Ball Lightning Sorcerer Guide (Season 3)

Season 3

Endgame

Slay everything with a maelstrom of electrically-charged lightning balls! In Season 3, the Ball Lightning Sorcerer is one of the strongest builds in all of Diablo 4. This build setup will enable you to utterly annihilate Nightmare dungeons, wreck bosses, and even destroy Uber Lilith in seconds if you're fully optimized! What's even better is that this build has some of the best mobility in the game - you can teleport from place to place extremely quickly and wreck everything in your path.

It's important to note also that this is a "glass cannon" version of Ball Lightning, prioritizing damage over survivability. If you wish to build more defensively, you could drop Raiment of the Infinite , Tibault's Will , and/or the Godslayer Crown in favor of more resistance or damage reduction, but doing that is unnecessary unless you want to push 100 Nightmare Dungeons and you would lose out on some offensive power by doing so.

This is super resource-intensive, and you will not be able to keep multiple Ball Lightning orbs going until you get the build-enabling aspects and Uniques. For this reason, most people choose to level with the Arc Lash generator until you have enough resources to drop it altogether in favor of Flame Shield. Getting to that point can be tricky, and you're still powerful with Arc Lash, so don't despair when using it through the leveling process. The Ball Lightning Sorcerer build also requires putting your two mandatory Basic Skill points in Fire Bolt so it can be enchanted for added Burning Damage.

Main Skill

• Ball Lightning - this is our main skill that deals the majority of our damage. It doesn't do a lot of damage in a single hit, but hits in rapid successsion with great results. Thanks to the Gravitational Aspect we can carry our Ball Lightning around to smack enemies with it.

Defense

• Ice Armor - An amazing defensive Ability that can protect us with barrier and increased resource regeneration when active.

• Flame Shield - Get out of jail free ability that completely protects our Sorcerer from any damage. Should be used in any tricky situations to ensure survival.

Utility

• Ice Blades - A Conjuration Skill that is only used to get the bonus from the unique ring, Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop , since it provides a source of cold damage. Use for damage increase when required.

Mobility

• Teleport - One of the best Mobility abilities in the game. Can pull the enemies in thanks to the Raiment of the Infinite and provide 30% Damage Reduction because of the Shimmering Teleport. Should be spammed consistently in all situations.

Ultimate

• Unstable Currents - Excellent Damage amplifier that can provide even more Ball Lightning for us to carry around. Use it when you need more damage.

For an in-depth explanation of the various stone choices, see the detailed video guide from Ronarray:

Offensive

• Gravitational Aspect - This is the BIGGEST build-enabling aspect for Ball Lightning Sorceress Build, which transforms the skill from a single bolt to a stacking orbit, and increases the damage through the roof!

• Conceited Aspect - Amplifies our damage while we have a Barrier, which is almost all the time thanks to Ice Armor !

• Aspect of Control - Everything gets crowd-controlled as part of Ball Lightning Sorceress Build, so this boosts our damage to most enemies!

• Recharging Aspect - Used to boost our resource generation from the enormous amount of Chain Lightning going out via our enchantment.

Defensive

• Aspect of Disobedience - this is the best damage reduction aspect in the game, almost doubles your armor when put in your Amulet, or increases it by 66% in your other slots. It's optimal to use on the amulet slot for better survivability.

Alternative Aspects

• Prodigy's Aspect - An alternative way to keep resource regeneration high. Our cooldowns are used ridiculously frequently, so this serves as a huge Mana battery that allows us to keep the Ball Lightning going.

• Storm Swell Aspect - An great source of damage which can give us bonuses against enemies that we make Vulnerable.

• Ghostwalker Aspect - This is the best aspect for mobility in boots.

• Accelerating Aspect - Can provide a solid damage increase from Attack Speed increase.

• Godslayer Crown - Gives us a great cooldown boost while pulling enemies in and increasing damage to them! Can also Increase single target damage to melt bosses faster.

• Raiment of the Infinite - Pulls enemies together to get slaughtered by our Ball Lightnings after each Teleport, and allows us to kill enemies so quickly we don't have to deal with their affixes and damage. A really strong option for CC and clear speed.

