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  • Build Overview
  • Skills And Passives
  • Recommended Gear
  • Leveling The Build

The Sorcerer is one of Diablo 4's most versatile classes to make builds for. They have great defensive skills, solid core skills, and powerful ultimate abilities with great uptime when you reach the endgame. While leveling the Sorcerer can be tricky, their build diversity in higher World Tiers is surprisingly varied.

Related: Diablo 4: Build Tier List

No build showcases this better than a Ball Lightning build. Taking inspiration from the Paladin's iconic hammer build in Diablo 2, this setup fills the screen with dozens of Ball Lightning orbs that orbit your character, destroying enemies with a barrage of electricity and lucky hit effects. This guide will showcase how to turn your Sorcerer into a walking storm of elemental destruction, covering everything from skills to optimal gear choices.

Updated July 26, 2023, by Charles Burgar: Season of the Malignant has made some major balance changes to the Sorcerer class, generally nerfing the class' DPS in endgame content. The good news is that this season's Malignant Hearts are fantastic and nearly offset these changes. We've updated this guide with up-to-date skill and affix recommendations, Malignant Heart suggestions for this season, and a refreshed D4Builds link.

Build Overview

D4Builds Link

Pros

Cons

  • Infinite mana
  • Great DPS and survivability
  • Instantly staggers bosses
  • Short cooldowns
  • Requires endgame gear
  • Bad for pushing high NM tiers
  • Ball Lightning despawns when it hits hard surfaces
  • Visual clutter

Turn your Sorcerer into a walking thunderstorm with this Ball Lightning build. We use the Gravitational Aspect to cause Ball Lightning to orbit our character, allowing you to deal damage by walking up to enemies. If you've played a Hammerdin build in Diablo 2, you'll feel right at home here. We aggressively scale attack speed, Crackling Energy, and lucky hit effects to stunlock our enemies to death with dozens of Ball Lightning orbs.

With the right gear, this build can spam Ball Lightnings as fast as your attack speed allows, and you'll have fairly high uptime on the Unstable Currents ultimate to give yourself a massive DPS boost against tankier Elites and bosses. While our build does rely on crowd control (CC for short) to deal damage, we inflict so many CC effects that we can instantly stun bosses to inflict massive damage. While this build does require good endgame gear to work, you can easily transition to this build from any Arc Lash configuration, making this a great build to try if you're already playing a lightning Sorcerer.

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Skills And Passives

Skill

Augments

Arc Lash

Enhanced: If Arc Lash's initial swipe critically hits, it swipes an additional time.

Glinting: Hitting a stunned enemy with Arc Lash reduces your cooldowns by 0.15 seconds.

Fire Bolt

None

Chain Lightning

Enhanced: Chain Lightning gains +3% critical chance per bounce.

Destructive: When Chain Lightning critically strikes, it has a 25% chance to form Crackling Energy.

Teleport

Enhanced: Reduces cooldown by 0.5s per enemy hit, up to 3s.

Shimmering: Gain 30% damage reduction for 5s after teleporting.

Frost Nova

Enhanced: Killing enemies frozen by this skill reduces its cooldown by 1s, up to 4s per cast.

Mystical: Enemies frozen by this skill are vulnerable for 4s, increased to 6s against bosses.

Flame Shield

None

Lightning Spear

Enhanced: After critically striking, Lightning Spear gains +5% stacking critical chance for its duration.

Invoked: Lightning Spear stuns targets for 2 seconds when it critically hits.

Ball Lightning

Enhanced: Ball Lightning's damage rate is increased by 200% of your attack speed bonus.

Mages: After hitting close enemies 50 times with Ball Lightning, your next cast of it stuns enemies hit for 1 second.

Unstable Currents

Enhanced: While Unstable Currents is active, gain +25% attack speed.

Skill Explanations

Ball Lightning is our main skill for this build, located in the Mastery section. We use the Gravitational Aspect to make each Ball Lightning orbit our character, allowing us to easily hit targets multiple times per second with this skill. While the Enhanced upgrade doesn't increase our DPS—the added attack speed lowers your damage per tick, leading to no DPS gains—it does make it substantially easier to trigger lucky hit effects, land critical attacks, and achieve high damage multipliers through the Fists of Fate Unique.

We take Mage's Ball Lightning since it lets every Ball Lightning stun on hit, allowing you to quickly stagger bosses and stunlock non-Elites. This will also trigger the Shocking Impact passive for added damage. If you're fighting a World Boss or have another source of stun, you can use the Wizard upgrade instead for Crackling Energy generation.

