The Lightning Spear Sorcerer is a new build that becomes possible thanks to the reworked Aspect Splintering Energy. This Aspect upgrades Lightning Spear's measly 16% damage per hit to 82.5-110% that is further increased by your Critical Strike damage. In the late game, this equates to approximately a 60x boost! With an aspect like this, it should come as no surprise that a previously useless spell becomes a real powerhouse.
This build uses Fractured Winterglass to reset the cooldown of Lightning Spear. Before you find the amulet, you have to rely on Unstable Currents. Both methods rely heavily on Cooldown Reduction so it becomes your #1 priority (if it wasn't already). On top of that you need high Crit Chance and Damage, which makes this build somewhat hard to get going early on.
On the bright side, Lightning Spear Sorcerer is insanely strong in the late game where your items are fully masterworked and you can get tons of CDR from Harlequin Crest and Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Sorcerer playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides. This build is also very reliant on CDR, Crit Chance and Crit Damage! It's best to wait until you have acess to Ancestral items and Worldly Finesse before trying to make this build.
Season 5 - Infernal Hordes
In Season 5, the Season Theme brings your hero back into the bowels of Hell, in the Infernal Hordes endgame activity. You're first introduced to Hellbreach Dungeons, miniature Horde-like micro-dungeons that teach you the new mechanics and rewards systems. As you slay more powerful Demons and Bosses, you're rewarded with the new Reputation progression that comes with amazing rewards. These include Crafting Materials, unlocking Season's Journey tiers and even the coveted Resplendent Spark, needed to craft a mythic unique.
Follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the Reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 5 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Lightning Spear is our main source of damage. Each cast summons up to 3 Lightning Spears. You should use it off cooldown.
- Frozen Orb is the spell you cast the most. We don't get any upgrades for it because we only use it for CDR from Fractured Winterglass and we already have Vulnerable built-in from Lightning Spear.
- Unstable Currents is our support skill. It gives a bit of attack speed and occasionally spwans a Lightning Spear or two. Use this off cooldown, it's not super important whether it's up or not.
- Teleport makes you Unstoppable and is your primary source of mobility on this build. As a bonus, it also procs Unstable Currents.
- Ice Armor is our go-to defensive skill, which also give a lot of Mana Regeneration.
- Flame Shield is our emergency defensive button. Use it when you're in danger or when you see a powerful attack coming for you.
- We put 1 point into Fire Bolt to use the Enchantment.
- Destructive Charged Bolts upgrade helps us reduce incoming damage when Unstable Currents casts this skill.
Passives
- Static Discharge is needed to activate Charged Glyph.
You can somewhat control your Lightning Spears by hovering your mouse cursor over an enemy you want to them to target. Normally, your spears alternate between attacking enemies and doing sick loops in the air. When you mouseover a new enemy, all spears that are currently idle turn to attack it. You can further abuse this behaviour by wiggling your mouse cursor on top of the enemy hitbox so that you are constantly re-targeting it. If you do it in the right rhythm, your spears will fly in a small circle, hitting the boss 50% more often than they normally would. This "wiggle strat" is useful to improve your single target damage and can be also useful to pick off single high value targets in AoE (e.g. Aether Fiends in Infernal Hordes).
Enchantment Slots
- Fire Bolt Enchantment is not flashy but extremely useful, giving us access to Devouring Blaze, Flamefeeder and Damage Reduction from Burning.
- Ice Blades Enchantment reduces the cooldown of Lightning Spear in two ways: through Summoned Ice Blades upgrade and by creating more Frozen Orbs to proc Fractured Winterglass.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Resource Management
Lightning Spear Sorcerer starts off by using Spark and you don't need any Mana at all in the early game. Eventually, you find Fractured Winterglass and switch to frozen Frozen Orb. Ideally, you get all your Mana just from Conjuration Mastery, Tibault's Will and maybe 1 or 2 items with Mana Per Second on top of that. If you don't have Tibault's Will yet, or if your items are not sufficiently upgraded, there's a number of things you can do to get more Mana:
- Switch your Key Passive to Avalanche.
- Get Destructive Frozen Orb.
- Get Frigid Breeze.
- Get Invigorating Conduit.
- Use Frozen Orbit Gloves and put a Resource Aspect on your Ring (Prodigy's, Umbral, or Starlight with Warmth tempers)
*Remove points from Teleport, Precision Magic, and Devouring Blaze to get the above passives.
