Best Sorcerer builds in Diablo 4 season 5 (2024)

Sorcerers are the magic-slinging wizards of Sanctuary in Diablo 4. But with each element they can harness bringing its own unique effect, it can be easy to get overwhelmed when trying to design a Sorcerer build. That’s where we come in, with our suggestions of the best Sorcerer builds for Diablo 4 season 5.

Sorcerers are capable of harnessing lightning to deal with crowds, ice to keeps the hordes at bay, and fire to burn the demons of hell. But they’re also able to enchant their own spells with unique effects, intricately combining abilities for devastating results.

In this Diablo 4 guide, we’ve gathered and simplified the best Diablo 4 Sorcerer builds for season 5. If you need even more information on item affixes or other more complex ideas, we’ve been sure to link out to the more detailed versions of these builds, as well as where to find their original creators.

Best Sorcerer leveling build in Diablo 4 season 5

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

This build is based off Northwar’s Sorcerer leveling guide at Maxroll.gg, and is purely for leveling: i.e., allocating your 58 skill points between levels 1 and 50. If you want more detailed information about the item affixes you want to look for on your gear, or which other Legendary powers are great for your build, check out the original Maxroll.gg guide.

Best skills for leveling

This Sorcerer build guide is going to see you harness the awesome power of the Firewall Core skill to speed through the leveling process. In this build, you’ll also use Inferno, Teleport, Frost Nova, Flame Shield, and Ice Armor.

Here are the best skills for a Sorcerer leveling build, organized by the exact order you should purchase them in — bearing in mind that some skills require you to allocate a number of skill points in the tree in order to unlock them. As such, you’ll need to unlock new skills before enhancing existing ones:

1. Arc Lash / Enhanced Arc Lash
2. Fireball
3. Glinting Arc Lash
4. Enhanced Fireball / Greater Fireball
5. Flame Shield
6. Teleport
7. Ice Armor / Enhanced Ice Armor
8. Frost Nova / Enhanced Frost Nova / Mystical Frost Nova
9. Glass Cannon (rank 1-3)
10. Firewall / Enhanced Firewall / Mage’s Firewall / Firewall (rank 2-5)
11. Fireball (rank 2)
12. Inferno / Prime Inferno / Supreme Inferno
13. Fiery Surge (rank 1-3)
14. Warmth (rank 1-3)
15. Soulfire (rank 1-3)
16. Combustion
17. Remove one rank of Fireball
18. Devastation
19. Elemental Dominance (rank 1-3)
20. Teleport (rank 2-3) / Enhanced Teleport / Shimmering Teleport
21. Shimmering Ice Armor
22. Frost Nova (rank 2-5)
23. Align the Elements
24. Mana Shield (rank 1-3)
25. Protection (rank 1-3)
26. Inner Flames (rank 1-3)

Best Enchantment setup for leveling

The Enchantment slot is key to a ton of your damage as a Sorcerer. You’ll gain two slots as you level, here’s which spell you want to put in each slot:

• Level 15: Fireball
• Level 30: Firewall

Best Legendary Aspects for Sorcerer leveling build

When you first start your new character, complete these four dungeons first in order to collect their Aspects. Then place them on a piece of gear (ideally jewelry and never weapons). The random drop Aspects are all nice to add to your Codex and your gear if you’re lucky enough to find them on your leveling journey.

• Prodigy’s Aspect (Witchwater, Hawezar)
• Aspect of Disobedience (Halls of the Damned, Kehjistan)
• Aspect of Control (Sunken Library, Kehjistan)
• Storm Swell Aspect (Onyx Hold, Dry Steppes)
• Conceited Aspect (random drop)
• Aspect of Disobedience (random drop)
• Aspect of the Umbral (random drop)

Best Sorcerer endgame build for season 4 — Frozen Orb

Note: This build was designed for season 4, Loot Reborn, and doesn’t take into account any of the upgrades to Uniques that came in season 5. However, this build is still viable if you’re looking to transition out of the leveling build above. We’ll update this section with a season 5 build once the dust settles on the new Diablo 4 update.

This build is based off of Northwar’s Sorcerer endgame guide at MaxRoll.gg, and is a general endgame guide capable of finding success in all activities. This guide assumes that you’re over level 50, have access to all 58 skill points, and are making progress on your Paragon Boards. If you want more detailed information about the item affixes you want to look for on your gear, or why these Legendary powers are great for your build, check out the original MaxRoll guide.

Best skill points for Sorcerer Frozen Orb endgame build

This build utilizes Frozen Orb as its core skill and main means of dealing damage. It also uses Lightning Spear, Unstable Currents, Teleport, Ice Armor, and Flame Shield.

