Fire Bolt Sorcerer Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Fire Bolt Sorcerer 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 pulls from Prime Inferno, but it takes a lot more effort and brainpower than builds with proper AoE.
Requirements for this build
- Flameweaver
- Moonrise
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.
Boss Powers
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.
Best-in-Slot Boss Powers
Main Power
Urivar's Lobbed Bombs - Thanks to extremely short cooldown of Inferno we can activate this power often, to proc Harbinger of Hatred's Volley Modifier. On top of that, we get some CDR for free!
Modifiers
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley gives us 1.3[x] damage multiplier and lets us activate Mana Shield even with permanent Supreme Inferno.
- Sinerat's Flames provides an unconditional 25%[x] damage boost, which grows even further when Enlightenment is active.
- Andariel's Flaming Skull gives us more Burning Damage.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - can replace Andariel's Flaming Skull for slightly higher damage multiplier in exchange for 2 Utility Tempers.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Fire Bolt is our main damage skill. It deals some direct damage and then applies a DoT. Because of all the Burning multipliers we're using the direct damage amounts to less than 2% of total so we only care about the DoT.
- Firewall is neccessary to proc Flameweaver and sixtuple our damage. It also buffs Burning even further with Enhanced Firewall.
- Inferno lets us group enemies together and provides a huge 50%[x] damage bonus.
- Ice Armor and Flame Shield are our standard defenisve spells, with the former also providing some Mana regen.
- Teleport is our mobility spell that can also break us out of Crowd Control. Since there's no slot for it on the skillbar, we only use it via the Enchantment.
- Finally, we use Invoked Familiar to get a bit more damage.
Skill Rotation
- Use your Evade Teleport to move through the map and find enemies.
- Group them together with Inferno.
- 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.
- Recast Ice Armor whenever it expires or breaks.
- Recast Inferno whenever it's up to maintain the damage bonus.
- Cast Familiar after a Fire spell every 8 seconds. There's no reason to have more than one of them out.
- 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.
Enchantment Slots
- Teleport Enchantment is necessary to move around the map and group enemies with Raiment of the Infinite.
- Incinerate lets us activate Conflagration while we are casting other spells. It also gives us Fire damage bonus via Enchantment Master.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Sorcerer Class Overview.
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.
Fire Bolt 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
- Flamefeeder
- Elementalist
- Torch
- Pyromaniac
To Level 46
- Torch
- Flamefeeder
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Pyromaniac
Learn more details about the Paragon System in our in-depth Paragon Boards and Glyphs guide.
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 Fire Bolt Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Cir + Thul - gives 15% damage bonus and periodicaly freezes all the enemies.
- Igni + Ohm - 15% damage with nearly 100% uptime.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Lith, Nagu, Yul, and Cem - decently good Ritual Runes that can serve as a substitute.
- For invocations there's not a lot of good stuff:
- Xal - For extra defense.
- Lum - if you struggle with Mana.
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 Scorched Earth.
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 Fire Bolt Sorcerer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. The green arrow ↑ indicates which affix is most impactful to Masterwork Crit, and it does not indicate how many Masterwork Crits you need on that particular affix. 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
- 180% Attack Speed (from all sources)
- 25+ Ranks in Fire Bolt
- 9s or less Inferno cooldown
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 3,000+ Life
- Lucky Hit Chance to Restore Resource roll
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Fire Bolt 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 Fire Bolt 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.
- Without Shard of Verathiel we don't spend any Mana so we remove things that depend on it such as Mana Shield and Shimmering Ice Armor.
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 Shard of Verathiel but without Ring of Starless Skies Mana can become a problem. The solution to it is very simple - Supreme Inferno. We need to spam this to activate the damage bonus anyway so it's best to focus on CDR rather than trying to get Mana. To that end we have: Zec, Orange Herald, and Inferno CDR tempers.
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
- Harlequin Crest gives us obscene amounts of Cooldown Reduction letting us remove it from the Amulet and also switch to Mystical Ice Armor. We also trade Zec for Ohm.
- Shroud of False Death provdies excellent all around defensive and offensive boost.
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
The base Mystic variant is good enough for Speedfarming. It has all the damage and Teleport Enchant as well as tons of CDR. The only change we make is replacing Familiar with another Teleport. However going fast is not that useful when to kill enemies we need:
- Place down Firewall.
- Suck them in with Prime Inferno.
- Shoot Fire Bolt a few times to apply the DoT.
- Wait a second or two for enemies to die.
This build just cannot kill fast.
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
For Pit Pushing we use the Mythic Variant without any changes.
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.
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.
- If all else fails you always have the nuclear option of replacing Raiment of the Infinite with a defensive chest, ideally Tyrael's Might.
Adaptability does not buff Fire Bolts that come out of Firewall after splitting. This means it only works when you position yourself wrong and deal 1/6th of normal damage.
Mechanics
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.
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 two Pyromancy Attack Speed tempers and Basic Skill Attack speed on Shard of Verathiel. Your final Attack Speed is the sum of all these bonuses with respect to 100% cap in each Category. To not waste any Attack Speed you need to aim for one of the follwing breakpoints:
| Frames | IAS (Sword + Focus) |
| 17 | 106.7% |
| 16 | 121.8% |
| 15 | 137.7% |
| 14 | 156.5% |
| 13 | 179.5% |
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.
With fully upgraded Ancestral Items it's quite easy to reach 13 frames breakpoint so you should ultimately aim for it.
- The multiplier scales exclusively with Burning Damage and Damage to Burning stats. These stats can only be found on Paragon Boards.
- Damage Over Time stat adds to your Burning Damage and boosts this passive.
- Conflagration and Andariel's Flaming Skull modifier multiplicatively increase your Burning Damage and that increase is translated to more Combustion damage.
Summary
Fire Bolt Sorcerer is a strong build that is, unfortunately, very Unique-dependent and very single-target oriented.
- Group up mobs with Raiment of the Infinite.
- Place down Firewall and shoot a million splitting Fire Bolts into them.
- Watch it burn.
Credits
Written by Northwar