Tal Rasha Meteor Wizard Guide

1. Do the Challenge Rift for the materials to cube Legendary Powers. You can complete this once a week for additional resources and we always update the guide for you!

2. Gather the full Tal Rasha's Elements 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 your last missing set piece is Tal Rasha's Allegiance - don't gamble for it! Instead gamble for a cheap and easy item, like the Pants, and once again convert it with Recipe 4. 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.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Tal Rasha's Elements set
2. Mempo of Twilight
3. Nilfur's Boast
4. The Shame of Delsere
5. Halo of Karini and Convention of Elements

4. Craft using Recipe 3 in Kanai's Cube in this order:

1. Staves to get The Smoldering Core and The Grand Vizier
2. Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
3. 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 4: Can drop any bounty item from any act
• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Captain Crimson's Trimmings, Aughild's Authority and Guardian's Jeopardy
  
  

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. It's better to spend your materials improving your set pieces, getting ancient weapon etc.

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:

• Bane of the Trapped is procced by default from our main damage skill and a very strong DPS choice, providing us with a 60% separate damage multiplier.
• Zei's Stone of Vengeance adds another up to 80% multiplier depending on the distance of the target to the player character. Generally you will be positioned far away, easily maxing out the bonus on most targets.
• Esoteric Alteration is a huge toughness buff, which can be used at lower paragon or eventually in some varints for survivability purposes.
• The third slot will be taken up by different gems depending on your needs and activities. Boon of the Hoarder is strong in Nephalem Rifts, Bane of the Stricken is necessary for solo pushing in higher Greater Rifts and Bane of the Powerful is useful in Speed Greater Rifts.

• Meteor is our main damage dealing ability.
• Magic Weapon Deflection and Diamond Skin Prism are used in some setups for defensive purposes.
• Magic Weapon Conduit is used push setups for Arcane Power generation without Arcane Power on Critical Hit (APoC).
• 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. It also procs our Lightning Tal Rasha's Elements Bonuses.
• Teleport Safe Passage is our mobility skill. In some variants, Calamity is our way to proc the Arcane stack of Tal Rasha's Elements.
• Familiar Sparkflint is necessary to proc and maintain our Fire Tal Rasha's Elements Bonuses.
• Black Hole Spellsteal is used in some setups to group and lock monsters while granting us a huge additive damage buff. It is also used to proc the Arcane Tal Rasha's Elements Bonuses. Absolute Zero is used for a massive Cold Damage buff with Comet setups.
• Spectral Blade Ice Blades is necessary to proc and maintain our Cold Tal Rasha's Elements Bonuses while also proccing Arcane Dynamo in the Star Pact solo variant.

• Power Hungry grants us a 30% separate damage multiplier, one of the best damage passives in the game.
• Elemental Exposure is a great passive for Tal Rasha's Elements builds, as you need abilities from the four different elements to get full benefit from the set anyway.
• Galvanizing Ward is often used to generate shields and protect Squirt's Necklace.
• Arcane Dynamo is a staple for some Star Pact builds, for its huge 60% separate damage multiplier.
• Illusionist, Astral Presence, Unwavering Will or Blur can be used as fourth passive for slightly more mobility, damage or mitigation depending on your needs.

¹ Take Maximum Arcane Power as it scales Star Pact damage.
² Add a bit of Vitality if you feel too squishy (a total of 1,000,000 Life is recommended).

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 unbelievable Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops, 3 Potion Super Powers, and the juicy Wings of Terror. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!

Optimal Path

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
7. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

• 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 few enemies 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 a few steps away regularly. The damage reduction can be tracked on your buff bar. Don't forget to re-apply this skill after 10 minutes when pushing.
• Make sure to keep up your four Tal Rasha's Elements stacks.

When playing Comet:

• Pull and gather monsters together with Teleport. Take care to not land on monsters because of Calamity stun.
• Cast Diamond Skin Prism whenever needed to protect yourself.
• When your Cold CoE cycle comes up, spam Comet on the monsters.

When playing Star Pact:

• Pull and gather monsters together with Teleport.
• A few seconds before your Arcane CoE rotation, group enemies at a safe distance before your nuke using Teleport and spam Star Pact to stack ground DoTs for Magic Weapon Conduit.
• At the start of your Arcane CoE, throw a fully Arcane Power-charged Star Pact then spam more Star Pacts.

This build is relatively mobile but unfornately Tal Rasha's Elements does not provide us a decent damage reduction Bonus. You should use Unstable Anomaly at all times, but don't rely on it as it only protects you with a shield of 400% of your HP pool. If you lose the damage reduction from Halo of Karini, you will probably die. Make sure to be really careful with your defensive buffs uptime and you will be fine. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Tal Rashas Elements (2) Bonus grants you immunity to Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning when you hit an enemy with the according damage type while also dropping a Meteor. The same Meteor can't happen twice in a row and this effect has no internal cooldown (ICD).
• Tal Rashas Elements (2) Bonus Meteors benefit from all Meteor damage multipliers and can proc Area Damage. They do not benefit from the Meteor Shower rune effect from Mempo of Twilight.
• Tal Rashas Elements (4) Bonus provides you with a 100% bonus to All Resistances for 8 seconds when attacking with Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning. Each attack provides a separate stack, for a total 400% bonus. This bonus is additive with other sources of increased All Resistances like War Cry Impunity.
• Tal Rashas Elements (6) Bonus is a generic 4,000% damage multiplier which works in a very unique way. Each element (Arcane, Cold, Fire, Lightning) has its own unique stack with a 8 second duration. The 1,000% damage buff per stack is self-additive, for a total 4,000% separate damage multiplier.
• Once you have 4 stacks, refreshing any stack will additionally add 2 seconds to the duration of the three other stacks. This means by alternating two abilities of a different element (after hitting 4 stacks) you'll be able to continuously refresh the set buff.

• Star Pact have a 740% base Weapon Damage value and consume all remaining resource after the initial skill cost to add Weapon Damage to the base value.
• This means the base damage of 740% Weapon Damage can be increased to up to a total of 4080% with a perfect 167 maximum Arcane Power and a Channeling Pylon.
• Resource Cost Reduction only applies to the base cost of the skill, meaning that a 8% RCR roll (e.g. on your Shoulders) will add ~3 more Arcane Power to be consumed for a Star Pact cast. This adds 60% weapon damage or ~1.5% overall damage to the impact.

• Each hit from Meteor on an enemy applies a debuff granting you a 50% separate damage multiplier, up to 3 stacks.
• Meteors from Tal Rasha's Elements (2) Bonus and Mempo of Twilight Meteor Shower effect are stacking the effect.
• This effect is a debuff on monsters, meaning another Wizard with The Smoldering Core equipped can stack the effect for other Wizards in the party but one has to equip it to benefit from the damage multiplier.
• The debuff stacks add up as one combined 150% separate damage multiplier.
• The debuff stacks have a duration of 5 seconds. All stacks have their duration refreshed on hit.
• The ground DoT effect of Meteor does not contribute to stacks.
• The lure effect means enemies are taunted by your Meteor Impacts and run towards them.

• 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.
• The 5% damage from each stack is additive to each other adding up to a total of 20% separate damage multiplier.