Lightning Sorceress Build Skills for Diablo 2 Resurrected

1. 20 points to Lightning — max first, required
2. 20 points to Chain Lightning — max after Lightning, required
3. 20 points to Lightning Mastery — max after Chain Lightning, required
4. 20 points to Charged Bolt — max after Lightning Mastery, required
5. 20 points to Nova — max after Charged Bolt, required
6. 1 points to Teleport — skill right at level 18, required
7. 1+ points to Thunder Storm — can be useful for extra points at the end, optional
8. 1 points to Warmth — invested once a higher level with a lot of plus to skills, optional
9. 1 points to Frozen Armor — helpful in freezing monsters that hit you so you can get away, optional
10. X points to Energy Shield — if you wish to build for Energy Shield you can place points here if you have spare, otherwise none, optional

The Lightning Sorceress is likely the fastest boss farmer and Baal run clearer. She also handles most, if not all, content very well and is comparable to builds like the Hammerdin and Javazon.

She utilizes a combination of Lightning and Chain Lightning depending on how many targets there are to damage. If there are a lot of scattered monsters, Chain Lightning may be preferred to hit them all. Otherwise, you can use Lightning and line up shots that pass between multiple monsters. Lightning is the boss killer skill, doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-50k damage at max build. It should be noted that Lightning and Chain Lightning have their own slower animation and have a separate Faster Cast Rate breakpoint table for it.

The Lightning Sorceress is somewhat gear dependent for a Sorceress. She does not become super strong until some important endgame items come into play, like Infinity. Without Infinity, the Lightning Sorceress can feel slow or frustrating to play, and a Cold Sorceress may be preferred for higher baseline damage. But once these important items come into play, the Lightning Sorceress can be extremely quick and do well even with a 200% Faster Cast Rate build (maximum Teleport speed, 7 frames).

A Lightning Sorceress should make good use of Static Field with her endgame items, as -% Enemy Lightning Resistance will increase her Static Field Damage, allowing you to chunk monsters' and especially bosses' health pools extremely quickly. For example, a 200% Faster Cast Rate Lightning Sorceress with an Infinity and Griffon's Eye can reduce Hell Mephisto's Life pool to ~49% of his maximum health in just over half a second (14 frames). However, Static Field is capped to 33% Life in Nightmare and 50% Life in Hell.

It should be noted that the Lightning Sorceress typically builds like a glass cannon, and while she may have good resistances and mobility compared to a Javazon, it is easy to teleport into the wrong spot and die quickly. Sorceresses are squishy after all.

The following section discusses how many attribute points should be allocated to each of the primary stats.

Enough for gear — for a Character using a Spirit Monarch Shield this will be 156 Strength as that is usually the highest Strength requirement for commonly used gear. If choosing to use another shield with lower Strength requirements, then adjust to that value. This number constantly changes based on the equipment you are using, so make sure to double-check the Strength requirements of each piece of gear you have and how much Strength each piece will provide once equipped.

Enough for gear. Dexterity is great for increasing Block Chance but if you are not planning to invest points to max that out, it is often not worth adding any additional points. The little bit of Attack Rating gained per stat point ends up not being worth it most of the time and is better spent on more Life instead.

Everything else into Vitality — 250+ Vitality. Every excess attribute point should be allocated to Vitality, as long as you can meet the Strength requirements of your items by the time you wish to equip them. Not only does this increase your Life total, but it also increases the chance for Health Potions to double the healing provided. On top of that, the more Life you have, the less chance you have to be put into Hit Recovery, helping your character out even more!

Nothing here unless going for an Energy Shield build, in which case everything else here. If running Energy Shield, then Mana becomes your Life pool so increasing that as much as possible is important.