• Flickerstep - Reduces our cooldown for Unstable Currents with every evade - a big damage amplifier!

• Tibault's Will - Provides a damage boost when we are unstoppable, and also triggers the resource generation ability through Teleport / Flame Shield usage. Make sure that you are not Unstoppable at the moment to get the Resource boost.

• Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop - Enables a huge enhancement to our damage, with a 15% (at max) bonus for each of the four elemental damage sources we use, and due to our build interactions we can them all for even more damage.

• Harlequin Crest (Shako) - The best of the best! Increases your survivability, damage, and cooldown and health. +4 to All Skills bonus can boost overall performance significantly. This should replace Godslayer Crown if it drops.

• Esu's Heirloom - A good damage amplifier that works best for single target damage in short fights when you need some burst.

In Season 2 the resistance system was revamped heavily. Now to achieve maximum survivability we will need to cap most if not all of them to a maximum of 70%. This can be done through a variety of options. For Sorcerer Builds we receive a lot of resistances from our paragon boards, but we can add some Royal Diamond in the Jewelry slots to get more if needed. For higher tier nightmare dungeons we will ideally need at least 60%+ to stay alive without any issues and have a smoother gameplay experience overall.

• Chain Lightning - Forms automatically every 100 Mana spent, which is constant in this build since it is very mana hungry, and synergizes with Recharging Aspect to provide a constant resource generator and damage source.

• Fire Bolt - This allows our Ball Lightning to deal additional Burning Damage to trigger effects from the unique ring Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop . It can also open the way to some passives that can work only when enemies are burning.

Our Paragon Boards emphasize the most powerful damage bonuses, including boosts to Crackling Energy , Crowd-Controlled enemies, and Mastery Skills (including Ball Lightning !). We also pick resistances here and there together with other survivability increases if we can.

• Reinforced - Initial Board - provides Non-Physical Damage, Resistance to All Elements, and Intelligence boosts while also giving us 15% Damage Reduction while our Ice Armor is up.

• Territorial - Static Surge Board - Almost all of our damage is to Close targets, including enemies hit by Ball Lightning and Fire Bolt, so this provides a big damage bonus while also giving us some vital damage reduction.

• Exploit - Searing Heat Board - our abilities make all enemies Vulnerable, so this increases our damage to Vulnerable targets while also adding an additional Vulnerable engine.

• Charged - Enchantment Master Board - The Crackling Energy produced by Ball Lightning gives us both more Crackling Energy Damage and more overall bonus damage.

• Control - Ceaseless Conduit Board - In this build we crowd control everything, so the additional stacking damage bonus is extremely helpful.

• Destruction - Burning Instinct Board - even though Critical Strike Damage isn't quite as good as it used to be, it and the increase to all damage is a crucial boost!

• Adept - Elemental Summoner Board - Ball Lightning is a Mastery Still, so this gives us a lot of extra damage and area bonus to our chief source of damage.

Legendary Nodes

• Static Surge - because we are constantly spending Mana, the 10% bonus Mana after Chain Lightning is very helpful to keep our resources high at all times!

We can start engagements with teleport to pull enemies in and stun them, then we spam Ball Lightning until every enemy around has been eliminated. Use Unstable Currents when you encounter tougher enemies that aren't immediately destroyed.

In the meantime we can also use Ice Armor right after Teleport to get some resource generation and overall defense.

Click Flame Shield if we are losing too much health or there are too many enemies around, or in various difficult situation.

For single target like tough Elites or Bosses we will want to use Ice Blades and Unstable Currents at the start of the fight to deal with them quickly - after that just spam Ball Lightning and defensive abilities when necessary.

The Ball Lightning Sorcerer build can perform very well in all types of content due to the amazing damage potential together with strong chain CC that helps to lock enemies before they can do anything.

It also excels at Speed clears due to the frequent usage of Teleport and the ability to pull enemies in to kill them more quickly and efficiently.

This build boasts some of the best single target damage in the game, but can lack the survivability of other builds.

Given all the upsides, the build can be a perfect for all the content in the game including Abattoir of Zir.