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Diablo 4 Build

Exodia Frost Witch S4 1-100 Leveling + Endgame Full Progression (Blizzard, Frozen Orb, Ice Shard)

Sorcerer

Season 4

Leveling

By Mordarim

Updated on May 16, 2024

May 16, 2024

Build Overview

The Frost Witch Full Progression Build Guide aims at providing you with a perfectly smooth experience while cruising to level 100. Most of the levelling phase utilizes the powerful Frozen Orb spell to wreck your way through encounters, with the mid and endgame focusing around Blizzard triggering your Enchantments for Frozen Orb and Firebolt as well as multiple legendary aspects like the Glacial Aspect to summon Ice Spikes.

Build Variants

1-70 Leveling

70-100 Endgame Transition

Exodia Endgame Push 100

Assigned Skills

1-70 Leveling

70-100 Endgame Transition

Exodia Endgame Push 100

Primary

Secondary

Enchantments

During leveling we do not need to use flameshield, which leaves us with a basic attack to have a filler once we run out of mana. Switch to the 70-100 endgame version once you obtain a tibaults will or enough mana regen to just not care about basic skill anymore. For our main source of damage we are looking at frozen orb early, with a switch to blizzard with the right aspects.

Aspect & Uniques

1-70 Leveling

70-100 Endgame Transition

Exodia Endgame Push 100

HelmSnowguard's Aspect

Chest armorJuggernaut's Aspect

GlovesAspect of Frozen Orbit

PantsEverliving Aspect

BootsExploiter's Aspect

AmuletConceited Aspect

Ring 1Prodigy's Aspect

Ring 2Aspect of the Frozen Tundra

WeaponGlacial Aspect

OffhandEmpty

Skill Tree

1-70 Leveling

70-100 Endgame Transition

Exodia Endgame Push 100

Available

Spent58

Leveling Path

Paragon Board

1-70 Leveling

70-100 Endgame Transition

Exodia Endgame Push 100

Points Spent0

No Glyphs Installed

Stats

Str:99

Int:99

Dex:99

Will:99

How it Plays

Gameplay strategy during leveling

(Exclusively) cast Frozen Orb until you get your Blizzard Aspects going. You will use Frost Bolt as a filler when OOM.
Cast Frost Nova to trigger Vulnerable and freeze enemies.
Teleport for unstoppable and for mobility.
Cast Blizzard once you get your aspects up and running to trigger Frozen Orb on enemies in group settings as well as conjure Ice Spikes, which are your primary source of damage.
Deep Freeze as a defensive tool or to AoE whole screens.

Gameplay strategy with Blizzard

Spam Blizzard.
Use cooldowns to recover mana and keep up your barriers. Tibaults Will changes this to use teleport -> Flameshield -> Teleport -> Deepfreeze -> Repeat. Once you have enough cost reduction and mana per sec you will infinitely sustain.
Use Ice Blades to proc Vulnerable and Burning on bosses to increase DPS.
Use Deepfreeze to reset cooldown!

What Weapon should I use?

2h Weapon early, 1h+offhand for exodia. Both are valid during lvling.

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

How it Works

Once you get access to the 2nd Enchantment slot at 30, you want to slot in Frozen Orb as well as Firebolt. Casting any spell has a high 30% chance to trigger Frozen Orbs, which apply vulnerable to targets, which also applying burns for DoT fire dmg, which enables Devouring Blaze. Freezing and chilling enemies will further provide us with CC, preventing enemies from moving and buffing our dmg even further. The frozen status can be applied through chill, which is done through Blizzard, Frost Nova, or Frozen Orb. Targets affected by Frozen are at the same time also affected by the chill status, allowing for multipliers that work for chill also to work on frozen targets.

Aspects such as Glacial Aspect or Aspect of the Frozen Tundra can further drop during the levelling process, boosting the power of this build immensely through Ice Spikes that spawn inside the spell. Those count as separate entities.

During WT3 and WT4 you will be able to find a ton of incredible unique items such as Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, X'Fal's Corroded Signet, Esu's Heirloom, and Tibault's Will. All of which will either boost your offensive capabilities or increase your survivability. However, it is very hard to fit all of them and the tempering system outshines most of them except utlility based ones like Tibaults Will. S4 will also see a large increase to droprates of uber uniques due to their lower threshhold to drop, enabling you to obtain the Ring of Starless Skies much earlier, which is absolutely worth it and should be exchanged for the Shredding Aspect.

