Chain Lightning Sorcerer Endgame Build Guide
The Chain Lightning Sorcerer puts on a dazzling performance. One of of the most visually impressive builds in the game, this Sorcerer paralyzes and destroys monsters with a barrage of electricity. It has insane mobility and great Speedfarming potential, shredding open world Events and Helltides with ease. Its Pit pushing capability is also solid.
Chain Lightning and Unstable Currents together make up the bulk of this build's damage. In the late game Axial Conduit greatly empowers the skill at the cost of increased Mana consumption. Luckily, Chain Lightning Sorcerer has many tools to address this problem, and with optimized gear we need nothing more than a single stat roll on our weapon.
While Chain Lightning Sorcerer needs Axial Conduit to become really good, it can still function somewhat well without it, thanks to strong resource Aspect that can be acquired in a dungeon. Furthermore, Chain Lightning's high lucky hit chance makes it easier to incorporate additional sources of damage such as Elemental Surge temper, Frostburn, or Azurewrath allowing you to get by until you find Axial Conduit.
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.
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
- Chain Lightning is our primary source of both AoE and single target damage.
- 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 damage from Conjuration Mastery stacks. On top of that, Familiars default to Fire element when cast automatically and this lets us access Burning thanks to Enhanced Familiar. Finally, Destructive Charged Bolts reduce enemies' damage.
- Teleport is our mobility spell that can also break us out of Crowd Control. On top of that it's an extremely fast Shock spell so it is very good for proccing Unstable Currents.
- 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, Conjuration Mastery stack and to quickly reactivate our Enlightenment.
Skill Rotation
- Spam Chain Lightning whenever you have enemies to kill. As long as you have stuff to hit, you will never run out of Mana thanks to Lucky Hit procs.
- Use Teleport to move forward and find more enemies.
- 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 find Axial Conduit very early and don't yet have the Mana Generation to spam Chain Lightning just slow down. Cast Chain Lightning once or twice and then just wait for it to kill everything. It will still deal a lot more damage than without the pants. Make sure to never let your Mana hit 0! If that happens all your Chain Lightnings disappear and you deal no damage so you feel compelled to cast more Chain Lightning and since your Mana is low it's just gonna disappear again and you will be stuck like that.
Enchantment Slots
- Chain Lightning is simply casting more of our main spell. More Chain Lightning = more damage, simple as.
- Ice Blades Enchantment reduces the cooldowns of all our skills and adds a bit of damage via Conjuration Mastery. 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 Enchantment Slots 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.
Chain 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
- Flamefeeder
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Unleash
- 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 Chain Lightning Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Tam + Wat - gives some damage reduction and generates a lot of Offering for our second Runeword.
- Xol + Ohm - free 15% damage with almost 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 and Poc - very strong Ritual Runes that can replace Tam and/or Xol with minimal loss in efficiency.
- Moni - poor man's Tam produces almost as much offering but you have to stutter step and then stop awkwardly in-between attacks.
- Gar - Crit Chance is extremely important. Use this instead of Wat 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 Chain Lightning 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
- Sub 30 sec Unstable Currents Cooldown
- 95%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 60%+ Attack Speed
- 8+ Total Ranks in Conjuration Mastery
- 100% Chance to Hit Twice
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 84%+
- 2,500+ Life
- Lucky Hit Chance to Restore Resource roll
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Chain 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 Chain 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.
- Starter version of the build uses vanilla Chain Lightning. Decently rolled Recharging combined with Unbroken Tether should solve all your Mana problems. If you only have a min roll of it, add in some Mana per Second and/or Elemental Acuity.
- Your #1 goal at this point is to get Axial Conduit so go do some Helltides and fight Grigoire.
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.
- With Axial Conduit you really need Lucky Hit Chance to Restore Resource on at least one item. If you can't get it you can temper same stat on all your Jewelry but doing so will destroy your Unstable Currents uptime. The damage won't be good until you have both.
- Since now most of the damage is coming from Axial Conduit explosion we can remove 4 ranks from Chain Lightning and get Destructive Charged Bolts for damage reduction. Additionally we unspec Potent Warding and Warmth to getInvoked Lightning Spear and Hoarfrost. Make sure that at least one of your utility tempers is Chance to Freeze!
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 Gar with Wat.
- Tyrael's Might and Ring of Starless Skies simply give us a lot of defense and damage respectively.
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
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:
- Harlequin Crest with GA CDR.
- If you don't have these items with good enough rolls/masterwork you can also use an Amulet with CDR and/or Evade CDR temper.
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
- Instead of Tyrael's Might we use Shroud of False Death for more damage. Among other things it gives us +1 to Elemental Attunement so we can put that skill point into Potent Warding instead.
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?
What can I do to improve my Mana generation?
Mechanics
Axial Conduit
Summary
- The Chain Lightning Sorcerer is easy and effective build well suited for speedfarming various types of content.
- Make sure to maintain your Mana! Find gear with Mana Per Second and take advantage of Recharging Aspect and Paragon.
- Find Axial Conduit and watch your destructive power rise to the next level.
- If you run out of Mana simply cast less and wait, it deals more damage this way!
- This Chain Lightning Sorcerer is a highly mobile destroyer that puts on a beautiful light show! What more can you want?
Credits
Written by Northwar