Home Diablo 3 D3 S26 Wizard Fresh Level 70 Guide | 2.7.3

D3 S26 Wizard Fresh Level 70 Guide | 2.7.3

April 13, 2022

150703

Leveled your Wizard to 70 already? It is time to go and get your free set for this season! Here are Wizard builds and tips to help you get your Seasonal Journey and Haedrig’s gifts ASAP! Get to endgame ASAP with Fresh 70 Wizard guide!

Updated Apr 16 2021: Added mentions of Follower Guide where applicable.

In Season 23, the Wizard free set is: Tal Rasha’s Elements. BUT, keep in mind, we will not be using the free set in this guide, for a couple reasons.

TRE (Tal Rasha) is not a great set to start out with, and isn’t exactly updated. It’s due for a buff or rework of somekind – not the kind of set I want to steer you towards. Don’t worry – you will still be ABLE TO COMPLETE THE SEASONAL JOURNEY (stash tabs or pets etc), but you will NOT NEED (or WANT) to use the S23 Haedrigs Gift on your Wiz.

Season 23 and YOU. How does it affect?

This season’s “theme” is the Follower buff + emanate items. I’m guessing it will be a permanent addition from after this season.

This mainly affects farming speed. While the follower buff skills make them more relevant in tryharding GR’s, it is by no means game-breaking.

Essentially, this season unlocks
NEW HEIGHTS FOR SPEEDFARMING

I highly recommend checking out our Follower Guide (Builds, Item, Skills etc)

Fresh 70 Wizard – summary of our path to power!

So here’s what we’re going to do. Let me outline it for you so you can get a grasp on what we’re trying to do ASAP and keep it in mind.

Get a basic Fresh 70 Wizard Build
Get core Legendary gems for your “transition hydra build”.
>> Maximizing Legacy of Dreams, and “absolute bare minimum rerolls”.
Being aware of what and how to obtain your core items.
>> Awareness about other useful items, and how best to get all of these items.
Increase your farming capability via follower, and other things
Awareness on “how powerful” you should aim to be, and how to measure it.
>> “Where to go from here”? If you’ve reached this power level.

Keep in mind since you’re not rushing for Haedrigs Gift (Tal Rasha), treat this process as a little more of a marathon than a sprint! Also, these checkpoints aren’t strictly linear. Try to be aware of each point as you progress.

Go to top

Fresh 70 Wizard Flexible Temporary Build

So here’s a build that you can easily change up as you get random drops. This build also considers our “final transitional Hydra build” while being great now, and easy to adjust.

S23 Fresh 70 Wiz NO SET BASIC BUILD
Skill	Rune
Electrocute	Surge of Power
Disintegrate	Entropy
Hydra	Mammoth / Frost
Teleport	Wormhole / Safe Passage
Familiar (open)	Arcanot
Energy Armor (notes)	Prismatic (notes)
Passives
Galvanizing Ward
Blur
Unwavering Will
Astral Presence (OPEN)

IMPORTANT EARLY GAME NOTES

Socket a Topaz into helmet to help with Arcane Power issues (Diamond otherwise).
Socket RUBY or EMERALD into chest/legs (ideally 3/2 sockets) for massive armor.

If you’re overflowing on Arcane Power, remove skills like Familiar – Arcanot (maybe use Magic Weapon), or Astral Presence passive (For something like Unstable Anomaly or Evocation). I put the default build on the rather safe side for AP, to help accomodate newer Wizards.

I don’t want to have a build that’s too hyper-specific that you need to worry about your build with every step. Hopefully, the build above does the trick. Mixing ease of play and ease of adjustment.

Go to top

Core Legendary Gems

Complete any level of GR that you can QUICKLY and RELIABLY clear. No need to tryhard here, you just want to get them done ASAP. You want these gems.

Legacy of Dreams: Your CORE gem. This gem essentially allows you to run “setless”, and instead greatly increases your power for every legendary item you have. Remember, that this DEACTIVATES once you wear an active set item bonus. Dump as many points into this as you can, once you get your other core gems up to 25.

