Welcome to the Firewall Sorcerer Eternal Endgame Build Guide. This build lets you set the world aflame and watch everything burn. It has very good AoE coverage but struggles against Bosses. It's definitely not the fastest build to clear Nightmare Dungeons, but since there's no clock to race against, you can just take your time and slow bake some demons. As long as you can stay alive, they will burn. Eventually.
This build is essentially melee because if you don't stay next to the monsters they will immediately run out of your Firewalls. Your usual gameplay loop consists of building a giant pyre and then running in circles around it, while chanting ritual spells and/or laughing maniacally.
The Firewall Sorcerer is a very reliable and robust build that doesn't require anything to work. You don't really need any non-Codex Aspects nor any specific stats on your gear to burn everything. This makes Firewall Sorcerer the best for leveling and early endgame, but it also means that it doesn't scale as well as other builds.
In this guide we teach you all you need to know to satisfy your hidden arsonist fantasies. Let's dive into it!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Firewall Sorcerer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Sorcerer playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides.
Snake ✔
Great AoE ✔
Tanky And Comfy ✔
Very Strong Early On ✔
❌ Very Slow Damage
❌ Countered by Mobility
❌ Bad Single Target Damage
❌ Scales Worse Than Other Builds
Season 2 - Season of Blood
Diablo 4 Season 2 introduces a new questline to hunt down the Shadow Vampire forces of Lord Zir across Sanctuary. With Lilith's blood still residing within our bodies, the infliction put upon us is harnessed throughout our leveling, granting access to new Vampiric Powers. Completing the seasonal questline, partaking in the seasonal Blood Harvest event and collecting Potent Blood are the main ways of obtaining and empowering these abilities. Check out the full Season 2 Guide from Chewingnom to learn more!
How it works
- There are 22 Vampiric Powers, separated into 2 different types:
- 15 Minor Vampiric Powers - Require 1 to 3 Pacts to be activated.
- 7 Major Vampiric Powers - Require 6 Pacts to be activated.
- There are 3 different types of Pacts:
- Ferocity Pact
have a Crown icon. - Divinity Pacts
have a Chalice icon. - Eternity Pacts
have a Skull icon.
- Ferocity Pact
- Pacts can roll only on Armor pieces (Helm, Chest Armor, Gloves, Pants, Boots).
- Helms & Boots can have up to 3 Pacts, Pants can have up to 4, Chest & Gloves can have up to 5. This gives you 20 Pacts max!
- You can use Cleansing Acid - All to remove all Pacts from a piece of Armor and place new Standalone Pacts to meet your Powers requirements to activate. Cleansing Acid can be altered at the Alchemists to target 1 of the 3 Pacts only.
- Once you have equipped the right Pact Armor pieces, you can activate Vampiric Powers in the Sanguine Circle through the character screen. Powers require varying amounts of different types of Pacts, pay attention.
- You can use Potent Blood acquired from Blood Seekers to upgrade your Vampiric Powers from Level 1 to Level 3.
With this in mind, let's look at the top 5 best Vampiric Powers and how they impact this build:
Best-in-Slot Vampiric Powers
- Ravenous (Minor) - Simply provides unholy amounts Attack Speed for free. Great for any non-channeling build.
- Flowing Veins (Major) - A separate multiplier for DoT builds with easy to fulfill condition.
- Anticipation (Minor) - Reduces the cooldown of Inferno, which helps us spam Firewall at no cost.
- Metamorphosis (Major) - Applies Vampiric Curse and helps with mobility.
- Prey on the Weak (Minor) - In combination with the previous above power, this makes everything Vulnerable and provides a damage bonus with 100% uptime.
Alternative Vampiric Powers
- Domination (Minor) - Pretty Straightforward damage boost that can be easily activated with Crippling Flames.
- Infection (Minor) - Provides a bit of extra damage and an extra stack for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- Accursed Touch (Major) - Provides more consistent Curse application.
Skill Tree
Active Skills
- Firewall is our main damage skill
- Inferno helps us with Mana and also groups up enemies.
