The Sorcerer or Sorceress is one of the strongest classes in Diablo, offering players the opportunity to go class cannon, and annihilate packs, bosses, and everything in between with various elemental spells. The result is that the Sorcerer has plenty of builds, fitting various magic types. While there are frost and fire builds, we believe the shock and lightning theme will produce the best Sorcerer builds in Diablo 4. With no further ado, here’s a Diablo 4 Sorceress Chain Lightning Shock Build.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Chain Lightning Hydras¶

As the name of the build suggests, this build will be running the Chain Lightning and the Hydras as the core of this build. The reason why is that the Hydras offer incredible single-target damage, while the Chain Lightning spell offers great AOE. Moreso, Chain Lightning grants critical strike bonuses via the Destructive and Enhanced perks, which will empower your Hydras to do even more damage, as you will find through a very specific talent called Invoked Hydras.

So, the main theme of the playstyle is to place your Hydra(s) down, and then spam Chain lightning wherever possible to fish for critical strikes. When you land a critical strike, your Hydra wall gets buffed for three seconds, which will shred whatever they are targeting. This gets even better if you manage to get the Hydra legendary, which is a random class drop chance, so you likely wont get this till around level 40 onwards when legendary drops become more common.

Also, your Chain Lightning and Shock Crits are also helpful for spawning in Crackling Energy, another feature you invest in via the passives in the tree. You have a percentage chance when you score a crit, depending on the Static Discharge passive improvements you’ve invested in spawning Crackling Energy at 5% intervals. Your Chain Lightning also has this via the nodes you put into it. As you collect these, you will then deal slightly more damage via the cracks of lightning you send out to one or two enemies. But, at level 30, you have an enchantment for the Lightning Spear, which means you can spawn another skill for free to deal even more burst damage via this feature. You can also get more energies from your Lightning Orb, so, this is another area of your build you will greatly improve on as you begin to build out more lightning focused passives for Crackling Energies.

Overall, this Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build is all about crit fishing to further bolster your skills and DPS. And it’s a lot of DPS at that.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Skills¶

To get this build going, here are the skills and passive improvements you want to invest in.

• Arc Lash > Extended > Flickering Arc Lash for leveling, and then Spark for its Crit chance improvements later on.
• Chain Lightning > Extended > Destructive Chain Lightning
• Flame or Frost Shield, depending on your preference for survivability, and mana management. Frost is better if you have high willpower, while Fire is better much earlier on. Frost also scales with any barrier effects you get, unlike Fire.
• Hydra > Enhanced > Invoked
• Unstable Current: Ultimate skill > both upgrades
• Teleport - You can remove this for Lightning Orb in the later build when you get better lightning based passives.
• Lightning Spear (Only at level 30, though)

Leveling to 25 Build: While leveling, focus on grabbing the above skills first. If you can’t grab a new skill, then prioritize your spare points into Hydra > Arc > Chain Lightning skills. Make sure to grab a point in the Static Discharge whenever you can as well, so you can prepare the additional Crackling Energy bonuses for your ultimate at level 25.

Passives: After level 25, you want to invest in Coursing Currents, along with other passives like Elemental Attunement, since you have lots of crit, and can reset your defensive for more man management and survivability tools. You can also take Glass Cannon later on when you have better damage and shielding profiles. As soon as you can get your capstone talent, you want Vyr’s Mastery, as that offers more damage to close-range enemies, ideal for your Arc Slash, and you also get reduced damage taken. This is your most crucial passive talent. You can spend any remaining talents on other passive progression areas too to spend your remaining points how you like.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Enchantments¶

As for your enchantments, you want to place the Chain lightning and the Lightning Spear into your two enchantment slots when you can:

• Chain Lightning: After spending 100 mana, you send out another chain lightning bolt. Again, this is more Crit opportunity for damage, passive interactions, and Hydra DPS boost. It also presents more opportunities to pick up Crackling Energy.
• Lightning Spear: Lightning Spears have a chance to spawn at enemies hit by your Crackling Energies. This is a skill you only want to spend a skill point on at level 30, just so you can get this enchantment proc rolling when your Spark passives are invested in.
• When you get toward end game, switch out Chain Lightning for Lightning Ball, as you get more lucky hit via certain build passives, which means more lightning Orbs to get more Energy Procs, replacing the roll of Chain Lightning for that Energy farm.

Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build: Legendaries¶

Below is a list of legendaries you will want as part of your build.

• Serpentine: You can summon one additional Hydra, but they last 20% less time.
• Aspect of Splintering Energy: Grants 11% chance when you use Lightning Spear to cast another one. You get these via your random chances of casting Lightning Spear from your enchantment procs, so, it’s nice synergy for that.
• Elementalist Aspect: Core or Mastery skills cast while on or above 100 mana gain 20% increased critical strike chance
• Esadora’s Overflowing Cameo: This is a unique necklace you can get when you reach world tier 3 onwards, which is a random drop chance. This offers some very strong AOE that emits around your character in large waves which can proc when you pick energy up. It also increases Crackling Energy damage, which is very nice when you can easily proc those energies in the late game. This is a big prized item, but, its not necessary to get the build rolling, but helps to cap it at a new height when you do get it.

These three legendaries are your core offensive legendaries you will absolutely want in your build. The Serpentine Hydra legendary is absolutely necessary, as it is the core damage of your build. Not to mention two sets of Hydras affected by the two crit dps boost will destroy everything they target. In addition, Splintering Energy is very good for additional chances at getting the Lightning Spear to double cast. This will feel great at bursting bosses down when the stars align. Elemental Aspect is also good when you have better mana regen and can get your Frost Shield off CD in the alter leveling process.

The rest of the legendaries found below are also decent options, but, they are optional, as they are nice additions if you can get a hold of them.

• Edgemaster’s Aspect: Skills deal up to 24% increases damage, based on your primary available primary resource when you cast it
• Recharging Aspect: Each time Chain lightning bounces off you, gain 3 mana. - Decent single target mana generation tool.
• Prodigy’s Aspect: Using a cooldown restores 15 mana. You will get this whenever you teleport or use your armor skill.
• Aspect of Efficiency: Casting a basic skill reduces the mana cost of your next core skill by 10%
• Charged Aspect: Collecting Crackling Energy increases your movement speed by 10% for 4 seconds.

Stat Priority¶

Now its stats time.

• Skill Damage: The main thing you want on your build is skill damage increase This stat will significantly boost your damage from skills, which means more crit damage on chain lightning, more crackling damage, and more hydra damage.
• Basic skill Damage: It is nice for improving your Arc basic skill, which is a very strong melee spell anyway.
• Critical Strike Damage: Your build is all about crit, so, crit damage is almost guaranteed to happen. This affects the crit bonuses in your chain lightning bounces, and your hydras too.
• Critical strike Chance: This is a much better stat early on, but, you only need it a little after around level 30, as you will get lots of crit opportunities through passive talent. More helps later, though, as it means you can crit earlier in the Chain Lightning bounces, or more often with Arc Lash.
• After that, lots of cooldown, intellect and willpower are handy. Small amounts early on are way less valuable, so you look for this at end game.

This concludes the Diablo 4 Sorceress Lightning Build. Have fun criting everything, empowering your spells and unleashing even more mechanics as you go through the leveling process, and then unleash crits and destructive magic at the endgame of your build.