Arc Lash is an amazing basic skill for this build. You can spam this attack while out of mana to cast abilities from Unstable Currents, and it reduces our cooldowns thanks to the Glinting augment. If you want to recharge your abilities quickly, stun a group of enemies with Ball Lightning and spam Arc Lash. This is especially powerful if you own the Raiment of the Infinite Unique body armor.

Fire Bolt is used for its enchantment bonus, allowing us to benefit from the Devouring Blaze passive for massive critical hits. It also lets us take advantage of burning-related affixes on gear and Paragon Board nodes. We do not equip this skill on our hotbar.

Chain Lightning is used for mana sustain and free damage. We use Chain Lightning as our second enchantment to automatically cast it upon spending 100 mana, something we do once or twice per second. Thanks to the Enhanced and Destructive upgrades, Chain Lightning will be generating many Crackling Energy orbs for us to grab, restoring 12 mana a piece through the Invigorating Conduit passive. This also lets us use the Accelerating Aspect to gain a free 25% attack speed bonus at all times. We do not equip this skill on our hotbar.

Teleport is a no-brainer for any Sorcerer build. It's a great movement skill that has a short cooldown and grants damage resistance through its Shimmering upgrade. If you have Raiment of the Infinite equipped, you will also group targets together and immediately stun them with each Teleport cast, greatly improving your damage dealt with Ball Lightning.

Frost Nova is mandatory since it's the Sorcerer's main source of vulnerability. Grab the Mystical upgrade to inflict vulnerability when you cast this skill, greatly increasing your DPS against Elites and bosses.

Flame Shield is a great survivability skill and a way to break out of CC effects. If you don't have any Flame Shields ranks through gear affixes, put one point into this skill. It also lets you inflict immobilization on targets through the Burning Embers Aspect, triggering Devouring Blaze's secondary effect for massive critical damage. This Aspect is only needed if you aren't using Fists of Fate.

Lightning Spear is an amazing crowd control tool that will keep you alive in high Nightmare Dungeon tiers. We don't equip this skill on our hotbar, but your Unstable Currents ultimate will make multiple Lightning Spears per cast. The guaranteed stuns through the Invoked upgrade greatly reduce the chance of your character dying from a ranged enemy off-screen.

Unstable Currents is a fantastic skill for this build. Every lightning skill you cast will trigger another lightning skill for free. Cast this before fighting a tanky Elite or boss to spam the screen with Lightning Spear and Ball Lightning projectiles. Paired with Fists of Fate, this ultimate allows you to stun dungeon bosses in two seconds or less. We invest in cooldown reduction and use Arc Lash's Glinting upgrade to increase this skill's uptime. With some small skill tree changes, you can increase Unstable Current's uptime to 80% or higher.

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Passives

This build focuses on taking lightning nodes, damage passives, and the Devouring Blaze passive. Some noteworthy passives are listed below:

Glass Cannon (3/3)

Greatly increases your damage at the cost of survivability.

Precision Magic (3/3)

Greatly improves your lucky hit chance.

Align The Elements (2/3)

Each second, gain 6% damage resistance to the next Elite hit you receive. Caps out at 40%.

Protection (3/3)

Gain 30% of your max HP as Barrier for 2 seconds upon using a cooldown skill.

Mana Barrier (3/3)

Gain 21% damage resistance for 5 seconds upon spending 100 mana.

Devouring Blaze (3/3)

Burning targets take additional critical damage, multiplicative with your critical damage value.

If the target is immobilized, this effect is more than doubled.

Static Discharge (2/3)

Critical hits have a 10% chance of spawning Crackling Energy.

Invigorating Conduit (3/3)

Each Crackling Energy orb grants 12 mana.

Shocking Impact (3/3)

Stunning a target causes them to take 45% weapon damage.

Electrocute (3/3)

Enemies deal 15% less damage when critically hit by a shock skill.

Vyr's Mastery

You deal 10% more shock skill damage and take 20% less damage from close enemies.

If you crit, these bonuses are increased by 25% for 3 seconds.

This setup allows us to spawn dozens of Crackling Energy orbs to restore our mana. Paired with the damage nodes we take, Ball Lightning can dish out some great damage to stunned targets. We also grab Align the Elements, Mana Shield, Protection, and Vyr's Mastery to improve our survivability in difficult Nightmare Dungeons. If you prefer shorter cooldowns and want to spam Unstable Currents, you can swap Vyr's Mastery for Overflowing Energy.

There are some variants of this build that opt to use Esu's Ferocity and its respective Aspect that gives 50% attack speed when this capstone's effects are all active. This is a viable alternative to our setup but requires you to sacrifice a damage Aspect on your armor, preferably Accelerating. We don't find this sacrifice to be worth it, but feel free to experiment and see if Esu's Ferocity better suits your needs.

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Paragon Board

Close

This Paragon Board showcased above is on a level 93 character with max renown and every Altar of Lilith discovered.

