Trying to level up your Sorcerer in Diablo IV is a challenging task when you consider how many options lie before you. When I see the abundance of spells and other attractive skills that the game has put before me, I immediately want to use them all at the same time which is sadly never an option. This makes me end up always questioning my build decisions and rethink whether I have made the correct choices.
However, to avoid thinking twice about your leveling builds and spell choices we have found a complete guide on how to level up your Sorcerer and be sure that you have in front of you one of the strongest versions of the class. Keep reading and learn which spells are the backbone of your build and what you can use to complement them.
Related: Diablo 4 Best Support Class
How to Level Up Your Sorcerer in Diablo 4 Season 1?
The build that we’re going to suggest to you is the one relying on quick movement, high chain damage to multiple enemies, and great survivability. As you will see it will rely mostly on Lightning damage but there will be other types of damage to support it as well.
The build will give you a good insight into how a Sorcerer is played from levels 1 to 50 and provide you with everything you need for doing quick runs that will let you level up quite fast.
We are going to explain the build in detail below, but if you just wish to see what the skill tree looks like, you can do that here.
Early Damage Spells
First of all, you’re going to start with Arc Lash as that’s going to be your source of fair damage and a quick and reliable mana generator. Follow up the pick of Arc Lash with Enhanced Arc Lash and Flickering Arc Lash. While the first upgrade boosts your damage, the second one gives you up to 18% movement speed per enemy hit. Since you’ll be hitting plenty of enemies you can count on this amazing speed boost for most of your run.
When going to further levels you need to go for Chain Lightning and Enhanced Chain Lightning. This will be one of your main damage dealers that you will build on in the future and we suggest you spam this spell whenever you have the mana needed for it. Pick Chain Lightning level two in order to unlock the next set of spells.
Early Defensive Spells
Next, you’ll be dealing with the defensive spells. You can pick one level in Teleport, Ice Armor, and Frost Nova in whichever order you think is the best for your current run. If you feel like you’re a glass cannon you can first go for the Ice Armor and its boost Enhanced Ice Armor to both get armor and buff for your mana regen necessary for murdering those big crowds of monsters. Alternatively, if you think you lack mobility you can go for Teleport, followed by Enhanced Teleport and Shimmering Teleport which will allow you to blink over short distances and avoid dangerous attacks. If you don’t think that no serious damage will come your way, you can go for Frost Nova to freeze your enemies and make them become vulnerable sitting ducks.
More Damage and Core Survivability
Now that you have a decent damage output and boosted mana regen with Enhanced Ice Armor, you can go back and pick Greater Chain Lightning to further increase your damage. Follow that up with 3 levels of Devastation to get more mana and more breathing room for casting spells.
It’s time to pick some passives that will greatly influence your overall survivability. Get level 1 level of each of these three core passive skills: Align the Elements, Mana Shield, and Protection. Each of these works in a way to either give you upgraded damage reduction or support you with an energy barrier.
Enchanting Damage
Next, you want to pick 1 level of Fireball and put it in your first Enchantment slot. This might seem random, but it’s not. Fireball has an Enchantment that makes enemies you kill explode for 50% of its damage which is a tremendous boost to your AoE (area of effect) enemy-clearing capabilities. After that go and max out Chain Lightning, Fireball, and Arc Lash, in that order. Now you have the base for your damage output.
Ultimate and Next Level Damage
At this point, you get to choose your ultimate, and yeah, you guessed it, we suggest you go down the lightning path again with Unstable Currents. Buff it up with Prime Unstable Currents for an additional +25% attack speed. Attack speed is always a great choice for classes that spend a lot of their mana (or other expendables) because you get to replenish it faster with your auto-attack. Vyr’s Mastery is another thing that will bring your damage to the next level because it increases the damage you deal to enemies close to you while limiting the damage you receive from them. After getting this passive you can jump among enemies more confidently either by walking in or with Teleport, and start unleashing huge amounts of spell damage.
Wrapping up the Leveling Build
To wrap up the build you need to first grab the Chain Lightning’s Enchantment as your second one since it automatically forms a Chain Lightning every time you spend a 100 mana. Next, you need to get all 3 levels of Coursing Currents to bump up your Critical Hits. Now you can go for either maxed-out Electrocution or Conduction depending on whether you want to buff up your survivability or further increase your movement speed. Conduction stacks up with your other move speed boosts and it can get you to be a real Usain Bolt in the dungeons which is really important if you wish to level up fast. You’ll be running through the mobs, stacking them behind you, and then clearing them with your powerful combos.
Finally, go back to those 3 core passives that were building your survivability, Align the Elements, Mana Shield, and Protection, and max them out now. They really give you the ability to put yourself even between some powerful elites and not care whether you’re going to die or not. Having these passives creates a great basis for you if you like playing the Hardcore mode. You won’t be by any means immortal but it really creates an atmosphere where it will be really hard for them to kill you.
More Damage Anyone?
Level 1 of Elemental Attunement and 3 levels of Elemental Dominance are there to spice things up and give you that extra push in both damage and defensive departments. All 3 levels of Glass Cannon will also be amazing since you get +18% of damage and only 9% of additional damage taken. However, when you take into consideration all the protective skills you already have (both active and passive) you will hardly feel the negative effects of this debuff.
Your first option with the last 3 points is to build up the Frost Nova to level 4 to reduce its cooldown and have the ability to Freeze enemies as often as you can. Keep in mind that most Elites can be affected with this debuff so you can possibly disable them for a long time. On the other hand, you can use those 3 points to bring Teleport to level 4 to reduce the cooldown and get increased mobility options.
Legendary Aspects to Look Out For
The Aspects you should implement in your leveling build are the following:
- Aspect of the Expectant – Arc Lash attacks build up the damage bonus for your Chain Lightning.
- Rapid Aspect – Arc Lash is faster thus, stunning more enemies and generating mana faster when you need it. When combined with the Aspect of the Expectant it can buff up your Chain Lightning faster.
- Aspect of Control – When using Frost Nova this Aspect will allow you to deal 25% more damage to the Frozen enemies, which is an insane buff.
Alternative Routes for This Build
The Lightning build that we’ve shown in our article is currently one of the most popular Sorcerer leveling builds out there. You can adjust it to your needs of course, but if you don’t want to stray too much from the original setup we suggest that you only level up the spells we’ve mentioned differently or choose some of them at an earlier/later stage. Getting skills that we haven’t described in our build can surely work, but it can disbalance the gameplay and leave you with a build that’s not as strong.
We hope you found our guide useful! For more interesting Diablo IV content see our guides Diablo 4: Should You Do Side Quests? and All Diablo 4 Waypoint Locations – How to Fast Travel. Find Gamer Journalist on Facebook and give us a like to receive more exciting guides like this one!
