Welcome to the Frozen Orb Sorcerer endgame guide! Frozen Orb has deep roots in the Diablo franchise. First making a spectacular appearance in Diablo 2, this devastating AoE attack takes no prisoners. The Frozen Orb Sorcerer unleashes an endless barrage of Frozen Orbs to decimate their foes from afar.
Runnin', Gunnin', and Teleportin', this Sorcerer melts open world Events and Helltides with ease. It is additionally a decent, safe Nightmare Dungeon pusher. Frozen Orbs make all enemies Vulnerable for a never-ending pain train. Frozen Orb comfortably shatters dense monster packs, and it's single target damage is also no slouch, provided you can stay at the right distance.
One of the best features of this build is that it does not absolutely require any Unique items to function well in the endgame! Feel free to play it from the beginning if you so choose. There are several possible sources of Mana generation and ways to customize the build in general for pursuits such as Hardcore mode. No matter the approach, this icy witch will freeze over hell!
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Ice Shards Sorcerer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Sorcerer playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides.
Season 3 - Season of the Construct
In Season 3, you obtain the Seneschal Construct through the Season Questline, then collect Governing Stones or Tuning Stones to add attacks and augment them to support your build. Only certain Tuning Stones work with a particular Governing Stone. Look at the bottom of any Tuning Stone tooltip to see if it is compatible with your Construct's currently equipped Stones. Lastly, they can be leveled up by getting duplicates to max out their power. Check out our full Season 3 guide for more information.
Recommended Stones
- Flash of Adrenaline
- Duration
- Tactical
- Initiative
This stone gives us 20% multiplicative damage with 100% uptime. Plain and simple.
- Tempest
- Safeguard
- Resource
- Efficiency
This stone gives us some damage reduction, bonus Crit Chance, and generates Mana.
Alternative Stones
If you are lucky enough to get either Evernight or Genesis from Uber Malphas, you want to swap them in instead of Safeguard and Initiative respectively.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Frozen Orb is your primary damage source. Use this for big AoE damage against monster density and to apply Vulnerable to targets Frozen Orb always travels a fixed distance and then explodes and it deals most of its damage with this explosion. Because of that you have to stay a bit away from enemies to maximize your DPS.
- Teleport makes you Unstoppable and is your main source of mobility.
- Ice Armor and Flame Shield are your defensive skills which make you almost immortal and literally immortal respectively.
- Ice Blades is good to proc effects such as Prodigy’s and Protection, thanks to its low cooldown. The blade itself does almost nothing so just treat this as a Mana button.
- Deep Freeze is our Ultimate of choice. It's mostly useful to reset our other cooldowns but sometimes invulnerability comes in handy when there's tons of on-death explosions going off. If you don't like Deep Freeze, you can use Inferno instead to pull enemies into the Frozen Orb's sweet spot. The cooldown is a bit long for what it does but it's still nice to have an option.
- We put two points into Fire Bolt to unlock the rest of the tree and to use its Enchantment.
Enchantment Slots
- Frozen Orb Enchantment greatly increases your DPS. More Orbs = More Damage. On top of that, Frozen Orbs cast by the enchant fly directly at a randomly chosen enemy and explode on top of them. They can go way further than normal Frozen Orbs and they can function well in tight spaces without flying off the map.
- Fire Bolt Enchantment is a lot less flashy but still very useful. It lets you use various stats such as Damage to Burning Enemies or Damage Reduction from Burning Enemies, as well as Devouring Blaze passive for a big damage boost.
Alternatively, we can use Teleport Enchantment while speedfarming to go faster.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Resource Management
Frozen Orb Sorcerer can be quite Mana-hungry in the early game. Fortunately, we have a wide array of tools to tackle this problem.
Prodigy’s Resource Aspect
This Aspect is very useful in the early game, as we have so many skills with a Cooldown, each giving us some Mana when activated. To make sure that you don't run out of Mana during the Boss fight, follow these tips:
- Always start the fight by casting Frozen Orb once or twice 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.
Aspect of the Umbral
Aspect of the Umbral synergizes insanely well with Frozen Orb given the constant Chill and subsequent Freeze it provides. However, it's completely useless against Bosses and we want to have Mana in every situation, so it's only used in the early game.
Lucky Hit Procs
We have access to several Lucky Hit effects that can help with Mana Generation
- Avalanche (plus Aspect of Frozen Memories)
- Frigid Breeze
- "Lucky Hit: Chance to Regain Resource" rolls on Ancestral Gloves and Focuses
Unfortunately, Frozen Orb's Lucky Hit Chance is 4% so these effects are not that powerful. We use them in the early game because we need all the Mana we can get, but in the final build we only keep one roll on the Gloves (and even that is optional).