Bane of the Powerful: A great gem that “maxes” out at L25. It’s a low investment, strong gem that doesn’t scale with further levels (which is fine, since you don’t need or want to pump gem levels other than Legacy of Dreams).

Your first 2 GR clears should ALWAYS give you LoD and Powerful.

Moratorium: An all-around defensive gem. You can alternatively choose either Esoteric for a more late-game proof defensive gem, or Wildebeest for a more newbie friendly one. Basically, I choose Moratorium for your go-to defensive gem of choice as you’ll likely need a defensive gem option early on.

Other gems? The only other 2 gems I would consider are Esoteric Alteration for more defense, and Enforcer for more DPS (Enforcer is potentially a super temp gem as you might not go Hydras late game)

Don’t worry about “wasting gem levels” on some temp gems
as you can use them for augments later on.

Again, try to get them quickly, and level them up efficiently. No need to ultra tryhard every GR. Find a balance of speed and rewards.

Go to top

Legacy of Dreams? Legendary items and rerolls!

The core to our speedy ascent to ownage is the Legacy of Dreams legendary gem. Naturally, you have to be aware on what it needs to work and how to maximize it.

LoD will not give any benefit if you have an ACTIVE SET BONUS. So you can equip 1-of set items if you like their stats or are ancient.
You get more and more bonuses for each legendary item you have equipped, and increases with each ancient item as well. So in this case simply wearing a legendary in a slot (regardless if the stats are trash) is a huge bonus over, lets say, a yellow.
This is the gem you want to stack as many levels ups as you can. It’s core to your transitionary build, but you can use the gem for augments later on if you wish.

What’s the best way to get these filler / junk pieces? Just playing the game in general if you’re lucky. BOUNTIES, and CRAFTED LEGENDARIES ARE GREAT FOR THIS. Spending your blood shards on pieces that you haven’t filled out yet works. I would ADVISE AGAINST using DEATHS BREATH rare item upgrade until you get a desirable weapon. (IE, use DB’s to find a decent legendary weapon first, before trying your missing slots)

Go to top

Stats and Rerolls for early game Wizard

So here’s the problem – you NEED to have legendaries equipped since you’re using LoD, but rerolling them is EXPENSIVE early on. Death’s Breath and Forgotten Souls aren’t exactly abundant. So how do we solve this?

Focus on “removing the absolute trash stats”
try to reroll once to get “anything usable”

Remove useless statsRoll useful stats

Life Regen: practically useless, this stat is widely considered joke-tier.

Unused Skill%, Unused Elemental%: actually useless. Like actually useless!

ALLRES: Is actually terrible for Wizard, take ARMOR instead.

Excessive Reduced Resource Cost: Crutchy, and mostly unnecessary after some time.

Excessive CDR: this stat is wildly variable from build to build. Not that hot here.

Attack Speed / Flat Damage: not for most early game builds, and some builds entirely.

VIT / Armor / Life%: amazing stats for your survivability.

Sockets: are super important on helm, chest, legs, and accessories.

Useful Skill%, Crit-related stuff: good DPS stats. Hydra% is found on shoulder > chest.

INT: if somehow your equipment has the wrong primary stat…

If you must, take CDR, RCR or anything else that’s “ok”, even if I discouraged them in the previous tab. Just remove the TRASH STATS!

Again, I wont go into the nitty gritty detail about getting the perfect stats. What you should focus on is removing the absolute trash stats and getting something even remotely useful without spending too much resources/time/effort in doing so. Small investment for huge gains!

Go to top

Items to look out for

Items are important for any build, and you’ll need to be aware of what you want, and how to best get them. Thankfully this build can pretty much work at 2 (or 3) items. Everything else is defense and utility!

Core items

Here are the main items you’re looking for.

Serpent Sparker (1h Wand): Simple and easy massive Hydra DPS boost. No extra actions or build modification needed! Probably the ultimate Hydra buff item since it will DOUBLE any further boosts you give them by having 2x Hydras. Another upside – has no alteration to build or playstyle.

