In this Diablo 4 Sorcerer leveling guide, we will take a look at Blizzard's new take on a Lightning-focused Sorcerer.
If you're looking for a fast and easy build for leveling, you've come to the right place.
You'll easily be able to utilize this build to not only hit endgame ASAP, but also for exploring the open world, completing side quests, and even fighting the Diablo 4 World Boss.
Diablo 4’s new Vessel of Hatred expansion will debut the Spiritborn class. Stay updated with our Spiritborn news.
This guide was written by Blyndside.
Leveling Build Summary
The Diablo 4 Sorcerer allows for manipulating the battlefield with elemental spells that are able apply status effects while delivering incredible amounts of damage, it utilizes the elements of Fire, Ice, and Lightning to inflict certain types of status effects on the enemy such as Freezing foes, Shocking to apply stuns and Burning for continuous damage.
My build will focus on leveling and pushing through the content fast with Lightning-based abilities and utilizing Crackling Energy to do large AOE bursts while keeping up primary resources (Mana). Execution is rather simple due how easily Chain Lightning works, able to deliver large bursts of damage while also hitting most units on the field.
I like this build because the build itself contains a mini game of collecting Crackling Energy that your spells create in order to deal additional damage and gain additional mana, leading to a positive and enjoyable gameplay loop.
Basic Skills
The Sorcerer has a selection of four basic skills. I'm going to choose something a little contrary to the end concept, because Spark does not generate resource for us right now.
The basic Frost Bolt is known as a "generator" once it has its final talent, it is one of two skills able to generate the mana necessary for us to be able to cast our Core Skills.
Later on, we will want to change this to Spark.
1/5 Frost Bolt (Frost Damage): Throw a bolt of frost at an enemy, dealing damage and Chilling them.
Enhanced Frost Bolt: Frost Bolt has a chance to explode on Chilled targets, hitting nearby enemies. Chance increased by 100% against frozen targets.
Glinting Frost Bolt: Frost Bolt generates mana when hitting Chilled or Frozen enemies.
This gives us a base for later while providing access to our Core Skills. You can pick up Glinting Frost Bolt after picking up the first Core Skill but faster clear speed, definitely something I’d recommend.
Core Skills
Chain Lightning is without a doubt one of the best spells, the sheer damage and clear speed it provides with little to no hassle just isn't comparable to the other 5 on the list.
This is where we’ll start rotating between our Core Skill and Basic Skill for damage and generating mana.
This is also the best time to have some fun and test the other skills as funding skills doesn't cost anything at this time, try them all and feel them out.
1/5 Chain Lightning (Shock Skill): Release a stream of Lightning that deals damage and chains between nearby enemies and you up to 6 times.
Destructive Chain Lightning: When Chain Lightning Critically Strikes, it has a 25% chance to form a Crackling Energy.
Defensive Skills
We’ll prioritize picking up Teleport and Ice Armor here, both will provide us with not only defensive capabilities when we need them but also ways to keep in the fight without getting burst.
A good thing to remember is that Teleport makes us unstoppable at no extra cost, what this essentially means is that we can’t be hit with crowd control abilities while the skill is active and it also allows us to utilize the skill even while being stuck in some sort of crowd control.
We’ll want to pick up the first passive of Ice Armor here while finishing off this section with 2 points in the passive Glass Cannon.
Teleport: Turn into lightning becoming Unstoppable and surging to the target location.
Ice Armor: A barrier of ice forms around you, absorbing 30% of your base life in damage. While Ice Armor is active, 10% of your damage is added to the barrier.
Enhanced Ice Armor: While Ice Armor is active your mana regeneration is increased by 25%
3/3 Glass Cannon: You deal increased damage, but take more damage.
Conjuration Skills
Conjuration is where we get our second source of damage, Lightning Spear. Lightning Spear with its talents gains 20% increased damage for every Crackling Energy we collect up to a total of 100%, this is huge and is amazing for clearing the screen.
The general loop at this stage is to start with Chain Lightning, collecting the Energy Orbs(Crackling Energy) as they appear to ramp up the damage of the Lightning Spear.
At this point I’d also pick up Hydras, as they’re honestly broken on their own and just provide additional passive damage for very little mana cost, you can also opt for Frost Nova here as an extra safety measure, but Hydra is hard to pass up on.
Lightning Spear: Conjure a spear of lightning that seeks out enemies, dealing damage per hit.
Enhanced Lightning Spear: After critically striking, Lightning Spear gains a 5% increased stacking critical strike chance for its duration.
Summoned Lightning Spear: Collecting Crackling Energy increases the damage of your next Lightning Spear by 25%, up to 100%.
Mastery Skills
This tree we’ll focus on just picking up passives that will round out our build, you could swap out Hydra for Ball Lightning for a more “Lightning” focused build, but I don’t think the cost of Ball Lightning is worth the switch as Hydra does more damage per second passively by just placing it down.
We’ll focus on Static Discharge for the extra Crackling Energy drops, Invigorating Conduit to enable us to spam more Chain Lightnings enabling our rotation with our last point going into Chain Lightning to gain access to Ultimates.
3/3 Static Discharge: Lucky Hit: Critical Strike with Shock skills have up to a 15% chance to form a Crackling Energy.
3/3 Invigorating Conduit: Upon absorbing Crackling Energy, you gain mana.
2/5 Chain Lightning (Lightning Damage): Release a stream of Lightning that deals damage and chains between nearby enemies and you up to 6 times.
Ultimate Skill
Our build won't utilize ultimates, instead, we’ll utilize one of the passives that are in this tree called Coursing Currents, which just enables more criticals that will lead into more Crackling Energy drops.
3/3 Coursing Currents: Hitting enemies with Shock increases your critical strike chance by 3%. Resets upon getting a critical strike.
Final Diablo 4 Leveling Sorcerer Build
The build above should be what you should be generally focusing toward during your leveling process, mostly due to the alternative routes requiring a little more mana than you have early- once you feel comfortable I’d recommend making a switch toward the Crackling Energy-focused build below:
How to Gear the Sorcerer
Early game it’s best to just wear anything, eventually swapping out Blues for Yellows, and equipping decent legendaries when obtained. This also goes for any weapon Legendaries you obtain, early game it’s likely better to swap into a skill that utilizes a weapon's Legendary.
You want to prioritize damage-dealing stats, +level to Lightning Skills, lightning damage, Critical Damage/Chance, and Intelligence.
Keep in mind that in Diablo 4, all stats are worthwhile on every class as Intelligence, Willpower, and Dexterity all have Primary attributes.
Intelligence increases Skill Damage.
Willpower increases Resource Generation.
Dexterity increases Critical Strike Chance.
While all of the stats also provide secondary attributes as well.
Strength increases Armor.
Intelligence increases All Resistances.
Willpower increases Healing Received.
Dexterity increases the chance to Dodge attacks.
Diablo 4's release date is expected to be on 6th of June, 2023 and early access will be open for Digital Deluxe owners and above on the 2nd of June, 2023, with the release of the game so close, a lot of things are likely to change for the Sorcerer, we’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Lightning Spear has a 11% chance to spawn an additional Lightning Spear when you cast it.
Unlocked by completing Crumbling Hekma in Kehjistan.
The reason why I'd recommend this Aspect is due to how well it fits into the build while also being quite easy to obtain from a dungeon, it’s not going to power spike the damage of your build by a huge amount but it will keep it rather relevant if you add the Aspect onto a 2H weapon.
We hope you found our Sorcerer leveling guide helpful! Be sure to check out our Diablo 4 Guides section.