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 first three 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
- Destruction
- Unleash
- Exploit
- Flamefeeder
- Elementalist
- Tactician
- Charged
- Conjurer
Level 21
- Destruction
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Elementalist
- Unleash
- Tactician
- Charged
- Conjurer
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 Best in Slot versions. In this section, we guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
The effectiveness of the Lightning Spear Sorcerer depends on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee, that everyone has access to the same Dungeon Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Splintering Energy in Crumbling Hekma (Kehjistan)
- Rapid in Buried Halls (Dry Steppes)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Might in Dark Ravine (Dry Steppes)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Snowveiled in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen):
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Conceited: Gamble Focuses
- Shredding Blades: Gamble Focuses
- Overwhelming Currents: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Control
- Hectic: Gamble Boots
- Replaces Bounding Conduit
- Orange Herald: Gamble Boots
- Replaces Snowveiled
- Concentration: Gamble Pants
- Replaces Disobedience
- Frozen Orbit: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Shredding Blades after you switch to Fractured Winterglass.
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- Replaces Rapid
- Fractured Winterglass (Zir)
- Tibault's Will (Duriel, Andariel)
- Replaces Might
- Esu's Heirloom (Varshan, The Beast in Ice)
- Replaces Hectic
- Flickerstep (Duriel, Andariel)
- A must-have in any Speedfarm Build.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Mythic Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Harlequin Crest is incredibly valuable for this build, thanks to massive amounts of CDR it provides.
- Tyrael's Might is incredibly powerful defensive chest.
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.
Why are you here? Did you not read the disclaimer at the top of the guide? Playing Lightning Spear Sorcerer on fresh level 50 character with only Dungeon Aspects brings nothing but pain and suffering. Come back when you have at least Hectic, Orange Herald, and can temper Crit Damage and either Unstable Currents or Lightning Spear CDR.
Without Fractured Winterglass you are forced to play an Unstable Currents-centered build with Spark. For it to work, you need to have decent uptime on your Ultimate, which can be hard to do early on. Personally I don't recommend playing this build unless you have:
- Ancestral items with:
- CDR on Helmet, Amulet and Focus
- Crit Chance on Gloves, Rings and Focus
- Crit Damage and Unstable Currents CDR tempers on every slot.
- Orange Herald
- Hectic
These requirements are quite steep for a leveling build but it's possible that you get all of that before a single Fractured Winterglass if you get unlucky.
Gear
As discussed above, your number 1 priority is Cooldown Reduction, followed by Crit Chance and Crit Damage. Put Splintering Energy on the Amulet as it's your main damage Aspect.
Skills and Enchantment Slots
We switch up half the Skill Tree for this build.
In the Enchantment Slot we replace Ice Blades with Teleport to go faster.
In this setup, you have access to all and Uniques and Legendary Aspects imprinted into high Item Power gear, high Cooldown Reduction, 100% Critical Strike Chance and tons of Critical Strike Damage.
Gear
This build uses several Uniques in the late game.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
- Esu's Heirloom
- Tibault's Will
These 3 items you can just use when you find it without major changes to the build. The big item that makes you switch up everything is Fractured Winterglass. With this you can switch your entire build and go ham (unless it rolled 0.1 CDR then it's kinda unplayable). In terms of Gear you need to change the following:
- Use 2-handed Staff with Splintering Energy.
- Put Frozen Orbit on a Ring.
- Temper Lightning Spear CDR on your Ring(s).
- Get Mana Per Second on Chest/Boots/Helmet.
Skills
Switch to the final skill tree when you get Fractured Winterglass.
Gear with Mythic Uniques
This build can make use of two and a half Mythic Uniques.
- Tyrael's Might gives insane amount of defensive stats and it's very hard to pass up regardless of the build.
- Harlequin Crest gives crazy amount of CDR.
Be careful: when you equip both of these items you lose all your Mana Per Second and might run into mana problems if your items are not sufficiently upgraded/well rolled.
- Ring of Starless Skies is good damage-wise but it hurts your CDR a lot. Use it if you have Mana problems or if your Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop didn't roll well. Eventually, you want to replace it.
Skills
With high CDR and extra extra skill points provided by Harlequin Crest you can make a small adjustment to the skill tree. Take 1 point out of Flame Shield, Frozen Orb, and Teleport each. Use these points to get Destructive Chain Lightning for easy and consistent Crackling Energy generation when Unstable Currents is up.
The Speedfarming setup often makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltides, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and low tier Nightmare Dungeons.
