As the glass cannon class in Diablo 4, Sorcerers have plenty of different ways to build themselves. Whether it’s Fire Sorcerers who specialise in bursts of high damage that result in Burning damage over time or Frost Sorcerers who control the flow of battle with Chill or Freeze, Sorcerers have incredible potential. In fact, if you’d like to learn how to build a powerful Ice Shards Sorcerer, one who can Freeze whole packs of enemies with a single spell and destroy Elites and groups with ease, check out our Endgame Freeze Sorcerer build here. If you want to be a bit more active in battle and want to challenge yourself with a lot of actions and decisions that result in high payoffs, you may be interested in building a Lightning Sorcerer.
Lightning Sorcerers play quite differently from their elemental counterparts. While Ice and Fire are about dominating the battlefield from a singular location, Lightning is about agility and aggression. Shock Skills focus on high Critical Strike damage and effects, letting you zoom around the battlefield to avoid attacks and get better positional advantages over your enemies. Crackling Energy, specifically, is an extremely powerful Shock buff that, if invested in, can provide you with numerous buffs that grant near unlimited Mana, damage boosts, cooldown reductions and more. Learn to utilise Crackling Energy alongside other staples of the Lightning Sorcerer kit and you can build one of the best proactive characters in all of Diablo IV.
Here’s how to build an endgame-viable Lightning Sorcerer in Diablo 4, one who utilises the Crackling Lightning mechanic to deal massive damage at close range and remain aggressive at all times.
Want more Diablo IV content and articles? You can find more here on KeenGamer:
- Diablo 4 | Ice Shards Sorcerer Build Guide (Endgame Freeze Sorcerer)
- Diablo 4 | World Boss Guide: World Boss Spawn Times, Strategies and Loot
- Diablo 4 Beta | Bio-Bomb Necromancer Build Guide (Corpse Explosion Build)
- Diablo IV – 5 Best Sorcerer Skills
- Diablo IV – 5 Sorcerer World Tier 3 Tips
Diablo 4 Crackling Energy Sorcerer Build Overview
Before we start going into specifics, let’s look at a brief overview of the stats and skills you’ll need to make this Lightning Sorcerer build work in Diablo IV work.
Firstly, here are the main skills you’ll be investing your Skill Points into by the time you hit level 50. Remember that, by reaching Renown Level 3 in all locations, you can score 10 extra Skill Points which help massively in carving out the best builds. Specifics on what upgrades each skill should receive will be talked about in the Skill Deep Dive segment:
- Basic Skills: Arc Lash
- Core Skills: Chain Lightning + Potent Warding
- Defensive Skills: Teleport + Elemental Attunement
- Conjuration Skills: Lightning Spear + Align the Elements + Mana Shield + Protection
- Mastery Skills: Ball Lightning + Static Discharge + Shocking Impact + Invigorating Conduit
- Ultimate: Unstable Currents + Coursing Currents + Electrocution + Convulsions
- Key Passive: Overflowing Energy
Electrical Chaos
For stats on your gear and Paragon Boards, the main focus of any Sorcerer should be Intelligence and Willpower. Intelligence determines your damaging prowess, increasing the damage of your skills directly for each point of Intelligence you have. Meanwhile, Willpower is more utility as it focuses on increasing your Mana regeneration rate, letting you sling your Core and Mastery Skills at a much higher rate. Both of these stats are extremely important pieces of the Sorcerer at endgame, allowing them to survive in situations where they otherwise shouldn’t.
In terms of hyper-specific stats and abilities on gear, Lightning Skill Damage or just general Shock Damage bonuses are always going to help as they make every part of your kit (including Crackling Energy) much stronger. Damage to Close Enemies is also a great pick seeing as this build is hyper-aggressive, meaning that you’ll be in the throes of combat more often than you’ll be sitting on the backlines. Critical Strike Damage and Critical Strike Chance are similarly important seeing as Critical Hits are a massive part of the Lightning Sorcerer, more even than Frost or Fire. Lastly, keep an eye out for Movement Speed Bonuses as they will come in very handy when working alongside specific Aspects or Affixes at the endgame.
