This is an Ice Shard Barrier build, which is one of the best builds on Sorcerer. The reason why this build is so good is that it shreds through every content in the game and you don’t need any specific legendaries to make this build work. What you need is only a few aspects.
Since this build is focused on Barriers, this build uses four cooldown skills. Also, because Ice Shards are the key to this build, all of our chosen skills can focus our damage into Ice Shards.
Frost Bolt With Glintering Mod
The first skill we take is Frost Bolt.
We’re speaking all the way into Glinting Frost Bolt for extra Mana Regeneration. At lower levels, Mana Regeneration is going to be very important to upkeep our damage. But the second reason why we take it is that against bosses, this skill has really good stagger against mobs. This is a Mana Regeneration skill and only does slightly less damage than our Clash.
Later in the game, when you have a really good cooldown and Mana Regeneration, you can drop this skill for another skill or an ultimate. But for now, we’re going to keep Frost Bolt.
Ice Shards With Greater Mod
Second, we take another skill called Ice shards.
Much of the credit for this build being so powerful goes to the Ice Shard. It’s our machine gun. Ice Shards release 5 waves and five Ice Shards, which does bonus damage against Frozen enemies. With this build, everything will be frozen. So, you will always be doing 25% more damage.
We’re taking Enhanced Ice Shards, which we can get by using Diablo 4 Gold, so we can ricochet to other targets. Also, we’re taking Greater Ice Shards whilst you have a Barrier active, casts of Ice Shards treat enemies as if they were frozen.
With this one perk, this changes our entire build and makes our build insane. You’re going to have a Barrier up most of the time, meaning that Ice Shards will always be dealing 25% more damage.
Teleport With Shimmering Mod
Next, we take three defensive skills Teleport with the enhanced cooldown reduction and the shimmering part for the extra damage reduction.
This is basically a no-brainer in every Sorcerer build.
Ice Armor With Enhanced Mod
We will also take Ice Armor.
This is a barrier that naturally synergizes with our build. So, we’re going to be taking the Enhanced Ice Armor for extra Mana Regeneration for 6 seconds.
Frost Nova With Mystical Mod
Finally, we have Frost Nova.
With the mystical perk, this makes it one of the only sources of vulnerable on Sorcerer. So, we have to take this to maximize our damage.
Frost Nova is one of the most important skills in this build if you can spam more skill ranks into this skill or get armor that increases the strength or has cooldown reduction. Reducing cooldowns is one of the most important things to make this build work effectively in the higher tiers of the game.
Frost Nova freezes everything around you and makes everything vulnerable, making you pump out way more damage. You can opt to take Flame Shield as your fourth defensive skill. But I find the cooldown is a bit too long. And since we’re always going to have a Barrier, you won’t need Flame Shield.
Ice Blades With Summoned Mod
Ice blades is one of the only other ways of applying vulnerable targets and have a relatively short combo down compared to Flame Shield. So, we take Ice Blades.
Fireball Enchantment For Early Levelling Only
Now, you can have some enchantments.
At level 15, you should spec into Fireball. since this is one of the best enchantments by far early in the game. So, taking Fireball, you’ll get insane area effect damage.
Firebolt Enchantment
Later in the game, you’ll be dropping Fireball and you’ll be picking up Fire Bolt Enchantment instead. With Fire Bolt Enchantment, your direct damage will apply up to an additional 23% burning damage.
Ice Shards Enchantment
Second, you should pick Ice Shards Enchantment. Because the Ice Shards in this enchantment will not only automatically conjure the frozen enemies but also fly directly to the frozen enemies.
And you’ll always have Ice Shards flying around everywhere in frozen targets since you’ll have a barrier all the time.
Protection Passive + Synergy
Now, let’s talk about one of the most important passives for the Sorcerer.
That is Protection: using a cooldown grants 30% of your Maximum Life as a Barrier for 2 seconds. While you have a Barrier active, casts of Ice Shards treat enemies as if they were frozen.
Ice Shards deal 25% extra damage to Frozen enemies and Ice shards will always ricochet off Frozen targets. Ice Shards will also automatically conjure and fly towards Frozen enemies. This means that when you use one of your four cooldown skills and use Ice Shards, Ice Shards will fly everywhere across the screen and blast everything.
Also Read: 5 Tips You Need to Master When Diablo 4 Release Hits
Icy Veil Passive
Another passive though pairs naturally with Protection is Icy Veil.
Icy Veil makes it so that your Barriers have an increased 15% duration. This also means that your skill ice armor, which normally lasts 6 seconds, will now last 7 seconds.
Elemental Attunement Passive
The Elemental Attunement passive will make it so that lucky hit critical strikes have up to 15% chance to reset one of your defensive cooldowns. And this can only happen every 10 seconds.
This means that you’ll also be able to have a defensive skill up more often so that you can apply more Barriers and deal more damage with Ice Shards.
Firebolt Enchantment Passive Synergy
Now, with the enchantment effect that applies burning, there are two passives that synergize with this.
The first we have is Devouring Blaze. You deal 30% increased Critical Strike Damage against burning enemies. And the other is Fiery Surge. Killing a burning enemy increases your Mana regeneration by 30 for three seconds.
This will make it so that we’re dealing more damage and also having increased Mana Regeneration that we are starving in the early to mid stages of the game.
Avalanche Capstone Passive
Finally, with our Capstone Passive, we’re taking Avalanche.
Lucky Hit: Your Frost Skills have up to 10% chance to make your next cast of Ice Shards, consume no Mana and deal 40% increased damage chances doubled against vulnerable enemies.
This will allow us to save more Mana. So, we can spam Ice Shards and deal more damage as well.
Legendary Aspects
Now, let’s talk about some legendary aspects that will really help out this build.
We have Aspect of Piercing Cold, which will make your Ice Shards pierce. This means that your Ice Shards have a higher chance of ricocheting as they’ll hit multiple targets. And this just makes your Ice Shards so much stronger as a skill. You will feel the difference with this legendary aspect.
The other is Aspect of Control, which means that we’ll deal more damage to frozen enemies. We’ll be freezing things all the time with Frost Nova. This damage will always be in effect.
In addition to the above two aspects that I think are more important, I also chose Aspect of the Protector, Aspect of Might, Aspect of the Expectant, Aspect of Disobedience, Wind Striker Aspect, Conceited Aspect, Storm Swell Aspect and Edgemaster’s Aspect. Please see the picture below for details.
Note that most of the legendaries I’ve put in the build are legendaries that you can reliably get from aspect dungeons, not legendaries that you need to find out in the open world. But there are more legendaries, such as Conceited Aspect that combos with Barriers. So, if you get those, that will really make this build take off.
Skill Rotation
The last thing to go through is just the basic skill rotation. It’s very simple. You cycle and you’ll go down skills. I usually teleport into a mob or a boss and use Frost Nova. This will apply freeze and vulnerable for which I can benefit from all of the damage passives. Then, I use Ice Shards and just blast everything down.
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