The support Wizard (usually called the zWiz because they do "zero" damage) has been a niche, off-meta, supporter for quite some time. It's one of the tankiest supporters out there, thanks to Delseres Magnum Opus(4) Bonus, and can provide up to:
It lags behind zDH and zNec in terms of offensive capabilities and has no chance against zBarb in terms of utility provided (no Movement Speed nor CC Immunity). This unfortunately means that zWiz, as it stands, is not really welcome in most setups and you'll have to group with friends/clan members that are prepared and willing to play with off-meta shenanigans.
zWiz's main problem is that it's not immune to Crowd Controls, which means that you'll need an external source of CC Immunity from the group (e.g. Ignore Pain Mob Rule, Laws of Justice Bravery, Inner Sanctuary Temple of Protection) or you'll have to equip Invigorating Gemstone. Additionally, if incorrectly executed zWiz can be extremely detrimental to the overall group performance, a good understanding of Crowd Control Resistance mechanics is required. Black Hole and Frost Nova as well as Energy Twister + Ranslors Folly all apply hard CC or knockback effects to their targets.
A novice zWiz player might very well lockdown entire screens of monsters making it impossible for the group to create significant pulls. This will be a nightmare to established zBarb players and will likely lead to conflicts within the group. The guide at hand is meant to steer you in the right direction to understand zWiz, its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.
Very Tanky ✔ Extremely Mobile ✔ Provides Incredible Defenses ✔ Little to No Cooldown Dependency ✔
❌ Complicated Mechanics ❌ Sensitive to Crowd Control ❌ Out of Meta / Hard to Find Groups ❌ Detrimental if Incorrectly Executed
Core Setup
Core Item Build
Items
Delseres Magnum Opus (4) Bonus is incorporated in all versions due to the 37.5% damage reduction it provides to your allies. It requires you however to play Slow Time.
Captain Crimsons Trimmings gives an incredible 20% Cooldown Reduction and 20% Resource Cost Reduction along with additional damage reduction.
Crown of the Primus grants you all runes of Slow Time besides Point of No Return which we don't want anyway. The relevant ones are Exhaustion, Time Warp and Stretch Time, which provide some great bonuses.
Ranslor's Folly grants an incredible pixelpull ability to our Energy Twisters.
Strongarm Bracers provide 30% additive damage, which can be triggered by Ranslors Folly with Energy Twister or, in some variants, by Black Hole.
Nemesis Bracers to spawn additional Elites on Pylons if nobody else in the group can wear them.
Oculus Ring is included in any support setup and provides 85% multiplicative damage to teammates standing within the circle. The effect does not stack with other Oculus Rings.
The Flavor of Time doubles Pylon duration, which is especially useful for Conduit Pylon.
Ring of Royal Grandeur allows us to equip two additional items.
Lastly the Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac which helps us reset our cooldown abilities to provide better uptime of our buffs and debuffs.
Recommended Potion: Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid to further assist your party by destroying walls.
Global Stat Priorities
zWiz does not have any specific Attack Speed Breakpoint that you must hit, however it helps out greatly in speeding up our casting animations, which is why each item that can roll Attack Speed should do so. We are, at least in most variants, not reliant on long cooldown abilities, which is why Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac will suffice most of the time. Resource Cost Reduction (RCR) greatly increases our toughness via the Captain Crimsons Trimmings(3) Bonus and additionally allows us to spam our abilities more freely (especially when you choose to play a variant with Teleport and Aether Walker to increase your freedom to move around).
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 support build, meaning we deal zero damage and need to farm the pieces/materials with a different build/character. We'll use BloodShards and Crafting Materials to acquire the remaining pieces outlined in the steps below.
Gather 3 pieces of the Delsere's Magnum Opus set. 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.
