These Aspects are terribly designed. Sorcerer has limited offensive aspect slots, 6 total. Why would any of these slots be used over objectively better options that are functionally always on such as Storm Swell, Conceited, Accelerating, etc.
Firestarter procs one time. In low level content this is fine but against bosses, where Sorc struggles the most, this will probably proc a single time.
Winter Touch will proc at most 3 times on bosses assuming it even works when the boss is staggered.
At least Jolting is always on, but as Crackling Energy has repeatedly proven, this isn’t an effect that is particularly powerful.
Maybe there’s a saving grace in that these count as “Skills” but the effects seem incredibly weak considering the opportunity cost.
After so much talk about “it will be good on Tuesday,” how are these incredibly conditional aspects still being designed?
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I figured out what these are for, but it’s just gonna make you even more mad.
If you search the PTR feedback section for references to Tal Rasha’s Ring, you should find a post where a user describes a tooltip issue where the French version of the tooltip has changed. According to this revised tooltip, it procs when you do damage with Frost, Shock or Pyromancy skills instead of upon doing elemental damage and is thus limited to three stacks and has to be procced by skills directly - no more getting it from Elemental Surge tempers or the Firebolt enchantment.
I strongly suspect that this is what they are (or at least were as of the beginning of the PTR) actually planning to do to it in S5 as part of the unique item overhaul. It is, obviously, a significant nerf. But that’s where these dumb aspects come in to take a little of the sting out of it. Without them, the Firebolt enchantment by itself wouldn’t proc the Pyromancy stack on the ring since it’s not a skill, but slap on Firestarter and since the damage it does counts as a Pyromancy skill, voila! You still get your stack. Winter Touch gets you your Frost stack from Frost Nova or a lucky hit chance to Freeze temper. And Jolting gets you your Shock stack no matter what. So whatever your skill bar looks like, if you don’t happen to be running damage dealing skills of all three elements, you can use one of these Aspects to fill a gap.
… Yeah, I really think that’s what they’re for. Although at this point I wouldn’t be too surprised if they change course on this before S5 because I can hardly think of a better way to really, really piss off the Sorc community even more than they already have. As if any of our builds can spare an Aspect slot to keep a 15% multiplier we used to get without needing an Aspect. For a lot of builds this is just going to mean losing 15% or even 30% damage.
Edit: Here’s the post - Tal Rasha's ring nerfed
I truly hope it’s not what you say. This is a mind boggling change if so.
I tried the Fire and Lighting one during my time testing in the ptr. They seem more for leveling or easy content imo. The lighting on could have some potential if it was a utility aspect though.
The fire one helps out burning builds with killing small trash mobs that walk into Fire Wall or incinerate for the first time. That way they are already injured and close to death so that the Fireball enchant can go off.
The lighting one was pretty interesting. If you have a decent amount of crit, it can proc the Electrocution passive that can give you up to 18% dr for 5 secs (It procs once per second). It can proc the new Vyrs Mastery capstone where you just need a shock spell crit to gain the charged buff and can potentially deal an extra 250% damage on a crit as lightning. Also, it can proc the Stable aspect for Unstable Currents where shock skills can trigger a free cast as long as UC isn’t active. I’m not sure if was a bug, but the aspect was working even when I didn’t spec into UC. I was standing around the training dummies with the new CL pants on and suddenly I see CLs, LS, and BL flying all over the place. It was pretty amusing lol.
Edit: As for Tal Rasha ring on PTR. It still worked the way it does on live where you just need to deal the right elemental damage type, but there was a new resource ring that was similar but you actually had to cast the appropriate spells for it to work. Maybe they are considering changing it to work that way as well.
with above 3 aspects, sorceress are now a complete spa masseuse that dress in skimpy outfit and grabbing a basket of massage oil, lotion and moisturizer to go down The Pit.