Frozen Orb Sorcerer Endgame Guide
Welcome to the Frozen Orb Sorcerer Endgame Guide!
The cornerstone of your build will be Fractured Winterglass. This unique amulet will give your Frozen Orb casts a chance to summon random Conjurations while also giving your Conjurations a Lucky Hit chance to attack with Frozen Orb, it also reduces the cooldown of your Conjurations when Frozen Orb explodes. Ice Blades has been improved and now provides some additional attack speed. Your Ultimate Skill Unstable Currents will give some extra attack speed to increase your damage and maintaining it will help keep up Ceaseless Conduit.
Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop is a large part of your gameplay, requiring you to stack your three different elements and then rotate two to maintain the stacks. Flame Shield is your only Pyromancy Skill and must be used at the beginning of combat. Enlightenment will require you to rotate two elements to gain stacks, with Lightning Spear and Teleport rotating with your Frozen Orb, this will be easy with the cooldown reduction you get from Fractured Winterglass and Harlequin Crest.
Primordial Binding is a new passive that replaces Conjuration Mastery. The new version will only apply the damage to your Summon Damage but is much easier to maintain now that it has a cap. Frozen Orb Sorcerer is a blast to play and resets your cooldowns quickly for lots of buttons to press while giving you plenty of mobility.
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.
Witchcraft Powers
Season 7 is the Season of Witchcraft. It features two separate borrowed power mechanics in the forms of Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems. Both Seasonal mechanics are unlocked and improved by new NPCs found at the Tree of Whispers after collecting resources from Headhunt Zones, Seasonal areas similar to Helltide that appear across Sanctuary.
There are 25 Witchcraft Powers, 6 of which can be equipped at a time. Each Power belongs to one of four Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, Psyche, and Lost), tags that promote synergies within themselves and with Occult Gems. Each School has a single Unique Witchcraft Power, only one of which can be equipped at a time. These Unique Powers max out and gain an additional effect at rank 5, while the other Powers max at rank 21 and gain their bonus effects at various levels. To unlock and improve Witchcraft Powers, defeat Headrotten or complete Whispers within the Headhunt Zones to collect Restless Rot. Lost Powers are an exception, requiring you to randomly encounter a Forgotten Altar in Dungeons to unlock them.
Best-in-Slot Witchcraft Powers
- Hex of Flames - The Fire damage will enable Elementalist.
- Aura of Siphoning - Damage in a close range and some extra healing is always nice along with a needed Aura.
- Grow - Bonus damage for your Conjurations.
- Soul Harvest - This will increase your primary stat after using a cooldown for each nearby enemy and in turn increase your damage. Staying near enemies will maintain the duration on the bonus.
- Aura Specialization - Provides additional critical strike damage to enemies in your aura along with increasing Aura size.
- Vengeful Spirit - Some extra defense doesn't hurt to keep blasting but any of you favorite Unique Powers will work.
Alternate Witchcraft Powers
If using the recommended Occult Gems, you will need to keep three Growth & Decay Powers active.
- Piranhado - This can help group enemies and looks pretty cool.
- Hex of Whispers - Fortify for defense along with the negative status effect removal applying to the Pit and Tormented Boss stacks in PTR make this a good choice.
Occult Gems
Rarely, Headrotten Bosses appear with a still-attached Fugitive Head stolen from the Tree of Whispers. Slay these enemies and return the Heads to Gelena to unlock and upgrade Occult Gems. These Gems are socketable in Jewelry and each provide +160 Armor and +8% Resistance to All Elements. More importantly, each Occult Gem grants a unique effect that synergizes with your equipped Witchcraft Powers to provide a variety of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility-based bonuses.
Best-in-Slot Occult Gems
- Friend of the Bog - Increased primary stat provides additional damage, along with an increase to health, but even more it makes you Unhindered, allowing you to easily navigate by moving through your enemies.
- Toadling's Wish - Improves Soul Harvest and Grow.
- Pointed Finger - Extra damage for your Conjurations.
Alternate Occult Gems
- Dust Stone - Provides extra damage for each Hex or Aura an enemy is affected by but not very much.
- Hungering Void - Pulling enemies together will help clear them faster.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Frozen Orb is your primary skill to cast but will not be your main source of damage, it will help produce Conjurations and reset your cooldowns with Fractured Winterglass.
- Lightning Spear is your primary damage thanks to Splintering. It will provide a stun to help crowd control enemies quickly but is also for your rotation with Enlightenment and Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- Ice Blades is a great support skill to improve your attack speed with Invoked Ice Blades.
- Unstable Currents is your ultimate skill. It helps summon additional Conjurations along with providing additional attack speed with Prime Unstable Currents and maintaining Ceaseless Conduit with Supreme Unstable Currents along with your Witchcraft Power Grow.
- Flame Shield makes you Immune for a few seconds, a powerful mechanic to avoid any damage and also provides Unstoppable, you can use this to avoid dangerous stacks from Pit bosses. You will also need to use it for your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop Pyromancy Skill.
- Ice Armor provides a large Barrier along with damage bonuses from Storm Swell, while Ice Armor is active you can reduce it's cooldown by spending more Mana thanks to Shimmering Ice Armor.
Skill Rotation
- Cast Flame Shield then Unstable Currents then Ice Armor for your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and Enlightenment. Cast Frozen Orb at your enemies and use Lightning Spear and Ice Blades whenever available for Primordial Binding stacks along with your Enlightenment and Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- (On Elites & Bosses) After getting your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop stack in the beginning, consider saving Flame Shield for dangerous moments to avoid death or deadly stacks from Pit bosses.
