Meteor Sorcerer Endgame Build Guide
Welcome to the Meteor Sorcerer Endgame Guide! So, you woke up today and were like, "I want to be a Meteor." Completely relatable - we've all had those days. Regrettably, our current technology does not support this sort of wild and drastic (but admirable) lifestyle transformation, so perhaps vicariously existing as one through the incantations of the Meteor Sorcerer can help fill that void.
The goal of the Meteor Sorcerer is to rain fiery impending doom and destruction on anything in its path, and to look good doing it. While it is currently not the strongest skill the Sorcerer has at its disposal, Meteor is more than capable of doing all endgame content with its above average base skill damage and more importantly, its stylish visuals.
Meteor is very dependent on Starfall Coronet and Cooldown Reduction to perform somewhat well. It's not impossible to play without the helmet but the base skill is so bad that basically any other build you can think of would be better.
Requirements for this build
- Starfall Coronet with 4s or less Cooldown
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
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
- Shaken Soul - helps us keep up Vulnerable when Inferno is on cooldown.
- 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 Killing Wind and Dust Stone.
- Doom Orb is needed to activate Killing Wind.
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
- Dust Stone - a small damage buff.
- Killing Wind - extra Crit Chance and Movement Speed is always welcome.
- Moonlight Ward - provides up to 15% unconditional Damage Reduction.
Learn more details about the season theme in our full Season Guide.
Skills & Gameplay
- Meteor is our main damage spell. With Starfall Coronet it doesn't cost any Mana and deals very good damage, albeit with a delay.
- Inferno is another key skill that groups us enemies, makes them Vulnerable, boosts our damage by 50% and activates Armageddon buffing our meteorites even further.
- Teleport is our mobility spell that can also break us out of Crowd Control.
- 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 Cooldown Reduction and to quickly reactivate our Enlightenment.
Skill Rotation
- Spam all 6 buttons and Evade at all times. The only ones you need to aim are Meteor and Inferno (somewhere next to enemies) and Teleport (wherever you want to go).
- Using more skills results in more Ice Blades summoned by the Enchantment which means more CDR -> more damage. The cooldowns on everything are so short that there's no point trying and using these skills strategically.
Enchantment Slots
- Teleport Enchantment provides extra mobility. It's always nice to have, regardless of the build.
- Ice Blades Enchantment reduces the cooldowns of all our skills. 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.
Meteor 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
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Pyromaniac
- Destruction
- Exploit
To Level 46
- Destruction
- Tactician
- Elementalist
- Pyromaniac
- Exploit
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 Meteor Sorcerer focuses on the following combos:
Best in Slot
- Yul + Ohm - gives 15% damage with 100% uptime.
- Igni + Gar - needed to reach 100% Crit Chance.
Alternative choices
If you haven't unlocked the final setup or found the top runes, you can also benefit from these options:
- Cir, Cem, and Lith are fairly good Invocations that you can use as a substitute.
- Eom a very small (around 5%) increase in DPS via Cooldown Reduction.
- Thul - another source of extra damage.
- Ton - thematically fitting visuals.
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 Meteor 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
- 45%+ Cooldown Reduction
- 4.5s or less on Starfall Coronet
- 80% Critical Strike Chance
- 25+ Total Ranks in Meteor
- Armor Capped 1,000
- Resistance Capped 70%+
- 3,000+ Life
Item Progression Goals
Before you dive into the Endgame with the Meteor 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 Meteor 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.
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.
- If you don't have good Boots with a lot of Meteor ranks, use Rakanoth's Wake instead.
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
- The only Mythic Unique we use is Shroud of False Death, which simply gives us a lot of damage and some defense.
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 sometimes Enchantment Master board) we can reach a point where we can Teleport after every attack! To get to that point of infinite teleports we need:
- Chest Piece with extra Teleport Ranks
- Amulet with Evade CDR temper
- 1h + Focus with 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.
Gear & Skills
- We switch from Teleport to Familiar to get another 10% damage from its Invoked upgrade. This skill has very long cast animation so don't use it more than once per 8 seconds, unless all your other skills are on cooldown.
- Instead of Ohm we run Thul because it provides the same 15% damage bonus but also freezes enemies.
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?
Why no Meteor Enchantment?
Why no Elder Sigil and Elemental Dominance?
Why Permafrost?
Mechanics
Wizard's Meteor
Summary
The Meteor Sorcerer offers a familiar and fun playstyle that was popularized in previous Diablo games. Fans of this playstyle should be happy to know that it is still more than viable, and only has room to get better from here on. If other builds like Lightning Spear or Fireball aren't your cup of tea, give Meteor a shot - it may very well re-ignite your enjoyment of the class.
Credits
Written by Northwar