follower skill :(. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality token, we do not need to stack survivability on our Scoundrel.
Dexterity > 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 Cain's Destiny: For more Experience and Attack Speed.
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Shi Mizu's Haori and ReverseArchon Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Cooldown Reduction from Prophetic Harmony, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Attack Speed from Focused Mind. Stat Priorities:Since we have the immortality relic, we do not need to stack survivability on our Enchantress.
Intelligence> 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.
Mempo of Twilight and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
At the start of a run, buff yourself with Storm Armor to enable the 80% damage reduction from Halo of Karini. Make sure you keep this buff up at all times. In most situations it will not require much attention, but be careful when there are only very few or one enemy as you need to hit something that is at least 15 yards away from you. When fighting single target Rift Guardians especially, make sure to walk away a few steps regularly. The damage reduction can be tracked on your buff bar. Don’t forget to re-apply this skill after 10 minutes when pushing.
Keep up Magic Weapon Deflection
Stack up Triumvirate and keep it up by using Spectral Blade at least once every 6 seconds. It also resets helps to stack up shields and Bane of the Stricken quickly on Rift Guardians.
Pull enemies and then group them up at a safe distance before your nuke using Black Hole.
Position yourself exactly 40 yards away from the center of the pull to cast Arcane Orb. This will maximize the value of Zei’s Stone of Vengeance and most importantly unleash the final explosion of Frozen Orb exactly on top of the enemies, dealing devastating damage. The Orb will shoot out shards in all directions as it travels, but by far the biggest portion is included in the explosion at the end of its path (which is also doubled by Unstable Scepter).
Use Teleport for mobility and survival as necessary. With the Wormhole rune, generally try to make sure to use both charges before the cooldown begins.
When possible, try to kill one small enemy before your big nuke during your Convention of ElementsCold damage cycle to spawn Oculus Ring. When it appears in the right spot, you can dramatically increase your damage by teleporting into one.
Hardcore
Rotate out Elemental Exposure for Unstable Anomaly. You are already insanely tanky; so technically speaking the switch is not needed. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
Nephalem Rifts
GR Solo Speeds
GR Solo Push
Echoing Nightmare
LoD Frozen Orb Solo T16
Concept In T16 we don't need a lot of damage and also won’t care about throwing Frozen Orb from the right distance all the time. The damage is good enough to destroy enemies with just the shards. We usually won’t need Convention of Elements and Unity here, so Stone of Jordan and Rechel's Ring of Larceny combined with Boon of the Hoarder and Avarice Band (on your follower) are great replacements.
Gameplay Be fast, use your Teleport to move around quickly and set up bubbles on large pulls, then throw your Frozen Orb and move on. It’s not really the smoothest T16 build but it does the job.
Setups Early in a season, it might be better for you to go with Wizardspike over Aether Walker for a lot of extra damage. In groups, replace Pauldrons of the Skeleton King with Homing PadsWarzechian Armguards with Nemesis Bracers, Frostburn with Gloves of Worship and Stone of Jordan with Avarice Band.
LoD Frozen Orb Solo Speeds
Concept In Speed Greater Rifts we try to combine a great mix of damage, toughness and utility. Ultimately, the build plays similarly as in solo pushing, but is much more fast-paced. Bane of the Stricken should not be necessary at all, so we can take Zei’s Stone of Vengeance for more damage. We also do not need the additional toughness from the Stone Gauntlets + Ice Climbers to take in even more damage with Frostburn and Strongarm Bracers.
Gameplay Similar to pushing, try to make big pulls and destroy them either with your Convention of Elements cycle active (on Elites) or without (most trash monsters). Don’t waste too much time on stray enemies, Waller Elites, burrowers, wasps or similar and just move on towards the next pull.
Setups If you feel tanky enough, you can consider replacing Unity with Stone of Jordan for extra Elite Damage. The Shame of Delsere can be switched to The Witching Hour for even more damage gain.
Select Build Version
Standard Setup
LoD Frozen Orb Solo Push
Concept We stack up as much damage as possible and take advantage of Teleport for mobility as well as Black Hole Absolute Zero to stack up enemies just before our damage nuke.
Gameplay
Make large pulls of monsters.
Before your Convention of ElementsCold cycle, use Black Hole to trap and stack them up.
After casting Teleport to position yourself 40 yards away from monsters, obliterate them with your Frozen Orbs.
Playing around Black Hole and maintaining the right distance are your most important tasks as most of your damage comes from Area Damage procs and the explosion of Frozen Orb. Shards do almost nothing on higher Greater Rift Tiers.
LoD Frozen OrbReverseArchon Solo Push
Concept The other variant you might find on the leaderboards is the Reverse ArchonShi Mizu's Haori taking advantage from The Swami and Fazula's Improbable Chain. We build around a 48 second cycle using Archon Teleport, meaning we need at least 61% Cooldown Reduction.
