Sorcerers are Diablo 4's ultimate chameleons with the number of builds they have capable of crushing the RPG's upcoming leaderboards. Last time, it was a lightning build that was so fast it made the game a slideshow, and now it's a build that fills your screen with bouncy fireballs.
Diablo 4 streamer Rob2628 is back with a build that uses the same structure as the Arc Lash build, but ramps up the damage by using Fireball in combination with a Unique pair of gloves.
The Gloves of the Illuminator, which you can find pretty easily, turn your Fireballs into basketballs and cause them to bounce and explode for slightly less damage than usual. With loads of attack speed, you can dump buckets of them out as you jump from room to room with Teleport. Enemies instantly turn into ash with this setup, so you don't even need to worry about having defensive gear on.
There are a few key parts of the setup that make it work:
- Gloves of the Illuminator make Fireballs bounce
- Flickerstep boots lets you spam Teleport and reset your Ultimate skill cooldown
- Tibault's Will leggings give you a huge damage increase and refill your mana when you Teleport
- The Ancient Flame Legendary Aspect (on your amulet) gives you a regular 80% boost to your attack speed
- Fireball enchant passive causes enemies to explode on death
- Teleport enchant passive turns your evade into a second Teleport skill
All you do is spam Fireball as you Teleport through dungeons and occasionally use your Ultimate or defensive shields against tough enemies. You can make tweaks to the setup for bosses or high-level monsters, but Rob's goal was to make it efficient at killing the level 100 enemies we expect to see in the upcoming leaderboard dungeon.
My hunch is that this build will be even better than the Arc Lash one simply because it trades a bit of speed for more consistent AoE damage. Blizzard has said The Gauntlet, the fixed weekly dungeon with leaderboards, will force you to balance clearing out monsters while picking items up to increase your score. You can't just skip to the end if you want to compete for the top ranks.
I've wanted to play a good fire build in Diablo 4 since I played the alpha, but it's never been very good for pushing the hardest endgame dungeons. It turns out lightning builds simply do way more damage. Rob's build shows the exciting potential of an endgame activity where pure damage isn't the goal. All the builds that struggle against bosses could thrive in a speedrun dungeon and I'm eager to see what the other classes have cooking.
Blizzard plans to show off The Gauntlet and its accompanying mid-season balance patch in a stream on Thursday.
