Diablo III

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Release Date: September 3, 2013

Wizard Build by MythosPraxis

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Level 60 Wizard // Inferno

Build Proposed by MythosPraxis

Skill Slot Skill w/ Rune
Mouse Skill 1 (Left) Electrocute w/ Surge of Power
Mouse Skill 2 (Right) Disintegrate w/ Intensify
Action Skill 1 Diamond Skin w/ Crystal Shell
Action Skill 2 Hydra w/ Venom Hydra
Action Skill 3 Teleport w/ Fracture
Action Skill 4 Energy Armor w/ Force Armor
Passive Skill 1 Galvanizing Ward
Passive Skill 2 Arcane Dynamo
Passive Skill 3 Temporal Flux

Cheers Hatfield.

First off, this is not "my" build. It's Blizzard's build.... DRM stuff aside, I don't want to claim authority on this....

In order to make this build, you will need to enable Elective Mode, as some of these skills overlap.

Anyways..... Here we go!



This build begins by filling your inventory. In order to not loose all of your gold and potions, and in order to gain some ground in the game on the higher difficulties you need to not be dying. Coupled with better gear allowing for higher armor and dps ratings, this build is a force of nature, even on Inferno difficulty, provided you know how to play the class. Do this right and you can come out of fights without even taking damage.

Active Skills:

(1)- Diamond Skin // Crystal Shell: This is you're emergency button. Anytime anything gets too close to you, hit this. Diamond skin is the Wizard's ignore damage skill. Many people already using a build like this will substitute Crystal Shell for Enduring Skin. However, Crystal Shell is a better choice on the higher difficulties simply because it absorbs quite a bit more damage, which is more important than the length the ability is active. This becomes especially obvious in multiplayer where enemies hit really hard. Enduring Skin ends up having a shorter duration because it peaks out on damage really quick. This is because the ability either ends after time duration or damage sustained. Higher damage absorption means it ultimately ends up lasting longer. This ability is really handy when a waller or vortex enemy nabs you, and Teleport has not refreshed yet.

(2)- Hydra // Venom Hydra: When you reach the higher difficulties, you will find that a lot of the time you cannot stand still in order to attack. This is the Wizards biggest difficulty in the game. It gets mediated in multiplayer when you have *cough*ideally*cough* good tanks, and can stand still long enough to use your more powerful abilities. When you can't, you cast Hydra and run in circles. It doesn't sound glamorous, but it works, and you will be the last one standing while people warp in on you. Venom is the best combination of damage and range, and works particularly well on The Butcher boss in Act 1, who may or may not be vulnerable to poison. Not sure on this. It's not critical which Hydra you use, as long as you have one because you need something to do damage while you move.

(3)- Teleport // Fracture: This will save your life constantly. Use this when anything gets too close and Diamond Skin is not ready yet. This is where knowing your class, and your specific character counts a ton! You need to know how much damage you're dealing, and how much you can take. When things get really nasty, use Teleport. This goes beyond just knowing your class, you need to know your character! If your health is particularly low, throw down Diamond Skin after Teleport. These abilities (1) and (3), couple particularly well with a vampiric weapon, allowing you to gain health while you are invincible. Fracture will also help you immensly with dropping aggro. This is useful when your group's Barbarian tanking that elite creep, for some reason decides to leap, and everything that was on him/her now comes for you..... Again this is useful for putting down some space between you and virtually every type of elite pack so you can bring out the pain!

(4)- Energy Armor // Force Armor: This is a fantastic defensive skill. Use Force Armor on Hell, but once you get better gear, switch it over to Prismatic Armor. The idea with Force Armor, is to lower the damage of hits that might otherwise kill you. What it does is limit high damage attacks to a percentage of your life. Prismatic Armor, once you have better gear and have it unlocked, gives you really high elemental resistances. Wizards already have high resistances, but this cranks them up even more. This is especially important on Hell and Inferno because just about everything does absurd amounts of elemental damage in some form or another. 

