We are seeing some classic Diablo skills remain in play with the Sorceress, one being Hydra, a classic player favorite. This is a flexible build with different options, good for clearing trash and single targets in solo or group play.
Note: I will not cover items in this guide, this is just a simple skill build to get you started in the Open Beta.
Basic Skill
For our basic skill we are taking Fire Bolt. A lot of this build relies upon burning damage, and burning damage is quite powerful in the early game of Diablo IV. Once your enemy is set on fire it will continue to burn after your attack is finished. This is very effective for conserving our mana!
The next skill to take in the tree is Enhanced Fire Bolt. This will allow our Fire Bolt is pierce through any enemies that are burning, which will be everyone we hit. Remember, you want to hit as many enemies as you can to make them burn.
You have a choice to make at the split and I recommend taking Glinting Firebolt. Glinting Fire Bolt increases the burning damage you deal to the enemy by 20% for 4 seconds. If you are conservative about your mana you will not need the extra 2 mana that Flickering Fire Bolt generates.
Core Skills
Core skills for this build are pretty flexible. This is where you can play around with the build and see what you enjoy playing, just make sure it’s still fire. As we are using Hydra, Core Skills are used while the Hydras are doing their thing. My skill of choice was Incinerate.
Incinerate is a pyromancy skill that is channeled, costing 20 mana per second. This skill inflicts burning damage, keeping up with the theme of the build. I noticed that Incinerate was a pretty devastating attack with the burning damage always finishing off enemies. Make sure to use it conservatively, you don’t want to run out of mana.
The next skill to take is Enhanced Incinerate. This skill causes you to burn enemies around you for 15% of the Incinerate damage per second. Again, anything to contribute to the burn.
An option to sink a point in for more survivability at this point would be Potent Warding. This grants you 2% resistance to all elements and an additional 1% of whatever element your core skill is (in this case it is fire).
Defensive Skills
There are two main skills we want to focus on in the Defensive Skills area: Teleport and Flame Shield.
Flame Shield is a new defensive skill for Diablo 4. It grants us Immunity while active. Immunity is incredibly powerful, preventing characters from being damage and all negative effects are removed and prevented. I preferred to take this over any other defensive skill, as this is the only one granting Immunity.
Take Enhanced Flame Shield for a 25% movement speed buff, something that is always nice in party play.
Add a point into teleport, which is the usual play for any sorceress build. Just remember that annoying cooldown from Diablo 3 is still in place. We don’t know yet if there is a item that will negate this or not.
You can take the skill behind Teleport to give you cooldown per hit, but I found it a waste of a point. Reason being I use teleport to move mob to mob, I wasn’t hitting any monsters, making that point useless.
Conjuration Skills
Conjuration skills are a new classification of skills in Diablo 4. They include skills like Hydra, Ice Blades, and Lightning Spear. For this step we will take Hydra, and this will be our main damage dealer.
Hydra is a pyromancy skill and has a limit of 2 active Hydras at a time. You want to cast two Hydras and then move around using Core Skills while the Hydras melt everything around. I maxed this skill out with 5 points.
Take Enhanced Hydra to gain one additional head. Remember, “Healthy” is a thing now. Healthy is defined as your characters health over 80%.
Summoned Hydra is my recommendation to add burning damage. Hydras do not naturally cause burning damage until this has been taken. All of the burning damage stacks together to make quick kills. Notice when you do damage with fire, the monster health bar will turn dark red and health will continue to lower, while his body turns charred in appearance.
Mastery Skills
I sunk a point into all the Pyromancy mastery skills seen above. This increases the damage of your Pyromancy skills, which is literally everything we are using. Feel free to experiment with this area, remember you can respec for gold!
The rest of the build is totally up to you. The main damage dealer here is Hydra and the burning damage provided by the other skills.
