BarricadeTTV's Chain Lighting Sorc Build

Who doesn’t love firing lighting and watching it bounce between huge elite packs for massive damage? Now imagine that but with all sorts of powerful effects activating on hit. BarricadeTTV brings you his Chain Lightning Sorc build that brings massive cc, damage, defensive options and aoe all in one easy-to-use package. Check out BarricadeTTV’s Channel here for a comprehensive overview of the build and click here for a link to his build in our calculator!

The Gear

Barricade takes advantage of some powerful synergies between aspects and item affixes to maximize damage and defensive stats.

• Helmet

  • Exploiter’s Apsect: This aspect grants incrteased crowd control duration, and increased damage against unstoppable enemies. This aspect plays very well with the build as you have access to a ton of cc. Extending it means more time to safely burst enemies, and the bonus damage against unstoppable allows you to melt anything that doesn’t bend the knee when you use abilities with cc.
  • Stat Priority

    • Maximum Mana
    • Maximum Life
    • Cooldown reduction
    • All Stats

• Chest

  • Unique: Raiment of the Infinite: This unique is crucial to the build. The ability to pull in enemies and stun when using teleport allows you to jump and in use your full rotation while keeping large packs close together and locked down. This plays well with the massive aoe that the build puts out.
  • Followup Option: Protector Aspect. This is alright if you don’t have Raiment, however, it only really makes up for the defensive benefits or Raiment, you still lose the offensive ability to jump to larger packs pulling everything in and prepping them for huge damage.

• Gauntlets

  • Aspect of Control: This aspect takes advantage of the easy access to cc within the build by enhancing damage to immobilized, stunned, or frozen enemies.
  • Stat Priority

    • + ranks to Chain Lightning
    • Critical Strike Chance
    • Attack Speed
    • Critical Strike damage with lightning

• Pants

  • Aspect of Disobedience: A must-have aspect for just about any build, especially for sorcerers given their inherent squishiness. This aspect increases armor by a percent when damaging enemies.
  • Stat Priority

    • Maximum life
    • Damage reduction
    • Total Armor
    • Damage reduction from burning enemies (nice because of firebolt enchantment)

• Boots

  • Eluding Aspect: Becoming injured while crowd-controlled grants unstoppable. This is an awesome defensive aspect for those moments where you’re cc locked watching your health drain quickly.
  • Stat Priority

    • Mana Cost Reduction
    • Movement Speed
    • + Ranks of Teleport/+ Ranks of Frost Nova
    • Movement Speed After Killing and Elite

• Two-Handed Staff

  • Barricade runs a two-handed staff for increased DPS and the ability to enhance the Unbroken Tether Aspect
  • Unbroken Tether Legendary Aspect: This drops from chapter 3 in the seasonal journey and grants chain lightning a chance to chain two additional times.
  • Stat Priority

    • Intelligence
    • Vulnerable Damage
    • Critical Strike Damage
    • Lightning Critical Strike Damage
  • Slot Saphires For increased critical strike damage to cc’d enemies

• Amulet

  • Elementalist’s Aspect: This provides additional damage by enhancing critical strike chance for abilities cast above 100 mana
  • Stat Priority

    • Cooldown Reduction
    • Mana Cost Reduction
    • + Ranks in All Defensive Skills
    • + Ranks in Elemental Dominance
  • Vicious Heart Tal’Rasha: For each unique element you deal damage with you deal 7.0-12% increased damage for 5-11 seconds. This heart is perfect for this build as you cycle between flame, frost, and lightning.

• Rings

  • Aspect of the Umbral: A very important aspect that synergizes with Elementalist’s Aspect. Aspect of the Umbral restores primary resource when you crown control an enemy. With this build taking advantage of multiple forms of cc this allows for high mana generation and increased damage with Elementalist’s Aspect. Try your best to roll this as high as possible by using obols and farming.
  • Recharging Aspect: Another perfect mana generation aspect this one grants mana for each time chain lightning bounces off the player. (With the recent changes in patch 1.1.1 you can get even more damage with chain lightning and more chances to generate mana making this aspect perform really well).
  • Stat Priority

    • Critical Strike Damage
    • Critical Strike Chance
    • Vulnerable Damage
    • Lightning Damage
    • Maximum Life (if you want to sacrifice damage and push higher tiers)
  • Hearts

