Looking at the patch notes it might look grim. People are mad and up in arms.
And, the change absolutely had to happen.
Having power taken away sure feels sad, but the power was never there to begin with.
Relying on firebolt enchantment or conjurations to get the most damage was nothing but a crutch.
I’m tired of playing whatever build I want to play to actually trigger something else to be viable. If I want to play LS, let me play LS. If I want to play Frozen Orb, let me play Frozen Orb without having to stack lightning spears on top of it. Playing one skill to trigger another skill to get the built to its most powerful state is just wrong.
The changes to CL with Axial are a start, but even last season I ran LS on top.
And the ask is not even to make every build/skill T4 crushing viable either.
So I think at the core, the change is good. Now I am just clinging on to the small sliver of (false) hope that the other reworks are made powerful enough and bring the power level to what it actually should be.
P.S. please fix teleport
8 Likes
The only problem is: what if you want to play a pyro sorcerer? Now your damage is significantly downgraded and there doesn’t appear to be adequate compensation elsewhere.
Conjuerer sorcerers are facing a similar issue. They lost a lot of damage and don’t appear to have adequate compensation elsewhere.
It’s good that they want to promote build variety, but crippling keys to pyro and conjurer builds with improvements elsewhere isn’t great design.
7 Likes
I think sorc is gonna be gutted with that firebolt removal, but we’ll see. Literally every build runs it because it’s so strong and they didn’t give us anything to replace it with. It’s just an overall nerf to an already struggling class.
3 Likes
I strongly expect we will see further Sorc buffs before the season starts. When they put that “we’re monitoring” red text on a buff it’s often an indication they know they went conservative.
the sorc was only useful for one season and then they cut its balls off. and now they are gutting it some more
but if it’s any consolation, at least the other week they randomly buffed up a bunch of skills and passives that nobody ever asked for and nobody will ever use.
the WW barb got gutted 3 times. we’re still not sure if they’re done gutting it.
the druid has literally became a meme character. have fun pushing pits with your kenmore refrigerator.
we all know what they are soon going to do to your $40 spiritborns too.
blizzard is a shell of its former self. they do not respect your time, and they have lost their sense of direction.
4 Likes
OP would be correct but you forgot one important thing, they didn’t buff any of the other skills enough to compensate for the dmg loss. The class isn’t even strong to begin with which is why the uproar. They could have at least made the new effect useful like give mana back per hit instead of 10% chance to heal a tiny bit of health. Gutting the conjurer and devouring blaze passives will essentially do to the sorc what they did to the barb when u nerf mandatory passives. They need to address the biggest issue sorc and rogue have and that is dealing with bosses, if the boss isn’t staggered you can’t do any dmg. This is such a huge flaw in design, to make a class that only can do damage when an enemy is crowd controlled.
They could upon up a lot of options by learning from what they did with SB and give us aspects and items that will combine skill tags and effects. If there was a paragon node or something that added all skills are now also lightning skills, or all skills now apply burning, chill, etc that would give back to the power they took away
6 Likes
Well since this is season 2 reloaded and sorc is assumed dead I will flashback to S2 and say sorc will ackchually be super op again! Ball build will be broken again in some way with some decimal off by 4 places and sorc meta returns.
I am going to buck the trend and say sorc in S7 is op AF and will need nerfs! 
S7 you can play… Ball Lightning or slightly different Ball Lightning! Thank you devs for all of those options.
6 Likes
Yep. Couldn’t agree more.
Builds right now are just silly.
So I don’t disagree with the direction of trying to eliminate the silly stuff. However, they need to give us non-silly alternatives rather than just nerfing a class into the ground.
At this point I am just hoping there is enough feedback on PTR that things get adjusted. I suspect they will but Blizzard buffs are always +.0001% to skills nobody uses. So I guess the real hope is something is bugged and does 10,000X damage.
2 Likes
This was a really mind boggling decision to me. WE have all these skills and builds for sorc and the devs instead make 2 items for the same build in the same slot? What in the world???
4 Likes
Eh, I think we’ll be fine. Frost builds not so much, but Shock and Fire should end up being pretty strong. The buffs to Shock legendary paragon nodes are pretty huge, and Fire gets to keep Devouring Blaze plus getting that huge new multi from Inferno. As always, we’ll have to see exactly how it plays out when the rubber hits the road in the PTR, but I think people wailing “Sorc is dead!” are massively overreacting.
Well frost sorcs will probably uninstall. The firebolt enchant to heal is a WTF moment. Not getting a third enchant slot is a mystery. Perfect time was now with devour nerf. Look at all the synergy and power SB got in its skill tree. WE need to match that on all heroes.
4 Likes
Trying to create something new to create excitement on an unbalanced foundation, imbalance between classes and imbalance within the skill system of each class…will sooner or later fall.
You can use the rework Inner flame and Icy Touch to compensate your lost of damage from not having Devouring Blaze. I am not sure how Lightning spear work after Conjuration Mastery change to a new skill. Splintering energy will Spawn Lightning spear instead of separate arc. Which means you need to level up real Lightning spear, not spawn something out of it. We need to test in PTR its effectiveness.
S7 meta for sorc will still be firebolt, as burning and basic skill constantly get buff.
ball lightning will be strong, dunno about other skills
Lightning will be compensated, look at those 60%s here and there, I’d worry about cold builds.
1 Like
When I realized that some builds need to stagger boss first I was like “hey lets play around it for a while, it is an obstacle so lets figure this out” So I invested in stagger… How suprised I was when I realized when you stagger boss for I think 3x times… Well no more stagger for him anymore 
You have to love their thinking. “guys lets make it that some builds can´t kill bosses without stagger, but also prevent them from staggering at all”
What a clowns
3 Likes
No compensation? inferno alone adds 50% pyro dmg for what? 8 seconds. lets test the changes first, pyro I feel will be doing ok.
1 Like