Stats on Gear
And finally we come to the real way of solving all our Mana problems: just find good gear. Easier said than done but this is what we have to do. There are 5 different stats we are looking for:
- Cooldown Reduction (rolls on Helmet, Amulet, Focus)
The most important stat for any Sorcerer build, it's also technically a Mana stat as long as we use Prodigy’s. Get all 3 possible rolls as your number one priority. - Mana Cost Reduction (rolls on Amulet, Boots, Focus)
The roll on the Amulet is significantly higher than the other 2 so you always want to get it. - Resource Generation (rolls on Ancestral Rings and Focus)
This stat has the same function as Mana Cost Reduction but it's slightly stronger if you have to choose between the two.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. For some Glyphs, we max our bonuses by allocating every relevant node in range, while on others we take the minimum required for the Additional Bonus only. Because Glyphs at level 15 increase their radius, we need to prioritize leveling them by completing Nightmare Dungeons. After that, we prioritize leveling our strongest glyphs to level 21.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the last five steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
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
- Control
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Destruction
- Reinforced
- Elementalist
- Unleash (PLACEHOLDER DO NOT LEVEL)
Level 21
- Destruction
- Control
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Reinforced
- Elementalist
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
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:
- Umbral in Champion's Demise (Dry Steppes)
- Prodigy’s in Witchwater (Hawezar)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Elementalist's in Pallid Delve (Dry Steppes)
- Snowveiled Aspect in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Frozen Orbit: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Elementalist's
- Conceited: Gamble Focuses
- Shredding Blades: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Umbral when you have enough Mana generation
- Everliving: Gamble Pants
- Frozen Orbit: Gamble Focuses
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
Note: You cannot gamble Unique items with Obols!- Tibault's Will (Duriel)
- Godslayer Crown (Duriel)
- Esu's Heirloom (Varshan, Beast in the Ice)
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Uber Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest is your BiS helmet. It provides about as much damage as Godslayer Crown but much more toughness and some utility.
- Ring of Starless Skies is also BiS. In terms of Mana sustain it's sligtly weaker than Prodigy’s but it gives 40% damage at the same time!
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Once you have completed the Leveling Guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects you need for the next progression point.
Gear
- Control goes on the Amulet for more damage.
- Prodigy’s and Umbral are Resource Aspects and can only be placed on Rings.
- Storm Swell and Elementalist's go on Gloves and one of the Weapons.
- Bounding Conduit can only be imprinted on Boots.
- Put Disobedience on the Chest.
- Snowveiled Aspect goes on Helmet or Pants.
At this point resources are scarce, so only upgrade items that have Mana Cost Reduction or Cooldown Reduction rolls on them.
Skills
At low levels we Struggle with Mana, so we remove 3 ranks from Teleport and Potent Warding. With these 6 skill points we get Fiery Surge and Frigid Breeze. Finally, we switch our Key Passive to Avalanche
With more level, better stats on items, and better rolled aspects our build can progress further. In this version we do a bunch of changes to our gear, skills and enchantment slots. See below to find out when and why each change is made.
Gear
- Replace Elementalist's with Frozen Orbit.
- Put Conceited in your last offensive slot.
- Replace Umbral with Shredding Blades when you feel like your Mana is good enough.
- Put Everliving on your Helmet.
Skills
With some Mana Cost Reduction and Resource Generation rolls we can switch to our endgame skill tree.
- Remove Fiery Surge and Frigid Breeze
- Max out Teleport and Potent Warding
- Switch from Avalanche to Shatter
In this setup, you have access to all Unique items, and Legendary Aspects. This allows you to pilot this build at its peak efficiency. Let's take a look at the changes you need to make to implement them.
Gear
The final version of the build uses 4 Uniques:
- Esu's Heirloom
- Tibault's Will
- Godslayer Crown
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
All of these items are direct upgrades in their respective slots so you can use them as soon as you find them.
Gameplay
These Uniques just make us stronger without drastically changing the build. The only new thing you have to worry about is maintaining the buffs from Tibault's Will and Esu's Heirloom. To do that you simply need to spam Evade and Teleport as much as possible.
Uber Uniques
Some Unique items are very rare and only drop from Duriel, King of Maggots with approximately 2% chance. If you are one of the lucky few to have these items, here's how you can use them in this build:
- Harlequin Crest - this is your Best in Slot Helmet. Use it instead of Godslayer Crown.
