Fireball Sorcerer Guide
Last Updated:July 13, 2024|Changelog
The Fireball Sorcerer can unleash a deadly barrage of enemy-seeking Fire Spells to incinerate your enemies! The cascade of Fireballs travels through the battlefield looking for their next target while the Meteors empower them and cause havoc. This Fireball seeks, pierces and destroys its foes... Only their ashes remain.
The Sorcerer stays away from threats while in combat but has plenty of tools to protect himself in case enemies get too close. Flame Ward is an incredible Defensive Skill with tons of Damage Reduction that can save him even from the most dangerous attacks. Toggle Arcane Ascendance whenever you need extra firepower. The build also has decent mobility thanks to Teleport: a Movement Skill that grants great defensive buffs on use.
This setup doesn't require any Unique to function. However Items like Wrongwarp, Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, Red Ring of Atlaria, Scales of Eterra, Omnis and Prismatic Gaze have the potential to enhance the build's power tremendously. Additionally, Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living are required to play the Low Life Ward version.
Overall the Fireball Sorcerer is a great build suited for all the content in the game, even in Hardcore. If you are looking for a super fun caster with a kite based playstyle, this build is perfect for you!
This article assumes you have a Level 70 Character.
Reach Level 70 with our Sorcerer Leveling Guide.
If you are looking for a different playstyle, check all our Build Guides!
Skills
Fireball
Fireball is your main Damage Skill. The combination between Embers, Seeker's Ash and Piercing Heat completely transforms how this Spell behaves. It has the Fire Resistance Shred Ailment built in thanks to the Flammability Node. The Flame Burst is huge for DPS. Invest extra points in Mana Sphere or Immolated Core.
- Only cast Meteor once after Teleport's to sustain Mana and to refresh Craterborn and Wrongwarp buffs.
- Adapt your Fireball's Skill Tree based on your gear. Exalted Level of Fireball opens up a top of options, but you might not have it early on. The points needed for Piercing Heat to reach the desired 100% pierce chance depends on how high the tier of your Fireball Pierce Chance is on your Helmet.
Passives
Passives provide powerful effects that dictate the playstyle of a Class and its Masteries. Remember that you can allocate Passives on the first half of all Masteries regardless of the one you chose.
- Take all the Intelligence, Cast Speed, Spell Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Multiplier Nodes.
- Lavamancer provides a bit of Leech and is crucial before switching to Low Life.
- Calculated Destruction is crucial to raise your Spell Critical Strike Chance.
- Recollection is amazing for most Sorcerers.
- The Spark Novas from Distant Spark are great for applying Ailments, but not mandatory.
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Passive Points.
Gameplay
This Sorcerer wants to position itself far away from the enemies while casting deadly Spells. Make sure you are familiar with enemy mechanics to know when to use your Support Skills to stay alive. Pay attention to the telegraphed attacks of your enemies and stay out of their range.
Skill Usage/Rotation
- Buff yourself by casting Teleport.
- Cast Meteor only once after each Teleport's to sustain Mana, refresh buffs and trigger Wrongwarp.
- Kite while spamming Fireball at your enemies.
- Use Flame Ward defensively before you take Damage.
- Refresh your Teleport defensive buffs by casting it before they expire.
- Toggle Arcane Ascendance whenever you need extra firepower.
Mapping
- This Fireball setup has 100% pierce chance. Line up enemy packs!
- Use Teleport to leave dangerous enemies behind and traverse terrain gaps.
Bossing
- Take advantage of all your defensive buffs and keep them active.
- Flame Ward can save you from incoming Damage. Time it against dangerous telegraphed Boss attacks.
- Always refresh your buffs before they expire.
- Teleport is a blink and can be used to go over incoming attacks or terrain.
- You can use Flame Ward preventively before you engage dangerous enemies.
- Hold one charge of Flame Ward for emergency situations.
Learn more about how to maximize your gameplay in the Build Scaling section of this guide.
Gear
Gearing in Last Epoch revolves around finding Items and then using the powerful Crafting System to enhance them. As long as an Item has Forging Potential left, players can upgrade or modify their Affixes up to Tier 5. However, the powerful Exalted Tier Affixes are drop only and can't be modified by players.
Using the correct Item Bases allows you to make use of their amazing Implicits, this is fundamental for gearing efficiently. Combine Implicits, Passives, Idols and Blessings to cap your Resistances and stack other defensive layers into your gear as efficiently as possible. Plan ahead for your next upgrades and consider the final Blessings of your build while gearing. Finish up by farming Uniques with Legendary Potential and Sealing Affixes into Exalted Items to unleash all of your build's power!
