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Sorcerer Class Overview

Last Updated: January 5th 2024

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The Sorcerer class is a master of magic and annihilates enemies. They use powerful spells imbued with raw elemental power to take command of the battlefield to crush anything that challenge them. This overview covers their Strengths & Weaknesses, Skills, Passives, Legendaries, and much more. Let's teleport in and learn why the Sorcerer holds the ultimate elemental magic!

Class Identity

The Sorcerer has ultimate control over the raw elemental magics to tear apart enemies. They let loose powerful torrents of destructive energy to snare and control the battle at any point. Strong defensive skills make them a deceptively hard target to kill. Further knowledge with Enchantment Slots bring a deeper diversity to their loadout of skills to leave nothing but destruction in their wake. The Sorcerer is fun to play with well-developed skills based around Cold, Lightning, and Fire. They also have amazing depth with seemingly endless skill interactions. Their skills are powered by Mana, a resource generated while in battle.

Female and Male Sorcerer

Strengths

  • Screen Wide Damage. The Sorcerer's ability to dish out damage through AoE (Area of Effect) skills in unmatched with Core & Mastery Skills.
  • Crowd Control For Days. The CC capability of the Sorcerer to lock down enemies makes for a destructive combo with Legendary Aspects that grant additional damage.
  • Great Movement. Between Evade, Teleport, and Legendary Aspects, the Sorcerer is a true master when it comes to getting out of danger.
  • Powerful Defensive Skills. While not designed to be as durable as the Barbarian, skills like Ice Armor, Flame Shield and Teleport to name a few, can make the Sorcerer a deceptively hard target to kill.
  • Can DPS on the Move. With skills like Hydra, Blizzard and Firewall, the Sorcerer can lead enemies to their death while gathering more monsters at the same time for efficient farming.

Weaknesses

  • Mana Dependent. Mana is a precious resource and needs to be used wisely for maximum efficiency during combat.
  • Close Combat. While Sorcerer can withstand melee attacks with Defensive Skills for a short duration, prolonged exposure is not recommended as the class is simply not built for it.
  • Crowd Control Dependent Buffs. Picking too many CC effects and damage multipliers can leave you with a hard time on CC immune Champions and Bosses.
  • Few Party Abilities. There are only a few options the Sorcerer has to buff the party.

Equipment

The Sorcerer can use Staves, a two-handed weapon which gives a different implicit modifier and stats compared to using the one-handed Dagger or Wand plus a Focus. The trade-off between these depends how many Legendary Aspects required for your build. Using a Staff may give the implicit you require, but you lose out on an additional Legendary Aspect from the Focus.

Sorcerer Item Slots:

Armor

Helm
Chest Armor
Gloves
Pants
Boots

Jewelry

Amulet
Ring (x2)

Weapons

Two-Handed Weapon
- OR -
One-Handed Weapon + Focus

Example gear for the Blizzard Sorcerer

Check out our Legendary Aspects and Codex of Power Overview or our Uniques Overview to learn more about which items the Sorcerer has access to.

Skills & Passives

Skill points are unlocked by level-ups and the Renown system. As you spend more points, you unlock more and more categories of skills. Each active skill can be leveled up to 5 times or more with items, increasing their power (usually +10% of the base value) or reducing their cooldown with each additional rank. After unlocking a skill, you can enhance it with another point and then choose one out of two upgrades to specialize it further.

In addition, there are passives found all over the tree, attached as optional choices to certain skill clusters. They grant small bonuses to damage, defense or utility under certain conditions and help to round out your build by shifting it further in the direction you want to take. All passives have 3 ranks and usually scale linearly.

Check out our Skill Tree Overview to learn more details.

Basic Skills

The Sorcerer's Basic Skills are weak and are mostly used to apply debuffs like Vulnerable with Frost Bolt or to reset Cooldowns with Glinting Arc Lash. They can be useful to finish off small enemies or to add extra damage against an Elite or Boss while you prepare one of your stronger Mana-spending attacks.

Frost Bolt

Enhanced Frost Bolt

Flickering Frost Bolt

Glinting Frost Bolt

Notes:

  • Animation length at 1.0 APS: 40 frames
  • Glinting restores 4 Mana for each enemy hit.
  • Chill applied by Enchantment is multiplied by the Lucky Hit Chance of triggering skill.

