The Sorcerer or Sorceress is one of the strongest classes in Diablo, offering players the opportunity to go class cannon, and annihilate packs, bosses, and everything in between with various elemental spells. The result is that the Sorcerer has plenty of builds, fitting various magic types. While there are frost and fire builds, we believe the shock and lightning theme will produce the best Sorcerer builds in Diablo 4. With no further ado, here’s a Diablo 4 Sorceress Chain Lightning Shock Build.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Chain Lightning Hydras¶

As the name suggests, this build will be running the Chain Lightning and the Hydras as the core of this build. The reason why is that the Hydras offer incredible single-target damage, while the Chain Lightning spell offers great AOE. Moreso, Chain Lightning grants critical strike bonuses via the Destructive and Enhanced perks, which will empower your Hydras to do even more damage, as you will find through a very specific talent called Invoked Hydras.

So, the main theme of the playstyle is to place your Hydra(s) down, and then spam Chain lightning wherever possible to fish for critical strikes. When you land a critical strike, your Hydra wall gets buffed for three seconds, which will shred whatever they are targeting. This gets even better if you manage to get the Hydra legendary, which is a random class drop chance, so you likely wont get this till around level 40 onwards when Legendary drops become more common.

Also, your Chain Lightning and Shock Crits are also helpful for spawning in Crackling Energy, another feature you invest in via the passives in the tree. You have a percentage chance when you score a crit, depending on the Static Discharge passive improvements you’ve invested in spawning Crackling Energy at 5% intervals. Your Chain Lightning also has this via the nodes you put into it. As you collect these, you will then deal slightly more damage via the cracks of lightning you send out to one or two enemies. But, at level 30, you have an enchantment for the Lightning Spear, which means you can spawn another skill for free to deal even more burst damage via this feature. You can also get more energies from your Lightning Orb, so, this is another area of your build you will greatly improve on as you begin to build out more lightning focused passives for Crackling Energies.

TOC:

• Skills and Passives
• Enchantments
• Legendary & Uniques
• Stat, Malignant Hearts & Gems
• Paragon and Glyphs

Overall, this Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build is all about crit fishing to further bolster your skills and DPS. And it’s a lot of DPS at that.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Skills & Passives¶

To get this build going, here are the skills and passive improvements you want to invest in.

• Spark > Enhanced > Glinting Spark - Grants ranged crit ramping
• Chain Lightning > Extended > Destructive Chain Lightning - More Crit ramping
• Frost Nova > Enhanced > Mystical - Using this as your defensive peel tool, and for Vuln spread, with the lowered CD for when your crits kill enemies while they are frozen.
• Hydra > Enhanced > Invoked
• Lightning Spear > Enhanced > Invoked - Synergizes with Crit, and causes Crackling Energies, which are useful for specific passives and enchantments. It also stuns enemies, which is needed, as you are fairly squishy.
• Unstable Currents > Prime > Supreme - This is going to be a tool to thing lots of various skills out, to ramp damage, and also be helpful for getting to the max damage multiplier from the Malignant Heart, Tal’Rasha.
• Only use this for Enchantments: Fire Ball > Enhanced > Destructive - This make Fireball crit scaling better when it goes off, which you will find happens often, with your typical 33% chance to crit just from skills and passives alone. Again, don’t place this on your bar, as you only want this for Enchantment perks later on, and for more consistent Malignant Heart usage.

Passives¶

Here is a list of all the passives in the skill tree you want to invest in.

Defensive:

• Elemental Attunement x3: Lucky Hit: Critical Strikes have up to a 15% chance to reset the Cooldown of one of your Defensive Skills. Can only happen once every 10 seconds.

Conjuration:

• Precision Magic x3: Your Lucky Hit Chance is increased by 15% - This helps to spawn more Crackling Energies from other passives synergies.
• Conjuration Mastery x3: You deal 3% increases damage for each active Conjuration. - Considering the chance to spawn Lightning Spears from Crackling Energy, and the few Hydras you can spawn, this can stack up very effectively.
• Align the Elements x3: You gain 9% Damage Reduction against Elites for each second you haven’t taken damage from one, up to 40%.
• Mana Shield x3: Every time you spend 100 mana, you gain 21% Damage Reduction for 5 seconds. One of the strongest defense passives you have in this build, so you need this for bossing or other large elite packs.
• Protection x3: Using a cooldown grants 30% of your Max Life as a Barrier for 3 seconds. - Another handy defense tool.

Mastery:

• Inner Flames x2: Your Pyromancy Skills deal 6% increases damage while you are Healthy. - This is to dump the remaining skill points you have to further enhance Hydras, and any other random Pyro spell from your ultimate, as long as you are healthy. When you get Esadora’s Overflowing Cameo, you want to drop these and put them into Static Discharge, as the damage from that passive outscales this once you get to three points, which is worth it, as the unique grants 2 ranks by default.
• Static Discharge x3: Lucky Hit: Critical Strikes with Shock Spells have up to a 15% chance to form a Crackling Energy. - Synergizes with Precision Magic and other crit passives with your skills.
• Invigorating Conduit x3: Upon absorbing Crackling Energy, you gain 12 Mana. - Sorcs have Mana issues, so this helps a lot with your Core Skill spam.

