Frozen Orb Sorcerer Endgame Guide
Welcome to the Frozen Orb Sorcerer Endgame Guide! This build is one of the best builds in the Endgame with a simple playstyle.
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. You will activate your Enlightenment with Lightning Spear, this will be easy with the cooldown reduction you get from Fractured Winterglass. Your Ultimate Skill Unstable Currents will give some extra attack speed to increase your damage.
The Frozen Orb Sorcerer has great Defensive Skills at your disposal. Flame Shield must be used for your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and provides Immune for a few seconds which is invaluable for avoiding dangerous stacks in Pits along with providing Unstoppable. 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.
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. Lightning Spear will make it easy to maintain Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and Enlightenment.
Frozen Orb Sorcerer is a blast to play and will be one of the best builds to scale into the Endgame. Let's jump in and see what it's all about!
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
Season 6 is the Season of Hatred Rising. It features the Zakarum Remnants faction which hunts Realmwalkers, massive behemoths that roam outdoor zones and beckon Mephisto's hellspawn. Participate in these zone events and take down the Realmwalkers to spawn a portal to a Seething Realm. There you can acquire Seething Opals, new consumables that stack with Elixirs for a XP buff and the chance to gather extra rewards when defeating enemies. The types of Opals are:
- Seething Opal of Equipment
- Seething Opal of Gold
- Seething Opal of Materials
- Seething Opal of Torment
- Seething Opal of Socketables
Use these Opals at all times to earn reputation with the Zakarum Remnants faction and unlock further rewards.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Frozen Orb is your primary damage skill and will easily cover your Vulnerable and stack your Conjuration Mastery thanks to Fractured Winterglass.
- Lightning Spear is your primary support skill. It provides a stun to help crowd control enemies immediately but is mostly used for your rotation with Enlightenment and Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop along with Conjuration Mastery stacks, it's cooldown is quickly reset thanks to Fractured Winterglass.
- Unstable Currents is your ultimate skill. It summons random Shock Skills while you cast Lightning Spear but mainly provides additional attack speed.
- Teleport provides mobility to reposition and also makes you Unstoppable to break crowd control if you are caught. It also provides damage reduction thanks to Shimmering Teleport.
- 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 whenever available for Conjuration Mastery 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.
Frozen Orb is your second enchantment, this will give a chance for a Frozen Orb to automatically launch at nearby enemies when you cast non-Basic Skills.
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
- Flamefeeder
- Tactician
- Unleash
- Destruction
- Elementalist
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Unleash
- Elementalist
- Flamefeeder
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
- Tam + Wat for additional damage reduction combined with Xol + Ohm for additional damage.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Use Topaz Gems for additional damage.
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: Raheir
- Raheir will potentially save your character with his reinforcement Bastion. Setting this to trigger on Injured can keep you going in difficult encounters.
- Varyana is a great alternative to Raheir if you are either using Raheir as your hired or if you just want some extra damage. Bloodthirst will give some extra attack speed and you can set it on any attack.
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
- 35%+ 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 rely on Hydra for your Enlightenment rotation.
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.
- 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
- Tyrael's Might make it much easier to hit your Resistance caps, even in high Torment difficulties. This allows you to min/max the setup further for example by removing such Paragon nodes and putting them into more damage.
- Ring of Starless Skies provides great damage and drastically reduces our Mana cost.
- Heir of Perdition provides a massive damage increase at the cost of cooldown reduction.
- Rakanoth's Wake adds some needed cooldown reduction now that you have plenty of critical strike chance.
- Your Mana will struggle at the beginning of combat until you stack enough Conjuration Mastery to make it smooth.
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
- Teleport Enchantment is the primary focus of our Speedfarming set which will replace your evade with a shorter range teleport that doesn't provide Unstoppable.
- Harlequin Crest (commonly called Shako) will provide massive cooldown reduction for maximum speed and helps your defense.
- Flickerstep will provide a massive 2.5 second evade cooldown reduction for each skill cast. This will reset our Teleport Enchantment at an accelerated rate. You put extra ranks into Teleport to help the cooldown reduction as well.
- Teleport ranks on a Chest will help you reach the maximum cooldown for your teleport evade, this will allow you to hold down your attack button and cast Teleport Enchantment as much as you want.
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.
- Shroud of Khanduras provides a massive damage increase thanks to the Passive Skill ranks while still giving some defense compared to Raiment of the Infinite. You will need good gameplay to survive compared to Tyrael's Might.
This setup creates a hybrid between Frozen Orb and Lightning Spear for a similar setup to last season. It plays the exact same way as other variants but can be easier to get started with in higher Torment difficulties. Find the Paragon Progression in the Planner by clicking on the character in the Gear profile.
Gear & Skills
- Splintering Energy is the focus of this hybrid and will require stacking Critical Strike Damage. In the planner you will see the Paragon attached to this set uses Burning Instinct instead of Icefall. Click on the character in this Gear variant to open the planner.
- Skill Rotation and Gear mostly remains the same compared to the other variants.
- Planner also includes an Ancestral version without Mythic items, be sure to click the tab where is says Splintering Energy to change to the Splintering Energy No Mythic Variant.
This setup creates a hybrid between Frozen Orb and Lightning Spear for a similar setup to last season. This variant has access to all gear and creates a casual experience for all content. Find the Paragon Progression in the Planner by clicking on the gear profile.
Gear & Skills
- Splintering Energy is the focus of this hybrid and will require stacking Critical Strike Damage. In the planner you will see the Paragon attached to this set uses Burning Instinct instead of Icefall. Click on the character in this Gear variant to open the planner.
- Skill Rotation and Gear mostly remains the same compared to the other variants.
- Planner also includes an Ancestral version without Mythic items, be sure to click the tab where is says Splintering Energy to change to the Splintering Energy No Mythic Variant.
This setup creates a hybrid between Frozen Orb and Lightning Spear for a similar setup to last season. This version maximizes your potential for pushing higher Pit tiers. Find the Paragon Progression in the Planner by clicking on the character in the Gear profile.
Gear & Skills
- Splintering Energy is the focus of this hybrid and will require stacking Critical Strike Damage. In the planner you will see the Paragon attached to this set uses Burning Instinct instead of Icefall. Click on the character in this Gear variant to open the planner.
- Skill Rotation and Gear mostly remains the same compared to the other variants.
- Planner also includes an Ancestral version without Mythic items, be sure to click the tab where is says Splintering Energy to change to the Splintering Energy No Mythic Variant.
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.
What can I do to improve survivability?
How can I trigger Unstoppable?
Which adjustments should I make on Hardcore?
Mechanics
Frozen Orb
Fractured Winterglass
Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
Enlightenment
Attack Speed Caps
Stagger
Video Guide
Summary
The Frozen Orb Sorcerer is an easy to play build with a simple playstyle that scales into one of the best Sorcerer Endgame builds.
- Sling Frozen Orb everywhere and cast Lightning Spear to maintain your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, Enlightenment, and Conjuration Mastery 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!
Credits
Written by pandaglassjaw