The D4Builds link showcases a Paragon Board intended for a level 85 character.

Paragon Boards

Elemental Summoner

Path towards the mana cluster, attack speed cluster, and Glyph socket.

Ignore the Legendary node.

Frigid Fate

Grab the Glyph socket and vulnerability clusters.

Ignore the Legendary node.

Burning Instinct

Grab the Glyph socket, Elite DR cluster, and attack speed cluster.

Ignore the Legendary node.

Static Surge

Path towards the mana cluster and Glyph socket.

Stunning close enemies restores 10 mana.

Glyphs

Control

Crowd controlled targets take more damage per 5 Dexterity.

You deal 10% increased damage to slowed or chilled targets. Stunned or frozen enemies take 20% increased damage.

Imbiber

Deal increased damage while healthy per 5 Willpower.

You gain 30% potion healing.

Tactician

Buffs all rare nodes within range.

You deal 10% increased damage for 4 seconds after casting a Defensive skill.

Destruction

Deal increased critical strike damage per 5 Dexterity.

Critical strikes increase all damage the enemy takes from you by 2% for 10 seconds, up to 12%.

Adept

Your Mastery skills deal increased damage per 5 Intelligence.

Mastery skills have 20% increased area.

The Paragon Board for this build focuses on increasing attack speed, mana, vulnerability damage, and Intelligence. Each board we grab provides some major bonus to one of these stats. While leveling, grab Elemental Summoner and Static Surge as your first boards, as these contain attack speed, mana, and contain the useful Static Surge Legendary node that restores mana by stunning targets. Flesh out your Glyph sections before expanding to other boards. By the time you're level 85, you can respec your board to what's showcased above.

As for Glyphs, we use Control, Imbiber, Tactician, Destruction, and Adept. All of these Glyphs greatly boost our damage since we burn, stun, and use Mastery skills with this build. Socket Control into your starter board, Imbiber into Elemental Summoner, Tactician into Frigid Fate, Destruction into Burning Instinct, and Adept into Static Surge. You can also drop Destruction for Flamefeeder if you don't have the Elementalist's Aspect.

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Enchantments

Enchantments

Fire Bolt

Direct damage from skills applies up to an additional 26% burn that lasts for 8 seconds.

Chain Lightning (Dungeons)

Chain Lightning forms automatically after spending 100 mana.

Ball Lightning (Single Target)

Lucky Hit: Critical Strikes have a 25% chance of spawning a static Ball Lightning.

This build uses the Fire Bolt and Chain Lightning enchantments for most content. Fire Bolt causes your attacks to burn, allowing this build to benefit from the Devouring Blaze passive and burning-related passives in the Paragon Board. We take Chain Lightning since we spend over 100 mana per second, allowing us to spam this skill for free. Since it critically hits so frequently, this is a great source of Crackling Energy.

If you're fighting a tough boss and need more single-target DPS, swap Chain Lightning with Ball Lightning. This will spawn a static Ball Lightning when you get a lucky critical hit. While this effect seems rare on paper, it frequently triggers once you spawn a few Ball Lightning projectiles. The best part is this enchantment can trigger itself, leading to a major ramp-up in damage the longer you're fighting the target.

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Related: Diablo 4: How To Unlock Class Features

Recommended Gear

Legendary Aspects And Uniques

Slot

Affix

Helmet

Aspect of Might

Basic skills grant 20% damage reduction for 6 seconds.

Chest

Raiment of the Infinite (Unique)

Teleporting pulls in close targets and stuns them. Teleport's cooldown is 20% longer.

Gloves

Fists of Fury (Unique)

Your attacks randomly deal 1-300% of their normal damage.

Legs

Aspect of Disobedience

Gain Armor for each instance of damage. Stacks up to 30%.

Boots

Aspect of the Ghostwalker

While Unstoppable and for 4 seconds after, gain 25% movement speed and the ability to walk through enemies.

Amulet

Elementalist's Aspect

Core or Mastery skills cast at or above 100 Mana gain +60% critical strike chance.

Ring 1

Accelerating Aspect

Critical strikes with core skills increase your attack speed by 25% for 5 seconds.

Ring 2

Prodigy's Aspect

Using a cooldown restores 25 mana.

Weapon 1

Gravitational Aspect

Ball Lightning orbits around you, but its damage is decreased by 10%.

Weapon 2

Aspect of Control

Deal 35% more damage to stunned, immobilized, or frozen targets.

