Diablo 4: Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Guide from crystalsnow's blog

Welcome to the Chain Lightning Sorcerer Leveling Guide! This is pound-for-pound among the best leveling builds for just about any class. We combine the astonishing AOE from Chain Lightning using the high-damage basic skill Arc Lash to destroy our enemies.

We take Frost Nova, Ice Armor, and Teleport as our main defensive skills. Teleport gets us from harm's way, Frost Nova freezes enemies and applies Vulnerable from Mystical Frost Nova, and Ice Armor provides us a nice barrier and mana regeneration from Enhanced Ice Armor. These tools ought to keep you alive while you torment the enemies who are around you with lightning!

One problem this build faces is Unstable Currents, to be more specific, it's a 70-second cooldown. There is no fantastic way to solve this issue with our leveling setup, so only pop Unstable Currents on big Elite packs and Bosses.

Overall this build feels incredible while leveling. In the endgame, you can keep playing the same build with very few changes, or swap to 1 of the many powerful endgame options we now have!

Skills

Arc Lash is an incredible basic skill. It deals very respectable damage and attacks quickly. Flickering Arc Lash allows us to move faster since we can not make use of Glinting Arc Lash because we lack stuns.

Skill Tree & Gameplay

Getting Started (Levels 2-7, 6 Skill Points)

We begin with Arc Lash for its incredible AOE damage. At early levels, we use the Flickering Arc Lash upgrade because Cooldown Reduction doesn't become important until later. At level 4 we get Chain Lightning and also the fun begins. Grab Enhanced Chain Lightning and Greater Chain Lightning to improve your Critical Strike Chance and single target DPS.

Level 2: Arc Lash

Level 3: Enhanced Arc Lash

Level 4: Chain Lightning

Level 5: Enhanced Chain Lightning

Level 6: Greater Chain Lightning

Level 7: Flickering Arc Lash

Adding Defense, Damage & an Enchantment (Levels 8-18, 11 Skill Points)

After investing 6 skill points we access the Defensive skill cluster. Here we instantly get Teleport, Ice Armor, and Frost Nova. These are our main utility spells and they'll stay with us before the very end. We also max our two damaging skills: Chain Lightning and Arc Lash.

For the very first enchantment slot, we take Chain Lightning which provides us a free cast for every three times we throw it. This allows us to on boss fights, which is the only stuff that can survive our damage at this time. Other Sorcerer builds may choose to take the Fireball enchantment for additional AOE, but since we now have level 5 Chain Lightning and already master AOE clearing, you no longer need it here.

If you want to skip farming or leveling, you can take a quick look at our diablo 4 items for sale and d4 items!