Ball Lightning - Mana Tank

Using Ball Lightning as its primary source of damage, the Mana Tank Sorcerer is an incredibly tanky Sorcerer able to dish out reasonable damage and tank damage due to the unique Melted Heart of Selig.

1. Reduce HP below 35%.
2. Ice Blades is used for the Tal'Rasha stack.
3. Charge a few Ball lightning to get damage rolling. Once you're recouping mana, you can spam Ball Lightning.
4. We want to activate Unstable Currents during Elite packs or bosses. Pulling things toward an Elite is generally a good idea so we don't waste Unstable Currents.
5. Use Ice Armour consistently for defense. Attempt to upkeep Ice Blade for the Tal'Rasha's buff and stacks can be maintained by just using Ball Lightning.

The build functions similarly to the Ball Lightning that most have become accustomed to now. The twist with the Mana Tank is that survivability has gone through the roof due to a Unique known as the Melted Heart of Selig, which essentially allows us to use our Resources in place of our Health, combining this with modifiers such as Damage Reduction while Injured we're able to play this build on Low Life increasing our tankiness even further.

• Remember to reduce your life below 35% to gain the Injured status. This enables your Damage Reduction while Injured.

Levelling Tips

As the build relies on a Unique to get rolling, mainly Melted Heart of Selig, the best bet for a build like this would be to start with **Ball Lightning - Orbital Storm**, then transition into a build like this once you've gained the Unique.

That guide also has tips for starting.

Ball Lightning

The core damage ability of the build is Ball Lightning, and it performs incredibly well with Gravitational Aspect as it allows for a much more excellent uptime on enemies. This is further enhanced with Raiments of the Infinite, grouping packs so that we're more easily hitting everything with our rotating Ball Lightning

• Wizard's Ball Lightning: This choice is essential. It's what helps incredibly well with the upkeep of Ball Lightning. Combining it with the passive Invigorating Conduit gives us mana.
• Mage's Ball Lightning: Due to the cost of Ball Lightning, this just isn't worth the investment. The synergy between Wizard's and Invigorating Conduit is almost unmatched regarding resource generation, especially in the early game.

It's important to note that Ball Lightning hit rate scales with Attack speed. This is useful to know as sometimes specific season mechanics can be utilised to increase the effectiveness of Ball Lightning.

• The Vampire Power Ravenous is essential this season; increasing our movement speed gives us more attack speed. Thus, boots like Esu's Heirloom combine well here.

Alternative Setups

This build can use and swap around quite a few uniques and Uber uniques, a lot of these work with the build, so there's quite a bit of flexibility depending on what you have looted.

Rings

• Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop: The best in slot ring right now is Tal Rasha's, giving a crazy increase in damage and allowing

Helmets

• Harlquinn Crest: Harlequinn gives us +4 to all skills and incredibly nice damage reduction. It's probably best in slot for most builds, especially when Damage Reduction is needed; that said, it doesn't compete with the damage Godslayer Crown can give; thus, it's only best in slot if you need Damage Reduction.
• Godslayer Crown: Gives us an incredible 60% damage increase; this is best in slot for us in most areas of play, as we can quickly meet the Stunning/Freezing requirement.

Weapon

• Occulus: This is more of a season-exclusive buff due to how Metamorphosis and Occulus interact. We're mostly aiming for the stats of the Occulus as Metamorphosis kindly deletes the horrendous unique passive that Occulus has, giving us an almost endless supply of unstoppable evades.

Paragon Board

The focus for the Paragon Board here is on increasing damage, resistances and damage reduction, using boards like Burning Instinct that benefit heavily from using our Fire Bolt Enchantment.

Our Glyph and Board order is based on a level 100 character. If you're levelling and have yet to reach level 100, it's a good idea to use Ball Lightning - Orbital Storms board before transitioning to this one.

The Glyphs

• Unleash: Great with Heart of Selig, giving us some Mana Regeneration and damage.
• Territorial: Some Damage Reduction vs Close and some Damage vs Close. This complements how Ball Lightning is played.
  Warding
• Destruction: Giving us 194% Critical Strike damage in a Dexterity board like Ceaseless Conduit is a solid choice for maximum critical strike damage.
• Adept: Works great with our Ball Lightning as Adept increases the damage of Mastery Skills for every point of Intelligence as well as expanding the area of Mastery Skills by 20%

1.0 - Build Created.