I played a pure lightning sorc. No fire or frost abilities at all. This is how I would play a sorc. I do not want fire or frost abilities at all.
Overall: very disappointed, always oom and getting chased around while waiting for mana. Base skills suck, too few other options for damage.
Sparks: slow animation to cast. Its free and does decent damage but the animation to cast it slows you down too much to use it while kiting and its single target so its useless while getting swarmed. Should have some kind of explosion attached at the end of its skill tree.
Arc lash: hits decently hard but its basically a melee attack and the last thing i want is to be doing melee damage as a sorc. Need to double the range for me to even consider it.
Charged bolts: i realized this is a diablo staple but i don’t know anyone who actually likes this ability. Its random and completely unpredictable. I don’t think anybody would care if it disappeared.
Chain lightning: i loved chain lightning. It bounced well and did decent damage but i was always oom. At 35 mana i got 3 casts and then i had to kite for 3-4 seconds between each additional cast while waiting for mana. You really need to double the mana regen. I should be kiting mobs to avoid overwhelming damage and attacks, not because I got ambushed and instantly went oom.
Teleport: this is NOT a defensive option. We already have a dodge. Teleport is an offensive spell. Why don’t we have a lightning barrier or other lightning defensive spell like mana shield?
Lightning spear: this was cool but it hit like a wet noodle even with 7 points invested into it. Not really worth a 20 second CD.
Ball Lightning: The damage is lower than chain lightning, the ball travels too slow and its area effect is is too small. To make it worse it costs 50 mana so 2 casts and I’m oom. I casted it 2 or 3 times, discovered how bad it was and immediately respecced out of it.
Crackling energy: i liked the Crackling energy mechanic except for the fact that it spawned where the enemy dies. Needing to run over to pick them up, sometimes 2 screens away because of chain lightning bounces got old real fast. It also made the enchantment for lightning spear crap because instead of proccing during combat i would get that 10% proc after everyone was already dead and I’m just running around doing cleanup. Crackling energy should proc on you and not be a pickup at all. Just fill up the charges instead of spawning something you have to run over to get. It was so bad when they spawned while i was oom and swarmed because i had to charge into the enemy packs just to get them. Its also impossible to predict when they will spawn which is very frustrating. I’ve done 1/2 a dungeon with no spawns and had 5 spawn from a single pack. Needs more consistency.
Enchantments: as far as i can tell the enchantment system for the sorc is total crap. I tried very one of the lightning skills in the enchanment slot and I didn’t notice any changes in gameplay in any way. They made absolutely no impact to my play. Many never even procced or procced at very bad times.