Cross posting here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/14ldwvp/sorcerer_weakness_discussed_long/
"This will be a long post so buckle in. I want to make an attempt at illustrating some foundational problems with Sorcerer and hopefully make it easier to understand where our negativity is coming from. I’ll list off the various issues in no particular order and try to focus only on Sorcerer specific pain points, references to other classes will only be for context. This will be written from the Perspective of a level 100 Sorc.
Defenses - This is a hot topic as most Sorcerers acknowledge that we struggle defensively. Lets try to understand why.
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Armor - Sorc has access to a total of 200 armor from paragon nodes. Comparatively Rogue has 4400, Barb has 2750, Druid has 2250 and Necro has 1350. With Armor being the most powerful source of DR currently, this disparity is huge with Sorc having more than 5x less armor available to them than the lowest other class which also enjoys Fortify. For what its worth, the amount of X% life nodes are also lowest on Sorc compared to every other class.
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Resistances - Sorc has high(er) innate resistance due to Intellect main stat and has resistance in almost every area other classes get armor. The problem is resistance is very weak, due to only contributing to half of your dmg reduction vs only non-phys attacks but also suffering a 40% penalty in world tier4. This creates an effective “soft cap” around the 35% non-phys mark, which we reach from Intellect and jewelry alone. So our paragon boards filled with resistance offer no practical defense by comparison to just a few 100 armor nodes we could of had.
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Barriers - This is where you would think Sorc defense would shine right? Well Barriers have one major flaw and that is that they are capped at your base HP. This is your HP value before +HP affix rolls, before paragon +HP% nodes and before Ruby gems. You cannot increase the max value of any barrier beyond the base lvl 100 health of Sorc @ 7959hp. Even stacked on +hp sources and reaching 16k hp, you can never have a barrier stronger than 7959hp.
- Barrier generation stat can be misleading, this increases the amount of barrier you get from a source by x% but still doesn’t break the cap of base HP. So if a skill gives you a 40% barrier and you have 10% barrier generation, you’ll get a 44% barrier from that skill use. This stat also doesn’t work with the Protection passive at all, detailed in point no.3
- Maybe Barrier uptime is where the power should come from right? Well Ice Armor is a 20sec base CD, with 6sec duration. Ranks in the skill do not increase duration or lower cooldown. Ice Armor at rank1 is only a 30% barrier (2387hp) with rank5 being a 42% barrier (3342hp). With 45% cdr you can get Ice Armor to an 11sec cd, for 54% uptime on an approx +3k hp barrier with typical Sorc builds.
- Now onto “Protection”, a passive skill tree node that gives a 10/20/30% barrier for 2 seconds after using a cooldown. This is the nerfed version after the Beta weekends. The problem here from a defensive perspective is the duration. When you look at your typical cooldown skills that trigger this - Ice Armor gives a stronger barrier that lasts 3x longer, Flame shield gives full immunity for the same duration as the barrier, Frost Nova freezes everything for longer than the barrier duration and Teleport with the Meta unique (Raimment of Infinite) stuns everything for longer than the barrier duration. So the 30% barrier this passive gives us is defensively overlapping with the cooldowns we need to use to activate it and offering a barrier at times when we mostly dont need or want one.
- Damage Reduction - Sorcerer’s primary DR comes from 3 sources. DR from burning enemies, DR from chilled enemies and DR from Stunned Enemies.
- The main issue here is that the requirements to gain all three of these sources is too high, when Sorc elements have been split into one CC/Status type each.
- The 2nd issue is that 2 of our 3 DR sources do not work vs Bosses or Unstoppable enemies, with 2 of these effects causing unstoppable also. So Burning becomes the absolute number one source of DR and every build has to revolve around it.
- The 3rd issue is that all of our DR is entirely tied to applying multiple CCs/Statuses on an enemy first, this both restricts our skill choice and enchant slots but also our need to use 4 of our 6 skill slots on the entire defensive skills category that we actually use to apply all of the statues and not as reactionary defensive tools.