Here are the Stat Goals for this build:
- Capped Resistances
- Capped Less Damage Taken From Crits
- 40%+ Armour
- 5000 - 10000+ Ward
- 100 - 200%+ Cast Speed
- 100 -150%+ Movement Speed
- 400% - 800%+ Increased Damage
- 300%+ Spell Critical Strike Multiplier
Gear Progression
Milestone 1
Aim for good Item Bases with four valuable T5 Affixes. The Defensive rolls on T5 Suffixes are very important at this stage as they can easily cap all your Resistances when combined with Item Implicits, Idols, Blessings or Passives.
Milestone 2
Make sure your Critical Strike Avoidance or Less Damage Taken From Crits is capped. Remember that Woven Flesh is always an option early on. It can be farmed by killing the Abomination in the Fall of the Outcast Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 3
Fit as much Health into your gear as possible. Hybrid Health and Health are extremely valuable, but can be hard to find early on. Use regular flat Health until you find them.
Milestone 4
Get T5 Fireball Pierce Chance on your Helmet to cap your Fireball's pierce chance with 2 Points into Piercing Heat.
Milestone 5
Farm Throne of Ambition in The Stolen Lance Empowered Monolith Timeline. It's a rare drop from God Hunter Argentus so it might take a few tries to drop. This Idol is great for Bossing but not required while mapping.
Milestone 6
While you look for this basic set of gear, start farming your Empowered Blessings and look for any Idols that can help you cap all your Resistances momentarily or increase your Damage output. Make sure you have at least 300 Mana if you find Idols with Increased Fire Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana) to increase your DPS.
Milestone 1
Upgrade your T20 setup with Exalted Items, high value Sealed Affixes or ideally both. Obtain the Affixes included in the Planner, but prioritize the indicated Item Bases for their Implicits. Make sure to Seal highly efficient low tier Affixes.
Milestone 2
When all of your core Defenses are covered, start working on your Damage. Chance To Shred Armour on Hit, Critical Strike Multiplier, Intelligence and Cast Speed are very important to scale the DPS of the build.
Milestone 3
Get Chance to Apply Frailty on Hit to decrease the Damage enemies deal to you. This Ailment is really important and should always be kept in mind. Make sure you have at least 300 Mana for your Idols.
Milestone 4
Get Wrongwarp, Strands of Souls and Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros with Legendary Potential. Remember, the Nemesis encounters in Echoes can give your regular Uniques Legendary Potential.
Milestone 5
Finish up your Empowered Blessings keep a decent Health pool, capped Resistances and Less Damage Taken From Crits.
Milestone 1
Upgrade you set up with T7 Exalted items, high value Sealed Affixes or ideally both. Obtain the Affixes included in the Planner and keep prioritizing the indicated Item Bases for their Implicits.
Milestone 2
Get Exsanguinous to transition into the Low Life setup: which greatly increases the defenses of the build thanks to the Ward generation it provides. Farm Exsanguinous by completing Unique Chest Reward Echoes in the Blood, Frost and Death Monolith Timeline.
Milestone 3
Complete you Low Life setup with Last Steps of the Living. Farm it in the Empowered Blood, Frost and Death Monolith Timeline by slaying Formosus the Undying.
Milestone 4
Wrongwarp, Strands of Souls and Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros with the max Legendary Potential you can find.
Milestone 5
Get Fireball Pierce Chance on Prismatic Gaze to cap your Fireball's pierce chance with 2 Points into Piercing Heat and the Flat Critical Strike Chance it provides.
Milestone 6
If you manage to get two Red Rings of Atlaria you must prioratize itemizing Intelligence to reach the 180 Attribute requirement. This amazing Item provides an amazing layer of tankiness for the build, crucial for pushing Corruption. Combine it with Omnis to easily cap your Resistances.
Milestone 7
Get a Legendary Scales of Eterra with Cold and Lightning Infusions. That way you can benefit from the amazing stats on this Unique without any downside to your Fire DPS.
Milestone 5
Get the rest of your Idols with Increased Fire Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana). These Idols are great for increasing your DPS. Get them as well rolled as possible and make sure you have at least 300 Mana to double the effect of the Suffix.
Milestone 1
Keep upgrading your gear with Exalted Items with high tier Sealed Affixes. Get every stat in the right place and on the correct Item Base. Min/Maxing your gear in Last Epoch can be pushed to the extreme as Items with multiple Exalted Affixes and Legendary Potential are technically possible.
Milestone 2
Get as close to perfect rolls for all your Empowered Blessings and find all your desired Idols with the best in slot Prefixes and Suffixes.
