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 Nightmare Dungeon pushing capability is also solid.
Chain Lightning and Unstable Currents together make up the bulk of this build's damage. In the late game Esadora's Overflowing Cameo clears entire screens of monsters with massive Lightning Nova's. With Lightning Spear flying around and making everything Vulnerable no demon can hope to escape your wrath.
While this Shock Damage powerhouse may not be quite as effective in the endgame when compared to its Leveling Counterpart, it boasts an incredibly fun and satisfying playstyle. Once you acquire Esadora's Overflowing Cameo and a couple of Legendary Aspects the rest is history. Electric Slide your way to victory!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Sorcerer playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides.
Season 3 - Season of the Construct
In Season 3, you obtain the Seneschal Construct through the Season Questline, then collect Governing Stones or Tuning Stones to add attacks and augment them to support your build. Only certain Tuning Stones work with a particular Governing Stone. Look at the bottom of any Tuning Stone tooltip to see if it is compatible with your Construct's currently equipped Stones. Lastly, they can be leveled up by getting duplicates to max out their power. Check out our full Season 3 guide for more information.
Recommended Stones
- Flash of Adrenaline
- Duration
- Tactical
- Initiative
This stone gives us 20% multiplicative damage with 100% uptime. Plain and simple.
- Tempest
- Safeguard
- Arcing
- Efficiency
This stone gives us some damage reduction and bonus Crit Chance.
Alternative Stones
If you are lucky enough to get either Evernight or Genesis from Uber Malphas, you want to swap them in instead of Arcing and Initiative respectively.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Chain Lightning is your primary source of both AoE and single target damage.
- Unstable Currents massively increases your damage output while it is active. Use it whenever you encounter a strong enemy. In the late game when you have lots of Cooldown Reduction, use it whenever.
- Teleport makes you Unstoppable and is your primary source of both mobility on this build.
- Lightning Spear Stuns enemies and makes them Vulnerable. Easy picking for your Chain Lightning!
- Ice Armor provides you with a reliable Barrier.
- Flame Shield makes you Immune for a short period. Use these skills when monsters have the audaicty to try and fight back.
Passives
We pick up a bunch of seemingly useless passives and upgrades: Wizard's Ball Lightning, Destructive Chain Lightning, Static Discharge. All of them are there to produce Crackling Energy which feeds our Esadora's Overflowing Cameo
Enchantment Slots
- Chain Lightning Enchantment fires an extra Chain Lightning for every three that you cast yourself. Simple but powerful.
- Ball Lightning Enchantment adds a bit of AoE damage and produces lots of Crackling Energy.
Alternatively, you can use Teleport Enchantment for extra mobility.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Resource Management
Chain Lightning is the probably the easiest Mana spender to spam infinitely, with only requirement that you hit an enemy. And that's mainly thanks to...
Recharging Aspect
Recharging Aspect is by far the most reliable Mana sustain solution on this build. Simply put, each cast of Chain Lightning takes 35 Mana and gives 15-27 back. With just a little bit of Mana Cost Reduction and Resource Generation it's easy to reach positive balance, and that's without even taking into account all the other Mana sources.
Prodigy’s Aspect
This Codex Aspect can help in the early game if you are struggling with Recharging Aspect alone (which will be the case until you find one with 2.5+ roll).
Static Surge
Static Surge on your Paragon Board grants you 10% Mana after casting Chain Lightning three times. We mostly get it for the Vulenrable application but extra Mana never hurts.
Destructive Chain Lightning + Invigorating Conduit
Taking these Passives can massively improve your Mana generation with Chain Lightning early on, especially if you do not care for using Arc Lash on your Skill Bar. Pick up the balls - they are your lifeforce!
Stats on Gear
Finding and equipping gear with certain stats is a reliable way to solve your "not enough Mana" issues. There are 4 different stats that accomplish this:
- Mana Cost Reduction (rolls on Amulet, Boots, Focus)
This stat is very helpful in the early game but it has anti-synergy with Chain Lightning Enchantment so you should avoid it in the late game when you have other ways to solve Mana issues. - Resource Generation (rolls on Ancestral Rings and Focus)
This stat has the same function as Mana Cost Reduction, but is slightly stronger and doesn't have any downsides. - Lucky Hit: Chance to Regain Primary Resource (rolls on Ancestral Gloves and Focus)
This roll can be useful if you get it early but ultimately unnecessary.