Fragment of Destiny (1h Wand): A significant boost to raw power that, unfortunately, requires a tax on your build and playstyle. You need to use one of the recommended Primary Spells in your build, as well as keeping up the Spectral stacks in combat

If you have both – wear one cube the other.

The Magistrate (Helm – Wizard Hat): Simple and easy massive Hydra DPS boost. No extra actions or build modification needed!

Tasker and Theo (Glove): It’s not Hydra specific, but it boosts minion attack speed by A LOT. It’s a noticeable quality of life improvement too so your hydra can retarget quicker. No extra actions or build modification needed!

Winter Flurry (Source): Increases damage hydras do against enemies in a Blizzard. Naturally, try to fit Blizzard in your open skill slots when you have this.

High value fillers

Bracers: Ashnagarr’s Blood Bracer is a solid defensive item option. Even if it only ever modifies your Galvanizing Ward, that’s more than enough. In this pile, you can get Nemesis too, which is great for your follower.

Rings: Unity, Halo of Karini, or Halo of Arlyse are all good defensive options. Defense will become an issue soon enough, and using one, or more of these is an option early to midgame. For each Halo, make sure you use the appropriate Shield spell.

Aquilla Cuirass, Leorics Crown, etc… There are many other semi-useful legendaries out and about but I wouldn’t really sweat getting any of them (In fact after Cuirass and Crown I struggle to think of many others). “If you got em, good – if not meh” should be the attitude here.

Finding the items: Spending Death’s Breath, Blood Shards

While you may be lucky to find some of these items while just playing the game, there are other ways to “try”. Specifically, Death’s Breath and Blood Shards. Here’s how you should spend your currency…

LoD Random Item Slots

First of all, the RANDOM ITEM SLOTS ARE IMPORTANT. In case you forgot, LoD Gem desperately wants a legendary item in all slots.

There are many ways to go about this as mentioned earlier in this guide, but ideally you want to get as many slots initially filled with random drops, bounty drops, and crafted legendaries.

If you’re desperate, that’s when you start using Blood Shards and Death’s Breaths. DB’s can be used for a Legendary Amulet as they’re quite expensive from Blood Shards. Hellfire Amulet works too.

Spending Death's Breath

DB’s are best spent finding your Legendary WEAPONS via the “upgrade rare item” mechanic in the Kanai’s Cube. In this case, both Serpent Sparker and Fragment of Destiny. Here’s how you should invest DB’s:

> 1h Wand: Serpent Sparker and Fragment of Destiny. Other fillers (Aether Walker)
> Source: Winter Flurry (if shards simply won’t drop it)
> Upgrade random items to fill out LoD slots?
> Ring: Unity, Zodiac, etc (a longshot – but if you really need ’em…)

Once you find one or both of these, you can then use DB’s to fish for other non-weapon CORE ITEMS. If you’re desperate, you can use ’em to fill out your random slots for LoD.

Spending Blood Shards

Blood Shards are great for any non-weapon, non-ring, non-amulet piece of equipment. This is typically how you fish for these core items. Here’s a spending strategy / flowchart:

> Helm: The Magistrate
> Bracer: Ashnagarr, Nemesis
> Source: Winter Flurry
> Other fillers? Belts for String of Ears / Goldwrap? Chest – Aquilla?
> Fill out random slots for LoD if you haven’t
> Rings: Unity, Halos, etc. (Expensive, but if you’re desperate…)

You can also use a few shards to get the random legendaries you need for LoD. This isn’t a bad way to use them up. Although, bounties and crafting should prove more practical.

Weapons are an EXCEPTIONALLY POOR way to spend BS. The chance you get anything you want is so remotely low, while costing a lot. Avoid. Use DB’s for weapons.

Go to top

Followers & Improving your farming speed

S23 introduced massive follower buffs including allowing your follower to have a “full build”, and have items which affect your active character even when equipped on follower. The most impactful in the early game are Sage set, and Nemesis Bracer.

