I have been testing Sorc exclusively on PTR. I played Eternal during S6 so that is my basis of comparison. I am comparing my Eternal builds which I imported back to back with the same build on Eternal and then making changes to them to adapt to PTR changes.
Firebolt - not a big deal IMO.
Devouring Blaze - much needed but a huge impact on Sorc power because there is nothing that adequately replaces the lost power. It used to take one skill point into Inner Flame and 3 into Devouring Blaze to get huge benefits for burning. Now, you have to put maximum skill points into Inner Flame, Shocking Impact and Icy Touch for damage boost, some of which are conditional, just to get a fraction of the damage back. And that is while investing 9 skill points as opposed to the previous 4. The changes to Ceaseless Conduit and Static Surge also fail to compensate for the loss of the burning damage boost, critical strikes and damaged reduction. Frost and Lightning (Shock) on PTR cannot be as strong as on Eternal.
Conjuration Master change to Primordial Binding - (Along with Fractured Winterglass change) has killed Frozen Orb builds. On Eternal I can Farm glyph experience at T76 comfortably. On PTR, I cannot do so.
Okun and Stormhorn unique Focus - Although an unique focus has been badly needed by the Sorc class for a long time both of these turn out to be underwhelming and do not make up for the previously listed changes to the Sorc class. They really do not offer anything overly useful and simply combine existing functions (Like Gravitational aspect) into an offhand. I have found that I am better off using a crafted focus because I lose too many benefits in order to get the gimmicks that each focus brings. IMO, they both need more of an upside to be worth using. Things like critical strike damage, int, max life, crit chance, double lightning spear damage, chance to cast double ice blades or ball lightning and cooldown reduction are tough to replace when you are already struggling with low damage and long Elite and Boss kill times. I think each focus should get a additional attributes or two and less things should be conditional before they provide a benefit. I love the idea but think the executions has fallen short of where it needs to be.
I also would have preferred a more generic unique focus that provides benefits to a wider range of Sorc builds rather than being of benefit to just one build. (BL).
My final thought is that the implemented changes should not have been made until something was in place to replace them. What we have been given is not adequate. Pumping BL and Shocking Impact to the max still does not restore power lost. And on top of that Shocking Impact also requires that the target be stunned or a stun was attempted to give you the damage boost. I have no idea how Frozen Orb builds will find viability now. Blizzard/Ice Spike got clobbered in S6 with the aspect changes where you have to now take 3 aspects toget the full benefits you used to get from 2. If nothing changes, most of the Sorc class will be gimped for the next 3 months until we get some help (hopefully) when S8 changes to the base game arrive.
Permafrost could be the answer if they remove the condition that it only give damage with Frost skills. Take Frost and and just leave the damage boost. That would help with Boss and Elite damage. You could potentially get a 25-30% damage multiplier in that case. Still not near the 100%x and higher multipliers that some classes are getting on PTR.
I would also like to see Unstable Current changed to include a damage component that scales as you add points. It seems ridiculous that there is an aspect to boost Ultimate skill damage and one of our Ultimate skills does zero damage. It either needs to do damage on its own or boost the damage of the shock skills that it triggers.
Jokes aside, I’m really dissapointed.
I thought by season 7 all Sorc’s problems would have been solved.
Why is so hard for these devs to buff the damage?
is that so hard to add the 3rd enchanment and two more ring slots?
this could solve the sorcerer problem once and for all
Fully agree, and you didn’t even mention one of our few “limitless scaling” aspects with splintering that gut gutted too…
For a few seasons now it was already clear that sorceress skills do no damage (except bugged). We get our damage from aspects like splintering, glacial etc. For our skills to really scale into endgame we need scaling aspects and uniques.
You mentioning that reminds me that several of our unique items need total reworks.
Shattered Winterglass went from being a strong highly desired item to now being mediocre at best and easily replaced with a crafted amulet.
The Spear of Lycander has been pretty much useless and its best use is to generate a spark so you can make something useful to your build. Perhaps limiting the shrine emulation skill to just the big damage offensive shrines like Artillery Shrine and Blast Wave Shrine would make it useful. Getting Greed, Conduit or other non damage spells is mostly useless. The 30% Attack speed bonus should be restored.
Azurewrath needs something. The Cold Resist affix is mostly useless as we get our resistances elsewhere. Perhaps crit or vulnerable damage or + to skills could replace it to make the item desirable.
Oculus has always been a joke. Why do so many Sorc items, skills and aspects have to have a crippling downside to offset the benefits they bring?
There are others but I do not want to look them up and try to list them all. Someone just needs to do an audit of items used by Sorc and those that are now going to collect dust.
It has been said many times that Sorc needs to be able to do some damage, especially against single target Elites and Bosses. Sorc does not have to be the most powerful class but it is not good if a class cannot even level its glyphs to max level without being carried through the Pits by a stronger class. (or using the cheat boost on PTR).
Buff here and there and nerf at the other side can’t be the answer! Sorc needs a complete overhaul.
Firebolt enchantment missing is a big dmg loss. And i understand the change but they can’t buff icy touch now to insane highs to compensate, the resulting devouring blaze loss. And give fire bolt enchant healing is the biggest joke on top.
Sorc is (i understand it as this) a high mobile (teleport) class, which is extrem fragile but does extrem dmg. And to compensate its low life and vulnerability it has barriers and magical shields. (in S6 i have 6k life meanwhile my spiritborn comes with 30k and a barbarian of a friend of mine hits 40k life, but never had more than 15k life with Sorc since release and i play always Sorc)
I do not agree that the class needs to be totally dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up. IMO some skills need to be changed and some items need to be changed due to changes that have already been made or are coming.