Milestone 3
Continue farming Wrongwarp, Strands of Souls, Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, Prismatic Gaze, Red Ring of Atlaria, Omnis Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living with high Legendary Potential. Remember that some of these Items are extremely hard to get with multiple Legendary Potential. Good luck with the chase!
Milestone 4
With enough Legendary Potential, Hand of Judgement can be used for the amaxing Fire Penetration.
Milestone 5
Keep looking for Nemesis encounters in Echoes to add Legendary Potential or Affixes to your rarest and hardest to get Uniques with the Egg of the Forgotten.
Milestone 6
Feel free to experiment with any crazy Unique, Legendary or Experimental Items that you might craft, trade or find! The possibilities are endless, so be open to explore new options. Good luck with the chase!
Learn the basics for crafting gear with our Beginner Crafting Guide.
Check our Unique Item & Set Farming Guide and learn how to get them!
Want to know more about Legendary Items? Check our Legendary Guide!
Blessings
Completing a Timeline in the Monolith of Fate lets you choose one of several randomized Blessings from its unique pool. Their benefits are permanent and persist even outside of the Monolith of Fate.
Empowered Blessings are a fundamental part of all builds, so getting the correct ones for each is key.
The sooner you reach Empowered Monolith, the faster you can start farming your desired Blessings!
Normal Blessings are not important as they are eventually replaced by Empowered Blessings. However they can still be a great source of Resistances, Critical Strike Avoidance or Life Leech for your build early on.
Pick up these Normal Blessings on your way to Empowered:
- Echo of Solarum
- Hunger of the Void
- Survival of Might
- Persistance of Will
- Protection of Heorot
- Resolve of Grael
- Heart of the Caldera
- Embers of Immortality
Note: Don't target farm Normal Blessings. Get to Empowered Monolith as fast as you can.
Reaching Empowered Monolith unlocks all the level 100 Timelines and the ability to farm Empowered Blessings. Unlike Normal Blessings, these need to be farmed until you get the desired ones for your build. It is extremely important to get this set up as fast as possible to free up affix slots on your gear. Remember, the more value you get from your Blessings, the easier it is to craft efficient gear!
These are the core Combat Empowered Blessings for this build:
- Get Grand Resolve of Humanity for the Resistances it provides.
- Farm Grand Body of Obsidian and Grand Bulwark of the Tundra for a huge survivability boost.
- Get Grand Emptiness of Ash for even more Damage.
- Finally, take Grand Resonance of the Sea for some Ward Generation if you don't need the Resistances from Grand Bastion of Divinity.
These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.
These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:
- Grand Mark of Agony is very valuable to help you find Adorned Arcane Idol with Ward Retention andIncreased Fire Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana). Once you find all your Idols, you can switch to the Grand Winds of Fortune and focus on Uniques instead.
- Grand Cruelty of Formosus and Grand Reach of Flame help you find more Exalted Wands and Catalysts.
- Lastly take Grand Vision of the Aurora to increase your chances for finding an Orian's Eye.
Learn how to farm Blessings fast with our Advanced Monolith Strategies.
Idols
Idols grant your character bonuses when equipped in the dedicated Idol Container. Unlock all the slots of your Idol Container by completing the Campaign and some of its Side Quests. Remember that some Idols are Class specific and you won't be able to equip them with other non-compatible Classes.
These are the Idols recommended for this build:
- Find 3 Adorned Arcane Idol with Ward Retention and Increased Fire Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana) Idols. These Idols are great for increasing your DPS. Get them as well rolled as possible and make sure you have at least 300 Mana to double the effect of the Suffix.
- Get a Throne of Ambition. You can farm it in The Stolen Lance Empowered Monolith Timeline. It's a rare drop from God Hunter Argentus.
- Finish up the setup with Resistance related Idols. You might also need extra Mana out of your Idols early on, so keep an eye for anything useful.
- Health
- %Health
- Vitality
- Armour
- Mana And Armor
- Mana
- Elemental Resistance
- Lightning Resistance
- Fire Resistance
- Increased Stun Chance
- Void Resistance
- Physical Resistance
- Poison Resistance
- Mana And Armor
- Mana
- Chance To Gain Lightning Aegis When Hit
- Ward Gained When Damage Leaves You At Low Health (5 Second Cooldown)
Make sure to complete the Campaign to get all your Idol Slots.
Learn how to be efficient with Idols with our Advanced Idols Setups Guide.
Build Scaling
This build uses Meteor to enhance Fireball's Damage. Both abilities are Fire Spells that scale with the same stats to deal big Crits to your enemies. This Sorcerer also has great survivability thanks to its multiple defensive layers and the Unique Items it can take advantage of.