Since you need all 58 points for this build, the order you select these skills in doesn’t matter as long as you have the pre-requisite points in the earlier skill tree tiers. Here is how you should spend your skill points for this build:

• Fire Bolt (rank 1-2)
• Frozen Orb (rank 1-5) / Enhanced Frozen Orb / Greater Frozen Orb
• Devastation
• Elemental Dominance (rank 1-3)
• Flame Shield / Enhanced Flame Shield / Shimmering Flame Shield
• Teleport / Enhanced Teleport / Shimmering Teleport
• Ice Armor / Enhanced Ice Armor / Shimmering Ice Armor
• Glass Cannon (rank 1-3)
• Elemental Attunement
• Ice Blades / Enhanced Ice Blades / Summoned Ice Blades
• Lightning Spear / Enhanced Lightning Spear / Invoked Lightning Spear
• Align the Elements
• Mana Shield (rank 1-3)
• Protection (rank 1-3)
• Conjuration Mastery (rank 1-3)
• Inner Flames
• Devouring Blaze (rank 1-3)
• Unstable Currents / Prime Unstable Currents
• Permafrost (rank 1-3)
• Hoarfrost (rank 1-3)
• Icy Touch (rank 1-3)
• Vyr’s Mastery

Enhancement slots for Sorcerer Frozen Orb build

For this build, you’ll want to use these spells for your two Enchantment Slots:

• Frozen Orb
• Fire Bolt

Legendary Powers and Uniques for Sorcerer Frozen Orb build

To make this build work, you’re going to need powerful Legendary Powers and Unique items to augment your build.

Northwar recommends these Aspects:

• Helm: Godslayer Crown (Unique) or Aspect of Concussive Strikes
• Chest: Everliving Aspect
• Gloves: Aspect of Frozen Orbit
• Pants: Tibault’s Will (Unique) or Aspect of Concentration
• Boots: Esu’s Heirloom (Unique) or Aspect of the Bounding Conduit (dungeon drop)
• Wand: Conceited Aspect
• Focus: Storm Swell Aspect (dungeon drop)
• Amulet: Fractured Winterglass (Unique)
• Ring 1: Tal Rasha’s Iridescent Loop (Unique) or Prodigy’s Aspect (dungeon drop)
• Ring 2: Aspect of Control (dungeon drop)

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of stat priorities, refer to Northwar’s original guide.

Paragon Boards for Sorcerer Frozen Orb build

The Paragon Board system is very complex, and you’ll want to carefully pair your Glyphs with specific boards for your class:

1. Starter Board / Elementalist Glyph
2. Enhancement Master / Reinforced Glyph
3. Icefall / Control Glyph
4. Burning Instinct / Destruction Glyph
5. Ceaseless Conduit / Flamefeeder Glyph
6. Frigid Fate / Tactician Glyph
7. Searing Heat / Exploit Glyph

You should level your Glyphs to 15 in this specific order:

1. Control
2. Elementalist
3. Destruction
4. Flamefeeder
5. Exploit
6. Reinforced
7. Tactician

You can path your own way through the Paragon Boards following these basic guidelines. However, for the best results, follow Northwar’s path exactly.

How to make a great Sorcerer build

Image: Blizzard/Activision via Polygon

Sorcerers are Diablo 4’s pure caster class, and use elemental magic to differentiate from the spells of the Druid and Necromancer. The Sorcerer has six Key Passives, but only three elements, which is what you’ll base your build around:

• Lightning
• Fire
• Ice

Lightning builds utilize Lightning skills to deal with large groups of enemies at once. When making a Lightning build, you’ll end up using the Overflowing Energy Key Passive or the Vyr’s Master Key Passive, depending on if you’re in melee range or not.

Ice builds specialize in slowing enemies down, making it easier to survive their attacks. Ice builds will take advantage of either the Avalanche Key Passive or the Shatter Key Passive, depending on how much your build relies on crowd control

Fire builds are all about big explosions and burning your enemies. For these builds, you’ll typically use either the Combustion Key Passive for burning enemies or the Esu’s Ferocity Key Passive for chunky critical strikes.

When making your own build for a Sorcerer, you’ll likely end up sticking to one element for your main damage sources. But that’s not the most important thing you need to remember. Sorcerers die very, very easily in Diablo 4, and they have the weakest defensive stats by far — however, they can deal a massive amount of damage when built correctly. If you don’t want to end up dead more often than not, make sure to invest heavily in defensive skills while making your way toward one of the six Key Passives we listed above.

Looking for other Diablo 4 builds? We have explainers on the Barbarian, Rogue, Druid, and Necromancer classes.