TL;DR - In an effort to head off snarky and pointless comments, this post is a 2,807 word essay on my personal experience on maxing out a Fireball/Hydra Sorcerer from level 50-100. I felt compelled to write this just to get all of this “on paper” and out of my head. If the subject doesn’t interest you, 
Last night, I dinged 100 on my sorcerer. At level 50, I got tired of the Maxroll.gg chain lightning leveling build and thought I’d see what I could do on my own using nothing but my intuition and ability to craft a build using my two favorite pyromancy skills: hydra, and fireball.
I’d like to share my thoughts and impressions based on my experience in the hopes that people that have yet to hit WT3 or WT4, or higher levels can learn from my experience, and the slim chance the feedback could be used to improve the game. I’ll hit on four specific topics that were germane to my experience:
- Skills
- Gameplay
- Hitting 100
- Gear
I would also like to point out that I am just an average gamer with a full time job that happens to be able to dedicate 100% of my free time as I see fit. I am sure there are glaring mistakes with my build and choices I made. This in no way intended to be a guide to other Sorcerer players looking for a powerful build or to have an easier time with the game.
Skills
In this section I’ll address each skill that I used during my leveling process from 50-100.
Frost Nova - In reality, it would be most accurate to say I was leveling as a Frost Nova Sorcerer. This skill is awesome. It’s super effective at both defense and offense. It did the bulk of the work for me. I think the cooldown on it is fair given its power. It even looks and sounds awesome. There was no better feeling while leveling than to get a large cluster of mobs, lock them all down, and watch them explode. Super satisfying gameplay.
Ice Armor - No brainer to help stay alive. The barrier should last until depleted, and not be on a timer. The cooldown on the spell is fair, but if I pumped this ability up, and my damage mitigation stats up in order for the barrier to last longer, it shouldn’t arbitrarily end at six seconds.
Teleport - Again, a no brainer choice. I’d even say it’s mandatory as it’s one of the few, if not only reliable means we have of dealing with incoming crowd control. It’s a fun ability to use as well, due to the nice mobility increase. As with the previous two skills, these are also very useful just to have as a means of regenerating mana in conjunction with the Prodigy aspect.
Inferno - Looks cool. Long(ish) CD. Never used for damage on its own. Mainly used for the free pyromancy casts while the Inferno was active. The vacuum and group effect hardly works. The most effective way to group enemies is to erect a barrier, and stand in one spot. It isn’t safe. It’s also a bummer that for an Ultimate skill, it was more used for its ancillary effects. The only thing ultimate about this skill was the graphic, and the casts for zero mana.
Fireball - Here is where I start to really gripe.
The mana cost is rather steep. Even at lvl 100 with gear and aspects to assist with mana regeneration, you deplete your mana so fast with this spell. You don’t feel like a spell caster, because you can only cast two or three of them before your mana is depleted.
The travel speed is ridiculous. It’s pure luck if it lands at range. This is really a melee range only spell. Sad.
On it’s own, it hardly did much damage, even though I maximized vulnerability damage, critical strike chance and damage, fire damage, non-physical damage, and all of the appropriate conditional damage boosting stats. The only enemies that would die with a single fireball were the weakest of fodder, like the bats or spiderlings. Beefier trash mobs would have to be burning first, and even then, many of them would not die with a single cast of Fireball unless they were vulnerable from Frost Nova.
The game play loop was very tactical. The spell was most effective in large clusters of vulnerable and crowd controlled enemies. The same spell that might take 50% of a trash mob’s health down on its own before depleting my mana, would clear the entire screen provided I clustered enough mobs, applied Frost Nova, and leaned on the Fireball enchantment to trigger a chain reaction of explosions. Fortunately, end of dungeon bosses are weak enough that with everything active, I could usually burst them down by the time Inferno expired. There is zero chance to do Uber Lilith relying on this spell as your primary source of damage.
Hydra - Fun spell. Has tactical applications since you can cast at range to avoid damage, or get mobs to run towards your position and thus cluster up. Used to apply burning effect, which is was great at.
Damage was nothing to write home about. Granted I didn’t try to max conjuration damage so it would suffer from that, I still did everything I could to maximize fire and burning damage. Even dropping fireball and focusing only on Hydra, I cannot see this being an effective spell on its own from a damage standpoint.
