I played frozen orb on the ptr and it was the most fun I had had in d4 till that point. Fast forward to s4 and I was so excited to try it even post nerf.
I now have and it’s sad to say but it’s just nowhere near as good and compared to blizzard just doesn’t have the damage.
Don’t get me wrong it’s amazing and speed running NMD and Helltide but killing bosses is so much slower
Meanwhile blizzard still does basically ALL the things.
After 4 seasons blizz im kinda tired of blizz ( c wut I did Thur )
Not trying to complain but I was so hyped to try something new this season
For any who have tried it, how’s fire bolt or incinerate ???
I’m doing FO as well. In general I wish sorc had some more straight forward options. I hate that the only way to scale damage is basically relying on multi element combos, unintuitive synergies on the paragon board + barriers being up. A lot of it devolves into spamming teleport for DR and keeping cooldowns and barriers up just for the multiplicative effects.
I get it’s cool that all these things can work together but part of my brain really wants to just see “big firewall number go up” and burn everything with something a little more straight forward but that has no chance in hell of working.
Since my sorc is now 100 I’ll probably go minion necro, see what all this hype is about.
Yes, both shields, teleport, and firebolt enchantment in every build. So yeah, half your usable skills and half your enchantment slots are the same for 95% of all sorcs. So much for options.
I was pretty bummed reading about Frozen Orb getting nerfed. Same with Grenade rogue. I was seriously hoping for greater build diversity, looks like I’ll be waiting a long time.
A big problem for some builds is the fastest way to get XP is you lay down, say, some DoTs or whatever then run away and keep on moving. The issue is you’ll miss out on tons of mats and items (so if it’s your first char for the season you’ll want to be picking these up).
Compared to something where you kill enemies before you get there or something in melee range you won’t have to double back to pick stuff up. This time difference seems minor but it multiplies out like crazy.
For alts this doesn’t matter cause you’ll be swimming in mats from the first char for the most part.
But I agree, from now on I’m probably going to just be picking the meta builds of the season for my first char cause the amount of wasted time on non-S tier builds is just crazy.
The other thing they “fixed” is Esu’s but if you currently want any boss dmg with Blizzard build you take it for the attack speed aspect. In the end the cold key passives are still useless because if you are not taking Esu’s you go for Vir’s for free 20% dmg reduction.
Playing Dust Devil barb now, and it’s basically the same as Frozen Orb sorc, except it one shots trash it can kill bosses almost instantly. Maybe not quite as mobile, but pretty damn close.
Dust Devil isn’t even a barb skill, just a proc added as an affix. But it gets way better multiplies than FO for some reason.
They overnerfed FO. Idk why, but the folks in charge of sorc seem to have a nerf trigger finger. And they are so incompetent at the mathematics behind it that they nerfed the seasonal signature build to be worse than an existing one. Screams stupid to me.
Another thing that annoys me is that it’s 10x easier to have infinite rage on my barb than unlimited mana on my sorc.
The Ball Lightning bug and Blizzard stagger hid sorc’s underlying problems fine for the early seasons, but with The Pit have boss health increasing that substantially, these fundamental class problems are showing itself again.
Sorc needs modifiers for boss damage. I’m not sure why other classes are scaling to billions of damage while sorc barely tickles things past a certain point.
Season 5 needs to be “Season of the Sorc”, when they finally remove craniums from rear ends and give us actual choices that are S or A tier. side note, it’s criminal that every single class doesn’t have at least one S tier build every single season
I too am tired of the “Fire Bolt enchantment and Flamefeeder glyph, check. Both shields, check. Teleport, check. Do most of my damage after applying shield and vulnerable, then kite around while recharging mana and cooldowns gameplay. check”.
I also have an axe to grind about the so-called LEGENDARY paragon nodes for sorcs.
We really just need other ways to scale damage. I’m almost sure they added stuff like the Tactician glyph as a bonus for using defensive skills - not as a mandatory part of your damage rota like it’s become.
I would love something simpler like [x]60% damage. -[x]30% for each additional element type on your skill bar.
Let me play mono element sorc. Let me scale damage in ways that isn’t spamming CD’s and teleporting and trying to get massive barrier uptime.
The OG bone spear necro is a lot more like what I wish more sorc builds were like. Relatively obvious damage synergies, a point and shoot ranged playstyle. Obviously we don’t need to be S+++ tier blowing away lilith in one shot like it was pre-season but something along those lines.
It’s also funny that super high APM playstyles like piano skills sorc and rogue are maybe A tier at best while necros can speed clear anything with one hand on the mouse and another holding a beer.
Damn +1. Definitely needed a change, was up to roll FO, started out as Blizz (was lucky with aspect) and now… you just can compare it.
The whole concept is so broken, you are picking up a spell that will do all of the damage on a proc, so 1 rank. Its just good as you have 4 extra points. Like many said before: 2 shields + port + FB ench - must haves. Dont forget the bugged OP Esu and now Vyr that compared to what Frost has to offer are just no-brainer.
Yeah, rogue is mighty fun but unless you play the top 2 builds which imho are the same you are doing 10% of the damage. Anything but Rapid Fire and Basic spam is worthless, again.
Hope you learn your lesson and have fun in the ptrs while they last because the fun new sorc builds aren’t permitted on live where you are only allowed to run blizzard lol
The game just ‘feels’ to me like it’s missing entire skill trees and a LOT of skills.
Like a Poison tree for necro, the Fire tree for Druid, the Throw tree for Barbs, Arcane tree for Sorc, and a lot of bow, crossbow, dagger and sword skills or Grenade tree for Rogue.
I hope the expansion greatly expands all that. And it would be nice if Ultimates got their own universal hotkey button and freed up a hotkey slot for something else for us.
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