Diablo 4: Frozen Orb Sorcerer Build Guide

Diablo 4 has significantly buffed Sorcerers in Season of the Infernal Hordes. Their Uniques are stronger, many Legendary Aspects were buffed, Paragon nodes have doubled in effectiveness, and the Intelligence stat received a scaling buff. Needless to say, Sorcerers are finally in a good spot for endgame content.

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This guide covers everything you need to know about the Infernal Hordes game mode in Diablo 4.

No build demonstrates this better than Frozen Orb mixed with Lightning Spear, a popular build archetype for endgame Sorcerer mains and Diablo content creators. In this guide, we go over how to create the Frozen Orb Sorcerer build for yourself, covering everything from the skill tree to optimized Aspects and item tempers.

Build Overview

Mobalytics Link

Pros

Cons

• S-tier clearspeed
• Great single-target DPS
• Good survivability

• Requires a Unique and certain affixes to function
• Visual clutter
• High APM playstyle

Turn the battlefield into a blinding snowstorm with this Frozen Orb build. We build our character for attack speed and mana regeneration to spawn dozens of Frozen Orb projectiles in a few seconds. These Frozen Orbs then explode and create dozens of conjurations, increasing our damage and mana sustain. Cast Frozen Orb for a few seconds, and you'll have a small army of conjurations at your command.

The build isn't possible without Fractured Winterglass, a fairly common Unique amulet you can target farm from Lord Zir. Once you get that amulet and some mana regeneration gear, you'll be able to turn Frozen Orb into one of the strongest core skill in the Sorcerer's arsenal. The sheer number of conjurations also make this build the perfect candidate for the reworked Splintering Energy Aspect, turning your Lightning Spears into screen-clearing missiles.

Skills And Passives

Primary Skills

Enchantments

Frozen Orb

Lightning Spear

Frozen Orb

Fire Bolt

Secondary Skills

Ice Blades

Teleport

Ice Armor

Flame Shield

The two most important skills in this build are Frozen Orb and Lightning Spear. Frozen Orb spawns an icy projectile that explodes after it travels a short distance. This triggers an affix on Fractured Winterglass that reduces conjuration cooldowns for each Frozen Orb explosion. This works with Aspect of Frozen Orbit as well, tripling the effectiveness of that affix. Enhanced and Destructive upgrades for Frozen Orb greatly help with your mana sustain.

Our strongest conjuration is Lightning Spear, so we'll be casting it whenever it leaves cooldown. We grab the Enhanced and Invoked upgrades to spawn multiple Lightning Spears that each inflict stun, making it easy to stagger bosses. We also gear around this through Critical Damage and the reworked Splintering Energy Aspect, causing Lightning Spear to deal substantially more damage when it crits.

Enchantments

We use Frozen Orb and Fire Bolt for our enchantment slots. Frozen Orb can trigger off any skill you cast, including Frozen Orb itself and Lightning Spear. Fire Bolt causes all damage to inflict burn, triggering effects like Devouring Blaze and the Flamefeeder Glyph in our Paragon Board.

The rest of our hotbar is fairly typical for a Sorcerer build. Teleport is useful for getting around large expanses. Ice Armor is your main source of Barrier. Flame Shield is useful for tanking one-hit mechanics in Pit and from certain Tormented bosses.

Your last slot is dealer's choice. We suggest using Ice Blades when starting out to help with your cooldowns—it reduces all skill cooldowns through the Summoned upgrade. Once you have some good gear, you can drop it for Unstable Currents for a free 25% attack speed buff while your ultimate is active. Throw on the Orange Herald Aspect to give your Unstable Currents 100% uptime in boss fights.

