I’ve tried ALL of the resource regen aspects and they all suck, particularly when it comes to the most crucial time: facing a boss in a single target situations. Prodigy is perhaps the best of them but really not good enough to warrant losing an offensive aspect. Aside from resource generation and mana cost reduction item affixes, is there anything else I am missing? Because those also aren’t enough.
It seems to me that, once again, Frost has the only viable way to deal with the mana glut via the Avalanche capstone passive. As a Fire Sorcerer using a Meteor build I am currently almost exclusively relying on the Static Surge legendary paragon node, which works great but obviously comes at the cost of other nodes more focused on damage or defense and also has the major weakness of being useless during a boss encounter.
Am I simply sol and should I just huff copium hoping that the mythical 13 page patch does something about mana regen? Or is there anything I can actually do about it?
So I’ve run fireball/hydra from lvl 50 to where I’m currently at which is 95. I’m using prodigy and umbral aspect.
With fireball enchant, I can be judicious with my mana use, as I typically just need to kill one trash mob to trigger a chain reaction of explosions to clear the screen.
Boss fights are rougher on mana. I typically drop two hydras to apply burning, nova for vulnerability, and Inferno for free fireball casts. Most bosses are dead, or will die form burning dmg at this point. Those that are not dead, I use Ice Armor, nova again, and teleport to regen mana for more fireballs and replenishing hydra.
I also run the unwavering aspect for a chance to reset a defensive CD, as well as 3/3 elemental attunement.
And since it matters, I stick to content where mobs are my level, or at most 4-5 levels higher than I am. I don’t see much of a point doing anything harder until I am lvl 100.
Interesting, so you use 2 resource aspects and I am assuming the Fireball unique staff which leaves you with just 2 offensive aspect slots (on your gloves and neck). I don’t think I can make that work with Meteor because the double hydra aspect also takes up a slot and Meteor has its own necessary aspects. If only we had an extra item slot like other classes… /sigh
Also they just really need to tone down the base mana cost of spells, a third of your mana bar (or ball in our case, lol) just for one spell is ridiculous.
P.S. How bad are those unique Fireball gloves? The game decided to give me a perfectly rolled pair along with a really well rolled staff and they have zero synergy, it’s amazing to me how this went live!
I don’t use the fireball unique stuff. It’s terrible because you cant roll the stats you want on the weapon. Core Skill, Crit Dmg, Vuln Dmg, Main stat. Even if every cast of fireball was two additional projectiles, I doubt it’s dmg potential would beat a well rolled legendary ancestral staff with a good aspect on it.
And yes, the mana cost of fireball is crazy. Compared to other skills that scale better, those other skills also cost less mana.
And last but not least, the gloves are complete trash.
It makes one wonder why they think reducing dmg by ~70% was a good idea. I think wasting the slot for a bounce effect and not being able to re-roll a stat (I mean you wanted stun as fire right wtf lol) would be sufficient nerfs to need it doing 3/4 less damage.
Alas I’m a charged bolt sorc and my aspect and the staff for it are hilariously bad
I have. I got a really good roll on my neck and my boots but the base mana cost of Meteor is just so damn high it barely makes a difference. And I can’t afford to use more than one resource aspect with my build.
Under normal circumstances I would agree. But given the overall state of Sorcerer specific unique items, the word I’m thinking of is appalling. All one has to do is compare them to the class specific uniques for other classes, and see cool effects with zero drawback, or effects that JUST happen, not have a chance to happen. Those are what I would like to find.
Even the good Sorcerer unique items have drawbacks. Like Rainment, there is no reason to increase the teleport CD by 20-30% on this item. The penalty for Rainment is just due to the fact you are losing out on four of your best defensive stat rolls and a legendary aspect on your chest piece. THAT SHOULD BE THE TRADEOFF! The increased cooldown is BS.
But the gloves are by far the worst offender. The effect doesn’t provide any benefit at all. There is no guarantee that the projectile bounces enough times, or that all the bounces will hit your intended target to make up for the asinine dmg penalty. Those gloves, as they are now, are likely the worst unique item in the history of the franchise.
Even tho i’m playing with a fare away optimal build (damage wise suck XD) i’m currently play a lightning build focused on CL and CE and honestly mana Is a non issue ( well i Guess the only non issue of the build) becouse especially on large pull i spawna so many crackling that i Just Need to Walk into few to have full mana back si basicly i Just run around using chain lightining ( btw for referente i’m at level 92 and i can clear lv 50 ND quite easily as long as i avois some of the debuff) but i can’t really see this build push me further , also on bosses It does work kinda but there Is where prodigy helps when i havo no crackling to pick up aviable
understandable I don’t think anyone can really afford to slot it, period
This is what paragon really needs ot be used for, CDR and mana cost reduction, and +mana. I did find a couple magic nodes with +4 mana, in the static surge board I wanna say.
