S5 Near Immortal Fireball - Perfected Exodia Fireball 1-100 Leveling + Endgame Full Progression

The Meatballmancer - 100 Exodia Fireball build aims at providing you with a delicious experience capable of clearing all high lvl pits, the new hell seasonal mechanic and uber bosses. It is a true ranged build that is able to offscreen enemies without getting into danger. Helltides are a blast to do and allow you to speedlevel your character into endgame. You will be doing everything at top speed lubed up in delicious souce. The biggest strength of this build is its immense amount of AoE and incredible range capable of off screening foes even 1 screen away. Later you will be able to access true godhood with the Exodia version once you get access to GA gear and uber uniques.

Gameplay strategy

1. Cast Fireball.
2. Use Teleport to move around.
3. Use Iceblades and Lightning Spear to proc Tal Rasha and apply vulnerable to targets.
4. Use Ice Armor for Mana Regen and Unstoppable with Snowveiled Aspect.
5. Use Unstable Currents to get a massive attackspeed buff and more Lightning Spears.

Later we can include Andariel to proc poison as a 4th instance on Tal Rashas. We will also get insane amounts of health back due to health on hit and additional attackspeed. If you happen to drop a Harlequins instead, you can still use it and benefit greatly from the other Uber helmet. Make sure to check out the Unique section down below.

Video Guides
I always update the written guides first before moving to youtube video guides. Make sure to check out the channel!
https://www.youtube.com/@Mordarim

This build heavily focuses on the interaction of Staff of Endless Rage and Gloves of the Illuminator, which are required for this build to pop off. You can however get to enjoy this build with just the Gloves of the Illuminator. Down below you will find a section going over substitutes for the Unique’s listed in this build. If you want to level as a fireball character make sure to go into helltides and stick to group based content to really benefit from the Fireball Enchant! Otherwise I advice you to play a firewall build until you get the mentioned uniques.

Gloves of the Illuminator changes your Fireball to a bouncy boi hitting the ground and exploding 3 times. Due to the gigantic explosion radius of Fireball you are nearly 100% guaranteed to hit targets by at least 2, which always results in a net plus to the dmg despite the less damage modifier of the effect. S5 will make it possible to roll 0% less dmg on it! We also get 1-2 mana back on a fireball explosion, resulting on at least 6 mana to be restored per fireball used. Those explosions should synergize very well with the Fireball Enchant which triggers explosions on monster death.

We can further combine this with Staff of Endless Rage to create 2 additional bouncing Fireballs every 3rd cast. All of which can stack and deal up to 90% more damage. We also get a ton of additional Fireball ranks. Hitting larger targets with all 9 balls is incredibly easy due to their narrow spread, but regular targets are also hit by multiple of them. This lead to a top end dmg of 810% of your regular Fireball hit. Each fireball also triggers an explosion resulting in 18 mana restored through the Gloves of the Illuminator!

This is the core of the build! We further enhance it by including multiple uniques such as Godslayer Crown, Temerity, Tibault's Will, Soulbrand, Tal Rashas and later Uber Uniques like **Harlequins Crest, Andariels, Tyraels Might and The Ring of Starless Skies.

Leveling

Due to the requirement of Gloves of the Illuminator I do not recommend leveling with Fireball, but it is doable. I will provide a seperate Firewall setup for you to enjoy during the 1-50(70) part until you get the balls bouncing. But i will also provide you with a fireball alternative if you really want to commit. S5 will allow you to drop Uniques from a variety of sources, as well as buy them from other players. With S4s inclusion of Unique drops in the lootpool of WT1 and WT2 you will be able to obtain them very easily.

GREAT FOR LEVELING!
Aspect Of Elemental Acuity
Casting a Pyromancy, Shock, or Frost Skill increases your Mana Regeneration by 10-20% for 5 seconds, once per Element.
At maximum stacks, the total bonus is increased to 60-120% for 10 seconds, but all stacks expire after the duration.

Defenses and Resistances

Season 4 changes a lot of things. This warrants a bit of an extended explanation when it comes to defences. This will heavily affects how we gear in terms of DR, which is now MUCH more impactful. Each % increase is rarer but the dmg scaling of enemies takes this into account, making single increases in the paragon board or on gear insanely strong. Increases on gear however can only be obtained on Uniques or through aspects, so keep that in mind.

