Sorc Balance Ideas

Sorceress
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I’d like to throw my hat in the sorc balance ideas arena and see what people think. Sorc has always been my favorite class but lately I’ve found myself avoiding it because it’s too easy with teleport spam and skills that easily clear P8.

Cold Sorceress Changes (buffs & nerfs)

Frozen, Shiver, and Chilling Armor skills add Chance to Block. 10% at level 1 and caps at 30% (similar to holy shield).

Frozen Orb needs another synergy to be end game viable. Add Frost Nova as a synergy and make both synergies 8-10% each so a frost nova/forb build is viable.

Buff Cold Mastery to -125% cold resistance at 20 points to match conviction aura.

Lightning Sorc Changes

Lightning and Chain Lightning need to remove synergies from Nova and increase remaining synergies to 15% each.

Thunderstorm needs to be re-worked to work like blizzard. It should summon continuous lightning strikes in an area for a short duration and have a casting delay so you can’t continuously stack it. Add Nova as a synergy and make synergies 5% each. (Tstorm + Nova will be a strong build with this change).

Another Thunderstorm idea is to remove its damage and instead imbues the sorceress to passively and continuously zap enemies within 13 yards to lower their lightning resistance by up to 100% (similar to pally conviction aura).

Nerf Teleport to add a 4 second cast delay as stated previously.

Energy Shield is fine but mana burn and ghosts need to be fixed further (yes I know they got fixed recently but it’s not enough), so they don’t instantly drain mana. Mana burn skills should work like Static Field where they take off a % of mana per burn, but they get diminishing returns past 50% mana. Since there’s no active way to recover ES the mana burn enemies are unbalanced currently because ghosts and baal can instantly drain mana and the next hit basically kills you if you are in p8 hell.

Lightning Mastery, if Thunderstorm isn’t changed to reduce enemy lightning resist then Lightning Mastery should be changed to reduce enemy lightning resist just like Cold Mastery does for its element.

Fire Sorc Changes

Warmth upgraded so putting 20 points in is more rewarding. Right now it’s a 1 point wonder for any non-enchant builds. Reduce regen at 1 point to 20% and increase regen at 20 points to 360%.

Hydra needs to be slightly buffed. Synergies should be upgraded to 4% each OR add Inferno or Warmth as a 3rd synergy at 3% each.

Fire Mastery needs to provide a small minus to enemy fire resist on hit modifier and a slight nerf to increased fire damage per level. Perhaps -3% fire res and 7% fire damage at 1 point up to -60% fire res and 140% fire damage at 20 points.

Nerf Teleport

It’s time for teleport’s time to end. Being able to blitz around the entire game has made sorc the must play ladder starter and engima the must use end game chest item. D2 is a dungeon crawler by design and this skill overly simplifies the gameplay loop. To fix this they can simply add a cast delay to teleport like leap and blade warp have. This makes it so teleport can’t be spammed and will only be used as a quick damage avoider or to re-position your merc.

1 Like
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I agree with minus resistance. Even if you don’t break immunities, at least, you provides good damage at hell.

  • I agree with teleport, it is not even fun.
  • I would like more specialization between frozen, shiver and chilling armor. One gives fast hit recovery (for 2 handed-staff), others with chance to block, the others increase the damage (chilling armor)
  • I would like thunderstorm work as rn, but if you invest hard points, the spell cast multiples lightning. I like the randomness of the skill, it is unique, but it needs a form of AOE.
  • It is weird, but I would add some physical damage on meteor (like molten boulder) or on blizzard (receiving a giant spike on your head is also physical IMO). I like hybrid skills, but your -% resistance is fine too.
  • Inferno need to be wider and maybe have a burning effect (like the monster is still on fire).
  • Maybe FW should be a bit wider (between d1 and d2)

Overall, this is my favorite list that you did.

2 Likes
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Thanks! It’s the class I’ve played the most so probably why it’s my best list of all of them. Honestly I’ll take anything at this point that reels in OP skills and helps struggling skills so we are encouraged to play differently.

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>Chance to block on chilling armor

I disagree with this, especially with fortitude offering chilling armor to everybody.

Instead I would rework all armor synergies.

Frozen armor adds .1 seconds of freeze per level to chilling and shiver

Shiver armor. adds 15% more defense to frozen, and 15% more damage to chilling per level.

Chilling armor adds 8% freeze length to frozen armor. It adds +2 cold absorb per level to shiver armor. and 5% more defense to both

>Frozen orb needs another synergy

Frozen orb is the best option for 2 elements IE Frozen orb+firewall. it definitely needs just a little more umph

I would drop its damage 20%, allow its ice bolts to pierce the first target and hit a second one. Up the synergy value for ice bolt to 3% and give it a second 2% synergy with chilling armor instead of frost nova because chilling shoots ice bolts AND would benefit the build more than nova.

>remove nova from the lighting synergies

Agreed

>increase the synergies to 15% each

Strong disagree. Lighting should now be 10%(was 8), Chain lighting should be 6%(was 4) Charged bolt should get a second synergy from Thunderstorm (6%)

>Thunderstorm

I think the -Lighting res would be a perfect addition. It should last 4 seconds, and apply to the target hit by lighting. 5% per level seems too good though, I would give it 2% per level for a total of -40

Additionally casting Thunderstorm would cause it to hit 1 additional target every 5 levels over the first 4 seconds. The rest of the time it hits 1 target every 1-3 seconds

Teleport nerfing is a very hot topic. Personally I think that teleport should have an FCR penalty attached to it.

Teleport at level 1 has -20FCR tied to itself (not other skills) Each hard level increases its FCR by 5 so by investing 5 points you negate the negative FCR. Obviously enigma users are SOL, which hopefully opens up other armors, because enigma shouldn’t simply be BIS on 90% of builds.

>Warmth

The thing about warmth is it synergizes so well with mana shield. its hard to buff its late game presence without overwhelming the need for mana recovery elsewhere.

Though I would agree that it needs something, maybe giving it +1 replinish life per level would be nice.

>Hydra

Agreed it needs a buff Remove fireball synergy entirely, boost firebolt synergy to 8% Now it works well in hybrid builds.

>Fire/Lighting mastery providing -res

No dealing with imunities early on is tough, but thats why hybrid builds are important.

I would convert 50% of meteors impact damage into physical (AFTER +Fire skill damage is added)

I would also buff Telekenesis 600% and convert 75% of its damage to physical (after +Lighting skill damage is added) Energy shield would increase its damage 10% per level

This gives both fire and lighting builds an option to deal with imunes, without radically overshadowing cold

>Nerf teleport

I agree but honestly its so controversial they probably wont do anything with it.

I would love to see all Charged items reworked.

An item with 50 charges, instead has 5 charges, with a new charge added every 20/5(4 seconds)

an item with 100 charges instead has 10 charges, with a new charge added every 20/10(2 seconds)

Enigma would lose the teleport skill, and instead have 10 charges of teleport (with 2 second replenish charges time)

but again teleport and enigma is too cemented into the game for them to likely make any big changes