Core Skills

These are some of the most iconic Sorcerer skills used in your build, and can count on always having one on your action bar. They hunger for all your resources, so be careful not to get Mana starved. On the upside, they hit more targets than Basic Skills. In addition, Core Skills can be amplified by multiple Legendary effects.

Ice Shards

Enhanced Ice Shards

Destructive Ice Shards

Greater Ice Shards

Notes:

  • Animation length at 1.0 APS: 41 frames
  • Lucky Hit Chance is 16% for each individual shard.
  • Greater provides bonus damage and 100% chance to ricochet but doesn't activate the Enchantment effect.
  • Enchantment fires a single shard at each Frozen enemy once every 36 frames regardless of your Attack Speed.

Defensive Skills

These skills significantly boost the Sorcerer's defensive capabilities by either giving you a shield, by Crowd Controlling enemies, or by letting you get out of harm's way.

Ice Armor

Enhanced Ice Armor

Mystical Ice Armor

Shimmering Ice Armor

Notes:

  • This skill can be used while performing other actions.
  • Total Barrier cannot exceed your Base Life.

Conjuration Skills

This cluster contains Sorcerer's summoning skills. While these summons are not full-fledged minions because of their short durations and/or inability to move, they are still very useful because they can deal extra damage while you are busy casting your other skills.

Ice Blades

Enhanced Ice Blades

Invoked Ice Blades

Summoned Ice Blades

Notes:

  • Attacks 7 or 8 times (depending on attack animation used) over base 6 seconds duration regardless of your Attack Speed.
  • Lucky Hit Chance is approximately 5% per attack.
  • Attack Speed bonus from Invoked only counts for the blades beyond the first
  • Enchantment can not summon more than 3 Ice Blades at a time.

Mastery Skills

These skills allow the Sorcerer to master the Elements, dealing massive damage with devastating AoE attacks.

Blizzard

Enhanced Blizzard

Mage's Blizzard

Wizard's Blizzard

Notes:

  • Animation length at 1.0 APS: 49 frames
  • Deals damage 2 times per second
  • Lucky Hit Chance is approximately 5% per tick
  • Each tick applies 9% Chill

Ultimate Skills

Ultimates are high-impact abilities with a long cooldown and need to be built around to be effective, so not every build runs with one of them. Only one can be chosen and only have a single rank with a two-step linear upgrade path that offers no extra choices.

Deep Freeze

Prime Deep Freeze

Supreme Deep Freeze

Notes:

Key Passives

These passives are located at the very bottom of the Skill Tree. They are extremely powerful and define the overall playstyle of your build. Similar to Ultimate Skills, only one of them can be chosen!

Avalanche

Unique Class Mechanic - Enchantment Slots

Enchantment Slots are Sorcerer's unique class mechanic. They allow you to take skills not on your action bar and use them for passive effects to bolster and deepen your build.

Check out our Enchantment Slots post for more details on this system.

Attributes

The four core attributes provide the following to the Sorcerer:

  • Strength: Armor (1 each)
  • Intelligence: All Resistances (5% per 100), Skill Damage (10% per 100)
  • Willpower: Resource Generation (3% per 100), Healing Received (10% per 100), Overpower Damage (25% per 100)
  • Dexterity: Critical Strike Chance (2% per 100), Dodge Chance (1% per 100)

Intelligence is considered the main attribute as it multiplies all your damage done. Dexterity and Willpower are also useful for their offensive and defensive bonuses, while Strength does next to nothing. Some items can roll bonuses to attributes and later on Paragon boards allow stacking the right stats for your character. In addition, you may find hidden Altars of Lilith in the open world that unlock a permanent bonus for all of your characters.

Check out our Stat Overview to learn more.

Video Guide

Sorcerer Summary

  • The Sorcerer is powerful, able to Crowd Control like no other, and destroy entire screens worth of monsters.
  • A Sorcerer deals Cold, Lightning, and Fire damage with ranged attacks.
  • Mana in their primary resource. It is easy to deplete, so strategic use of skills to make sure you get the most magical bang for your resource use is critical.
  • Pay attention to the implicit, Stats, and Legendary Aspects you need when deciding if you should use a Two-Handed Weapon or a One-Handed Weapon + Focus.
  • Enchantment Slots are Sorcerer's unique class mechanic. It gives every skill a unique passive effect to further deepen your build.
  • The Sorcerer is fun to play and embodies the raw elemental magic you come to expect from the class.

Credits

Written by Dredscythe and Northwar
Reviewed by Chewingnom and Echohack

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