In summary, between lower average armor values, an emphasis on resistance that is too weak to compete, barriers that are too restrictive and non scaling, no access to Fortify or any form of base “always on” DR and DR in general all being too conditionally tied to enemy states - Sorcerer is defensively weak, with almost no standing DR at all. Hence the 1 shots, if literally anything attacks you before you’d applied half a dozen statuses to them first.
Dealing Damage - This is another area where people may be confused, they hear Sorc does weak dps but are also clearing T100 or Lilith so whats going on? “I see Sorc’s blow up packs instantly by teleporting into them!”
- Dmg vs CC - This is the entire Sorcerer design methodology. Sorcerer does damage in swings of 1x or 10x depending on the presence of CC and the number of CCs. The issue most people acknowledge with Vuln vs No Vuln is amplified tenfold on Sorc because we have the same Vuln or No Vuln issue thats game-wide, but a 2nd time with CC or no CC.
Essentially the Sorcerer is the most conditional class in the game both offensively and defensively. You don’t do any meaningful damage or reduce any meaningful damage unless the enemy is first burning and also either frozen/stunned/immobilized or all of them at once.
- The main culprit here is Aspect of Control - “You deal x25%-35% more damage to immobilized, stunned or frozen enemies” (50-70% on a 2 hander)
- First things first, upto x70% multi vs CC sounds absurdly strong but that’s only the beginning, it double and triple dips if you can get 2 or 3 layered hard CCs on the enemy before you deal damage. So this is why you see the Sorcerer teleport (Raiment stun) into Frost Nova (Freeze) then delete the pack of mobs instantly. You may have also seen Sorcs hard casting a meteor (immobilize) or use Binding Embers aspect (flame shield immobilizes) for true degenerate CC stacking on every build.
- So whats the issue here? Well, this is the entire Sorcerer damage output. It hard locks Teleport and Frost Nova into every build as CC applicators, it forces Sorc to play in essentially melee range and do dive bomb attacks on mobs to quickly kill them while they’re under layered CCs. You’re damage goes to zero if the enemy becomes unstoppable (because your stacking multiple hard CCs on them) and its all ineffective vs Bosses unless you Stagger them.
- Paragon’s follow this same trend, with all of our damage output locked to “vs burning”, “vs chilled/frozen”, “vs CC’d” or “vs Stunned”. There’s little or no general dmg increases with certain skill types/tags and nothing that is “always on” or even based on the Sorc’s state, its all tied to what condition(s) the enemy is under. So its out of your control and entirely reliant on the enemy.
- This “style” is also further enforced by the power of “Prodigy’s Aspect” which gives 15-25 mana per cooldown used, again locking in those 4 defensive skill slots even further to now fuel our resource while also applying our numerous status and CC effects to setup our damage combo and our miserable DR. All while hoping things die before going unstoppable and 1 shotting us because we’ve just used all our defensive skills in the setup.
In summary there is too much damage tied into CC, worse than even Vulnerable, while also being so conditional that to benefit from it you have to use all 4 of your defensive category skills as conditional requirements to setup your damage in every build and you have to spread yourself thin across both skill trees and paragons to try shoehorn in every status/CC type you can, not just for utility/defense or some damage bonuses like other classes but to actually do damage at all.
Core Skills - Our core skills have gone through a number of balance attempts which haven’t made any impact whatsoever, this is due to most of them being mechanically challenged and impractical regardless of the numbers. While core skill viability isn’t a uniquely Sorc problem, its more noticeable on Sorc than any other because our core skills are not a numbers problem.
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Incinerate - stationary skill channel on a defensively weak class, takes 4 seconds to ramp its damage, doesn’t retain the ramp if you stop channeling, costs mana upfront and per second making any channel cancelling extremely punishing for both dmg and resource management. Despite what the tooltip indicates this skill does not apply any Burn, thus cannot offer you any DR or DMG to play off your forced “vs burning” conditionals everywhere else in the class. Its also coded like a dot, so cannot crit either.
