Welcome to the Meteor Sorcerer Endgame Guide! So, you woke up today and were like, "I want to be a Meteor." Completely relatable - we've all had those days. Regrettably, our current technology does not support this sort of wild and drastic (but admirable) lifestyle transformation, so perhaps vicariously existing as one through the incantations of the Meteor Sorcerer can help fill that void.
The goal of the Meteor Sorcerer is to rain fiery impending doom and destruction on anything in its path, and to look good doing it. While it is currently not the strongest skill the Sorcerer has at its disposal, Meteor is more than capable of doing all endgame content with its above average base skill damage and more importantly, its stylish visuals. Something about a flaming boulder (it's not just a boulder...) plummeting to Earth and delivering an explosion of Fire, Ice, and Death in its wake is just too hard to pass up. If you agree, then enable the screen shake option in your game settings because Meteor is for you. And if you're lucky, maybe in time, Meteor is you.
This build guide assumesyou have a Level 50 Character and finished the Campaign. Level up with our Firewall Sorcerer Leveling Guide. If you are looking for a different Sorcerer playstyle, check out all of our Sorcerer Guides.
DifficultyEasy
SpeedfarmingPoor
The PitWeak
BossingTerrible
DefenseAverage
Season 5 - Infernal Hordes
In Season 5, the Season Theme brings your hero back into the bowels of Hell, in the Infernal Hordes endgame activity. You're first introduced to Hellbreach Dungeons, miniature Horde-like micro-dungeons that teach you the new mechanics and rewards systems. As you slay more powerful Demons and Bosses, you're rewarded with the new Reputation progression that comes with amazing rewards. These include Crafting Materials, unlocking Season's Journey tiers and even the coveted Resplendent Spark, needed to craft a mythic unique.
Follow the seasonal questline until you unlock the Reputation system, check which rewards suit you most and then follow your regular leveling path. To learn more, check out our full Season 5 guide for more information.
Skill Tree & Gameplay
- Meteor is our primary source of damage. We take Wizard's Meteor to apply Immobilize and boost its damage significantly via the Devouring Blaze passive. Generally, casting it once is enough to kill most non-Boss enemies you just need to wait for all Meteors to land.
- Ice Armor provides a Barrier, which grants us some extra defense. More importantly, it gives us uptime on certain offensive Aspects such as Conceited.
- Flame Shield for tougher fights and to break crowd control, as well as heal up. This is also our panic button when things get too spicy.
- Ice Blades give us some extra Cooldown Reduction and can be very useful to activate Protection with its short cooldown. Use it whenever it's ready and you have nothing better to do.
- Teleport for mobility and a nice defense boost after use. It can also break us out of crowd control.
- Lightning Spear is our main source of Vulnerable and it also helps us stay alive by Stunning enemies before they can attack.
- Frost Bolt is not used but we must put points into something to progress in the skill tree.
In its final form this build runs six cooldown skills. Four of them: Lightning Spear, Ice Blades, Ice Armor, and Flame Shield you can just mindlessly spam all the time. The other 2 you use according to the situation: Meteor to kill or Teleport to go next.
Enchantment Slots
Meteor Sorcerer has some flexibility when it comes to its Enchantment slots. For the purpose of this guide, the recommended ones are:
- Meteor Enchantment simply adds damage by increasing the amount of Meteors we can produce. It's not huge because its proc chance is somewhat low, but hey, damage is damage!
- Ice Blades. With our 6 cooldown skills we can get out quite a few blades from this enchantment, letting us spam our skills even harder. This becomes especially important while fighting Bosses because we need to cast Meteor as often as possible. On top of that we get some Vulnerable application and extra damage via Conjuration Mastery.
For speedfarming we use Teleport instead of Meteor because we need to go fast and the damage is already good enough.
Learn more details and how to unlock this class specification in our full Sorcerer Enchantment Slots Guide.
Resource & Cooldown Management
Before we find a good Starfall Coronet we must spend Mana to cast Meteor. Fortunately, most enemies die after 2-3 casts so we don't have to spam it all that much. With some Mana Per Second and Resource Cost Reduction rolls, as well as Supreme Inferno we can afford to cast quite a few Meteors. In the early game we can also get Fiery Surge and Prodigy’s Aspect.
After we switch to Starfall Coronet, cooldowns become our main priority, but even early on CDR should not be overlooked to have constant access to our important spells such as Ice Armor and Teleport. Without them, the build will feel clunky and substantially weaker. In the late game you should become a real CDR fanatic (if you weren't already):
- Rolls on items. On every slot that can roll CDR it always has the highest priority for being a Greater Affix and for Masterworking crits. The only exception is the Amulet where you gain more damage by masterworking a passive.
