What is Crackling Energy in Diablo 4? Explained

If you’re a Lightning Sorcerer in Diablo 4 like me, you may have noticed something interesting. Many of your Lightning skills will produce something called Crackling Energy. Understanding what this feature is can help define a good use of your Sorcerer build, and a bad one. We’re here to help explain what Crackling Energy is, and how you can best make use of it in Diablo 4.

Diablo 4: Crackling Energy explained

Many of your Lightning-based skills as a Sorcerer character in Diablo 4 can create and manipulate Crackling Energy. These are little orbs of Lightning energy that can spawn throughout combat, depending on how your skill tree looks. Some skills you unlock allow you to spawn more Crackling Energy, while others dictate how and when you use it.

Walking over the Crackling Energy will make your character collect it. Right above your skills in your hotbar, you will see your collection, which can hold up to 12. But what do they do? Well, whenever you’re in a certain proximity to an enemy, the energy is spent by passively hitting them, dealing AoE damage. It only lasts a few seconds before a Crackling Energy disappears. If you have a lot stored up, it will keep hurting nearby enemies until all is spent.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

At first, this may not be a very powerful asset. But once you start exploring the skill tree, you’ll realize that you can upgrade how your Crackling Energy works. Even some Aspects can affect your Crackling Energy, which makes the Lightning Sorcerer the best early game Sorcerer build, in my opinion.

For example, Flickering Spark and Destructive Chain Lightning raises the chance of Crackling Energy spawning. Also, Mystical Teleport makes it so that each time I teleport, my Crackling Energy hits two additional enemies. I make sure to prioritize purchasing Crackling Energy skills, as well as Imprint Sorcerer Aspects that have something to do with them.

Once your Sorcerer reaches level 15, they can also add Enchantments, which are skills than have different passive effects. If you add Lightning Spear as an Enchantment, there will be a 10% chance upon absorbing Crackling Energy to trigger Lightning Spear. Use this special Sorcerer feature to your advantage to make your Shock skills even more powerful.

Diablo 4 is available on Battle.net.