Lightning Sorcerer Stat Overview
Crackling Energy Explained
Another thing we should go over at this point is what Crackling Energy is, what it does and how it can massively help your build. Crackling Energy is a buff provided by multiple different skills and bonuses across the Lightning Sorcerer’s array of abilities.
Whenever you spawn Crackling Energy, whether via a Skill or through something like a kill condition, it will appear on the field as a small orb of blue electricity. You must walk into this orb to pick it up, at which point you’ll gain up to 3 stacks of Crackling Energy, with your current available stacks being displayed above your hotbar. With any stacks of Crackling Energy in your possession, you will deal automated Lightning damage to any close enemies, with one strike of Crackling Energy using up one stack.
On its own, Crackling Energy is a nice way to help with crowd control and damage while incentivising the Lightning Sorcerer’s more aggressive playstyle. When paired with other skills, passives and Aspects, though, Crackling Energy becomes an insanely useful tool which will allow you to deal absurd levels of damage to rank-and-file and Elite enemies alike, recharge your Mana at a consistent pace and reduce the Cooldowns of all your abilities including your insanely powerful Ultimate. It does require a good deal of investment but the payoff is way worth it, making Crackling Energy a must-pick feature of the Lightning Sorcerer in Diablo 4.
Crackling Energy and Buff Bar
Skill Deep Dive
Basic Skills
For our Basic Skills, we recommend taking Arc Lash for this Crackling Energy Sorcerer build. This is a close-range attack that costs no Mana, dealing Shock damage in an arc in front of the player: every 10 Arc Lash swipes, this skill will also Stun all enemies hit for 2 seconds. Alongside regular Arc Lash, we’ll be picking up Enhanced Arc Lash and Glinting Arc Lash. The former makes it so that if Arc Lash’s initial swipe Critically Strikes, it will swipe one additional time. Meanwhile, Glinting Arc Lash reduces your Cooldowns by 0.15s whenever you hit a Stunned enemy with Arc Lash.
Surprisingly, Arc Lash is actually a core part of this build. While it doesn’t focus or heighten the Crackling Energy side of the build much, it does provide you with a great Crowd Control tool that costs no Mana while facilitating and setting up other more powerful skills and cooldowns. With some later skill tree passives, Arc Lash will even start generating Crackling Energy fairly consistently. Even after a decently sized nerf early in Diablo 4’s life cycle, Arc Lash remains an incredibly potent force and an excellent addition to this build.
Additionally, some may be wondering why we’re taking Arc Lash over Spark, the other Lightning-based Basic Skill, especially when the Flickering Spark upgrade gives it a 3% chance of spawning a Crackling Energy on cast. There are a few reasons but the primary one is that Spark is simply too weak to work well in this build: you’ll be fighting at close range most of the time, engaging several enemies at once and Spark simply doesn’t have the damage output or utility of Arc Lash. Also, through our other skills and passives, we should be generating enough Crackling Energy that the minuscule chance provided by Flickering Spark won’t be missed in the slightest.
Basic Skills
Core Skills
In terms of Core Skills, you’ll be picking up Chain Lightning. This attack unleashes a stream of lightning that deals Shock damage for the cost of 35 Mana. After the initial impact, the lightning will then chain between other enemies or you up to 5 times, prioritising enemy targets. We’ll also be getting Enhanced Chain Lighting, to give it a 3% Critical Strike Chance on each additional bounce, as well as Destructive Chain Lightning, which gives the attack a 25% chance of spawning a Crackling Energy when it Critically Strikes.
Chain Lightning is an excellent ability at a base level, allowing you to deal good damage to groups and bosses using the bounce mechanic. When paired with Crackling Energy and all the buffs provided by this build, it becomes even better. The pairing of Enhanced and Destructive Chain Lighting allows it to become a consistent source of Crackling Energy while retaining high damage thanks to the Critical Strike increase, letting you confidently take on everything from Elites to rank-and-file junk enemies. This skill is insanely versatile and can work in almost any piece of content, making it a mainstay of many Lightning Sorcerer builds in Diablo IV, including this one.
