Improving My Fireball Sorcerer

Sorcerer
1

Any suggestions on how to improve my build would be appreciated. I have stayed on the Eternal Realm in WT4 and I am level 100. I succeed at Tier 53 in the Nightmare Dungeons. My goals are to succeed at the higher tier NMDs and to take on Duriel solo (I fail when he has about 25% health remaining.

Current Stats: Attack: 8,074 Armor: 11,244 Life: 14,999

Resistances are 52% - 70% with poison being at 70%.

Attack Speed Bonus: 27.5%
Damage w/Fire: 246%
Damage w/Pyro: 41.3%
Damage w/Conjuration: 119%

Damage Reduction: 5.5%
DR Elite 21%
DR Close 16%
DR Burning 24%

Mana Cost Reduction 27%
Mana Regeneration 13
Mana Generation 31%

Skills: Hydra - 5 (x2 ), Fireball - 9, Flame Shield - 8, Frost Nova - 5, Firebolt -5, & Inferno

Paragon Board:

Board 1: Emphasized Intelligence. Rare nodes: Elementalist, Resilience, Erudite, and Elemental Balance with Wisdom for the selected Glyph

B2: Rare nodes: Smoldering Embers, Cinders, Culler, Kindling, Safeguard, Keeper of the Flames; with Burning Instinct for Legendary. Glyph Socket was Elementalist.

B3: Legendary - Searing Heat; Rares - Pyromancy, Recuperate, Combustion, Ashes, and Flame Touched ; Glyph - Warding

B4: Legendary - Elemental Summoner; Rares - Swift Conjurer, Reservoir, Conjurer, and Erudite ; Glyph - Unleash

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

2

What are you using for enchants? Are you using Gloves of the Illuminator and the Staff of Endless Rage? What Key Passive did you select?

Your glyphs could easily be improved:

Wisdom is a blue glyph. Replace that for sure with Flamefeeder or Destruction.

Unleashed has a terrible scaling bonus. I would replace that also unless you’re truly desperate for that mana regeneration, but even then I’d try to solve that issue with an aspect or equipment affixes before using this subpar glyph.

I’m not a fan of Warding since the additional bonus scales inversely to your mana sustain. If you feel you need the DR I’d go with Reinforced or Tactician over Warding, but I suspect you’d be better of with an offensive glyph.

Elementalist is only useful if you’re reliably proccing damage from all three elements but I see nothing but fire damage on your skill bar. Are you getting cold and lightning damage out of your enchants? If not, don’t use this glyph.

Better options than your glyphs to consider would be Imbiber, Flamefeeder, Destruction, Territorial, and Torch (if using Firebolt enchant). Control is also good if you’re reliably inflicting crowd controlling things.

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3

Go with 5-6 Paragon boards, not sure why at 100 you would only have 4 glyphs.

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4

For pure damage, you want Enchanter (boost to elemental damage), Pyromaniac, Tactician (node boost + multi), Exploit and Destruction
The sixth would be the AoZ glyph, alternatives can be Elementalist (15% multi), Territorial, Adept, Reinforced, Flamefeeder. You don’t need Burning instinct, pick Frigid fate instead. This will improve drastically your damage

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5

You might get some ideas here

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6

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to look at all the data I posted. I am sure it was a chore. Thank you very much.

I see that I will need to redo my Paragon board. I suspected as much but was reluctant to for fear that I would make my situation worse. I will incorporate your suggestions. Thanks.

My two enchantments are Firebolt and Fireball.

My Key Passive is Combustion, though I have gone back and forth with Esu’s Ferocity.

Passives: Devastation (3) & Elemental Dominance (3), Align the Elements (1) & Mana Shield (3), Inner Flames (2), Fiery Surge (3) & Soulfire (1) & Warmth (3).

