The last time Energy Twister was a force to be reckoned with was in Season 5 and Season 6, where Twisters dominated the leaderboards with Raging Stormcornerstacking and Archon Twister zET Meta.
However with Season 7 and 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 years of absence, Twister Wizard was reborn with Season 22 bringing us buffed and even completely reworked Valthek's Rebuke, The Twisted Sword and Etched Sigil. However, as its dedicated Delseres Magnum Opus (DMO) Set comes with Slow Time restrictions, inherent clunkyness and underwhelming tankyness, Legacy of Dreams became 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 selfcast 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 how you cast your skills is of the utmost importance due to the merging mechanic granted by The Twisted Sword (see Mechanics). This guide will go over everything you need to know to Twister successfully!
Very Tanky ✔ Very High DPS ✔ Extremely Flavourful ✔ Rewards Good Gameplay ✔
❌ Not Beginner Friendly ❌ Complicated Mechanics ❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control ❌ Very Sensitive to Skill Sequence
Core Setup
Items
The Twisted Sword provides us with a massive 750% separate damage multiplier. Energy Twister gains the Raging Storm rune and can now 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 five.
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 merge from The Twisted Sword.
Squirts 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.
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, which, however, 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 is already a reason by itself to incorporate them.
Stone Gauntlets provide an outrageous amount of mitigation and their negative effect can be fully negated by Ice Climbers.
Convention of Elements is another separate damage multiplier, giving you triple damage during your Arcane cycle.
Aquila Cuirass and Unity grant us two sources of 50% damage reduction.
Season 32 Ethereals
Ethereals are powerful rare weapons that can only be found during Season 32. They were initially the Season 24 Theme. They have incredible stats, a random Legendary power, and a free passive for your class. Read our Ethereal Mechanics Guide for full details on how they work and our Ethereal Farming Guide to learn how to acquire them. What you should prioritize on them is the following:
TheLegendary Power This build requires The Twisted Sword and Valthek's Rebuke to be functional. We need our Ethereal to roll one of these powers so we can cube the other. We also want a good roll on our Legendary power if it has a range. For speed content it is always helpful to have Ethereals with Aether Walker, In-geom or Messerschmidt's Reaver powers, so keep those if you find them.
TheEtherealItself There are 3 different weapons available to us, each with its own benefits:
Wizardspike - This is the best Ethereal for this build due to its Damage Stacking special affix, especially in Greater Rift push eventhough its high Attack Speed does not benefit us. With it, we land on the 10 frames Arcane Torrent Breakpoint which is good regarding Etched Sigil ICD.
The Oculus - This is a good alternative due to its high Arcane Power on Critical Hit and Elite Damage affixes, especially for speed content or as a Trash Killer where the Damage Stacking mechanic from Wizardspike is not important. It allows you to replace your APoC roll on your Off-Hand.
Mang Song's Lesson - This is a great Ethereal for T16 farming where Etched Sigil is not necessary.
The EtherealStat Rolls Each Ethereal comes with its own fixed set of powerful affixes. While some have a static value, many have a wide stat range. This means the difference between good and bad rolls is significant and something you should look for.
A Useful Passive This is just icing on the cake because a fifth passive is not going to make or break your build. You're better off hunting for the things above. Check out the Passives section down below to see which ones you're looking for.
Global Stat Priorities
You want to stack damage stats wherever possible, especially Critical Hit Chance and Damage, Area Damage as well as Arcane Damage and Energy Twister Damage. Regarding Attack Speed, this build 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). 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 as long as you don't aim to play the ReverseArchon Variant (see below). In regard to 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 the reason why you want to 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.
Rings to get Halo of Karini, Convention of Elements and Unity
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 2: Gloves of Worship
Act 3: Avarice Band and Pride's Fall
Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Cosmic Strand, 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:
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
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
The Shame of Delsere Hergbrashs Binding Fazulas Improbable Chain Goldwrap The Witching Hour
1. Intelligence 2. Vitality 3. Life % 4. Armor
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. We must, however, stand within 15 yards of our enemies to apply its effect when playing Wicked Wind, which is the same range we require for Audacity. On the Rift Guardian our Follower will continuously reapply a slow for BotT. However, Cold damage from Mistral Breeze chills the target and slows it before any damage instance is calculated meaning that BotT will always be applied.
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
Magic Weapon Deflection grants you a Shield with 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 decent 25% damage reduction buff.
