Firewall Sorcerer Endgame Guide
Incinerate Enchantment may not enable Conflagration anymore. In this case the build will change after launch.
Welcome to the Firewall Sorcerer Endgame Guide! This build is for those who want to set the world on fire.
Firewall received some buffs to allow it to be a more comfortable Endgame build, while it is less powerful than Incinerate it has the benefit of not being a Channeling Skill. Familiar will provide a damage bonus with Invoked Familiar, try to keep one Fire Familiar active. Flame Shield makes you Immune for a few seconds which is invaluable for avoiding dangerous stacks in Pits along with providing Unstoppable, which will break active crowd control. Teleport will allow you to reposition for damage or defense along with providing Unstoppable. Ice Armor will provide a large Barrier and a damage increase thanks to Storm Swell. Inferno gives a large damage bonus and removes the Mana cost from Pyromancy Skills with Supreme Inferno, use this whenever available to group enemies and deal more damage.
Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop is a large part of your gameplay, requiring you to stack your three different elements to gain a large damage bonus and then rotate two to maintain it. Ice Armor will provide your Frost Skill and Teleport will be your Shock Skill and main rotation with your Pyromancy Skill Firewall.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Sorcerer 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 - Extra Cooldown Reduction provides additional quality of life but the damage won't scale as well in this build. On the plus side it adds cool explosions.
Modifiers
- Andariel's Flaming Skull - This provides a strong multiplier but will take time to rank up.
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - This provides a strong multiplier but will take time to rank up.
- Sinerat's Flames - This provides a good multiplier and is easy to activate without tempers.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Sinerat's Flames - Main: This provides area burning damage but sacrifices potential Firewall Size utility tempers by replacing it with Flesh Reaper's Disruption. Might be the best option for Speedfarming but it's power was greatly reduced.
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - Modifier: This provides a good multiplier but requires Crowd Control Duration utility tempers to activate.
- Kirma's Sparks - Modifier: This provides Evade Cooldown Reduction for better mobility.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Firewall is your primary damage skill. This creates a line of burning damage on the ground. You can stack these and lure enemies into them, enemies will continue to take damage for a few seconds after leaving the burning area thanks to Mage's Firewall.
- Familiar will provide a damage bonus if used after a Pyromancy Skill with Invoked Familiar, try to keep one active.
- Frost Nova provides additional damage on enemies that don't fall over instantly.
- Teleport is great mobility and it provides Unstoppable to break crowd control if you are caught, the Enchantment version will not provide Unstoppable.
- Flame Shield makes you Immune for a few seconds, a mechanic to avoid any damage and also provides Unstoppable to break crowd control, you can use this to avoid dangerous stacks from Pit bosses.
- Ice Armor provides a large Barrier along with damage bonuses from Storm Swell and Mystical Ice Armor, it can also make you Unstoppable with Snowveiled.
- Inferno will pull enemies together to group them, remove the Mana cost of your Pyromancy skills and also provide a large damage bonus while active, cast this as often as possible.
Skill Rotation
- Cast Ice Armor and Teleport to activate Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, follow up with Inferno then Familiar to start activating NaguCeh.
- Blanket the ground with Firewall and lure enemies into it. While Speedfarming you can generally target where you are teleporting and let enemies chase you to their death.
- Rotate Firewall with Teleport to maintain your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop stacks and quickly traverse the game.
- Use Inferno whenever available to group enemies and gain a damage bonus.
- Use Ice Armor when available for Unstoppable.
- Use Frost Nova as needed for bonus damage on important targets.
- Consider saving Flame Shield for dangerous moments to avoid death but it can also be used to quickly summon a Fire Familiar thanks to it's fast animation.
Sorcerer Enchantments
Incinerate is our first Enchantment. This will give us extra damage with Conflagration.
Teleport is a useful Enchantment for adding more mobility to your gameplay. This replaces your evade with a shorter range Teleport than doesn't make you Unstoppable.
Fireball now has an execute to make it more viable. This can be used for Speedfarming or as another Fire Enchantment for 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.
Firewall 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
- Torch
- Tactician
- Pyromaniac
- Flamefeeder
- Eliminator
To Level 46
- Torch
- Flamefeeder
- Pyromaniac
- Eliminator
- Tactician
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 Firewall Sorcerer Endgame build focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- CirVex provides additional damage and utility.
- NaguCeh will provide Vulnerable and crowd control. You will need to cast Familiar to start summoning the wolves.
Alternative choices
- Neo, Igni, and Cem are good Ritual Runes.
- Kry groups enemies.
- Ohm can provide an additional damage multiplier.
- Zec can provide Ultimate Cooldown Reduction.
- Mot can provide Damage Reduction.
- Grand Topaz will provide additional damage if you don't have access to Runes.
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 is a great choice for casual gameplay thanks to his passive Seeker that reveals enemies and objects, this is a nice quality of life addition and also gives some Mana sustain. Grab Molotov along with Scorched Earth to boost your damage over time. Next you pick Snipe along with Incendiary Bolt to trigger the Scorched Earth as well.
