Lightning Spear Sorcerer Endgame Build Guide
The Lightning Spear Sorcerer is a build that becomes possible thanks to the reworked in Season 5 Aspect Splintering Energy. This Aspect makes Lightning Spear hit another time and directly increases the damage of this second hit by twice your Critical Strike Damage. In the late game, this amounts to approximately a 70x boost! With an aspect like this, it should come as no surprise that a previously useless spell becomes a real powerhouse.
This build uses Unstable Currents to spawn a lot of Lightning Spears. You need to have this buff active almost all the time and for that you need a lot of Cooldown Reduction. 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 have Greater Affixes and are fully masterworked. With uniques such as Rakanoth's Wake and Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop CDR becomes much easier to manage, while Hatred's Embrace's Haste and Ring of Starless Skies let you effortlessly reach 100% Crit Chance.
Requirements for this build
- Unstable Currents cooldown of 25s or less.
This build guide assumes you have a Level 60 Character and unlocked Torment 1. To get there, level up with one of our Sorerer 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 - We use this primarily for the bonus Cooldown Reduction which is an extremely important stat for this build.
Modifiers
- Beastmaster's Training - A no-brainer for any Summon build, this Power serves as a direct multiplier of up to 150%!
- Sinerat's Flames provides an unconditional 25%[x] damage boost, which grows even further when Enlightenment is active.
- Hatred's Embrace's Haste gives us tons of Critical Strike Chance - another extremely important stat for this build.
Alternate Boss Powers
- Beast in the Ice's Sleet - a good source of extra damage and a way to activate Hoarfrost. Used in pit push setup where we don't care about CDR as much.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Lightning Spear is our main source of damage. While most of them come from Unstable Currents, having 2 more is very nice and boosts our overall DPS by almost 30%.
- Charged Bolts is our main spell, it doesn't do any noticeable damage but it has short cast animation and can proc Unstable Currents, giving us plenty of chances to summon Lightning Spears.
- Unstable Currents is very important buff that should be active at all times. It gives us extra Attack Speed and summons most of our Lightning Spears.
- Ice Armor and Flame Shield (which we get from Harlequin Crest in the Mythic variant) are our standard defenisve spells, with the former also providing some Mana regen.
- Finally, we use Ice Blades to get extra Attack Speed, Primordial Binding stacks and to quickly reactivate our Enlightenment.
- Teleport is our mobility spell that can also break us out of Crowd Control. On top of that it's an extremely fast Shock spell so it is very good for proccing Unstable Currents. Unfortunately we don't have a slot for it on the skill bar so we only use it via the Enchantment.
- We put points into Invoked Familiar to benefit from the damage bonus when our Unstable Currents summons it.
- In starter versions of the build we use Spark because it costs no Mana and gives Crit Chance both of which are very useful in the early game.
Skill Rotation
- Hold down Charged Bolts (or Spark) and spam Evade Teleport to trigger Unstable Currents as much as possible.
- Keep Ice Armor and Unstable Currents active at all times.
- Use Lightning Spear off cooldown.
- Use Ice Blades every 2-3 seconds when your Enlightenment is up. Use them as often as possible when it's down.
- Use Flame Shield once at the start of the run to get full stacks of Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop. After that, keep it for emergencies.
Enchantment Slots
- Teleport Enchantment is necessary because we don't have a skill slot to use Teleport without it.
- Familiar Enchantment counts as all 3 elements for Enchantment Master and gives us tons of damage when Enlightenment is active.
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.
Lightning Spear 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
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Unleash*
- Flamefeeder
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Unleash
- Elementalist
- Flamefeeder
*If you're still on Spark version of the build by the time you reach 4th board, use Eliminator instead of Unleash (don't level it past 15).
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 Lightning Spear Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Igni + Thul - gives 15% damage and activates Hoarfrost.
- Nagu + Vex - consistently provides +3 ranks to all skills which gives us more than 20% damage, since Lightning Spear ranks are very hard to get.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Yul, Lith and Tam - very strong Ritual Runes. Can replace Igni with minimal loss in efficiency.
- Gar - Crit Chance is extremely important. Use this Rune if it's below 90%.
- Cir can be a cheap repalcement for Nagu. While it generates less offering, it is almost always enough to keep your Vex fully stacked.
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 passively gives us a maphack which is so nice to play with it's hard to use any other merc after trying it once. On top of that he provides some extra damage through Opening Fire.
Reinforcement: Raheir
We choose Bastion with Injured trigger for its massive damage reduction which can save our life in sticky situations.
Learn more about Mercenaries and how they work in our dedicated Mercenaries Overview.
Stat Priorities & Item Progression
To enable the Lightning Spear Sorcerer 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
- Sub 25 sec Unstable Currents Cooldown
- 60%+ Attack Speed
- 8+ Total Ranks in Primordial Binding
- 2,500%+ Critical Strike Damage
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 6,000+ Life
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Lightning Spear 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 Lightning Spear 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.
