Welcome to the Arc Lash Sorcerer Endgame Build Guide. This build dishes out incredibly high damage and it does that by spamming a skill that you unlock at level 2 - Arc Lash. Being a melee build it might not be the easiest build for conquering the depths of The Pit but with smart usage (read: incessant spam) of Flame Shield your survivability is effectively infinite, so the sky is the limit.
The build deals damage by attacking very fast with Arc Lash, producing lots of Unstable Currents procs.
With 3 Defensive Skills on our bar and extra Cooldown Reduction from Hectic, Glinting Arc Lash, and Summoned Ice Blades, this build is about as tanky as a Sorcerer can get. Still, surviving in melee range in high tier Pit is not easy and you will need to use your abilities very carefully.
The build doesn't need any specific Legendary Aspects or Uniques to come online. Each one of them provides a small bonus and missing out on one or two is not gonna break the build. Rather than Aspects, this build is very hungry for stats. You need quite a lot of Cooldown Reduction, Attack Speed and Critical Strike Chance to make everything fall into place. Because of that you have to modify your build and play a weaker version until you get all these stats.
In this guide we teach you all you need to know to grow from Level 50 Crook with a tiny lightning whip into a Level 100 Avatar of Elemental Destruction whose mere presence instantly disintegrates all enemies. Let's dive into it!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Ball Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Sorcerer playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides.
Season 4 - Loot Reborn
In Season 4, the Season Theme revolves around helping out the Iron Wolves. Compared to past themes, this one does not offer any borrowed power as the entire game has been redesigned with new itemization and crafting options, increasing player power substantially across the board. Instead, you can gather reputation similar to the Vampire Bounty Board from Season 2 to unlock rewards that supercharge your leveling journey to 100 with extra items, crafting materials and eventually even a Resplendent Spark to craft an uber unique.
We recommend to 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 4 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
- Arc Lash is our main skill, it deals decent damage on its own, it hits twice when you crit, and it's a Shock spell which means it can proc Unstable Currents. On top of that the Cooldown Reduction from Glinting Arc Lash is absolutely invaluable for a build where every other skill has a cooldown.
- Unstable Currents is a huge damage buff for our build. It casts a random Shock Skill every time we cast Arc Lash and gives +25% Attack Speed, which is an extremely valuable stat for this build. The random spells it casts don't do a lot of damage but they can proc various effects such as Destructive Chain Lightning, Destructive Charged Bolts, or Conjuration Mastery.
- Teleport is our main mobility skill, which also serves as a CC break and pulls enemies together with Raiment of the Infinite
- Ice Blades are used for the Cold Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop stack and their Coolodwn Reduction ungrade. Also this spell gives us a little bit of damage via Conjuration Mastery.
- Ice Armor gives us a huge Barrier and extra damage against Frozen enemies (which includes staggered Bosses).
- Flame Shield provides even more defense.
- We put some points into Chain Lightning and Charged Bolts to benefit from their ranks and upgrades when they are cast by Unstable Currents
Enchantment Slots
Sorcerers can choose two skills to put into Enchantment Slots, where they provide powerful passive bonuses. Arc Lash Sorcerer uses the following Enchantments:
- Fire Bolt gives us access to various Burning bonuses such as Devouring Blaze and Flamefeeder.
- Ice Blades Enchantment simply gives us more Ice Blades which translate into additional damage via Conjuration Mastery and more Cooldown Reduction.
The Enchantment Slots can sometimes change. Fireball can be used to give us more AoE while speedfarming. Teleport Enchantment is invaluable in scenarios where we need mobility more than damage.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
This build does not use Mana and is filled to the brim with Cooldown Reduction effects. In most cases no management is necessary, so feel free to spam all the buttons.
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
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Control
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Reinforced
- Charged
Level 21
- Destruction
- Control
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Elementalist
- Reinforced
- Tactician
- 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 versions. 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!
