Arc Lash Sorcerer Endgame Guide
Welcome to the Arc Lash Sorcerer Endgame Guide! This build is melee and for those that want to get aggressive. It's range can make it a difficult and dangerous playstyle but is very fun once you get the gear you need.
You will mainly be using your Raiment of the Infinite to pull in enemies with your Teleport Enchantment and then pummeling the enemies with Arc Lash. Unstable Currents will provide a massive damage increase and you can maintain the uptime. Ice Blades will be needed to maintain your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and Enlightenment.
You have great Defensive Skills at your disposal. Flame Shield must be used for your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and provides Immune for a few seconds which is invaluable for avoiding dangerous stacks in Pits along with providing Unstoppable. Teleport will allow you to reposition for damage or defense along with providing Unstoppable. Ice Armor will provide a large Barrier and a damage increase thanks to Storm Swell.
Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop is a large part of our gameplay, requiring us to stack our three different elements and then rotate two to maintain the stacks. With enough cooldown reduction this will be much easier to manage. Since Ice Blades has a cooldown, you will need to also rotate your Defensive Skills for the fastest access to your Enlightenment.
Arc Lash Sorcerer is a fun and aggressive playstyle and one of the only builds to provide a true melee experience for a Sorcerer. The gear can be difficult to get online but can scale well. Let's jump in and see what it's all about!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Sorcerer Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Season Theme
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Arc Lash is your primary damage skill. It has a close range and will swipe twice on a critical strike and restore Mana as long as you hit an enemy thanks to Flickering Arc Lash. Shard of Verathiel adds a Mana cost to you Arc Lash.
- Ice Blades is your primary support skill. It provides cooldown reduction along the primary rotation for Enlightenment and Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- Unstable Currents is your ultimate skill. It summons random Shock Skills while you cast a Shock Skill and provides additional attack speed. This will provide Conjuration Mastery stacks from Lightning Spear being summoned and also solve your Vulnerable application at the same time. It is a priority to keep Unstable Currents active.
- Teleport provides mobility to reposition and also makes you Unstoppable to break crowd control if you are caught. It also provides damage reduction thanks to Shimmering Teleport.
- Flame Shield makes you Immune for a few seconds, a powerful mechanic to avoid any damage and also provides Unstoppable to break crowd control, you can use this to avoid dangerous stacks from Pit bosses. You will also need to use it for your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop's Pyromancy Skill.
- Ice Armor provides a large Barrier along with damage bonuses from Storm Swell, while Ice Armor is active you can reduce it's cooldown by spending more Mana thanks to Shimmering Ice Armor.
Skill Rotation
- Cast Flame Shield then Unstable Currents then Ice Armor for your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and Enlightenment. Use Teleport Enchantment to group enemies. Cast Arc Lash on the grouped enemies. Use Ice Blades in rotation with Arc Lash to maintain Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and Enlightenment.
- (On Elites & Bosses) After getting your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop stack in the beginning, consider saving Flame Shield for dangerous moments to avoid death or deadly stacks from Pit bosses.
- (On Bosses) Keep an eye on the stagger bar and prepare to nuke right when it fills as many of our damage modifiers rely on crowd controls.
Sorcerer Enchantments
Ice Blades is your first Enchantment. This will summon Ice Blades after using enough Skills with cooldowns. This helps with Vulnerable, cooldown reduction, and Conjuration Mastery stacks.
Teleport is your second Enchantment. It will replace your evade with a shorter range Teleport that does not make you Unstoppable. This build needs the mobility and uses it for Raiment of the Infinite to group enemies for an easier clear.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Sorcerer Enchantments Guide.
Paragon & Glyphs
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 at level 15 and from 4 to 5 at level 46. Some of them cannot be activated before reaching these thresholds! Progress through The Pit to rank up your Glyphs.
Use the slider to see the progression steps. At around Paragon 200, leveling slows down significantly and all important Rare clusters, Legendary nodes and Glyph sockets should be unlocked. Afterwards, you can min/max your build with minor tweaks and by picking up additional smaller nodes.
Arc Lash Sorcerer Endgame Paragon
Some Glyph position swaps, board changes and other pathing adjustments may occur as you unlock your full potential. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build before spending additional points that do not significantly impact your character's power.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
To Level 15
- Flamefeeder
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Unleash
- Destruction
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Unleash
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Flamefeeder
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Runes
You can have up to two Runewords in your setup, each consisting of one Ritual and one Invocation Rune. Socket them in Two-Handed Weapons if your build calls for them, otherwise place them into your Armor pieces to replace normal gems. The Arc Lash Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Cir + Wat for additional damage reduction combined with Xol + Ohm for additional damage.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Use Topaz gems for damage.
Learn more about Runes and how they work in our dedicated Runewords Overview and Runewords Tier List.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries are unlocked during the Vessel of Hatred campaign and assist you in battle. There are 4 separate Mercenaries to choose from, each with their own skill trees:
Hired: Subo
- Subo is a great choice for casual gameplay thanks to his passive Seeker that reveals enemies and objects, this is a nice quality of life addition and also gives some Mana sustain. Grab Wire Trap along with Ready At Hand for some mobility. Next you pick Cover Fire with the damage increase from Opening Fire.
- Raheir is a great alternative if you don't mind dropping the maphack, Valiance is an amazing defensive tool that will prevent damage from large hits along with give you Unstoppable. Take Ground Slam and grab Raheir's Aegis for extra defense. Next you want Bastion with Inspiration. Valiance is a very powerful mechanic for pushing more difficult content or playing on Hardcore.
