Ball Lightning Sorcerer Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Ball Lightning Sorcerer Endgame guide! This build uses Okun's Catalyst 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 and lack of burst damage.
Ball Lightning Sorcerer doesn't produce very impressive damage numbers; you will never see a billion 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. »
The alternative to the Okun's Catalyst is Strike of Stormhorn and curiously enough you can just exchange one item for another and keep the rest of the build intact. This item offers you similar power but a much different playstyle almost identical to that of a Frozen Orb Sorcerer.
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!
Requirements for this build
- Okun's Catalyst or Strike of Stormhorn.
- Elemental Acuity or Poc Lum.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Sorerer Leveling Guides. See how this Build compares against others with our various Build Tier Lists.
Boss Powers
Season 8 is the Season of Belial's Return. It allows you to tap into Boss Powers obtained from World, Event, and Lair Bosses throughout Sanctuary. The new seasonal mechanic, Apparition Incursions, is available at any difficulty level and gives you the opportunity to unlock a subset of these powers very early on. Various Apparition Monsters appear in these special timed events throughout Sanctuary. Defeating these monsters spawns 1 of 10 Apparition Bosses to hunt you down and defeating them grants you their Boss Power. After defeating the first Boss, continue the event for a chance to fight a second Apparition Boss, after which Belial himself joins the fray.
There are 24 Boss Powers available and the first time you defeat one of these Bosses, you claim their power for yourself. Boss Powers each have Main and Modifier effects to boost your build. 13 are available in all difficulties (from Apparition Incursions and World Bosses), while 11 can only be acquired in Torment 1 difficulty or higher from Lair Bosses and Lilith. You can equip 1 Main Power and 3 Modifiers, and all powers can be upgraded up to Rank 20, increasing the potency of both the Main and Modifier effect. You use Spectral Ash to upgrade these powers, dropped from Apparition Incursions and by defeating any Bosses. Boss Powers also scale with your Paragon Level, growing stronger as you progress.
Best-in-Slot Boss Powers
Main Power
Grigoire's Lightning Square - a nice chunk of extra damage with super easy activation condition.
Modifiers
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - a 1.3[x] Vulnerable Damage multiplier. Basic Skill part is irrelevant.
- Sinerat's Flames provides an unconditional 25%[x] damage boost, which grows even further when Enlightenment is active.
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - another damage multiplier that can be scaled by Crowd Control Duration Utility Tempers.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Hatred's Embrace's Haste - used in some build Variants to cap Crit Chance without Heir of Perdition.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- 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 is very important buff that should be active at all times. Not only does it give us extra Attack Speed, but 3 out of 4 spells it can cast are also very useful us: Lightning Spears and Familiars are Conjuration so we gain mana regen from Primoridal Binding. On top of that, Familiars give us 10% damage via Invoked Familiar. Finally, Destructive Charged Bolts reduce enemies' damage.
- Ice Armor and Flame Shield are our standard defenisve spells, with the former also providing some Mana regen and damage via Storm Swell Aspect.
- Finally, we use Ice Blades to get extra Cooldown Reduction, Primordial Binding stacks and to quickly reactivate our Enlightenment.
Skill Rotation
- Spam Ball Lightning to maintain the Ring of Happiness™ spinning around yourself.
- Walk or Teleport into enemies to kill them with aforementioned ring.
- Keep Ice Armor and Unstable Currents active at all times.
- Use Ice Blades every 2-3 seconds when your Enlightenment is up. Use them as often as possible when it's down.
- Use Flame Shield once at the start of the run to get full stacks of Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop. After that, keep it for emergencies.
If you run out of Mana, pick up Crackling Energy that is lying around.
Enchantment Slots
- Teleport Enchantment lets us spam the spell a lot more. The ability to spam Teleport is very important for Ball Lightning Sorcerer because with Raiment of the Infinite we can group all enemies in the middle of the ring where damage is the highest.
- Ice Blades Enchantment gives us a lot of Cooldown Reduction via Roaring Ice Blades. It also greatly reduces the cooldown of Ice Blades themselves, turning it into a spammable skill we can use to proc Enlightenment.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Sorcerer Class Overview.
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.
