Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Guide

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.

Leveling Boss Powers

Alternate Boss Powers

• Kirma's Sparks - Main: This will deal damage to all close enemies when you evade. Prioritizing boots with Attacks Reduce Evade will allow you to get plenty of extra damage from frequent evades.
• Allek's Talons - Main: This gives a lot of power early on to your basic skills and is great in the early levels. Spark works well with this but you will spend most of your time using your basic attack to benefit the most from it.
• Flesh Reaper's Disruption - Modifier: This provides extra vulnerable damage. To fully activate it you need Crowd Control Duration tempers in Utility slots.
• Beastmaster's Training - Modifier: This provides extra damage for your variety of summons.

Enchantments

At level 15, you unlock the Sorcerer Enchantments class mechanic. Finish this Priority Quest as soon as possible to get Fireball Enchantment. Any enemy that dies will explode with a Fireball, providing a chain reaction that destroys weaker enemies and sometimes elites if they are surrounded by weaker enemies. If you completed this quest on a previous character then your Enchantments will be unlocked, however you can still complete the quest for a Legendary cache.

Mastery Skills

You don't take any skills here but you will grab Shocking Impact, this will provide a large amount of damage from your Lightning Familiar. Pick up Invoked Familiar in the Conjuration Skills. Grab one rank in Chain Lightning in the Core Skills. Take a point in Glass Cannon near Defensive Skills to unlock Ultimate Skills.

Ultimate Skills

You don't take any ultimate skills for this build but you should prioritize getting the two ranks in the Warmth passive. This will heal you for each enemy burning around you and allows you to save Healing Potions for important moments. You also grab another rank in Chain Lightning in the Core Skills. Take two ranks in Protection and Primordial Binding in the Conjuration Skills. You can move on once you unlock your Key Passive.

Key Passive

Enlightenment is your key passive. This will give additional damage, Mana regeneration, and attack speed. It requires you to rotate between different elements to gain stacks until you become Enlightened. The buff will last 10 seconds, during this time you will do not need to rotate your elements and instead can focus on dealing as much damage as your Mana allows. Once the buff falls off, you should go back to rotating between different elements.

Priority Passives

After your Key Passive you pick up passives that will have a more direct impact. Finish off your ranks of Chain Lightning and pick up Greater Fireball in Core Skills. Take Permafrost, Icy Touch, Hoarfrost, Elemental Synergies, and a final point of Warmth in the Ultimate Skills. Grab Inner Flames from the Mastery Skills. Pick up your final point of Protection in the Conjuration Skills.

Final Journey to 60

Your final passives will include Evocation from the Ultimate Skills, Elemental Dominance and Potent Warding in the Core Skills, Mana Shield in the Conjuration Skills. You also take Shimmering Teleport for some extra damage reduction and Shimmering Ice Armor which will reduce the cooldown of Ice Armor by spending Mana while it is active. You can change your order of passives if you feel the desire to, focusing on all damage before grabbing extra defense.

Sorcerer Enchantments

To get started with the Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling build, always use your highest DPS Staff available for more damage. You can use one hand and offhand if they both have higher item power than your current Staff but will be less likely to find consistent upgrades for two items instead of one. Otherwise, follow the priority list below. While you don't have all of the desired temper manuals available, simply try to get anything useful on your gear until you acquire the right ones. For example, % Damage, Damage to Close, Vulnerable Damage, etc. all work as long as you activate their conditions. Likewise, you can temper multiple defensive options such as Resistances, Life, Armor to fill gaps in your survivability. Tempering low level gear is relatively cheap and the results can be very impactful.

Tip: For the early game, Elemental Surge Weapon Tempers are very powerful due to their high base damage, especially if you already have the better versions. If you find these, you may want to keep imprinting them on your weapons for an easy time.

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary or salvaging items with these powers. Check out our Map Tool to locate these Dungeons.

For leveling, there are a few powers that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them. In addition, keep an eye out for powerful Unique items you may find for this or other builds.

First Season Journey Cache

• The Season Journey will provide caches with legendary aspects.

Undercity of Kurast

• The Undercity will be available to unlock at level 15 if you have access to Kurast. This provides a large amount of legendary items for aspects and quick upgrades. You don't need tributes for the Undercity.
• The Undercity will provide massive cooldown reduction for a limited time after completing an objective. This cooldown reduction will allow you to use your Teleport Enchantment rapidly to quickly traverse the dungeon while summoning maximum familiars. This is a very fun way to progress for Sorcerers and provides a lot of loot.

Must-have Dungeon unlocks

1. You don't need any aspects to get started with the Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling build.

Nice-to-have Dungeon unlocks

1. Recharging
2. Disobedience
3. Snowveiled

Great Uniques for this build

1. Axial Conduit
2. Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
3. Esu's Heirloom

Jackpot Drops

As you level up, you may get lucky and find some great random drops. Some of these can massively amplify your power and speed up the leveling by switching to another build. Keep in mind that there are many more Aspects and Uniques that can be useful to multiple builds; this just lists some of the most impactful ones. While we usually recommend starting with Endgame Builds at level 60, you often can make them work earlier with these drops:

Build-defining Aspects

• Glacial / Frozen Tundra (enables Blizzard Endgame)

Build-defining Uniques

1. Fractured Winterglass (enables Frozen Orb Endgame)
2. Blue Rose (enables Blizzard Endgame)
3. Gloves of the Illuminator (enables Fireball Endgame)
4. Axial Conduit (enables Chain Lightning Endgame)

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 Leveling build focuses on the following combos:

Best in Slot

• Cem + Qua for high mobility, increasing your movement speed with each evade and stacking up, this will help you navigate the game much faster.
• Cir + Ceh will provide additional summons that freeze enemies and apply vulnerable. These also activate Primordial Binding for mobility and Mana regeneration, a good option over Tec.

Alternative choices

As long as you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top Runes, you can also benefit from these options:

• Tec for extra damage, with this you will create an earthquake and has the highest damage potential for early Invocation Runes. Gar will provide additional Critical Strike Chance.
• Yax and Poc are other options for Ritual Runes.
• Igni + Jah is a lot of mobility if you have access to Legendary runes. This will give you a Teleport for your evade every 3 seconds after casting a non-basic skill.

In Diablo 4, you can level by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, completing Helltide activities, grinding Dungeons, clearing Strongholds, fighting in the Undercity of Kurast or interacting with the Seasonal Mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are equal.

Paragon & Glyphs

Use the slider to see 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

Coming soon.

The Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling build is fun from the start and gets much more powerful in the Endgame.

• Sends bolts of electricity ricocheting through your enemies with Chain Lightning.
• Use Spark to combo Familiar and stun enemies while triggering Shocking Impact. Don't forget to stack Enlightenment.
• Protection will provide a barrier every time you use a cooldown and Warmth will easily keep you healed up.

Written by pandaglassjaw