An image of the male and female Sorcerers in Diablo 4.

Screenshot by Dot Esports

Best Diablo 4 Sorcerer leveling build

How to get the most of your elemental powerhouse.

Anish Nair

and

Hayley Andrews

Published: Jul 21, 2023 01:24 am

The Sorcerer is one of the most well-known classes in the Diablo series. From their humble beginnings as a Sorcerer in Diablo, progressing as a Sorceress in Diablo 2 and a Wizard in Diablo 3, the class has come full circle as a Sorcerer once more in Diablo 4.

Diablo 4 Sorcerer skills

A sorcerer holding a blue flame in Diablo 4. — Image via Blizzard

The Sorcerer’s skill tree is divided into six main focuses.

Basic skills: The starter skills that help you build up mana.
- Frost Bolt: Fires a frozen bolt that deals damage and chills enemies.
- Fire Bolt: Fires a flaming bolt that deals impact damage and damage over time.
- Arc Lash: Cracks a lightning whip, shocking enemies ahead in an arc.
- Spark: Fires a lightning bolt that shocks enemies four times, dealing damage.
Core skills: The main damage skills that consume mana.
- Ice Shards: Launches five frozen shards that deal damage and chill enemies. Frozen enemies take even more damage.
- Frozen Orb: Launches an orb that fires frozen shards all around it. The orb then explodes, dealing area damage and chilling enemies.
- Incinerate: Channels a flaming wave that deals increasing amounts of damage per second.
- Fireball: Launches a flaming ball that explodes and deals area damage.
- Chain Lightning: Fires a bolt of lightning that bounces between enemies, damaging them.
- Charged Bolts: Fires five bolts that travel in erratically, damaging enemies on their path.
Defensive skills: The skills that save you from certain death.
- Ice Armor: Creates a frozen barrier that absorbs a percentage of your health in damage.
- Frost Nova: Unleashes a nova of ice around you that freezes enemies in place.
- Flame Shield: Creates a flaming barrier that burns surrounding enemies.
- Teleport: Instantly warp a short distance away, dealing damage when you land.
Conjuration skills: Secondary damage skills that summon various elemental attacks.
- Ice Blades: Summon a pair of ice blades that constantly damage surrounding enemies.
- Hydra: Summons a fire-spewing Hydra that shoots fireballs at enemies.
- Lightning Spear: Summons a lance of lightning, homing in on enemies and shocking them.
Mastery skills: Powerful high-level elemental skills.
- Blizzard: Conjures a storm of ice that deals consistent damage and chills enemies.
- Meteor: Calls down a giant meteor that deals impact damage and damage over time.
- Firewall: Creates a wall of fire that burns enemies that pass through it.
- Ball Lightning: Unleashes a ball of lightning ahead that shocks enemies it passes through.
Ultimate skills: The highest damage-dealing skills in the Sorcerer’s spellbook.
- Deep Freeze: Turn into ice, becoming invulnerable and dealing damage over time. After the duration ends, the encasing shatters, dealing burst damage and chilling enemies.
- Inferno: Creates a flaming serpent that coils around an area, dealing constant burning damage over time to enemies that it entraps.
- Unstable Currents: Become infused with lightning for a certain duration. During this time, each time a Shock-based skill is cast, another random Shock skill is also cast.

Every class in Diablo 4 has unique mechanics, and the Sorcerer is no exception. Their unique mechanic, Enchantment Slots, unlocks at level 15.

This mechanic allows Sorcerers to equip certain passive abilities that affect some of their active abilities. These passive abilities are derived from one of their 21 skills, not counting Ultimate skills, and provide unique effects in battle.

The Enchantment Slots mechanic can be quite complicated to understand at first since every skill can produce different passive effects. These passives can be paired with the other Sorcerer talents to create some interesting synergies that can completely alter the way a Sorcerer is played. Add certain Aspects into the mix, and you have an elemental powerhouse at every stage of the game.

Now that you know what the Sorcerer is capable of doing, you will need to know the fastest way to get your character to level 50.

Best early game Sorcerer leveling build

An image of the Sorcerer's skill tree in Diablo 4. — Screenshot by Do Esports

While there are a few builds that work to level up your Sorcerer, the most ideal one that works for beginners would be the Ice Shards build. This build focuses on the Ice Shards skill, allowing you to maximize its chilling potential by increasing the amount of crowd control you can do while clearing massive waves of enemies.

Skill point assignment level two to 15

Selecting appropriate upgrades and talents is essential to this build to make sure you are getting the most out of certain synergies. You start with Arc Lash until you get to Ice Shards, and then focus on making the skill as strong as possible before you get complementary skills. This is what your skill progression should look like till you get to level 16:

Level two: Arc Lash
Level three: Enhanced Arc Lash
Level four: Flickering Arc Lash
Level five: Ice Shards
Level six: Enhanced Ice Shards
Level seven: Greater Ice Shards
Level eight: Teleport
Level nine: Fireball
Level 10: Ice Armor
Level 11: Frost Nova
Level 12: Enhanced Frost Nova
Level 13: Mystical Frost Nova
Level 14: Enhanced Ice Armor
Level 15: Hydra

The reasoning behind this build is getting Arc Lash for early levels since you need to invest points into it. Flickering Arc Lash will give you mobility along with damage, making it great for the early levels. Once you get Ice Shards, that will be your main source of damage, so spam it whenever possible. The upgrades to Ice Shards will ensure that your Shards will ricochet every time you have a barrier active.

