Chain Lightning does less damage at 5/5 than Arc Lash despite potentially hitting fewer enemies and Arc Lash having a chance to double swing. That’s comparing it to a basic that has no mana cost. Comparing it to Ice Shards is even sadder.
None of the open beta Sorc nerfs were justified. Blizzard had to know this based on closed beta end-game testing, but they wanted to appear like they were listening, so they did a PR stunt open beta balance patch rather than listening to any of the end-game feedback from the actual end-game beta (which included things like the infinite WW damage bug that they didn’t fix until after release).
Hydra would not have been a huge end-game powerhouse pre-nerf. It actually needed buffs to be an end-game contender and they nerfed it heavily instead.
Ice Blades builds likely wouldn’t have been meta because their damage output was bad. Maybe as a HC higher survival build it would have been nice, but pre-nerf it was not a damage powerhouse and wouldn’t have competed with the end-game meta build damage output of any other class and likely not even with things like ice shards.