Welcome to the Ball Lightning Sorcerer Endgame guide! This build uses Gravitational Aspect to make many shiny Balls of Lightning go round and round. The build has good single target damage and decent AoE coverage and it can evaporate every enemy in the game. The main downsides of this build are its melee range, lack of burst damage, and the unfortunate interaction with Waller and Suppressor Elites (Ball Lightnings disappear).
Gravitational Aspect is mandatory for the build. It's not available in the Codex so you need to find it before you can get started!
Ball Lightning Sorcerer doesn't produce very impressive damage numbers; you will never see a million on your screen. However, the sheer amount of the damage numbers more than compensates for that and, at times, it gets so ridiculous that you have to go and disable them in settings. As a wise man once said: « Fear not the man who does 10 million damage per hit, fear the man who does 100,000 damage thousand times per second. »
Ball Lightning Sorcerer runs the usual repertoire of Defensive Skills, which keep you very safe and tanky until you delve deep into The Pit. There, you might need to bolster your defenses even further to stay alive.
This guide will teach you all you need to know to fill your entire screen with yellow numbers. Your almighty cloud of damage numbers will blot out absolutely everything and make the game lag, instilling fear in friends and foes alike! Let's dive into it!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. You also need a Gravitational Aspect to get started. If you are looking for a different playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides.
Season 5 - Infernal Hordes
In Season 5, the Season Theme brings your hero back into the bowels of Hell, in the Infernal Hordes endgame activity. You're first introduced to Hellbreach Dungeons, miniature Horde-like micro-dungeons that teach you the new mechanics and rewards systems. As you slay more powerful Demons and Bosses, you're rewarded with the new Reputation progression that comes with amazing rewards. These include Crafting Materials, unlocking Season's Journey tiers and even the coveted Resplendent Spark, needed to craft a Mythic Unique.
Follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the Reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 5 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Ball Lightning is our main damage skill which also produces tons of Crackling Energy via Wizard's Ball Lightning. You want to spam this skill all the time. If you run out of Mana, simply walk around or use Evade to pick up some Crackling Energy.
- Unstable Currents gives us a big damage buff when active. Use it when you encounter a strong enemy. In the late game we stack enough Cooldown Reduction to spam it all the time.
- Teleport is our mobility skill, which also serves as a CC break and can pull and Stun enemies with Raiment of the Infinite.
- Ice Blades are used to get the Cold stack for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and to reduce our cooldowns.
- Ice Armor gives us a huge Barrier and a bit of Mana regen.
- Flame Shield provides even more defense by making us immortal.
- Fire Bolt is just there to unlock the rest of the Skill Tree and for the Enchantment.
Passives
- Warmth gives us a lot of Mana via Starlight Aspect.
Enchantment Slots
Sorcerers can choose two skills to put into Enchantment Slots, where they provide powerful passive bonuses. Ball Lightning Sorcerer uses the following Enchantments:
- Ice Blades Enchantment gives us more Cooldown Reduction and a couple Conjuration Mastery stacks.
- Fire Bolt Enchantment gives us access to various Burning-related bonuses such as Devouring Blaze and Flamefeeder.
In different variants of the build our Enchantment Slots may change:
- Teleport is used for extra mobility while speedfarming.
- Fireball helps with AoE in low-difficulty content.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
If there's was a competition between Sorcerer skills for who can consume the most Mana, Ball Lightning would take the first place and it wouldn't be even close. Not only does it have the highest Mana cost at 50, but it also attacks faster than any other spell and its Enhanced Ball Lightning upgrade incentivizes us to stack even more Attack Speed. Luckily there are several tools at our disposal to help us tackle this monstrous Mana problem.
Prodigy’s Aspect
This Aspect give us a lot of Mana and it works at full effectiveness, regardless of how many enemies (if any) we are currently fighting. Four out of six our active skills have a Cooldown, so there are plenty of opportunities to activate it.