Shocks to Wake the Dead
Like with all Core Skills, the biggest issue with Chain Lightning is that it runs off Mana: unlike Arc Lash, you won’t be able to spam Chain Lightning in quite the same way. However, this build has several ways of either improving Mana Regeneration or just straight up giving you instant Mana, so this isn’t as much of a problem as it is in some other Sorcerer builds. So long as you stay proactive and aggressive while keeping your eyes on Crackling Energy spawns, you should be able to get off plenty of Chain Lightings without much issue.
To close off the Core Skill section, you’ll also be picking up all three points in Potent Warding. This passive skill increases your Resistance to all elements by 6% after casting a Non-Basic Skill, with an additional 3% Resistance for the element matching the Skill you just cast (meaning that you’ll always have 9% Lightning Resistance with this build and kit). Sorcerers are an infamously squishy class and that’s something you’re going to inevitably notice with this build. You need all the help you can get to survive, especially because of how up-close and personal this build is, meaning that the Resistance from this passive is going to be invaluable in keeping you going.
Core Skills
Defensive Skills
Next up we have the Defensive Skills which includes one of the most important skills in the entire build: Teleport. This skill has a 9.9-second cooldown where, after being cast, it will transform the user into a ball of lightning, making them Unstoppable before surging them to a target location on the screen. This will also deal Shock damage to any nearby enemies when you finish the Teleport. Make sure to pick up Enhanced Teleport (which decreases the skill’s cooldown by 0.5 seconds per enemy you hit with Teleport) and Mystical Teleport (which allows Crackling Energy to hit 2 additional enemies for 4 seconds after teleporting).
Teleport provides so much to this build. On one hand, it’s a source of constant aggression and a way to feed into that hyperactive playstyle of the Lightning Sorcerer. For example, you can use Teleport to dash into a large group of mobs, dealing high damage while priming Crackling Energy and getting you in the perfect position for Chain Lightning or Arc Lash. On the other hand, Teleport is a great escape or pure movement tool when it needs to be: Lightning Sorcerer’s push-forward playstyle often lands them in danger and Teleport is a superb option if you need to get out of dodge or simply want to reposition on the field.
Alongside Teleport, you’ll definitely want to pick up all three levels in Elemental Attunement. This passive gives you a new Lucky Hit ability where Critical Strikes have a 15% chance to reset the Cooldown of your Teleport. The more often Teleport is up, the more damage potential you have as you can begin using it to pick up stray Crackling Energy orbs or chase down specific targets. Having it active more often is also very useful when you find yourself in danger – you don’t want to be stuck in a corner surrounded by a group of tanky Elites, after all – so investing in Elemental Attunement is a massive win-win for this build.
Defensive Skills
Conjuration Skills
The Conjuration Tree is where we’re going to pick up our next skill, Lightning Spear, as well as its upgrades, Enhanced Lighting Spear and Summoned Lightning Spear. This skill has a 20-second cooldown upon cast. With it, you conjure a spear of lightning that seeks out enemies in the surrounding area for 6 seconds, dealing Shock damage as it does. Enhanced Lightning Spear provides a 5% increased stacking Critical Strike chance to the attack after it Critically Strikes an opponent. Meanwhile, Summoned Lightning Spear increases the damage of your next Lightning Spear by 20% (up to 100%) whenever you collect Crackling Energy.
Honestly, Lightning Spear is one of the weaker elements of this build: it has relatively low base damage compared to other skills, its tracking and homing abilities aren’t great and it has a very long cooldown. It still definitely has a place here, though. With our skills, we’re constantly forming Crackling Energy all over the field, which can be used to overcharge Lightning Spear thanks to the Summoned upgrade. It also has more range than most of your other attacks and will act autonomously, allowing you to just pop it and continue pushing forward instead of having to worry about positioning like with some other skills in your toolkit. Don’t underestimate it as it can become very useful later in Diablo IV.
