LoD Meteor Wizard BiS Gear, Gems, and Paragon Points (2024)

This Meteor Star Pact Wizard build is based on the Legacy of Dreams power,which offers significant flexibility when it comes to item choice. Stat-wise,focus on pieces where Meteor skill damage is a possible roll — helm,boots and source, as well as spreading Area Damage wherever possible.

The Legacy of Dreams power allows you to run any legendary item combinationwhile not losing out on the damage amplification and reduction associated withthe traditional 6-piece sets. You can obtain this power in two ways; the olderway is equipping the two rings — The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted — as your only active set bonus. The newer(and more powerful, since it also opens your ring slots for legendary jewelry)method is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem.

In a setup with Legacy of Dreams, you will be wearing your two bestrolled rings and cubing the third between Convention of Elements, Unity, and Halo of Karini. Convention of Elementssimply provides a massive damage increase during the Arcane cycle of itsrotation. Halo of Karini will greatly supplement your defenses,providing a massive damage reduction bonus for the modest requirement ofkeeping your Storm Armor active. Unity further reducesincoming damage when paired with another on the follower, along with animmortality relic for them (i.e. Enchanting Favor).

Aside from Halo of Karini, Squirt's Necklace will alsoincentivize you to keep track of your enemies' positioning — it rewardsthe evasive playstyle of a LoD Meteor Wiz with a massive damage bonus,but also punishes the unwary with an amplification of damage taken. To encaseyou in at least a measure of protection before you lose that valuable DPSbuff, you will be wearing the Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer for the doubledshield potency (consult this build's skillspage to see where the shields should come from).

Blackthorne's Jousting Mail provide an elemental damage increase,which is fairly unique for the slot — as long as it does not form itsset bonus with another Blackthorne item, thus breaking the LoD bonus, thiswill be your best-in-slot item.

To counteract your resource pool depletion, you will be using The Shame of Delsere to augment your Signature Spells with a massiveArcane Power restoration angle.

Four more armor slots will be occupied by protective legendary powers, withthe combo of Ice Climbers, Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, Aquila Cuirass and Stone Gauntlets each bringing their own angleof value to the build. Stone Gauntlets are one of the most effectiveprotective pieces in the game, bumping your armor in 50% increments as you gethit, but with a similarly stacking mobility penalty — a downside youwill be completely negating with the unique property of Ice Climbers,which make you immune to immobilization effects (note that you can either wearor Cube them, with identical results). Aquila Cuirass is simply adefensive cornerstone, cutting incoming damage in half if you maintain above90% of your resource. There is no required legendary shoulder to use; the ActI bounty cache-specific Pauldrons of the Skeleton King bring a marginallyuseful, low chance "Cheat Death" proc, but are by no means a required piece.Simply use your best-rolled shoulder in the slot.

A trio of Meteor-specific items make up the remainder of your gear. Buffedin Patch 2.7.4, Mempo of Twilight now applies the Meteor Showerrune to all casted Meteors, and multiples their damage. Nilfur's Boast is a Meteor build mainstay, further multiplyingthe skill's damage, and empowering it against singular targets — amassive boon against Rift Guardians. Note that these boots areinterchangeable with Ice Climbers; weaker roll goes in the Cube).Finally, the mandatory weapon for the build is The Grand Vizier —a two-handed legendary staff that reduces the Arcane Power cost of Meteor in half, and, once again, greatly multiplies its damage. Notethat unlike its fixed Resource Cost Reduction bonus, the damage multiplicationis of variable strength — and try to get as good of a roll as you can.

The 'Reverse Archon' variant (outlined in its variant paragraph in the skill page) requires several changes to thegear described above. The head slot needs to be occupied by The Swamiin order to maintain Archon stacks outside that form, and Fazula's Improbable Chain is required in order to kickstart any Archonstacks at all, since the build revolves around Meteor damage, not Archon(the latter is treated strictly as a buff). Altering to this setup requiresperfected cooldown across most of your gear (shoulders, hands, both rings, andweapon, Flawless Royal Diamond in the helm), as well as Paragons andan Enchantress for the cooldown reduction buff. Missing any of thepieces will land you short of the 61%+ sheet CDR breakpoint.

Kanai's Cube lineup for the Archon variant needs to be: The Smoldering Core in the Weapon slot, Mempo of Twilight in theArmor slot, and Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac in the Jewelry slot. Note thatby losing Ice Climbers from the setup (since you need both Mempo andSwami), you can no longer sustain Stone Gauntlets, and should alter thegloves to St. Archew's Gage instead.

An extra step further in gear alteration is to drop Aquila Cuirassfor Shi Mizu's Haori, which guarantees Critical Hits below 25% life.Since the build runs several shields and is quite tanky in general, it will beable to sustain even at that low health point. This alteration allows you todrop all Critical Hit Chance rolls on gear, and replace them with Intelligenceand Area Damage rolls for even more damage.

For Offense stats, try to obtain Meteor % bonus on both the helm and boots(maximum of 30%), Arcane elemental damage on the amulet, wrists and pants(maximum of 60%), Crit Chance and Crit Damage within a 1:10 ratio (ideallyover 50% and 450%, respectively), and Area Damage of 150%+.

For Defense stats, aim for a life pool of 800k+; dropping as much as youcan for offense as you grow accustomed to the build. You will mostly sustainthrough Life per Hit on gear, with at least one high roll in your setup (i.e.bracer).

All augmentations on gear should be done with your main stat,Intelligence.