Crown of the Primus
Strongarm Bracers, Nemesis Bracers and Ranslor's Folly
Create a level 1 Demon Hunter and upgrade Bows to get Yang's Recurve
Wands to get Aether Walker
Rings to get Oculus Ring and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
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 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
Bounty Turn In: Recipe for Captain Crimson's Trimmings
6. There is one final required piece that is difficult to acquire, The Flavor of Time. With amulets being so expensive to gamble or craft, we'll have to search for it 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:
Oculus Ring
Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac
The Flavor of Time
Item Stat Priorities
SLOT
ITEM
STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand
Aether Walker Yangs Recurve Chantodos Will Messerschmidts Reaver (Cubed) The Executioner (Cubed) Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander (Cubed)
1. Socket Ramaladnis Gift 2. Attack Speed 3. Resource Cost Reduction 4. Cooldown Reduction 5. Maximum Arcane Power 5. Intelligence
Off-Hand
Cosmic Strand Chantodos Force Orb of Infinite Depth (Cubed)
1. Resource Cost Reduction 2. Maximum Arcane Power 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Armor 5. Life %
Helm
Crown of the Primus Shrouded Mask Leorics Crown (Cubed)
1. Socket Flawless Royal Topaz 2. Life % 3. Vitality 4. Intelligence
Gloves
Fierce Gauntlets Vyrs Grasping Gauntlets Gloves of Worship (Bounties A2)
1. Life % 2. Armor 3. All Resistance 4. Vitality 5. Intelligence
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS
Gems
Gem of Efficacious Toxin is a staple for each support build granting 10% additive damage (stacks) and 10% damage reduction (does not stack). Other supports can also wear this gem because the damage buff stacks.
Iceblink provides 10% increased Critical Hit Chance to the damage dealers. This effect does not stack and is applied both by Frost Nova as well as Ice Armor Frozen Storm.
Gogok of Swiftness gives 15% Attack Speed, 15% Cooldown Reduction and up to 30% Dodge based on the amount of stacks you have. You gain a stack with each hit up to a maximum of 15, and all stacks are refreshed if you attack every 4 seconds.
Esoteric Alteration for additional toughness or Invigorating Gemstone for Crowd Control Immunity when away from the group can replace Gogok of Swiftness if needed.
Skills
Ice Armor Frozen Storm grants 12% melee damage reduction and continuously activates Cold Blooded and Iceblink from the whirling storm of ice.
Teleport helps us to get where we need to be and can use either Safe Passage for additional damage reduction, or Wormhole for more mobility.
Slow Time has all runes via Crown of the Primus. Exhaustion (25% damage reduction), Time Warp (15% additive damage multiplier) and Stretch Time (10% Attack Speed) are great bonuses to the group. Unfortunately Point of No Return applies a 5 second long hard Crowd Control effect, which means we have to cast and place Slow Time cautiously.
Frost Nova Bone Chill grants 33% additive damage to our damage dealers. This effect applies even when the target is CC immune.
Energy Twister Gale Force provides a pixelpull via Ranslors Folly. The Fire rune is selected to proc Conflagration.
Black Hole Event Horizon activates Strongarm Bracers and removes unwanted Elite Affixes. The slower your runs are, the more impactful this ability becomes, but it is preferably avoid anyway because of Crowd Control Resistance in order to pull and group monsters freely.
Passives
Cold Blooded gives 10% additive damage to our group when a target is hit with Frost Nova or Ice Armor Frozen Storm.
Conflagration debuffs our enemies, increasing their chance to be critically hit from any player by 6%. This effect is applied once we hit with a Fire ability.
Astral Presence regenerates Arcane Power helping us keep Aquila Cuirass active. This comes in handy if you don't have gear with plenty of Resource Cost Reduction rolls. If you have no trouble with Arcane Power, Blur is a fitting substitution.
Illusionist provides a significant Movement Speed buff after casting Slow Time and using Teleport. 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 include Unstable Anomaly instead.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Attack Speed
1. Armor
1. Resource Cost Reduction
2. Maximum Arcane Power
2. Cooldown Reduction
2. Life %
2. Pickup Radius
3. Vitality1
3. Critical Hit Chance
3. All Resistance
3. Life per Hit
4. Intelligence
4. Critical Hit Damage
4. Life Regeneration
4. Area Damage2
1 Put all points into Vitality until you reach 3 million HP, then put the rest into Intelligence for All Resistance. 2 Do not take Area Damage as we deal no damage and it will lag the game.
Gameplay
Maintain your Buffs: Cast Ice Armor when you enter a Greater Rift. Make sure that this buff doesn't time out on you. Also place a Slow Time right at the entrance to gain the damage reduction.
Prepare a Pull:
Place an Energy Twister to create a pixelpull in locations where you and your group want to DPS. Since Ranslors Folly does not pull Elites, you should cast on them to pull trash monsters on top of the Elites.