- Always start by casting a Ball Lightning or two before using your other skills, so that the Mana is not wasted
- Don't use your Cooldowns all at once for the same reason
Invigorating Conduit
This passive is our backup source of Mana. Theoretically, it provides enough Mana to infinitely spam Ball Lightning all on its own, but in practice there's one problem. Crackling Energy needs to be picked up, meaning you need to waste time running after it. For that reason we never want this passive to be our main Mana source and instead use it just to help us quickly replenish Mana after a fight or as an emergency.
Starlight + Warmth
This is the ultimate midgame solution for all our Mana problems. Simply by picking up Warmth in the skill 3 and tempering it on 3 of our armor pieces we get to rank 9 Warmth. Even against a solitary Boss this passive will trigger Starlight almost 2 times per second giving you enough mana to cast as many Ball Lightnings and that's not even taking into consideration that both healing and resource generation are boosted by our Willpower.
However, we can't use this combination forever because as we progress through the build we replace all our armor pieces by Uniques and lose ranks of Warmth. Eventually we replace Starlight itself to get more damage out of our ring slot.
Lategame Solution
In the late game we have a very simple solution: simply have more Mana Regen than we can spend. To achieve that we need:
- Ring of Starless Skies
- Axial Conduit with good roll on Resource Generation
- enough CDR for permanent Unstable Currents
- amulet with 5 or more Ranks of Conjuration Mastery
- fully upgraded boots with Mana Per Second Greater Affix
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. For some Glyphs, we max our bonuses by allocating every relevant node in range, while on others we take the minimum required for the Additional Bonus only. Because Glyphs at level 15 increase their radius, we need to prioritize leveling them by completing Nightmare Dungeons. After that, we prioritize leveling our strongest glyphs to level 21.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the first three steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
For maximum efficiency, follow the order outlined below. First, level your Glyphs to level 15 and then do a second pass to get them all to 21.
Level 15
- Adept
- Destruction
- Exploit
- Flamefeeder
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Unleash
- Charged
Level 21
- Destruction
- Adept
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Unleash
- Charged
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build version. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Many of your Skill choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee, that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Minimum Requirements (Legendary Aspects & Unique items)
- Gravitational Aspect
Put it on your Amulet or Gloves as they are generally less likely to be replaced than Weapons.
- Gravitational Aspect
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Prodigy’s in Witchwater (Hawezar)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Snowveiled in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen)
- Elementalist's in Pallid Delve (Dry Steppes)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Starlight: Gamble Rings
- Conceited: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Elementalist's
- Shredding Blades: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Control
- Orange Herald: Gamble Boots
- Everliving: Gamble Pants
- Replaces Disobedience
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- Replaces Prodigy's
- Raiment of the Infinite (Varshan, Zir)
- Replaces Snowveiled
- Axial Conduit (Grigoire)
- Replaces Bounding Conduit
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Mythic Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest is your BiS helmet. It provides a ton of CDR, some damage and more defense than any Aspect.
- Ring of Starless Skies can replace Starlight when you have your Mana Regen figured out. This way you maintain the ability to spam Ball Lightning and gain lots of damage on top.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Once you have completed the leveling guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
- Gravitationalgoes on the Amulet for extra damage.
- Prodigy’s is a Resource Aspect and can only be placed on Rings.
- Put Control, Elementalist's, and Storm Swell on your Gloves, Weapons, or second Ring.
- Bounding Conduit can only be imprinted on Boots.
- Put Disobedience and Snowveiled on Chest and Helmet.
At this point you will struggle with Mana so prioritize Mana Per Second rolls above anything else.
Skills
We replace Ice Blades with Flickering Arc Lash because sometimes we run out of Mana and need another skill to use. We also give up Devouring Blaze and Warmth to max Fiery Surge, get Supreme Unstable Currents, Potent Warding and couple Teleport ranks. Finally we switch our Key Passive to Overflowing Energy to help with cooldowns.