I am not using either the Staff of Endless Rage (though I ran 50 Vashan’s to get it) or the Gloves of the Illuminator. My staff is a 925 staff with 4,047 DPS while my best Rage is a 914 doing 3,085 DPS. I rerolled one of my staff’s enchantments to get +60 All-Stats and imprinted the aspect to provide a 72% chance for a Critical Strike. The best Gloves of the Illuminator I have is an 884 so I am using a 925 with +23 All-Stats, +Strength, +4 Ranks of Fireball. I rerolled to get a +15% Attack Speed and imprinted an aspect to give me a second Hydra with a 20% duration increase.

That video was amazing!

So, again, thank you all for taking the time and for your suggestions. I will be re-doing my Board.

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7

Your build needs a lot of work.
You need to pay attention your gear’s affixes. I know it’s hard and takes a of of time, but unfortunately for sorcs this is vital.
Also check your paragon board. Looks like you are leaving some phis. damage & resistance nodes behind… bad idea.

8

What’s the reasoning behind Combustion instead of Esu? Emh, a redo/polishing of skill points might be needed as well, don’t you have Protection? Devouring blaze? Points in Devastation and Warmth aren’t needed. I think the Critical on the staff is overkill as well ( Aspect of Three Curses), probably pushes you over 100%. How come your 914 Staff of endless rage has 1000 dps less then a 925 staff? Sounds weird, anyway, 914 should be fine to use, item power wise.

9

It’s a great question. Thank you for asking as my answer applies to my thought process throughout – maybe I’m wrong. Combustion is always ON. I always inflict 20% more damage while ESU is dependent on the health of the target and the chance that I successfully score a critical hit.

10

For Burning damage, yes, but that is not the same thing as Fire damage. It does nothing for Fireball, for example. The only things that benefit from that in your build right now are Inferno, the damage done by the Firebolt enchant, and possibly your Hydras if you’re using the modification that gives them some Burning damage.

11

First, thank you. Second, this has been a valuable, to me, lesson.

Firebolt burns for 19k [62%] over 6 seconds – what does that “62%” represent? And, its enchantment provides Direct Damage From Skills for 8k [33%] over 8 seconds.

Fireball provides 10% of burning damage as additional direct damage which would be another 1.9k from Firebolt.

Flame Shield burns for 19k which give Fireball another 1.9k as additional direct damage.

Hydra does between 5.9 and 7.3k times 3, 4, or 5 heads (let’s use 4 heads at 26k) and 60% of that as burning damage for another 15.9k so Fireball gives 1.6k as additional direct damage.

Inferno burns 93k over 8 seconds adding another 9.3k to Fireball as additional direct damage.

Skills that provide Direct Damage: Firebolt & Fireball & Hydra

Do I have that correct? And I would need to do the math to calculate the per second damage.

However, I do listen to more experienced players and if my analysis is wrong or if correct but ESU is still the better choice then I will revert to that.

Again, thank you

12

You would have that correct if burning damage scaled easily. Fireball is a lot better if you just focus on crit/crit damage rather than trying to buff burns (considering you should be spamming fireball and not firebolt). Esus should be active all the time and with both bonuses being activated on a crit for boss it is just straight better for a fireball build.

Focus on getting the fireball uniques as those multipliers are substantial in addition to extra lucky hits etc.

13

I have a pure fire sorcerer in Eternal that can do level 90 nightmare dungeons with no problem. I can’t post my entire build right now. I focused heavily on crits. I use Gloves of Illuminator with a regular staff for fireball damage, and I have some damage built into Hydras for bosses. It is definitely possible to push into high tier nightmare dungeons.

14

Thanks for replying. I cannot take the bouncing fireballs from the Gloves of the Illuminator. They are fine for a dungeon hallway. I can’t decide if they are good for a mob but for a lone Boss they seem problematic to me. I want to aim down stream and know the ball is going there. What is your experience?

I have an aspect allowing me two active Hydras plus Enhanced and Summoned. Other than those what damage have you built into your hydras?

