Frozen Orb Sorcerer Endgame Guide
Welcome to the Frozen Orb Sorcerer Endgame Guide! This build gives up it's dedicated unique this season and focuses only on scaling Frozen Orb.
Frozen Orb is now the source of your damage and you will be slinging out a lot of them. Familiar provides a damage bonus when used after a Frost skill thanks to Invoked Familiar. Ice Blades increases your Attack Speed.
Flame Shield makes you Immune for a few seconds to prevent any damage along with providing Unstoppable. Teleport isn't on your Action Bar but replaces your evade and must be used for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop's Shock Skill and provides Crackling Energy for Convulsions. Ice Armor provides a reliable source of Unstoppable with Snowveiled. Unstable Currents provides additional Attack Speed and prevents Crackling Energy from expiring.
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 requires you to rotate two elements to gain stacks, usually id=516547]Teleport[/d4-skill] rotating with your Frozen Orb.
- Check the Build Variants if you aren't ready for the Mythic setup. Click the picture of the Sorcerer on any gear setup to bring up a planner with a drop down to all variants.
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.
Season Theme
The Season 9 theme is the Sins of the Horadrim. This season allows you to craft unique Horadric Spells using three different components: a Catalyst, an Infusion, and three Arcana. You earn Catalysts and Infusions through the Seasonal Questline, and Arcana can be found while exploring Nightmare Dungeons. You choose a Skill as the trigger for your Horadric Spell. Once in Torment I or higher, Horadric Jewels can be crafted, which replace the Gems in your Jewelry, adding additional power to your build.
Endgame Horadric Spell
Catalyst
Cosmic Anomaly provides a consistent way to activate your Arcana.
Infusion
Smoldering Ember gives a minor damage bonus by dealing Fire damage and activating Elementalist without needing to use Flame Shield.
Arcana
- Fractured Core deactivates Champion damage reduction auras to prevent being slowed down.
- Potent Alloy removes Barriers to prevent being slowed down.
- Bloody Charm executes enemies to speed up clearing your way to the Bosses.
Alternative Arcana
- Tranquil Stone - Unstoppable source before you have enough cooldown reduction to maintain Ice Armor with Snowveiled.
- Shifting Powder - Additional movement speed before you have enough evade cooldown reduction.
- Invigorating Helix - This provides a good amount of defense with Fortify and healing.
Best-in-Slot Horadric Jewels
- Idol From Below - Extra damage and Unhindered along with the potential for faster Pit progression.
- Scornful Light - Extra damage at the cost of taking some extra damage yourself.
- Myriad Stone - Extra attack speed after using your Ultimate Skill.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Frozen Orb is your primary damage skill and should be easy to cast a lot with Avalanche. It Chills enemies and applies Vulnerable.
- Familiar provides a damage increase if used after a Frost Skill, try to maintain one.
- Ice Armor provides a large barrier along with a damage bonus from Mystical Ice Armor. Snowveiled makes you Unstoppable.
- Flame Shield makes you Immune for a few seconds, a powerful mechanic to avoid any damage and also provides Unstoppable. This version of the build is the Mythic variant and gets ranks to this skill from Harlequin Crest. Check the Build Variants for earlier progression skill trees such as Starter or Ancestral.
- Ice Blades increases your attack speed with Invoked Ice Blades.
- Teleport is taken for the Enchantment and provides additional Damage Reduction.
- Unstable Currents provides additional Attack Speed and prevents Crackling Energy from expiring.
Skill Rotation
- Cast Flame Shield at the beginning of each area for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- Cast Frozen Orb and Teleport to maintain Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- Teleport into enemies to generate Crackling Energy for Convulsions.
- Use Unstable Currents when available to increase your Attack Speed and prevent Crackling Energy from expiring.
- Use Familiar for a damage increase if used after a Frost Skill, try to maintain one.
- Use Ice Blades when available to increase your Attack Speed.
- Use Ice Armor when available for Unstoppable.
- Consider saving Flame Shield for dangerous moments to avoid death.
Sorcerer Enchantments
Teleport is your first Enchantment. It replaces your evade with a shorter range Teleport that does not make you Unstoppable.
Frozen Orb is your second enchantment, provides more damage by sending extra Frozen Orbs while you cast your Skills.
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.
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
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Destruction
- Exploit
- Eliminator
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Eliminator
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Exploit
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 Frozen Orb Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- CirVex provides additional damage with ranks to and utility.
- IgniGar provides additional Critical Strike Chance.
Alternative choices
- Neo, Cem, and Ahu are good Ritual Runes.
- Qax can provide burst damage.
- Ohm can provide a damage multiplier.
- Kry groups enemies.
- Zec can provide Ultimate Cooldown Reduction.
- Mot can provide Damage Reduction.
- Grand Topaz provides 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 on your map, this is great quality of life. 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 prevents damage from large hits and makes 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 gives some extra attack speed and you can set it to activate on any skill in combat.
- Raheir is a good choice to maximize defense. Bastion gives a large amount of Damage Reduction and you can set it to activate on any skill in combat.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Frozen Orb 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
- 50%+ Cooldown Reduction
- 40%+ Attack Speed
- 40%+ Critical Strike Chance
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 75%+
- 5,000+ Life
- Damage Reduction Sources
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.
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.
- 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.
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 massive Cooldown Reduction and help easily solve your Defenses.
- Shroud of False Death still provides damage while greatly improving your Defenses over Raiment of the Infinite.
- 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
- Raiment of the Infinite can help group enemies quickly at the cost of Defense.
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 Skill Tree featured may gain Skill Ranks from different sources such as Harlequin Crest. Check the Build Variants for the correct setup for each step of your journey. Click the picture of the Sorcerer on gear setups to pull up the full planner and scroll through the variants with a drop down menu.
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 have two primary sources of Unstoppable with Teleport and Flame Shield. You can also use the Snowveiled aspect to add it to Ice Armor. Teleport Enchantment does not make you Unstoppable.
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 defenses:
- 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 is currently visually bugged. It increases the damage of all your skills, not just Frost ones.
There are two benefits to Shredding Blades that are separated by a period. The second benefit gives you a multiplier to all damage dealt to Vulnerable enemies even if you don't use Ice Blades.
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.
- 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 within 8 seconds to maintain all three stacks.
- 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 temporarily takes 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.
Summary
The Frozen Orb Sorcerer is a fun build but is one of our weaker builds going into Season 9.
- Check the Build Variants for the correct setup for each step of your journey.
- Throw orbs everywhere and ask questions later.
- Use Flame Shield at the beginning of combat for the Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop stack then save it for important moments.
- Stay Unstoppable with Ice Armor thanks to enough Cooldown Reduction and Snowveiled.
Credits
Written by pandaglassjaw