Enchantment Slots
We use Teleport instead of Ice Blades because we don't have enough CDR to make the latter really good.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
- Replace Control with Starlight.
- Replace Disobedience with Everliving.
- Put Orange Herald on your Pants.
- Put Conceited in your last offensive slot.
- Replace Elementalist's with Shredding Blades.
As soon as you find Starlight, you need to spec into Warmth
Skills
We remove Arc Lash and get Lightning Spear for Vulnerable application and more Conjuration Mastery stacks. We also remove Elemental Dominance and extra ranks from Teleport to pick up Warmth.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects and Unique items, unleashing the strongest version of this build. Be prepared to grind to access some of these highly sought after items!
Gear
In the optimal build, we use 3 Unique items:
- Raiment of the Infinite
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
- Axial Conduit
It's worth noting that Axial Conduit is used mostly for the Resource Generation and Damage Reduction it provides. The Chain Lightning effect is mostly a negative because it doesn't deal a lot of damage and drains even more Mana. Only use these pants if you get one with good rolls, otherwise stick with your Snowveiled Pants or pick up Tibault's Will.
Gear with Uber Uniques
Ideally we want to use 2 Uber Uniques:
- Harlequin Crest
- Ring of Starless Skies
Keep in mind that you lose your major Mana engine when you put on Ring of Starless Skies. Most of the time 50% Resource Cost Reduction will be enough to keep your Mana balance in the green, but in case it's not put Starlight on your Amulet until you fix it.
Once you successfully transition out of Starlight you can do some minor adjustements to your Skill Tree. Take out Warmth and 1 point from Flame Shield to get Invoked Lightning Spear and Destructive Charged Bolts.
Skill Tree
We switch to our final skill tree with Ice Blades and Devouring Blaze instead of Lightning Spear and Fiery Surge.
Gameplay
With Raiment of the Infinite our Teleport becomes a lot stronger. It can now pull enemies together and Stun them, so we have to use it carefully instead of just Teleporting as far forward as possible.
The Speedfarming setup makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and low tier Nightmare Dungeons.
Gear
Flickerstep is a mandatory item for any serious Sorcerer speedfarming build. What makes this item so good is not the stats on it and not even the unique power but the implicit roll that makes your attacks reduce Evade cooldown by 2.5 seconds, which is 1 second more than what you can normally have on Boots. However, that 1 second makes all the difference. With enough CDR, Teleport Ranks, and Enchantment Master we can reach a point where we can Teleport after every attack! To get to that point of infinite teleports we need:
- Get a chest with Teleport Ranks
- Temper Evade CDR on the Amulet
- Get normal CDR on every slot
- Harlequin Crest is very strong here as it gives both insane amount of CDR and +4 to Teleport.
We also use Tibault's Will and Prodigy's (if you don't have Ring of Starless Skies) to generate Mana without relying on enemies.
Enchantment Slots
We use Teleport for mobility and Fireball to extend our AoE.
Skills
We remove Warmth to pick up Supreme Unstable Currents and max out Teleport. We switch our Key Passive to Overflowing Energy.
Paragon Boards
Replace Flamefeeder with Control. You can also remove Safeguard and Guarded to get Enchantment Master but it's not necessary if your Evade CDR is capped.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. While this build is tanky enough to be played in hardcore as-is, here's some adjustments you could make it even tankier:
- Prioritize Maximum Life over Intelligence on your Gear.
- Replace Raiment of the Infinite with Concentration Chest or better yet Tyrael's Might.
- Replace Flamefeeder or Exploit with Territorial.
- Take Skill Points out of Glass Cannon and put them into Destructive Charged Bolts.