- Ice Blades are used to get a Cold damage stack of Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and to proc Protection.
- We pick up Greater Fireball to use it in the Enchantment Slot.
- Teleport is our main mobility skill, which also serves as a CC break.
- Ice Armor gives us a huge Barrier and a bit of Mana regen.
- Flame Shield provides even more defense, as well as some healing.
Enchantment Slots
Sorcerers can choose two skills to put into Enchantment Slots, where they provide powerful passive bonuses. Firewall Sorcerer uses the following Enchantments:
- Firewall Enchantment gives us up to 200% more Firewalls per Firewall, which is obviously amazing.
- Fireball simply adds more damage in AoE situations and it's upgrade Greater Fireball combos nicely with Mage's Firewall.
For speedfarming, the first Enchantment Slot is switched to Teleport.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Paragon Board
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
Glyphs drop from everything once you hit level 50. You can only find each Glyph once so it doesn't take long until you have them all. After finding them, you need to level up your Glyphs by completing Nightmare Dungeons. At level 15 Glyphs increase their radius, which makes it much easier to activate their Additional Bonus.
Placeholder Glyphs
- Torch
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
- Destruction
- Control
- Adept
- Exploit
- Reinforced
Level 21
- Destruction
- Control
- Adept
- Exploit
- Reinforced
There are a total of 225 Paragon Points. Starting with level 50 you gain 4 Paragon Points per level, plus 20 from Renown, and 4 from Altars of Lilith.
Gameplay
The Firewall Sorcerer has two different ways of fighting. First is against weak enemies, such as the ones you find in the open world and normal Dungeons. Simply throw down a couple of Firewalls and maybe an Inferno here and there, and continue walking forward while everything dies behind you.
Against more difficult enemies you need to follow a specific rotation to maximize your damage.
- Start off a fight by placing a single Firewall under enemies to apply Burning and Enhanced Firewall's debuff to them.
- Open with Inferno to pull all enemies together.
- The next few seconds are your DPS window. Cast as many Firewalls as you can before the Freeze ends. Ideally, move around the enemies while casting to make it harder for them to walk out of all Firewalls at once.
- Next comes the most difficult part. You need to keep enemies where they are. Don't run away! Instead, run around in circles, making enemies waste time with their attack animations.
- Use Ice Armor, Flame Shield, and Teleport as necessary to stay alive during this dance.
Resource & Cooldown Management
This build doesn't use a lot of Mana due to Firewall's low cost and attack speed.
Prodigy’s Resource Aspect
This is our main source of Mana in the early game. Apart from Firewall all of our skills have a Cooldown and give us some Mana when activated.
- Always start by casting a Firewall or two before using your other skills, so that the Mana is not wasted
- Don't use your Cooldowns all at once for the same reason
Prodigy’s Aspect is available in the Codex of Power, but you can also find a much more powerful version of it randomly. Important: This Aspect is incredibly rare, so if you find a well rolled one, save it until you have a good item (Ancestral Ring with at least 3 out of 4 optimal stats). It's not uncommon to get all the way to level 100 without ever seeing this Aspect.
Stats on Gear
In the late game with good gear we can get rid of Prodigy’s to play one more Offensive Aspect. To do this we need to stack enough stats:
- 3x Cooldown Reduction (Helmet, Amulet, Focus)
- 3x Mana Cost Reduction (Amulet, Boots, Focus)
- 3x Resource Generation (Ancestral Rings and Focus)
CDR indirectly gives us Mana even without Prodigy’s Aspect by increasing Ice Armor and Inferno uptime. Ideally you want to have all 9 of these rolls, but missing one or two is not gonna be a big problem unless you get into a long Boss fight.