Mouse Left- Electrocute // Surge of Power: This is your basic attack. Use it a lot, but watch out for Treasure Goblins. This will arc between targets so you need to pay attention so that you don't aggro anything you don't want to attack. Again be careful about aggroing the Goblin. If you do, blame it on the Demon Hunter. Surge of Power here serves to build up your source when you run low. Every enemy hit with Electrocute builds one unit of source, and since Electrocute arcs, generally you build about 3 surce per fire. Again this works well in tandem with all of the other skills previously outlined.

Mouse Right- Disintigrate // Intensify: This is your direct damage ability. It's also where Diamond Skin becomes really handy, because it allows you to stand still while you bring out the big guns. As Disintigrate intensifies, you can just chill while some Mallot Lord tries to whack you in the face and gets nothing for it. Intensify will max out your damage output to 202%, but combined with the passive abilities of this build, you can actually get it to go significantly higher. When you are strong enough, you can switch this back over to Chaos Nexus (you know you want to!) and have some fun. You lose the damage output increased by intensify, but your crowd control abilities at this point go through the roof.

This is where stuff starts to get really fancy.....

Passive Skills:

Galvanizing Ward: With this passive, as long as you have an armor mode active you gain 310 life per second. Your armor modes also last 120 seconds longer with this rune, meaning Energy Armor rarely drops off of you. You always need an armor mode on regardless of which one you choose because of the health gain from this rune. Energy Armor is suggested here because of its runes. It takes nothing to cast, and your power source bounces back really fast. Cast it after every fight. This will save your potions for when you really need them. When you get strong enough you can free up this passive skill for something a littlemore interesting, like Glass Cannon.

Arcane Dynamo: The trick here is the "flashes of insight." These things stack up as you use your signature spell, which in this case is Electrocute. It maxes out at five. After five flashes of insight, you do 75% more damage with non-signature spells. In sum, what you do is build up your flashes of insight, trigger Diamond Skin, and unleash Disintigrate with the Intensify rune. It's scary how much damage this can do. It's single target damage easily more powerful than Archon, and because of the other abilities in this build, it leaves you more mobile and less vulnerable (AKA your not a big shiny blue target)-- remember that survivability is the biggest thing to work for on inferno when you first start.

Temporal Flux: This third skill is sort of a toss up. Many people will use something like Prodigy instead, provided they aren't using Electrocute and Surge of Power to build their source. Using both isn't really necessary because source builds fast enough with just one of these skills. Temporal Flux is nice because it combos well with Disintigrate to slow down enemies when you deal arcane damage. If you want to subsitute it for something else to cover your bases go for it.

Notes For This Build:
You will die. It happens. But it should happen a lot less.

Use your death to figure out where the hole(s) in your build is(are). Most likely it is either your armor or your weapon. Or more frequently, it is because you did not trigger Diamond Skin. This is where this build is finnicky. Diamond Skin will interrupt channeling, but it will not interrupt your signature spell. In other words if something starts to get close, stop spamming Electrocute and give yourself some time to trigger Diamond Skin. When something starts getting close, switch over to Disintigrate instead, and throw up Diamond Skin-- like when that Hammer Lord starts getting to close for comfort.

Always, always, always, have Energy Armor on. It's fast, inexpensive, and builds health. There is no reason not to have this, or another armor ability, active at all times with this build.

Flashes of insight don't build equally on every enemy. This is important to note. They build particularly slow on boss types. Bear this in mind as you work them up, and give yourself time to move around while you do so.

A socketed weapon with a beefy Amethyst will work wonders for this class. Your health won't even go down by noticeable amounts, and when it does you just Teleport out and/or throw down Diamond Skin and then wait for it to go back up while still dishing out damage- a la Galvanizing Ward and a vampiric weapon.

This will help with survivability, armor, damage, gold. Pretty much everything.

You're welcome :)

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Wizard Builds | Level 60 Wizard Build-Hell and Inferno

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