Ultimate

• Coursing Currents x3: Hitting enemies with Shock Skills increases your Critical Strike Chance by 3%. Resets upon getting a Crit. - Your base Crit chance is 8 with spark, which can rise to a max of 23% with the final Chain Lightning bounce. This passive essentially works like chain lightning, so you can get your crit to 38% just using these passives and skill crit chance modifiers. Of course, this means a lot of cooldown reset opportunities, and crackling energies for Mana restoration.
• Conduction x3: Crit Strikes with Chock Skills increase your Movement Speed by 9%, for 3 seconds. - More kiting and map clearing speeds since we don’t use teleport.

Key Passive:

• Overflowing Energy: Crackling Energy hits 1 additional enemy. Each time Crackling Energy hits an enemy, your Shock Skill cooldowns are reduced by 0.1 seconds, increased to 0.25 against Elites. - Since you have a high chance of generating Crackling Energy via Lucky Hit Crits, and Chain Lightning, on top of the normal procs, you can easily reduce cooldown for your ultimate and Lightning Spear.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Enchantments¶

As for your enchantments, you want to place the Fireball and the Lightning Spear into your two enchantment slots when you can:

• Fireball: When you kill an enemy, they explode in a Fireball for 50% of its damage. - This is about 30% of your attack power, but, with its crit synergy, it can be rather strong, and killing multiple enemies with your AOE can make bursting down other enemies and Elites in packs much easier to achieve.
• Lightning Spear: Lightning Spears have a chance to spawn at enemies hit by your Crackling Energies. This is a skill you only want to spend a skill point on at level 30, just so you can get this enchantment proc rolling when your Spark passives are invested in. This scales with the Conjuration passive damage bonus, and can happen fairly often thanks to the amount of crits and Crackling Energies you can produce.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Legendaries¶

Below is a list of legendaries you will want as part of your build. Some of these are very necessary, while others are mere suggestions based on luck of the draw, as many are random drops Legendary Aspects. We have also thrown in some unique options you can get as part of this build.

• Serpentine Aspect - This got buffed for Season 1, with the duration reduction only lasting for 10-20, which is very nice for the one extra head to buff your Conjuration damage, an DPS output further.
• Aspect of Splintering Energy - This got buffed to 41-50% chance, making Lightning Spear very strong since you use it to stun and help control mobs, and ramp crits for other benefits. You can get this from Crumbling Hekma in Kehjistan.
• Aspect of the Unbroken Tether - This got buffed to 30-40% chance for Chain Lightning to bounce 2 additional times, which is another 6% crit chance, and therefore 12% if you consider the Coursing Currents passive. Not to mention two more opportunities for Crackling Energy spawns.
• Stable Aspect - Blizzard gave this a 2% buff in Season 1. You can now have between 7 and 12% chance to trigger a free spell when your ult is not active.
  Aspect of Efficiency: This got buffed to grant 15-25% Mana reduction in your next Core Skill. This means you can now get 8 Mana refunded from Chain Lightning. On your fourth basic attack, you essentially get a free CL, which adds up very fast for bossing, or on very large packs. You can get this from Domhainne Tunnels in Scosglen.
• Aspect of Control - You deal more damage to Immobilized, Stunned or Frozen enemies. Nice synergy with Frost Nova and Spear stuns. You get this from Sunken Library in Kehjistan.
• Aspect of Retribution - Distant enemies have a chance to be stunned for 2 seconds when they hit you and you deal 10-20% more damage to stunned enemies.
• Frostblitz Aspect - Extra charge of Frost Nova, and the longer CD doesn’t matter if you can kill enough to lower its CD when using both charges.
• Boot Slot: Wind Striker Aspect or Charged Aspects: Wind Striker grants 8-16% Movement Speed when you crit for 1-6 seconds. While Charged grants 10-15% for 4 seconds when you pick Crackling Energies. Both are good, it just depends which one rolls better at the time.
• Esadora’s Overflowing Cameo: This is a unique necklace you can get when you reach World Tier 3 onwards, which is a random drop chance. This offers some very strong AOE that emits around your character in large waves which can proc when you pick energy up. It also increases Crackling Energy damage, which is very nice when you can easily proc those energies in the late game. This is a big prized item, but, its not necessary to get the build rolling, but helps to cap it at a new height when you do get it.
• Temerity - Since you lack decent defensiveness, these unique pants are great for Lucky Hit healing, which you do have great boosts to in your passives. You also get a Barrier when you’re full Life from healing sources, which again, is very handy.
• If you happen to get very lucky from World tier 4 level 85 mobs, you can use the Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander. The Shrine buff RNG can be very good if you get the Core Skills cost no resources, or the one where you always Crit. The others are a bit meh however. You also get Lucky Hit chance to stun, which is very nice for your stunning opportunities, and then getting more worth from the Shocking Impact passive, thats if you have Esadora’s.
• Aspect of Might - Solid defense legendary for a flat 20% damage reduction when you basic attack. You get use out of this fairly often, since you need to keep your Spark crit stacks up as often as possible.
• Aspect of Disobedience: Armor stacking defense legendary.

