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 50x 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 Heir of Perdition 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.
Witchcraft Powers
Season 7 is the Season of Witchcraft. It features two separate borrowed power mechanics in the forms of Witchcraft Powers and Occult Gems. Both Seasonal mechanics are unlocked and improved by new NPCs found at the Tree of Whispers after collecting resources from Headhunt Zones, Seasonal areas similar to Helltide that appear across Sanctuary.
There are 25 Witchcraft Powers, 6 of which can be equipped at a time. Each Power belongs to one of four Schools (Eldritch, Growth & Decay, Psyche, and Lost), tags that promote synergies within themselves and with Occult Gems. Each School has a single Unique Witchcraft Power, only one of which can be equipped at a time. These Unique Powers max out and gain an additional effect at rank 5, while the other Powers max at rank 21 and gain their bonus effects at various levels. To unlock and improve Witchcraft Powers, defeat Headrotten or complete Whispers within the Headhunt Zones to collect Restless Rot. Lost Powers are an exception, requiring you to randomly encounter a Forgotten Altar in Dungeons to unlock them.
Best-in-Slot Witchcraft Powers
- Soul Harvest - This Power dramatically increases Core Stats based on monster density and is a reliably strong choice for any build
- Grow - gives a huge damage buff and 100% Crit Chance. Get this to Rank 11 as soon as possible!
- Aura of Siphoning - You must equip one of the three available Witchcraft Auras to enable Aura Specialization. Aura of Siphoning is preferred for its Healing effect.
- Aura Specialization - The AoE is nice but the Critical Damage Multiplier that comes with levels is even better.
- Hex of Flames is needed to activate Pointed Finger.
- Piranhado gives a very nice pull which lets your Lightning Spears instantly evaporate large groups of enemies.
Alternate Witchcraft Powers
- Hex of Shattering can replace Hex of Flames providing some Damage Redcution instead of damage.
Occult Gems
Rarely, Headrotten Bosses appear with a still-attached Fugitive Head stolen from the Tree of Whispers. Slay these enemies and return the Heads to Gelena to unlock and upgrade Occult Gems. These Gems are socketable in Jewelry and each provide +160 Armor and +8% Resistance to All Elements. More importantly, each Occult Gem grants a unique effect that synergizes with your equipped Witchcraft Powers to provide a variety of Offensive, Defensive, and Utility-based bonuses.
Best-in-Slot Occult Gems
- Pointed Finger - buffs summons, a must-have for a Conjuration based build.
- Friend of the Bog - Extra Core Stats and Maximum Life and we get 3 Growth & Decay powers without even trying.
- Toadling's Wish - provides more damage by buffing Grow.
Alternate Occult Gems
- Dust Stone - A small damage increase than can replace Friend of the Bog.
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 are our standard defenisve spells, with the former also providing some Mana regen and damage via Storm Swell Aspect.
- 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.
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
- Teleport Enchantment is necessary because we don't have a skill slot to use Teleport without it.
- Ice Blades Enchantment gives us more attack speed via Invoked Ice Blades. It also greatly reduces the cooldown of Ice Blades themselves, turning it into a spammable skill we can use to proc Enlightenment.
Learn more details and how to unlock this system in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots 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.
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*
- Exploit
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Unleash
- Elementalist
- Exploit
*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).
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 Lightning Spear Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Nagu + Ohm - free 15% damage with 100% uptime.
- Cir + 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 Nagu with minimal loss in efficiency.
- Gar - Crit Chance is extremely important. Use this Rune if it's below 95%.
- Thul provides the same 15% damage bonus as Ohm and also Freezes enemies. Can be used in Pit Push and other slow paced gameplay where the fact that it's a debuff rather than a buff doesn't matter.
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. 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
- Rank 11+ Grow
- 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 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.
- Once you get Grow to rank 11, Crit Chance becomes useless and you should focus all your efforts on Unstable Currents uptime. Use Zec, Orange Herald, Flickerstep, or whatever else you find but cast that skill every 10s like a clockwork.
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.
- With these Boots our Resistances go through the roof so we can completely ignore them in skill tree and paragon.
- 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
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:
- Harlequin Crest with GA CDR.
- Wand + Focus with GA CDR instead of a staff
- If you don't have these items with good enough rolls you can also use an Amulet with CDR and/or Evade CDR temper.
- As a last resort, you can switch one of your paragon board to Enchantment Master.
With very good gear it's possible to reach perma-Evade even without Flickerstep so you get to keep your regular boots.
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
- 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 Gloves.
- 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 use a Roaring Ice Blades to get more CDR instead of Attack Speed. This lets us use Mystical Ice Armor and also switch to Concussive Strikes from Orange Herald.
- Finally, we switch Ice Blades Enchant to Lightning Spear in order to make use of all that Crackling Energy produced by Wizard's Ball Lightning.
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?
What can I do to improve my Mana generation?
Why aren't you using Fractured Winterglass?
Why Permafrost?
Mechanics
Unstable Currents
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