- Adaptive Spell Damage: You want to get as much Flat Damage as possible. Nodes like Spell Slinger grant raw Adaptive Spell Damage and are extremely valuable for DPS. Cinder Song is not considered for this setup due to its low Flat Spell Damage values.
- Cast Speed: The faster you attack the more Spells you cast and Ailments you apply. This is especially important to scale Fireball since its Skill Tree doesn't have good Damage Multipliers.
- Idols: Increased Fire Damage (Doubled If You Have Over 300 Max Mana) is great for increasing your DPS. Get it as well rolled as possible and make sure you have at least 300 Mana to double the effect of the Suffix. They are a priority when it comes to scaling this build and its main source of Increased Damage. Throne of Ambition provides an insane DPS boost while fighting Bosses.
- Intelligence: Meteor and Fireball gain 4% Damage per point or Intelligence. It also provides %Spell Critical Chance thanks to Calculated Destruction. Additionally it grants 4% Ward Retention per point, which adds a nice defensive layer for the build.
- Spell Critical Strike Chance: It's easy to cap with a good Implicit on your Crystal Skull plus some Intelligence and %Spell Critical Strike Chance on your gear.
- Critical Strike Multiplier: Increases the Damage your Crits deal. Arcane Obliteration 50% on its own. Build as much as you can on your gear.
- Flammability: Fireball has built in Fire Resistance Shred thanks to this Node. Since the build attacks so fast and has many hits, it is extremely easy to apply the maximum 10 stacks to your targets, increasing the Fire Damage enemies take by 50% (20% for Bosses).
- Chance To Shred Armour on Hit: Each stack of this Ailment reduces enemy Armour by 100 for 4 seconds and stacks infinitely. Enemies have 0 Armour by default and it can go into the negatives. At -1000 Armour a target takes 16.5% increased Fire Damage, while at -4000 Armour it takes 40%. With the amount of hits the build has, the stacks ramp up quickly.
- Flame Ward: The Damage Reduction is insane. While this Skill is active you are almost immortal! Get all the charges you can (3 max) and lower its CD as much as possible.
- Stun Immunity: Provided by the Rock Phase Node from Teleport. The buff is sustainable thanks to Tunnel Finder and Time Dilation.
- Armour Mitigation: This build can get decent Armour. Just with the implicit Armour from your gear, Grand Body of Obsidian Blessing and Flat Armour from Teleport you reach 40%+ Mitigation. Thanks to Throne of Ambition this Mitigation increases to 60%+ while Bossing. This is huge on top of all the other defensive layers the build has.
- Ward: A shield above your Health that is generated by certain effects, rapidly decays over time and is protected by Armour Mitigation. The build can reach more than 10k Ward with investment.
- Ward Retention: Reduces the rate of Ward decay.
- Intelligence: Each point of Intelligence provides 4% Ward Retention.
- Chill and Slow: Are Ailments that greatly reduce the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. They are must haves on most builds, especially once you reach hard content with insane speed modifiers.
- Frailty: This Ailment reduces the Damage dealt by enemies by 6% for 4 seconds. Stacks 3 times.
- Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use: Cleanse all Ailments on Potion use.
Our Damage Explained Article covers all you need to know to scale Damage.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Loot Filter
Loot Filters are critical in Last Epoch. Making sure you highlight all the related valuable Item Bases, Affixes, Uniques and Idols is crucial to ensure your character's progression. Click on the Generate Loot Filter button down below then use the Paste Clipboard Contents button in-game to import it!
Here is the Endgame Loot Filter for this build:
Learn how to load and make Filters with our Loot Filter Guide.
Video Guide
COMING SOON!
Summary
Overall the Fireball Sorcerer is a very fun build capable of completing all the content in the game. It has insane Range, a very active playstyle and has great survivability thanks to its multiple defensive layers and powerful Unique Items.
- Cast Meteor for the Craterborn buff.
- Kite while spamming Fireball at your enemies.
- While they are not mandatory, Wrongwarp, Twisted Heart of Uhkeiros, Red Ring of Atlaria, Scales of Eterra, Omnis and Prismatic Gaze have the potential to enhance the build's power tremendously.
- Exsanguinous and Last Steps of the Living are required to play the Low Life Ward version.
- Teleport is a great Movement Skill that grants great defensive buffs on use.
- Flame Ward is an incredible Defensive Skill with tons of Damage Reduction that can save you from incoming Damage. Time it against dangerous telegraphed Boss attacks.
Credits
Written by Lizard_IRL.
Reviewed by McFluffin, Facefoot