    • The Barber: Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage within 2.0-4.0 seconds is absorbed by your target. Then, the absorbed damage erupts onto surrounding enemies. Stored damage is increased by 10% per second. Really great for taking your crit damage and converting it to aoe.
    • The Calculated: After spending 150-200 of your Primary Resource, your next attack Stuns enemies hit for 2 seconds. This heart provides cc when your mana gets low, then getting mana off stun from the previous aspects works great while you wait to use your core skill again.
    • Revenge: 0-20% of incoming damage is instead suppressed. When you use a Defensive, Subterfuge or a Macabre skill, all suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes, dealing up to 1360-2040 Fire damage to Nearby enemies. While this is not listed in the build, consistent suppression of all damage by up to 20% is a formidable option to ensure you can teleport into dangerous situations and pump out damage.

Skills

Below are the key skills passives and enchantments that really make this build work.

• Firebolt

  • Barricade puts one point here solely to gain access to the firebolt enchant to take advantage of damage reduction from burning and Tal’Rasha
• Arc Lash

  • Barricade specs into glinting arc lash for the cooldown reduction when hitting stunned enemies. Paired with the additional cc in this build it allows for quick cooldowns.
• Frozen Orb

  • Barricade specs into greater frozen orb to enhance damage with the frozen orb enchant and to gain a chance to apply vulnerable consistently. Part of what makes this build work so well is that you’re constantly spawning free frozen orbs because of frozen orb enchant.
• Devastation and Elemental Dominance

  • Grants access to additional mana and grants additional damage when casting skills above 50 mana
• Chain Lightning

  • This is the center of the build, Barricade puts 5 points into it and specs into greater chain lightning for the increased damage when bolts bounce off your character, since you’re always trying to teleport in this means you can nuke targets when it matters most.
• Flame Shield

  • One of the best defensive options, Barricade specs into shimmering flame shield for the additional healing.
• Teleport

  • Barricade maxes out this ability and specs for shimmering teleport. When running Raiment of the Infinite teleport becomes and incredibly aggressive aoe focused ability as it applies stun and vacuums packs together, shimmering teleport adds additional damage reduction to make up for the aggressive playstyle with Raiment.
• Frost Nova

  • Mystical frost nova allows for vulnerability and applies significant cc and stagger to regular enemies and bosses
• Key Passive: Vyr’s Mastery

  • Given the way you play the build, constantly teleporting in to stun and use aoe, you want the increased damage to close enemies allowing for a huge payoff when taking this passive.

Paragon

• Starting Board

  • Barricade grabs Elementalist, Elemental balance and Erudite, he then sockets Elementalist into the glyph slot for additional damage when swapping elemental damage.

• Static Surge

  • Barricade grabs Paralyzing, Incapacitate, and Overwhelming for a huge net damage increase to stunned enemies. He then grabs the legendary node for mana restoration, and sockets Control which further amplifies damage to crowd-controlled enemies.

• Burning Instinct (Attached to the left of static surge in the orientation above)

  • Barricade grabs Smoldering Embers and Kindling to enhance damage done to and reduce damage from burning enemies. He slots Flamefeeder for additional damage to burning enemies

• Ceaseless Conduit (Attached to the bottom of Burning instinct in the orientation above)

  • Barricade grabs Galvanic Catalyst and Hunter Killer to enhance crackling energy damage and damage to elites. He slots Destruction which increases critical strike damage and enhances damage dealt to enemies that have been critically struck.

• Enchantment Master (Attached to the left of Ceaseless Conduit in the orientation above)

  • Barricade grabs Elemental Balance, Elementalist, and Ruinous each heavily enhancing all non-physical damage dealt.

• Elemental Summoner (Attached to the top of Static Surge)

  • Barricade makes a quick stop on this board to Reservoir for additional mana and life.

Overall

BarricadeTTV provides an incredibly fun and fast-paced build for Sorcerer players that also takes into consideration the defensive needs of the class. There is nothing more fun than teleporting around the map as you spit out elemental damage of all types including chain lightning and frozen orbs. Make sure to check out BarricadeTTV’s channel here for more awesome Diablo IV content, and click here to see his build in our calculator with precise damage numbers that show you just how strong it is!