Cast Slow Time after you created the pull with Energy Twister.
Do not randomly cast Twisters on your way to the next pull since it unnecessarily increases the Crowd Control Resistance of the monsters.
Damage Phase: When the pull is prepared and you are sitting on top of it in a Slow Time, you'll have to time your buffs with your DPS players.
Cast Frost Nova right before you expect your DPS players to actively start damaging the pull.
If you don't have to remove dangerous Elite Affixes with Black Hole Event Horizon, cast it so it clips the pull (not exactly in the center). Any enemy that Black Hole attempts to suck in will be debuffed with Strongarm Bracers regardless if the target is moved or not.
Recast Energy Twister Gale Force in the center of the pull to re-apply Conflagration, if needed.
Scout and Pull: Scout for Pylons and body pull monsters with Ice Armor Frozen Storm (notEnergy Twister).
The playstyle is definitely something you have to get used to; it's fast paced, strategic and follows a specific rotation. The biggest mistakes you should avoid are the following:
Don't cast Energy Twister all the time, and especially not randomly while moving. The ability is meant to be used moderately and precisely when setting up to DPS a pull.
Don't place Slow Times everywhere. The Point of No Return rune makes it hard for you and your group to create density. Use it when it's clear that your group will set up for a pull in a specific location.
Hardcore
Rotate out Astral Presence for Unstable Anomaly. Additionally, you can also rotate out Gogok of Swiftness (or Iceblink if someone else already provides it in the group) for Esoteric Alteration to tank up even further. Don't forget about Black Hole Event Horizon as it absorbs Elites Affixes, which considerably reduces the incoming damage on you and your group. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!
Variants
GR Speeds
GR Push
Echoing Nightmare
Speeds zWiz with Energy Twister
Concept Support Wizard is a great incorporation for Speed Greater Rifts to farm both XP and gear due to its high mobility and its wide variety of defensive and offensive buffs.
Gameplay When entering a Nephalem Rift cast Slow Time once to gain the 60% damage reduction, and activate Ice Armor Frozen Storm. Afterwards you rely on Teleport to travel and body pull monsters via Frozen Storm. Once you find a DPS location, cast an Energy Twister on an elite, drop a Slow Time on top of it, cast Frost Nova and then Black Hole. This sequence applies all the buffs and debuffs for your group. You ultimately want to be ahead of your group, preparing pulls right before they appear and move on right before everything dies.
Setups There are two noteworthy setups for the weapon cube slot: Echoing Fury and Yangs Recurve.
With Echoing Fury you'll gain up to 75% Attack Speed, for shorter and faster animations, and up to 25% Movement Speed. With Yangs Recurve you'll gain a significant amount mitigation due to its huge 50% Resource Cost Reduction primary affix via Captain Crimsons Trimmings(3) Bonus as well as Aquila Cuirass. This means you need to equip it and cube Aether Walker. Lastly, since you forfeit Cosmic Strand, you should change Safe Passage for Wormhole to re-gain the additional mobility.
Select Build Version
Standard Variant
zWiz High Greater Rift w/ Event Horizon
Concept Overall support Wizard is very tanky, thanks to Delseres Magnum Opus (4) Bonus and Orb of Infinite Depth, and fast-paced providing some great mitigation and decent damage bonuses to your group. This variant only plays smoothly with a decent investment of Resource Cost Reduction for the damage reduction from Captain Crimson's Trimmings(3) Bonus and the Aquila Cuirass uptime, so make sure to prioritize these rolls according to the Item Stat Priorities section above. Additionally, we use Energy Twister Wicked Wind to keep some control on the pixelpull position and avoid unwanted pulls.
Gameplay When entering a Greater Rift cast Slow Time once to gain the 60% damage reduction, and activate Ice Armor Frozen Storm. Afterwards you rely on Teleport to travel and bodypull monsters via Frozen Storm. Once you find a DPS location, cast an Energy Twister on an Elite, drop a Slow Time on top of it then cast Frost Nova. This sequence applies all the buffs and debuffs for your group.
Ranslor's Folly is great to complement zBarb pulling abilities. You create the initial pixelpull on top of an Elite and the zBarb brings more monsters and Elites in the pull using Ancient Spear Rage Flip before Ground Stomping during the DPS rotation to regroup monsters even more and maximize Area Damage.
