General Notes from Patch that came out today - Fire builds

Sorcerer
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  • Tibault's took a huge hit. Now max is 20% damage
  • Flamethrower aspect for incinerate that splits into 3 beams
  • Inner Calm damage decreased to a max of 30%; was 40%
  • Mastery skills are considered core skills; so Im wondering what aspects and uniques give ranks to core skills beyond starless
  • Enhanced Flameshield has a 50% larger burn radius
  • Mystical flameshield now stuns enemies for 3 seconds and next skill is guaranteed a critical strike; not sure firewall can critically-strike
  • can now have 2 hydras instead of only having 1
  • incinerate damage increased 10% and has increased damage reduction
  • Conflagration aspect causes enemies to explode and burn for 6 seconds
  • Tactician: now lasts for 4 seconds longer for each defensive skill 'not' on your action board. Im assuming 'not' was a typo. Also they fixed the damage from being additive to 10% multiplicative to match the glyph description
  • Huge buff to Soulbrand and Temerity with 30% multiplicative damage to each
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    Was just going through this myself, gonna be a crazy old hydra lady sorc.

    Shards will hit mildly harder. Also lucky hit vuln will be a thing, looking forward to see the proc chance.

    Temerity proximity buff

    I just realized this post had the intent of fire build discussion. Please disregard, cannot read

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    Conjuration build is the intended meta for the season, gonna be like HOTA S2 (followed by nerf hammer HOTA S4).

    Uber Chest, New Unique Amulet, buffed conjuration mastery passive, aspect when running no defensive skills…epic. Oh an Devouring blaze conditional buff.

    Sorry, edit, Uber Chest here = Soulbrand for any confused by which chest I am referencing.

    Also don’t forget the passives on Elemental Attunement and Mana Shield Buffs and Elemental Dominance Buff.

    Bounding Conduit…can this be put on boots? Makes constant teleport even better. No more walking ever for me. Which then makes the new unique amulet’s absense of movement speed make a lot of sense.

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    Don’t forget the Aspect that gives you a sizable damage buff as long as you have no defensives on your action bar. Interesting tradeoff there. You could compensate for losing Teleport between Metamorphosis and Oculus or the enchantment, but it’s a tough pill to give up on all the rest. It might be OK with a Conjuration build operating on the principle of running away from everything while your summons murder everything chasing you?

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    I havent run shield skills in a long time; i do use frost nova though.

    Dont say that, we been trash for months :confused:

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    Yeah it’s not really about any individual skill there’s it’s about not being able to use ANY of them. I’ve always avoided the “use all four” meta myself, but they’re among the most useful skills we have when taken as a group.

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    I think thats mainly because, outside conjuration, they are the only cooldowns generally useable.

    Mastery skills and core skills have always been far too similar in use, with of course mastery usually taking the lead in terms of damage. Sorc has always had ‘too many spammables’ that cost resources, and the game def lends itself to focusing on 1 of them.

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    About the Mastery skills becoming “Core Skills” for mechanical purposes - there a few uniques and Aspects beyond Starless that this opens up for us - Mother’s Embrace, Banished Lord’s Talisman, Edgemaster’s Aspect, Aspect of the Expectant, Blood Boiling Aspect… There might be some more but those are what come to mind.

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    I think it will be a fun design flip. So say emergency flame shield extra life as enchantment, teleport on enchantment.

    Skill bar = lightning spear, ice blades, hydra, frozen orb as core skill, arc lash to spam, and unstable currents.

    Now we’re at presumably 3 Hydra, 5-10 Lightning spear per ultimate cast, 1 Iceblade. so that maybe about 45% move speed bonus!!! Nice!

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    Yeah I agree, could be fun. Emergency Flameshield is no more though; they changed it from a cheat death to it going off more or less randomly every time you lose a cumulative 100% of your health. I’m not sure I see a real good use case for it under those circumstances outside of Incinerate, because that’s the only skill we have that wants and expects you to sit still and facetank stuff.

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    Why is it not a cheat death anymore? I mean, whats the difference if im at 75% or 25% health? If i lose both, FS triggers right? Or do i have to go from exactly 100 to 0 to get the cheat death?

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    Well if you take 50% damage, then health pot, then take 40% and health pot again, the shield will go off when you take 10+% damage, and then won’t trigger again for 30 seconds or whatever the cooldown was. It’s just less useful, unless you’re expecting incoming one shot kills; most people who take a big hit or two that they can react to will pot and take evasive action, meaning unless they fail to get out of dodge, the shield will probably then end up triggering later at some much lower threshold when they don’t need it quite as much.

    I don’t know, this is just my opinion, but outside of operating as a fragile glass cannon or intentionally trying to face tank stuff, it’s just not very useful this way.

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    Having had more time to consider all this, I feel they are trying to make this the season of Incinerate/Conjuration. We’ll see how that goes.

    Incinerate:

    Now gives DR and has base damage buffed again. Aspect of Flamethrower or whatever triples the beam; I assume it will spread shotgun style. AoE at medium range and triple damage at point blank. And they definitely want you to get in the boss’s face. New Frost Nova branch that gives dodge chance plus the new Aspect of Assimilation and the other dodge aspect (can’t remember the name) can all combine to give you something like a +30% dodge chance that heals, fortifies and gives mana back every time you dodge. New Ice Armor enhancement that reduces cooldown per 50 mana spent may also be handy. Aspect of Conflagration adds even more AoE. I still don’t know if it will actually work, but it is the most promising setup yet. The triple beam especially has potential to get the damage high enough to finally make up for the downsides.

    Conjuration:

    I’m pretty sure everyone can do the math here. And they’ve taken into account the abysmal Lucky Hit on Conjurations by making the chance to cast FO up to 100% on the amulet.

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    14

    The only other diablo class ive played is d3 crusader, and i loved the shotgun heaven’s fury. Incinerate is looking kinda cool…

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    While it’s not a replacement for Raiment, im fire builds are getting more chances to CC

    I really disliked this aspect bc i always have a defensive skill in use while attacking.

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    Aspect for that damage going to be off the chart for conjuration build PvE and PvP.

    Just think about combined with Shredded aspect once 3 ice blades flying around too. Best defense is best offense with ‘Bubble’ wrap. :rofl:

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