Check out our dedicated in-depth guide to learn more survival tricks in Hardcore.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
- Cooldown Reduction (CDR). This is the most important stat for any Sorcerer build. What good are your skills if you can't use them because they are on cooldown? In purely offensive terms CDR gives us the following:
- More Unstable Currents uptime (about 2x damage)
- More uptime on Barrier from Ice Armor or Protection activating Conceited and Storm Swell(1.62x damage buff)
- Mana. We continue to chase our philosophy of being able to use skills = good. To spam Ball Lightning with our high attack speed, we need lots of stats. Mana Per Second is extremely important, especially in the late game when you can only have it on Boots.
- Offensive Stats. After that, we want all the normal offensive stats: Ball Lightning Ranks, Weapon Damage, Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance, Intelligence, and all kinds of Additive Damage, in that order of priority.
- Cooldown Reduction (CDR). As with our damaging skills, our powerful Defensive Skills are not doing much if we cannot cast them. Flame Shield makes you immortal and Ice Armor is Flame Shield with 3x the duration at best, or a protective layer that almost doubles your HP at worst.
- Barrier. Mostly coming from Ice Armor, it is our main defense outside Nightmare Dungeons. With our high and consistent damage output, the Barrier will instantly refresh as long as it's not broken in one hit.
- Armor is the major source of Damage Reduction against Physical damage. We naturally get Armor just from having high Item Power gear, and we further boost it with Skulls in Jewelry. It's extremely important to reach the Armor cap of 9,230 as the last few points of Armor get exponentially more effective.
- Resistances give us damage reduction against Elemental damage. Similar to armor it should be stacked as close to the 70% cap as possible for full effectiveness. As a Sorcerer, we get lots of Resistances from our high Intelligence and our Paragon Boards, letting us almost reach the cap without sacrificing any stats on gear.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
Damage Scaling
- 60%+ Critical Strike Chance
Defense and Utility
- Armor Capped 9,230
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 18,000+ Life
- 55%+ Cooldown Reduction
- Unstable Current CDR on every item that can have it
- Helm: Mage-Lord's
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Mana Per Second ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Barrier Generation
- Chest: Raiment of the Infinite (masterwork Glass Cannon)
- Otherwise Look For: Snowveiled
- Mana Per Second ↑
- Armor
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence
- Ranks to Teleport
- ⚒️Warmth ↑
- ⚒️Chance to Freeze/Immobilize/Slow
- Gloves: Gravitational
- Ranks to Core Skills ↑
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- ⚒️Chance to Freeze/Stun
- Pants: Axial Conduit (masterwork DR and Resource)
- Otherwise Look For: Everliving
- Intelligence ↑
- Armor
- Maximum Life ↑
- ⚒️Warmth ↑
- ⚒️Barrier Generation
- Boots: Orange Herald
- "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown"
- Mana Per Second ↑
- Ranks to Ball Lightning ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Movement Speed
- ⚒️Evade Cooldown Reduction
- ⚒️Chance to Stun/Freeze
- Amulet: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
- Conjuration Mastery ↑
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Devouring Blaze ↑
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR
- Ring 1: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (masterwork CDR)
- Otherwise Look For: Prodigy's
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR
- Ring 2: Starlight
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR
- Main Hand: Conceited (Dagger)
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Crit/Vulnerable Damage
- Chance to Regain Resource
- ⚒️Chance to double cast Ball Lightning ↑
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- Off Hand: Storm Swell
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Resource Cost Reduction
- ⚒️Chance to double cast Ball Lightning ↑
- ⚒️Crit Damage
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Advantage II, Elixir of Fortitude II, Elixir of Resourcefulness II, Elixir of Precision II.
- Incense: Song of the Mountain
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Ball Lightning
Summary
The Ball Lightning Sorcerer is a powerful and fun to play build. It's not the strongest build, it's hard to get gear for it, and it can be very frustrating to fight small enemies. However, all of that is more than compensated by shiny balls going in circles and producing literally thousands of damage numbers. The balls are good for your soul, and that's what really matters in the end!
Credits
Written by Northwar
Reviewed by Chewingnom