Fire Bolt Sorcerer Build Guide

Welcome to the Fire Bolt Sorcerer Specialized Build Guide! This build uses Flameweaver to turn Fire Bolt into a real damage skill. Unfortunately the way this item works makes the build quite clunky: first you have to place down Firewall, then shoot enemies with Fire Bolt and then you have to wait for them to die because you deal damage over time. On top of that, the damage only gets really high if you hit the same enemy with all 3 Fire Bolts right after they split. Effectively that means that this build is very single target oriented even if Fire Bolts can technically hit multiple enemies. This build is most suited for Bossing and slow push in high tier Pit. Speedfarming is doable, thanks to Raiment of the Infinite, but it takes a lot more effort and brainpower than builds with proper AoE.

Paragon

Look below for the selected Paragon Boards, Paragon point allocation, and the correct Glyphs you should use for the Fire Bolt Sorcerer. Note: The Paragon Boards below are the final setup with no steps.

Level 21 Glyphs required: Elementalist, Destruction, Torch, Unleash, Tactician, Exploit, Reinforced.

Season 5 - Infernal Hordes

In Season 5, the Season Theme brings your hero back into the bowels of Hell, in the Infernal Hordes endgame activity. You're first introduced to Hellbreach Dungeons, miniature Horde-like micro-dungeons that teach you the new mechanics and rewards systems. As you slay more powerful Demons and Bosses, you're rewarded with the new Reputation progression that comes with amazing rewards. These include Crafting Materials, unlocking Season's Journey tiers and even the coveted Resplendent Spark, needed to craft a mythic unique.

Follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the Reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 5 guide for more information.

Gameplay

The general gameplay loop of Firebolt Sorcerer is not complicated:

• Use Frost Bolt once at the start of the run to get a stack of Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
• Use your Evade Teleport to move through the map and find enemies.
• Group them together with Raiment of the Infinite.
• Place Firewall on top of the group and position yourself slightly outside.
• Spam Fire Bolts into it trying to hit as many mobs as possible with all 3 Fire Bolts.
• After applying some DoT to the enemies, start alternating Fire Bolt and Fireball.
• Recast Ice Armor whenever it expires or breaks.
• Use Flame Shield if you get CCd or if your Barriers break for some reason.
• Be careful to not spam too many Firewalls because when everything is on fire, your Fire Bolts will split immediately after you shoot them, and then you have to worry about being exactly right distance away from your target.
• Use your Firewall as little as possible. Its animation is almost twice as long as Fire Bolt, so you're losing a bunch of DPS each time you recast it.

Gear and Stat Requirements

Fire Bolt Sorcerer requires specific Aspects, Uniques, and Affixes on your gear to perform their primary function. Only deviate from the list below after you have fully learned the intended gameplay style and strategies.

1. Legendary Aspects:
   • Moonrise
   • Storm Swell
   • Concussive Strikes
   • Snowveiled
2. Uniques:
   • Flameweaver
   • Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
   • Shard of Verathiel
   • Raiment of the Infinite
   • Ring of Starless Skies (required)
   • Harlequin Crest (can be replaced with Might)

Recommended Stat Thresholds

FAQ & Mechanics

Because Fire Bolt Sorcerer is a Specialized build, the obvious Mechanics or build interactions may not be clear to most first time players. Search below for the answers you need or come check me out live via the link at the top of the article for more information!

Why no Flamefeeder and Searing Heat?

Flamefeeder and Searing Heat only provide damage bonuses to direct damage. In this build only around 6% of total damage is done by direct impacts of Fire Bolt. The rest comes from the Damage Over Time, which is not affected by these bonuses.

Mechanics

Learn about the mechanical details that make the Fire Bolt Sorcerer work.

Stagger

Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) 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 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. In this build we have:

• Slow, Stun, and Freeze from tempered affixes on our gear.
• Immobilize from Crippling Flames.
• Daze from Concussive Strikes.

Apart from using different types of CC you can use the same CC from different sources to apply full stagger. These sources are:

• Skills and Passives
• Legendary Aspects
• Uniques
• Lucky Hit procs

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: 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.

Fire Bolt Attack Speed

Like all other skills, Fire Bolt has Attack Speed Breakpioints, meaning you need to stack certain amount of Attack Speed to actually make it cast faster. In this build we have Category 1 Attack Speed from Gear, Moonrise, and Elixir of Advantage II. For Category 2 we have up to 4 Pyromancy Attack Speed tempers and optionally Rapid. Your final Attack Speed is the sum of all these bonuses with respect to 100% cap in each Category. With this build we need to attack very fast to reset Flame Shield so you should have at least around 100% of it. There you want to aim for one of the follwing breakpoints:

Frames	IAS (1.2 weapon)
17	98.1%
16	112.6%
15	127.8%
14	145.8%
13	167.9%
12	196.6%

Note: the above values are measured with 1.3% precision. If you have exactly as much Attack Speed, you have the breakpoint. If are at least 1.3% below the stated value, you will not have the Breakpoint. If you are less than 1.3% below, then you need to check manually.

Recommended Breakpoints are 17 frames (reachable with singe unmasterworked Pyro AS roll) for normal build, and 13 frames for Raiment of the Infinite push version. You can always choose to go for more Attack Speed to make it easier to reset Flame Shield but doing so will result in less DPS than going for Damage Over Time/Close Damage tempers.

Credits

Written by Northwar
Reviewed by wudijo
Shoutout to Mekuna for helping optimize the build