I am pretty surprised at how good Chain Lightning is in Diablo 4 Season 2. I take down bosses almost 30 levels higher in only 8s. I soloed all Uber Bosses pretty easily, including Duriel that I slayed it without even knowing its mechanics.

With further optimized gear and fully upgraded Vampiric Powers, I chilly beat nightmare dungeon Tier 100 fast at only level 86 multiple times, with no elixir and sometimes no death.

The build has the damage to nuke everything plus the survivability to facetank everything. Be prepared with plenty of Diablo 4 Gold if you want to make such a powerful build.

Key Synergy & Aspects

We use two DPS skills in this build, Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning.

We use Chain Lightning directly on the skill bar to take down both melee and ranged monsters fast for speed farming.

We also use Ball Lightning indirectly for insanely high AOE damage from two sources:

One from the Enchantment Slot where all Critical Hit trigger a static Ball Lightning on the ground at a decent chance, unleashing massive AOE damage. Make sure to get high Crit Chance from gloves and two rings to feel like a Thor.

Another source is from the Ultimate, that every Chain Lightning we cast during the Ultimate will randomly cast Ball Lightnings and melt everything around.

I made the build that it has almost 0 Cooldown Ultimate. We use the Anticipation Vampiric Power to get 20% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction. We use Overflowing Energy that translates Crackling Energy to Cooldown Reduction plus two Crackling Energy generators, one from Destructive Chain Lightning and one from Wizard's Ball Lightning for further Cooldown Reduction.

And I recommend getting one extra Cooldown Reduction Stat on Helmet or Amulet so that it feels like we have 0 Cooldown Ultimate and just use it whenever we want.

But why do we want two indirect sources for Ball Lightning in the build?

This is because Ball Lightning does absolutely insane damage in Season 2. It gets 200% benefit from bonus attack speed and we get tons of bonus attack speed in this build.

We run the Accelerating Aspect on a two-handed weapon for 50% attack speed. The Ultimate adds another 25% attack speed as we have close to 0 Cooldown Ultimate.

Plus, we get another 48% from the Ravenous Vampiric Power. If we have Esu’s Heirloom, we get another 75% movement speed for 3s after using evade. This goes back to another 30% attack speed buff from Ravenous.

And we get another 14% attack speed from gloves. This is already 167% bonus attack speed in total that we more than quadruple the damage of Ball Lightning.

On top of that, we run the Gravitational Aspect to keep the Ball Lightning around us to not waste any Ball Lightning DPS and further improve its damage by another 25% multiplicatively.

As a result, we melt monsters, elites and bosses that are even 70 levels higher than us.

Infinite Mana

We will need infinite mana first to run the build smoothly.

To achieve infinite mana, we will use the Recharging Aspect that we get mana from each Chain Lightning bounce and Invigorating Conduit to recover 12 mana per crackling energy pick up.

Build Tankiness Effectively

Survivability becomes much more important post level 70.

We use Ice Armor in this build to get unlimited barrier for 6s. Plus, the 0 Cooldown Ultimate we basically get infinite barrier because we have the Protection passive that All Cooldown Skill cast grants a Barrier equal to 30% of our Maximum Life. Plus, the random Lightning Spear casted from the Ultimate.

We run the Snowveiled Aspect so that we have both Teleport and Ice Armor as Unstoppable Skill to stay safe if we are getting Crowd Controlled. And we get tons of extra Armor as the Armor bonus is buffed from 10% to 30% in 1.2.0.

In this build, Chain Lightning applies 100% Uptime for Vulnerable to all monsters with the benefit from the legendary node in the Static Surge Board. This is also why we don’t need the passive on Frost Nova.

So, we also take the Ice Armor passive to get further barrier to be really tanky. I can facetank butchers easily with Ice Armor on and even facetank T100 sometimes at only level 86.

We also run the Everliving Aspect for another constant 25% damage reduction as all monsters are Vulnerable. And make sure to get 70% All Resistance in World Tier 4 by combining the Resistance Stats on these 4 positions. We can also tweak the Paragon Board Nodes and use Gems if necessary.

Last, get at least 2% Total Armor Stats on these 4 positions. With the Aspect of Disobedience, we are super tanky and facetank everything. I will fast scan my full gear that passed T100 at level 86. I carefully selected all stats on each piece and I used Maximum Life stats on Rings to improve my survivability to just challenge T100.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Ball Lightning Sorcerer Build: Season 2 Best Tank Endgame Build Guide

Skill Tree

For the Skill Tree, we use Firebolt in Enchantment for burning synergy.

This is combined with Devouring Blaze for further crit damage. If our base crit chance is below 25%, replace Devouring Blaze with Elemental Dominance and replace Firebolt with Chain Lightning in the Enchantment for better performance.

If we got a Recharging Aspect that is above 2.5, we can remove all points from Invigorating Conduit and put them to Conjuration Mastery + Precision Magic for further damage.

Paragon Board

As mentioned earlier, the most important node in the Paragon Board is the Static Surge legendary node that enables our Chain Lightning to apply Vulnerable states to all monsters plus some mana regeneration. We will unlock it the first thing after we are on the second board.

Vampiric Powers

For Vampiric Powers, I recommend using:

• Resilience. It is the best Vampiric Power to help us survive in high tiers.
• Ravenous. It gives us 40-75% extra attack speed for great synergy in the build Anticipation. It helps us get, close to 0 Cooldown Ultimate for much more damage and survivability.
• Accursed Touch. It does great AOE damage to further speed up farming.
• Prey on the Weak. It helps us get another 16% multiplicative damage boost as we apply 100% Vulnerable Uptime to all monsters.

Without Gravitational Aspect

Unfortunately, the Gravitational Aspect is only dropped randomly and cannot be target farmed.

If you haven’t got one, I recommend using the Unbroken Tether Aspect for greater Chain Lightning Synergy or the Control Aspect that can be codex imprinted if you don’t have the Unbroken Tether either.

Skill Rotation

There is no specific skill rotation in this build Skill Rotation.

We are pretty flexible to fight enemies both in close range or at a distance. As the Ultimate is free, just cast Ultimate, keep pressing Chain Lightning and witness everything melt in seconds.

Ending

I really like this Chain Lightning build because it has extremely high attack speed, insane damage, superb survivability and free to cast Ultimate to greatly boost damage whenever I want.

I am not only having a blast but also having lots of fun running it.