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Rapid in Buried Halls (Dry Steppes)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Retribution in Abandoned Mineworks (Kehjistan)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Snowveiled in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Conceited: Gamble Focuses
- Adaptability: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Retribution
- Moonrise: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Control
- Concentration: Gamble Pants
- Replaces Disobedience
- Hectic: Gamble Boots
- Replaces Snowveiled
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with Obols!- Raiment of the Infinite (Varshan, Lord Zir)
- Replaces Bounding Conduit
- Paingorger's Gauntlets (The Beast in Ice)
- Replaces Edgemaster’s
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- Replaces Rapid
- Raiment of the Infinite (Varshan, Lord Zir)
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest is your BiS helmet. It provides a lot of damage and utility and almost as much defense as your regular Helmet with Concentration.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Setups
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
- Rapid goes on the amulet for extra Attack Speed.
- It's best to put Control and Storm Swell on Rings or Gloves because Weapons are often replaced.
- Bounding Conduit can only be imprinted on Boots.
- It's best to put Disobedience on the Helmet.
- Might and Snowveiled can go on either Pants or Chest.
Enchantment Slots
In the early game we don't have enough Burning-related bonuses to make Fire Bolt Enchant useful, nor do we have CDR and Conjuration Mastery ranks that are needed to make Ice Blades Enchant shine. So instead we use Teleport and Fireball for more mobility and AoE damage.
Skills
- Remove Fire Bolt to add Fireball.
- Remove Devouring Blaze to max out Static Discharge and get Supreme Unstable Currents.
- Switch the Key Passive to Overflowing Energy.
With more level, better stats on items, and better rolled aspects our build can progress further. In this version we do a bunch of changes to our gear, skills and enchantment slots. See below to find out when and why each change is made.
Gear
We add Conceited, Adaptability, and Moonrise replacing our weakest Offensive Aspects. We also add Hectic and Concentration instead of Armor-boosting aspects.
In this setup, you have access to all Unique items, and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them.
Gear
In the optimal build, we get Raiment of the Infinite, Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, and Paingorger's Gauntlets.
Gear with Uber Uniques
The only Uber Unique this build wants is Harlequin Crest. When you get it you can remove points from Fire Bolt and Flame Shield and put them into Icy Veil.
Skills
We switch to our final skill tree:
- Remove Fireball to add Fire Bolt.
- Remove Static Discharge and Supreme Unstable Currents to get Devouring Blaze.
- Switch the Key Passive to Vyr's Mastery
Gameplay
Raiment of the Infinite changes the way you use Teleport. The main difference is that now you need to be more careful and never Teleport into the unknown. First, walk up (or Evade up) to the enemies until you can see all of them, and only then Teleport in the right spot to pull everything together.
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
- Drop Raiment of the Infinite for a Chest with Ranks to Teleport and Hectic Aspect.
- Put Bounding Conduit on your Boots.
- Make sure to have Evade CDR temper on both Boots and Amulet.
- Your Boots also must have "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown" implicit.
Enchantment Slots
We use Teleport for mobility and Fireball for extra AoE.
Skills
We once again replace Fire Bolt with Fireball because we need it for the Enchantment. We remove Devouring Blaze to get Shocking Impact to allow our Lightning Spears oneshot small enemies on their own. We take one point out of Align the Elements to pickup Supreme Unstable Currents and switch our Key Passive to Overflowing Energy. Finally we switch to Mystical Teleport to give it enough damage to kill small enemies around us.
Paragon Boards & Glyphs
Replace Flamefeeder with Territorial. Remove Guarded and Safeguard to get Enchantment Master.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Prioritize Maximum Life over Intelligence on your Gear.
- Replace Raiment of the Infinite with Mage-Lord's Chest.
- Replace Flamefeeder or Exploit with Territorial.
- Take Skill Points out of Glass Cannon and put them into Flame Shield or Icy Veil.
- Only farm Nightmare Dungeons with monsters that are about your character level when you have near optimal gear.