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 last five 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
- Control
- Destruction
- Elementalist
- Territorial
- Exploit
- Reinforced
- Charged
Level 21
- Destruction
- Control
- Territorial
- Exploit
- Reinforced
- Elementalist
- 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 Best in Slot versions. In this section, we guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
The effectiveness of the Chain Lightning Sorcerer depends 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:
- Recharging in Zenith (Fractured Peaks)
- Prodigy’s in Witchwater (Hawezar)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Elementalist's in Pallid Delve (Dry Steppes)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Snowveiled in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen):
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Unbroken Tether: Gamble Focuses
- Conceited: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Control
- Shredding Blades: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Prodigy’s
- Everliving: Gamble Pants
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with Obols!- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- Replaces Shredding Blades
- Esu's Heirloom (Varshan, Beast in the Ice)
- Replaces Bounding Conduit
- Tibault's Will (Duriel)
- Replaces Everliving or Snowveiled
- Godslayer Crown (Duriel)
- Replaces Everliving or Snowveiled
- Esadora's Overflowing Cameo (Zir)
- Replaces Elementalist's
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- 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 about as much damage as Godslayer Crown but much more toughness and utility.
- Ring of Starless Skies can replace Recharging. It's weaker in terms of Mana sustain, but 40% multiplicative damage cannot be overlooked.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Once you have completed the Leveling Guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects you need for the next progression point.
Gear
Imprint the following Codex of Power Aspects onto your gear:
- Disobedience (Chest)
- Snowveiled(Pants or Helmet)
- Storm Swell (Weapon or Off-Hand)
- Control (Gloves)
- Bounding Conduit (Boots)
- Elementalist's (Amulet)
- Recharging (Ring #1)
- Prodigy’s (Ring #2)
Avoid imprinting high roll Offensive Aspects on Weapons early on, as they are often replaced.
Enchantment Slots
Without high Crit Chance we can't effectively use Ball Lightning Enchantment so we replace it with Fireball.
Skills
Since we are not very reliant on Crackling Energy in the early game we can afford to completely remove Ball Lightning and take couple of points out of Static Discharge and Teleport in order to get Rank 5 Fireball.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, the Static Surge on your Paragon Boards, and high Mana-related stats (see Resource Management above), allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Many of these Aspects and better versions of Codex of Power Aspects on the Starter Build must be found.
Gear
Imprint the following Aspects onto your gear for even more power:
- Unbroken Tether on Gloves (instead of Control)
- Conceited on the Off-Hand
- Shredding Blades on Ring (instead of Prodigy’s)
- Everliving on Helmet.
Enchantment Slots
When you get around 30% Crit Chance, you can switch from Fireball to Ball Lightning.
Skills
Remove Fireball and 1 point from Static Discharge. Put all the points into Ball Lightning with Wizard's Ball Lightning upgrade.
With Ball Lightning Enchantment we should have enough Crackling Energy to feed our Overflowing Energy so we can switch to Greater Chain Lightning for more damage.
In this setup, you have access to all and Uniques and Legendary Aspects imprinted into high Item Power gear, high Critical Strike Chance, and high Mana-related stats (see Resource Management above), unleashing the strongest version of this build. Be prepared to grind to attain this level of power!
Gear
In the final build, we use five Unique items:
- Esadora's Overflowing Cameo
- Esu's Heirloom
- Tibault's Will
- Godslayer Crown
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
Out of these five items, only Boots and Amulet require special attention. To maximize the Crit Chance bonus of Esu's Heirloom you need to constantly spam Evade. Esadora's Overflowing Cameo encourages us to produce and pick up as much Crackling Energy as possible.