Supreme Inferno
This upgrade to our Ultimate Skill simply makes our Firewall free for 8 seconds. In the late game with maxed out Cooldown Reduction and well rolled Flickerstep we can have it up nearly all the time, to the point that all our other Mana sources become redundant. If you reach that point, you can discard Prodigy’s Aspect for more offensive option.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Many of your Skill choices depend 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:
- Prodigy’s in Witchwater (Hawezar)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Incendiary in Tomb of the Saints (Kehjistan)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Edgemaster’s in Oldstones (Scosglen)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Shared Misery in Oblivion (Hawezar)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Snowveiled in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, through the Tree of Whispers, or gambling with Obols:
- Conceited: Gamble Focuses
- Engulfing Flames: Gamble Focuses
- Find the following Unique items by farming in Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides.
Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with Obols!- Raiment of the Infinite
- Godslayer Crown
- Flickerstep
- X'Fal's Corroded Signet
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Setups
Once you have completed the leveling guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
- Storm Swell goes on the amulet for extra damage.
- Prodigy’s and Incendiary are Resource Aspects so they must go on a Rings.
- Pput Edgemaster’s and Control on your and Gloves and one of the Weapons.
- Bounding Conduit can only be imprinted on Boots.
- It's best to put Disobedience on the Pants because you can only put Defensive Aspects there, and Disobedience is the one Aspect that stays in every variant of the build.
- Shared Misery and Snowveiled go on Chest and Helmet.
At this point resources are scarce, so only upgrade items that have Mana Cost Reduction or Cooldown Reduction rolls on them.
Skills
Without Raiment of the Infinite we need some other Source of Crowd Control so we replace Ice Blades with Frost Nova
- Remove Ice Blades
- Remove extra ranks from Teleport
- Remove Potent Warding
- Max out Mystical Frost Nova
We also don't have consistent Barrier generation yet, so we drop Precision Magic for Warmth.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
The answer to many questions can be found in the following section.
Build Scaling
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
- Cooldown Reduction (CDR). This is the most important stat for any Sorcerer build. What good are our skills if we can't use them because they are on cooldown? In purely offensive terms, CDR gives us the following:
- More uptime on Vulnerable and Freeze from Frost Nova (about a 3x damage buff)
- More uptime on Barrier from Ice Armor or Protection, activating Conceited and Storm Swell (1.625x damage buff)
- Mana. We continue to chase our philosophy of being able to use skills = good. The next skill we want to use is Firewall, which has a Mana cost instead of a Cooldown. We need to stack enough Mana Cost Reduction and Resource Generation to spam Firewall freely, but not to the point where our Mana is always full. Letting it slowly drain is completely fine because we have Supreme Inferno to bail us out.
- Offensive Stats. We want most of the normal offensive stats: Firewall Ranks, Weapon Damage, Attack Speed, Intelligence, and all kinds of Additive Damage, in that order of priority.
- Critical Strike Damage. This stat becomes useful after we get the Burning Instinct Node, ranking somewhere between Attack Speed and Intelligence.
- Critical Strike Chance doesn't directly buff our damage because Firewall can't crit.
Stat Priorities & Gear Options
There are many stats and status effects that generate on gear, but many are not important for your build. Some stats may block others from rolling or only appear on certain gear slots. See below for a per slot priority list in the table.
