I read the latest S3 patch notes. I didn’t feel any excitement but at least I wasn’t disappointed like those patches back in 1.1.x.
Looking at the wall of text, it seems Sorcs has the least patch note changes if compared to the other classes. It could mean Sorc is fairly balanced now or devs are still clueless.
It seems Fire and Conjuration should have an edge in S3 in THEORY. We know what happened in S2 where in practice DoT and Conjuration were overshadowed by Ball Lightning. Even without Ball Lightning, Burn DoT and Conjuration wasn’t that really popular.
Ball Lightning will be nerfed. If you are still surprised by this, I don’t know what else to say.
So it’s confirmed Searing Heat and Burning Instinct wasn’t performing as expected. I remember folks were complaining about these Paragon nodes. I hope these changes will be impactful. BUT I DOUBT IT! History is my teacher.
I’m still not sure why they are buffing Vulnerable with Lightning Spear and Ice Blades when the theme in S2 is to make Vulnerable less impactful. It’s still a good buff for Conjuration but it doesn’t excite me. The problem with Ice Blade buff is it’s an aspect so it’s gonna compete for another aspect slot.
Meteor is getting a big focus. It has its own unique and damage buff. Why not all Fire skills? What happened to Incinerate and Firewall?
I think the only one that’s appealing to me here is the guaranteed 925 Item Drop from running NM 90+s, but quite unfortunate we are still stuck with Duriel for getting those Uber uniques.
The less challenging but most tedious content drops Uber Unique and the most challenging and probably more engaging (at least for me, NMs) is still not impactful. It still remains as a build and ego check.
I wanna skip S3 but I still wanna try it. I probably won’t spend as much time as I did back in previous seasons. I would stick with 1 Sorc and reach whatever I can, then go back to PoE1 and LE.
Enhanced Ball Lightning changed to have its attack rate increase with attack speed, up to 25%.
wtf is this what are they getting at with attack rate over AS as it used to be
One thing I noticed was the overhaul to Ring of Starless Skies which is now actually deserving of the Uber classification. I got one with my CL sorc this season and I used it. It was alright, but Recharging Aspect was actually better for mana management; I mainly used it for the superior, automatically maxed affixes. Now it’s basically a permanent 40% RCR and 40% damage multiplier for any build that spams mana spenders and can sustain, making it vastly better for anything that isn’t Conjuration or Arc Lash. It’ll be best in slot for non-incinerate core skill builds. Probably not for meteor since the new helm converts it from a spender to a cooldown.
Another thing I noticed was the 900% damage boost to Barbarians’ Charge skill. That’s the kind of number they’ve been utterly afraid of applying to our skills despite how many persistently underperforming ones we have… Oh well.
1.) If you use static surge legendary node and chain lightning for automatic casts, the automatic casts will no longer trigger static surge legendary node. Thus, there is no use for chasing after this legendary node if you are not directly casting chain lightning or charged bolts. This is a big change for me.
2.) If you’re in PVP, might be worth getting the new aspect: Shredding Blades: chance to apply vulnerable is increased by 20% and vulnerable duration is increased by 4 seconds; you gain 15-25[x] vulnerable damage. Not sure it adds much value in NMDs since it is single target
3.) The melted heart Selig is worth looking at now. All stats 2x normal value; core skill damage changed to movement speed; damage is 3x normal value ( which I assume is 90%)
For BL it used to be a 200% bonus of your attack speed. Now it’s only 25% of attack speed. I expect it will do less than 1/4 the current damage, I’ll be surprised if each BL tic still manages to crit for 100k… and yet I foresee I will be using it anyway because I see no changes that would make me wanna go fire or back to Ice Spikes.
I’m more upset about Elemental Summoner getting only 2% more damage and nothing else… I was excited to hear Adam saying people picking it will be happy… but man… It used to give me 15% cdr with 3 conjurations on and now instead only gives a flat 10… the extra 2% damage… doesn’t really make me all that much happier…
The new meteor unique is a head, my shako’s is laughing at it… I wanna try it so badly… but I can’t put shako in my stash… after all those Duriels. One more sad choice…
Nothing to help mana regen at all anywhere if anything they “Fixed” Static surge so it doesn’t work with the CL enchantment, I hope it’ll still work with the chain lightning “Cast” while Unstable Current is active(although I doubt it) at least or I’m dropping the Ultimate permanently too, thanks for fixing the teleport enchantment with Flickerstep… and then taking away my only reason to want to use it to being with… or that CL enchantment(not that I had the slot for it anyway)
The new Ice Blades aspect not giving any buffs to the skill’s unique cooldown reduction capabilities is also upsetting… it doesn’t really add anything the skill doesn’t already do, the best past is the extra 20% vuln damage… I was hoping for something about Ice Blades but this is just… not really game changing for me
The worst of it all though is nothing at all on a 3rd or 4th enchantment slot
I’m really disappointing by this patch, core skills not buffed at all.
I really wanted to try frozen orb next season… oh well it’s just gonna be season of the meteor.
And even then i bet its damage will be crap. I think we’re all going to see how much faster Barbs will do those gauntlet dungeons.
It’s not that I’m surprised but the way they handled it is rather frustrating (for a multitude of reasons).