Sage set doubles the amount of Deaths Breath dropped by enemies. While completely useless in combat, you can see how this will greatly speed up your farming.
Nemesis spawns an elite pack at every pylon / shrine you activate. Great for Nephs and GR’s for giving huge chunks of speed and progress towards rift completion.
Gloves of Worship (found in bounties) is also an emanate item for Followers that helps out quite a bit!

They kinda synergize. Nemesis spawns elites, and when killed are the main source of Death’s Breath.

Of course there’s a lot of other useful follower items. I won’t discuss that in detail here, but you can check out our Follower Guide & FAQ.

Go to top

Fresh Level 70 Wiz “Final” Build Preview

Welp, here’s what your fresh level 70 Wizard build SHOULD look like after a few farming sessions. Use this as a reference on how everything should come together for you in season 23.

S23 Fresh L70 Wiz – Temp LoD Hydra Build
Head	Leoric (Any)	Skill	Rune
Shoulder	Any	Electrocute / Spectral	Surge of Power / Barrier
Chest	Aquilla (Any)	Hydra	Mammoth / Frost
Arms	Tasker and Theo	Teleport	Wormhole / Safe Passage
Legs	Any	OPEN	OPEN
Boots	Illusory Boots (Any)	Blizzard	Apocalypse / Snowbound
Belt	Goldwrap / String (Any)	Energy Armor (notes)	Prismatic (notes)
Bracer	Ashnagarr’s	Passives
Amulet	Any	Galvanizing Ward
Ring	Unity / Karini > Arlyse	Blur
Ring	Unity / Karini > Arlyse	Unwavering Will
Weapon	Serpent’s Sparker	Unstable Anomaly (Open)
Offhand	Winter Flurry	—
Kanai’s Cube		Legendary Gems
Fragment of Destiny		Legacy of Dreams
Any, preferably defense or utility		Bane of the Powerful
Unity / Karini > Arlyse / Any		DEFENSE (Moratorium / Esoteric)

Build notes:

Open Skill? The build has one open slot to fill with whatever utility you need. Familiar – Arcanot for more AP. Magic Weapon has many useful runes. Mirror Image / Diamond Skin… Get creative!

Hydra Rune? The only two options are Frost and Mammoth IMO. You can try the others if you like… Personally I’m a bigger fan of Mammoth.

Primary Skill? Electrocute – Surge of Power is great in the early game or when you dont wanna worry about Arcane Power. Barrier Blades is a tankier option especially as your build matures, and you don’t really need or care about AP.

Blizzard Rune? Snowbound uses less AP, but covers less area. Apocalypse is great but chunks your AP. Totally depends on your total build options and preferences. IMO, though, if you can comfortably run with Apoc do it.

Energy, Ice, or Lightning Armor? No Halos? Energy – Prismatic. Karini? Storm – Shocking. Arlyse? Ice – Crystallize.

Passives? I just stacked pure defenses here. Your best DPS passives are Arcane Dynamo, followed by Audacity – If you want them, you can replace any of these passives except Galvanizing Ward which I feel is almost mandatory coupled with Blood Bracer. Blur is one of the weaker ones. Need more speed? Cram in Illusionist and Evocation.

Go to top

When am I strong enough? Where to go from here?

That’s exactly the goal of this guide. To get enough power to “transition into any build you like”, or finish the Seasonal Journey with ease.

Farming speed is the most important expression of your builds power. Ideally, you can easily farm Torment 8+ with a follower decked out with at least the Sage setup. Also being able to safely and reliably clear a decent GR level (70+, minimum). 99% of D3 is farming, so you want to be fast at it!

I’m strong enough, where to go from here? Well, finishing the seasonal journey is a start. Farming quickly still empowers every decision you make from here. Wether you need to finish other set dungeons, transition to try another build or character…

Ultimately getting past that “fresh level 70” roadblock of power is your aim, and if you’re reading this far down that means you’re close to or at least got there!

Go to top