Ice Shards is the only Sorcerer skill that has good synergy with the rest of the class toolkit and has solid supporting aspects. Frost in general is vastly superior to either Shock or Fire because it can apply the Vulnerable status effect with ease (whereas the other two outright cannot) and the damage scaling on vulnerability damage is absolutely busted.
Even if you have masochistic tendencies and are trying to play a Shock or Fire build it’s practically mandatory to include Frost Nova as it is the ONLY means of applying Vulnerable outside of playing a Frost build. But even then you will be doing a much poorer job of applying it and have much lower uptime on the rebuff than if you when with a full Frost build. Meanwhile everything about how the game works under the hood, from stats on gear to the paragon board, actively encourages playing a single element build. Make it make sense?
As things stand right now, unless you are willing to actively handicap yourself, you are forced to play a Frost build. And I use the word “build” in the loosest sense possible because it basically consists of nothing other than constant Ice Shards spamming. One skill does not constitute a build in my mind.
The only way to fix this glaring inconsistency is to allow Fire and Shock build to also apply the Vulnerable status effect. Fire can apply Paralyze. Shock can apply Stun. Frost can apply Freeze AND Vulnerable. Therefore, Frost is superior (and by a long shot because Vulnerable damage scaling is busted). It took me 5 minutes of playing the game to see this. How did the devs work on this for over a decade and not pick up on it!?
Agreed with everything as I recently changed from a Firewall build to Ice Shards build around lvl 45 and things are so much smoother with a cold build. I kill things so fast once I get a Frost Nova cooldown because everything dies after spamming Ice Shards. Don’t fear it will be nerfed soon because it’s so good. The only thing I need to get is better cooldown items and I’ll be set up for those NM dungeons.
gotta agree here, i went through campaign with a mostly lightning build with Hydras,
then switched to pyro at 50 and…hated it.
then thought “screw it lets try ice” and DAMN its so much better,
In Ice Shards We Trust!
How Long Before the Devs Realize Why Everyone is Using Ice Shards?
Better question: Do they care?
Probably the way they think about it is, “So long as there is a build which works, our job is done.”
I started pre-release with a Sorceress, played up most of the way as Shock, have her still as my highest level character, and today I invested more heavily in another class. I am in love with the idea of playing a Sorcerer, but honestly…I am more in love with not being endlessly frustrated trying to avoid being shoe-horned into the only effective build there is for the class.
Frost Nova, as noted, is mandatory. Right there one of your skill options is gone if you are not playing Frost/Ice Shards. And unlike other classes, who have the option to grab the ability to apply Vulnerable via the Exploit glyph, the Sorcerer version does not apply Vulnerable. It is the ONLY CLASS whose version does not do so.
The problems with the class go deeper though. Look at Barbarian and ask yourself if the choice of Core/Brawling/Mastery skill in any way drive you to a specific Ultimate selection. Call of the Ancients does not care if you are using Whirlwind, Charge, Steel Grasp, Rend, Double Strike, Kick, Puncture, etc. Or look at Druid. While fitting theme might suggest going one way or the other, you could quite happily be a spellcaster or werebear druid and happily use Lacerate. By contrast, the Sorcerer pretty much had best fit their elemental theme outside some dipping allowed by Fire Bolt as an Enchantment in terms of the passives in the section.
Shock does not give you crit chance outside of two skills–Chain Lightning, and Lightning Spear and it only applies to those skills. Vulnerable applies regardless of the skill you are using.
As for Fire giving you more damage, do not forget the passives in the Ultimate section for Frost which straight up increase your damage against Elites, Chilled, and Frozen (double dip there since Frozen means Chilled). The only thing Fire really has over Frost is it comes with an option to Heal via Warmth. But Frost has plenty of things over Fire.
Oh I know they don’t care, they’ve proven as much with their inaction already, not to mention their poor decision making before the game released. But here’s the thing: the build doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for more casual players because they don’t like how rigid it is or how ugly Ice Shards look and feel to use. And it doesn’t work for try-hard endgame players because even with the best and fully optimized Sorcerer build it takes x2, or x3 and even longer to clear the same level nightmare dungeon, let alone the Echo of Lilith. And of course Sorcerer survivability is a joke no matter which element you choose to go with, hence why you have to use all the damn defensives.
There’s the Spark upgrade although it might not be worth it to take up a slot for a basic skill just for an 8% crit. Also Coursing Currents which increases your crit rate for each Shock hit that does not crit. Though admittedly, it’s crit rate resetting once you crit is too gimmicky compared to the Frost passives which are straight up damage bonuses.
Then we have fire’s Devouring Blaze which I wish wasn’t so damn good, but it is. It pretty much forces everyone to have some source of burning.
They do not care, they released a class that 95% of the skill tree is trash and they know it. If they cared this would have been hotfixed already. Re-roll or request a refund.
You are correct, and as a Shock sorcerer, I should not have made that mistake.
I could work out the math for average wait for the climb/reset mechanic but let’s assume you are sitting at 20% chance to crit. To equal base Vulnerability you would need 225% critical damage. So a lot more effort to get to where Frost starts (though on balance Frost will not always have Vulnerability up, just when it wants/needs, but contrast the random nature of crisis occurring, so again Frost is up).
I went as long as I could playing a Blizzard build through the mid 60’s, even passed the T4 capstone with the homemade blizzard build because I really liked the synergies with the ice spikes and whatnot… but around 70 I geared up for a shard build and went full shard and holy crap… It’s massively superior in basically every way. Just hoping they don’t decide to nerf shard and instead buff the other viable builds to get on par… From what I’m hearing, shard isn’t even viable on higher NM tiers so likely this even needs a boost to make it competitive with other end game NM pushing tier builds, but I’m not there yet so can’t really say.
600 posts is crazy, why not reply with what tbey actually said? They said that was the reason they didnt buff anything recently, but theyre gonna be buffing a lot of the off meta builds soon. You cornball
Any build, Sorcerer builds in particular, can wipe out massive packs of mobs. If anything the more mobs the easier it is because of things like Shatter, Meteor, the Fireball enchant, etc. That’s not the benchmark for good performance.
The problem is single target and specifically single target on really tanky elites with an annoying set of affixes as well as bosses. If you push high enough, even an Ice Shards build can’t do it, or if it can it becomes a war of attrition where the best case scenario means the fight will take x5 longer than it would any other class. Worst case it takes you forever to whittle down the boss and you slip up and die before you can take it out just because the fight took too damn long and you made a silly mistake because you got tired.
I joined the forums 92 days ago. So that is 600/92=6.52 posts per day. You joined 14 days ago and have 87 posts, which is 87/14=6.21 posts per day. Guess you are crazy (and not math literate).
They said as I claimed. Yes they mentioned buffs, but they addressed the common whine about buffing everything else.
For sure IS will get nerfed. Ice in general, probably. I don’t get how they’re going to balance it, not that I’m even close to end-game, but I’m reading about how bad Sorcs fall off. I’m still in WT2 Act 3 and I don’t even have to use IS. Just FN + Blizzard is enough to clear elites and bosses, I don’t even have to move. Granted I have good gear and am a high level for the area (scaling though?) - 53. It’s too easy, but if late game is too hard then how do they balance it?
There is a very useless passive giving us 3 mana per point. Replace it with 5% lucky hit core skill applies vulnerability might allow greater diversity in builds.
