Introduction

Vyr Reverse Archon Frozen Orb Solo Push
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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 cornerstacking, 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, but this also depends on the Season Theme running at the time.

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 alwys 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!

Unique Playstyle ✔
Fast Paced Gameplay ✔
Incredible Burst Damage ✔
Rewards Excellent Gameplay ✔

❌ Difficult Execution
❌ Not Beginner Friendly
❌ Vulnerable to Crowd Control
❌ Heavy Cooldown Dependency

Core Setup

Core Item Build

Items
This build makes use of the Vyr's Amazing Arcana Set 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.

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 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 Frozen Orb setup gear is a good option.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

The full Vyr's Amazing Arcana set
Triumvirate
Fazula's Improbable Chain
The Swami
Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer

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

Wands to get Unstable Scepter
Daggers to get Wizardspike
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:

Unstable Scepter
Triumvirate
Convention of Elements
Halo of Karini

Item Stat Priorities

Gems

Skills

Passives

Paragon Points

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

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.

Hardcore

Variants

Frozen Orb Solo Push

Twister Solo Push

Echoing Nightmare

Vyr Reverse Archon Frozen Orb Solo Push

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.

Vyr Reverse Archon Energy Twister Solo Push

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 Elements Cold 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 Sigil Twister merging into a self cast Twister inherits this property. You only channel to keep up Taeguk stacks and during your Convention of Elements Arcane 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.

Echoing Nightmare Setup

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

S24 GR136 Vyr Frozen Orb Gameplay Showcase

Mechanics

Arcane Orb Frozen Orb

Archon

Wizard Shields

Black Hole Absolute Zero

Elemental Exposure

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.

SLOT	ITEM	STAT PRIORITY
Main-Hand	Unstable Scepter Wizardspike (Cubed)	1. Damage Range 2. Socket Ramaladni's Gift 3. Cooldown Reduction 4. Attack Speed 5. Area Damage 6. Damage % 7. Intelligence
Ideally, you want a Fire or Arcane Damage Range in order to get an additional stack of Elemental Exposure.
Off-Hand	Triumvirate	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Arcane Power on Critical Hit 3. Critical Hit Chance 4. Arcane Orb Damage 5. Area Damage 6. Intelligence
Helm	Vyr's Sightless Skull The Swami (Cubed)	1. Socket Flawless Royal Diamond 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Arcane Orb Damage 4. Intelligence 5. Vitality
Gloves	Vyr's Grasping Gauntlets	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Area Damage 5. Intelligence
Shoulders	Vyr's Proud Pauldrons	1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Area Damage 3. Intelligence 4. Vitality 5. Life %
Chest	Vyr's Astonishing Aura	1. Sockets Flawless Royal Topaz 2. Life % 3. Elite Damage Reduction 4. Intelligence 5. Vitality 6. Armor
Pants	Vyr's Fantastic Finery	1. Sockets Flawless Royal Topaz 2. Intelligence 3. Vitality 4. Armor 5. All Resistance
Boots	Vyr's Swaggering Stance	1. Arcane Orb Damage 2. Intelligence 3. Vitality 4. Armor 5. All Resistance
Ring 1	Convention of Elements Halo of Karini (Cubed)	1. Socket 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Hit Damage 4. Critical Hit Chance 5. Area Damage 6. Damage Range 7. Intelligence
Ring 2	Unity	1. Socket 2. Cooldown Reduction 3. Critical Hit Chance 4. Elite Damage
Ideally, you want to equip Halo of Karini with a 78%+ Legendary power there and cube Unity instead.
Bracers	Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer	1. Cold Damage 2. Critical Hit Chance 3. Intelligence 4. Vitality 5. Armor
Amulet	Squirt's Necklace	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

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

Vyr Reverse Archon Twister Wizard Guide