LoD Hydra Wizard Guide

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. This is a Legacy of Dreams build whose success is heavily dependent on this gem's rank. The first order of business is to equip a Legendary or Set item in every slot to take advantage of its power. Make sure to not have any Set Bonuses equipped or the gem will be nullified and you will deal no damage! Farm speed Greater Rifts (in under 5 minute clears) to find the items and get this gem as high as possible. Above Rank 25 ancient pieces of gear will give you even greater power.

3. Gamble from Kadala in this order:

1. The Magistrate
2. Create a level 1 Wizard and gamble for Winter Flurry
3. Tasker and Theo
4. Nemesis Bracers
5. Goldwrap
6. Aquila Cuirass
7. Mantle of Channeling
8. Ice Climbers
9. Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer
10. Stone Gauntlets
11. Blackthorne's Jousting Mail

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

1. Wands to get Serpent's Sparker, Fragment of Destiny and Aether Walker
2. Rings to get Halo of Karini, Convention of Elements and Unity
3. Anything from the Gamble list in Step 3 that you haven't already acquired.
   
   

5. At this point you can somewhat comfortably farm Nephalem or Speed Greater Rifts where you can find all the remaining items you need for different variants of the build. Spend your materials getting items with better rolls and/or ancient quality.

6. 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:

• Serpent's Sparker
• Winter Flurry
• Convention of Elements
• Halo of Karini

• Legacy of Dreams is the Legacy of Nightmares Set in a gem, which frees up two ring slots at the cost of removing Bane of the Trapped. Due to the rings available to us this is a great trade-off to take.
• Bane of the Stricken helps us kill the Rift Guardian. As long as you don't need more than 2 minutes to kill it you can equip Bane of the Trapped.
• Enforcer is strictly better than Bane of the Trapped since its damage multiplier is unconditional.

• Blizzard Unrelenting Storm is purely a catalyst to activate the damage buff of Winter Flurry. We need to cast it twice during one full cycle of Convention of Elements.
• Black Hole Spellsteal grants us a nice additive damage buff. Additionally, this is skill the best way for us to proc Oculus Ring, since pets still cannot proc it.
• Teleport Safe Passage provides us with a nice defensive buff each time we use it. We are not using Illusory Boots, which is why we need at least one source of mobility.
• Storm Armor Shocking Aspect is needed to proc the defensive capabilities of Halo of Karini. Shocking Aspect has the best overall uptime while Scramble grants a nice Movement Speed buff.
• Hydra Mammoth Hydra is the best rune for Area Damage. Hence, we play it!
• Spectral Blade Barrier Blades is our main ability to stack Bane of the Stricken on the Rift Guardian; due to The Shame of Delsere and Fragment of Destiny, which are both separate speed-coefficients, our total Attack Speed will be 2.25 faster than what our sheet Attack Speed depicts. Additionally, Barrier Blades provides us with some much needed shielding to preserve our Squirts Necklace.

• Elemental Exposure is a separate and global multiplier debuffing each target once for each element (Fire, Cold, Arcane, Lighting) for up to 5 seconds when you hit it with said target. The elemental type of the Damage Range on your equipped weapon will also be applied with each ability that you hit with.
• Audacity provides us with a separate 1.3 multiplier if and only if our target is within 15 yards.
• Galvanizing Ward grants a massive shield leading to better Squirt's Necklace uptime in conjunction with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer.
• Arcane Dynamo grants us a 60% separate damage multiplier to our Mammoth Hydras. However, it requires us to cast our skills in a specific sequence since both Black Hole as well as Blizzard can consume this passive.
• Other options can include Unwavering Will, Conflagration or Blur for slightly more damage or mitigation.

¹ Aim for a decent HP pool (~800,000 Life in Solo Push) as your Shields (Galvanizing Ward and Barrier Blades) scale with it.

The Altar of Rites is a tree that grants tremendous powers to your entire account in exchange for sacrifices. It requires you to farm Bounties, kill the Ubers, craft the Staff of Herding, and more. Completing all 26 of these tasks, along with sacrificing 6 Primal Ancients grants you extra Damage, Defense, Quality of Life, Increased Drops and 3 Potion Super Powers. Read the full guides on Unlocking the Altar and the Altar Mechanics by Raxxanterax and Chewingnom to learn everything about this fantastic mechanic!

Optimal Path

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Followers share 20% of their Experience, Magic and Gold Find stats with you.
5. Legendary gems do not work on followers, except Esoteric Alteration and Mutilation Guard.
6. With Enforcer equipped on the player, it is much easier to keep followers alive without immortality relic since the 90% damage reduction works on them. Unfortunately for this build, Unity requires you to use immortality relic.
7. Cooldown Reduction does not work for any follower skill except the Templar’s Heal.
8. Followers never deal significant damage; you’re on your own to clear the content.

Select Follower

The general playstyle is very straightforward, which is why LoD Hydra is one of the most beginner Wizard builds out there.