Alas, it’s not enough. I feel the same about attack speed/basic dmg and such as well, paragon boards are just a little too hyper focused on just a handful of stats
Anyhow I did run a meteor enchant slot for a grenade build for a minute, it’s nice, but 10% lucky hit is just too low. I used it for right click for a minute but my build is Lightning not fire so it was underwhelming compared to bolts.
Mana wasn’t the problem I think, just didnt hit consistent enough (though it does hit fairly hard). Things kept moving around. Alas I did not have Adept/mastery board which might have made it work better
I mainly wanted the immobalize for CC dmg and the crit dmg from Devouring Blaze but it didn’t work out for me.
If i was going all in on a meteor build I’d definitely be supplementing it with Fire Bolt + Mana gen on hit. Are you not doing that?
For the longest time I tried to but the Fire Bolt’s measly 2 mana is practically a joke. I even run the Ancient Flame aspect which gives me insane attack speed and it still can’t recover my mana fast enough. Plus if I have Fire Bolt on my skill bar I have no room for freaking Frost Nova which is beyond mandatory.
Appalling is right. Uniques already come with inherent tradeoffs but this one takes the cake. At a minimum a 65% damage reduction and turning a projectile into a bouncy ball which most of the time hits nothing. It also have massive counter synergy with other uniques like the raiment which pulls things in not to mention that most bosses stay pretty stationary.
I will admit it looks pretty cool when you have both uniques equipped and you on the third cast you cover the entire screen in bouncy fireballs but they do no damage so it’s like you’re setting off firecrackers instead of chain reaction tactical nukes, which is what Fireball was meant to be.
It’s like these uniques were designed in a vacuum and by people who never played the game…
I am using Blizzard with Frost Bolt in an Enchantment slot to slow things and sometimes freeze them so meteors mostly hit. On the upside, Meteor’s immobilizing keeps them in the Blizzard.
I can pretty much hard spam frozen orb in nm dungeons. I have about 180 mana, cold skills lucky hit mana on vulnerable targets, I get 2 charges of avalanche (free casts) as a lucky hit, and just a 2/4 umbral ring. I also have a 35% mothers embrace but if there’s 5 targets getting hit I’m floating at 100% mana anyway, just using it for its other stats. I’ve also got ~25% resource cost reduction on neck/boots.
On bosses I have to weave in frost bolts but can easily spam for the duration of stagger.
Am currently leveling another sorc to see how bad things are for fire builds and seem to be heavily relying on the free casts during the ultimate so far.
Before I rolled into Ice Shards, I didn’t run any resource aspect and obligatorily avoided +mana/resource gen/mana cost affixes - because I was somehow managing to make a build focused on Hydra work out reasonably well up to around lvl 78 or so.
But that’s sort of what happens when you find some delicious pyro/fire dmg rings and chest, a ridiculous +4 hydra helmet, and an amulet that somehow rolls pyro/fire dmg with +3 conjuration skills, and managed to reroll the other stat to +3 conjuration mastery.
Hydra itself is still a pretty “meh” spell that even trying to really maximize it left a lot of power to be desired, and absolutely doesn’t compare to ice shards build. However, it only costs 20 mana to lay down and lasts for about 9 seconds (variable on your Serpentine roll reducing it’s duration/keeping Conjurer glyph bonus applied). I’d only end up spending mana on Meteor/Fireball/Firewall/Whatever to fill in the gap of time that Hydra was active; and the fire spells would only “consume” mana if it was outside of Inferno duration.
Hydra is meh by itself but combined with the double hydra aspect and the ancient flame aspect it turns into a fire machine gun. Some times I won’t manage to kill the boss in just one Inferno and the hydras finish it off while I wait around for my mana, lol.
It’s not the end of the world but it feels dumb to just stand there and wait for your mana to regen, especially when they could easily fix it by reducing the base mana cost of spells and redesigning Devastation into something actually useful.
Just up to the 40s for leveling. The mother’s embrace is overkill honestly, if you’re hitting enough mobs for it to benefit, you’re already swimming in mana from umbral and the lucky hit procs. Inferno ultimate with the pull is actually amazing for frozen orb.
It’s worth noting I scrap every sigil with mana burn, unstoppable, reduced damage from cold, reduced damage from distant and reduced damage from crits, and try to mostly run dungeons that don’t have a boss.
I think… I found the perfect mana balance, I really hope they don’t mess it up with the next update.
25 mana on cooldown aspect
30% mana regen aspect
35% mana cost reduction
55% mana regen
35% cdr
150 max mana
On top of 25% attack speed(you might be able to run a bit less mana regen if you don’t run any attack speed or a 2h, and your main damage dealer cost less than 25 mana after reduction, it should work the same).
I have Blizzard+Ice Spikes aspect as damage dealer and the rest are cooldowns, and with this setup I can smoothly spam Blizzard as long as I press all my cooldown abilities as soon as they are off cooldown to refill the mana bar before the mana runs out from chain casting, it is amazing eheh.