Thanks

15

I think the bouncing fireballs are almost required. The single fireballs don’t do enough damage on their own. The bouncing fireballs plus the fireball enchantment is enough to clear lower mobs once the damage plus crits are high enough. For elites and bosses, you have to gauge it. A lot of it depends on the hit boxes. I always have 2 hydras going. I weave in fireballs if the bounces will hit multiple times. If not, I use Meteor.

I’m boosting my hydras with the Conjurer glyph on the Searing Heat board. I also have some nodes including the Legendary on the Elemental Summoner board. I’m on the fence about these. I need hydras for bosses because the other pure fire spells are too weak and unreliable. If you are using mixed elemental damage, there are much better options.

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16

Thanks for the suggestions. I went ahead and swapped Enchanter for Wisdom. FWIW, Wisdom gives me +15% Damage to everything. Enchanter only pumps up non-physical damage. I thought all damage was the better choice but maybe all sorcerer damage is non-physical so that may be a non-issue. I spent a couple of days running NMD to upgrade the Enchanter glyph and it’s currently at level 11, which is where Wisdom was. I will try to use a damage calculator to compare.

I also used Gloves of the Illuminator while in the dungeons and I must say they are rather fun. I still swap them out prior to the boss fight because a bouncing ball going after a lone target is iffy.

Speaking of damage calculators, which do you use and most people use? I was trying to use “d4 ut . net”. Is that the one most people use? I noticed it wants, as an input, Basic [damage] with Core though my Stats do not include such a stat. Am I missing something? Also, when using something like that calculator are we ignoring the damage as displayed on the Skill Tree?

Finally, is the Attack Power value rather meaningless or is it a general idea of your damage? With the Wisdom glyph, which gave +15% damage my AP was 8,074 but when I replaced it with the Enchanter glyph my AP went down to 7,025.

Thanks

17

I really don’t know why they included the blue glyphs. Enchanter should give you a much bigger boost. All sorcerer damage is elemental as in non-physical. Yellow glyphs go up to level 21, and at level 15 they increase their radius to include more paragon nodes.

If you are using the legendary Elemental Summoner node to boost your conjurations, all 3 elemental types will contribute to the bonus, even if you are not using spells of those types. Again, I’m still on the fence about the conjurations.

I have not used an online damage calculator. I test changes using the training dummy. It’s very hard to see all of the damage numbers flying by, and the ranges between the min and max can be huge.

I don’t pay much attention to Attack Power. It can give you a general gauge for comparison, but there are so many damage enhancements that are not part of its calculation.

18

Following this thread. Just stared a fireball sorc tonight. Up to level 32 so far, biggest issues I am having early game is being mana starved and slow boss kills.

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19

Welcome to the fray.

Skill Tree:
Devastation: +9 Max Mana
Flickering Firebolt: Regen 2 mana per hit
Fiery Surge: 45% increase to Mana Regen for 3 sec.

Not everyone agrees these are the best options but it’s what I am using. My mana pool is 168.

Also, when looking at gear my mantra is “Mana Mana Life” … Plus Max Mana, Mana Cost Reduction, and Plus Max Life. Again, I am not sure how many agree with this. As you can see from this thread, I am working to better my build.

Replacing the blue glyph Wisdom with the rare Enchanter has already produced very good results. I succeeded in a Tier 59 NMD last night. I haven’t tried to enter a Tier 60+ yet.

Enjoy and let us know what works for you. I’m interested.

20

Don’t worry. By the time you get to Level 100…it will be exactly the same. If you created a fireball sorc in Season 2, it should be stronger because you have access to vulnerable that pure fire sorcs can’t usually get.

I prioritize damage over everything else because fire sorcerers are so weak. I use Fire Bolt, not for the burning damage itself, but for the damage boosts to burning and damage reduction from burning. I use the Fireball enchantment for the chain reaction explosions that can clear large mobs.