Gameplay You want to time it so that you come out of Archon at the start of the Lightning rotation to give yourself enough time to setup your nuke. The first nuke will be boosted by The Swami stacks. During your second Cold rotation, you can time Archon to get some additional kills in the split second of overlapping all your damage multipliers, resulting in some Archon stacks for the next rotation.
This setup is also taking advantage of Wizard shielding mechanics to incorporate Shi Mizu's Haori, allowing you to replace all your Critical Hit Chance for stats such as Intelligence or even Area Damage. Nonetheless, it is possible to play ReverseArchon with Aquila Cuirass if you prefer so.
Please note that this setup is not recommended for casual play at all. The playstyle is similar to the regular version, except you have precise damage burst windows and can spend Archon time to pull and gather enemies or simply skip through maps. Other than that, you will have more trouble keeping up shields outside of Archon and you cannot take Teleport else you have to drop Black Hole Absolute Zero.
Swap Bane of the Stricken with Zei's Stone of Vengeance since we are fighting hordes of enemies.
Reroll Area Damage to Average Damage as we do not need to make huge pulls.
Replace Illusionist with Dominance.
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.
Unfortunately Frozen Orb is not the best fit for this activity. Before your Convention of ElementsCold cycle, use Black Hole to gain a damage buff. Position yourself exactly 40 yards away from the center of the pull using Teleport to cast Frozen Orb. This will maximize the value of Zei’s Stone of Vengeance and most importantly unleash the final explosion of Frozen Orb directly on top of the enemies, dealing devastating damage.
Video Guide
In Production!
Mechanics
Arcane Orb Frozen Orb
S20 LoD Spellweaving Frozen Orb
This skill fires in a straight line from your character towards your cursor position and explodes precisely 40 yards away.
The final explosion deals the most damage by far but its AoE is really small. It deals 950% weapon damage twice in succession because of Unstable Scepter, for a total of 1900% weapon damage.
The main orb deals 635% weapon damage to enemies it passes through while the shards deal 315% weapon damage to all enemies along the path.
Frozen Orbs spawned by Wizardspike benefit from all the damage multipliers but won’t deal Area Damage.
When Wizardspike procs from your own Frozen Orb, they overlap so well that it is only noticeable from the higher amount of frost shards emitted by the two stacked orbs.
Wizard Shields
In order to keep up your shields to survive while maintaining Squirt's Necklace damage multiplier, you need to learn to judge the incoming damage and how fast you can build those shields yourself, which requires practice.
Shields have no direct UI indicator unless you mouseover your health globe.
You can see that you have any shield up when you see a transparent blue bubble around your character (not the size of the shield, however).
Because Wizard Shield values scale with your total life, Vitality and Life % stats become substantially better for toughness scaling compared to other builds.
Galvanizing Ward is the main shielding mechanic used for most Wizard builds, which combined with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer adds up to 120% of your total life as a shield. This shield will reset to its maximum value every 5 seconds if this shield in particular doesn't take any hit in the meantime.
Spectral Blade Barrier Blades and Magic Weapon Deflection represent the secondary shielding mechanic of the Wizard and can be stacked as much as you like, but their shield value is set at 4% (up to 8% with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer) of your total life and they only lasts for 3 seconds. The duration is counted for each stack individually.
While Barrier Blades or Deflection (or any other shield in that matter) protect the Galvanizing Ward shield, it is possible to reset the shield gained from the passive to full even while taking hits.
All of these mechanics make it so that when your shields start breaking or your Galvanizing Ward doesn't find enough time to reset, the whole setup will fall apart really quickly. Make sure you understand your limits and survivability in different situations.
Black Hole Absolute Zero
The damage bonus from Black Hole Absolute Zero is additive with your Cold Elemental damage. As a consequence, "Cold skills deal X% more damage" affixes (Mainly found on Bracers and Amulet slots), grants a lower relative damage increase to builds using Absolute Zero.
The Shame of Delsere
The Attack Speed bonus of The Shame of Delsere is multiplicative with other bonuses.
This can be used to stack Bane of the Stricken quite fast on longer boss fights. Try to use it a lot especially at the start of a long boss fight and when you are waiting for your Convention of ElementsCold cycle!
Elemental Exposure
Each stack is a debuff for one of the following elements: Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning.
Each stack is unique and refreshes 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.
Since the build already deals Cold and Arcane damage by default, having a Fire or Lightning damage roll on your weapon is the most optimal choice.
The 5% damage from each stack is additive to each other adding up to a total of 20% separate damage multiplier.
Summary
Put together the core items and level up the Legacy of Dreams gem.
Keep up your Storm Armor for Halo of Karini buff at all times.
Activate Triumvirate by using your Signature Spell.
Pull enemies together with Black Hole to trap and stack them.
Position yourself at the right distance to explode Frozen Orbs directly on top of the enemies.
Play around the Convention of Elements cycle to maximize your damage.
Cheers!
Credits
Introduction by Chewingnom. Written by Rob& wudijo. Updated by Chewingnom.