There is a decent foundation there. Sorc was good and fun to play in S5. It was not as OP as many of the other classes and no where near where Spiritborn came in at. Yet Sorc got some ill advised changes (IMO) that has put it in a bad place.
AS you said, Sorc uses high mobility and barriers for defense. It has low life and weak defense. The problem is that it has never had extreme damage. Even the bug enhanced Ball Lightning build from Season 2 pales in comparison to the Spiritborn damage of S6 or the Spiritborn, Necro and Druid damage of S7 PTR.
They need to loosen the reins on the Sorc, eliminate some of the conditional damage and let the Sorc compete with the other classes on legit damage output, not bugged damage.
I have my opinions how they should do that as do you but none of that matters. What matters is that they actually do something to allow the glass cannon class Sorc to actually equip some cannon like damage.
Yes i agree Sorc is glass canon without canon. S5 was pretty good. I loved it. Overall balancing was fine S5. I played every class in high Pits in S5 because i thought what will happen after VoH.
I think Blizz, or it seems, they do short term decisions. Cut firebolt enchantment because it blocks a enchantment slot in every build. Good so far. But don’t think about the 10% missing dmg.
And more because of devouring blaze, etc…
And leave us with nothing to compensate the dmg loss.
And this is only one example. The whole game seems for my like this. I’m missing a long term plan for the game. But maybe it only seems this.
Please make Fractured Winterglass a focus instead of a neck. and replace the implicit with the old cooldown implicit from legendary focus. It is currently WAY too weak to be worth giving up an ancestral amulet with a good aspect. EVEN FOR FO/Conj builds
Maybe even consider replacing LHC FO cast 2X with one of these or something similar to address the general weakness of frost builds:
LHC For frost skills to hit twice
Frost Skills damage increased 35%(x)
And change the aspect to one of these or similar
Every third frost skill casts a random conjuration
Frost skills have a X% chance to cast a random conjuration [25% - 50%]
and keep the second part of the aspect as is
Casting a conjuration has a chance to cast a frozen orb at a random target.
OR…
Lean into the “Fractured” as in it is broken and uncotrollable lol … and make it have a chance to cast a random non ultimate cold skill
Then FO would still not make any damage.
The main Synergy of Winterglass/FO was to get out a huge number of conjurations that scale with Conj. Mastery.
To make it viable, winterglass needs a tag that says: “Frozen orb will now count as a conjuration skill”
“not a big deal”
sorry, but your opinion lost all credibility…
you don’t know how sorc synergies work
so, you have no right to talk…
this topic shall be from a true sorcerer player, not from you.
“not a big deal”…yeah, sure!! very sure!!!
It’s true though? Most builds in S6 already don’t use it anymore and get the burning through Familiar autosummons. He didn’t say that loosing the burning synergy is not a big deal, just the firebolt enchant.
Man they really gimped the hell out of sorc. My LS/FO build couldn’t even take down the blood maid. SB wastes her. I guess I’ll play SB next season. Even my CL sorc beat the BL sorc w/ the new focus. What a disappointment. And I don’t use firebolt enchant on my sorc builds since we have familiars now. I do have say after playing my nerfed CL sorc from eternal that I leveled up to 60 was a blast. Glyphs buffed at a 100? Yeah buddy.
LOL. There are many ways to apply burning on a D4 Sorc. Losing Firebolt is only a big deal to noobs that never looked closely at all the skills.
Firebolt enchantment applied burning as many skills will do. Devouring Blaze gave all the boost to damage due to the applied burning. It will not longer do this for non fire skills which means the change to Devouring Blaze was a big deal. The change to Firebolt enchantment was not.
for your information, familiar ench is not worth and using familiar in a mixed build like 100% sorcs out there is not a guaranteed fire sorc, it needs devoring blaze anyways.
sorry try again… I did my homework.
go back to spiritborn please
And since Devouring Blaze benefits has been changed to Fire skills only, the the FireBolt change is a non issue. It is already been replaced as a go to enchantment long before the change was made in PTR. Most people will not use Familiar enchantment either as there are better choices. However, they may and probably will throw some points in Familiar so they get that fire familiar showing up and they may run Aldkin if they want burning. Many if not most top Sorc builds run Flame Shield which also applies burning. They do not use Firebolt even now. They certainly will not want it with the change to Devouring Blaze. Thus the change to Firebolt enchantment is a non issue as I said in my OP.
Never played Spiritborn. I do not like the Monk style of gameplay. Sorceress is my class and will remain so until I do not play D4 anymore or they introduce another one that actually interest me.
Seems to me that Blizzard can add Charm Slots and move Unique Aspects over to those Slots. This would make Unique items become mostly just strong Generic items that can fit into a multitude of Builds. The Charms would have the Unique Affix and Aspect on it only.
Charms would be upgradable allowing them to scale and evolve with you as you level.
I agree up until they said they were adding the “summoning” tag to Sorc “conjuration” skills in order to try and bring more damage to this class.
IMO, they have too many damage types, all coming with some penalty before they kick in. They have way too many affixes on Unique/Mythic and Ancestral. When I pick up a Fractured Winter Glass, I should not have to find 2,000 of them to find the one aspect I need. It is a FWG, they should all have the same affixes with varying degrees of percentage.
And, just as a kicker who the heck thought “life per 5 seconds” would be good or anyone?