The Chain Lightning Sorcerer puts on a dazzling performance. One of of the most visually impressive builds in the game, this Sorcerer paralyzes and destroys monsters with a barrage of electricity. It has insane mobility and great Speedfarming potential, shredding open world Events and Helltides with ease. Its Nightmare Dungeon pushing capability is also solid.
Chain Lightning and Unstable Currents together make up the bulk of this build's damage. In the late game Axial Conduit greatly empowers the skill at the cost of increased Mana consumption. Luckily, Chain Lightning Sorcerer has many tools to address this problem, and with optimized gear we need nothing more than a single stat roll on our weapon.
The ultimate form of this build leverages Chain Lightning's high Lucky Hit Chance to add a ton of Poison damage from Andariel's Visage, making sure that no foe dares stand before you (for more than a couple seconds at least).
This build guide assumesyou have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Sorcerer playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides.
DifficultyEasy
SpeedfarmingStrong
The PitStrong
BossingAverage
DefenseExcellent
Season 5 - Infernal Hordes
In Season 5, the Season Theme brings your hero back into the bowels of Hell, in the Infernal Hordes endgame activity. You're first introduced to Hellbreach Dungeons, miniature Horde-like micro-dungeons that teach you the new mechanics and rewards systems. As you slay more powerful Demons and Bosses, you're rewarded with the new Reputation progression that comes with amazing rewards. These include Crafting Materials, unlocking Season's Journey tiers and even the coveted Resplendent Spark, needed to craft a mythic unique.
Follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the Reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 5 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
Active Skills
- Chain Lightning is your primary source of both AoE and single target damage.
- Unstable Currents massively increases your damage output while it is active. Use it whenever you encounter a strong enemy. In the late game when you have lots of Cooldown Reduction, use it whenever.
- Teleport makes you Unstoppable and is your primary source of mobility on this build.
- Ice Armor provides you with a reliable Barrier and much needed Mana Regeneration.
- Flame Shield makes you Immune for a short period. Use these skills when monsters have the audaicty to try and fight back.
- Ice Blades is our last active skill that gives us a Cold stack for Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
Passives
- Conjuration Mastery is an extremely strong passive which gives us tons of damage and Mana Regeneration. We get stacks of it from Lightning Spears cast by our ultimate.
Enchantment Slots
Sorcerers can choose two skills to put into Enchantment Slots, where they provide powerful passive bonuses. Chain Lightning Sorcerer uses the following Enchantments:
- Fire Bolt Enchantment is not flashy but extremely useful, giving us access to Devouring Blaze, Flamefeeder and Damage Reduction from Burning.
- Teleport Enchantment lets us zip around the battlefield and effortlessly pick up Crackling Energy. Alternatively, you can use Chain Lightning Enchantment to gain about 7% DPS if you need it more than mobility.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Resource Management
Chain Lightning is the probably the easiest Mana spender to spam infinitely, with only requirement that you hit an enemy. And that's mainly thanks to...
Recharging Aspect
Recharging Aspect is by far the most reliable Mana sustain solution on this build. Simply put, each cast of Chain Lightning takes 35 Mana and gives 15-27 back. With just a little bit of Mana Regeneration on top it's easy to reach positive balance, and that's without even taking into account all the other Mana sources.
Prodigy’s Aspect
This Codex Aspect can help in the early game if you are struggling with Recharging Aspect alone (which will be the case until you find one with 2.5+ roll).
Stats on Gear
In the late game we can even get rid of Recharging Aspect and simply stack enough Mana Per Second and further boost it with Enhanced Ice Armor and Conjuration Mastery. This lets us run one more Offensive Aspect or a Unique.
After Axial Conduit
This item changes things, making every Chain Lightning drain up to 66 Mana. This Mana drain is not affected by Resource Cost Reduction so we need to find a way to generate a lot of Mana. To make things worse, in the late game we gain quite a lot of Attack Speed and 100% chance to double cast Chain Lightning so this drain can get quite ridiculous. And, as a final nail in the coffin, if you ever run out of Mana with these pants on, all your Chain Lightnings disappear and you lose 80% of your damage.
If your Mana Generation is too bad, you have to limit how many Chain Lightnings you cast. Click it once or twice and then let it spin and do its thing. This doesn't feel very good but it works, and it still deals a lot more damage than spamming Chain Lightning without Axial Conduit.