And in lieu of the positives from the safety features of this spell, one huge drawback is target selection. If you encounter mobs with the damage resistance aura, or a priority target like a nasty elite or volatile blood on Uber Lilith, your only choice is recast the hydra near or on your target and hope it gets prioritized.
Gameplay
The gameplay in general was very enjoyable. I stuck to running regular dungeons, legion events, Helltides, world bosses, and when I did Nightmare Sigils to max my glyphs, I stayed in the pocket and would go no further than monsters five levels above mine, as there was no benefit. The skills above along with the fireball and firebolt enchant were more than enough to have a fun time leveling to 100.
I didn’t feel much like a traditional spellcaster; staying at range to avoid damage, and casting a flurry of my primary spell to slay enemies. I felt more like Diablo’s version of the Doom Slayer from Doom Eternal as I was constantly moving, and using my entire kit to take down enemies of all kinds. I certainly enjoy that style of gameplay, but as a veteran of the fantasy RPG genre, this is diametrically opposed to what I’d expect from a spell caster.
Gear
This could be a multi-page essay on its own, so I will keep this relatively brief and tied to my personal experience.
Stats - I actually enjoy the stats in this game. I enjoy building around conditional effects tailored to the skills I want to use. What I don’t really enjoy is having to analyze every single drop to determine if it is an upgrade. Let me provide three examples:
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I have an item power 750 staff with Intellect, Crit Damage, Damage to distant enemies, and Core Skill damage. I then find an item power 800 staff with the same stats. Obvious upgrade, equip ASAP.
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I now have my item power 800 staff from example 1 equipped, and find an item power 800 staff with Intellect, Crit Damage, Core Skill Damage and Vulnerable Damage. Not quite an obvious upgrade. Now, by the time you are getting item power 800 items, it’s reasonable to expect players to understand how vulnerable works, and how valuable it is. But this may not be intuitive to everyone yet. That’s ok.
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I have the same item power 800 staff from example one, but I find an item power 775 staff with Int, Crit Dmg, Core Dmg, and Vulnerable Dmg. I know that vulnerable damage is the second most important stat on a weapon behind DPS or dmg per hit. But does the presence of vulnerable damage in place of dmg to distant make up for the inherent DPS loss of the higher item power weapon? No idea without consulting a spreadsheet. This is where this system shows its flaws.
It would be nice if the game could use key-words for these conditional effects to cut down on the verbiage bloat on the item cards (ironic thing to say in this book of a post). It would make the item cards more pleasing to look at, as well as easier to analyze quickly. For example, think of how Magic the Gathering did this. Instead of a creature card saying “This creature may attack on the turn it comes into play” the card instead says “Haste”. Awesome! Way easier on the eyes. I wonder if there are too many conditional effects in this game to pull this off.
Unique items - My oh my. As a fire/pyro Sorcerer these are such a huge let down. I’ll pick on the staff since it makes my point so well
The two extra fireballs every third cast represent a 66% base damage increase. Five projectiles instead of three. In an AoE situation this isn’t needed as the fireball enchantment does all the damage. And in a single target situation, you have to assume all the extra projectiles will hit the intended target, meaning you are face to face with the target, and single target situations are where that is most dangerous.
We’ve only addressed the cool effect/good part of this item. Now lets address the drawbacks:
- No Intellect
- No Damage to Vulnerable
- No Critical Strike Damage
- No legendary aspect
Even in the few situations those two extra fireballs every third cast might be useful, there is no way that can make up for losing the four stats I listed above.
And this is he “good” Pyro Sorcerer unique available. The gloves are so useless its almost funny, but appalling is really the word that comes to mind.
Raiment of the Infinite or Temerity are the only two I would consider using. I say “or” because there is no way I could use both and expect to survive as we need at least the leg slot or chest slot to focus completely on defensive stats. I tried both and even standard mob packs and elites in Helltides became incredibly dangerous. I wouldn’t dare try a Nightmare Sigil with mobs at my level or higher (Tier 46 on up) with both of the cool uniques equipped.