- Starter version of the build uses Spark as our main skill. This way we don't have to worry about Mana generation and we also get some free Crit Chance, as well as acess to Hectic to help with Cooldowns.
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.
- In this version of the build we don't change much compared to the started version. We get Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop, Rakanoth's Wake, and Godslayer Crown but they don't change the build in a noticeable way.
- When we get enough Mana Regeneration we switch from Spark to Charged Bolts. This skill has much better Lucky Hit Chance, gives us access to Mana Shield and has a higher chance to summon Lightning Spear from Unstable Currents because it cannot duplicate the spell used to trigger it.
- At this stage of the game getting 100% uptime on Unstable Currents is more important than anything else so we use Zec Rune instead of Thul to help with that.
- Sidhe Bindings give a lot of Primordial Binding Ranks when upgraded. As a result, this passive becomes a lot less desirable on the Amulet (ideally we have another passive there).
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
- Harlequin Crest gives us tons of CDR to the point that we can reach the 75% cap. If that happens you can replace Rakanoth's Wake with regular boots to get Snowveiled and a bit more Intelligence.
- Shroud of False Death provdies excellent all around defensive and offensive boost.
- Ring of Starless Skies gives even more damage and resource cost reduction making sure that we never ever run out of Mana.
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
Speedfarming setup is barely different from the normal one. You just need to make sure that your CDR is capped and that both your Boots and Amulet have Evade CDR tempers. That, combined with Enchantment Master should be enough to drop your Evade cooldown below 1.5s meaning any attack will instantly reset it. If you don't quite have enough CDR on your gear, you can use Flickerstep for its 2.5s Evade CDR.
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. This variant sacrifices a lot of convenience and tankiness to get maximum damage output.
Gear & Skills
- We replace Charged Bolts with Ball Lightning because it casts even faster. If you struggle with Mana, get a Lucky Hit Chance to Restore Resource roll on your Weapon.
- Instead of Shroud of False Death we use Raiment of the Infinite. It provides similar damage bonus and also lets us group enemies together which is extremely important when they don't die instantly. Since spamming Evade Teleport is already optimal for our Lightning Spear generation, this item gives us unparalleled ability to keep all enemies in the same spot.
- We switch to Roaring Lightning Spear upgrade and pickup Mystical Flame Shield.
- We change our Main Boss Power to Beast in the Ice's Sleet and replace Thul with Ahu Qax combo for extra damage.
- We put 3 points into Invigorating Conduit to manage the increased Mana consumption.
- Finally, we replace Ice Armor with Greater Fireball to execute Elites and to reactivate Enlightenment faster. Without Ice Armor we can no longer use Snowveiled so we get Mind's Awakening in its placce to keep 100% Barrier.
In order to maximize the damge of Lightning Spear we need to do some snapshots. At the very start of the run, before up cast any Lightning Spear or Unstable Currents, use Ball Lightning to get full stacks of Roaring Lightning Spear. Then go find and enemy, press Flame Shield and go to town with your Lightning Spears and all other spells. From this point as long as you maintain at least 1 active Lightning Spear, all your Splintering Energy procs will benefit from full Roaring Lightning Spear buff as well as Mystical Flame Shield's Crit Damage buff (which science cannot explain).
You can push this build even further if you wish, but it becomes very tedious and difficult to play.
- Fist change is rather mild: replace your pants with Tibault's Will. You will lose a bit of tankiness and will generate way less Barrier but your overall damage will go up by 8-10%.
- Second is much more radical change: using Heir of Perdition. This gives you 1.6[x] damage multiplier and also lets you run Harbinger of Hatred's Volley instead of Crit Chance power, but you lose a lot of Life, Armor, and CDR. You can somewhat compensate it with Unstable Currents CDR temper on the Amulet, Armor temper on Pants, and by switching to Roaring Ice Blades. But even with all that, surviving will be quite a challenge.
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.
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.
- Use defensive consumables.
- Roll Maximum Life instead of offensive stats on as many pieces as possible.
- Kite enemies when they become Unstoppable.
This build has acess to 3 major Mana sources: Primordial Binding, Lucky Hit Chance to Restore, and Invigorating Conduit. With good enough stats only the passive should be enough but if it isn't you can always add one of the other two.
Also you can replace one of your Runewords with Poc Lum and use Elixir of Resourcefulness II.
The main benefit of Fractured Winterglass is it's ability to summon lots of Lightning Spears. However with the Season 6 nerfs the spears are capped to 12 so Unstable Currents version of the build is only behind by 1-2 spears, while having 2.5 extra Aspects and all the stats + tempers on the Amulet.
Fractured Winterglass has a place in a starter version of the build because it somewhat makes the build function even with 0 useful stats on your other items (mostly because you're just playing Frozen Orb Sorcerer at that point). However it requires different tempers and Paragon board, so build progression becomes very awkward. With Zec, Hectic, and Orange Herald getting good uptime on Unstable Currents is not that difficult even early on.
Mechanics
- Skills cast by this spell benefit from ranks and upgrades invested into them.
- Cannot cast the same spell that was used to trigger it.
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 varinat of the build