The key to permanently fixing our Mana problems is Starlight Aspect. In early game we fuel it with Warmth by picking it up on the skill tree and by tempering it on our Chest, Helmet, and Amulet. With Warmth you get essentially infinite Mana, as long as there are enemies next to you. It doesn't work all that well in speedfarm scenarios, because you kill all the enemies quickly and then instantly run out of Mana. But since you have no more enemies left you don't really need that Mana, and when you encounter more enemies you regain it just as quickly. In the late game Andariel's Visage replaces Warmth.
With super optimized gear it's possible to generate enough Mana without using any Resource Aspects. To do that you need:
- Greater Affix "Lucky Hit: Chance to Restore Resource" on the Staff
- Greater Affix Resource Generation and Maximum on Axial Conduit
- Greater Affix Lucky Hit Chance on Fists of Fate
- Over 300 Maximum Mana (requires Paragon points and Elixir of Resourcefulness II)
This Lucky Hit-based strategy only works in scenarious where enemies stay alive for a long time aka The Pit. In 99% of the cases you should just stick with Starlight Aspect.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. For some Glyphs, we max our bonuses by allocating every relevant node in range, while on others we take the minimum required for the Additional Bonus only. Because Glyphs at level 15 increase their radius, we need to prioritize leveling them by completing Nightmare Dungeons. After that, we prioritize leveling our strongest glyphs to level 21.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the first three steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
For maximum efficiency, follow the order outlined below. First, level your Glyphs to level 15 and then do a second pass to get them all to 21.
Level 15
- Destruction
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Elementalist
- Tactician
- Unleash
- Charged
Reinforced
Level 21
- Destruction
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Elementalist
- Tactician
- Unleash
- Charged
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
When you start diving into the Endgame you don't have all the tools available to achieve the Best in Slot versions. In this section, we guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
The effectiveness of the Chain Lightning Sorcerer depends on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to you. While we can guarantee, that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Recharging in Zenith (Fractured Peaks)
- Prodigy’s in Witchwater (Hawezar)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Elementalist's in Pallid Delve (Dry Steppes)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Snowveiled in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen):
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Unbroken Tether: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Prodigy’s
- Lightning Rod: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Elementalist's
- Shredding Blades: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Control
- Everliving: Gamble Pants
- Mage-Lord's: Gamble Pants
- Replaces Disobedience
- Orange Herald: Gamble Boots
- Replaces Bounding Conduit
- Starlight: Gamble Rings
- Replaces Recharging after you find Axial Conduit
- Unbroken Tether: Gamble Focuses
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- Replaces Unbroken Tether
- Axial Conduit (Grigoire)
- Replaces Everliving
- Fists of Fate (The Beast in Ice)
- Replaces Lightning Rod
- Flickerstep (Duriel, Andariel)
- A must-have in any Speedfarm Build. Replaces Orange Herald.
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Mythic Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Andariel's Visage is our go-to endgame Helmet, which gives us tons of Attack Speed, insane healing, powerful Poison proc, and an extra stack on Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop.
- Tyrael's Might is incredibly powerful defensive chest, that, when combined with healing from Andariel's Visage, lets us straight up facetank everything in the game without even using defensive skills!
- Ring of Starless Skies replaces Shredding Blades (you have to move Starlight to the Amulet).
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Starter
Leveling to 100
Endgame & The Pit
Speedfarming
Once you have completed the Leveling Guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects you need for the next progression point.
Gear
Imprint the following Codex of Power Aspects onto your gear:
- Disobedience (Pants)
- Snowveiled(Chest or Helmet)
- Storm Swell (Weapon)
- Control (Amulet)
- Bounding Conduit (Boots)
- Elementalist's (Gloves)
- Recharging (Ring #1)
- Prodigy’s (Ring #2)
Skills and Enchantment Slots
In the early game Chain Lightning is quite weak so we let Fireball Enchantment do the heavy lifting. We remove points from Align the Elements, Teleport, and Devouring Blaze and use them to get ranks in Fireball and Fiery Surge for easier Mana management.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, and better versions of Codex of Power Aspects on the Starter Build must be found.
