I currently play a FO sorc build. But watching lightning spear zoom all over the place got me thinking. How about a build around that and some other lightning skill?
I’m just curious, is it viable to at least do NMD 100, and maybe pit up to 50-60’s? I don’t need amazing, just viable enough to play.
This is my first attempt at a build with Sorc, I’ve always played druid up until this point, for casters anyway.
Thoughts?
Yes, such a build is possible.
One way is to focus on Crackling Energy generation and run the Lightning Spear enchantment. I did that once with Destructive Chain Lightning and it was good enough to do T100 in S2 despite not being particularly optimized.
Another probably better way this season is to run Ball Lightning and aim for 100% uptime or close to it on Unstable Currents (which you could also try to do with a Chain Lightning version, but BL is a stronger skill by far).
Lightning spear enchant/spears all over the place is my favorite thing about sorc in d4. You can certainly make it a build but the spear damage isn’t going to blow you away. That’s why they are mostly used for vuln, stunning and conjuration mastery passive.
As GatheringDrk said, any build that generates lots of cracklings and uses lightning spear enchant can be turned into a spear build. I would not bother with the aspect that can proc two spears with one cast though. This is a waste since you can make a lot with the enchant.
Chain lightning, ball lightning, charged bolts were the usual ways to generate a lot of cracklings. Chain lightning was the biggest producer but as GatheringDrk said, you’d probably be better off using Ball Lightning this season so you have more overall functionality. Not sure where charged bolts are sitting at this season in terms of usefulness.
-I’d make sure to add crowd control duration tempers where possible to keep things stunned longer for your safety.
Any build focusing on any skill can do NMD100 and Pit 60. Those aren’t hard.
Even a crappy skill like Lightning Spear. On paper and in looks Lightning Spear looks great, but it is horrible in almost every way. It has crappy Lucky Hit coefficient, long cooldown, bad enchantment effect, weak damage, and pathetic single target damage. You can proc a ton of it with Unstable Currents, Chain Lightning, and other tricks, and while it’s great at clearing trash mobs, it is horrible against bosses as it keeps swirling around them with a really low attack rate.
You can’t survive with nothing but Lightning Spear in the Pit, as a Conjurer I’ve tried, it does not do enough damage to bosses, you definitely need to augment it with another strategy, or rather it is the second strategy, you need something else as your main single target damage dealer. I’ve gone so far as to do a Chain Lightning Splintering Aspet build to throw 160x Lightning Spears all over the place, the damage was underwhelming.
But if you just want to play a fun build and love Lightning Spear, it can be done. Take Splintering Aspect, the usual multiplier aspects and Tal Rasha, lots of CDR, and Crackling Energy Generator like Chain Lightning, and Elemental Summoner on your Paragon with lots of Non Physical damage. Was actually planning to do a Chain Lightning Lightning Spear Andariel’s Visage build, but Andariel bugged =_=
No, the aspect is important. YOu can proc a ton of spears in many ways, but they will not get the 160x multiplier from the upgrade. You only get that from hardcasting the spear. That’s why there is value to getting the 30x damage on the enchant AND getting two 160x Lightning Spears on top of that.
Yeah even on a lightning spear focused build, I would never use that skill tree choice over the stunning one. Even at 160x with two lil spears, I completely disagree it would be greater than other aspect choices. Just my feelers.
Splintering aspect is a necromancer aspect for bone spear so I got confused but then remembered “splintering energy” is the sorc version, so now I get it.
You know what I mean. I am too lazy to look up the entire name and type it.
For the record, I just finished Tier 81 of the Pit with a straight Lightning Spear build using Summoned Lightning Spear (160x dmg upgrade). No Frozen Orb, no Winterglass, just using an amulet with Conjurer Mastery and Chain Lightning to proc Crackling Energy to feed my Lightning Spears. Build isn’t even optimized and is using my Hydra Build Paragon Board.
The 160x Lightning Spears are great, hitting for 1M when cast at the right moment. The army of other little lightning spears do fine but the 160x ones are nicer.
I probably can’t push much higher as the build is really weak, just crappy skill all around, but sleepy will continue trying to push tomorrow.
Why not though? Every sorc uses 25% inc damage while having a barrier. This also gives you the same amount of multiplicative lightning damage on top of 2 spears w/ 1 cast.
Have you considered arc lash as your primary “right click” and then focusing on CDR to spam your ult to constantly generate ball ightnings with CE generation upgrade (on top of chain light of course)? The ult poops out a ton of CE this way, as well as extra spears.
Also, does global crit multi from destruction glyph also apply to conjurations?
It gives you a lot more than Conceited Aspect. Conceited Aspect is just 25%x. Summoned Lightning SPear is 160%x dmg. On top of the 25% increase on all lightning skill damage, though just for three seconds. It’s well worth it. Do note though that it is very different from Conceited, because Conceited gives you 25%x damage to everything, which is very valuable, for as long as you have a Barrier, and Sorc always has a barrier. The Splintering Aspect is limited to when you cast Lightning Spear, and getting it up to 100% uptime is very hard.
Anyway, my version of the build tops out at around Pit83. It’s just not a good build, lol. But you can try to get it to work if you really love Lightning Spear. I am going back to my Hydra build, and then my second Sorc will be doing a Meteor build. Was supposed to do an Andariel build, but Andariel is bugged so I will switch to Meteor for now.