- Andariel's Visage - this item is quite bad. Poison Nova doesn't proc much with our abysmal Lucky Hit Chance. On top of that, losing CDR and damage hurts quite a bit.
- Ahavarion, Spear of Lycander is also quite bad, it has great stats but you lose a lot of damage and CDR and the random Shrine effect is not even that good most of the time.
- Melted Heart of Selig is a good defensive item, but using defensive Amulet means losing a lot of damage.
- Ring of Starless Skies is BiS for this build, providing a lot of extra damage as well as Resource Cost Reduction.
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.
Gear
The only change we need to make to our gear is replacing Esu's Heirloom with Bounding Conduit Boots that have either "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown" or "+Max Evade Charges" implicit roll
Enchantment Slots
We replace Fire Bolt with Teleport. We don't remove points from Devouring Blaze because there's nothing better to take and we still have some uptime on it from Flame Shield and Seneschal Companion.
This variant of the build gives up a bit of speed and convenience for more safety.
AVOID THESE Nightmare Dungeon Afflictions
Before we go into what you should change on your build, take a look at Nightmare Dungeon Afflictions that you HAVE TO avoid for a successful push:
- Unstoppable Monsters - For a Cold Sorcerer, Unstoppable means Unkillable. This build deals about x4 times more damage to enemies that can be Crowd Controlled.
- Monster Cold/Vulnerable/Crowd Control/Critical Resist - These afflictions simply reduce your damage output by a lot. In some cases your push is limited by survivability rather than damage so these don't do much to stop you, but in most situations they should be avoided.
- Stormbane's Wrath, Lightning Storm, Drifting Shade - These afflictions just add one more thing for you to worry about on top of nearly every mob being able to kill you in a couple of hits.
- Armor Breakers - This affliction can be absolutely devastating in lower tier push where your Armor is still high enough to provide tons of Damage Reduction. In tier 100 it doesn't matter too much because our Armor is very low anyway.
Gear
The only change we need to make for high tier Nightmare Dungeon is adding a bit more Armor to reach the cap (13,200). The easiest way to do is simply to get an Amulet with Total Armor roll. If your gear is not good enough to reach the cap with just that, you can further bolster your Armor with Iron Skin Elixir. Finally, as a last resort option, you can drop Godslayer Crown for a Helmet with Total Armor and Everliving.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to prioritize defensive stats and gameplay. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Prioritize Total Armor, Life, a mix of all Damage Reduction stats, and Barrier generation on all of the Frozen Orb Sorcerer's gear.
- Consider using Flame Shield Enchantment instead of Frozen Orb Enchantment for its "cheat death" mechanic. It can save your life! This will require at least 1 Skill Point into Flame Shield, which can be pulled from any offensive Passive.
- Consider putting Aspect of Disobedience on your Amulet and using Everliving on your Helmet (remove Aspect of Shredding Blades).
- Take Skill Points out of Glass Cannon and put them into Icy Veil. This will massively increase your tankiness. Additionally, do not use Amulets with ranks to Glass Cannon.
- In the Paragon Boards, select additional Life Nodes in Rare clusters whenever possible.
- Only farm Nightmare Dungeons with monsters that are about your character level until you have near optimal gear.
Check out our dedicated in-depth guide to learn more survival tricks in Hardcore.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
- Cooldown Reduction (CDR). This the most important stat for any Sorcerer build. What good are your skills if you can't use them because they are on cooldown? In purely offensive terms CDR gives us more Mana generation via Prodigy’s and more uptime on Barriers which are needed to activate Conceited and Storm Swell.
- Mana. We continue to chase our philosophy of being able to use skills = good. The next skill we want to use is Frozen Orb, which has a Mana cost, instead of a Cooldown. We need to stack enough Mana Cost Reduction and Resource Generation in order to spam Frozen Orbs freely. Maximum Mana is also helpful to be able to activate bonuses from Enhanced Frozen Orb and Elemental Dominance more reliably.
- Offensive Stats. We want all the normal offensive stats: Weapon Damage, Frozen Orb Ranks, Critical Strike Chance, Attack Speed, Cold Damage, Intelligence, and all kinds of Additive Damage, in that order of priority. Attack Speed can be a double edged sword, as it also increases your Mana consumption, so it's better to focus on other stats until your Mana is completely figured out.
- Cooldown Reduction (CDR). As with our damaging skills, our powerful Defensive Skills are not doing much if we cannot cast them. Flame Shield makes you immortal and Ice Armor is Flame Shield with 3x the duration at best or a protective layer that almost doubles your HP at worst.
