Repurposing the original thread, I would like the devs to have some heart for the Frozen Orb (FO) build which I believe was meant to be a signature build this season but has been snuffed in PTR before it could even take flight. More reasons below.
1. Very, very low damage: The highest documented clear right now with FO is 115 with near perfect gear: https://maxroll.gg/d4/events/s4-pit-ladder.
Since devs say that Bash build will not be adjusted going forward, I think it should be the golden standard for balancing.
From this perspective, the FO build, even with optimized gear, is performing -20 tiers, which, damage-wise, I am guessing is 1.17x^20 = 23x weaker than an optimized Bash build; here, I am assuming mob hp scales +17% per tier as it did in Diablo 3.
I don’t think I even need to elaborate how poorly this build performs on Pit bosses because of poor singe-target damage.
2. Disharmony between gear requirement and payoff: This is arguably the hardest build to gear for; it usually requires two ubers (Shako and Starless - though some swap out Starless once they get GA Conjuration Winterglasses - good luck getting one!) , three uniques (Tal Rasha, Esu’s, and Winterglass), and an INSANELY expensive pair of gloves.
Why are the gloves expensive? Because the devs have rigged the RNG for it to almost never roll +4 to Frozen Orb. Just look at Diablo.Trade. The gloves might as well be the most expensive +4 skill gear piece out there because of how improbable it is to get that roll. Why they rigged the RNG against such a poorly performing build, I don’t understand.
And of course, you also need +4 to Flame Shield on the armor. Otherwise, the class is so squishy it just gets one shot. Lastly, as already mentioned, getting a GA Conjuration Mastery Winterglass is essentially impossible for the vast majority of players, not to mention that it would have to roll with near perfect unique stats. Why does this build seem to have so many more layers of RNG than others? Why did the devs insist on making this build so difficult to optimize yet so insanely weak? Seems like a failure in execution.
3. Squishiness: Yes, the class is insanely squishy. That’s why everyone’s opting into immortal builds based on +4 to Flame Shield gear. I find this trend to be unsustainable, as I am confident that the devs will nerf this to oblivion. Indefinite immortality seems like a degenerate solution to what should otherwise be a well-formed optimization problem. Alas, in this case, the problem itself seems to be malformed because the Sorc class is offered no avenues for non-degenerate solutions.
Suggestion: Increase base duration of Flame Shield and make it give the player “unstoppable” for only 1 sec and then 80% damage reduction thereafter. Also, please buff weak passives. Like the Icy Veil passive that buffs shield duration is so insanely stingy in reward that almost no one uses it. Further, Mana Shield has a pretty steep triggering requirement of 100 mana; that’s your entire mana pool. I think it should be lowered to something like 50. Give us more defensive options other than immortality, please.
4. Incongruity between the theme and stat prioritization: It almost goes without saying that Fractured Winterglass is the centerpiece of the build. Its unique aspect reads:
“Casting Frozen Orb has a [35 - 50]% chance to spawn a random Conjuration when it explodes. [Lucky Hit] Your Conjurations have up to a [50 - 70]% chance to launch a Frozen Orb at Nearby enemies.”
If you had expected that this build would revolve around lucky hit chance, you’d be dead wrong. Just about every best performing variant stacks crit chance rather than lucky hit chance, because the base lucky hit chance of all relevant Sorc abilities are insanely low.
Try casting FO without Winterglass, and you will notice that the # of FOs on screen do not differ all that much. I am thinking at least 80% of the FOs on screen come from the player rather than the conjurations. So, most of the damage gain comes from Conjuration Mastery rather than extra FO casts. I think this meshes poorly with the theme of the build.
Further, this build requires stacking +Dmg to Close on tempers, because Sorc has no good paragon nodes that scale with Crit Dmg or Vulnerable Dmg. What you end up with is a degenerate build that has ranged attack but fights up close with immortality. Does this have any kind of thematic cogency? The class is a ranged caster and is being forced to fight up close… What?
Further, the build requires just too many stats to optimize around; resource regen, crit chance, attack speed, skills to FO, skills to Flame Shield, and lucky hit chance wherever possible to eke out teeny bit more. Most other builds will require one to two fewer stat priorities in general, which is actually a great amount of freedom to add more to defense or other offensive stats. You have made the build requirement a little too stringent.
Suggestion: Please increase base lucky hit chance across FO and Conjurations; also, please consider balancing out the tempering options. It is so weird that a ranged caster has to stack +Dmg to Close. Otherwise, at least update paragon nodes so that Sorcs have some other scaling options with Crit Dmg or Vulnerable. Also, please consider reducing mana requirements on Sorc spells. While I have one, I really don’t think Shako should be a necessity to run this build.
5. Jack of All Trades? Not even: With all these cacophony of stats, gear, and tempers that FO Sorcs have to manage, FO Sorcs feel like Jack of All Trades and Master of NONE. No, actually, they don’t even feel like Jacks. They just feel outclassed and useless.
What makes builds special is specialization. Bash Barb specializes in insane single target dmg. Heatseeker Rogue specializes in speediness, cc, and vulnerable dmg.
FO Sorc is the best at what exactly? I don’t think it’s even the fastest speed farmer; WW barb with holy bolts would easily destroy FO Sorcs. What is its edge? Because devs have misaligned stats offered on skills, gear, paragon, etc., the build feels so blunted and weak. Let it have its edge. Let it be a pointed spear that tears through demon flesh like other premier builds. Sorcs have been waiting a year for this. Isn’t it only fair?
Thoughts, comments welcome.
Thanks for reading.
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Sorc bugs have been addressed.
Let’s hope they don’t break Sorc again.
Thank you, Blizzard!
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