Vyr Reverse Archon Twister 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 Vyr's Amazing Arcana 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. Note that this is mainly a push build, farming with Firebird's Finery to collect the Vyr Twister setup gear is a good option.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The full Vyr's Amazing Arcana set
2. Etched Sigil
3. Fazula's Improbable Chain
4. The Swami
5. Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer

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

1. Swords to get Deathwish and The Twisted Sword
2. Staves to get Valthek's Rebuke
3. Rings to get Halo of Karini and Convention of Elements
4. Amulets to get Squirt's Necklace
5. 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:

• Bounty Turn In: Recipes for Cain's Destiny (for your follower)
  
  

6. This build heavily relies on Cooldown Reduction to get to the hardcap 32 seconds Archon rotation so when starting out you need to include extra CDR items such as Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac or Gogok of Swiftness which will be later phased out when you get better gear. With those items you can comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for the different variants of the build. From that point, spend your materials on 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:

• The Twisted Sword
• Etched Sigil
• Convention of Elements
• Halo of Karini

• Bane of the Trapped is equipped since it grants us a nice 1.6 global separate multiplier and is applied by default in this build, since Frozen Orb applies its slow before the damage instance.
• 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.
• Zei's Stone of Vengeance is an incredible gem for this build due to Frozen Orbs explosion triggering after traveling 40 yards and Power Hungry.

• Archon is the cornerstone of the build. We make use of Archon only to open specific insane damage burst windows while outside of it.
• Arcane Orb Frozen Orb is our main skill to deal damage using the benefits from Archon stacks.
• Shock Pulse Piercing Orb is used as a nice long ranged Signature Spell to sling from a safe distance and to activate the damage multiplier of Triumvirate.
• Black Hole Absolute Zero increases our Cold damage by a tremendous amount to maximize our damage burst window.
• Magic Weapon Deflection has amazing synergy with Archon since it grants a shield for each ability used in Archon (including Teleport). The shields are protecting your hit points from taking damage, preserving the damage buff of Squirt's Necklace.
• Storm Armor Shocking Aspect is needed to proc the defensive capabilities of Halo of Karini. Shocking Aspect has the best overall uptime while Power of the Storm grants a nice flat Resource Cost Reduction on your spells.

• Evocation is mandatory to reach the Cooldown Reduction cap to achieve a 32 seconds Archon rotation.
• 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 complements our ranged playstyle.
• Other options can include:
  • Elemental Exposure for more damage.
  • Unwavering Will for some mitigation and damage.
  • Blur for some damage mitigation.
  • Prodigy to get even more Arcane Power sustain.
  • Dominance is a decent defensive choice mainly for lower Greater Rifts.
  • Unstable Anomaly for a cheat death proc.

¹ Aim for a decent HP pool (~900,000 Life in Solo Push) as your Shields (Galvanizing Ward and Deflection) scale with it.

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!

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

The idea of the build revolves around entering Archon during a very precise window to benefit from Archon stacks outside thanks to The Swami. You are very squishy in your first rotation, and each time you drop out of Archon. When entering a Greater Rift:

• Activate Storm Armor and Magic Weapon Deflection instantly.
• Click Archon 2 seconds in Lightning Convention of Elements cycle. This is why you preferably want to launch the Greater Rift end of Cold cycle or very early Fire cycle to reduce the waiting time before your first Archon.
• During your Archon, activate Slow Time to slow down and dodge projectiles and Teleport around to bodypull monsters and trigger them at long range with your Disintegration Wave beam (Right Click).
• Always spam Blast (Button 1) which has no cast animation and a 600 ms Cooldown to help build Archon stacks and Strike (Left Click) to punch monsters and build even more stacks once you've made a decent pull.
• Make sure to think about your position to perform your damage burst beforehand while preparing the pull and Teleport 40 yards away from the monsters the very last second of your Archon or you won't be able to perform a proper burst!
• Archon is ending 2 seconds in your Arcane cycle. When you are out of Archon, instantly use Black Hole Absolute Zero on the monsters for a massive amount of Cold damage and to lock them in place.
• Convention of Elements Cold cycle is coming 2 seconds after you are outside Archon. After using Black Hole Absolute Zero, use Shock Pulse Piercing Orb three times to stack up Triumvirate damage multiplier and proceed to spam Frozen Orbs on the monsters from a safe distance: you are a real machine gun!
• When you are out of Arcane Power (which happens really fast considering the massive Attack Speed granted by Vyr's Amazing Arcana (4) Bonus), start to weave in some Piercing Orbs between Frozen Orbs. After your Cold cycle, refill your Arcane Power a bit and dump all of it again at the start of your Lightning cycle (you can cast Black Hole again as well), right before entering Archon again 2 seconds during Lightning cycle.
• When entering Archon again, you should have a 8 seconds overlap with The Swami stacks and new Archon stacks. You need to use this overlap to build Archon stacks quickly due to the Attack Speed granted by Vyr's Amazing Arcana (4) Bonus. Use either your current pull or build stacks while slowly moving towards your next pull.
• After those 8 seconds of overlap, you are completely free to Teleport around again and pull more monsters or move towards a new pull.

For Hardcore you can use Esoteric Alteration instead of Zei's Stone of Vengeance and incorporate the passives Unstable Anomaly and Blur at all times. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• 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.

• Being in Archon form grants a 30% global separate damage multiplier.
• Archon and The Swami stacks instances are additive with each other to form one global separate damage multiplier.
• Archon Slow Time inherits the Slow Time rune equipped on your skill bar. Crown of the Primus works on Slow Time. Slow Time and Slow Time effects stack for Exhaustion, Time Warp and Stretch Time runes.
• Archon Teleport benefits from both Aether Walker and Cosmic Strand.
• All Archon Abilities snapshot their Elemental Type upon Archon cast to your current highest element.
• Each Archon Abilities' damage is dynamic with its current Elemental Damage Bonus (according to its Elemental Type) which is not always your current highest element.
• Archon Strike's Attack Speed is fully dynamic with Increased Attack Speed. Any Attack Speed gained during Archon will speed up Archon Strike and any IAS lost will slow it down.
• Archon Disintegration Wave tickrate is snapshotted upon entering Archon. Any Attack Speed gained (or lost) during Archon has no effect on its tickrate. The 50 stacks granted from Fazula's Improbable Chain are accounted for.

• 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 resets 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. These effects have an incredible synergy with the Attack Speed from Vyr's Amazing Arcana (4) Bonus.
• 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 falls apart really quickly. Make sure you understand your limits and survivability in different situations.

• 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.

• 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 Lightning damage by default, having a Fire or Arcane 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.