- Barrier. Mostly coming from Ice Armor, it is our main defense outside Nightmare Dungeons. With our high and consistent damage output, the Barrier will instantly refresh as long as it's not broken in one hit.
- Damage Reduction (DR). We stack as much of it as possible, mostly going for Damage Reduction, Damage Reduction from Close/Distant Enemies and Damage Reduction from Burning Enemies. A lot of these stats can be found on Chests, Pants, Amulets, and some of our Paragon Boards. If we can stack enough to make our Barrier survive a hit then everything is easy, as we can just cast Ice Armor and not worry about anything for 6 seconds.
- Armor is the major source of Damage Reduction against Physical damage. We naturally get Armor just from having high Item Power gear, and we further boost it with Skulls in Jewelry and Defensive Aspect of Disobedience. It's extremely important to reach the Armor cap for the current level of monsters as the last few points of Armor get exponentially more effective.
- Resistances give us damage reduction against Elemental damage. Similar to armor it should be stacked as close to the cap as possible for full effectiveness. As a Sorcerer, we get lots of Resistances from our high Intelligence and our Paragon Boards, letting us almost reach the cap without sacrificing any stats on gear.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
Choosing the right stats for your gear can make or break your build. You won't always find perfect stats (also known as affixes or modifiers) though, and you may need to make a tough choice between two good pieces of equipment. Use the following list of priorities to compare your gear and pick the best.
- Helm: Godslayer Crown, look for high damage roll and CDR
- Otherwise Look For: Everliving
- Cooldown Reduction
- Total Armor
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence
- Maximum Mana
- Chest Armor: Disobedience
- Total Armor
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Damage Reduction from Close
- Maximum Life
- Damage Reduction from Burning
- Damage Reduction
- Gloves: Shredding Blades
- Ranks to Frozen Orb
- Attack Speed
- Critical Strike Chance
- Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Resource
- Intelligence
- Pants: Tibault's Will, look for good roll on Unique effect
- Otherwise Look For: Snowveiled
- Total Armor
- Damage Reduction from Close
- Damage Reduction from Distant
- Maximum Life
- Damage Reduction from Burning
- Damage Reduction
- Boots: Esu's Heirloom, look for high Movespeed and Crit Chance rolls
- Otherwise Look For: Bounding Conduit
- Evade Cooldown or Charges
- Movement Speed
- Mana Cost Reduction
- Ranks to Teleport
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Amulet: Frozen Orbit
- Cooldown Reduction
- Mana Cost Reduction
- Ranks to Permafrost
- Ranks to Devouring Blaze
- Ranks to Icy Touch
- Movement Speed
- Total Armor
- Ranks to Defensive Skills
- Rings: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, look for high CDR, Resource and Unique effect
- Otherwise Look For: Prodigy’s & Shredding Blades
- Resource Generation
- Critical Strike Chance
- Maximum Life
- Cold Damage
- Close Damage
- Off-Hand: Storm Swell
- Cooldown Reduction
- Resource Generation
- Critical Strike Chance
- Mana Cost Reduction
- Intelligence
- Main Hand: Conceited (Wand)
- Intelligence
- All Stats
- Close Damage
- Core Skill Damage
- Critical Strike Damage
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Heady Assault Elixir, Heady Precision Elixir, Iron Skin Elixir
- Incense: Song of the Mountain, Sage's Whisper
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.
Why don't you use Imbiber?
Can I Target My Frozen Orb Wherever I Want?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Esu's Heirloom
Video Guide
Hungry for more Guides?
Sorcerer Guides
Summary
- The Frozen Orb Sorcerer attacks from a distance with an endless stream of maxed out Frozen Orbs.
- Maintain your Mana! Find gear with the Cooldown Reduction, Resource Generation, and Mana Cost Reduction stats, and take advantage of Prodigy’s Aspect.
- Cooldown Reduction is key for maximizing uptime on your Defensive Skills Teleport, Ice Armor, and Flame Shield.
- Having Barrier up at all times is essential to your success when pushing the hardest content in the game. Protection is instrumental here. Not only is it essential for defense, but also for offense along with Conceited Aspect and Storm Swell Aspect.
- The Frozen Orb Sorcerer is a highly versatile density destroyer, bringing a solid amount of damage and survivability to the table! It is capable of completing the hardest content in the game! Crush it with this iconic Skill!
Credits
Written by Northwar
Original post DarkHumility
Reviewed by Wudijo