• When you enter the Greater Rift you want to cast Storm Armor and make sure this buff won't time out on you.
• Afterwards you must cast Spectral Blade five times to receive the Arcane Dynamo buff, which you must consume with casting Hydras every 16 seconds. You place two Hydras this way.
• You should cast Black Hole Spellsteal three seconds before your Convention of Elements goes into its Fire cycle.
• You cast Blizzard every 8 seconds. Each time right at the beginning of your Convention of Elements Cold and Lightning cycle.
• The rest of the time, you simply hold down Spectral Blade. You can occasionally use Teleport to jump into an Oculus Ring.

This build is already insanely tanky but you can rotate out Elemental Exposure for Blur if you want more safety. Check out our dedicated Hardcore Survival Guide to learn more about how to succeed in this game mode!

• Hydra Mammoth Hydra only has one head, hence it does not work with The Typhon's Veil. This is why this rune is best used with the Legacy of Dreams setup presented at hand.
• Hydras does benefit from Pet damage bonuses but Attack Speed is not a damage multiplier for them. Unlike most pets, Attack Speed increases the rate of their attacks upon reaching Breakpoints instead.
• Mammoth Hydras target the closest monster and start to cast expanding Fire pools (the layers), dealing damage and expanding by 10 yards every 0.3 seconds, up to 50 yards.
• These layers spawn in front of the Hydras and take about 1.8 seconds to expand to their full length of 50 yards. Layers last for 3 seconds after they fully expanded, for a total duration of 4.8 seconds. This means one layer ticks 16 times, once every 0.3 seconds.
• This mechanic creates a ramp-up period to reach maximum damage potential. This is why positioning Mammoth Hydras less than 5 yards in front of the monsters is extremely important because the layers reach the monsters and damage them instantly. If the monster is more than 5 yards away, you lose one tick per layer (6.25% damage), two ticks (12.5% damage) if the monster is more than 15 yards away… and so on.
• When the Mammoth Hydra expires after 15 seconds, or is replaced by a new one (in which case the oldest instance is replaced), its remaining layers are orphaned, meaning they do not benefit from your damage multipliers anymore.

• In order to keep up your shields to survive while maintaining Squirt's Necklace damage multiplier, you need to learn to judge the incoming damage and how fast you can build those shields yourself, which requires practice.
• Shields have no direct UI indicator unless you mouseover your health globe.
• You can see that you have any shield up when you see a transparent blue bubble around your character (not the size of the shield, however).
• Because Wizard Shield values scale with your total life, Vitality and Life % stats become substantially better for toughness scaling compared to other builds.
• Galvanizing Ward is the main shielding mechanic used for most Wizard builds, which combined with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer adds up to 120% of your total life as a shield. This shield will reset to its maximum value every 5 seconds if this shield in particular doesn't take any hit in the meantime.
• Spectral Blade Barrier Blades and Magic Weapon Deflection represent the secondary shielding mechanic of the Wizard and can be stacked as much as you like, but their shield value is set at 4% (up to 8% with Ashnagarr's Blood Bracer) of your total life and they only lasts for 3 seconds. The duration is counted for each stack individually.
• While Barrier Blades or Deflection (or any other shield in that matter) protect the Galvanizing Ward shield, it is possible to reset the shield gained from the passive to full even while taking hits.
• All of these mechanics make it so that when your shields start breaking or your Galvanizing Ward doesn't find enough time to reset, the whole setup will fall apart really quickly. Make sure you understand your limits and survivability in different situations.

• The Attack Speed bonus of The Shame of Delsere and Fragment of Destiny are multiplicative with each other and with other bonuses. This means using both will grant you a 1.5 * 1.5 = 2.25 Attack Speed multiplier. With the solo setup presented in this guide, using both these items will effectively drop your Spectral Blade Breakpoint from 35 FPA to 16 FPA.
• This can be used to stack Bane of the Stricken faster on longer boss fights or even on Rare Elites because you can avoid hitting too many different enemies at a time using Spectral Blade. Try to use it a lot especially at the start of a long boss fight and when you are waiting for your Convention of Elements Fire cycle!
• The damage bonus stacks from Fragment of Destiny are additive with each other, combining into a 300% separate damage multiplier at 10 stacks. To gain and keep the stacks, you need to actually hit enemies. Each enemy hit adds another stack, so you won't have to attack 10 times in AoE situations.

• Each stack is a debuff for one of the following elements: Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning.
• Each stack is unique and will refresh its own duration when reapplied.
• Any ability with a proc coefficient greater than 0 will apply a stack of its respective element. This inherently means that only selfcasted abilities will grant stacks.
• The elemental range on the Weapon applies its respective stack with all abilities if the elemental range is of the type: Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning. The only exception to this is Hydra, which only applies the stack of the Hydra element itself.
• The Magistrate has a special interaction. Hydra applies the stack of the Hydra element itself. The Frost Nova casted by your Hydras will, however, apply the Cold stack as well as the stack for the elemental range of your weapon. This is why Item Stat Priorities mention that you want a weapon with Lightning Damage Range.
• The 5% damage from each stack is additive to each other adding up to a total of 20% separate damage multiplier.

• This is one of the strongest DPS passives in the game, giving up to 60% multiplicative damage bonus for Hydras.
• Maximum stack count is 5, which stacks once per attack of your Signature Spells (Spectral Blade).
• Stacks will be consumed by any damaging Arcane Power Spender, including non-Hydra spells.
• The effect only activates and consume stacks after reaching the maximum of 5.