Ball Lightning 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
- Tactician
- Destruction
- Elementalist
- Unleash
- Exploit
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Unleash
- Elementalist
- Exploit
Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.
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 BallLightning Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Tam + Thul - gives us 15% damage and periodicaly Freezes enemies.
- Nagu + Ohm - free 15% damage with 100% uptime.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Yul, Igni, and Poc - very strong Ritual Runes.
- Lum - is great in early game when you're struggling with Mana, especially when combined with Poc.
- Gar - Crit Chance is extremely important. Use this instead of Ohm if it's below 70%.
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 and abilities. You can have one hired (permanent) mercenary during solo play and a reinforcement who assists you from time to time in certain situations.
Hired: Subo
Subo passively gives us a maphack which is so nice to play with it's hard to use any other merc after trying it once. On top of that he provides some extra damage through Opening Fire.
Reinforcement: Raheir
We choose Bastion with Injured trigger for its massive damage reduction which can save our life in sticky situations.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Ball Lightning Sorcerer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does not indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. 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
- Sub 30 sec Unstable Currents Cooldown
- 95%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 60%+ Attack Speed
- 70%+ Chance to Cast Twice
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 3,000+ Life
- Lucky Hit Chance to Restore Resource roll
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Ball Lightning 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 Ball Lightning 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.
- At this point your number one problem is Ball Lightning's insane Mana Cost. Prioritize Mana Per Second Mana per Second above everything else and pay attention to your Elemental Acuity and Enlightenment buffs. Poc Lum Runeword also helps with that, and you can use any good ritual rune if you don't have Poc.
- Early versions of the build use Hatred's Embrace's Haste instead of Flesh Reaper's Disruption so you have easy Crit Chance and don't have to worry about Crowd Control Duration.
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.
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
- Heir of Perdition gives us tons of damage and Crit Chance letting us replace Hatred's Embrace's Haste with Flesh Reaper's Disruption.
- Ring of Starless Skies gives us a lot of damage and enough resource cost reduction to drop Lum in favor of Thul.
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
To go really fast we need to get our Evade Teleport cooldown low enough that a single proc of our Boots' implicit affix will reset it. To do that we need:
- Harlequin Crest with GA CDR.
- Amulet with Evade CDR temper.
- Gravitational Chest with extra Teleport Ranks.
- Replace Fundamental Release board with Enchantment Master:
If you don't have good enough items to make the above setup work, use Flickerstep and an Amulet with regular CDR roll on top of Evade CDR temper.
Ball Lightning Enchantment is used instead of Ice Blades because the latter can't really keep up when you go fast and to get more damage from Enchantment Master.
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
- The only change in Pit Push version is that we replace Teleport on our skill bar with Greater Fireball to execute Elites.
Instead of Okun's Catalyst you can use Strike of Stormhorn if you want a different playstyle. Since both builds want to maximize the damage of Ball Lightning you don't need to change anything else. The only exception is Raiment of the Infinite in the Pit Push variant. Strike of Stormhorn doesn't want all enemies to be on top of you so it's best to stick with Gravitational or use Shroud of False Death.
Gear & Skills
The only change besides the Focus is switch from Raiment of the Infinite to regular Chest with Gravitational because this variant can't play in melee range.
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.
The build works really well when you decimate everything in seconds, but may get overwhelmed if fights are long against high level monsters. There are several adjustments you can make when you have trouble with more difficult content:
- Check if your Armor & Resists are capped.
- Use defensive consumables.
- Roll Maximum Life instead of offensive stats on as many pieces as possible.
- Kite enemies when they become Unstoppable.
This guide is already very focused on Mana Generation as it is always a major problem for any Ball Lightning. Poc Lum Runeword helps a lot and even just Lum with any strong Rune of Ritual will go a long way. Ultimately, you just have to get enough CDR, Mana per Second, and Lucky Hit: Restore. You can get some Resource Cost Reduction rolls on your Gloves, Rings, or Focus but that will cost you a lot of DPS or survivability. The best course of action is to chug Elixir of Resourcefulness II and keep keeping on, you'll be fightning an uphill battle until you get Ring of Starless Skies.
Mechanics
- Ticks 3.33 times per second.
- Each Ball Lightning has a separate 5 second timer.
- The damage is proportional to the number of currently active Ball Lightnings.
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