- Amulet: 15.6%
- Focus: 21.6%
- Starfall Coronet: 15.6%
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop: 21.6%
- TOTAL: 56.2% Cooldown Reduciton
- Summoned Ice Blades with Ice Blades Enchantment adds a bit of CDR to all skills. It generally doesn't do much because blades need to first make an enemy Vulnerable and then hit it a bunch and by that time it's most likely dead. However it's very useful against Bosses and that's precisely when we need to cast Meteor as much as possible.
- Attack Speed doesn't make you cast more Meteors because they are limited by cooldown but it does make your Ice Blades hit faster, meaning more CDR. Unlike other builds that benefit from Attack Speed directly we don't care about it too much but still pick it up when we can.
Paragon Board
Carefully check your Paragon Boards to ensure correct board rotation. Glyphs go from a radius of 3 to 4 when they reach level 15!
Level the Paragon Board by scrolling. Each step optimizes progression.
Glyphs
We need to level up our Glyphs to activate their Additional Bonus with surrounding nodes. For some Glyphs, we max our bonuses by allocating every relevant node in range, while on others we take the minimum required for the Additional Bonus only. Because Glyphs at level 15 increase their radius, we need to prioritize leveling them by completing Nightmare Dungeons. After that, we prioritize leveling our strongest glyphs to level 21.
Note that there are some Glyph position swaps and a few adjustments to surrounding Paragon nodes once they reach level 15. See the first three steps in the Paragon progression above for details. The setup displayed by default is the final version of the build.
Glyph Leveling Priorities
Level 15
- Adept
- Tactician
- Pyromaniac
- Destruction
- Exploit
- Flamefeeder
- Elementalist
Level 21
- Destruction
- Adept
- Flamefeeder
- Exploit
- Pyromaniac
- Tactician
- Elementalist
Also check out our dedicated in-depth guides to learn more about Paragon Boards and Glyphs.
Endgame Gear & Skill Progression
When you start diving into the Endgame, you don't have all the tools available to achieve the final build versions. Let us guide you through different progression points to give you a smooth transition from our Leveling Guides to the final build version.
Progression Goals
Many of our Skill choices depend on what Legendary Aspects and Unique items are available to us. While we can guarantee that everyone has access to the same Codex of Power Aspects, the progression might be different for everyone!
- Unlock the following Aspects in your Codex of Power:
- Prodigy’s in Witchwater (Hawezar)
- Control in Sunken Library (Kehjistan)
- Incendiary in Tomb of the Saints (Kehjistan)
- Three Curses in Serpent's Lair (Hawezar)
- Disobedience in Halls of the Damned (Kehjistan)
- Storm Swell in Onyx Hold (Dry Steppes)
- Bounding Conduit in Komdor Temple (Dry Steppes)
- Snowveiled in Sarat's Lair (Scosglen)
- Find the following Legendary Aspects either as a random drop or by gambling with Obols:
- Conceited: Gamble Focuses
- Shattered Stars: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Control.
- Shredding Blades: Gamble Focuses
- Replaces Incendiary.
- Orange Herald: Gamble Boots
- Concussive Strikes: Gamble Boots
- Replaces Disobedience
- Starlight: Gamble Rings
- Replaces Prodigy’s
- Acquire the following Unique items either as a random drop or by farming specific Boss drops.
- Starfall Coronet (The Beast in Ice)
- Replaces Orange Herald
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (Varshan)
- Replaces Starlight
- Tibault's Will (Duriel, Andariel)
- Replaces Bounding Conduit
- Starfall Coronet (The Beast in Ice)
- If you're lucky enough to obtain the following Mythic Uniques, they're useful for the build.
- Tyrael's Might is incredibly powerful defensive chest.
Learn more details and how to farm Legendary Aspects and Uniques in our General Farming Guide.
Progression Steps
Follow the build's gearing progression from level 50 to 100, including the changes that need to be made as you obtain Legendary Aspects and Uniques.
Starter
Leveling to 100
Endgame & The Pit
Speedfarming
Once you have completed the leveling guide, only the Codex of Power Aspects are guaranteed. With this setup you can farm the Legendary Aspects and Unique items you need for the next progression point.
Gear
Helm, Pants, Armor
- Disobedience
- Snowveiled
Gloves, Off-Hand
- Three Curses
- Control
Boots
- Bounding Conduit
Amulet
- Storm Swell
Rings
- Prodigy’s
- Incendiary
With this, we have a functional build that can be used to farm better versions of our existing gear as well as fill in some missing pieces. Don't worry if it feels a little clunky at first - we are using the bare minimum here and this will fix itself in time.
