Alright so lets talk about this for a second before the new season drops. Dev’s I hope and pray you read this.
I played every single class this season and leveled them all to 100 and geared them all to be able to clear tier 100 nightmares and Lilith. Now yes all of them are capable. Sorc has the hardest time on both for one reason and one reason only. OUR DEFENSE!! Now as season 2 is coming closer there have been information from the dev streams that sorc is having damage buffed for hydra, which is by far the strongest spell the class has. There isn’t anything WRONG with hydra’s current damage, its totally capable of doing the new bosses as it is right now. But every single sorc main is going to have a problem with the bosses and tier 100 still because of DEFENSE! Now as I leveled and geared my characters I realized why, despite dumping 90% of our paragon points into defense stats we STILL GET ONE SHOT by the tiniest lightning orb, or we have to pop 5 potions to survive a poison if our shield or teleport immunity is down. If they are down we die. No if’s, and’s or but’s. Its game over if we get hit, we literally have to tiptoe around everything in high tiers just to be successful whereas other classes dont have to worry about a thing, if Necromancer didnt have blood mist then necro main’s would REE about the same thing, but they have a shield aspect for bone storm and blood mist to compensate them being slightly squishy.
OKAY now here’s the rub family. The PROBLEM lies in the defense and stat scaling PER LEVEL, meaning the stats you obtain when you gain a level for sorc are MUCH MUCH lower than other classes, which makes them way weaker on the fly.
I understand a wizard/sorcerer has history of being squishier than other classes and I don’t dispute that whatsoever. But in a tier90+ we SHOULD NOT get one shot by a small lightning orb from a regular monster. We should get a little more defense for breathing room and every sorc main will be happy.
Sorcerer was my favorite class out of the 5 but I WILL NOT be using it as my main or most likely not even playing it for season 2 because I don’t want to have to tiptoe around the new bosses and get 1 clear out of 500 fails because we just get one shot by the smallest mechanic.
Sincerely, All Sorcerer Mains
8 Likes
Love sorc too but sorc needs some major love. Its astounding how bad sorc is defensively (while using 3 to 4 defense buffs) and offensive compared to other heroes like rogue and druid. I got my eyes lit up when my nado druid was doing same dungeon tiers as my chain lightning wizard at level 75 while nearly permanent unstoppable, doing omega DSP, and moving at warp speed.
What sorc needs to get up to speed:
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3rd enchant slot back.
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Some sort of solution for being poisoned. Maybe resists working will help with this.
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Some great new defensive aspects just for sorc
Good chance of this, i took alot of DOT resist nodes put all amethyst in my gear, this helped for awhile,but it just doesnt hold up in the last half on n/m. Maybe with resist working it will be fine,
Also dont forget like i do, Glass canon passive really hurts having 3 ranks imo in high n/m
3rd enchant would help.
find out soon enough, it will get it;s tunning pass, just takes time.
My only issue with sorc is that you are basically required to use every defensive ability for every build. Which means you only get to choose 2 skills to play with. If we could get more survivability and open up a slot or 2 on our bars, that would add so much more build diversity.
But yeah, even with DR on all gear, still getting owned feels bad.
2 Likes
Sorc, is my favorite class as well but there are too many basically mandatory skills just to be remotely on par with the other classes. I mean, go out to maxroll and look at all their sorc builds. Teleport, Nova, Ice Shield on 13 out of 13 builds. Flame shield on 10 of 13.
Not if they are using Fortify. Blood necro is far tankier than Sorc.
As for Sorc supposedly the resistance fix in season2 will address defenses. I am not entirely sold it will. But let’s wait and see. Plus we lost Icefall which gave us some defense consistently. I played Blizzard Sorc so icefall was great.
1 Like
You are right. It’s boring to drop 3 hydras and click-hold firebolt.
I want a physical melee sorc. There are absolutely zero dagger builds. Where’s my dagger build? If toons are overusing a spell, NERF! 0 dagger builds? maybe next season?