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 our skills if we can't use them because they are on cooldown? In purely offensive terms, CDR gives us the following:
- More uptime on Unstable Currents
- More uptime on Vulnerable from Lightning Spears
- More uptime on Barrier from Ice Armor or Protection, activating Conceited and Storm Swell
- Attack Speed (AS). Attack Speed is more valuable than usual because on top of directly increasing our damage it also translates into extra Cooldown Reduction via Glinting Arc Lash and Summoned Ice Blades.
- Critical Strike Chance (CSC). Apart from letting us benefit from 1.5x Crit multiplier more often, CSC also activates Enhanced Arc Lash, effectively becoming another way to get more Attack Speed. One caveat here is that since Crit is rolled separately for each enemy hit, there's no difference between 30% CSC and 100% CSC when fighting multiple enemies, Arc Lash will swipe twice either way. In single target fights though, every point of CSC matters.
- Next, we have all the normal damage stats: Arc Lash Ranks, Weapon Damage, Intelligence and all kinds of Additive Damage bonuses, 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. Teleport makes you Unstoppable invincible for a short moment, lets you get out of any dangerous situation and gives 30% Damage Reduction for 3 seconds after. 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
- 75%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 80% Attack Speed
Defense and Utility
- Armor Capped 9,230
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 20,000+ Life
- 55%+ Cooldown Reduction
- Unstable Currents CDR on every slot that can have it
- Helm: Concentration
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Armor
- ⚒️Total Armor/Max Life
- ⚒️Chance to Slow/Freeze/Immobilize
- Chest: Raiment of the Infinite
- Otherwise Look For: Hectic
- Ranks to Teleport ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Armor
- ⚒️Total Armor/Max Life
- ⚒️CC Duration/Barrier Generation
- Gloves: Paingorger's Gauntlets (prioritize Crit and Attack Speed)
- Otherwise Look For: Edgemaster’s
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Close Damage
- ⚒️CC Duration/Barrier Generation
- Pants: Might
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life ↑
- Armor
- ⚒️Total Armor
- ⚒️Chance to Freeze/Slow/Immobilize
- Boots: Hectic
- "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown"
- Intelligence
- Movement Speed
- Maximum Life
- Armor
- ⚒️Evade Cooldown Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Chance to Immobilize/Slow/Freeze
- Amulet: Adaptability
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Adaptability/Devouring Blaze/Glass Cannon ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed
- ⚒️Close Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR ↑
- Ring 1: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (prioritize CDR)
- Otherwise Look For: Rapid
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Close Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR ↑
- Ring 2: Moonrise
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Close Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR ↑
- Main Hand: Conceited (Wand)
- Attack Speed ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Vulnerable/Crit Damage
- ⚒️Chance to deal Poison/Shadow Damage
- ⚒️Close Damage ↑
- Off Hand: Storm Swell
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- ⚒️Teleport Size
- ⚒️Close Damage
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Heady Assault Elixir, Heady Precision Elixir, Iron Skin Elixir
- Incense: Song of the Mountain, Sage's Whisper
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.
Why don't you use Imbiber?
Why no Stable Aspect?
Why no Aspect of Overwhelming Currents?
Why do you have points in Charged Bolts if you don't use them?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Arc Lash
Summary
The Arc Lash Sorcerer is a very powerful build that can output absolutely insane damage in the right conditions. Its melee range and squishiness are the only things keeping it somewhat in check. Still, between abundant Crowd Control and never-failing Flame Shield, this build can find a way to survive even when it has no right to.
- Start off by using Fireball Enchantment to farm in the open world.
- Stack Cooldown Reduction, Critical Strike Chance and Attack Speed to unlock unlimited power.
- We use Teleport to get on top of enemies, not to run away from them!
- Use Ice Armor and Flame Shield to stay alive against even the toughest foes.
- If you're hesitating about using Unstable Currents, the answer is always "yes".
Credits
Written by Northwar
Reviewed by Chewingnom