Important Passives

• Conjuration Mastery - Increases damage, movement speed, and mana regeneration per active conjuration.
  • This is your main source of mana sustain. If you can't maintain ten conjurations, this build will not work.
• Devouring Blaze - Grants x21% multiplicative critical damage to all of your skills thanks to the Fire Bolt enchantment.
• Permafrost - Buffs your Frozen Orb damage.
• Hoarfrost - Buffs all damage.
• Icy Touch - Buffs cold damage.
• Frigid Breeze - Useful mana sustain node while leveling. Unnecessary with good gear.
• [Capstone] Esu's Ferocity - Needed to trigger Ancient Flame Aspect, which grants a whopping 50% attack speed.
  • Once you have endgame gear, you can run Vyr's Mastery instead. It works with all attacks, not just shock skills.

Paragon Board

This Paragon Board is intended for a Level 100 character with good gear. A leveling board can be found in our Mobalytics guide.

Our build uses a Paragon Board with seven Glyphs and eight boards. Most of your damage comes from Frigid Fate, Icefall, and the secondary effects of your Glyphs. The more Glyphs you can squeeze into your board, the better.

We use the following Glyphs in each board:

Board Order

Board

Glyph

1

Starting

Destruction

2

Elemental Summoner

Conjurer

3

Burning Embers

Tactician

4

Searing Heat

Flamefeeder

5

Enchantment Master

Elementalist

6

Ceaseless Conduit

Control

7

Frigid Fate

Exploit

8

Icefall

N/A

While leveling your character, we suggest you place Enchanter in your starting board and spec for Intelligence, then expand your board to include Frigid Fate and Icefall. You'll want those bonuses as soon as possible, as it's where most of your Frozen Orb damage is coming from. Once you reach Level 100, you can use a Scroll of Amnesia (an award from the Season Journey) to respec your board.

The only Glyphs that might seem odd are Conjurer and Control. Conjurer extends the duration of your conjurations by 20%, which indirectly buffs how many conjurations you can maintain. Conjurations ramp up the Conjuration Mastery passive, which is where most of your damage is coming from. It's worth using. Control simply gives a massive 20% damage multiplier while targets are stunned. This greatly improves our DPS against Elites and staggered bosses.

Since we don't grab an eight Glyph, we use the remaining points on maximum HP nodes to buff our Sorcerer's survivability. This lets us comfortably run five Topaz Gems on our gear for a major damage boost. With three Greater Affixes on Maximum Life (two if you're using Harlequin Crest), you'll have just shy of 20K HP at Level 100. Considering we aren't using Ruby Gems, that's fairly high.

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Recommended Gear

Helmet

Amulet

Concentration

Casting a conjuration grants you 25% DR for 5 seconds.

Fractured Winterglass

Frozen Orb's initial explosion has a 65% chance of spawning a conjuration. Conjurations can spawn Frozen Orbs through Lucky Hits (90% chance).

Chest Armor

Ring #1

Juggernaut

You gain +10,342 Armor, but your Evade cooldown is increased by 100%.

Tal'Rasha's Iridescent Loop

For each type of elemental damage you deal, gain x20% damage for 4 seconds. Caps at 80%. Dealing any damage refreshes all stacks.

Gloves

Ring #2

Accelerating

Critical hits with Core skills grant +25% attack speed for 5 seconds.

Ancient Flame

While both effects of Esu's Ferocity are active, gain +50% attack speed.

Pants

Boots

Snowveiled

Casting Ice Armor grants Unstoppable and 25% DR for 5 seconds.

Esu's Heirloom

Your critical strike chance is increased by 40% of your movement speed.

Main-Hand Weapon

Off-Hand Weapon

Splintering Energy

Critical hits with Lightning Spear cause lightning to arc, dealing 2,000 damage to the target and 5 nearby enemies. This damage scales with your critical damage bonus.

Frozen Orbit

Frozen Orb explodes two additional times, dealing 60% of its initial damage.

