In this guide, I’ll be showcasing another unique build we tested in Season 4 PTR, which is the powerful Frozen Orb Sorcerer with Fractured Winterglass unique Amulet at its core. This is an incredible endgame build that combines Frozen Orb with a spell, creating an effect that can easily reach high levels and permanently freeze enemies.
It’s no problem with Pit of Artificers endgame newly introduced in Season 4. Personally, Pit Tier 159 was the highest we could open with this build at the time. So, at least with the scaling we have on PTR, getting all the way to Pit Tier 200 is pretty easy. So it’s safe to say this is one of the best builds out there, especially for a Sorcerer.
How Does It Work?
How it works is that Fractured Winterglass gives it a chance to spawn any random Conjuration whenever you cast Frozen Orb. So Ice Blades, Lightning Spear or Hydra and those Conjurations will spawn and throw their own Frozen Orbs. These Orbs can move back and forth and explode around like you know.
Basically, you’ll see about 20 Frozen Orbs exploding all the time. What’s more, if you have Aspect of Frozen Orbit, it can also cause Frozen Orbs to explode three times.
What this means is that you actually have a lot of Lucky Hit triggers, you have a lot of opportunities to trigger those Conjurations summon spawns, and you have Lightning Spears flying around all the time to deal a lot of damage.
Additionally, Frozen Orb synergize well with Conjuration Mastery Passive, providing additional damage and mana regeneration. So the more Conjurations you have, the more these scales up, the more you can spam everything. So it all synergize with each other in a really crazy way, making this build powerful.
Fractured Winterglass
You might feel that with the build going roughly the way I’ve shown it, it might be a little weak. Since our goal in Season 4 is to get into Pit Tier 200, the bar is a little higher, but the unique Fractured Winterglass will definitely help you get there.
This is one of the new Diablo 4 items dropped by Lord Zir in World Tier 4. It gives you a 35-50% chance of generating random Conjuration when casting Frozen Orb Explosion. If Lucky Hits, your Conjurations have a whopping 70-100% chance of launching Frozen Orbs at nearby enemies. Before getting Fractured Winterglass, Frozen Orb Sorcerer dealt mediocre damage and struggled to maintain mana.
While this build will still work on the starting Sorcerer, we strongly recommend switching to Chain Lightning Sorcerer build before you get Fractured Winterglass. Because Frozen Orbs deplete resources quickly, starting at a whopping 40 mana, and requiring specific equipment to maintain mana to continuously cast Frozen Orbs.
Pros And Cons
They’ve buffed Frozen Orbs quite a bit since I played it in Season 1. As I mentioned, this is pretty good, especially for leveling. When you're not looking for truly high-end content, and you don't have to fight millions of monsters like a boss, Frozen Orb Sorcerer is always the best choice.
But like I mentioned before, Aspect of Frozen Orbit has great synergy with Frozen Orbs, so you have to find it at least once. This will change your settings for more Conjurations.
And in Season 4, you can now choose where to detonate Frozen Orbs. When you play the game using your mouse and keyboard, it moves to your cursor. I think when you play with the controller, it just goes to your target or, like, a random set distance.
So it’s not like there was always a fixed long range where you had to constantly reposition yourself to really cast accurately. If you want, you can even stand on top of your enemies and throw Frozen Orbs into their faces. This also makes using it easier and better. Because you are guaranteed to always explode on the target, and the radius is very large.
But I have to say, I think this build will last a long time against all of these bosses. Therefore, boss battles are definitely a weakness of Frozen Orbs. But don’t worry, you can increase boss damage by optimizing settings. Once you are fully equipped, you can enter Pit Tier 200 and even clear speed will be fast.
Paragon Board Explained
We can also take a quick look at Paragon Board. We have six boards, six glyphs, and one or two very influential legendary nodes.
First, Icefall causes you to deal extra damage to vulnerable enemies. Additionally, we have Frigid Fate here, which also deals extra damage to vulnerable targets based on your cold damage. This number may seem a bit low, but you can actually Temper the cold damage, or non-physical damage, to maximize the effect of this Frigid Fate board.
There are also Paragon nodes that are basically just for stacking a lot of defenses. So we have a lot of life and similar damage reduction here, such as Damage Reduction from Vulnerable, Damage Reduction from Burning, Damage Reduction from Chilled. Because we need to be as tanky as possible to ensure we can survive the high-end content in Pit and those Uber bosses.
The rest is just like you know, grab some really important stuff like damage modifiers like Winter Glyph, and Destruction Glyph which can crit scale. Additionally, there’s a Conjurer Glyph here that increases their duration, so you have a really nice damage bonus.
All in all, this Frozen Orb build is a powerful and fun build for Sorcerer in Diablo 4 Season 4. But anyway, we still need to wait for the final patch notes. Let’s wait and see!