Skills
Our build is quite different from the endgame version since we need Mana instead of Cooldown Reduction to spam Meteors. We get Inferno and replace Ice Blades with Frost Nova. We also pick up some Mana-related passives such as Fiery Surge and Mana Shield.
Enchantment Slots
Since we don't use need CDR from Ice Blades yet, we get Teleport for extra mobility.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects, allowing you to pilot a much stronger version of this build. Additional Legendary Aspects are used to fill slots that may be replaced with Unique items later on.
Gear
Before we find any Uniques, there's 3 non-dungeon aspects we want to use:
- Conceited
- Shattered Stars
- Shredding Blades
- Orange Herald
- Concussive Strikes
- Starlight
Skills
With better gear we can make some minor adjustment to skill tree:
- Remove points from Fiery Surge to get more ranks in Potent Warding if you have enough Mana.
In this setup, you have access to all Legendary Aspects and Unique items, unleashing the strongest version of this build. Be prepared to grind to access some of these highly sought after items!
Gear
The final version of our build includes 4 Uniques:
- Tibault's Will
- Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop
- Starfall Coronet
The first two are just straight up upgrades and you can use them as soon as you find them, but it doesn't work the same way for Starfall Coronet. This item completely turns our build upside down and you need to be ready before making the switch. That means you need to have Cooldown Reduction in all slots that can have it (at least 40% in total) and your Starfall Coronet roll should be 7 seconds or less. This way you can have Meteor with low enough cooldown to use it all the time.
If you're lucky enough to find Tyrael's Might, just put it on, no adjustments to the build necessary.
Enchantment Slots
We replace Teleport with Ice Blades to lower the cooldowns of our skills.
Skills
We lose Inferno, Frost Nova, and Mana Shield and instead we get Summoned Ice Blades, Invoked Lightning Spear, and Conjuration Mastery. Since we no longer spend Mana, we switch to Mystical Ice Armor upgrade.
The Speedfarming setup makes you more efficient in farming the Open World, Helltide zones, Tree of Whispers, regular Dungeons, and low tier Nightmare Dungeons.
Gear
Flickerstep is a mandatory item for any serious Sorcerer speedfarming build. What makes this item so good is not the stats on it and not even the unique power but the implicit roll that makes your attacks reduce Evade cooldown by 2.5 seconds, which is 1 second more than what you can normally have on Boots. However, that 1 second makes all the difference. With enough CDR, Teleport Ranks, and Enchantment Master we can reach a point where we can Teleport after every attack! Luckily, our build already stacks as much CDR as possible so the only things we need to add are Teleport ranks on the chest and Evade CDR temper on the Amulet.
Skills
If the content is easy enough that you kill it in one Meteor, switch the upgrade to Mage's Meteor to make it fall slightly faster.
Enchantment Slots
Replace Meteor with Teleport to go fast.
Paragon
We unspec some defensive nodes to pick up Enchantment Master.
Hardcore Adjustments
Hardcore requires you to build into more defenses. Here are some tips to successfully navigate this build through potentially dangerous situations:
- Prioritize Maximum Life over Intelligence on your Gear.
- Replace Tibault's Will with Snowveiled or Everliving Pants.
- Replace Flamefeeder or Exploit with Territorial.
- Take Skill Points out of Glass Cannon and put them into Flame Shield.
Check out our dedicated in-depth guide to learn more survival tricks in Hardcore.
Build Scaling & Stat Priorities
Learn about the important build scaling mechanics and stat weights.
Damage
Defense
Cooldown:
- Summoned Ice Blades
- Elemental Attunement.
- Cooldown Reduction rolls on Helmet, Amulet, Unique Rings, and Off-Hand.
- Attack Speed also turns into Cooldown Reduction by making our Ice Blades hit faster.
All our skills have cooldowns, including our main attack, so naturally this is our #1 stat.
Critical Strike Multipliers:
- Esu's Ferocity
- Aspect of Three Curses
- Devouring Blaze
Together these 3 effects result in a much higher Critical Strike Multiplier than the normal 1.5x. This forces us to stack as much Critical Strike Chance as possible.
Lucky Hit Chance:
Lucky Hit Chance gives a very small damage increase via X'Fal's Corroded Signet and Meteor Enchantment (In push version). We get this stat when it doesn't compete with anything important e.g. implicit on Wands.
Barrier:
Barrier offers us some extra defensive protection that scales with our health pool. Ice Armor is our main contributor, with Protection offering us even more when we cast any skill with a Cooldown. Barrier is not only important for us defensively, but also as a means to utilize Storm Swell and Conceited Aspect.
