Sorc specific feedback on class fantasy and defense philosophy

PTR Feedback
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Hi, as a Sorc main I wanna a give feedback on some facettes of the PTR changes for Sorcs, specifically on Defense skills and class fantasy. (TL;DR on the bottom)

I understand there are a ton of changes, new aspects and items coming so I wont comment on viability of builds (or their lack of!) and will focus on 2 things instead:

1. Defense skills and class fantasy

I struggle a bit to understand what the class fantasy of the Sorc is supposed to be in regards to Damage and defense ratio.
Do you want the Sorc to be a literal Glass canon (she already has the lowest base life (which makes perfect sense in that case), with low survivability and big dmaage? In that case - WHERE is the over the top damage?

Or do you want Sorcs to be squishy but with powerfull temporary big defense spells? In that case why nerf every single defense spell available with the PTR/ S5?
Getting rid of permanent Flame Shield was 100% the correct thing BUT shouldnt the base cooldwon of FS now be lowered to match the intended uptime of it? Now the spell is way lower uptime for people who always just used it with its intended purpose. (maybe even lower it dramatically to make it pop more often)

Same for Ice Armor - a 40% barrier every 14 sec is NOT a powerfull temporary defense tool.

Nerfing teleport is the most baffling of the bunch though. Reading through the patchnotes Necros get a 7 sec mobility skill via an aspect (and I think thats great!) but at the same time

you nerf one of the franchises most beloved and iconic skills

(and Sorcs only mobility tool) to DOUBLE of that base Cooldown? What is going on here?

So all in all we have a squishy caster class that deals no damage and whos defense skills getting gutted over and over. All the while it has no defense options via Paragon board either, as 90% of the rare nodes on boards have completely useless stuff like “resist to x” etc. Pls get rid of these nodes, Sorcs have enough all Res.

2. Ice Spikes and Blizzard
I understand the desire to make players use more than just 2 aspects when building an Ice Spike build. BUT Putting the 15% bonus damage on a seperate aspect just leads to players use one of the other 30 aspects available instead, right? IF you really need to swap around the abilities at least make the 15% bonus damage of Frozen Wake into 30% so it matches not only the Blizzard Ice spike theme but also the power level of other aspects available.

tl;dr:

the good:

  • fun new aspects and items (pretty much all underpowered or buggy, but fun nevertheless)

the bad:

  • Flame Shield cooldown needs to be slightly lowered to match the new CD startup
  • Ice Armor nerf unnessecary and not clear withing the class fantasy
  • Ice spike aspects swaperoo not fully thought through - increase bonus dmg on frozen wake or revert the changes

the ugly:

  • shamefull teleport nerf without rhyme or reason!
  • still no overhaul on the Paragon boards (basically 90% of rare nodes on all boards need an overhaul. Why is there so many nodes with “resist to x” on them for an intelligence class? Legend nods need rework as well)

Anyway thanks for the PTR and your great work on the game and dev-to-player communication

5 Likes
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The devs have no clue what they are doing with Sorc. The original rework of resistances stemmed from complaints of how squishy sorcs are. They are still too squishy. They are a barrier class that gets its barrier knocked off in one hit. Now they make any form of barrier have caps and longer cooldowns. We already have no health.

Canon. It just isn’t there. Outside of bugged interactions it was never there. If we are supposed to be the squishiest class, aka glass canon then we should have superior damage. We do not. We don’t even have damage to compete much less superior damage.

We don’t have the multipliers to have good damage. We don’t even have good working synergies. They tried to make some gear to compensate for this and even some of that is anti synergy. There needs to be base power first. Gear should augment that power in different fun ways and boost it somewhat. The base needs to be there first. Bandaids with over powered gear is the wrong answer. Especially when that gear doesn’t even do enough because the base is that bad.

I feel like the changes for S5 is medicine because of adjustments coming with the expansion. The devs said they would never give medicine without sugar again. I believe they did and not just for Sorc. It just hits Sorc harder because we are already weak. It’s either that or the unique reworks are super powerful to compensate…which again, gear should not be like this. Class power needs to first come from skill tree.

Also tired of the swing meta bs. Something feels good for a season and they nerf it to the ground then make something else feel good. Happens for all classes. They need to stop that. Fix the busted stuff but even those builds should feel good after the busted stuff is fixed. Bring up the weaker stuff to feel good. Then people can play the skills they want. Instead they over nerf everything except the build they want to showcase the next season. It’s stupid and goes against what they said “play your way”. I’m still waiting to see play your way. Hasn’t existed since beta.

5 Likes
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The PTR was just for them to decide what they want as a goal. There are no powers “borrowed” from the season. So nothing from the wizard will be good, just the wizard’s new pants and the new helm. It was supposed to be a more fun class to play with different possibilities, but they prefer more x damage than ice hydra, incinerate frozen, Frozen orb causes explosion, meteors now cause electrical damage and spread electrical discharges. New electrical. We should have several construction options

2 Likes
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I largely agree with your points, particularly regarding the class fantasy. As a Sorcerer main who has played MMORPGs since the 2000s and is a veteran of Hellbreath on both Korean and International servers, which are very successful MMORPGs, I have a deep appreciation and understanding of the Sorcerer class.

However, what we currently have in Diablo 4 does not embody the true essence of a Sorcerer. It’s a haphazard combination that lacks coherence, offering neither damage nor defense. It attempts to be something it’s not and fails to deliver on all fronts. If Blizzard decides to fix or nerf Chain Lightning and the new unique items, this class will be rendered obsolete—it’s as simple as that.

If Blizzard is unwilling or unable to rectify the Sorcerer’s issues, then at the very least, they should allow us to utilize the Chain Lightning and the new unique item builds for the next two months. I’ve heard that there’s a significant rework planned for Season 6; I hope this includes the Sorcerer. In my opinion, this should be the main focus, as an MMORPG without a valuable Sorcerer class is not a real MMORPG.

4 Likes
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What baffles me is if they’re reworking us to become more powerful in two seasons, why nerf us for the upcoming season?

It’s borderline insane. The base sorcerer should be the most powerful damager outputter of the game, not the worst. Per canon, the sorcerer is one of the top damage dealers at the most risk of physical combat because they wear clothing for armor.

It’s not hard to figure out. For some reason they just keep resisting and every time we ask for buffs, they say “we hear you” and nerf something else for our class.

Also agree 100% on the rotating meta. That’s not good design philosophy, and simply creates more work for the devs because they’re constantly shuffling values in an attempt to showcase a singular build at the expense of others.

2 Likes