On top of Lightning Spear, you need to grab Align the Elements, Mana Shield and Protection. These are some defensive and protective passives which will aid your Lightning Sorcerer in staying alive long enough to wipe out the screen of all available threats. Align the Elements grants you a stacking 3% Damage Reduction buff against Elites for each second you haven’t taken damage from one, up to 40% Reduction. Then, Mana Shield similarly grants you 15% Damage Reduction whenever you spend 100 Mana (which is about 3 casts of Chain Lightning).
Of particular note here is Protection. This passive spawns a Barrier equal to up to 30% of your Maximum Life for 2 seconds whenever you use a Cooldown. In this build, we have 3 main skills which rely on cooldowns instead of Mana – Teleport, Lightning Spear and Unstable Currents – which, when paired with a variety of cooldown-reducing buffs and effects, allows us to have really high uptime on these Barriers. This massively helps offset the main weakness of this build, allowing you to continue being aggressive so long as you know when to cycle through your cooldowns and activate the Barriers at the correct time.
Conjuration Skills
Mastery Skills
The next two sections – Mastery and Ultimate Skills – are where a lot of our Skill Points are going to be spent, primarily on powerful passive abilities. Starting with offensive skills, you’ll want to pick up Ball Lightning. This is another Mana cost skill, requiring 50 Mana per cast, which discharges a ball of lightning that slowly moves forward, continually zapping enemies for Shock damage. In terms of modifiers, Enhanced Ball Lightning increases the damage rate of the attack by 200% of your Attack Speed Bonuses, whereas Wizard’s Ball Lightning creates a Crackling Energy whenever the same enemy is hit by a single cast of Ball Lightning 4 times.
Alongside Chain Lightning, Ball Lightning is one of your primary damage-dealing and crowd-clearing options. It has a very large radius and works excellently as you push into targets or as they run up to you. The modifiers are also a massive boon for this build, resulting in more damage and more ticks which results in more Crackling Energy which results in more Mana, more damage and shorter cooldowns: overall, it’s just a perfect package. You do have to be a bit more wary with this skill than some others, as you need to learn how to position it properly to get the maximum effect out of it, but that all comes with practice.
For Mastery passives, you’re going to want to pick up every Lightning one available. This includes Static Discharge, Shocking Impact and Invigorating Conduit. Shocking Current is the odd one out here but it is certainly worth investing in, at least a little bit. Every time you Stun an enemy, you instantly deal additional Lightning damage to them based on the skill’s level. Several parts of your kit revolve around Stun and it is a very important part of this build in keeping you alive, even if it isn’t the main focus. The little boost you get from this passive is more than enough to make skills like Arc Lash way more valuable.
Then we have Static Discharge and Invigorating Current. Both of these passives relate to Crackling Energy in one way or another. The former gives you a Lucky Hit ability where Critical Strikes with Shock Skills have a 15% chance of spawning a Crackling Energy, which allows any skill in your arsenal the ability to generate this very important buff. Meanwhile, the latter restores 12 Mana whenever you absorb a charge of Crackling Energy, allowing you to go for massive periods just using your Mana-expensive skills so long as sources of Crackling Energy are nearby. When combined, these passives allow you to make Crackling Energy the star of the show as you constantly spawn it and use it to prop up the rest of your build.
Mastery Skills
Ultimate Skills
Lightning Sorcerers of all kinds are obviously going to pick the Lightning-based Ultimate ability. In this case, the Ultimate Skill is Unstable Currents, an incredibly strong ability which essentially turns you into an invincible lightning-calling death machine for 10 seconds. Unstable Currents has a 70-second cooldown and it will cause lightning to surge through you for 10 seconds after being cast. During these 10 seconds, whenever you cast a Shock Skill (so any skill at your command) you will also cast a random Core, Conjuration or Mastery Skill alongside it. In addition, the Prime Unstable Currents and Supreme Unstable Currents upgrades make it so you have +25% Attack Speed and allow Crackling Energy to continually pulse and consume no charges while the Ultimate is active.