Both of these damage types are covered by resists now, not armor. Sorc being an int class will innately get a lot of resists and be tankier vs these damage types with less investment. The physical damage is the more worrying thing for sorc now since that’s still entirely armor and sorc doesn’t have good sources of armor.
TBH I feel like the main issue with sorc’s defense (even though the resist changes are a big buff) is how reliant good DR is on the DR vs burning stat and how much that pigeonholes you into firebolt enchant for defense on non-burning builds.
In general I feel like defensive itemization in D4 is pretty boring and limited. Look at Path of Exile for instance. You have HP, armor, resists sure. But you also have energy shield, dodge, evasion, block, damage taken conversion, armor applying to elemental damage, instant damage taken converted to DoT, damage taken from mana before HP, spell suppression, life leech, life recoup, guard skills, and plenty of other unique defensive setups like strength of blood or bloodnotch. D4 has a few of these but only in tiny amounts that can’t really be scaled or made part of your build.
2 Likes
Devs prob nerf all the mobs and boss so all class and build can clear them no problem
, only thing is Rogues prob take 30sec to kill uber lilith while sorch need 10min
That’s a resistance issue, it’s been addressed and because it now works like it should, sorcs will have quicker access to resistances than a non-int based class.
resistance is sh.1 we all get. they already said everyone will max it
the real problem with mage is that he/she is a mage, meaning lowest tier. go pick a barb or a palladin when it comes so that you can melt the content!
I think the 3rd enchantment slot is a VERY good start with buffing.
The main idea of any caster in any game is risk vs rewards. Mages are supposed to do a crap ton of damage, but are squishy. Give me the damage and start with that.
As of now, sorc doesn’t even do the most damage and die like disgusting bug. WHERE’S THE RISK VS REWARDS???
It sounds to me like sorc is still designed to play the role of support in a party.
The problem is D4 doesnt encourage or even offer a way to form a party.
It feels like sorc is being asked to climb a ladder to get to the roof but all the rungs are taken away.
Give us a better basic design, dont let the skirts and robes fool you, we should be alot tougher than we look.
1 Like
Good discussion thread here. Some very valid points about defensive requirements in the builds and issue with firebolt for damage and damage reduction. Another good point about Sorc’s are supposed to have very high damage and be a little squishy. Problem is we are squishy and not high damage.
Everything I saw in the patch notes doesn’t appear to actually address the issues with Sorcs and more of a bandaid on specific skills. Not even sure the Hydra change will amount to a buff or a nerf. Maybe at level 100 its a buff, but if you were doing higher level NMD at say level 75 because Hydra scaled to the monsters, now that it scales with player, it seems like it would actually do less damage, even with higher base damage of the skill.
They made zero changes to cold skills, so apparently Ice shards with or without Orb is still main cold build. Honestly, I don’t really see any changes to the most used Sorc builds. Hydra, Ice Shards and Arc Lash are still going to be the main 3 builds I think.
I didn’t get nearly as far as most, if not all, of you did with my Sorcerer because, frankly, while I am known to be a glutton for punishment, even I realized I had my fill- and by the lower 50s in terms of level.
In pretty much every other game of this general type, you knew that, when you played a Wizard-type character, you traded defensive capability for overwhelming offensive capability. Your damage was heavily front-loaded and had to be because, if you didn’t kill it quickly, you probably weren’t going to kill it at all. I understood that tradeoff and accepted it.
But here in D4, it seems I have all the defensive drawbacks with none of the offensive perks balancing them. I deleted my Sorc when it became apparent that I was wasting playing time- things just weren’t getting any better, no matter how I mixed up spec points and equipment. Seems time for a near-total revamp of the class to bring it anywhere near in line with the capabilities of other classes.
I just reached the point of accepting that if you want to play sorc you just roll a necro and sacrifice all the minions.
Except you didnt clear lilith with a barb without barber.
This is why i hate things like barber, it gives noobs the wrong impression about everything.
1 Like
I’m still rolling a sorcerer this season. I find it the most fun fantasy class to play.
I’m looking forward to getting kicked in the nuts a lot this season.
If sorcerer was designed to be as squishy as it currently is it also should be the top dps in the game which is clearly not the case.
1 Like