Before you can even start playing this build, you need two things:

1. Fractured Winterglass
2. Two items with "+Mana per Second" affixes.

Fractured Winterglass is the glue that holds this build together. If you don't have this amulet, the build does not function. Period. This allows Frozen Orb to spawn conjurations, and it gives you a ton of conjuration cooldown reduction every time your Frozen Orb explodes. We use the Aspect of Frozen Orbit to make each Frozen Orb detonate three times, tripling the cooldown reduction we receive.

How To Fix Your Mana Sustain

Arguably the biggest issue with Frozen Orb builds is mana sustain. When first starting out, it can feel like you're always spent on mana and can't spam to your heart's content. That's where mana per second affixes come into play. These buff your base mana generation by a set amount. You want at least +7 mana per second, upgrading to +10 once you can start masterworking.

That mana regeneration stacks multiplicatively with Conjuration Mastery. If you have ten conjurations out, you aren't regenerating 17 mana per second. You're regenerating 37 mana per second. If that still feels a little low, you can forge resource cost reduction on your rings to smooth out the mana drain. Elixirs can help as well if you're really struggling.

Mythic Uniques

Once you get Ring of Starless Skies, you no longer need mana regeneration on your gear. This frees up your helmet and chest slots for Harlequin Crest and Tyrael's Might, respectively.

Scaling Attack Speed And Critical Chance

With your mana solved, it's time to scale your attack speed. You'll want attack speed affixes on your gloves and secondary ring. We can get the last chunk of attack speed from Aspect of Ancient Flame, which gives a whopping 50% attack speed after you kill an enemy or damage a boss. It's the only reason we're using Esu's Ferocity on this build. Once you get Mythic Uniques, you can drop this Aspect and switch your capstone to Vyr's Mastery—it works with all skills, not just Shock.

Finally, you'll want critical chance. Esu's Heirloom does most of the heavy-lifting for you, providing a massive 40% critical strike chance when you cap your movement speed. Conjuration Mastery ensures that you'll be at capped movement speed at all times. Some critical chance affixes on your focus and gloves should be more than enough to get around 70-85% critical chance. Lightning Spear covers the last 15% for you.

Important Stats And Breakpoints

Important Stats

Breakpoints

• Critical Damage
  • Temper on everything you can
• Attack Speed
• Cooldown Reduction
• Chance for Frozen Orb to cast twice
  • Temper on weapons
• Critical Chance
• Maximum Life

• 94% attack speed (44% if using Ancient Flame)
• +7 mana per second
• 0.4s CDR to conjurations when Frozen Orb explodes
  • Found on Fractured Winterglass
  • Requires masterworking or a Greater Affix

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Leveling The Build

After making your Sorcerer, you'll want to level as Firewall through World Tiers 1-3. It's the most effective leveling build in the game and is incredibly easy to play. You can pair Firewall with Hydra for high single-target DPS, useful for fighting Hellborne and tough bosses in Helltide.

Your primary goal is to get Fractured Winterglass. The seasonal reward track has a chance of dropping one for you. If you don't get one, you can farm the amulet from Lord Zir. Player trading is also an option if you're flush with Gold. The amulet needs to have 0.3s conjuration cooldown and at least 50% chance to spawn conjurations for the build to feel smooth.

Once you get the amulet and have some mana regeneration gear, go ahead and swap to the build. You'll want to temper your gear for Critical Damage, Frozen Orb multicast, and as much Life as you can manage. Get some attack speed on your gloves and ring, and you should be able to comfortably spam Frozen Orb through World Tier 4. Finish up leveling in Helltide and T3 Infernal Hordes, T4 if you can handle it.

Be sure to run a few Nightmare Dungeons while leveling. They're a great source of XP and your only method of leveling Glyphs.

Once you hit Level 100, respec your Paragon Board to the endgame variant. If you haven't already, start farming Nightmare Dungeons to get your Glyphs to Level 15. You should be able to start running T5 Infernal Compass at this point. The resource chest will give you common Pit materials, allowing you to masterwork your armor. Get your gear to a decent state, and you should be able to farm Tormented Bosses and start the journey of min-maxing the build.

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