Keep your gear updated to not fall behind in Armor. Make sure to upgrade it once you feel like you are taking too much damage from regular enemies. Always compare the gear you are wearing to the gear you pick up!

Resistances now have a hard cap at 70%. Meaning a 100-damage elemental damage hit would only deal 30 damage. We can further increase this cap with maximum resistance. Endgame elixirs provide you with additional 6% to one element. The 100-damage hit would now be reduced by 76% to 24, which is 20% LESS damage taken than before. This cap can be increased to 85% which is done in the exodia build through Tyraels Might and Andariels

This change makes Resistances incredibly valuable, especially when pushing higher Tier Content. Sorcerers get a ton of free resistances due to the Intelligence stat providing it to them, which will basically allow you to complete your resistance caps without much affort.

1. Cold, Lightning, Fire Resistance will be taken care of by your paragon board and Jewelry affixes.
2. Shadow, Poison Resistance will need a bit of work depending on your Jewelry. You will either need 1 dedicated gem or a diamond gem to cap those.

Crafting Elixiers is a valid way to free up another affix on your gear but I personally much prefer *armor elixiers since its much harder to acquire sufficient values to not get destroyed once you enter 100 NMs and the Pit.

Speaking of which, Armour is still incredible and MUCH easier to get maxed out, even on a sorcerer. The higher Item Power allows for a much higher base value. One Total Armour affixes now also provides you with enough to get you to 9230 Armour, which translates to 85% reduced physical damage taken vs targets level 100+. IF you can get your resis sorted, you can drop them in favour of skullgems to make this easier, but your chest slot should take care of this.

And lastly Damage Reduction. This stat works on all damage types and now a lot rarer. We get it through every few sources but it is IMPORTANT to grab somewhere to offset the penalty of glass canon. Do not omit the paragon related reductions and do not omit any DR on gear through aspects or through the skilltree. Tyraels Might is an incredible choice once you find it, providing your with extra dmg and a TON of DR. BUT armor becomes an issues that needs to be sorted.

Unique List and how to obtain them

S Tier | Gloves of the Illuminator - Mandartory for the build. Can be obtained in WT1 and WT2 through all activities. Make sure to roll gloves at the gambler since you will be able to find them through this in S5. Same is true for helltide chests. It allows you to get the Balls bouncing. This will make playing the build and sustaining you mana much easier.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Grigoire and the Beast in the Ice

S Tier | Staff of Endless Rage - Very important for the build. Can be obtained in WT1 and WT2 through all activities. Make sure to roll gloves at the gambler since you will be able to find them through this in S5. Same is true for helltide chests. It enchances your Fireball with massive buffs to its dmg and it synergizes very well with the Gloves of the Illuminator.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Varshan and Lord Zir

A+ Tier | Godslayer Crown - This unique will greatly enchance the burst potential of this build, especially vs bosses and groups of enemies. Its incredible and rivals all Uber Unique choices the game has to offer. However, it comes at the cost of mana regen which can be a huge issue for this build without the Ring of Starless Skies. Use it whenever your mana issues are sorted until you can grab an Uber.
S5 allow the effect of this item (60x multiplier) to apply on dealing dmg vs bosses.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Duriel and Andariel

A Tier | Tibault's Will - BiS pants before you get an Andariels. Helps with mana sustain. Works best with capped armor without the Juggernaut Aspect.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Duriel and Andariel

S Tier | Temerity - With S5 we will see an incredible buff to this item. Use it once you get Andariels, which now provides you with health on hit resulting in infinite barrier!
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- *Lord Zir

A Tier | Soulbrand - This chest provides you with up to 40% DR in S5. Additionally you wil generate a ton of Barrier through potion uses. You can alternatively drop this chest for a rare one with lvls to teleport, resistances, armor and maximum life, but nothing will come close to the defenive potential of this piece of gear, except Tyraels Might.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Duriel and Andariel

S Tier | Tal Rashas - This ring provides you with an enormous boost to your dmg with up to 80% more dmg dealt in S5 once we get to deal some poison dmg with Andariels. Its just incredible and priority to get on nearly any Sorcerer Build.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Varshan

UBERS:

