Difficult execution, meticulous timings… Reverse Archon builds are arguably among the hardest and most satisfying setups to master in Diablo III. While they are more commonly used with Legacy of Dreams setups, Vyr Reverse Archon builds have sometimes shined in the past.
In Season 6 the zET Wizard, a setup using the Tal Rasha & Vyr combination and Energy Twisters with conerstacking, was the strongest build ever seen by a large margin, ultimately resulting in a GR130 4man clear that remained unbeaten for almost a year.
In Season 12, Reverse Archon Vyr Frozen Orb was theorycrafted and proven to be an extremely competitive setup with an incredibly hard to master but flavorful playstyle. These days, Vyr Reverse Archon setups are slightly weaker than the common Vyr-Chantodo build since Chantodo's Resolve got buffed.
In Season 24, Ethereals offered a unique opportunity for Vyr Reverse Archon builds to shine once again as they can equip Ethereals while Vyr-Chantodo could not, losing its edge.
In Season 31 with the Forbidden Archives theme, the possibility to add Deathwish to the build made the Energy Twister variant an extremely strong build, while the Frozen Orb variant is usually always the strongest one.
This is an Area Damage (AD) build, since Frozen Orbs can and will proc it. The whole playstyle revolves around the precise use of Archon cycles in conjunction with Absolute Zero and Convention of Elements, in order to unleash devastating icy explosions like a machine gun onto stacked enemies due to an incredible Attack Speed granted by Vyr's Amazing Arcana (4) Bonus. This guide will show you the way to become a phenomenal Archon spellslinger!
❌ Difficult Execution ❌ Not Beginner Friendly ❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control ❌ Heavy Cooldown Dependency
Core Setup
Items This build makes use of the Vyr's Amazing ArcanaSet and the basic Archon Starter Kit™:
The Vyr's Amazing Arcana set grants us all Archon runes, 1% Resistances, Armor and Attack and 100% increased damage instead of the base 6% per Archon Stack and allows us to build Archon stacks with every enemy hit.
Fazula's Improbable Chain is a staple, providing us with 50 Archon stacks by default when you use Archon.
The Swami is mandatory, allowing us to keep our Archon stacks for 20 seconds after it expires, which is the main idea behind the Reverse Archon concept.
Unstable Scepter is our core Weapon, providing 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.
Unity grants us a welcome 50% damage reduction.
Convention of Elements is another separate damage multiplier, giving you triple damage during your Cold cycle, which is incredibly good due to our burst playstyle.
Halo of Karini is a core Wizard defensive item, providing us with a tremendous 80% damage reduction at the cost of using Storm Armor.
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 Unstable Scepter and Wizardspike 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.
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 high innate Attack Speed to scale our Archon stacks potential with Vyr Bonuses and its Damage Stacking special affix.
The Oculus - This Ethereal is a great second choice for its damage and its high Arcane Power on Critical Hit roll. It also brings us a 25% damage reduction debuff on monsters, which is very helpful as the build is relatively squishy.
Mang Song's Lesson - This is a Two-Handed Staff meaning we can't use it as we have two Weapons and a Off-Hand that grant us massive damage multipliers.
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 Cold Damage and Arcane Orb Damage. Cooldown Reduction is however your first priority as you need it on every single piece of gear. You can only afford to miss up to 2% Cooldown Reduction in total in order to reach the Breakpoint to perform a proper 32 seconds Reverse Archon cycle.
Arcane Power on Critical Hit (APoC) is mandatory on your Off-Hand in order to sustain the insane Arcane Power drain of your damage burst, which also makes Critical Hit Chance really important. Attack Speed is not really useful as Archon stacks grants you plenty of it due to Vyr's Amazing Arcana (4) Bonus.
For toughness, we prioritize Vitality and Life % as Galvanizing Ward and Magic Weapon Deflection shields are scaled on our HP pool (See Mechanics). This is why we aim for a solid HP pool in Greater Rift Solo Push. The next priority would be Armor, mainly in Chest and Pants sockets using Flawless Royal Ruby if you feel too squishy.
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 during our short damage burst window 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.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 VyrFrozen Orb setup gear is a good option.
Rings to get Unity, Halo of Karini and Convention of Elements
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:
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:
1. Socket 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Cold Damage 6. Area Damage 7. Intelligence
Belt
Fazula's Improbable Chain
1. Intelligence 2. Vitality 3. Life % 4. Armor
Potion
Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered
For breaking walls to pull enemies and increase DPS or to avoid Crowd Control effects during your DPS phases
Gems
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.
Skills
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.
Passives
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.