Item Affixes

Important Affixes

  • +Rank to Defensive Skills (Amulet)
  • +Rank to Ball Lightning (Pants)
  • +Rank to Frost Nova (Boots)
  • +Rank to Teleport (Boots)
  • +Life (Chest, Pants, Rings)
  • Cooldown Reduction (Helm, Amulet, Focus)
  • Damage Resistance (Chest, Pants, Topaz Gems)
  • Damage to Vulnerable Targets
  • Critical Damage
  • Damage to Stunned/Burning Targets

Before you can play this build, you will need the Gravitational Aspect. This causes your Ball Lightning orbs to orbit around your character for their duration, making it much easier to hit targets. We also highly recommend that you use the Raiment of the Infinite and Fists of Fate Uniques on this build. Raiment gives you a way to group targets together, synergizing nicely with Ball Lightning. Fists of Fate is amazing since it gives us another damage scalar and a source of immobilization, triggering Devouring Blaze's secondary effect. These gloves also allow us to stun bosses in a couple of seconds since we're inflicting three different CC effects per hit—daze, immobilize, and stun.

Fists of Fate Alternative

If you do not own the Fists of Fate Unique gloves, you can use a Legendary pair of gloves with attack speed, critical chance, and primary resource restore chance. Equip the Aspect of Retribution on your gloves, then replace your boot Aspect with Burning Embers to give Flame Shield the ability to immobilize targets.

Beyond those items, you'll want to focus on damage and survivability. Might and Disobedience grant damage resistance and armor, respectively. Ghostwalker gives you a massive movement speed bonus after teleporting, and Prodigy's Aspect gives you a way to restore your mana in the unlikely event that no Crackling Energy spawns.

For damage, we use Elementalist's Aspect on our amulet to reach capped critical strike chance with Ball Lightning when it's cast above 100 mana. With how good our mana sustain is, this condition is met more often than not. For attack speed, we use Accelerating to gain a permanent 25% attack speed buff from our Chain Lightning enchantment. While both of these Aspects are great, our main source of damage is through Control, giving us a 35% damage buff against stunned, immobilized, and frozen targets. Fists of Fate ensures targets are always immobilized. If you want to further increase your damage, you can drop Prodigy's Aspect for any other damage Aspect; this build's mana sustain is still great without Prodigy equipped.

Malignant Hearts

Season of the Malignant characters can socket Malignant Hearts into jewelry, acting as a secondary Legendary Aspect. These effects are quite powerful and make this Ball Lightning build even stronger. Here's what we recommend:

  • The Calculated (Devious): After spending 150 mana, your next attack stuns enemies hit for 2 seconds.
  • Tempting Fate (Vicious): You gain 60% critical strike damage, but your non-critical strikes deal 15% less damage.
  • The Picana (Vicious): Critical strikes electrically charge the enemy for 2.5 seconds, causing lightning to arc between them and any other charged enemy. Lightning damage scales with item power.

The Calculated is a great fit for this build since we spend so much mana. This allows your Ball Lightning projectiles to stun with every tick of damage, allowing us to drop the Mage's Ball Lightning upgrade for Wizard's instead. Your Ball Lightning projectiles can now stun targets and spawn Crackling Energy, making this build much stronger against bosses.

Tempting Fate is a ton of critical damage wrapped in a small package. This hearty offsets most of the critical affix nerfs this season, so we highly recommend you use it. Since you're using the Elementalist Aspect, non-crits are fairly rare.

The Picana is a nice source of added damage to this build. Critically hitting a target will electrocute them. If you electrocute multiple enemies, each target will zap each other with lightning, dealing heavy damage. This helps speed up the build's clearspeed, making it competitive with more popular builds like Ice Shards and Flame Wall.

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Leveling The Build

We do not recommend that you level with Ball Lightning, as its damage is highly reliant on the Gravitational Aspect and spamming as many Ball Lightning casts as possible. For leveling, we recommend using a standard Arc Lash or Ice Shards setup to get through the first few World Tiers. An Arc Lash setup is ideal since both skill trees and Paragon Boards are fairly similar.

You'll want to transition to this build when you've achieved the following:

  • You own the Gravitational Aspect. This is a drop-only Legendary effect.
    • In Season of the Malignant, you can unlock the Gravitational Aspect in your Codex through the Season Journey.
  • You have good rolls for the Prodigy and Control Aspects.
  • You can grab the Static Surge Legendary node on the Paragon Board.
  • You own multiple items that scale critical chance, life, and mana cost reduction.
    • Cooldown reduction is also highly recommended.

Once you hit all of those thresholds, you can safely swap to this build and deal good damage. To scale your damage further, you'll want to level your Glyphs, unlock all five Glyph sockets for this build, acquire the Fists of Fate Unique gloves, Raiment of the Infinite Unique chest armor, and obtain gear with good affixes. Exact affix recommendations can be found in our "Recommended Gear" section and the D4Builds link.

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