Ice Shards Sorcerer Leveling Guide

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.

After spending 6 points we gain access to the Defensive skill cluster. Here we instantly fill up our skill bar with Teleport, Flame Shield, Ice Armor, and Frost Nova.

The latter two skills are really important because they both allow our Ice Shards to ricochet to an extra target, which lets us kill large groups of enemies twice as fast. Additionally, at level 10 you unlock the ability to imprint Legendary Aspects on your gear. When the campaign takes you near it, complete Dead Man's Dredge dungeon and imprint Offensive Aspect of Piercing Cold onto one of your Rings.

We spend the next few levels pumping ranks into Ice Shards and picking up useful passives such as Glass Cannon and Elemental Attunement.

At level 15 you unlock your first Enchantment slot, so we must put a point into Fireball. The Fireball Enchantment is invaluable when it comes to killing large hordes of small enemies, which is something our build was struggling with up until now.

Next we put one point into Protection passive, max out Frost Nova and unlock Frigid Breeze.

Finally, we unlock our Key Passive Avalanche, to proc it (and also Frigid Breeze) easier, we switch to Destructive Ice Shards. Next thing you should do is clear Witchwater and add Prodigy’s Resource Aspect to your Ring. After that you should have enough Mana to cast Ice Shards all the time and you can remove Arc Lash and replace it with Blizzard.

We use Blizzard to Freeze enemies when Frost Nova is on cooldown and let our Enchantments kill them all. To conserve Mana, don't cast Blizzard more than twice. To make it Freeze even faster, we put 2 points into Cold Front.

At this point our build is largely complete so we just pick up useful passives and skill upgrades to boost our damage and survivability. Apart from leveling up you can get 10 skill points by completing Renown objectives, so don't forget to do your side quests!

Enchantments are extremely important to any Sorcerer build. In fact, the moment you hit level 15, you should drop whatever you were doing and go unlock your Enchantment Slots! You must have at least one rank in a skill to put it into Enchantment Slot but it doesn't have to be on your skillbar.

Slot 1 - Enchant Fireball. This effect lets you easily destroy large hordes of small enemies while also dealing heavy damage to any Elites that happen to be caught inside.

Slot 2 - Enchant Ice Shards. This power fires a single Ice Shard (normally you fire 5 per cast) at every Frozen enemy approximately twice a second. As a result, your Frost Nova becomes a powerful AoE nuke which can easily kill anything short of a Boss.

Once you hit level 15, you automatically start the "Legacy of the Magi" Priority Quest. Complete it to unlock your first Enchantment Slot. The second Slot unlocks on it's own when you reach level 30.

Generally you want to have 1H Weapon + Focus instead of 2H Weapon, mostly because Focus can roll Cooldown Reduction and it's by far the best stat you can have. However, during leveling you won't lose that much CDR, so if you find a high DPS staff feel free to go for it. Always go for higher DPS over weapon's stats during leveling. The useful stats to look out for are:

Hint: Press SHIFT over an item to compare it to what you're wearing!

If you have sockets on your items, fill them with the following;

The Codex of Power is a collection of Legendary Aspects you can imprint onto Rare or Legendary items at the Occultist. They unlock after completing specific Dungeons located around Sanctuary. For leveling there are a few aspects that can significantly help us if we have the funds to imprint them:

Warning: DO NOT imprint your Weapons as they are constantly replaced while leveling. Put Offensive Aspects on your Amulet, Rings, or Gloves instead.

There are more helpful Legendary Aspects for the Firewall Sorcerer that can either be found in the Codex of Power or Extracted from an item drop. Note that all Legendary Aspects can be found from item drops, and dropped Aspects can have higher rolls frequently making them significantly better than ones sourced from the Codex of Power.

You level in Diablo 4 by completing the Campaign, collecting Grim Favors for the Tree of Whispers, grinding Dungeons, or interacting with Seasonal mechanics. While there are many ways to level up in Diablo 4, not all of them are made equal.

Let's look at some tips and tricks to remember when leveling up!

Written by Northwar
Reviewed by Chewingnom