Don't forget to cast Explosive Blast, not only to keep Orb of Infinite Depth active, but also to continuously apply Conflagration and aggro enemies. You can rely on Teleport to travel and bodypull monsters via Frozen Storm and Explosive Blast.
Setups zWiz is extremely versatile and there are a lot of variants possible depending on your group composition or preferences. If your group does not have any Necromancer for Frailty and no support that can use The Executioner, then you have to swap out Echoing Fury for The Executioner in the weapon cube slot.
zWiz High Greater Rift w/ Event Horizon
Black Hole Variant If you play in Hardcore or push tier by tier at your DPS ceiling (clears in 15 minutes), you might want to incorporate Black Hole Event Horizon to soak Elites Affixes to greatly reduce incoming damage. In that case, you want to swap out Explosive Blast for Black Hole and change your Energy Twister rune from Wicked Wind to Gale Force to proc Conflagration.
Doing so, your Twisters will be wandering around, so you want to remove Ranslor's Folly if you're playing with a zBarb or a zNec in order to avoid random pulls on monsters. Take care to only cast Black Hole Event Horizon when it is absolutely needed and after the monsters have been grouped together!
Also, because you're dropping Explosive Blast, you can equip Yang's Recurve and cube Aether Walker, removing Orb of Infinite Depth in the process.
Setups zWiz is extremely versatile and there are a lot of variants possible depending on your group composition or preferences. If your group does not have any Necromancer for Frailty and no support that can use The Executioner, then you have to swap out Echoing Fury for The Executioner in the weapon cube slot.
Use the Black Hole & Strongarm Bracers variant since you cannot pull monsters with Ranslor's Folly.
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.
Cast Frost Nova right before you expect your DPS players to actively start damaging the pull. If you don't have to remove dangerous Elite Affixes with Black Hole Event Horizon, cast it so it clips the pull (not exactly in the center). Any enemy that Black Hole attempts to suck in will be debuffed with Strongarm Bracers regardless if the target is moved or not. Cast Energy Twister Gale Force in the center of the pull to apply Conflagration.
Video Guide
zWiz GR150 3-Player Gameplay Showcase
Mechanics
Cold Blooded + Iceblink & Frost Nova Bone Chill
Frost Nova with all runes but Frozen Mist does not chill and only freeze targets.
Frost Nova Bone Chill pierces CC Immunity and always applies a 2 second debuff for 33% increased additive damage even if the target is not frozen.
Cold Blooded is a 3 second debuff applied when a target is successfully frozen or chilled. This means Frost Nova Bone Chill alone does not proc Cold Blooded if the target is CC immune.
However, if Iceblink is equipped, Frost Nova Bone Chill applies a chill, which activates Cold Blooded.
Ice Armor Frozen Storm continuously applies a chill that activates both Iceblink and Cold Blooded (even if you are in Archon form).
Slow Time + Delseres Magnum Opus
The 60% damage reduction of Delseres Magnum Opus(4) Bonus applies to you with either Slow Time or Archon'sSlow Time. This effect does not stack.
The 30% damage reduction granted to allies of Delseres Magnum Opus (4) Bonus applies to them with either Slow Time or Archon'sSlow Time. This effect does not stack.
Black Hole + Strongarm Bracers
Black Hole only attempts to apply a knockback to a monster, if the monster is clipped by it and not already standing in its center. Monsters in its center will get hit by Black Hole, however it will not attempt to knock them back.
Strongarm Bracers apply their debuff if a monster was attempted to be displaced. Any displacement constitutes a knockback. Whether or not the monster was successfully displaced is irrelevant, as long as an attempt was made to displace it.
A Black Hole that clips any monster (including Juggernaut Elites and Rift Guardians) will attempt to displace it and therefore successfully debuff the target with Strongarm Bracers regardless if the target is moved or not.
Ranslor’s Folly + Strongarm Bracers
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.
Monsters that are not displaced by Ranslor's Folly (such as Bosses, Juggernauts or CC immune monsters) does not trigger the damage buff from Strongarm Bracers.
Summary
A niche supporter that unfortunately can't compete with META supports currently.
Has one of the strongest pixelpulls in the game with Energy Twister + Ranslors Folly.