Blizzard recently revealed that Sorcerers are Diablo 4‘s most popular class. It’s not hard to understand why. They’re a lot of fun to play, they’re quite powerful, and they can be built in a variety of interesting and viable ways.
We’re obviously here to talk about that last aspect of the class today. While there are several viable Sorcerer builds out there at the moment, we’re going to be focusing on builds that represent each of the class’ three main schools of magic: Lightning, Ice, and Fire. While each of these builds actually mix-and-match elements from all schools, they ultimately focus on one over the others. More importantly, each is viable for Diablo‘s Level 50+ endgame content.
The only things you won’t find in this guide are full Paragon Board breakdowns. That’s largely because Paragon Board information is still being gathered as more players optimize different kinds of builds up to Level 100. I apologize for the inconvenience, and we will update this article once more information on Paragon Boards is available.
Diablo 4 Best Lightning Sorcerer Build: Unlimited Unstable Currents
Skills: Arc Lash, Ball Lightning, Flame Shield, Frost Nova, Ice Armor, Unstable Currents
Key Legendary Aspects and Unique Gear: Rainment of the Infinite, Aspect of Fortune, Aspect of Control, Aspect of Abundant Energy, Aspect of Overwhelming Currents
This is a fascinating Lightning build that makes the most out of some slightly less obvious synergies in the Sorcerer package.
The basic idea behind this build is to use your Unstable Currents Ultimate as much as possible. So far as that goes, you have two main enablers: Overflowing Energy and Arc Lash. Overflowing Energy reduces your Shock cooldowns whenever Crackling Energy hits an enemy, and you’ll be generating a ton of Crackling Energy with this build. Arc Lash, meanwhile, reduces your cooldowns when you strike Stunned enemies, which is also pretty easy to proc with this build.
Teleport also becomes significantly more powerful in this build thanks to Rainment of the Infinite. That Unique item pulls enemies close to you and Stuns them whenever you use your Teleport ability. Both of those effects feed into the main goal of spamming Unstable Currents. Bunched-up enemies mean more Crackling Energy hits, and Stunned enemies can be spammed with Arc Lash to reduce your Unstable Current cooldown. When Unstable Currents is up, you become a cyclone of Lightning damage that can tear through packs of enemies in no time. Many of the passives in this build are intended to enhance your Unstable Currents damage, though it certainly does pretty well on its own.
That brings us to the Defensive abilities. Your Defensive abilities are so important in this build that we’re basically skipping two Skill sections to take all of them. Teleport is the obvious star of that section for the reasons noted above, but don’t overlook your other options. Ice Armor will keep you on your feet most of the time, Flame Shield is one of the best “oh s***” buttons in the game (that also offers extra damage), and Frost Nova lets you keep enemies grouped and helpless. Frost Nova might be the flex spot of this build, though I honestly don’t think there is a clearly best second option, unless you want to lean more into the burn damage package and run Hydra or Meteor. Besides, Iceheart Brais is very powerful Unique for any builds that rely on grouping enemies.
Rainment of the Infinite eventually becomes an essential piece of gear, but you can work around it until you get lucky enough to snag it. It basically enhances the strategy this build is already intended to utilize, so you can stick to the plan until you acquire it. In the meantime, it’s probably better to prioritize Defensive Legendary Aspects as so much of your damage comes from your Skills. Mana regeneration is definitely going to be a problem if you’re trying to level with this build, so I wouldn’t recommend doing that. If you’re looking for a good Lightning leveling build, this one should work fine.
Diablo 4 Best Ice Sorcerer Build: Ice Shards Turrets
Skills: Frost Bolt, Frost Nova, Teleport, Ice Armor, Flame Shield, Inferno
Key Legendary Aspects and Unique Gear: Frostburn, Aspect of Frozen Memories, Aspect of Piercing Cold, Aspect of Fortune
So far as Ice Sorcerer builds go, it’s becoming very clear that Ice Shards is one of the best overall skills in Diablo 4.
On its own, Ice Shards is a reliable, no-frills Core ability. However, the Ice Shards Enhancement takes that skill to a new level. That ability automatically summons Ice Shards to attack any Frozen enemy. As such, most Diablo 4 Ice builds are designed to freeze as many enemies as possible as often as possible in order to conjure an almost infinite stream of essentially free damage.
Specifically, this build tries to get the most mileage out of Frost Nova as possible. Since Frost Nova instantly freezes enemies that it hits, it is one of the few abilities that will guarantee a proc of the Ice Shards enhancement. That said, there are quite a few Passives and Gear abilities in this build that will allow you to Freeze enemies through basic attacks with some consistency. So far as that goes, Frostburn is the one piece of Unique gear that really elevates your core strategy and should thus be considered a must-have.
Inferno is a surprisingly strong Fire-based addition to our Ice-focused strategy. It not only allows you to grab some of this class’ powerful Fire damage buffs, but it pulls enemies close to you. As such, both it and Teleport (with the Raiment of the Infinite Unique) make it that much easier to hit larger groups of enemies with your Frost Nova ability.
Compared to the build above, I would argue that this build is a touch safer and just a bit less explosive. Constantly Freezing and slowing enemies makes it much easier to ignore incoming damage, but your own damage bursts will come during slightly tighter windows. Your choice between the two may simply come down to preference.
Again, it’s not recommended that you try leveling with this build as you will need a lot of skill points and a little gear help to make it work. That said, once you unlock the Ice Shards enhancement, you can start to play around with variations on this concept.
Diablo 4 Best Fire Sorcerer Build: Build the Firewalls
Skills: Firewall, Frost Nova, Teleport, Ice Armor, Flame Shield, Inferno
Key Legendary Aspects and Unique Gear: Raiment of the Infinite, Aspect of Engulfing Flames, Aspect of Biting Cold, Aspect of Fortune
I’m not as big of a fan of Fire Sorcerer builds as I am of Lightning and Ice builds, but this variation of a Firewall build that has been going around is certainly impressive.
You probably figured it out from the name, but this build is all about Firewall. The goal is to cast Firewall as often as possible and to force enemies to essentially live in those Firewalls. The Firewalls themselves deal damage, but they also inflict a series of valuable debuffs on anything that gets caught up in them. In an ideal situation, you’ll cast a few Firewalls, use Inferno and Frost Nova to trap enemies in the burning space, and let the Firewalls do the rest. Teleport can also be used as a “pull” technique when you unlock Raiment of the Infinite.
When things aren’t going quite so smoothly, you’ll want to run around enemies and trap them in Firewalls as much as reasonably possible. Interstingly, that makes Movement Speed more valuable in this build than it is in a lot of other builds. Meanwhile, Flame Shield and Ice Armor will keep you alive in most encounters.
Gearing for this build is interesting. Honestly, this is probably the least gear-dependant Sorcerer build from a Legendary standpoint. You can mix and match a number of Aspects and still get a lot of what this build is trying to do. There are some nice Burning-based Legendary Aspects out there, but Aspects that enhance your survivability are also welcome.
However, reducing your Cooldown time is a vital part of making this build work during harder content. We’re not taking many Skills or Passives that reduce our overall cooldown time, and you are going to be relying on some slightly longer cooldowns from time to time. As such, you’ll want to prioritize gear that reduces your Cooldown time whenever possible. It’s tough to find quality Cooldown gear that also features worthwhile secondary stats, but anything you can equip to help yourself in that area will make this build significantly better.