Note that the stat suggestions below portray an ideally rolled item withstats listed in relative order of importance. The first four of them are mainstats, and the latter two — secondary stats. If your item lacks and isunable to be rerolled into the primary stats outlined below, especially for astat higher on the list, strongly consider its replacement. PerfectingSecondary stats is mostly a case of hyper-optimization and is not a case fordiscarding an item, except where noted.

To help you with farming the gear you need for your builds, we have two veryuseful guides that you can access by clicking the links below: a Salvage Guide tohelp you quickly check whether or not you can safely salvage a piece of gear anda Legendary Farming Guide to help you efficiently farm legendaries and set items.

The former Season 28 theme, the Altar of Rites, has been revised andre-added to Diablo 3 as a permanent character progression mechanic. — Forvirtually all builds and players of all skill levels — from casual toadvanced — we recommend progressing through the Altar tree using the pathoutlined below. The suggested path is geared towards maximum quality of lifefirst, then amplifying damage, and then mopping up the tree with defensive andedge case utility nodes.

Note that while they require reaching them with a Seal, Legendary PotionPowers are not part of the Seal cost system; Potions unlock with a separateresource called Primordial Ashes, obtained from salvaging Legendary or Setitems of Primal (red bordered) quality. Upgrade them as soon as possible, andin the order shown below (courtesy of Caleko's Altar of Rites planner).

You can read more on the Altar of Rites, Seals and Legendary Potion Powersin our dedicated Altar of Rites Mechanics guide.

In the Core section, max out Movement Speed to the 25% cap. Normally thisis done by dumping the first 50 Core Paragon points into Movement Speed, butif your boots have an imperfect roll with Movement Speed as a stat that youcannot replace, adjust the necessary point investment accordingly by simplysubtracting your roll from the 25% max. Then, max out Arcane Power — thedamage of Star Pact scales off AP spent. After that dump as much as youcomfortably can into Intelligence, but feel free to invest into Vitality ifyou feel yourself lacking in toughness.

In the Offense section, max out Crit Damage, Crit Chance, CooldownReduction and Attack Speed in that order. In Defense, prioritize Armor, thenLife %, then All Resistance, and finish off with Life Regeneration. InUtility, build up Area Damage and Resource Cost Reduction first, then finishoff with Life on Hit and Globe Radius.

Bane of the Trapped is a potent source of additional damage, as it isits own multiplier in your total damage calculation. You will benefit from itnaturally, due to the close fighting range of Metor Wizards as a whole (inconjunction with the Level 25 property of the gem, which ensures it procsitself), as well as the myriad of sources of crowd control available to yourFollower.

Introduced in Season 4, Bane of the Stricken occupies a necessaryjewelry socket in GR solo progression. Building up your damagemultiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specificallytargeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds intheir struggle against single target, high HP enemies during Greater Riftprogression attempts.

Your final slot is best occupied by the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem,which provides a scaling bonus for each legendary item equipped, as long as youhave no set bonuses equipped. This bonus is multiplied for Ancient or Primalquality items, and when the gem is maxed out, it matches the Legacy of Nightmares( The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted rings) set bonus. Thispotent bonus allows you to play around with all your gear slots for synergisticlegendary powers at the cost of a gem slot; in the older LoN setup, this socketwould be occupied by Gogok of Swiftness or Esoteric Alteration.

For more information about gems, please refer to our guide on gems.

Tucked away in the Cube, The Smoldering Core provides essentialpowers for Meteor-based builds. Its luring effect does pretty muchwhat it says on the tin — enemies are drawn (Taunted) to the impactareas of your Meteor casts. The stacking damage debuff ("consecutivehits against an enemy increase in damage") has a 5-second duration, refreshedon re-application. It produces a separate damage multiplier in your totaldamage calculation, and builds up to 500% extra damage on top. These effectscombined make this item an essential legendary effect for the build.

As previously mentioned, your armor Cube slot will be taken by yourweaker-rolled legendary item between Ice Climbers and Nilfur's Boast. Ice Climbers negate the downsides of wearing Stone Gauntlets, while Nilfur's Boast is a dedicated Meteor-boosting item.

Your jewelry Cube slot will be occupied by your worst rolled item between Halo of Karini, Convention of Elements and Unity.

The Kanai's Cube can be used for much more than simply extracting Legendary powers from items. Pleaserefer to our Kanai's Cube guide for more information.

The seasonal theme for Season 31 will be completely flexible slots forKanai's Cube, which means you can use anypiece of gear in any slot of the Cube.

This is one of the builds where we don't recommend making any changes, sincethe options presented in the default build already make up the strongestKanai's Cube composition possible for the setup.

The recommended follower for this build during solo GR progression is theScoundrel due to his powerful damage and crit buffs: both passivein nature (with Piercing Shot and Anatomy),as well as the brief but battle-turning window of guaranteed crits from Night's Veil. Remember to alternate to Enchantressif you are playing the Archon variant, due to her valuable CDR buff.

For more information regarding followers, we advise you to read our FollowerGuide, which contains detailed advice for choosing the skills and the gear ofyour follower.

The preferred potions for this build are Bottomless Potion of Kulle-Aid(allowing you to break down Waller affixes that impede Energy TwisterDPS), Bottomless Potion of the Unfettered (giving you a brief window of CCimmunity to counter your lack of CC-breaking or immunity skills), or Bottomless Potion of the Tower (whose Armor-increasing propertiescomplement the naturally high All Resistances stat of Wizards). Pick whicheveryou feel helps you out the most.