Leveling

During the levelling process before reaching T3 you are most likely going to use the Frozen Orb spell for a majority of encounters. This spell was changed to always shoot towards where your mouse is pointing instead of flying a fixed distance. This makes this spell insanely strong for leveling due to its huge AOE and great single target damage.

During leveling I highly recommend going with the highest Ilvl Weapon no matter if its a 1h or 2h one. Grab Attackspeed or increased Damage here no matter what. This will give you the strongest increase to power during the leveling process. Later you can think about grabbing some critchance on your offhand instead of the increased dmg, but attackspeed stays king.

The Prodigy’s Aspect allows you to recover mana when using cooldowns and you want to grab as much mana per sec as possible on your other gear. This is very important in making the build feel good before grabbing a Tibault Will

Aspect of Frozen Orbit is the single most important aspect during your leveling process. It will nearly guarantee 100% vulnerable uptime and increase you dps by a huge amount.

The Blizzard related ice spike Glacial Aspect is less important during leveling due to the flat value it provides. While nice once you get one on par with your lvl, it will fall off dramatically around 40-50 until you get to sacred items due to how scaling works. But once you get to the better affixes in the sacred tier, you will want switch to using blizzard around 55. Make sure to apply a new coat of the Glacial Aspect every few levels to not fall behind in terms of dmg. It is important to combine this with new weapons to take advantage of the new flat dmg scaling of aspects in S4!

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.

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!
THE ARMOR CAP IS 9230! GET THIS CAP!

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%. This change makes Resistances incredibly valuable.

Sorcerers get a ton of free resistances due to the Intelligence stat providing it to them, however it is not enough to outright ignore this defensive stat altogether.

Cold Resistance will be taken care of by your paragon board.
Lightning Resistance will also be taken care of by your paragon board.
Fire, Shadow, Poison Resistance need some help, but this might change depending on your paragon state. Make sure to use gems and defensive tempers to cap your resistances!!

After you reach Level 70 you should aim to bring all your resistances to 70%!

Each World Tier also penalized you with a resistance debuff! World Tiers III & IV now apply -25% and -50% to Resistance to All Elements. World tier IV overwrites World Tiers III!

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.

Lastly, health recovery is a problem. We don´t have much in terms of tool for this and have to mostly rely on healthpots as well as dmg prevention through CC and Barriers.

Scaling your Damage and Paragon Board

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 and Icefall as well as 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 …

Ranks to Skills are INCREDIBLY STRONG BUT not for us. We will scale our dmg through Icespikes as well as unique procs, which are not affected by this. This makes crit, attackspeed and Intelligence our best options for stats on gear. Afterwards stack conditional increases like Cold Damage which in turn scales the more multiplier from Frigid Fate, followed by conditions you can easily meet, like Damage to chilled. We try to avoid crit damage and vulnerable damage as much as possible but can slap it on if we do find it. Crit dmg is very strong once you get close to 100% and vulnerable dmg can now be met very easily with this build. Non-Physical Damage counts towards cold damage, which in turn scales the more multiplier accessed through the Frigid Fate legendary node.

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.

Transitioning into Endgame

Lastly, how to transition into endgame. Try to grab a Tibaults Will as soon as possible by farming duriel. This one is very important to get your build rolling and to be able to slot in more uniques! The more uniques you use the less mana regen per sec you will have on your gear. This also makes armor aquisition very hard!
Make sure to supplement your cost reduction with Potion of Resourcefulness, which you should be flooded with during helltides. Those will make it feaseable to switch to Tibaults earlier.

Once you are masterworking your gear and will be able to drop most of the resistance modifiers on your gear. This will make it possible to fit more stats like teleport ranks and CDR on your gear.

Uber Uniques are hard to fit now. Grab the Ring of Starless Skies first which will fix all your mana issues and will also give you a massive boost to dmg.

Leveling Plan and Tips for Season 2

Leveling Plan

Finish the seasonal quest ASAP.
Stay in the overworld and do overworld stuff. Helltides are GOATED now. Whispers for gold and mats are also a great option if you can do them while blasting helltides.
Dungeons are also great but very monotonous and I personally do not like spamming them.