This Ultimate is where Crackling Energy Sorcerer builds shine in Diablo IV. The amount of carnage you inflict upon casting this skill is absurd, as Lightning skills from the entire tree just rain down upon your foes, creating a constant supply of Crackling Energy in the process. This means a constant flow of Mana, a constant flow of skills like Chain Lighting and Ball Lightning (along with their various modifiers and effects), a constant flow of damage to close enemies and so much more. Unstable Currents is possibly one of the biggest powertrips in the entire game and this build makes it so that the Ultimate not only remains powerful but also gives you ample opportunities to get it back sooner.
As we mentioned above, a lot of our Skill Points are going into passives on the Mastery and Ultimate trees. In the Ultimate tree, you need to get Coursing Currents (hitting an enemy with Shock Skills increases your Critical Strike Chance by 3% until you land a Critical Strike), Electrocution (enemies deal 15% less damage for 5 seconds after being Critically Struck by a Shock Skill) and Convulsions (Lucky Hit: Shock Skills have a 9% chance to Stun enemies for 3 seconds). Everything here is made to make you more lethal by either directly increasing your potency and consistency or lowering the effectiveness of enemy targets.
Ultimate Skills
Key Passive
Last, but certainly not least, we have the Lightning Sorcerer Key Passive. Lightning Sorcerers have 2 options here – Overflowing Energy or Vyr’s Mastery – which both certainly have their uses. Overflowing Energy lets Crackling Energy hit 1 additional enemy for each stack, while also decreasing the cooldown of all your Shock Skills by 0.1 seconds (increased to 0.25 against Elites) whenever Crackling Lightning hits an enemy. On the other hand, Vyr’s Mastery makes close enemies take 10% more damage from your Shock Skills and deal 20% less damage to you, with these bonuses increase by 25% for 3 seconds whenever your Critically Strike.
While both Key Passives are very useful, we’re going to be going with Overflowing Energy in this build. Vyr’s Mastery is very good but it will not increase the damage or potency of our Crackling Energy – it only increases the damage of our Shock Skills directly – and it doesn’t result in the satisfying feedback loop that the rest of the build can facilitate. That being said, Overflowing Energy does massively rely on actually consistently being able to create Crackling Energy to be effective, so be wary of this when setting up your skills and compositions.
As for the Key Passive itself, Overflowing Energy is what turns you into a true monster. Just on its own, it makes Crackling Lightning a way more consistent, way stronger ability that rewards you for playing aggressively, sticking close to enemies and darting around the battlefield, but it becomes absurd when paired with Unstable Currents. While the Ultimate is active, you will constantly be creating Crackling Energy while never losing any of your current charges, Stunning enemies, gaining Mana, reducing your cooldowns to basically nothing and dealing high damage. If there are enough enemies around and you have enough Crackling Energy charges, Overflowing Energy essentially lets you cut down the cooldown of all your most potent Shock Skills by half.
For this build, there truly is no better pick than Overflowing Energy.
Key Passive
Enchantments
Sorcerers in Diablo IV get exclusive access to an ability known as Enchantments. With this, you get to choose 2 of your currently unlocked skills to take as Enchantments. This won’t change the base skill but it will provide you with a variety of different bonuses and additional abilities related to the skill you’ve chosen. Each skill provides a wildly different Enchantment and finding optimal combinations between different skills is one of the best features of the Diablo 4 Sorcerer.
For this Crackling Energy Build, we recommend taking the Arc Lash and Ball Lightning Enchantments. The Arc Lash Enchantment causes all nearby enemies to become Stunned for 0.5 seconds whenever you cast a Cooldown (so your Ultimate, Lightning Spear or Teleport). Then, the Ball Lightning Enchantment gives you an additional Lucky Hit ability, where Critical Strikes have up to a 25% chance to spawn a static instance of Ball Lightning. While it’s true that neither of these Enchantments directly affect or buff Crackling Energy, they do allow you more opportunities to play aggressively and benefit from the high close-range damage of that effect.
If you feel like you want a bit more impact for your Crackling Energy charges, try taking Spark as an Enchantment, instead. By using a single Skill Point to unlock Spark, you can access its associated Enchantment which gives you a 10% chance to spawn an instance of Crackling Energy whenever you kill an enemy. To those struggling with consistently spawning charges with their other abilities, this will be very useful in keeping you stocked up. However, because it’s limited by being a kill condition, meaning that against tanky solo Elites or Bosses, it loses out on effectiveness compared to the other Enchantments. As always, mix and match to find your exact preference.
