What are the guidelines to completing high level rifts as 2-player team?

Question

We are a 2 player team (support monk and firebird wizard) and are struggling to get past GRIFT 105.

According to leaderboards we have superior (on paper) DPS to those running GRIFTS 115+, so it must be something in the way we approach the rift.

Our approach is to gather as many whites as we can find, then destroy them, moving forward until we find elites.

We avoid Juggernauts.

We seem to be doing fine in large groups, but the meteors seem to get increasingly worse the fewer mobs there are on the screen.

What am I missing? Do we have to exclusively hunt elites, ignoring everything else? What if a giant blob of whites is blocking the way for the wizard? The monk needs to stay pull them away from the bottleneck.

It seems like we don't have enough DPS, again, teams higher up the ladder have gear that's similiar or worse than ours, it must be how we tackle the grift...any tips which hidden witchcraft we're missing is appreciated!

Skillset for the wizard: 3.1million DPS on paper 20k intelligence 1200 Paragons, 50% crit, 475% crit dmg, 70% area damage, 29% meteor dmg

• Meteor - Meteorshower
• Magic Weapon - Ignite
• Storm Armor - reactive Armor
• Teleport - Wormhole
• Arcane Torrent - Flame Ward
• Frostnova - Bone Chill

Passives: Audacity, Glass Cannon, Dominance, Unwavering Will

Support monk is capable of surviving 108+.

Answer 1

You don't want to go specifically elite hunting, instead you want to go density hunting.

The wizards biggest tool is area damage and you want to capatalize on it.

Be aware that it is insanely hard to get all the skill timings correct with this build, and this may be the single biggest cause for the difference in GR levels. In my opinion it is the hardest bulid to play properly, and skill plays a very large part.

Group mobs: The best way to do this is to seek out and form large groups of monsters, because a big white pack is more beneficial than wasting time on an elite with no white mobs (and no Oculus for your wizzard to stand in). Once you do find an elite don't fight it right away, instead the monk should pull it along a little bit (using cyclone) and round up an even bigger group of mobs (wizard can help here as well), ideally two elite packs and a bunch of trash so you can wipe the screen with all that area damage.

Dont stay to fight: If you take down all the white mobs but dont kill the elite, then consider pulling it along (It will follow you a bit, and the monk can use cyclone) while you find more white mobs to form another big group.

Wizard: It is also very important for the wizard to stands in the Oculus circle (Provided by the monk) whenever possible, and that the monk pulls the mobs on top of the wizzard so that Audacity will work correctly, and strongarms will be triggered.

Legendary gems: What gems is the wizard using? Bane of the Trapped is manditory, and Taeguk is follows closely. If you struggle to kill the rift guradian then use Bane of the Stricken as your third gem.

Elemental damage: Make sure that the wizard has elemental damage on their amulet and wrists. Elemental damage is a massive buff, and is a multiplier to sheet damage.

Wizard set: Is the wizard using the same build as the leaderboards? If so then be aware that it is insanely hard to get all the skill timings correct, and this may be the single biggest cause for the difference in GR levels. There is a very small damage window that is crucial, so many of the wizards on the leaderboards have insane keyboard skills, or are using third party software to macro the skills so that everything is timed correctly. If the wizard is unaware of how to time the skills or are not nimble on the keyboard then consider swapping to a more user friendly varient (Starpact or Tal Rasha).

Monk: Is the wizard struggling to stay alive? If so then that has a massive effect on damage output because they are too busy trying to stay alive. Consider spending some time maxing the Monks globe bonus on all pieces of gear that have the stat (Ancient items give far greater healing bonus), and also maxing attack speed.

Advertise for groups: It can take a while to get the combo working, maybe try paring with other monks and wizards to see what they do differently. And then come back and try what you learned.

Last note: As @Dpeif mentioned, 3.1mil is not a lot for a wizard at this level of GR, and especially not in a two man group with a support monk/barb.

Answer 2

Use Star Pact instead of Meteor Shower, it has much higher damage potential.

Get the timing down perfectly, it isn't easy to consistently proc the deathwish in time.

Save your meteors for your COE (arcane), as you need the density to do high damage, and if the density dies while not on COE you wont hit the elites as hard.

Get huge density rifts, this will require some 'fishing' and can be time consuming. Look for open floor layouts.

Watch videos, there are plenty of 2 man team videos out there of monk and fb wiz, they will give you a good idea of what you should be doing.

Your area damage is actually quite low. You want area damage on every piece possible, if you're missing 1 or 2 thats OK for 105s, but you really want it on everything. This is a bit of a misunderstood stat as area damage works kind of weird. The easy way to think of it is every 5 mobs in the group gets you 1 area damage proc. So if there's 20 mobs in the group you get 4 procs, so you actually get 70% x 4 = 280% damage. At 40 mobs it's twice that, so the larger the group and the more area damage you get the numbers get insane which is how people are able to push so high.

Good luck!