Skills
Since we now have Lightning Nova's to take care of AoE situation we can remove the extra ranks from Ball Lightning and only use it to generate Crackling Energy. These points go into Static Discharge and Teleport.
Gameplay
After you get Esadora's Overflowing Cameo your Diablo 4 gets upgraded to Pac-Man. Running around and picking up small white orbs is now of paramount importance (avoiding ghosts is optional, although recommended if they are red).
Uber Uniques
Some Unique items are very rare and only drop from Duriel, King of Maggots with approximately 2% chance. If you are one of the lucky few to have these items, here's how you can use them in this build:
- Harlequin Crest is very good. It provides a nice damage boost and a lot of survivability. However it doesn't buff the damage of Lightning Nova's so Godslayer Crown is still slightly better if we only look at DPS.
- Andariel's Visage - this item is not good for the build, Poison Nova doesn't deal damage fast enough and losing CDR is always very painful on a Lightning build.
- Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander is also quite bad. It has great stats but you lose a lot of damage and CDR and the random Shrine effect is not even that good most of the time.
- Melted Heart of Selig is a good defensive item, but we don't usually look for defense when choosing an amulet.
- Ring of Starless Skies is very good and can replace Recharging in the late game. In terms of Mana generation it's a lot weaker, but 40% multiplicative damage is huge!
The Speedfarming setup often makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltides, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and Nightmare Dungeons below Tier 50.
Gear
We replace Esu's Heirloom with Flickerstep. It's mainly here for the "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown" implicit. You can use Legendary Boots with Bounding Conduit to almost the same effect.
Enchantment Slots
We use Teleport and Fireball Enchantments. This combo provides us with unparalleled mobility because each monster we kill triggers a Fireball, which counts as an "Attack" that can reduce the cooldown of our Evade. The end result is endless Teleports as long as we keep killing enemies.
Skills
We remove all points from Ball Lightning and 1 point from Static Discharge. These points are used to max out Teleport and to get Fireball.
We also transfer points from Invigorating Conduit to Shocking Impact to buff up our Lightning Spear and let it kill packs of enemies all on its own.
There are no changes to the Gameplay, Paragon Board or Glyphs from the Standard Endgame Build.
The Standard Build featured at the top of the guide is suitable for success in Nightmare Dungeons up until about Tier 80. Before we go into how to push Tier 100 NM Dungeons, make sure to avoid the following Afflictions:
AVOID THESE Nightmare Dungeon Afflictions
- Monster Critical Resist - Makes all enemies much more tanky with how much the Chain Lightning Sorcerer relies on Critical Strike Damage.
- Monster Lightning Resist - Difficult to kill Lightning Resistant monsters on a Lightning Damage build.
- Melee Defenders - Hard to kill these monsters since you want to Teleport right on top of the monsters on this build.
- Unstoppable Monsters - These monsters cannot be locked down at lower HP values.
- Monster Vulnerable Resist - Noticeably prolongs fights against high HP Elites and Bosses.
- Crowd Control Resist - These monsters recover fast and fight back.
- Death Pulse - This affliction is challenging since you Teleport right on top of the monsters.
- Drifting Shade - Same as above, but also nullifies your ability to deal damage.
Pushing the highest Tier Nightmare Dungeon requires a more tanky build. We make a few gear adjustments below.
Gear
In high tier Nightmare Dungeons we need to get tankier so we drop Godslayer Crown and get a Helmet with Everliving and Total Armor roll.
If that's still not enough to reach the Armor cap (13,200) even with fully stacked Disobedience, use Iron Skin Elixir.
There are no changes to the Skill Tree, Paragon Boards & Glyphs, or Enchantment Slots on this setup.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to prioritize defensive stats and gameplay. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Prioritize Total Armor, Life, and a mix of all Damage Reduction stats on all of the Chain Lightning Sorcerer's gear.
- Consider using Flame Shield Enchantment instead of Chain Lightning for its "cheat death" mechanic. It can save your life!
- Imprint Everliving into your Chest and Aspect of Disobedience into your Amulet for maximum survivability. This will require sacrificing Conceited Aspect in favor of maintaining Aspect of the Unbroken Tether.