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Frozen Orb - fixed travel distance before it explodes makes this skill extremely cumbersome when enemies teleport onto you or run towards you. The Orb’s damage is split between shards it fires while travelling and the explosion, with the explosion being the stronger of the two. The speed it travels makes the shards have little impact and the fixed distance makes the explosion unreliable and impractical. Oddly the FO enchant directly fires to enemy locations, without a fixed travel distance. We need baseline FO to behave this way.
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Fireball - deals half the damage of Ice shards for a 16% increased resource cost and its upgrades are tied to distance based benefits, causing it to struggle with the opposite issue Frozen Orb has. You fire it at a pack, it hits the first basic enemy in its path and misses the entire pack behind him. Its not a practical skill and its simply inferior to Meteor in every single way.
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Chain Lightning - its only change so far was a complete gutting during a level 25 capped beta. Its the only directly target capped Core skill in the game at 5 targets max which is already a significant restriction in our current density (that’s going to go up soon) and its damage package is essentially divided by target count making its overall dmg per enemy weaker for every additional enemy beyond 1. The skill is both weaker in single target than Ice shards and essentially nerfs itself when it has more targets to reach.
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Charged Bolts - as a melee “shotgun” skill, Charged bolts isn’t that bad. But its a tough ask for a defensively weak class to spam a shotgun style skill in point blank range of large enemy packs and its design space is overlapping with the powerful basic skill Arc Lash that has better reach, no cost and interacts with the wider class mechanics easier such as stun/cdr and Unstable Currents.
Core Skills v2 - because the Mastery Category is basically just another 4 core skills, that deal damage for a mana cost and overlap with the exact design space that core skills should have. Sorc is the only class that has an entire 2nd category of primary resource costing skills half way down its skill tree for no reason. So this is a uniquely “Sorc problem” which is why I’m including it.
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Firewall and Ball Lightning - mostly great skills, they work in the builds that it makes sense to use them for but as is the trend with Mastery skills they just overlap with Core. Firewall makes incinerate redundant and Ball is simply better in a lightning build than chain lightning or charged bolts, for damage and practicality.
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Meteor - This is a design overlap issue, this is just a better Fireball that you have to wait 15 levels to get. It deals more impact damage than Fireball, it applies a burn (we know how important this is) and it immobilizes (we also know how important this is) and until the recent patch cost the same as Fireball. This should be a core skill and Fireball should be deleted, its very existence makes Fireball redundant.
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Blizzard - Potentially the worst “core” skill in the game. Blue Firewall but worse in every single way. A ground AoE that is coded to be a dot, so it can’t crit and can’t apply effects that require direct dmg (like burning). It deals less dmg than Firewall, has zero supporting effects because its a dot in the Frost skill type (only fire has DoT support). This spell is currently used as a rank1 vehicle to deliver the Ice Spikes aspect that have zero interaction with the Blizzard skill or its scaling at all, if they ever nerf the Spikes this skill goes from a few % usage metrics to 0.
Paying for power - Thankfully not pay2win, but there is a common trend with Sorcerer having to take a penalty for every bonus we’re given. Having studied other classes itemisation/trees/paragons and playing across each of the classes to the 50-60 range I felt this was still primarily a Sorcerer problem, so I want to highlight some examples where we either take a direct dmg penalty for some utility/function, gain no dmg at all for a QoL improvement or are only given power on a low RNG chance. Nothing is given freely for Sorc, everything has a draw back and its always weaker than generic non-sorc specific powers.
