Blizzard Sorcerer Endgame Guide

Season 7 is the Season of Witchcraft. It features two separate borrowed power mechanics in the forms of Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems. Both Seasonal mechanics are unlocked and improved by new NPCs found at the Tree of Whispers after collecting resources from Headhunt Zones, Seasonal areas similar to Helltide that appear across Sanctuary.

There are 25 Witchcraft Powers, 6 of which can be equipped at a time. Each Power belongs to one of four Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, Psyche, and Lost), tags that promote synergies within themselves and with Occult Gems. Each School has a single Unique Witchcraft Power, only one of which can be equipped at a time. These Unique Powers max out and gain an additional effect at rank 5, while the other Powers max at rank 21 and gain their bonus effects at various levels. To unlock and improve Witchcraft Powers, defeat Headrotten or complete Whispers within the Headhunt Zones to collect Restless Rot. Lost Powers are an exception, requiring you to randomly encounter a Forgotten Altar in Dungeons to unlock them.

Best-in-Slot Witchcraft Powers

Alternate Witchcraft Powers

It will be difficult to change any Witchcraft Powers because the recommended Occult Gems require three Eldritch Powers along with three Growth & Decay Powers.

• Piranhado - This can help group enemies and looks pretty cool.
• The Cycle - Allows you to replace Hex of Whispers.
• Hex of Shattering - Provides damage reduction and more reliable for Dust Stone.
• Hex of Flames - Provides damage and more reliable for Dust Stone.

Rarely, Headrotten Bosses appear with a still-attached Fugitive Head stolen from the Tree of Whispers. Slay these enemies and return the Heads to Gelena to unlock and upgrade Occult Gems. These Gems are socketable in Jewelry and each provide +160 Armor and +8% Resistance to All Elements. More importantly, each Occult Gem grants a unique effect that synergizes with your equipped Witchcraft Powers to provide a variety of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility-based bonuses.

Best-in-Slot Occult Gems

• Friend of the Bog - More primary stat will provide more damage combined the benefit of moving Unhindered through enemies along with a health increase make this an easy choice.
• Dust Stone - Provides extra damage for each Hex or Aura an enemy is affected by but not very much.
• Toadling's Wish - Boosts Soul Harvest.

Alternate Occult Gems

• Hungering Void - Helps group enemies, good option over the minor damage of Dust Stone.

Skill Rotation

• Cast Flame Shield, Ice Armor, and Teleport to activate Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop if you are using it, rotate Blizzard with Teleport to maintain your stacks. Use Ice Blades and Ice Armor when available and maintain one Cold Familiar. Use Deep Freeze when desired for extra damage, a cooldown reset, or immunity. Lure enemies into your Ice Spikes, you can use Raiment of the Infinite or Kry to pull enemies together.
• (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

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.

Glyph Leveling Priorities

• Stalagmite will be used in the early Endgame but will be replaced once enough critical strike chance can be attained in the Pit variant.

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 Blizzard Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Lith + Wat will provide damage reduction and an execute, it also generates for Xol to trigger Kry faster.
• Xol + Kry will reduce your Ultimate cooldown to improve uptime.

Alternative choices

If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Igni + Ohm will provide additional damage.
• Cir + Thul will cast a Mystical Frost Nova after using 5 skills every three seconds.
• Ceh will provide additional Summons which provides more Mana regeration from Primordial Binding.
• Grand Topaz will give you a flat damage increase.

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: Varyana

• Varyana is a good choice to maximize offense. Bloodthirst will give some extra attack speed and you can set it to activate on any skill in combat.
• Raheir will potentially save your character with his reinforcement Bastion. Setting this to trigger on Injured can keep you going in difficult encounters.

To enable the Blizzard 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

Item Progression Goals

Before you dive into the Endgame with the Blizzard 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.

This section is designed to guide your Blizzard 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.

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?

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.

How can I trigger Unstoppable?

Sorcerers has two primary sources of Unstoppable with Teleport and Flame Shield. You can also use the Snowveiled aspect to add it to Ice Armor. This build will use Snowveiled and Flame Shield.

Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?

Generally hardcore and softcore share the same builds. Outside of being more prudent in your gameplay, you can also tweak the setup slightly to raise your survivability:

• Focus more on Armor & Resists, making sure that they are always capped especially as you transition into higher torment difficulties.
• Focus more on maximum life rolls, for example replacing DPS stats like main attributes, attack speed, critical strike chance and additive increased damage rolls. Also masterwork life more than normal if no other crucial stats have priority.
• Focus on adding defensive skills, passives and paragon nodes first as you level up.
• Play on a slightly lower difficulty than normal, don't push into difficult territory. As long as you can deal with all enemies swiftly, they can't retaliate.
• Save a source of Unstoppable if possible to get out of crowd controls.
• Use defensive elixirs and incenses instead of offensive ones.

Mechanics

Ice Spikes

• Glacial spawns an Ice Spike in a random spot within Blizzard every 0.5 seconds.
• Ice Spikes benefit from Cold Damage bonuses and Permafrost passive.
• Ice Spikes benefit from your Intelligence Skill Damage bonus.
• Ice Spikes do not benefit from Mastery Skill Damage bonuses.
• Ice Spikes can Critically Strike but cannot proc Lucky Hits.
• Aspect of the Frozen Tundra damage range doesn't matter, it is used to increase the area effect of your Glacial Ice Spikes.
• You don't put ranks into Blizzard because your build focuses on scaling Ice Spikes instead of the standard damage over time of the base skill.

Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop

• Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop provides up to 25 percent additional damage for each different elemental skill you cast, stacking up to 75 percent for a Pyromancy, Frost, and Shock skill. All stacks will remain as long as you rotate two different elements within 8 seconds.

Enlightenment

• Enlightenment is your key passive. This requires you to rotate different elements to quickly stack up to 100 for a buff called Enlightened. Enlightened gives increase damage by stacking your lightning, fire, and cold elemental damage additives with each other, it also increases your mana regeneration and attack speed along with an additional 25 percent damage multiplier. While Enlightened your stacks will deplete and you can't gain additional stacks until reaching 0 and then you will need to start your rotation again.

Attack Speed Caps

• While all the exact mechanics are much more nuanced, there are two separate Attack Speed Bonus caps of +100% that apply to all builds for a total potential of +200%. For Sorcerers, these two caps are distributed in the following way:

Cap 1

• Moonrise
• Elixir of Advantage II
• Attack Speed (Gear Affix)
• Andariel's Visage
• Culler
• Swift Conjurer
• Ancient Flame
• Artillery Shrine (100% AS)

Cap 2

• Accelerating
• Rapid
• Prime Unstable Currents
• Basic Attack Speed (Gear Affix)
• Gloves of the Illuminator
• Pyromancy Attack Speed (Tempering)

Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.

Stagger

Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects and instead take Stagger Damage when hit by one. The amount of stagger damage dealt depends on the type of CC and is proportional to its duration. After being hit by a CC effect, the Boss will temporarily take less Stagger Damage from a CC of the same type.

Effectively, this means that when you're just spamming one type of CC you don't need to spam any more of it than what you need to keep a normal enemy permanently CC-d. To stagger the Boss quickly you need to use as many different types of CC as possible. After the Boss is staggered it gains a certain amount of stacking Stagger Damage Reduction for the rest of the fight:

• After 1st Stagger: 20%
• After 2nd Stagger: 40%
• After 3rd Stagger: 60%
• After 4th Stagger: 90%

Bosses naturally regain 1% of their Stagger HP every second and when that regen is combined with 90% Stagger Damage Reduction it becomes borderline impossible to Stagger the Boss again unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.

Coming Soon.

The Blizzard Sorcerer is an easy to play and powerful Endgame build but will require some luck to find a good Glacial aspect.

• Maintain Enlightenment easily with Blizzard and Teleport Enchantment.
• Lure enemies into your Blizzard stack and try to keep bosses from moving too much by staying close.

Written by pandaglassjaw