Teleport Safe Passage provides us with a nice defensive buff each time we use it. We are not using Illusory Boots, which is why we need at least one source of movability (often combined with Illusionist).
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 is played with the stationary Arcane Wicked Wind in push for its consistency and with the moving Cold Mistral Breeze in speeds.
Wave of Force Arcane Attunement constitutes an incredible separate multiplier for Wicked Wind specifically with the pixelpulling capabilities of Ranslors Folly.
Passives
Elemental Exposure is a separate and global multiplier debuffing each target once for each element (Fire, Cold, Arcane, Lightning) for up to 5 seconds when you hit it with said target. The elemental type of your 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 and only if our target is within 15 yards.
Galvanizing Ward grants a massive shield leading to better Squirts Necklace uptime in conjunction with Ashnagarrs Blood Bracer.
Illusionist provides us with some mobility via Teleport. This passive also procs when you take 15% of your maximum Life as damage on your shields.
Other options can include:
Unwavering Will for some damage and mitigation.
Conflagration with Arcane Torrent Flame Ward for some damage.
Blur for some decent flat 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. Vitality1
4. Cooldown Reduction
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.
Altar of Rites
The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!
Note: The suggested path assumes you are playing Solo and used the Challenge Rift Cache to help you level up.
Optimal Path
Node 2: Choose Anointed to gain a full set of 70 yellows from level 18-70!
Node 6: Rush to gain double Bounties to help unlock other Nodes in the Altar.
Node 7: Take Vigor to help your build sustain its resources.
Nodes 8-14: These are the last Nodes you can gain until the Challenge Rift resets. Take at least 1 Node at the bottom of each path to unlock all 3 Potion Super Powers. Pick up the Mirror Node at the top for a colossal 41% extra XP all season. Remember to unlock Father once you clear GR70 solo and have your first Primal!
Nodes 15-26: Pick up the final Quality of Life, Damage, and Defense Nodes (in that order) to finish the Altar.
Potion Super Powers: Take Father first, then Mother, and finally Mortal.
Disclaimer: The Mortal and Mother Potions require you to salvage 2 and 3 Primals respectively. Unlock them as soon as you have those materials as they don't cost a point!
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 Greater Rift with Legacy of Dreams using Unity we recommend this Enchantress setup for the Slow from Temporal Pulse, Arcane Damage from Amplification, Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield, and the Cheat Death Proc from Fate's Lapse. If we play ReverseArchon, we take Cooldown Reduction from Prophetic Harmony. 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.
Blind Faith: To consistently blind the Rift Guardian, keeping it immobile.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
The Witching Hour,Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
The general playstyle for pushing Greater Rifts with LoD Twister is definitely more complicated than for 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 this buffs won't time out on you.
Prepare a Pull: You 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; make sure to 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, since any ArcaneEnergy Twister casted by Etched Sigil will consume your WoF stacks.
Damage Phase:
Two seconds into your Convention of Elements (CoE) Lightning cycle selfcastan Energy Twister (the parent) right in the center of your pull. It must be a selfcast 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 the channel begins one second before your CoE Arcane cycle and ends one second before CoE Cold begins.
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 selfcast the parent Energy Twister.
The playstyle is definitely something you have to get used to; it's fast paced, strategic and very sensitive towards sequencing. Make sure to train it a couple of times in town - especially timing your Convention of Elements is crucial. The biggest mistakes you should avoid are the following:
Don't rely purely on Energy Twister cast 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 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
GR Group Trash Killer
Echoing Nightmare
Concept Legacy of DreamsEnergy Twister is an acceptable Torment farming build that is unfortunately not the easiest to gear into due to its significant dependency to Resource Cost Reduction (RCR). The build is fast paced thanks to Aether Walker with Cosmic Strand and Teleport but ultimately still gets outrun by the best Keyfarmer builds.
As usual, we are using Boon of the Hoarder with Goldwrap and Avarice Band to become invincible and allowing us to instantly vacuum the juicy Progression Orbs from Elites. Etched Sigil is entirely omitted in this setup since channeling is too slow in T16; instead we are purely reliant on selfcasting Energy Twister.
Gameplay When entering the Nephalem Rift you first want to spam 5 Energy Twisters to gain your maximum multiplier from The Twisted Sword, elsewise you'll have a harsh time for the very first enemies.
