The Diablo 4 Chain Lightning Sorcerer Build has managed to maintain itself as one of the most powerful and popular builds in the game since its release.

This build uses the powerful Critical Chance building of the Sorcerer’s lightning spells and the ability to bounce off enemies of Chain Lightning to deliver devastating tempest storms throughout Sanctuary. However, to make the best of it, players need to build their class around it.

In this guide, we’ll break down exactly what you need to make Chain Lightning hit like a storm and even give a few tips for players starting their build in Diablo 4.

Best Chain Lightning Sorcerer Build

The best Chain Lighting build for the Sorcerer in Diablo 4 uses Chain Lightning alongside Unstable Currents and several passives to maximize the crit chance and overall damage of the class.

Here are the skills that you will need to equip for the build as well as the best way to distribute your skill points:

• Chain Lightning
• Teleport
• Flame Shield
• Ice Armor
• Frost Nova
• Unstable Currents
• Chain Lightning Enchantment
• Fire Bolt Enchantment

Chain Lightning is one of the most devastating abilities in Diablo 4, and this build allows it to maximize its power in combat.

Best Malignant Hearts for Chain Lightning Build

These are the best Malignant Heart abilities to use for your Sorcerer in Diablo 4 Season of the Malignant:

• Caged Heart of the Barber – Critical Strikes and all subsequent damage within (2-4) seconds is absorbed by your target. Then the absorbed damage erupts onto the surrounding enemies. The power of the stored damage is increased by 11x per second.
• Caged Heart of Tempting Fate – You gain more Critical Strike Damage, but your Non-Critical Strikes deal less damage.
• Caged Heart of Revenge – Surpresses (10-20%) of incoming damage. When the player uses a Defensive, Subterfuge, or a Macabre skill, all suppressed damage is amplified by 250% and explodes, dealing fire damage to nearby enemies.
• Caged Heart of the Prudent Heart – The player becomes Immune for (2-4) seconds after you lose more than 20% of your Life from a single hit. This effect can only soccer once every 100 seconds.

Best Legendary Aspects & Unique Gear for Chain Lightning Build

To take your Sorcerer Chain Lightning Build to the next level as one of the best classes in Diablo 4, you’ll need to add the following Aspects and Unique Gear to your inventory:

• Raiment of the Infinite – After a player uses Teleport, Close enemies are pulled to them and stunned for 3 seconds. However, this also increases Teleport’s Cooldown by 20%.
• Aspect of Retribution – Any Distant enemy has an 8% chance of being stunned for 2 seconds when they hit you. You also deal 10-20% more damage to Stunned enemies.
• Frostblitze Aspect – Frost Nova gains an additional charge, but the cooldown for each charge is increased by 30-40%.
• Aspect of the Unbroken Tether – Chain Lightning has a 30-40% chance to chain 4 additional times.

After you add all these to your inventory, you can focus on rounding out the rest of your build with a few more Legendary Aspects that boost your damage, help mana recovery, or increase your defense.

How to Use Chain Lightning Build in Diablo 4

The most important thing to keep in mind when using the Chain Lightning Build in Diablo 4 is that you need to save your Unstable Currents for when you meet a problematic enemy like an Elite or Boss.

This is because the most significant fault in the build is that to maximize your damage, you need to use Unstable Currents alongside Chain Lightning, but Unstable Currents has a long cool down.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any way to mitigate the cooldown time for this ability, so we recommend saving it for when you find a challenging enemy.

Frost Nova will help players inflict Vulnerable on enemies so that the damage of your abilities increases. In contrast, the rest of your abilities will help you survive the carnage that is World Tier 4.

You can see the build-in action in the video below, but please note that following Patch 1.1.1. this build received several buffs that boosted its performance:

Best Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Build

If you still haven’t reached the endgame content in Diablo 4 but want to get a feel for the Chain Lightning build, then this Sorcerer Leveling Build is perfect for you.

• Arc Slash
• Chain Lightning
• Frost Nova
• Teleport
• Ice Shield
• Unstable Currents
• Enchantment 1: Chain Lightning
• Enchantment 2: Fire Bolt Enchantment

After you’ve equipped the right skills, you’ll need to distribute your skill points in the following way:

Players can start using this build as soon as they obtain skill points. The only thing they need to make sure is to get the abilities in proper order.

When you start leveling up the Chain Lightning Build in Diablo 4, you’ll use the Arc Lash and Chain Lightning as your main damage dealers. This is why it’s essential to spend your first few skill points getting both of these for your Sorcerer.

For the rest of the abilities, here is the order in which you should obtain each skill as you level up:

1. Arc Lash
2. Chain Lightning
3. Teleport
4. Ice Armor
5. Frost Nova
6. Chain Lightning Enchantment – Level 15
7. Unstable Currents
8. Fire Bolt
9. Fire Bolt Enchantment – Level 30
10. Vyr’s Mastery

By the time you have 35 skill points available, you should already have at least one point in each of these abilities.

Once you reach level 50, you should transition to the best Chain Lighting Build in Diablo 4.