Damage Reduction:
- 30% from Shimmering Teleport.
- ~20% from Safeguard
- ~12% from Smoldering Embers
Through various forms of damage reduction, we keep ourselves... well, alive. We can only play the game when we're alive.
Armor:
- Royal Skull socketed in Amulet and Rings.
- Armor rolls and Total Armor tempers on Chest Armor or Pants.
Another form of damage mitigation, Armor is perhaps the most important as it is not conditional and always in effect. We want to 9,230 to get maximum 85% Physical Damage Reduction.
Resistance:
Resistances reduce incoming Elemental damage by up to 70%. Luckily, as a Sorcerer we don't need to invest much into it since we can reach the cap from just base stats on Jewelry, Paragon, and Potent Warding.
Our Damage Explained article explains how to scale your Offense.
Learn all you need to know to scale Defense with our Defense Explained Article.
Stat Priorities
To enable your build to perform optimally, you need to reach certain Stat "Breakpoints". Some examples are reaching 100% to Critically Strike, or 20 Resource per second. Since there are many values of these stats on different pieces of gear, read the checklist below and refer to the recommended Tempered Affixes and Masterwork Crits ↑. Desirable Greater Affixes will always be the top three recommended Affixes.
Damage Scaling
- 60% Critical Strike Chance
- 50%+ Cooldown Reduction
Defense and Utility
- Armor Capped 9,230
- Resistance Capped 70%
- 17,000+ Life
- Helm: Starfall Coronet (prioritize CDR and Meteor Ranks)
- Otherwise Look For: Orange Herald
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Mana Per Second ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Frost Nova Size
- Chest: Snowveiled
- Intelligence ↑
- Ranks to Teleport ↑
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Warmth
- ⚒️Chance to Freeze/Stun/Slow
- Gloves: Shattered Stars
- Ranks to Core Skills ↑
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Attack Speed
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Mastery/Pyro Crit/Fire Damage
- ⚒️Chance to Freeze/Stun/Slow
- Pants: Tibault's Will (masterwork Maximum Life)
- Otherwise Look For: Concussive Strikes (Bounding Conduit on Boots)
- Intelligence ↑
- Maximum Life ↑
- Armor
- ⚒️Warmth ↑
- ⚒️Frost Nova Size
- Boots: Concussive Strikes
- "Attacks Reduce Evade Cooldown"
- Ranks to Meteor ↑
- Movement Speed
- Armor
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Evade Cooldown Reduction ↑
- ⚒️Chance to Freeze/Stun/Slow
- Amulet: Storm Swell
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Devouring Blaze ↑
- Glass Cannon ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence %
- ⚒️Mastery/Pyro Crit/Fire Damage
- ⚒️Frost Nova CDR
- Ring 1: Tal Rasha's Iridescent Loop (masterwork CDR)
- Otherwise Look For: Starlight
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Resource Cost Reduction ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Mastery/Pyro Crit/Fire Damage ↑
- ⚒️Inferno CDR
- Ring 2: Shredding Blades
- Attack Speed ↑
- Critical Strike Chance ↑
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Mastery/Pyro Crit/Fire Damage ↑
- ⚒️Lightning Spear CDR
- Main Hand: Conceited (Wand)
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- Crit Damage
- Vulnerable Damage
- ⚒️Meteor Size ↑
- ⚒️Mastery/Pyro Crit/Fire Damage ↑
- Off Hand: Three Curses
- Cooldown Reduction ↑
- Critical Strike Chance
- Intelligence
- Maximum Life
- ⚒️Meteor Size ↑
- ⚒️Mastery/Pyro Crit/Fire Damage
This build benefits a lot from the following Consumables:
- Elixirs: Elixir of Advantage II, Elixir of Precision II, Elixir of Fortitude II.
- Incense: Song of the Mountain or Reddamine Buzz.
FAQ & Mechanics
Once a guide is released, many players have questions on why and how we are approaching certain choices. In this section you can find the answers to the questions that have been asked the most.
Why are you neglecting Meteor Enchantment?
Mechanics
Learn all you need to know about how to scale this build in the endgame.
Wizard's Meteor
Summary
The Meteor Sorcerer offers a familiar and fun playstyle that was popularized in previous Diablo games. Fans of this playstyle should be happy to know that it is still more than viable, and only has room to get better from here on. If other builds like Lightning Spear or Fireball aren't your cup of tea, give Meteor a shot - it may very well re-ignite your enjoyment of the class.
Credits
Written by snail
Reviewed by Northwar, DarkHumility
Updated by Northwar
