Recently my Chain Lightning Nuke Sorcerer Build has reached level 83 and can do a million burst damage with Chain Lightning. I don’t think there will be any enormous improvement near level 100.
But I can still do 6 million burst damage per chain at level 98. Each Chain Lightning can deal 30 million damage. It can shoot Elites in Tier 65+ Nightmare Dungeon and kill them instantly when the boss staggers.
So I want to share what I’ve learned during the endgame progression. Hope it helps optimize the damage of your favorite builds. I’ll also suggest some tips at the end of the guide to address the problem of Sorcerer Nuke’s high cooldown. I’ll start with damage basics, with a quick recap.
Level 83 State
The million damage I did a combination of Stun, Freeze, Vulnerable and Immobilize. With all Aspects and Skills, I could achieve about 180,000% damage, including:
- 600% “Damage to” Bucket
- 330% “Crit Damage” Buckets
- 250% “Vulnerable Damage” Buckets
- 170% Intelligence Buckets
Gear Changes
Elementalist’s Loop is one of my additional Diablo 4 Items. It has nearly full value for every damage stat, and they’re all good damage stats. But it has a big problem, which is the lack of Vulnerable Damage.
Assuming we replaced the maximum 24.8% damage to Crowd Control enemies, Vulnerable Damage would be as low as 26.2%. So I put in about 10 million Diablo 4 Gold to re-roll and get it to 63% Vulnerable Damage.
Damage Boost Principal
A simple rule to remember is that it will always increase the damage in the lowest Damage Buckets first. For Sorcerer, the lowest Damage Buckets are Intelligence, Vulnerable Damage and Crit Damage.
So always prioritize Vulnerable Damage on weapons and rings, Crit Chance and Crit Damage on boost rings. Because these categories are “Damage to” Bucket and are additive.
Paragon Board gives a lot of “Damage to” Bucket data, including Glyphs. One note for Rare and Magic Nodes Glyphs is to follow the same rules. And put Glyphs of Vulnerable Damage and Crit Damage on the most dexterous Board, Burning Board and Crackling Energy Board. Because the number of these two Damage Buckets is the lowest.
Level 98 State
Now I’m level 98 with 6 Glyphs, most of them up to level 21. Coupled with some extra Rare and Magic Nodes, we can get further amazing and non-physical damage. I have 764.7% on “Damage to” Bucket.
My “Vulnerable Damage” Bucket has 386.6% when I update my weapons, rings and level up my Tactician Glyph. My “Crit Damage” Bucket has 362.5%.
Also, I got about 180 Intelligence from the progress of Paragon Board Aspects. I replaced Accelerating to Retribution for more efficient mana usage and higher burst damage.
I can further leverage the basic skills to get better support. Finally, gain elemental advantage in skills, another 9% increase. So now I have in total:
- An extra 10% Multiplicative from Flamefeeder Glyph
- An extra 38% Multiplicative from Retribution Aspect
- An extra 30% Multiplicative from Expectant Aspect
- An extra 9% Multiplicative from Elemental Dominance
All of this adds up to 860,000% damage, roughly 5x the damage at level 83. This increases my damage per Chain Lightning from 1.2 million to 6 million. This instantly kills Elites and Bosses in Tier 65+ Nightmare Dungeons.
Also Read: Diablo 4: New Lead In Search For Secret Cow Level! - An Interesting Encounter
Addressing High Cooldown Tips
Before wrapping up the guide, I also want to share a tip for solving the high cooldown issue of this Nuke fighting style. Arc Lash is the savior here, as it reduces the cooldown of stunning enemies with each hit.
For example, hitting 5 enemies will reduce the cooldown of all abilities by 0.75 seconds. This works really well with Raiment Teleport, as it can pull a group of enemies to a single point. And an Arc Lash Slash can easily hit more than 5 enemies. So it can be reduce the cooldown of Teleport Frost Nova and Flame Shield Nuke, and can be used every few seconds.
Ending
But I would only recommend Arc Lash over Spark if your base crit rate is over 35%. Because if it doesn’t crit, it only does about 1/10th the damage. Hopefully, this knowledge helps you improve the damage of your favorite builds in the endgame.