Out of all the weapon and amulet aspect buffs you want, you may consider the following aspects

• Aspect of Splintering Energy - May potentially double the 50% effect to a 100% chance for Lightning Spear to double up when cast, presuming you have a 50% role and put it on the weapon.
• Retribution Aspect on it too for a potential 40% damage bonus to stunned enemies.
• Aspect of Control- That 25-35% more damage can become 37-53% on Amulet, or 50-70% on weapon, which is huge for mobbing damage.

Stat Priority, Malignant Hearts & Gems¶

• Crit Chance - As mentioned, you can have between 23-38% crit from skills and passives. So you need to push to around 60% crit from gear and other forms of stat progression.
• Crit Damage -Plenty of crit means you can get a solid damage bucket improvement from crit damage, as crit damage is its own calculation.
• Vuln Damage - You get Vuln from Exploit and Frost Nova, so, improving its damage is also very good
• Core Skill Damage - Chain Lightning is still our main DPS tool.
• Lightning Damage - Improves Spear, CL, and Spark damage, including Crackling Energy and Static Discharge passive damage.
• Ranks to things like Static Discharge, Frost Nova, CL are all nice additions.
• Intelligence - Damage increase primary stat.
• Dexterity / Willpower. You need these to reach certain Glyph Bonuses on Paragon. Its not so much required, but its something to consider if you do want them.

As for Gems, you want:

• Armor - Ruby for the HP increase or Topaz if you find yourself getting CC’d and need the damage reduction
• Jewel - Skulls for the armor bonuses, or Diamonds for the flat resistance improvements
• Weapons - Emerald for the Vuln damage via Exploit and Frost Nova.

With Season 1, you now get access to Malignant Hearts, which offer a variety of bonuses. For the Diablo 4 Chain Lightning Sorc build, you will want at least one of the following, depending on your needs at the time:

• Tal’Rasha - Easy to apply 20% damage multiplier, which can easily get to 30%~ when you get Frost damage effects from your ultimate.
• Spite - Can spread CC you are hit with to other enemies, saving you from potential mobbing, and also helps your CC damage aspects.
• The Picana - Potentially decent Lightning Damage procs from Crits you deal. Its priority depends on the amount of Lightning Damage boosts you have on gear.
• Tempting Fate - When you start getting close to the 60% crit chance, this becomes very strong for your build.

Diablo 4 Chain Lightning Sorcerer Build: Paragon & Glyphs¶

(Image via Maxroll’s D4 Planner)

• Starter Board / Control - 20% increased damage to Stunned and Frozen enemies.
• Static Surge / Destruction. Spin the board so the legendary node is middle right. Static Charge grants: Stunning close enemies grants Mana restoration, and Destruction ramps crit damage and enemies crit take more damage from all skills for 10 seconds. Make sure to get Overwhelming, Incapacitate, and Paralyzing Rare Nodes. Leave the boar at the top gate.
• Frigid Fate / Tactician. Spin the board so Oppressive is in the bottom right corner. Ignore the legendary node here, and go for the Glyph slot. You gain increased damage when activating a Defensive skill. With two stacks of Frost Nova, this can be on demand damage buff twice every minute. Make sure to grab Chilling, Weakness and Oppressive Rare nodes too. Leave the board by going right.
• Ceaseless Conduit / Exploit. Start the board by placing the Glyph slot in the bottom left corner. Go to the Glyph Slot, take the Dex nodes, and grab Galvanic Catalyst and its surrounding blue nodes. No go up from the gate, and grab the Legendary Node, and take Conduit and its Blue nodes along the way. Now go to the gate by going up.
• Elemental Summoner / Electrocute. Start the board so the Legendary Node is bottom center. Travel up to the Elemental Summoner Node, so you can get the Conjuration buffs, and grab the Swift Conjurer and two Conjuration Skill Damage blue nodes. Also go left so you get the Reservoir Rare Node, and its surrounding blues. Now go to the Glyph slot, place Electrocute, and grab Conjurer and Erudite. Grab all blues around Conjurer, and take two Resistance nodes, just so you can reach the two Dex nodes above it.

With any spare nodes, try to grab Dexterity, so you can reach the bonuses.

This concludes the Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build. Have fun criting everything, empowering your spells and unleashing even more mechanics as you go through the leveling process, and then unleash crits and destructive magic at the endgame of your build.