- Take Skill Points out of Glass Cannon. This will massively increase your tankiness. Additionally, do not use Amulets with ranks to Glass Cannon.
- In the Paragon Boards, select additional Life Nodes in Rare clusters whenever possible.
- Only farm Nightmare Dungeons with monsters that are about your character level until you achieve high defensive capabilities and become comfortable with farming endgame content.
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 your skills if you can't use them because they are on cooldown? In purely offensive terms CDR gives us the following:
- More Unstable Currents uptime (about 2x damage)
- More uptime on Barrier from Ice Armor or Protection activating Conceited and Storm Swell(1.62x damage buff)
- Intelligence. Intelligence double dips on this build by increasing all our damage by 0.1% per point and then separately scaling the damage of Esadora's Overflowing Cameo. That doesn't make it completely insane but it's slightly higher priority than normal.
- Offensive Stats. After that, we want all the normal offensive stats: Chain Lightning Ranks, Weapon Damage, Critical Strike Chance, Intelligence, Attack Speed, and all kinds of Additive Damage, 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. 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.
- Damage Reduction (DR). We stack as much of it as possible, mostly going for Damage Reduction, Damage Reduction from Close/Distant Enemies. A lot of these stats can be found on Chests, Pants, Amulets, and some of our Paragon Boards. If we can stack enough to make our Barrier survive a hit then everything is easy, as we can just cast Ice Armor and not worry about anything for 6 seconds.
- 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 and Defensive Aspect of Disobedience. It's extremely important to reach the Armor cap for the current level of monsters 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 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
Choosing the right stats for your gear can make or break your build. You won't always find perfect stats (also known as affixes or modifiers) though, and you may need to make a tough choice between two good pieces of equipment. Use the following list of priorities to compare your gear and pick the best.
- Helm: Godslayer Crown, look for high damage roll and CDR
- Otherwise Look For: Everliving
- Cooldown Reduction
- Total Armor
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence
- Lucky Hit Chance w/ Barrier
- Chest Armor: Disobedience
- Total Armor
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Damage Reduction from Close
- Maximum Life
- Damage Reduction
- Gloves: the Unbroken Tether
- Ranks to Chain Lightning
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed
- Intelligence
- Injured Critical Strike Chance
- Pants: Tibault's Will, look for good roll on Unique effect
- Otherwise Look For: Snowveiled
- Ranks to Ball Lightning
- Total Armor
- Damage Reduction from Close
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Maximum Life
- Damage Reduction
- Boots: Esu's Heirloom, look for high Movespeed and Crit Chance rolls
- Otherwise Look For: Bounding Conduit
- Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown
- Movement Speed
- Ranks to Teleport
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Amulet: Esadora's Overflowing Cameo, look for high CDR and Lightning Nova damage
- Otherwise Look For: Elementalist's
- Cooldown Reduction
- Movement Speed
- Ranks to Glass Cannon
- Ranks to Conjuration Mastery
- Ranks to Elemental Dominance
- Ranks to Defensive Skills
- Total Armor
- Rings: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, look for high CDR, Resource and Unique effect
- Otherwise Look For: Recharging & Shredding Blades
- Critical Strike Chance
- Maximum Life
- Close Damage
- Lightning Damage
- Resource Generation
- Off-Hand: Conceited
- Cooldown Reduction
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Resource Generation
- Lucky Hit Chance
- All Stats
- Main Hand: Storm Swell (Wand)
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Close Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- Critical Strike Damage
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Heady Assault Elixir, Heady Precision Elixir, Iron Skin Elixir, Elixir of Combatant Fortune
- Incense: Song of the Mountain
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 no Elementalist's Aspect
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown
Video Guide
Hungry for more Guides?
Sorcerer Guides
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 Generation/Mana Cost Reduction/Maximum Mana stats and take advantage of Recharging Aspect and Paragon.
- Unstable Currents massively increases your damage output. It is just one of many reasons why you want to get as much Cooldown Reduction as possible on your gear.
- 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
Original post by DarkHumility