A Tier | Harlequins Crest - This Uber Unique will now also provide you with a ton of Amor which makes it a great choice for any build in the game. The effect provides you with 4 Ranks to all your skills and 20 DR. BUT, Godslayer outperformance it in terms of dmg. And Andariels beats. We get a ton of Ranks to fireball through other sources already and we can´t masterwork the ranks on this item anyway. This make it an inferior choice compared to the other gear pieces suggested in this guide.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Duriel, Andariel, all tormented bosses

S+ Tier | Andariels - Be careful who you call ugly in previous seasons. This item is absolutely insane now. 30% attackspeed, around 450 life on hit, 80 all stats, 10% maximum poison resist and 666% flat poison res to cap you all in one item. It gives you access to incredible sustain, deletes the threat of poison dmg from the game, gives you a TON of attackspeed on a defensive slot and provides you with a massive 40k poison nova to apply a stack of Tal Rashas. Just just insanely good.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Duriel, Andariel, all tormented bosses

S Tier | Tyraels Might - The defensive monster. BIS on nearly all builds in the game, offering you 17% movementspeed, 7.5% MAX RES TO ALL ELEMENTS & 60% Resistance to all elements as well as 20% DR. On top of that we will also get access to a barrage of divine projectiles which we will basically always fire due to infinite Barrier through Temerity and Andariels. A defensive monster.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Duriel, Andariel, all tormented bosses

S+ Tier | The Ring of Starless Skies - This item was already very good on a lot of builds, but it got even better. 17.5% attackspeed, 12.5% crit chance, 12.5% lucky hit chance AND 2 Ranks to coreskills. On top of the 50% more dmg multiplier and 50% cost reduction. You will never run out of mana. Ever. Given the massive boot to attackspeed through this item, Andariels and the Gloves of the Illuminator we are looking at attackspeed cap. But we are also using Aspect of Ancient Flame. which overcaps your attackspeed but you will still benefit from it because its a special instance.
☠️Target farm Bosses☠️- Duriel, Andariel, all tormented bosses

Scaling your Damage

Season 2 also saw some big changes to how you are going to Scale your Damage. Crit Damage and Vulnerable Damage are now all added into the same bucket as all other damage increases like Damage to chilled. They now work as increased damage.

Critical strike are however still useful! A critical strike will now always deal 50% more damage. Meaning a 100 damage hit will now deal 150 damage. Critical Strikes are basically 50% more damage for free.

Vulnerable saw the same treatment with a 20% more multiplier. 100 damage will increase to 120. We want to apply Vulnerable for effects such as the legendary nodes Frigid Fate as well as the vampiric power Prey on the Weak and the Storm Swell Aspect on gear.

The calculation for this is now as follows:

(Base damage) x (Willpower modifier) * (increased damage) x (crit multiplier if crit [static 50%]) x (vulnerable multiplier if vulnerable [static 20%]) x (more multiplier 1) x (more multiplier 2) x (more multiplier 3) x …

Additionally, Non-Physical Damage counts towards cold and fire damage, which in turn scales the more multiplier accessed through the Frigid Fate and Searing Heat legendary node. Frigid Fate works on all damage types as long as the target is vulnerable. But this leaves us with the problem of making enemies vulnerable with a fireskill. How are we going to do that? Through a new lucky hit affix on gear! Slap it on your amulet and you are golden. This will give us a TON of additional dmg.

As for the Paragon board its a great source for your offensive stats but also for additional defences in form of DR and Resistances. Unlock glyph thresholds first before scaling them with additional increases to your damage. Some glyphs need 15 ranks in them to utilize their threshold bonus. Progress from board to board, grab the legendary nodes ASAP and move on to the next board afterwards.

Please check the Attack Speed Section below.

Critical Strike Chance
You will get to 40% sheet crit chance very easily. 12% additional pyromancy crit chance is found in the paragon tree and you also get 10% through the keystone Esus Ferocity in the skilltree. Resulting in a bit over 60% critchance. Math says this is the optimal point for dmg gains.

S5 Changes

1) Fireball
Damage increased from 60% to 66%.

2) Ice Armor
Max Life Base Shield amount increased from 25% to 40%.
No longer gains increased Shield based on damage.

3) Teleport
Cooldown increased from 11 to 14.
Base damage increased from 25% to 35%.

