The Sorcerer/Sorceress has been a long-time favorite and staple of the Diablo franchise. Manipulators of elemental energies, the Diablo 4 Sorceress follows in the footsteps of their Diablo 2 predecessor by utilizing fire, ice and lightning magic. While Diablo 2 usually encouraged specialization, there was one decent build conspicuous for its merger of two opposing elements - the Meteorb Sorceress. As the name implies, it mixed Frozen Orb, a high-level ice spell, with various fire spells (usually Fireball and Meteor). Diablo 4 is, from our limited exposure to the game via the beta, more favorable to hybrid builds, as many skills can be used to great effect with little investment, and some intriguing combinations can be made by utilizing the Sorceress’s unlockable Enchantment Slots. This page will provide a sample build for a Hydra/Frozen Orb Sorceress utilized by Haeravon during the Diablo 4 beta, including skill point allocation and ideal legendaries.

Diablo 4 Beta Sorceress Build - Fiery Frozen Orbs¶

Despite the fact that progression was limited in the beta, you could still end up with some wonderfully silly elemental combinations. One of our favorite was the mixture of fire and ice via the Sorceress’s unlockable Enchantment Slots.

Frozen Orb is a… decent offensive spell, but we may be a bit blinded by nostalgia on this one. It deals decent damage and flies through any enemies in its path, spewing freezing spikes before detonating. For peak damage, you’ll need to catch enemies in the flight path of the orb and have the orb detonate near them, something that’s very tricky with fast, melee-focused enemies, especially if you don’t have any allies to serve as a meat shield. While offering decent crowd control, it’s expensive to cast and doesn’t pack a tremendous punch, leaving this build a bit underpowered against bosses.

To shore things up a bit, we added Hydra to the mix, which is a cheap, powerful, fire-and-forget spell that you can start out fights with before switching to Frozen Orb spam. You can’t target specific enemies with Hydra, but its bolts deal decent damage and Hydra lasts a good while, picking off fodder or, better yet, piling on extra damage to stronger foes while you work your magic with Frozen Orb.

Along with Hydra, another must-have is Frost Nova, which freezes enemies and, more importantly, when upgraded inflicts Vulnerable on every enemy frozen. This keeps enemies at an ideal Frozen Orb range and increases damage by 20%, which suits both your Hydras and Frozen Orb just fine.

Those three spells are the core of this build - drop a Hydra, get close to enemies and hit them with Frost Nova, then spam two or three Frozen Orbs into the mix before resorting to Ice Bolt, the main purpose of which is to recharge your mana and deal a bit of chip damage before you start the sequence over again. Flavor with Teleport to give yourself more mobility and Inferno or Deep Freeze to add an extra punch every minute or so and you have a versatile build that’s a decent all-rounder, even if it does chug a bit when engaged by multiple durable enemies.

As for where the “Fiery” part of the “Fiery Frozen Orbs” comes from, you may think it’s due to the addition of Hydra or Inferno… but you’d be mistaken! Equipping humble Fire Bolt to an Enchantment Slot will cause all your “direct damage” skills to cause burn - including, paradoxically, Frozen Orb! It’s a fine way to add some extra damage and crowd control to all your attacks. You can also use Fireball, which will cause slain enemies to erupt into Fireballs - there’s something wonderful about tossing a Frozen Orb into a horde of enemies only to see them erupt into Fireballs, but we prefer the Fire Bolt option, as it’s useful against bosses and fodder.

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(1 of 3) The core playstyle of the Hydra + Frozen Orb build is to lay down a Hydra (or two!) and blast enemies with Frost Nova,

Diablo 4 Fiery Frozen Orb Build - Best Skills¶

• Frost Bolt (Enhanced Frost Bolt, Glinting Frost Bolt): Deals minor damage, but has a chance to AoE against chilled and frozen enemies. Mostly you’ll use this to recover Mana after your Frozen Orb barrage.

• Fire Bolt: You only need one rank to use this in an Enchantment Slot. You may get this from gear, if you’re lucky.

• Frozen Orb (Enhanced Frozen Orb, Destructive Frozen Orb): Main offensive spell, expensive, Mana-wise, best used after Frost Nova and Hydra to clear mobs and damage bosses. We went with the Enhanced Frozen Orb/Destructive Frozen Orb upgrades, as we feel Frost Nova is sufficient for spreading debuffs, and you ultimately get more reliably damage boosts from keeping your mana high and either getting a second empowered Frozen Orb, or by being able to just toss out another one sooner.

• Teleport: Just an extra dodge, which is sometimes needed, especially after Frost Nova to reach prime range for Frozen Orb. Also counts as a cooldown skill, which synergizes with some legendary mods.

• Frost Nova (Enhanced Frost Nova, Mystical Frost Nova): Key skill that seems like an auto-include for most Sorceress builds right now. While the ability to freeze foes in a wide area is great by itself (especially for a cooldown skill which doesn’t fight for your limited Mana pool), Mystical Frost Nova adds 4-8 seconds of vulnerability to enemies, making it combo well with any followup offense. Enhanced Frost Nova also works well with the Hydra lead-in and Frozen Orb punish, as killing a few enemies will reduce the cooldown of Frost Nova. Nice synergy all around.