Gear
Imprint the following Aspects onto your gear for even more power:
- Shredding Blades on the Amulet (instead of Control)
- Lightning Rod on Gloves (instead of Elementalist's)
- Unbroken Tether on Ring (instead of Prodigy’s)
- Everliving, Mage-Lord's and Snowveiled are your three defensive Aspects on Helmet, Chest and Pants.
Skills and Enchantment Slots
Once your Mana Per Second and Recharging become enough to spam Chain Lightning without reserve, you can get rid of Fiery Surge and 1 point in Teleport to pick up Devouring Blaze.
In this setup, you have access to all and Uniques and Legendary Aspects imprinted into high Item Power gear, high Critical Strike Chance, and lots of Mana Per Second, unleashing the strongest version of this build. Be prepared to grind to attain this level of power!
Gear
In the final build, we use 3 Unique items:
- Axial Conduit
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
- Fists of Fate
Out of these 3, Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop is the most straight forward: you just put it on when you find it, it's great. Fists of Fate is only good if it rolls well. It doesn't need to have Greater Affiex but at the very least it needs decent rolls and close to 300% on the unique power, otherwise it's not worth losing the skill ranks. This is especially true if you don't have extra ranks from Pants and Ring of Starless Skies. Finally, Axial Conduit is another tricky item. It's always a big upgrade and you should equip it immediately, but, depending on the state of your Mana generation, it may alter your Gameplay. NEVER let your Mana run out. If that means you can cast only 2 Chain Lightnings, then cast only 2 and wait for them to explode. It will still deal a ton of damage, just stick close to the enemies to hit them with the orbiting bolts. To fix the aforementioned Mana problems we switch Recharging to Starlight and temper Warmth on every slot.
Skills
With Axial Conduit we no longer need the extra AoE damage from Fireball, so we can switch to our final skill tree using 5 points from Fireball to max out Teleport and Align the Elements. We also pick up Warmth to fuel our Starlight Aspect.
Gear with Mythic Uniques
This build can make use of three Mythic Uniques. And with them our build changes quite drastically.
- Ring of Starless Skies is very straightforward it gives us tons of damage. Remove Shredding Blades and move Starlight to the Amulet.
- Andariel's Visage gives us a powerful Lucky Hit effect, which is responsible for almost half of our damage. Since Damage Over Time cannot crit, we don't stack too much Crit Chance and we temper Vulnerable Damage. Fists of Fate also become a lot better with this item. Another thing we get from Andariel's Visage is over 600 Life on Hit. At a first glance that doesn't seem like that much life, but this build hits very often. We cast ~2.5 times per second and each cast fires 3 spells: 2 Chain Lightnings and one random Shock spell. Each spell hits enemies 4-5 times and many of those hits are AoE. Long story short, if we don't die in one hit, Andariel's Visage instantly heals us back to full.
- And then, in comes the final piece of the puzzle - Tyrael's Might. This item provides a ton of Damage Reduction and Elemental Resistance, making sure that we never die in one hit.
With Andariel's Visage we no longer need Warmth so we can spend the points on Precision Magic and Teleport and temper Evade CDR on the Amulet.
The Speedfarming setup often makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltides, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and low tier Nightmare Dungeons.
Gear
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:
- Get a chest with Teleport Ranks
- Temper Evade CDR on the Amulet
- Get normal CDR on every slot (don't use 2h staff)
It's very hard to reach the point where you can Teleport after every attack with Andariel's Visage equipped. You need perfect rolls and masterworks just like in the planner. If you don't have that kind of gear you have to options:
- Settle for 1 Teleport every 2 attacks. Then you don't need to go so hard on cooldown, just switching Boots and Chest + adjusting Paragon Board should be enough.
- Use Harlequin Crest. This will make the CDR threshold easily reachable but you will have Mana problems. Use Recharging instead of Starlight.
Paragon Boards
We simply remove some life and damage reduction to pick up Enchantment Master. You don't need to do this if you have fully upgraded Harlequin Crest and your Evade CDR is maxed.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to prioritize defensive stats and gameplay. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Prioritize Maximum Life over Intelligence on your Gear.
- Replace Exploit with Territorial and/or Tactician with Reinforced.
- For complete immortality use Harlequin Crest instead of Andariel's Visage.
- Only farm Nightmare Dungeons with monsters that are about your character level until you have near optimal gear.