Reinforcement: Raheir
- Raheir will potentially save your character with his reinforcement Bastion. Setting this to trigger on Injured can keep you going in difficult encounters.
- Varyana is a great alternative to Raheir if you are either using Raheir as your hired or if you just want some extra damage. Bloodthirst will give some extra attack speed and you can set it on any attack.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Arc Lash Sorcerer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. Keep in mind that certain stats, such as Armor, Resistances, Extra Size Tempers, Attack Speed and more, have caps that may affect your priorities according to the items and Paragon points available at that moment.
Recommended Endgame Stat Thresholds
- 35%+ Cooldown Reduction
- 40%+ Attack Speed
- 40%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 2000+ Intelligence
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 3,500+ Life
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Arc Lash Sorcerer, take a look at this overview of the items used in the build. See below for further details about the different progression steps and variants. Some of your Skill Tree choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. Keep in mind that while we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the exact progression is different for everyone.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Build Variants
This section is designed to guide your Arc Lash Sorcerer from a fresh level 60 into the very late endgame using the three variants Starter, Ancestral and Mythic. At the final step, you should be fully decked out with a great all-rounder build. From there, follow the other min/max variants if you want to optimize around certain activities such as Pit Pushing, Speedfarming and more.
If you are fresh in Torment 1 coming from a leveling guide, this is where you begin. Since only some Aspects can be guaranteed from Dungeon unlocks for the Codex of Power, focus on acquiring the additional aspects via gambling with Murmuring Obols.
Gear & Skills
- Early on in your progression, focus on Armor & Resistances to survive. Each Torment difficulty adds a penalty of -250 Armor and -25% all Res and it's recommended to keep both capped (1000 Armor, 70+ Res) at all times. As you unlock higher power gear, masterworking levels and more Paragon points, you naturally scale your character into the higher difficulties and can start replacing some of these rolls with offensive or utility stats.
- Cooldown reduction is a priority when we get started to maintain our Unstable Currents uptime for extra damage from Conjuration Mastery stacks.
The goal here is to progress through the Torment difficulties as you unlock Ancestrals, Paragon points, all Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and the most important Uniques to pilot this build. Some Legendary Aspects are used temporarily to fill slots that may be replaced with more Unique items later on.
Gear & Skills
- As you upgrade your gear to Ancestrals with more masterworking levels and reach higher paragon, you can focus more and more on replacing Armor & Resistance rolls with better stats, but ensure to stay capped at 1000 Armor and 70%+ Resistances for the difficulty you're currently in.
- Raiment of the Infinite will pull in enemies to your Teleport location, allowing you to group enemies together for a much better clear speed.
- Shard of Verathiel adds a Mana cost to your Arc Lash and will now require you to think about how you spend Mana. Mana per second on Helmet is important to give extra room when you begin to ramp with your ultimate.
- Unstable Currents solves your Mana with Conjuration Mastery stacks. It's important that you get enough cooldown reduction to maintain uptime, Hectic and Orange Herald are important for this.
This is the final version of the build's progression, including all regular Unique items, Mythic Uniques, Legendary Aspects, Temper mods and Masterworking, leaving you with a great all-rounder build for all content in the game. Additional variants use this as a baseline to optimize around certain activities.
Gear & Skills
- Tyrael's Might make it much easier to hit your Resistance caps, even in high Torment difficulties. This allows you to min/max the setup further for example by removing such Paragon nodes and putting them into more damage.
- Ring of Starless Skies provides great damage and drastically reduces our Mana cost.
- Heir of Perdition provides a massive damage increase at the cost of cooldown reduction.
This Speedfarming variant optimizes the build for easy activities like Helltides, Whispers, Nightmare Dungeons and lower Pit Tiers after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- Harlequin Crest (commonly called Shako) will provide massive cooldown reduction for maximum speed and helps solve your defenses with a high Armor roll along with Damage Reduction.
- Flickerstep will provide a massive 2.5 second evade cooldown reduction for each skill cast. This will reset our Teleport Enchantment at an accelerated rate.
- Giving up Raiment of the Infinite for maximum cooldown on your Teleport Enchantment means you will have a harder time clearing with low range and area effect. To solve this you can cheat a bit with Splintering Energy to give you the needed area clear speed that is needed for Speedfarming.
This setup optimizes the build to push the highest possible Tiers in The Pit after you have finished the Mythic variant and reached a plateau in your progression.
Gear & Skills
- When fighting monsters in high tiers of the Pit, remember that after crowd controlling elites for 5 seconds, they become Unstoppable for 8 seconds. This may be the right moment to start kiting them around because your damage done goes way down and they can freely retaliate.
- Not much changes from your Mythic variant.
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.
What can I do to improve survivability?
How can I trigger Unstoppable?
Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?
Why don't you use Paingorger's Gauntlets?
Why do you have points in Charged Bolts if you don't use it?
Mechanics
Arc Lash
Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
[d4-skill id=2016157]Enlightenment[/d4-skill]
Attack Speed Caps
Stagger
Video Guide
Summary
The Arc Lash Sorcerer Endgame build is an aggressive melee powerhouse, once you get the right gear. While you will be on the front line, Sorcerer gets plenty of defensive skills to keep you healthy.
- Pull in enemies with your Teleport thanks to Raiment of the Infinite and start shredding the grouped enemies with Arc Lash.
- Rotate your Ice Blades and defensive skills to maintain Enlightenment and Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- When a problem comes along, you must Arc Lash it!
Credits
Written by pandaglassjaw