Can we talk about Sorc for a sec

PC General Discussion
1

Every season I try to make a Meteor build a thing and inevitably wind up failing. It works to a certain point then it just caps out. The game clearly has an early-game balance (leveling, the skills on the tree itself + some aspects), mid-game balance (paragon + aspects, before you start collecting uniques), and end-game balance (everything available).

A fair number of Sorc skills seem to be okay with leveling balance, though there are obvious clear winners (Hydra, Firewall, Arc Lash, Incinerate).

However, I have come to the following set of conclusions:

  • A skill needs several strong aspects to scale up to at least T2, which most skills do.
  • A skill also needs 1 or 2 strong skill-specific uniques to scale past T2, which Meteor and Firewall do not have. (Let’s be honest, Starfall Coronet and X’Fal’s are not strong uniques.)
  • Fireball has the staff and gloves, which makes it viable past T2.
  • Incinerate has Flamethrower and Conflagration, which makes it super strong early, but dies past T1/2-ish cuz it has no good supporting uniques.
  • Frozen Orb has Frozen Winterglass, which is just ridiculously strong thanks to Conjuration Mastery.
  • Firewall basically has nothing so it dies midway through T1.
  • Meteor has Starfall Coronet, which can bring it into T3 with a TON of effort, but it cannot scale past that, as it cannot take advantage of almost every mythic because it does not benefit from attack speed (Ring of Starless Skies), does not use resource, and cannot benefit from any helmet because it itself is a helmet, removing two of the most powerful items in the game (Harlequinn Crest and Heir of Perdition).

Ergo, any Sorc skill without 1 or 2 good supporting uniques will not scale because aspects are not as strong as uniques and our class gimmick is… well, kinda terrible, as all anyone takes is Ice Blades and either Fireball or Fire Bolt.

Also, the worst part by far:
Starfall Coronet makes Infernal Horde an exercise in stupid frustration due to the limited number of casts you have. This MUST be addressed in whatever changes to Starfall Coronet come in the future. Holy cow. I DREAD Soulspires.

7 Likes
2

I’d like to see Sorcs get an off hand while using a staff. It would help with an added aspect, attributes, etc. (and same goes for other classes who utilize staves.)

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3

They’ve said in the past they plan to give Enchanting an uplift, and said they didn’t think it would make S6. Hopefully S7.

We don’t need gear changes, we just need a class gimmick that actually adds power, not utility.

4

The same devs you are asking to solve this issue also created the tornado skill for druid and made it bad until you have stormchasers aspect.

It’s not like Nado Druid was only good in Diablo 2 cause of Enigma. We all knew 20 years that tornados suck if they don’t chase enemies automatically and yet they created a skill (tornado) that sucks and only works if you find an aspect to fix it (stormchasers). Basically stormchasers aspect should be built in the skill already LOL

5

IMO there’s a number of aspects that should be baked into the skill. I’d rather like the final two skill choices to be way more visible/impactful.

6

Yeah thats the issue.
They made skills bad and only good if they create items.

Normally the skills should be decent/ good and items should just make them stronger.
Currently they just have a ton of bad skills in this game that don’t work properly and you require aspects to “patch” them to become decent/ usable and not “powerful”.

I mean cool they can play god but you just gotta hope they will create an item and come up with a cool animation.

1 Like
7

Yeah. I still think it’s because the game used to be a lot slower, and a large part of the skill tree (for all classes except SB) is still designed for that slower pace.

8

Metero was only really viable in S3. Was tons of fun, wish they brought back the construct spider

9

Sister of Sorc. Being season 1 - 5 sorc main, up n down. being there. My advice : time to change to sb for boss killer. sorc as efficient mobs killer aka whispers cache. Let it go. Trust me, you love me more

10

sorc build are “very honest” kind a build that doesn’t have much chance to double/triple dip damage multipliers, thus the current state of typical hundreds of million damage max.

to reach billions of damage, will need luck/ RMT to get super min max gear to stack up skill ranks a dozen times, as paragon and skills already are bottleneck.

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11

True, we don’t have a lot of crazy interactions, except Conjuration Mastery, which I really kinda hate.

12

The X’Fal reference just made me have a sad smile :joy:

I mean, on it’s current state, it’s not even supportive to Firewall or Incinerate because the Lucky Hit proc of burning status is capped to ticks per second… Meanwhile it triggers much more if you just use Fire Bolt enchantment (or have some constant Burning status on enemy somehow) and do many other direct attacks to the enemy instead… But even then, the Ring damage has no scaling, so it still is useless…

I’ve been playing sorc since S0, even played sorc this season despite friends telling me “You even bought the ultimate pack, play that SB man!”… Every season I just end up getting mad at how bad it is, how you’re somehow “forced” into making some build decisions and can only play those setups to be somehow “descreet” else you just have no spot (and now can’t even shine with the best setups imo).