Lightning Sorcerer Enchantments
Paragon Board
Upon reaching level 50, you’ll stop earning Skill Points and instead begin earning Paragon Points that you can spend on the Paragon Board. At first glance, the Paragon Board can be quite overwhelming, with a ton of nodes and different stats, but it is a very useful tool in increasing the potency of your builds.
For the Crackling Energy Sorcerer, you’ll want to keep an eye out for the following Rare Glyphs to slot onto your Paragon Board:
- Charged: For every 5 Intelligence purchased within range, Crackling Energy deals +3.2% increased damage. Additionally, picking up Crackling Energy grants you 5% increased damage for 5 seconds, up to 15%.
- Control: For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, you deal +4.2% increased damage to Crowd Controlled targets. Additionally, you deal 10% increased damage to Slowed or Chilled enemies or, instead, deal 20% increased damage to Stunned or Frozen enemies.
- Destruction: For every 5 Dexterity purchased within range, Core Skills deal 2.4% increased Critical Strike Damage. Additionally, Critical Strikes increase all damage the enemy takes from you by 2% for 10 seconds, up to 12%.
- Electrocute: Paragon Nodes within range gain +18% Lightning damage and damage reduction modifiers. Additionally, if you +25 Dexterity within range, your Lightning damage has a 5% increased chance to Critically Strike enemies who are Stunned, Immobilized or Frozen.
- Unleash: Grants +30% bonus to all Magic Nodes within range. Additionally, if you have +40 Intelligence within range, you deal 6.7% increased damage and gain 6.7% increased Mana Regeneration for 3 seconds whenever you spend 50 Mana.
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- Charged, Control and Destruction Rare Glyphs
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- Electrocute and Unleash Rare Glyphs
For your second Paragon Board, you have two main choices for a Lightning Sorcerer: Ceaseless Conduit or Static Surge. The Ceaseless Conduit Legendary Node gives Crackling Energy a 25% chance not to consume a Charge when triggered and increases the damage of Crackling Energy by 2% per 20 total intelligence you have. On the other hand, Static Surge’s Legendary Node makes it so Stunning Close enemies restores 10 Mana.
Seeing as this build is focused on capitalising on Crackling Energy alongside Stun, Ceaseless Conduit is what we’ll be recommending.
Paragon Boards
Aspects
Aspects are a very important part of the Diablo 4 endgame. These slot into armour, weapons and jewellery to modify parts of your existing kit with additional effects, bonuses and more that can wildly change how you play a certain class or build.
For the Crackling Energy Sorcerer, your main focus points for Aspects are going to be Mana Regeneration and Aspects which alter your most used Shock skills. While we have a lot of Mana regen sources already, you’ll run through Mana very quickly and you may find yourself upstream pretty quickly because of it. You’ll also want to invest in at least one defensive Aspect but you don’t really want one that limits your movement or agility, which are defining parts of this build. If you find the right Aspects and Affixes, the Crackling Energy Sorcerer can become one of the strongest builds in the game with near-constant uptime on all your abilities.
Here are the main Aspects to keep an eye out for in Diablo IV for the Lightning Sorcerer:
- Charged Aspect: Collecting Crackling Energy increases your Movement Speed by 10% for 4 seconds. (Maddux Watch, Scosglen)
- Recharging Aspect: Each time Chain Lightning bounces off you gain 4 Mana. (Zenith, Fractured Peaks)
- Aspect of Efficiency: Casting a Basic Skill reduces the Mana cost of your next Core Skill by 10%. (Domhainne Tunnels, Scosglen)
Aside from the 3 listed above, you’ll also want to consider looking into the Aspect of Shared Misery and the Aspect of Disobedience. Shared Misery is a trap-based Aspect which gives you a 30% chance to spread Crowd Control conditions to surrounding enemies when you Lucky Hit. This Aspect works excellently with Stun (which is considered Crowd Control), letting you immobilise waves of enemies in the blink of an eye whenever you use a cooldown like Teleport, thanks to the Arc Lash Enchantment. Then, the Aspect of Disobedience is the best defensive Aspect for this build, increasing your Armour by 0.25% whenever you deal any kind of damage – Skills, Crackling Energy, etc. – up to 25%, letting you stay mobile while reaping the benefits of higher defences.
