Diablo 3: Patch 2.7.4 PTR Tal Rasha’s Elements Wizard Build

Tal Rasha’s Elements set is getting up an update along with The Smouldering Core for patch 2.7.4 on the PTR. This blog post will go over what I feel will become the meta for Tal Rasha’s in the patch as well as putting a build together.

Legendary Items

• Tal Rasha’s Elements (Helmet, Chest, Gloves, Boots, Amulet)
  • (2): Damaging enemies with Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning will grant immunity to that element and cause a Meteor of the same damage type to fall from the sky. The same meteor cannot happen twice in a row. – This is a massive change to the basics of the set as now you will be constantly auto-casting an elemental meteor as long as you damage an enemy with a different element as they removed the 8 second cooldown per elemental type. Also, you will gain immunity which sounds insane. It’s not specified how long the immunity buff last but I’m wondering if combined with an amulet or Blackthorne’s if you can achieve complete damage immunity? Also, as a 2 set bonus, the defensive buff is pretty great which could help early builds lacking a complete 6 set and/or Ring of Royal Grandeur.
  • (4): Arcane, Cold, Fire, and Lightning attacks each increase all of your resistances by 50% for 8 seconds. – This is another major change as they’ve effectively doubled your resistance from the current 4 set bonus. So as long as you’re doing elemental damage from one of the four listed, you should have good damage immunity all around.
  • (6): Attacks increase your damage by 2000% for 8 seconds. Arcane, Cold, Fire, and Lightning attacks each add one stack. At 4 stacks, each different elemental attack extends the duration by 2 seconds, up to a maximum of 8 seconds. – Nothing has changed here. But I think now that you’re constantly triggering Meteors to fall from the sky, you should be doing far more consistent damage.
    
• Captain Crimson’s Trimmings (belt, pants) – Mostly for the resource reduction which will compliment your damage boost from it.

• Mantle of Channeling (shoulders) – While channeling Siphon Blood, Whirlwind, Rapid Fire, Strafe, Tempest Rush, Firebats, Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost, you deal 24% increased damage and take 25% reduced damage. [20 – 25]% – There’s not a lot of options for the shoulder slot for Tal Rasha’s so this is one of the better options.

• Pauldrons of the Skeleton King (shoulders/optional) – When receiving fatal damage, there is a chance that you are instead restored to 25% of maximum Life and cause nearby enemies to flee in fear. – This is another reasonable option for Tal Rasha’s. The idea here is that you can take out Unstable Anomaly as a passive skill since you will be getting a cheat death through this mechanism.

• The Smoldering Core (staff/weapon slot/cube) – Lesser enemies are now lured to your Meteor impact areas. Meteors deals 40-50% increased damage on consecutive hits to the same target. This stacks up to 10 times. – This basically buffs up your Meteor attacks big time and turns this into a mandatory item to use in the Cube. Besides the buffed Meteor Damage, it’s stacking damage which means on Elites and Guardians, this will make Meteors do pretty significant damage.

• Ashnagarr’s Blood Bracer (bracers) – Increases the potency of your shields by 85%. (Wizard Only) [75 – 100]% – There’s really no other option here. But you will be gaining shields to help with your defense.

• Nilfur’s Boast (boots/cube) – Increase the damage of Meteor by 600%. When your Meteor hits 3 or fewer enemies, the damage is increased by 675%. (Wizard Only) [675 – 900]% – Pretty much another mandatory item to further boost your Meteor damage.

• Convention of Elements (ring/cube) – Gain 179% increased damage to a single element for 4 seconds. This non-static effect rotates through the elements available to your class in the following order: Arcane, Cold, Fire, Holy, Lightning, Physical, Poison. [150 – 200]% – A perfectly aligned item for the Tal Rasha set.
• Ring of Royal Grandeur (ring/cube) – Used for doing the hybrid Tal Rasha + Captain Crimson’s Trimmings.

• Halo of Karini (ring/cube) – You take 74% less damage for 5 seconds after your Storm Armor electrocutes an enemy more than 15 yards away. (Wizard Only) [60 – 80]% – Another defensive item that synergizes well with this build.

• The Grand Vizier (staff/cube/weapon slot) – Reduces the Arcane Power cost of Meteor by 50% and increases its damage by 328%. (Wizard Only) [300 – 400]% – I imagine that along with the update to the Smoldering Core, you will be using this to further boost your Meteor damage. But to really take advantage of this weapon, you will be use Meteor as an active skill slot too.

Sanctified Power

For the Sanctified Power, you will want the following power:

Casting Storm Armor sends a power thunderbolt from the skies that instantly kills a random enemy within 30 yards. Bosses are not killed but take significant damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds.

The idea here that you will be using Storm Armor naturally as part of your build. While Storm Armor is a long lasting buff, having this ability turns it into a more active/cooldown skill used to help take down bosses and elites.

Legendary Gems

• Bane of the Trapped – Increased damage all around and some CC.

• Zei’s Stone of Vengeance – You’re mostly going to be doing ranged damage. But the stun from the secondary will also help trigger your Bane of the Trapped damage.
  

• Bane of the Stricken – To help with your single target damage.

Active Skills

• Arcane Torrent: Death Blossom – This will trigger your Arcane damage and cast your Arcane Meteor
• Meteor: Molten Impact – Fire damage trigger and your main source of damage
• Teleport: Wormhole – This is not a fast build so you will need Wormhole for the double teleportation.
• Magic Weapon: Deflection – Provides your shields to work with bracers and
• Storm Armor: Power of the Storm – Your passive lightning (and occasionally active) damage. Also, boost your defense from Halo of Karini along with reducing the cost of your Meteor spell so this is indispensable.
• Blizzard: Frozen Solid – Cold damage as well as a CC to help further trigger your Bane of the Trapped.

Passive Skills

• Elemental Exposure – Pretty much a must have for this build as you are doing all elemental damage and this helps increase it.
• Galvanizing Ward – More shields that augment your Magic Weapon: Deflection buff.
• Audacity – You’re probably going to be dragging enemies towards you with the Smouldering Core and blasting them. So this will allow you to gather them up and increase your damage.
• Illusionist (optional) – Used to speed up your cooldown on Teleport since you really have no other options
• Astral Presence (optional) – In case you find yourself Arcane starved
• Unwavering Will (optional) – Defensive/offensive boost while you’re still for a second or two.

Followers

This build is a resource intensive build because of frequent casting of Meteor, Blizzard and Arcane Torrent so you want to go with a Templar. If you go with the Pauldrons of the Skeleton King, you can skip out on Guardian and pick up Inspire. If you manage to have enough Resource Reduction cost and don’t find yourself out of Arcane power all the time, you probably can just go straight to Mantle of Channeling and use Guardian. Captain Crimson’s Trimmings, a Topaz in the helmet and aiming for resource reduction cost on Shoulders, Gloves and jewelry (rings) should make your build smooth. Also, Astral Presence can help there too.

Final Thoughts

Although I have yet to give this version of the build a try, I’ve always liked Tal Rasha’s but the biggest problems I’ve had in the past were low damage and slowness. I think the boost in damage and focus on Meteors will make this build pretty fun and straight forward. There’s really no “tricks” with this build outside of potentially using Illusionist to reset your cooldown on your Teleport skill. Other than that, I’m eager to see how this build plays out on the PTR.

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