This season the only good damage comes from Elemental Constellation aspect, stack attack speed, crit rate and get many attacks at once within the 3 seconds lifespan to trigger some decent DPS for bosses… and of course, still use Conjuration Mastery since it’s the bis passive in the tree… So you end up being forced to be lightning (which also has Attack Speed [+] through Unstable Currents plus extra skills casted) to see decent damage…

Any other element? Falls off behind… Also remember to use new key passive “Enlightenment” and stack Non-Physical damage since it counts as 3x through that passive…

Best setup I found runs with Lightning Ball + Fireball as enchantments, while on skillbar using:
Flame Shield | Hydra | Ice Armor | Blizzard | Charged Bolts | Unstable Currents

h ttps://d4builds.gg/builds/2931e0c4-329f-41f0-b03c-6f825716e0e5/?var=0

Hydra allows to keep some extra Conjuration up besides stacking bonus for key passive
Blizzard to have some constant chill on enemies besides the stacks for key passive

First time being able to play a 3-element build and I appreciate the idea of multi-element aspect (creates 3 different elemental arrows at a time) and passives, but the implementation needs to be improved…

P.S. No idea why both “Druid” and “Spiritborn” have aspects or uniques that make their skills be Earth+Storm+Werewolf+Werebear or Gorilla+Eagle+Jaguar+Centipede, while sorcs can’t have anything for their skills to be Pyromancy+Frost+Bolt…

One of the main reasons we can’t synergize skills/enchantments/aspects is because of those limits, further enhanced by the many conditions with “debuffs” on enemy (which oftens can’t even proc for example in cases of Unstoppable or bosses)…

This season I also was testing a new option for Meteor build, trying to maximize Meteors and Meteorites through Inferno spamming… Somehow managed to make that work, but it just doesn’t do any valuable damage… Regardless, Meteor enchantment procs way too little, despite having 250%+++ lucky hit chance and using Enchantment legendary node…

Anyways, sorry for the WoT, this post could go on and on, so many things I’ve broken my head into while messing and testing all sorc stuff in all these seasons… it’s just designed poorly…

1 Like
13

Burn based Sorcs are generally weaker than Frost or Lightning based.

What Burn Sorcs need are at least equivalent of Poison builds in the SB arsenal. I am giving the same effort to DoT SB as I did with my DoT Sorc and I have far far far better results with SB. Its kit is just better (plus the fact it has bugs). Considering the fact I am way more experienced with Burn Sorc. The effort vs result ratio is highly imbalance.

14

I’m still betting on the exact reverse, nerf strong builds and rework monsters properly

  • Increased Health has to go - that is just game stopper right there
  • Boss HP = same, there’s absolutely no reason why a run that ended up in 9 minutes has a 6.5 minutes 1v1 boss fight ffs (yes, that’s more than 15 minutes so you get my point right there)

Do something interesting with monsters for a change => there are tons of player assets in the game meaning can easily specialize monsters against some of them

  • Active armor/barrier (armored or barriererd until condition is met)
  • Reactive armor/barrier (armored or barriered if a condition is met)
  • Increased Regen (to fight back DoT), or make it re/active even better
  • Immune to Crit, Overpower, Thorns, Vuln.
  • Denying LH
  • Assistant (empowering a nearby elite’s X affix)
  • Cursed attacks

e.t.c.

The “winning experience” never felt bad in the game, the biggest problem is that the game is failing (i.e. making players lose) the wrong way

Since Day 1 the “failing experience” in the game was dreadful and bringing the game down (and NEVER fixed nor even attempted to fix - unless counting on the Mother’s Curse stacks :stuck_out_tongue: b.t.w.)

Time running out or time-consumption is LITERALLY THE WORST of all of them

  • Make failures matter (as much as ironic as it sounds) and make them happen for the right reasons the right way
15

I’m not sure this is really a problem. The root is really still that the skills don’t have strong enough support. Throwing a Frozen Orb that tosses fire really wouldn’t help.

And Burning damage has like zero meaningful support. It’s practically dead on arrival because no one’s going to want to wait when other builds can kill without a damage over time.

Sorc builds really just strike me as “honest”. There are no tricky interactions. But therein lies the problem, apparently.

16

I think it was started in S2 which Adam Jackson decided the way to buff sorc is by release new powerful uniques instead of fundamentally change the skills.

The best sorc build is fireballs, but it needs unique. At least the good old fireballs taking centre stage now. With SB taking all the heats this season, I think fireballs will not be touched next season and continue to shine.

There is some issue with fireballs too, the dungeon wall will eat some of them. So it is best to play in opened dungeons like the hordes. Hope this can get fixed next season.

17

that would be interesting. give spiritborn an off hand for an extra offensive aspect. would definitely be useful

18

Fireball is not that powerful. It’s definitely not more powerful than Lightning Spear.

19

Hundred billions damage now, cleared Pit 105. Lightning spear is not the strongest even in S5, it is best to farm Hordes as it can auto track the mobs in entire screen. Fireball overcome it now as it has been the best screen clearing skills. Nevertheless the meta fireball build is still based on shatter, no more firebolt. And we dont talk about shatter :wink:

20

Does it still play like crap in cramped hallways, which The Pit has a lot of? If it doesn’t change it’s the easiest build to get to T3 on sorc but I switched out of it quicky because of the cramped hallway annoyance with the build.