Paragon Points
Core
Offensive
Defensive
Utility
1. Movement Speed
1. Cooldown Reduction
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. Attack Speed
4. Life Regeneration
4. Life per Hit
1 Aim for a decent HP pool (~900,000 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
GR Pushing Enchantress
For Greater Rift Pushing we recommend this Enchantress setup because she is the only follower that gives Cooldown Reduction with Prophetic Harmony, which is required to achieve a 32 seconds Archon rotation without using Gogok of Swiftness. This will also give us Slow from Temporal Pulse,Damage Reduction and Armor from Powered Shield as well as Cheat Death from Fate's Lapse. 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 and Cord of the Sherma: To blind monsters and the Rift Guardian so they're not running towards you during your damage burst.
Ice Climbers: To make your follower immune to Freeze and Immobilize effects.
Tal Rasha's Relentless Pursuit and Cain's Destiny: For more Attack Speed.
Gameplay
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 LightningConvention 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 Teleport40 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 ElementsCold 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.
Hardcore
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!
Variants
Frozen Orb Solo Push
Twister Solo Push
Echoing Nightmare
Concept This is the setup described in the main sections of the guide. While the potential of this build is pretty high, it requires practice to pull off the rotation perfectly and master the gameplay.
Gameplay Upon entering a Greater Rift you immediately activate Storm Armor and Magic Weapon. During this phase you should refrain from using the Right Click Beam except for long range pulling since it builds up Archon stacks significantly slower than the Melee Strike (Left Click). For a step-by-step gameplay description on how you should sequence your skills, check out the "Gameplay" section above.
For the Rift Guardian fight you should regularly Teleport in and out quickly to refresh your Halo of Karini damage reduction buff in time with Storm Armor. Additionally, you want to purely use Archon's Melee Strike to stack Bane of the Stricken on the Rift Guardian, since the Right Click Beam suffers from a channeling skill penalty.
Setups If you feel too squishy, replace Elemental Exposure with Blur. At very high Paragon, you can drop Unity and Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer to cube Ring of Royal Grandeur and equip Aughild's Authority alongside more Vitality in Paragon points to scale your shields in order to maintain Squirt's Necklace. This setup loses ~35% toughness to gain around 2 Greater Rift tiers in damage.
Concept This is an Energy Twister variant of the Frozen Orb setup described in the main sections of the guide. While the build is easier to play overall, it has a lower damage burst ceiling due to channeling and Etched Sigil mechanics not synergizing well with Attack Speed.
Gameplay Upon entering a Greater Rift you immediately activate Storm Armor and Magic Weapon. During this phase you should refrain from using the Right Click Beam except for long range pulling since it builds up Archon stacks significantly slower than the Melee Strike (Left Click).
The Archon cycle is slightly different for this variant, you enter Archon right at the start of your Convention of ElementsCold cycle to go out at the end of Cold cycle with your Arcane cycle being your last 4 seconds before reentering Archon. This allows you to set up your Energy Twister burst properly.
During your burst damage rotation, you will self cast Energy Twister as much as you possibly can to take advantage of your massive Attack Speed. Don't forget that only selfcast Twisters can proc Area Damage, and that any Etched SigilTwister merging into a self cast Twister inherits this property. You only channel to keep up Taeguk stacks and during your Convention of ElementsArcane cycle to benefit from the Etched Sigil damage multiplier.
For the Rift Guardian fight you should regularly Teleport in and out quickly to refresh your Halo of Karini damage reduction buff in time with Storm Armor. Additionally, you want to purely use Archon's Melee Strike to stack Bane of the Stricken on the Rift Guardian, since the Right Click Beam suffers from a channeling skill penalty.
Setups If you feel too squishy, replace Elemental Exposure with Blur. At very high Paragon, you can replace Unity with Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac to remove some Cooldown Reduction rolls on your equipment for more damage.
Concept For more information, check out our full Echoing Nightmare Guide and take a look at our Echoing Nightmare Build Tier List and our META post for the best builds and strategies! This build is terrible for this game mode since we rely on Reverse Archon rotations. Typically we utilize a Greater Rift pushing build with a few tweaks.
Changes
Go for the Energy Twister variant of this build which fits more the Echoing Nightmare activity.
Swap Bane of the Stricken with Bane of the Powerful since we are fighting hordes of enemies.
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.
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. Since the build is rather complicated to execute, it is recommended to take a look at the "Gameplay" and "Variants" sections below for a step-by-step gameplay description.
Video Guide
Mechanics
Arcane Orb 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.
Archon
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 DamageBonus (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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
Summary
Put together the core items and acquire the full Vyr's Amazing Arcana set.
Keep up your Storm Armor for Halo of Karini buff at all times.
Make sure to cast your Archon at the right moment and respect the 32 seconds rotation.
Position yourself at the right distance to explode Frozen Orbs directly on top of the enemies.
Hard Crowd Controls Effects and Walls are incredibly annoying during your burst damage window.
Cheers!
Credits
Thanks to LouLou for theorycrafting the original build in Season 12! Written by Chewingnom.