4) Crippling Flames
Immobilize chance increased from 5% to 7%.

5) Warmth
Healing from non-elites increased from 0.5/1/1.5% to 1/2/3%.
Healing from bosses increased from 2/4/6% to 4/8/12%.

6) Mana Shield
Damage reduction Increased from 8% to 10%.

7) Align the Elements
Damage Reduction from Elites cap increased from 40% to 60%.

8) Unleash Glyph
Increased the damage bonus from 7% to 8%.
Increased the Mana Regeneration from 7% to 25%.

9) Frigid Fate
Now caps its damage bonus at 60%[x].
Scaling from damage with Cold increased from 10% to 20%.

10) Searing Heat
Now caps its damage bonus at 60%[x].
Scaling from damage with Fire increased from 10% to 20%.

Attack Speed Buckets & Breakpoints

There are currently 2 known attack speed buckets. The sheet bucket caps at 100% additive attack speed, the special bucket ignores that cap and goes beyond it.

Sheet Bucket

1. Moonrise
2. Elixir of Advantage II
3. Attack Speed (Gear Affix)
4. Andariel's Visage
5. Culler
6. Swift Conjurer
7. Ancient Flame
8. Artillery Shrine (100% AS)

Special Bucket

1. Aspect Accelerating
   ‍2. Aspect Rapid
2. ‍Prime Unstable Currents
3. Basic Attack Speed (Gear Affix)
4. ‍Gloves of the Illuminator
5. Pyromancy Attack Speed (Tempering)

To explain what Attack Speed Breakpoints are we first need to understand how the game works.

• The server operates at a fixed 60 FPS, irrespective of your ingame FPS.
• Because casts can only take a discrete amount of frames to go off this leads to the existence of breakpoints.
• A cast can't take between X.01 and X.99 frames. For example, Attack Speed values that should lead to a cast speed between 20.01 to 20.1 will all lead to 21 frames.
• Because the server runs at 60 FPS we can find our real cast speed by calculating 60/Frames. For example, if your Heartseeker cast takes 15 frames, that translates to 60/15 = 4 attacks per second.

This means for Fireball we are looking at multiple distinct breakpoints rounded up to the nearest full number.

• 2 attacks per sec = 36% attackspeed
• 2.5 attacks per sec = 71.1% attackspeed
• 3 attacks per sec = 106.3% attackspeed
• 3.5 attacks per sec = 141.9% attackspeed (maximum)

There are other breakpoints inbetween but those listed are the most important ones. Aim for 2.5 before Andariels and Starless and 3.5 afterwards.

Build list

Sorcerer S5

1. Exodia Meatballmancer S5 1-100 Leveling + Endgame Full Progression (Fireball)
   https://mobalytics.gg/diablo-4/profile/2ca243f3-a3b0-4f9a-ae02-aa8db0633a5c/builds/ab48922a-b756-4ca8-b318-5adf67a03ae7

Rogue S5

1. Victimize Heartseeker 1-100 Leveling + Endgame Full Progression (Victimize, Heartseeker, Smoke Grenade)
   https://mobalytics.gg/diablo-4/profile/2ca243f3-a3b0-4f9a-ae02-aa8db0633a5c/builds/509ed177-cad7-48f5-99eb-c46a3d1d11e5

Druid S5

1. Sundering Cataclysm Storm Claw Endgame Full Progression (Earth spike, Claw, Stormstrike)
   https://mobalytics.gg/diablo-4/profile/2ca243f3-a3b0-4f9a-ae02-aa8db0633a5c/builds/80240270-466f-48e7-8988-1904c7839d0e

12.8.2024

1. Optimized the skilltree for the 70-100 and Uber sections for better performance.
2. Changed the Enchant recommendation to Frostblades for regular play instead of Fireball.
3. Exchanged Temerity for Tibaults Will for the 70-100 section.
4. Changed the stats and Aspects on the Chest Armor in the 70-100 section.
5. Changed the stats and Aspects on the Amulet & Ring in the 70-100 section as well as Uber section.
6. Optimized the Paragon board by adding an additional board and glyph.
7. Added new Attack Speed Buckets & Breakpoints Section.
8. Added new 100 Exodia Tyraels Might Section.
9. Optimized the 100 Exodia Regular Section.