Check out our dedicated in-depth guide to learn more survival tricks in Hardcore.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
Damage
Defense
- Cooldown Reduction (CDR). This is the most important stat for any Sorcerer build. What good are your skills if you can't use them because they are on cooldown? In purely offensive terms CDR gives us the following:
- More Unstable Currents uptime (about 2x damage)
- More uptime on Barrier from Ice Armor or Protection activating Conceited and Storm Swell(1.62x damage buff)
- Chain Lightning Ranks are extremely important in the early game, lose 70% of their power after we get Axial Conduit and become almost completely irrelevant when we also add Andariel's Visage.
- Lucky Hit Chance is the opposite: completely useless at first, quite important for Mana generation once we get Axial Conduit, and becomes a great DPS stat with Andariel's Visage.
- Crit Chance and Crit Damage are very good before we get Andariel's Visage but lose a lot of value with it. We still get them when it doesn't cost us much but in slots where comparable alternatives exist we go for those.
- Cooldown Reduction (CDR). As with our damaging skills, our powerful Defensive Skills are not doing much if we cannot cast them. Flame Shield makes you immortal and Ice Armor is Flame Shield with 3x the duration at best, or a protective layer that almost doubles your HP at worst.
- Barrier. Mostly coming from Ice Armor, it is our main defense outside Nightmare Dungeons. With our high and consistent damage output, the Barrier will instantly refresh as long as it's not broken in one hit.
- Both CDR and Barriers become irrelevant for our defense once we get Andariel's Visage. From that moment we rely on Life on Hit and raw HP and Damage Reduction.
- Armor is the major source of Damage Reduction against Physical damage. We naturally get Armor just from having high Item Power gear, and we further boost it with Skulls in Jewelry. It's extremely important to reach the Armor cap of 9,230 as the last few points of Armor get exponentially more effective.
- Resistances give us damage reduction against Elemental damage. Similar to armor it should be stacked as close to the 70% cap as possible for full effectiveness. As a Sorcerer, we get lots of Resistances from our high Intelligence and our Paragon Boards, letting us almost reach the cap without sacrificing any stats on gear.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
Damage Scaling
- 50%+ Critical Strike Chance
- 9+ ranks of Warmth or Andariel's Visage.
Defense and Utility
- Armor Capped 9,230
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 20,000+ Life
- 30%+ Cooldown Reduction
- Helm: Snowveiled
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Mana Per Second
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️CC Duration/Chance to CC
- Chest: Mage-Lord's
- Mana Per Second ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Ranks to Teleport
- Armor
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Chance to CC
- Gloves: Fists of Fate (masterwork Lucky Hit Chance)
- Otherwise Look For: Lightning Rod
- Ranks to Chain Lightning ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️Chance to CC
- Pants: Axial Conduit (masterwork double cast to 100% then DR)
- Otherwise Look For: Everliving
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life ↑
- Armor
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Barrier Generation
- Boots: Orange Herald
- "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown"
- Armor
- Mana Per Second ↑
- Maximum Life
- Intelligence
- ⚒️Evade Cooldown Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Chance to CC
- Amulet: Shredding Blades
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Ranks to Conjuration Mastery ↑
- Ranks to Glass Cannon ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Attack Speed
- ⚒️Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️Warmth
- Ring 1: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (prioritize CDR)
- Otherwise Look For: Unbroken Tether
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR ↑
- Ring 2: Starlight
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️Unstable Currents CDR ↑
- Main Hand: Storm Swell (Staff)
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Vulnerable Damage
- Critical Damage
- ⚒️Chance to double cast Chain Lightning ↑
- ⚒️Vulnerable Damage
- Off Hand: none
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Resourcefulness II, Elixir of Advantage II, Elixir of Fortitude II, Elixir of Precision II
- Incense: Reddamine Buzz, Chorus of War, Spirit Dance
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.
Why no Chain Lightning Enchantment?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Axial Conduit
Summary
- The Chain Lightning Sorcerer is easy and effective build well suited for speedfarming various types of content.
- Make sure to maintain your Mana! Find gear with Mana Per Second and take advantage of Recharging Aspect and Paragon.
- Unstable Currents massively increases your damage output. It is just one of many reasons why you want to get as much Cooldown Reduction as possible on your gear.
- This Chain Lightning Sorcerer is a highly mobile destroyer that puts on a beautiful light show! What more can you want?
Credits
Written by Northwar
Original post by DarkHumility