It will do far less than that: you are losing the seasonal buffs (which were double dipping), the damage from the bug fix (which was another x5 multiplier iirc.) and the “>75%” of your remaining damage from the nerf.
About the Ring and Selig IDK, changes look very good on paper. I am having visions of a fire/vuln build but(in my head)I can’t make it work with the Unique Helm or Meteor… Losing either Andariel’s or Shako’s just not worth it.
BUT Neither of them have a Cooldown Reduction roll if I remember correctly… so I think I’ll stick to my current setup Tal Rasha’s/X’Fal… 3.55 seconds teleport cd without Oculus, 10.41 second Fire Shield, 7.5 seconds Ice Blades, I am not giving this up for any amount of mana cost reduction and damage(maybe lol after losing static surge’s regen… I might even -need- to o.o), I still suffer from PTSD(bad joke sorry) after logging in and finding my CDR nerfed by 35% last time… I still don’t understand how reducing it makes it less appealing to anyone… if anything it is the opposite! No amount of explanation on why will help with this…(even tho I could listen to Adam talking all day he is adorkable I mean it <3) I feel like I need some more CDR back to make some build works, or buffs are needed to Cooldown reducing skills like Ice Blades and the Overflowing Energy Key passive.
I was also hoping for an update to Ahavarion’s underwhelming Aspect… not having a unique weapon worth the slot(for me) is so upsetting…
Missing the CDR is unfortunate but the 40% MCR should more than compensate for losing a resource regeneration affix and resource aspect if you build accordingly. You won’t need MCR on anything else, for one thing.
The class will be fine. Not everyone played broken BL last season. Success was had with Fireball, Firewall, Blizzard/Ice Spikes (probably the top build this season if Meteor doesn’t pan out), Chain Lightning, Charged Bolts… Vampire powers will be missed but can be worked around for most builds. Even BL can probably still work, it just won’t be killing World Bosses in 10 seconds flat anymore.
This “multitude of reasons” is actually what disappoints me the most…
I usually tend to play summoning classes when playing any of the Diablo games, but I chose to try the Sorcerer this season and ended up using Ball Lightning purely because of its attack speed bonus, before even experiencing someone one-hitting a world boss with it.
Improving lucky hit chance to then trigger a multitude of effects with Ball Lightning felt interesting, especially in combination with certain legendary aspects and unique items. Personally, I would have very much preferred if they just lowered the skill’s damage considerably instead of lowering its attack speed bonus. If I understand the patch notes correctly, the way I currently play my Sorceress will completely fall apart, not just because of the lower damage output but mostly because of the lower rate of hitting enemies.
the attack speed or hit nerf was neccesary, not cause it was too good. The Problem is it created these lagspikes in the code. Sorc is a class that suffers a lot from this. It makes certain interactions unplayable. For example if u used shard + shards enchant in combination with conjuration spam casting frostnovas. It would shoot so many shards at once. that i expereinced up to 10 sec lag.
Also certain fw builds can experience it too.
And that is a major problem with the class, since these spikes if ur not running super tanky, almost always spelled death for your char, and just for being creative with your builds.
that said if we only have easy content and everything dies left and right and nearly no hp sponges, then this problem istn as pressing. But the moment they do aoz like content, sorc suffers the most imo.
on Topic:
the patchnotes were a joke. The conjuration buff was miniscule, and only really impacts one specific build the LS spam one. And even here its maybe a 5% buff to the overall dmg this does.
And the new aspect for ib is nice in theory, but it only really benefits other vul applying spells, since the nature of ib is trash, it is single target and has no real coverage if you have more then a few mobs. and even the enchant is capped at 3 Ibs. I wonder why they not at least give it a smal aoe. So what this means is, ignore the first part, just use it for the generic dmg increase to vul dmg.
So beside the new Meteor Unique and the new general uniques its not really anything to be excited about. Just some minor buffs that dont mean much.
Especially stuff like the iceheart buff. Its absolutely meaningless, since the effect is still not reliable and the stats on the item suck.
Im more then a bit disapointed by the lack of creativity here. It seems sorc was just an afterthought, and they didnt had enough time left, to make changes like with the other classes.
No fixes to underperforming spells like incinerate, FO, CL etc.
Can you elaborate here? Maybe we need a new thread for this but the way i interpret in 1:1 scenario: enemy is vulnerable more often for longer periods of time and gets 25 multiplicative damage. So its much better than other additive aspects like Conceited or the one that does 30% additive damage to vulnerable enemies.
Im aligned with you that its unfortunate the use case for IB is single target, making it less useful for mob situations, but very good for PVP and bosses
if anything they “Fixed” Static surge so it doesn’t work with the CL enchantment, I hope it’ll still work with the chain lightning “Cast” while Unstable Current is active(although I doubt it) at least or I’m dropping the Ultimate permanently too, thanks for fixing the teleport enchantment with Flickerstep… and then taking away my only reason to want to use it to being with… or that CL enchantment(not that I had the slot for it anyway)
code. Sorc is a class that suffers a lot from this. It makes certain interactions unplayable. For example if u used shard + shards enchant in combination with conjuration spam casting frostnovas. It would shoot so many shards at once. that i expereinced up to 10 sec lag.