Diablo 1: BEST SORCERER BUILD: Stats, Spells, Items

The best sorcerer build in Diablo 1 is the one that can efficiently farm Lazarus, Warlord of Blood and Sir Gorash. This sorcerer build can slay anything in the blink of an eye. By virtue of Teleport and favorable dungeon RNG, I have reached Lazarus in 5 mins flat. Due to their ability to teleport-farm and incinerate and electrocute enemies with AoEs, Sorcerer is the best class in Diablo 1.

cf. Sorcerer PC Games.

Diablo 1 Sorcerer Stats Guide

• Magic: Our spells and mana pool are everything. Everything. Thus, we strive to max magic. To spell it out, we need Magic in order to learn spells in the first place (from books), and we need mana in order to cast spells over and over again.
• Strength: This is only increased in order to equip arms and armor.
• Dexterity:  of secondary importance
• Vitality: Not important. For survivability, we should be relying on our deep mana pool through Mana Shield, not Vitality and HPs

Best Spells in Diablo 1

Spells Guide: Sorcerers are nothing without their spells. The best defensive spell is Mana Shield, the best mobility and positional facilitator in the game is Teleport, and the best offensive spells are Fireball and Chain Lightning (though Fire Wall is great in the early game as well).

• Mana Shield (F5): Every time we enter a new killzone, we cast this. And we make sure it is active at all times. No exceptions. This spell is key to survivability because it converts our deep mana pool into a HP pool.
• Fireball (F6): This spell is great for its splash on tightly-packed mobs, and its dmg scales handsomely to lvl 15: 372-582 dmg, Mana 10. With +spell lvl items, the dmg continues to scale to the point of obscenity.

• Chain Lightning (F7): scales to 4-66 but hits multiple targets in a broad radius
• Teleport (F8): Our key to getting to Lazarus quickly

Due to enemy elemental resistances, we definitely want the ability to cast fire and lightning spells. Magic-dmg spells are not as important. Cast Golem vs. elemental-immunes.

Best Items in Diablo 1

Obvious books and mana potions aside, sorcerers are not as item-dependent as warriors and rogues. However, items that increase the Magic stat and mana pool are the best items in Diablo 1 (magic, mana). Such item mods can be found on every item type, which gives sorcerers a deep mana pool (which can never be deep enough when teleporting about and farming). 

We're looking for items with mods such as Wizardry, Drake's, Brilliance and Zodiac. Examples that I have personally found:

• Drake's Amulet of Wizardry: Magic +26, Mana +43
• Drake's Ring of the Zodiac: All Stats +20, Mana +47

Second ring:

• Ring of Wizardry: Magic +27

Thus (as an example), from that jewelry alone we have +228 mana.

And then:

• Awesome Full Plate of Sorcery
• Royal Circlet
• [shield] of Brilliance

That equates to a mana pool approaching 1,000 at 30th level.

Best Weapons in Diablo 1

I prefer sword and shield over staff setups because we can wield a King's Bastard Sword of Haste and also block with the shield. Indeed, the King's Bastard Sword of Haste is the best weapon in Diablo 1. However, staffs culminating in the Arch-Angel's Staff of Wizardry or Arch-Angel's Staff of Apocalypse are not to be ignored (+2 to spell level / Apocalypse spell).

Diablo 1 Resistances

We need to balance our spellcasting potency with resistances vs. magic, fire and lightning. The easiest way to get solid all-resists going is with the Veil of Steel (+50%), which is piss-easy to get within a few playthroughs. I have also personally found the following:

• Obsidian Amulet of Life: all-resists +40%, Vitality +30
• Emerald Tower Shield of the Ages: all-resists +42%, indestructible (better would be of the Tiger)
• Obsidian Ring: all-resists +33%

Thus, we have many mix-and-match options for max-resists, which is what we want to see:

Max-resists are important due to bullet-hell cRPG Combat Encounter Design that comes out of nowhere. Everything's fine until we come across a coven of ranged spellcasters as a fool who neglected resistances.

Note that we can gain +spell levels through the Thinking Cap and Dreamflange uniques, not just through staffs.

Once we reach this point, optimization comes down to farming through Wirt, Adria and Griswold, as well as dungeons 13-16. 

Hundreds of times. 

Good luck with that.

cf. Diablo 1 Review.

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My Diablo commentary pertains only to the original and authoritative version of Diablo; that is, v1.09. No other version of Diablo, and no other mode of play, is recognized by my commentary as anything other than a casualized laughing stock.