Afterwards you simply rely on holding down Teleport and casting one or two Twisters every couple of seconds. You want to preferably Teleport on top of Elites and then selfcast one or two Twisters. Targeting Elites one screen away and then jumping on top of them is also a valuable strategy with the only downside being that you won't be able to benefit from Audacity (in which case Power Hungry would fit you better). You click Diamond Skin Prism immediately when it comes off cooldown.
Setups The recommended version for Nephalem Rifts is the Cold setup, however a Fire setup with Cindercoat is also a possibility if you are willing to look out for the gear. In groups, you need to swap Stone of Jordan for Avarice Band, Warzechian Armguards for Nemesis Bracers as well as equipping The Flavor of Time and cubing Squirt's Necklace.
Concept Legacy of DreamsEnergy Twister is one of the strongest Wizard builds out there for farming experience with Solo Speed Greater Rifts. We need Resource Cost Reduction which is mainly achieved by incorporating Leorics Crown with Flawless Royal Topaz. While it is possible to play with any rune, Mistral Breeze is the practical winner due its lower Arcane Power Cost, which leads to a better uptime of Aquila Cuirass, yielding better uptime of Squirts Necklace.
Gameplay The gameplay is very relaxing, since you only have three active buttons: Energy Twister, which you only need to selfcast on the Rift Guardian and on tough Juggernaut Rare Elites, Arcane Torrent, which you tap once in a while to pull monsters with a selfcasted Twister, and Teleport, which is purely there for mobility. You simply teleport through and use those buttons accordingly based on the situation. Overall your average runtime is a bit longer due to the inherent setup time of Energy Twisters and the lack of Aether Walker, which can't be incorporated due to competitiveness of the Weapon slot. Hence, it's recommend to run slightly higher tiers while still clearing within 5 minutes.
Select Build Version
Standard Setup
Concept The first setup here is the one described in the main sections of the guide, focusing around making large pulls, snapshotting Wave of Force Arcane Attunement for your first Energy Twister and melt everything on your Convention of ElementsArcane cycle.
Gameplay To play the build optimally, you want to follow these steps for maximum DPS. The right sequencing is very important:
Pull monsters to create density. Use Wave of Force Arcane Attunement with as many enemies as possible around you to snapshot its effect. Before your final cast, you can also use it repeatedly to stack up shields with Magic Weapon Deflection.
Place a single Energy Twister to create a pixelpull from Ranslor's Folly.
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.
Repeat at step 1.
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 Fire rotation to give yourself enough time to setup your Twisters. The first nuke will be boosted by The Swami stacks. During your second Arcane 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're not using Wave of Force Arcane Attunement. Here is a gameplay showcase of the build in action clearing a solo GR150!
Concept Legacy of DreamsEnergy Twister, built as a Reverse Archon iteration to gain stacks via Fazulas Improbable Chain and utilize these stacks out of Archon with The Swami, is a pretty solid Trashkiller for 4-Player setups. It's sadly not as strong as some other Trashkillers and also puts significant stress on the game servers, such that lagging is a common "feature" you'll witness when attempting to play this.
This variant utilizes Pain Enhancer (PE) to heavily influx its Attack Speed to lower the Energy Twister Breakpoint significantly, such that more Twisters are raging at the same time. You need to invest a bit into Cooldown Reduction, however, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac with PE proves to be very potent at resetting large cooldowns such as Archon.
Gameplay This builds must be played in a fixed 32 second rotation, meaning it's continuously tied to your Convention of Elements (CoE).
You click Archon at the start of CoE Cold. You can now run around freely for 20 seconds. Your team should prepare a good pixelpull for you. You drop out of Archon at the start of CoE Fire.
You cast Wave of Force Arcane Attunement.
You cast Energy Twister 5 times.
You cast Wave of Force Arcane Attunement.
You cast Energy Twister indefinitely.
You switch to channeling Arcane Torrent 3 seconds into your CoE Lightning.
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.
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.
Video Guide
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 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.
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.
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 level up the Legacy of Dreams gem.
Be careful of Etched Sigil stealing all your precious Area Damage.
One of the few builds that can actually pull off to play Shi Mizus Haori.
Shoutouts to Cratic for his work on PTR 2.6.10 and his Solo Speeds GR Twister Variant!
Cheers!
Credits
Thanks to Rob and Northwar for extensive PTR testing. Thanks to LouLou for revising D3Planners and mechanical insights! Written by sVr & Chewingnom with special help from wudijo. Updated by Chewingnom.