- Direct penalty:
- Glass cannon passive - You deal x6/12/18% more dmg, but take x3/6/9% more damage
- Gloves of the Illuminator (Unique) - Fireball now bounces(3 times) as it travels, but deals 65-75% less damage
- Raiment of the Infinite (Unique) - Teleport pulls in enemies and stuns them, but teleports cooldown is increased 20%
- Staff of Lam Esen (Unique) - Charged bolts pierce, but deal 25-30% less damage
- Serpentine Aspect - You can spawn a 2nd Hydra, but Hydra’s duration is reduced by 20-30%
- Gravitational Aspect - Your ball lightning now orbits you, but its damage is reduced by 10-20%
- Frostblitz Aspect - Frost Nova gains a 2nd charge, but its cooldown is increased by 30-40%
- Piercing Cold Aspect - Ice Shards pierce 3-4 times, but deal 20-25% less damage per target
- Only a chance for power:
- Aspect of Static Cling - Charged bolts have a 15-25% chance to be attracted to enemies and last longer
- Aspect of Abundant Energy - 20-30% chance for crackling energy to chain to 1 more enemy
- Aspect of Splintering Energy - Lightning Spear has a 11-20% chance to spawn an additional Spear (This is a base 20sec cooldown, for context a Druid Tornado has a 20% double cast as a skill tree upgrade on a spammable core)
- Aspect of Biting Cold - When you freeze an enemy, 25-35% chance they become Vulnerable (Frost Nova does already does this 100% of the time, Frostbolt does it 100% vs Frozen and Frozen Orb both does it 100% vs frozen and has the same chance vs Frozen enemies as this aspect)
- Aspect of Overwhelming Currents - Unstable Currents has 10-20% chance to cast an additional shock skill
- Aspect of Unbroken Tether - Chain lightning has a 25-35% chance to chain to 2 more enemies
- Stable Aspect - While Unstable Current is not active, 5-10% chance to trigger a free cast
- Just bizarrely weak:
- Aspect of Efficiency - Using a basic reduces your next core skill cost by 10-20% (literal dps loss aspect)
- Aspect of Fortune - Lucky hit increased by 10-20% with a barrier (same value as item affix roll but takes an aspect slot?)
- Aspect of Singed Extremities - applies a slow after Immobilise ends (a CC after a CC, that doesn’t apply if unstoppable)
- Aspect of Bounding Conduit - 20-25% movespeed for 3sec after Teleport (Compare this to Ghostwalker, that gives the same movespeed for 1 second longer when you are unstoppable which Teleport does…)
- Aspect of Storm Swell - x20% dmg while you have a barrier and enemy is vulnerable (5% weaker and twice as conditional as Conceited which any class can use…)
Sorcerer Enchants - Just have to call out 3 of these that start out bad and actually get worse as you get more powerful, in just another comedic Sorc specific issue.
- The following Enchants, which are Sorcerer’s class mechanic have a flat resource cost or cooldown usage requirement to trigger which actively get worse as your gear improves.
- Chain Lightning Enchant - every 100 mana you spend, fire a free chain lightning (resource cost reduction hurts this)
- Hydra Enchant - every 300 mana you spend, a 5 headed Hydra spawns for 5secs (resource cost reduction hurts this)
- Ice Blades enchant - Every 40secs of cooldowns used, spawns an ice blade (cooldown reduction hurts this)
Thats it, I’m done. If you made it this far thanks for reading. If you came here for a TLDR, here you go.
Sorcerer feels like an overdesigned class, that was made in a vacuum for a different point in time. It gives off old or outdated design vibes like it was made years before the others and hasn’t yet enjoyed the power creep of more recently iterated classes. It seems to hold onto oldschool RPG designs of gaining something but giving up something in return, while also having so many conditional constraints than it should be in a turn based strategy game.
Sorc needs to be let off the leash, it needs to be free from the notion that an enemy must be simultaneously stunned, rooted and frozen before you’re spells can do damage to them and it needs to get unconditional power from its items, skill tree and paragon that simply gives us power without taking 5 steps backwards for it. What are you so afraid of, Blizzard?"