- (On Bosses) Keep an eye on the stagger bar and prepare to nuke right when it fills as many of our damage modifiers rely on crowd controls.
Sorcerer Enchantments
Teleport is your first Enchantment. It will replace your evade with a shorter range Teleport that does not make you Unstoppable.
Frost Nova is your second enchantment, this will give a chance for your Conjurations to unleash a Frost Nova, increasing your damage against enemies hit.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Sorcerer Enchantments Guide.
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.
Frozen Orb 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
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Control
- Eliminator
- Elementalist
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Eliminator
- Control
There are a total of 328 Paragon Points. After reaching level 60, you gain up to 300 Paragon Levels, 24 from Renown and 4 from Altars of Lilith. Check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
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 Frozen Orb Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Nagu + Vex will provide additional damage.
- Igni + Gar will provide needed critical strike chance.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Cir and Cem are good Ritual Runes.
- Ohm can replace Vex. Topaz are another option.
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 Wire Trap along with Ready At Hand for some mobility. Next you pick Cover Fire with the damage increase from Opening Fire.
- 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: Varyana
- Varyana is a good choice to maximize offense. Bloodthirst will give some extra attack speed and you can set it to activate on any skill in combat.
- Raheir will potentially save your character with his reinforcement Bastion. Setting this to trigger on Injured can keep you going in difficult encounters.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Frozen Orb Sorcerer to perform optimally, hunt for these stats on your gear with good rolls and aim to Temper ⚒️ & Masterwork Crit ↑ them accordingly. 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
- 50%+ Cooldown Reduction
- 40%+ Attack Speed
- 40%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 2000+ Intelligence
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 3,500+ Life
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Frozen Orb 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 Frozen Orb 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 Fractured Winterglass you still rely on your Frozen Orb damage and won't have your Conjuration cooldowns available frequently.
- Deep Freeze will reset your cooldowns and provide a damage buff.
- Familiar will maintain a consistent damage buff.
- Low cooldowns means we invest into Avalanche instead of Enlightenment.
- Frozen Orb enchantment instead of Frost Nova for this variant.
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.
- Fractured Winterglass is your priority unique to make the build function.
- Raiment of the Infinite will pull enemies near your Teleport location, making it easier to group enemies. 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.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop will require casting your Flame Shield for your Pyromancy stack at the beginning of combat and then rotating Shock and Frost to maintain it.
- Esu's Heirloom provides critical strike chance and movement speed until you get Mythic items.
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 will provide a lot of cooldown reduction, especially with a Greater Affix. This cooldown allows you to produce more Conjurations by casting Lightning Spear, maintaining your ultimate, along with giving fast Teleport enchantment resets to create a fun playstyle. Defense is also much easier to solve with this Mythic.
- Ring of Starless Skies provides great damage and drastically reduces our Mana cost.
- Legendary boots allow you to use Teleport enchantment.
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
- Remains similar to the Mythic build.
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
- When fighting monsters in high tiers of the Pit, remember that after crowd controlling elites for 5 seconds, they become Unstoppable for 8 seconds. This may be the right moment to start kiting them around because your damage done goes way down and they can freely retaliate.
- Extra damage from Concussive Strikes over Snowveiled.
- Optional Dodge temper on pants if you use incense to cap Armor.
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 aspect to add it to Ice Armor. This build will use all of those sources.
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.
Mechanics
- Frozen Orb has three damaging components starting with the Orb itself dealing damage on contact. Second, Piercing Shards periodically deal damage to everything around the Orb as it travels. Finally, the Explosion that deals damage in a large area when Orb reaches its destination.
- Most of the damage comes from the Explosion, however, to get maximum performance out of your Frozen Orb you need to aim it slightly behind the enemy to get the Orb damage, maximize the amount of Piercing Shards hitting, and keep the enemy in the final Explosion radius.
- Conjurations are only summoned with manual casts of Frozen Orb by pressing the button assigned on your Skillbar. This doesn't include free casts such as Frozen Orb Enchantment or from your Conjurations.
- The temper "Chance for Frozen Orb Projectiles to Cast Twice" doesn't produce a free cast of Frozen Orb but instead modifies your current spell to throw two orbs at once. This means you can get two conjurations when a manual cast triggers this effect.
- The Conjuration summoned is chosen randomly. If you already have maximum amount of conjurations of this type summoned, the oldest one is replaced.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop provides up to 25 percent additional damage for each different elemental skill you cast, stacking up to 75 percent for a Pyromancy, Frost, and Shock skill. All stacks will remain as long as you rotate two different elements within 8 seconds.
- Enlightenment is your key passive. This requires you to rotate different elements to quickly stack up to 100 for a buff called Enlightened. Enlightened gives increase damage by stacking your lightning, fire, and cold elemental damage additives with each other, it also increases your Mana regeneration and attack speed along with an additional 25 percent damage multiplier. While Enlightened your stacks will deplete and you can't gain additional stacks until reaching 0 and then you will need to start your rotation again.
- 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
Coming soon.
Summary
The Frozen Orb Sorcerer is a fun build that allows you to use your cooldowns as much as you want, quickly resetting most of them while you fly around with plenty of mobility.
- Sling Frozen Orb everywhere and cast Lightning Spear to maintain your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, Enlightenment, and Primordial Binding stacks.
- Use Flame Shield at the beginning of combat for the Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop stack then save it for important moments.
- Get ready to blast through the Endgame while your screen is flooded with Frozen Orb and Conjurations!
Credits
Written by pandaglassjaw