Getting Teleport is a no-brainer, it is the best mobility skill in Diablo 4 and an iconic Sorceress skill from Diablo 2. We take one point in Fireball to keep it ready for when we gain access to Enchantment Slots at level 15. The rest of the skills are what we need in the early game to stay alive.

Ice Armor ensures you are protected from damage while its upgrade gives you increased mana regeneration. Frost Nova is a great defensive option that keeps enemies in place while the enhancements reduce its cooldown and makes enemies vulnerable.

Once you gain your first Enchantment slot, equip the Fireball Enchantment. With this active, each time an enemy dies, it will explode into a Fireball, damaging enemies around them. You can cause quite a chain reaction of Fireballs.

Skill point assignment levels 16 to 30

Now that you have your early damage sorted, this is how the skill progression will look on the road to level 30.

Level 16: Enhanced Hydra
Level 17: Invoked Hydra
Level 18: Ice Shards
Level 19: Ice Shards
Level 20: Ice Shards
Level 21: Ice Shards
Level 22: Hydra
Level 23: Hydra
Level 24: Hydra
Level 25: Hydra
Level 26: Frost Nova
Level 27: Frost Nova
Level 28: Frost Nova
Level 29: Frost Nova
Level 30: Permafrost

The focus till level 30 will be to improve your core set of skills. Maxing out Ice Shards for the damage increase is essential since it is your main skill in this build. On the defensive side, maxing out Frost Nova for more damage and longer freeze duration adds great crowd control. And to round off your Cold skills, we take a level in Permafrost to ensure bonus Cold spell damage against Elite enemies.

On the Pyromancy side, we max out Hydra and acquire its improvements. The Hydra upgrades will increase its damage, the number of attacks it can launch and add a critical strike to its attacks. The fire damage is quite complementary to your Cold damage, and with the Fireball Enchantment, nothing should be able to withstand your onslaught.

Skill point assignment levels 31 to 40

The next 10 levels should look something like this.

Level 31: Icy Touch
Level 32: Frigid Breeze
Level 33: Frigid Breeze
Level 34: Frigid Breeze
Level 35: Avalanche
Level 36: Flame Shield
Level 37: Enhanced Flame Shield
Level 38: Shimmering Flame Shield
Level 39: Enhanced Teleport
Level 40: Shimmering Teleport

The Icy Touch and Frigid Breeze talents have great synergy with each other, destroying enemies that are left vulnerable, which Mystical Frost Nova does by default. The key passive, Avalanche, makes it so that you have a chance to cast Ice Shards for no mana cost with a 40 percent damage increase. This trigger chance is doubled against vulnerable enemies, making it invaluable.

Beyond this point, we work on enhancing our Teleport to reduce its cooldown and gain damage reduction. Picking up Flame Shield and enhancing it to the max will also grant you increased movement speed and heal you for up to 50 percent of your maximum life.

Skill point assignment levels 41 to 50

Now that all of your defensive options are in place, we work on completing this build in the next 10 levels.

Level 41: Align the Elements
Level 42: Elemental Attunement
Level 43: Glass Cannon
Level 44: Glass Cannon
Level 45: Glass Cannon
Level 46: Protection
Level 47: Protection
Level 48: Protection
Level 49: Permafrost
Level 50: Permafrost

The last part of your build involves picking the talents you will need to sustain through the final stretch. Align the Elements increases your damage reduction against Elite enemies, while Elemental Attunement gives you a chance to reset cooldowns.

Glass Cannon increases the damage you deal, but also the damage you receive. This is offset by Protection which grants you a barrier each time you use a spell with a cooldown. Polish the build by maxing out Permafrost to deal even more damage to Elite enemies, and you are good to go.

The second Enchantment slot should also be filled by the Ice Shards Enchantment. This passive will fire out Ice Shards at Frozen enemies by default, with no mana cost, in addition to your active Ice Shards, making it essential in a build that focuses on constantly freezing enemies.

Leveling your Sorcerer in Season One, Season of the Malignant

While in the seasonal realm, you’ll still use the guide above. However, one of the more unique items you’ll encounter is Caged Hearts, each has a unique color and will grant you buffs, or buffs and debuffs when slotted. So far, the ones I believe are working best with this build don’t have the debuffs.

There are a few Caged Hearts for Sorcerers you can get, but for this build, these are the best ones:

‍Caged Heart of Tal’Rasha—For every unique element you deal damage with, you’ll deal additional damage for a short duration.
Caged Heart of Creeping Death—Your Damage over Time (DoT) effects will increase for every CC you have on a target. But monsters that are Unstoppable or Staggered will take more of the DoT effect.
‍Caged Heart of the Malignant Pact—For every 20 kills, you’ll cycle through these Malignant bonuses:
- Vicious: You’ll gain attack speed.
- Devious: Your core and basic skills have a chance to fully restore your primary resource.
- Brutal: Every 20 seconds, you’ll get a Barrier that absorb a specific amount of damage

Now you are ready to move on to the real late-game grind to the end-game content. This is where you might prefer switching to an endgame build like the Blizzard build to skyrocket your damage and unleash the full potential of the Sorcerer.

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