Gear
Flickerstep is a mandatory item for any serious Sorcerer speedfarming build. What makes this item so good is not the stats on it and not even the unique power but the implicit roll that makes your attacks reduce Evade cooldown by 2.5 seconds, which is 1 second more than what you can normally have on Boots. However, that 1 second makes all the difference. With enough CDR, Teleport Ranks, and Enchantment Master we can reach a point where we can Teleport after every attack! To get to that point of infinite teleports we need:
- Get a chest with Teleport Ranks
- Get normal CDR on every slot (don't use 2h staff)
- Harlequin Crest is very strong here as it gives both insane amount of CDR and +4 to Teleport.
Enchantment Slots
Replace Ice Blades with Teleport.
Paragon Boards
We simply remove our last board to pick up Enchantment Master and some extra Non-Physical Damage. You don't need to do this if you have fully upgraded Harlequin Crest and your Evade CDR is maxed.
In this setup, we aim to get absoulte highest damage this build can output. Currently the only place where so much damage is needed is high level Pit.
The main idea behind this build is that we stack a ton of CDR and Lucky Hit Chance to have a lot of Lightning Spears. These Lightning Spears will then launch so many Frozen Orbs that the cooldown will reset faster than we can cast the spell. That way, the amount of Lightning Spears we have out is only limited by our Attack Speed, so we stack as much of it as we can. With perfect gear this build can get up to 64 Conjurations!
Warning: This setup is extremely gear-demanding. If you can't reach 50+ Conjurations on single target it's best to stick with the regular Frozen Orb version.
Approximate requirements to make this work:
- Fractured Winterglass with 0.7s CDR and 85%+ chance to launch a Frozen Orb.
- 89.3% Attack Speed (including Unstable Currents and Elixir of Advantage II)
- 5.15s cooldown on Lightning Spear (requires Greater Affix on Harlequin Crest or going all in on masterworking CDR on both rings)
- 94% chance to double cast Lightning Spear
Gear
We make a number of changes to our build.
- We replace Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop with second Legendary Ring. This gives us Shredding Blades, a bunch of Attack Speed, and lots of Crit Damage. It also makes it much easier to reach 100% crit, so you don't need GAs on your Gloves and Rings.
- Tibault's Will is replaced with Orange Herald Pants that help us bridge the gap in the uptime of Unstable Currents. This also lets us use Vyr's Mastery for extra Damage Redction.
- Finally, we use Raiment of the Infinite instead of Tyrael's Might. This change is purely optional and you can ignore it if you prefer to be tanky, but it gives you over 40% damage and that doesn't grow on trees.
Skills
Ice Blades replace Frozen Orb. We don't use that skill a lot but when we just start summoning Lightning Spears, they have a bit of cooldown so we can alternate spears and blades for the first few casts. One Ice Blade produces around 40% more total CDR than a Frozen Orb.
Since we no longer use Mana, we remove Mana Shield and switch to Mystical Ice Armor. We also don't need a point in Elemental Attunement because we get it for free from Raiment of the Infinite. Finally, we can remove Static Discharge because with permanent Unstable Currents we get more than enough Crackling Energy from Destructive Chain Lightning.
This gives us 7 points which are used to max out Teleport and pick up Hoarfrost.
Paragon
Without a mana spender we cannot use Unleash so we remove one board to pick up some Attack Speed, Critical Strike Damage, Lucky Hit Chance, and Non-Physical Damage.
Gameplay
The basic skill usage is very straightforward:
- Spam Ice Armor and Unstable Currents off cooldown.
- Use Teleport when you want to move and Flame Shield when you don't.
- Start DPSing by alternating Lightning Spear and Ice Blades. After 2-3 Ice Blades casts, stop pressing it and only spam Lightning Spear.
This strategy will work just fine against Bosses, but when facing many enemies that don't die instantly, this build produces A LOT of lags. To combat that you can try to go slow and only fight a few monsters at a time. However, that's not how you get the highest possible Pit clear. For that you need a strategy with some chest hair: take the lag head on.
- At the start don't spam Lightning Spear. Use it once every 3-4 seconds to keep enemies around you Stunned, Burning, Vulnerable, and Electrocuted. Instead just cast Ice Blades to reduce the cooldown of your defensive skills.
- Locate an Elite pack and use Raiment of the Infinite to gather all surrounding mobs in one place. Your priority shouldn't be to get as many mobs as possible but to eliminate all the stragglers and get all the mobs neatly packed.
