Sorceress / Monk Elemental Skills and Builds Feedback: Issues And Possible Solutions
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Hello all! After patch 0.2 that severely nerfed most of skills including some of those mentioned in this thread most elemental abilities of Sorceress and Monk have issues - from being massively undertuned compared to other classes analogues to crazy mana costs that make character out of mana after several usages. Since interview and developer posts stated that they will be doing mid league buffs to builds and address builds one by one, I decided to create a dedicated thread to analyze issues with Sorceress and Monk elemental skills / builds and offer possible solutions to fix these issues. Hopefully this thread can provide GGG with feedback and food for thought for future changes.
Sorceress Fire builds / skills
Spoiler
Main issue of such builds is damage of Ignite - it is often based on hit damage, so requires scaling both direct damage and Ignite modifiers, low base damage of Ignite (which got even lower for some skills like Fire Wall when it already was not that impressive) and slow gameplay - even with previous issues somehow addressed due to dealing damage over time it would still be slower than more frontloaded cold and lightning builds while also providing least amount of tools to hold off enemies (cold provides chill and freeze and lightning can get access to Electrocute via items and support gems). These factors combined make fire builds both slower and more vulnerable than other builds and could be looked at. Suggestions for general improvement of fire Sorceress builds: - Buff base damage of Ignite only spells like Flame Wall to account for their damage both being delayed (compared to direct damage builds) and having a better base to scale their damage from. - Consider adding more fire spells that deal Ignite only damage to provide access to effective damage over time focused builds that would scale with Ignite modifiers only (with no necessity to scale direct damage modifiers) - Add more spells that consume Ignite for immediate pay-off to help address issue of slow and delayed gameplay of fire builds. Firestorm exists, but it is also delayed (its empowered impacts still fall over time) and unreliable (empowered impacts can still fall randomly and not even hit intended targets), so more direct and reliable tool would be helpful. For example it could be a spell that would consume Ignite on enemies in area and deal X% of stored damage instantly or cause an explosion from each enemy cleared from Ignite. Such tool is still combo gameplay based, reliable and most importantly more frontloaded, providing a tool to mitigate the slow pace of fire builds. - Add more tools to scale fire spells. Existing ones are Raging Spirits (minion based) and Archmage (requires mana stacking and is based on other element) and both are not very compatible with common fire builds that just focus on stacking fire damage / Ignite modifiers. Fitting tool could be something like Spirit gem that would cause Ignite to deal the more damage the longer it is on enemy up to a threshold - it is Ignite focused, so can't be exploited by other builds with access to reliable Ignite tools like Flame Wall and it can also help with alleviating slow pace of fire builds with stacking power of applied Ignites that would allow to end the prolonged encounter faster. Here is also feedback about specific fire Sorceress skills and combos: Solar Orb -> Flameblast: Has too long cooldown after the 15 sec CD addition for Flameblast and is misaligned, since after Solar Orb expires (10 seconds duration) and you summon a new one Flameblast can still be on cooldown (15 sec cooldown). This cooldown is also too long for its not that big effect and risk of channeling a disruptable skill and could be lowered. Suggestion: Reduce cooldown of Flameblast to 8-10 seconds. Flame Wall: Nerf to its projectile damage increase effect is fine as it was exploited by many builds, but its base damage did not need a nerf since it is already over time and delayed. Consider buffing its base damage back a bit. Ember Fusillade: Is too clunky to use both with its delay that cannot be modified by player and its priority system where it attempts to target different enemies and prioritizes last enemy hit. Needs several QoL changes to make it more reliable to use. Suggestion: Allow player to also manually release accumulated Embers via holding the skill button for 1 second (so that player can release it when and where they need to) and make embers fly in the direction of player's cursor instead of last targeted enemy / random enemies when multiple embers are accumulated. Such changes would make the skill much more controllable and reliable to use and address issues with uniques like Dusk Vigil. After such QoL changes its performance can be tracked and tuned up / down if needed. Incinerate: was slightly buffed in 0.2, but likely not enough as it still remains both risky (as a channeled skill with stages) and backloaded (since damage is done via Ignite). Suggested above additions of Ignite consuming spells and Ignite scaling Spirit gems could help it become more viable and if needed it could use a personal damage boost too to compensate for its level of risk and delays, especially in endgame where deaths become much more punishing. Fireball: does too low base damage. Could use a boost. Rolling Magma (datamined): "bouncy fireball playstyle" that both can create its own builds and cover niche of "no projectiles Fireball" for people who don't like part of Fireball's damage being attached to shrapnel projectiles. Please just implement and release this skill as soon as possible without delaying it till next league to both provide new playstyle options for fire spells (for players) and get more feedback and data about its performance (for developers). Firestorm: can be both too weak / unreliable against smaller enemies and too strong against large size enemies. Second issue can be addressed with manual limitation of hits per second against specific enemy (which was already partially done) and first issue can be addressed via just increasing radius of both normal and empowered impacts to increase average number of impacts that land on specific enemy. That can be even combined for balancing - impact radius can be increased to make Firestorm better against smaller enemies and there can be maximum number of impact hits per second for each target to keep its power in line against larger enemies. Sorceress Frost builds / skills