• Hydra (Enhanced Hydra, Summoned Hydra): Like Frost Nova, this is almost an auto-include for the Sorceress. It deals heavy damage, lasts a fine chunk of time (enough to fully take advantage of a Frost Nova, and then some) fire autonomously, and doesn’t cost much Mana. The only downside is you can only summon one of them, initially, which necessitates the use of a secondary offensive skill - in our case, Frozen Orb. Enhanced Hydra increases the number of heads, and hence, damage output and Summoned Hydra adds some burn damage. Fair enough.

• Inferno / Deep Freeze: Invest enough points (maxing Hydra and Frozen Orb isn’t a bad idea) and you’ll get access to an ultimate skill. Both Deep Freeze and Inferno are fine choices, but Inferno definitely wins in pure offense, while Deep Freeze makes you invulnerable, deals some damage, and gives you time for your mana to recharge.

• Fiery Surge / Endless Pyre: If you have any points left over, you can invest in these two passives. The mana regen from Fiery Surge is somewhat inconsequential, but it’s a prerequisite for Endless Pyre, which increases burning damage to enemies as long as they remain burning. Since all direct damage you deal will inflict burning, this is basically just a passive increase to your damage-over-time, albeit one you can’t really make the most of due to limited skill points in this beta.

Diablo 4 Fiery Frozen Orb Build - Best Enchantments¶

After you’ve unlocked Enchantment Slots (you need to be Lv15), you’ll be able to equip a skill to one of them, whereupon you’ll gain a passive bonus. The most promising enchantments for this build are as follows:

• Fire Bolt: Direct damage from skills deals extra fire damage over 8 seconds. This damage will be around 50% of what you’re dealing with a maxed out Frozen Orb or Hydra, so it’s not a huge amount, but it’s constant and reliable.

• Fireball: Slain enemies explode into Fireballs, dealing 50% of your normal Fireball damage. Fun watching trash mobs combust, but of limited utility against hardier foes.

• Frozen Orb: Casting non-basic skills gives you a 20% chance to shoot out another Frozen Orb. The reliability of this one makes it fairly dubious, as you obviously can’t control when this will proc or what enemy it’ll shoot at. On the plus side, this can proc when you cast Frozen Orb, doubling the Orby goodness, but the consistent burn damage from Fire Bolt is a safer bet with the limited resources available during this beta.

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Look out for legendary gear with with mods that improve Frozen Orb, Hydra and Frost Nova, or mods that increase your damage to Vulnerable or Crowd Controled enemies.

Diablo 4 Fiery Frozen Orb Build - Best Legendaries¶

While we didn’t find every legendary in the game, we saw enough to get a good grasp on some legendaries to look out for. Legendaries in Diablo 4 are basically just “super rares”, possessing higher stats and a legendary mod - it’s largely the latter that you’re after, but some of the other stats will be mentioned under the next header, below. For now, here are the legendary mods you should seek out:

• Serpentine: You can summon one additional Hydra, but they last 20% less time.
• Control: You deal 45-60% more damage to Immobilized, Stunned, or Frozen enemies.
• Frozen Orbit: Frozen Orb stays in place after reaching its destination and explodes 2 additional times for 20-30% of its damage.
• Frostblitz: Frost Nova gains an additional Charge, but the Cooldown per Charge is increased by 40-30%.

Nothing too outlandish here, having access to more Hydras via Serpentine means more damage, but also more fussing with Hydra casts and Mana consumption. Worth it. Frostblitz is another no-brainer, doubling your charges of Frost Nova at the expense of making each charge take longer to recover. In long boss fights it may lead to having less access to Frost Nova, but since there are usually periods where you can’t punish, even in these less-than-ideal scenarios you usually end up ahead. Control causes you do deal more damage every time you freeze something, synergizing with Frost Nova quite well, and Frozen Orb is… well, the less useful of the bunch, but you’re going to be tossing out a lot of Frozen Orbs, you might as well score some extra damage out of it.

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As for more mundane stats, you want gear with mana cost reduction, cooldown reduction, and various damage boosts.

Diablo 4 Fiery Frozen Orb Build - Stat Priority¶

Gear increases your stats, but the exact stats (and amount boosted) varies - the rarer the item, the more stat modifiers they’ll have. This will cover which stats are the ones you should keep an eye out for and favor.

• Mana Cost Reduction: Mana powers your Frozen Orb and to a lesser extent, your Hydras. Having enough reduction to toss out a third or even fourth Frozen Orb in succession will greatly increase you kill rate, and making sustaining two Hydras and a followup Frozen Orb spam easier.
• Cooldown Reduction: Frost Nova is a key aspect of your offense and defense. Teleport gives you mobility and hence, survivability, and you’ll be able to use your ultimate more often the lower your cooldown is. A very nice-to-have mod, whenever you can get it.
• Frozen Orb/Hydra Skill Ranks: Getting a +1 Skill bonus to Frozen Orb or Hydra will increase their damage directly. Since those are your two primary damage-dealers, it’s a significant boost to your overall offense. While rarer, +1 to all Core Skills and +1 to all Conjuration Skills also suffices.
• Core Skill Damage: Increases the damage of your Core Skill (read: Frozen Orb) by a hefty amount. Preferable to most other forms of damage boost just due to the sheer amount of damage you’ll gain from it.
• Conjuration Skill Damage: Same as above, but this empowers your Conjuration Skills (Hydra).
• Fire/Cold Damage: Less impressive than the skill damage increases, these elemental boosts give you less damage overall, and since you only have one key fire and one key cold skill (plus perhaps your ultimate), it’s of lower value.
• Other Damage Boosts: This includes All Stats, Intelligence and All Damage - they boost your damage output, albeit much less overall than the above damage boosters.