- Start spamming Lightning Spear to bring in the pain. When the game starts to lag, don't try to get out! Stay where you are and spam all your buttons (except Ice Blades). HARD. The lag will resolve eventually and there's two possible ways it can resolve:
- 1. All the monsters die and you stop producing damage calculations that overload the server.
- 2. You die and your Lightning Spears disappear thus no longer producing damage calculations that overload the server.
- Which outcome of the two you get mostly depends on your luck and determination. If your magic is strong and your heart pure, you will be the one standing atop a pile of corpses! (if not, there will be just one corpse in the "pile").
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 Maximum Life over Intelligence on your Gear.
- Replace Exploit with Territorial.
- Replace Tibault's Will with Everliving pants.
- Make sure that your Armor and Resistances are always capped, especially when going up in World Tiers.
- 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 is 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 the following:
- More Unstable Currents uptime (about 2x damage)
- More uptime on Barrier from Ice Armor or Protection activating Conceited and Storm Swell(1.62x damage buff)
- CDR directly increases your damage output by letting you cast more Lightning Spears.
- Crit Chance and Crit Damage are incredibly important because Splintering Energy only deals damage when you crit and it uses Crit Damage as a separate multiplier on top of it functioning normally as an additive bonus.
- Lightning Spear Ranks, on the other hand, are completely useless because all of our damage is coming from Splintering Energy and not from Lightning Spears itself.
- 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. Teleport makes you Unstoppable, gets you out of harm's way, and provides 30% Damage Reduction.
- Barrier. Mostly coming from Protection, it is our main defense. We spam a lot of Cooldown skills so this barrier is constantly refreshed.
- 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. It's extremely important to reach the Armor cap of 9,230 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 70% 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
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
Damage Scaling
- 95%+ Critical Strike Chance including all bonuses
- 15% from Lightning Spear
- Up to 40% Esu's Heirloom (use Evade to see your full Crit Chance in town)
- 60%+ Lightning Spear Cooldown Reduction (tooltip cooldown of 8s or less)
Defense and Utility
- Armor Capped 9,230
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 20,000+ Life
These stat priorities assume Fractured Winterglass version of the build. If you're still on the Spark version, refer to "Leveling to 100" tab of Gear Progression.
- Helm: Snowveiled
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Mana Per Second
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Lightning Spear Lucky Hit
- Chest: Concentration
- Armor
- Mana Per Second
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Lightning Spear Lucky Hit
- Gloves: Storm Swell
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Damage
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- ⚒️Lightning Spear Lucky Hit
- Pants: Tibault's Will (masterwork Max Life)
- Otherwise Look For: Everliving
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life ↑
- Armor
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Lightning Spear Lucky Hit
- Boots: Esu's Heirloom (masterwork Crit Damage)
- Otherwise Look For: Fortune
- "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown"
- Mana Per Second ↑
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence ↑
- ⚒️Evade Cooldown Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Lightning Spear Lucky Hit
- Amulet: Fractured Winterglass
- Conjuration CDR per Explosion ↑
- Ranks to Conjuration Mastery ↑
- Chance to double cast Frozen Orb
- Non-Physical Damage
- Ring 1: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (masterwork CDR)
- Otherwise Look For: Storm Swell
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Critical Strike Damage
- Intelligence
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- ⚒️Lightning Spear CDR ↑
- Ring 2: Frozen Orbit
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Critical Strike Damage
- Intelligence
- ⚒️Crit Damage
- ⚒️Lightning Spear CDR ↑
- Main Hand: Splintering Energy (Staff)
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Crit Damage
- ⚒️Chance to double cast Lightning Spear ↑
- ⚒️Crit Damage ↑
- Off Hand: none
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs:Elixir of Advantage II, Elixir of Fortitude II, Elixir of Precision II
- Incense: Reddamine Buzz, Chorus of War, Spirit Dance
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 no Lightning Spear Enchantment?
When can I comfortably switch to this build?
How can I tell which Fractured Winterglass is better?
Are Fists of Fate good?
Which build is stronger "Endgame" or "Pit Push"
Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop vs second Legendary Ring
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Splintering Energy
Summary
- The Lightning Spear Sorcerer is easy and effective build that excels at demolishing large groups of enemies.
- Just zoom through the map and let your Conjurations do all the work, you don't even have to aim!
- Stack Cooldown Reduction until you can stack no more.
- Then get Crit Chance until you reach 100%.
- Put the rest of your being into stacking Crit Damage
- Enjoy the fireworks!
Credits
Written by Northwar
Shoutout to Mekuna for helping optimize Pit Push version of the build