Ice Shards Sorcerer Endgame Guide
Welcome to the Ice Shards Sorcerer Endgame Guide! This build was a Frost machine gun that has been upgraded to a shotgun.
Azurewrath is the star of the show in this build and it's focused around the Lucky Hit affix. Hail of Verglas was just added to the game and provides a large damage bonus. You will be casting Ice Shards combined with Teleport to easily move around the battlefield and stack Enlightenment. Unstable Currents will provide an Attack Speed bonus and prevents your Crackling Energy from expiring to keep Ceaseless Conduit and Convulsions active.
Flame Shield will make you Immune for a few seconds to avoid damage along with providing Unstoppable. Ice Armor provides a large Barrier and gives Unstoppable with Snowveiled. Teleport won't be on your skill bar but will replace your evade and will be used for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop's Shock Skill.
- Enlightenment stacks the multipliers of other elements while active and applies them all to your main source of damage.
- Flamefeeder has a non-phys multiplier that will apply individually for each element while Enlightenment is active. You don't worry about the additive value or applying Burn.
- Familiar Enchantment provides all elements for Enchantment Master which stacks for Enlightenment.
- Ceh provides Primordial Binding stacks for Mana Regeneration and have a chance to Lucky Hit.
- Teleport into enemies for Crackling Energy.
- 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.
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 - Main: This provides Cooldown Reduction for quality of life.
Modifiers
- Kirma's Sparks - Modifier: This provides better Evade Cooldown to help stack Enlightenment faster.
- Sinerat's Flames - This provides a good multiplier that scales well with Enlightenment and is easy to activate without tempers.
- Hatred's Embrace's Haste - This gives a large amount of Critical Strike Chance.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Beast in the Ice's Sleet - This adds extra damage and is mainly effective against Bosses. It will be less effective against basic enemies.
- Grigoire's Lightning Square - Main: This provides better uptime on Harbinger of Hatred's Volley as a secondary.
- Harbinger of Hatred's Volley - Modifier: This provides a good multiplier but requires a Main power that activates often.
- Flesh Reaper's Disruption - Modifier: This provides a good multiplier but requires Crowd Control Duration utility tempers to activate.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Ice Shards is your primary damage skill but your damage will come from Lucky Hit Elemental Surge.
- Hydra is used to rotate different elements for Enlightenment to stack the most efficiently while it is not active. It also provides a chance at a free Fire Familiar with your Enchantment.
- Familiar will provide a damage increase if used after a Frost Skill, try to maintain one. While Enlightenment is active, you benefit from all three elements being active but this requires precision to maintain.
- Ice Armor provides a large Barrier, it also gives Damage Reduction and Unstoppable with Snowveiled.
- Flame Shield makes you Immune for a few seconds, a powerful mechanic to avoid any damage and also provides Unstoppable to break crowd control.
- Unstable Currents will provide an Attack Speed bonus and prevents your Crackling Energy from expiring to keep Ceaseless Conduit and Convulsions active.
Skill Rotation
- Rotate Ice Shards, Hydra, and Teleport to stack Enlightenment to 100 and focus on Ice Shards once Enlightenment is active while maintaining Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop. Enlightenment uptime is a priority.
- When your gear is near perfect, you can rotate only Ice Shards and Teleport.
- Teleport into enemies to generate Crackling Energy for Ceaseless Conduit and Convulsions.
- Use Unstable Currents whenever available to boost your Attack Speed and maintain your Crackling Energy.
- Use Ice Armor whenever available for Unstoppable.
- Consider saving Flame Shield for dangerous moments to avoid death.
Sorcerer Enchantments
Teleport is a useful Enchantment for adding more mobility and for Enlightenment. This replaces your evade with a shorter range Teleport than doesn't make you Unstoppable.
Familiar is for more damage, this helps scale Enlightenment with Enchantment Master. You don't need to worry about activating it's condition.
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.
Ice Shards 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
Use Eliminator until you have a Legendary Warding.
To Level 15
- Elementalist
- Tactician
- Flamefeeder
- Destruction
- Eliminator
- Warding
To Level 46
- Elementalist
- Warding
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Flamefeeder
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 Ice Shards Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- AhuQax will provide a large damage increase.
- NeoCeh will provide Vulnerable and Mana Regeneration with Primordial Binding stacks. They also have a Lucky Hit Chance.
Alternative choices
- Nagu, Igni, Cir, and Cem are good Ritual Runes.
- Kry groups enemies.https://maxroll.gg/d4/planner/e23010zx#4
- Ohm and Vex can provide additional damage.
- 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 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 Ice Shards 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
- Masterworks on Azurewrath Lucky Hit Chance.
- 40%+ Cooldown Reduction
- 40%+ Attack Speed
- 40%+ Critical Strike Chance
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 5,000+ Life
- Damage Reduction Sources
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Ice Shards 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 Ice Shards 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 Azurewrath you rely on your Ice Shards to deal damage.
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.
- Azurewrath is what provides the majority of your damage with it's Lucky Hit Chance to Deal Cold Damage.
- Fists of Fate has a wide range and finding a good pair might be difficult.
- Hail of Verglas gives a large damage bonus.
- 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
- 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.
- Teleport goes on your bar for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop and using Raiment of the Infinite.
- Ice Blades and Familiar Enchantments for damage from Enchantment Master.
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.
Enlightenment adds the multipliers that apply to each individual element together while active. This means you gain extra value from the Non-Phys mulitplier of Flamefeeder and you do not worry about the additive value on the glyph. Familiar Enchantment applies all elements for Enchantment Master to benefit Enlightenment. Elements will provide a cold damage bonus or add both fire and lightning together depending on which is active when Enlightenment is active.
Ceh provides additional summons that make enemies Vulnerable for you and count as stacks of Primordial Binding to increase your Mana Regeneration. Ideally you combine it with Neo or Nagu but can get started with Cir.You need a Mana Per Second roll on your boots to feel the most comfortable while stacking Primordial Binding. Frigid Breeze and Lucky Hit Resource Restoration tempers on jewelry or as an affix on offhand can help if you don't have all the tools needed.
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 here or picture of the Sorcerer on gear setups to pull up the full planner and scroll through the variants with a drop down menu.
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 whether you have Ice Blades or not.
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.
- Stack different sources of Damage Reduction.
- 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 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.
Mechanics
- Ice Shards Enchantment fires a single Shard at each Frozen enemy 1.66 times per second.
- Greater Ice Shards only affects the conditional Frozen bonuses that are default listed on the Skill and won't activate any other conditional multipliers such as Icefall.
- 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 cast two different elemental Skills within 5 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 AND MULTIPLIERS 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
Summary
The Ice Shards Sorcerer Endgame build is an ice shotgun that is a fun and engaging playstyle where positioning matters.
- Check the Build Variants for the correct setup for each step of your journey. Click here or picture of the Sorcerer on gear setups to pull up the full planner and scroll through the variants with a drop down menu.
- Maintain Enlightenment with Ice Shards, Hydra, and Teleport Enchantment.
- So anyway, I started blasting.
Credits
Written by pandaglassjaw