And I’m not going to worry about “THE SIX” uniques that I will never see in my lifetime. Three of them could be really great for the build I used, but with their drop rates, they may as well not be coded into the game. Then imagine getting one of these “once in several life time’s” items, and it had a crap roll 
It’s hard to convey how disappointing this is. Blizzard, I assure you there is a gap between “everyone has all six in a week” and “will never see a single one in my lifetime”. Perhaps put the drop rates for these cool items somewhere in that vast galaxy and make them have max rolls with no level requirement given how freaking rare they are?!?!?
And finally - hitting level 100
The journey overall was a lot of fun. Peak fun is obviously the first full playthrough of the campaign. Well done and bravo to the team.
I really enjoyed the time where I went form the end of the campaign, unlocked WT3, got nice gear upgrades with sacred items, unlocked paragon, started leveling glyphs, farmed all of the renown, and opened WT4. Every day I wanted to do nothing more than log on and work on all of these. It was probably the best the game felt in terms of my power curve versus the enemy’s power curve. I got to WT4 with my janky, off-brand, homemade build at level 64.
I had to stay in WT3 to 70 farm up more paragon and a couple defensive upgrades because WT4 was crushing me at 64. The price I pay for not following a meta build, I know. But I had a goal in mind, and was happy to put in the work.
However, it becomes nothing but a grind shortly after your first few levels in WT4. You’re now farming to max out paragon, and you cannot expect to get much power increase from gear once you’ve filled you character sheet with ancestral drops. This happened for me around level 80. The problem is, the monsters kept getting stronger, and stronger. Fortunately, I had enough juice with my paragon, and gear to make it to 100 without a struggle, but it was a bummer knowing that somewhere around lvl 85 or so, I had hit peak power, and that the monster scaling was going to outpace mine from the remainder of the paragon boards.
And then I hit level 100 last night. It was incredibly anti-climactic. Why? Well let’s do some more BULLET POINTS!
- I cannot use this character to farm gear for other characters. Well that sucks doesn’t it? A staple from D2 and D3 isn’t found in this game. Yeah, yeah. I can send everything but weapons I find on this Sorcerer to other characters, but the problem is, those characters gotta be level 100 to use them! I really struggle to accept that this was deemed OK. This decision is even dumber than the astronomically low drop rates on “THE SIX” uniques I have to not care about.
- I have no chance of killing Uber Lilith with my build. At all. None. Now i know I’m probably some D tier gamer, and maybe the true gamers here could do it, but let me fill you in on my observations. I knew going in it wasn’t going to work, but I wanted a little data to back up my assertion. The best I did in five attempts was kill two of the volatile blood blisters before they killed me. I had to unload on them too with nova, hydras and fireballs to bring them down. I couldn’t do it with my “passive” hydra damage. It took maybe 40 seconds to get that far, and at that point, I had maybe hit Lilith for 1-2% of her health in phase one. At best, at that rate, the battle would take 68 minutes. I can live without doing this for now.
- I cleared a Tier 50 sigil. Woopity doo! I could likely go higher, but not much before I start getting trucked. I estimate the somewhere from 55-60 is the limit for this build. And with maxed glyphs, no skills or paragon to unlock, and no reasonable expectation of any good gear to drop. Why would I? Just to brag to a bunch of people that couldn’t care less if I didn’t exist? Pass.
And yes, I realize I can change my build to Ice Shards and/or Blizzard. I also remember someone saying something along the lines of “Your class. Your way.” I also recall being told at some point the developers envisioned players rolling new character over swapping builds, and I would definitely agree that at lvl 100, you’ve reached that point. If clearing a level 100 sigil and soloing Uber Lilith is on your D4 bucket list, my strong admonishment is to start off with a character build in mind from level 50 and work towards that.
My way (fireball/hydra) not working is fine. It comes to down to whether or not its worth it for me to change my build in the hopes I like it, kit out the character for the new build, and hope I have the skill to accomplish the last two facets of gameplay left. For me, it’s not worth it. I’ll be switching to Necromancer now for a new experience, and maybe feel compelled to max that character out and try the two remaining bucket list items.
I’ll close by saying I’ve had a lot of fun playing the game, warts and all. I plan to continue playing for sometime with the faith that the warts will be removed, and the game play experience will get better over time. It felt great to put all of this in writing with the minute hope that anyone that can do anything to bring positive change to a great base game will consider what I wrote.
If you made it this far, respect and thanks!