- Raheir is a great alternative if you don't mind dropping the maphack, Valiance is an amazing defensive tool that will prevent damage from large hits along with give you Unstoppable. Take Ground Slam and grab Raheir's Aegis for extra defense. Next you want Bastion with Inspiration. Valiance is a very powerful mechanic for pushing more difficult content or playing on Hardcore.
Reinforcement: Raheir
- Raheir will potentially save your character with his reinforcement Bastion. Setting this to trigger on injured can keep you going in difficult encounters.
- Aldkin can provide additional damage reduction with Field of Languish if you are using Raheir as your Hired, set it to cast on any skill.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Firewall Sorcerer build 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
- Scale Flamefeeder and Torch for Combustion.
- 30%+ Cooldown Reduction
- 30%+ Attack Speed
- 40%+ Pyromancy Attack Speed
- 2000+ Intelligence
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 3,500+ Life
- Damage Reduction Sources
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Firewall 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 Firewall 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.
- Scale Flamefeeder and Torch for Combustion.
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.
- Flickerstep quickly reduces your Teleport Enchantment cooldown and helps reset your Inferno.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop will require casting your Ice Armor for your Frost stack at the beginning of combat and then rotating Shock and Fire to maintain it.
- Raiment of the Infinite pulls enemies near your Teleport location, making it easier to group them. Beware of being trapped in the enemies. If you actively move away from the direction enemies are mainly being pulled from then you can avoid the trap.
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
- Shroud of False Death provides damage and a good amount of defense thanks to it's bonus to Passive Skills.
- Harlequin Crest provides massive Cooldown Reduction and Damage Reduction.
- Ring of Starless Skies provides great stats, a damage multiplier, and reduced Mana costs.
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
- Raiment of the Infinite can help group enemies quickly at the cost of Defense.
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
- Incinerate and Fireball Enchantments for damage from Enchantment Master.
- Teleport goes on your bar for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and using Raiment of the Infinite.
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.
Sorcerers has two primary sources of Unstoppable with Teleport and Flame Shield. You can also use the Snowveiled to add it to Ice Armor.
Generally hardcore and softcore share the same builds. Outside of being more prudent in your gameplay, you can also tweak the setup slightly to raise your survivability:
- Focus more on Armor & Resists, making sure that they are always capped especially as you transition into higher torment difficulties.
- Focus more on maximum life rolls, for example replacing DPS stats like main attributes, attack speed, critical strike chance and additive increased damage rolls. Also masterwork life more than normal if no other crucial stats have priority.
- Focus on adding defensive skills, passives and paragon nodes first as you level up.
- Play on a slightly lower difficulty than normal, don't push into difficult territory. As long as you can deal with all enemies swiftly, they can't retaliate.
- Save a source of Unstoppable if possible to get out of crowd controls.
- Use defensive elixirs and incenses instead of offensive ones.
Permafrost's tooltip is currently bugged. It increases the damage of all your skills, not just Frost ones.
Shredding Blades will increase your damage against Vulnerable enemies even if you don't use Ice Blades.
Mechanics
- Deals damage 2 times per second for a total of 16 ticks over the 8 second duration.
- When an enemy leaves a Firewall, the DoT from Mage's Firewall starts ticking for up to another 6 ticks of damage.
- Firewall snapshots all damage buffs and debuffs on an enemy when it's applied (when Firewall is cast or when an enemy enters an existing Firewall).
- Same applies to the Mage's Firewall's DoT. The damage is snapshotted when an enemy leaves the Firewall or when it expires.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop provides a stacking damage increase for each of our elemental skills. After casting all three elements you only need to cast two different elements to maintain all three stacks. For Firewall sorcerer you will most commonly rotate between Teleport > Firewall > Frost Nova > Firewall > Ice Blades > Firewall. At this point you simply always try to have a Frost skill available within every 5 seconds to weave into our Firewall. Once you have enough cooldown reduction it won't require as much timing.
- While all the exact mechanics are much more nuanced, there are two separate Attack Speed Bonus caps of +100% that apply to all builds for a total potential of +200%. For Sorcerers, these two caps are distributed in the following way:
Cap 1
- Moonrise
- Elixir of Advantage II
- Attack Speed (Gear Affix)
- Andariel's Visage
- Culler
- Swift Conjurer
- Ancient Flame
- Artillery Shrine (100% AS)
Cap 2
- Accelerating
- Rapid
- Prime Unstable Currents
- Basic Attack Speed (Gear Affix)
- Gloves of the Illuminator
- Pyromancy Attack Speed (Tempering)
Read up more on Attack Speed in our dedicated guide by Ava.
Bosses are immune to Crowd Control (CC) effects 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 a 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. 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: 60%
- After 4th 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 unless you bring a serious amount of crowd controls.
Video Guide
Summary
The Firewall Sorcerer has great visuals and remains viable for Endgame thanks to recent buffs.
- Set the world on fire, lots of fire.
- Maintain your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop stacks easily with Teleport.
- Stay Unstoppable with Ice Armor thanks to enough Cooldown Reduction and Snowveiled.
Credits
Written by pandaglassjaw