Anyone who’s played with charged bolts knows the skill is bad. Low damage, can’t hit anything with it unless you’re point blank. The only satisfying part about charged bolts is the thunderclap from the nova proc.
So delete charged bolts from the tree and give us nova in its place. It appears you designed lightning to be a cc, melee build, which is fine. Nova fits perfectly in that shell. And unlike charged bolts, it actually hits the enemies you’re trying to hit, gives the light sorc a melee option beyond arc lash that can scale damage better than basic skills do.
Port in, freeze, nova, nova, nova. With arc lash being the OoM failsafe. If it’s a massive elite pack or boss, pop your currents and let nova keep mobs off you while your spears and ball lightning take care of the ranged mobs.
Please, make it happen blizz. Sorc need some major love right now.
Or, they can also make charged bolt not be terrible. it should be able to travel the entire screen and each rank needs to add additional bolts.
Additionally, the aspect that makes them pierce should NOT lower damage. The most fun part of charged bolt from D2/R was filling the entire screen with them. The D4 version feels awful in comparison.
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I was disappointed when the wizard in D3 didn’t have something similar to static field and nova. I was further disappointed when the D4 sorcerer didn’t have them as well. My nova sorceress in D2 was probably my favorite build ever.
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Oh absolutely, having a screen of bolts fluttering around was sweet. Unfortunately that takes more than 3 casts which is all a un optimized sorc can manage because blizz for some reason thought mana pools shouldn’t increase with levels. Who ever heard of a caster not getting naturally more efficient at casting spells as they gained levels? Nope instead we have to spend our precious mod slots/ paragon slots, to solving our mana so we can cast more than 2-3 spells before becoming a paper weight swinging a wet pool noodle.
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I loved CB in D2. Tried it for a few hours in D4 with a level 70-something well geared Sorc. Was pitiful. Needs to cost half the mana, produce double the bolts.
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Double the bolts would only be 6…it should be throwing out 12 at rank 5, and close to 20 at rank 10. I’m not sure what Blizzard is afraid of with some of these under tuned skills.
They have so much historical data to draw from, especially with the D2 sorc skills but all the returning favorites feel very conservative and watered down
Absolutely agree. It’s like they’ve intentionally gimped the skills
No one liked charged bolts in D3 and no one likes charged bolt in D4. And Blizzard continues to include this skill for some reason.
And they continue buffing it like if the damage is what is wrong with this dumb skill.
No one likes an RNG , short distance skill.
That skill was literally ignored for over 10 years of D3 life , yet they decided to include it over the better more POPULAR skills like Black hole, etc.
Yeah it’s dumbfounding isn’t it?
Charged Bolts can hit a single target for 174% damage at rank 1. 5 x 30% + 24% Nova. It’s your boss killer.
I’m not sure why you’d fill the screen with Charged Bolts in D2. The power came from hitting an enemy with as many bolts as possible, like a shotgun. Which is why you used it at point blank range, just like Diablo 4.
I ran charged bolt as a close range shotgun until endgame because only spamming arc lash was boring af. I don’t need you telling me what the numbers are. I played it.
And why would you fill the screen? I dunno maybe a 13 year old kid playing d2 after school in the early 2000s found it cool to fill the screen.
Charged bolt sucks.
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D2 charged bolts got nerfed so that you could only hit a single enemy with a maximum of three bolts, regardless of the enemy’s size or other conditions. It was only a “shotgun” until Blizzard realized that changing Lightning Mastery to be a damage adder transformed Charged Bolts into a straight-up death wave.
D4 Charged Bolts is different. Yes you can point-blank enemies with it, but what you can’t do is create an endless tidal wave of electric death like you could in D2.
i theorized it should have like 18-24 bolts and fire in all directions, sort of like D1 nova.
The aspect for it breaks the built making charge bolt cost more. So bad. Meanwhile other characters are doing insane dps like bonespear necro, the 1 billion druids, and every single rogue in the game including AFK rogues.
Yea how bout no more “port in, freeze, do stuff” builds. How bout ranged builds and have teleport be for getting away or positioning.