Put the following Gems into your gear:
- Armor: Royal Rubies
- Jewelry: Royal Skulls
- Weapons: Royal Amethysts
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Assault Elixir, Expertise Elixir, [d4-item id=701935]Iron Skin Elixir
- Incense: Song of the Mountain, Sage's Whisper
Refer to the table below to see the best rolls for every slot ranked in order of importance:
| SLOT | ASPECT | STAT PRIORITY |
| Weapon | one of: Edgemaster’s Conceited Storm Swell | Weapon Type: Wand 1. High Damage per Second 2. Intelligence 3. All Stats 4. Critical Strike Damage 5. Mastery Skill Damage 6. Damage to Close Enemies |
| Off-Hand | one of: Edgemaster’s Conceited Storm Swell | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. High Damage per Second 3. Resource Generation 4. Mana Cost Reduction 5. Intelligence 6. Damage Reduction against Burning Enemies 7. Lucky Hit Chance |
| Helm (Best in Slot) | Godslayer Crown | |
| Helm (Optional) | Shared Misery | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. % Total Armor 3. Maximum Life 4. Lucky Hit Chance while Barrier 5. Intelligence 6. Crowd Control Duration |
| Chest (Best in Slot) | Raiment of the Infinite | 1. Damage to Close Enemies 2. Damage to Stunned Enemies 3. Intelligence 4. Ranks to Glass Cannon |
| Chest (Optional) | Snowveiled | 1. % Total Armor 2. Damage Reduction against Burning Enemies 3. Damage Reduction against Close Enemies 4. Damage Reduction against Distant Enemies 5. Damage Reduction 6. Maximum Life |
| Gloves | one of: Edgemaster’s Conceited Storm Swell | 1. Attack Speed 2. Intelligence 3. Lucky Hit Chance 4. Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Resource 5. All Stats 6. Lucky Hit: Chance to Heal |
| Pants | Disobedience | 1. Ranks to Firewall 2. % Total Armor 3. Damage Reduction against Burning Enemies 4. Damage Reduction against Close Enemies 5. Damage Reduction against Distant Enemies 6. Damage Reduction 7. Maximum Life |
| Boots (Best in Slot) | Flickerstep | |
| Boots (Optional) | Bounding Conduit or Ghostwalker | Implicit: Max Evade Charges 1. Mana Cost Reduction 2. Movement Speed 4. Ranks to Teleport 5. Intelligence |
| Amulet | Control | 1. Cooldown Reduction 2. Mana Cost Reduction 3. Ranks to Mastery Skills 4. Movement Speed 5. Ranks to Inner Flames 6. Ranks to Defensive Skills 7. Damage Reduction from Burning Enemies |
| Ring 1 | Prodigy’s or Retribution | 1. Vulnerable Damage 2. Resource Generation 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Maximum Life 5. Lucky Hit Chance 6. Damage to Close Enemies |
| Ring 2 (Best in Slot) | X'Fal's Corroded Signet | |
| Ring 2 (Optional) | Engulfing Flames | 1. Vulnerable Damage 2. Resource Generation 3. Critical Strike Damage 4. Maximum Life 5. Lucky Hit Chance 6. Damage to Close Enemies |
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Put Flame Shield into your second Enchantment Slot.
- Focus more on Defensive rolls on your gear, such as Damage Reduction on the Amulet, or Maximum Life on Rings.
- Use Royal Topazes in armor instead or Royal Rubies to prevent worst case scenarios.
Check out our dedicated in-depth guide to learn more survival tricks in Hardcore.
Level 100 Endgame Variants
You can optimize your build further for certain endgame activities, such as Speedfarming, Nightmare Dungeon Pushing, etc. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to achieve the best results in them.
The Speedfarming setup makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and Nightmare Dungeons below Tier 45.
Skill Tree
Simply drop 1 point from Precision Magic to max out Teleport.
Enchantment Slots
We replace Firewall with Teleport to get more mobility and more pulls from Raiment of the Infinite.
No Changes
There are no changes to Gear, Gameplay, Paragon Boards, or Glyphs.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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 don't you use Imbiber?
Why no Incendiary Aspect?
Why no Aspect of Engulfing Flames?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Firewall
Video Guide
Coming Soon
Hungry for more Guides?
Sorcerer Guides
General Guides
Summary
The Firewall Sorcerer is a fun and flavorful build, capable of dealing great AoE damage while covering your entire screen in flames. It's very strong early but doesn't scale as well into the late game. Still, it can definitely clear all the endgame content, be it World Bosses or Nightmare Dungeons, it will just take some time.
- Spam Firewalls to bring down enemies' HP and set off a chain reaction of Fireball explosions.
- Don't look at the explosions.
- Stack Cooldown Reduction, Mana Cost Reduction, and Resource Generation to spam Firewall without a care in the world.
- Use Ice Armor, and Flame Shield to stay alive.
- Build a big fire under your enemies and then dance around it (literally).
Credits
Written by Northwar
Reviewed by snail