Lightning Sorcerer Aspects
How to Play the Crackling Energy Sorcerer in Diablo IV
Key Rotations
Here’s how you should aim to perform in most battles in Diablo 4 with the Crackling Energy Sorcerer:
- If you have it, pop Unstable Current at the start of any fight to make things go much faster and much smoother.
- Begin any actual encounter by using Teleport to dash into large groups and deal big Shock damage. This will also generate a Barrier for you.
- From here, spam Ball Lightning and Chain Lightning (preferably at a 1:2 ratio) to spawn plenty of Crackling Energy orbs while still dealing very high damage.
- Once you run out of Mana, use Lightning Spear to give you some additional damage and another Barrier.
- Use Arc Lash whenever you’re surrounded and low on Mana to Stun enemies and deal good damage.
- At some point, your Teleport should come back off cooldown and you need to use it again to restart the rotation cycle.
- During all of these actions, make sure you keep moving around to grab all the Crackling Energy you create: Teleport, in particular, is invaluable in getting you to large pockets of Energy quickly.
Main Skill Rotation for Lightning Sorcerer
We’ve mentioned this a lot in this guide but movement and aggression are at the heart of this build. Teleporting into a pack of enemies with a couple of stacks of Crackling Energy is a superb way to begin any encounter: it lets you get into the thick of the action quickly, instantly deals high damage to all those around you (potentially even Stunning them) and starts creating more Crackling Energy to use later in the fight. From there, use your more deadly Mana-cost abilities with the thin herds and take out enemies in a flash, with Arc Lash serving as a great backup tool as you run around the battlefield, avoiding foes and collecting Energy for another sweep.
Against Elites, your mobility becomes even more of a star. Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning will be consistent ways of generating Crackling Energy of larger targets, whereas Teleport will let you zip around them, avoiding their deadliest attacks and luring them around the field at your leisure. In both of these scenarios, having Unstable Currents active will only make things go smoother. If you play smart while remaining on full-frontal assault, even most Elites won’t be able to challenge you and your lightning.
Stun is Very Good
Boss Fights
Boss fights should be handled with the same mindset as Elites. Your goal in every fight is going to be weaving around enemy attacks, sneaking in high-damage bolts of lightning wherever you can. Chain Lightning is particularly excellent in these scenarios as you won’t be losing out on a lot of potential DPS thanks to how it can bounce between you and the target. This allows you to continually deal high damage while on the move and have a continuous source of Crackling Energy throughout the majority of solo boss fights.
Compared to some other Sorcerer builds you’ll be dealing good levels for the entire fight. You don’t have to wait for a stagger or to trigger a Burn before damage starts ramping up, making Lightning Sorcerers one of the best for speed-clearing Nightmare Dungeons and other pieces of endgame content. The trade-off is that you need to be much more aware of your abilities and how to optimally use them: if you’re just spamming attacks and hoping for the best, you’ll still succeed but at a much slower pace. Learn your rotations and how to dance from one ability to the other. Between all your Mana regen sources, Cooldown reduction passives and high damage abilities, you have plenty to build off and utilise to the fullest.
One thing about boss fights is that you’ll likely see fewer Crackling Energy pickups than normal. A lot of your Energy sources rely on hitting a lot of targets or off of Lucky Hits to spawn: as such, the more targets you have, the more opportunities you have for Energy. That isn’t to say that you won’t get any Crackling Energy – Chain Lighting and Ball Lightning will both be quite consistent in that area – but you do have to be aware that you’ll have access to much less than you may be used to. Compensate for that by focusing on mobility, and staying close to the boss so you can squeeze out every bit of mileage from your available charges.
Let Lightning Rain
That was how to build a Crackling Energy endgame Lightning Sorcerer or Sorceress in Diablo IV.