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Frost spell builds have similar issue to fire builds via too low base damage of many spells and combined with multiple consecutive nerfs to freeze build-up that nerfed both survivability and damage output of frost builds (via crowd control and availability of Cold Snap) they are currently undertuned, especially at lower levels. Frost spells also lack dedicated ways to scale damage (and if fire builds at least have minion-based Raging Spirits frost spell builds don't have any dedicated Spirit gem at all) and could use work in that direction too. Suggestions for general improvement of cold Sorceress builds: - Increase base damage of frost spells, especially lower level ones. - Add dedicated damage scaling Spirit gem for frost spell builds. For example that could be a skill that would increase damage taken by enemies based on accumulated Chill (the more chilled they are the more damage they take) - it is fitting for frost builds and allows to decently scale damage of frost skills without relying on limited freeze / consume freeze effects. Here is also feedback about specific frost Sorceress skills and combos: Frostbolt -> Frost Novas from Frostbolt -> Cold Snap: while it does provide way to deal AoE damage and chill / freeze enemies from range its execution can be clunky, especially against moving enemies that move towards you and away from Frostbolt projectile and can avoid most hits of originating from it Frost Novas and Cold Snap. Suggestion: Add a support gem that would make affected piercing projectile move slower after hitting first enemy. Such support gem would allow to more reliably use launched Frostbolt to trigger Novas / Cold Snap from it and would be helpful for other abilities with similar issues too (like Ball Lightning). Frostbolt: does too low damage from the projectile and has most damage loaded into its explosion with player either having minimal control over where it would happen or being required to Cold Snap every Frostbolt to trigger explosion where needed and pretty much spending 2 abilities to get full damage from one cast. Consider instead making more damage come from projectile itself and less from its explosion - that would allow to use Frostbolt itself as a more viable single-target damage option and since frost spell builds lack options for that (the only alternative is Freezing Shards that is diminished against smaller size enemies) that would both better cover that niche and provide more build options. Cold Snap - is useful, but clunky, since detonating freeze on multiple enemies requires either using Frostbolt and frozen enemies being near it or manually clicking every enemy to detonate them. Consider making it also useable on Ice Crystal to immediately detonate it and apply Cold Snap to all frozen enemies affected by the explosion (just like it works for Frostbolt) - such tweak would allow to get access to AoE freeze detonation with more options to pick from and to open more synergies with frost spells. Frost Bomb - its value is decent, but damage is low for a skill that both has a cooldown and significant delay before detonating. Consider buffing its damage a bit. Comet - because of long cast time is too risky to use on its own in endgame (and even its backflip does not help much) and requires other tools like Frost Wall or even meta gems to make it work. Maybe it is intended as a "high risk, high reward spell", but that should be indicated with its damage (which was severely nerfed in 0.2 and might need buffing again) and there should be a way to play it without requiring other specific abilities. Here is one possible option - consider adding a support gem that would affect spells that have increased total cast time and reduce / remove this total cast time increase, but add short cooldown to the spell instead. Such gem would be useful to make these spells including Comet easier to use on their own, but with a cooldown tradeoff, open new builds and can enable additional synergies with Chronomancer and her cooldown ignoring / resetting nodes. Eye of Winter - even with buff to 75% damage increase per surface and soon being boosted when passing elemental orb skills too it is still undertuned and main reason for that is its very low base damage. Despite being a multi-hit ability its projectiles are not consistent to stack damage from (can hit different targets, can miss targets), so such low base damage is not justified and should be increased. Sorceress Lightning builds / skills
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While some lightning spell builds (specifically Spark build) were meta in 0.1, they received so many nerfs that currently opposite is true - they do low damage and have crazy mana costs that make them too punishing to play compared to even nerfed in 0.2 builds and even more so Lightning Spear. While many nerfs were deserved and should be kept, nerfed lightning spell builds should be still playable and competitive and as such need attention to bring them back in line. Some other lightning skills were initially not that strong and still got nerfed (like Arc and Ball Lightning's interaction) and should be looked at too. Suggestions for general improvement of lightning Sorceress builds: - Reduce mana costs via either lowering base spell costs or cost penalties of Archmage / Eldritch Battery. - Buff base damage of lightning spells (to compensate for severe Archmage nerfs and to provide better base for non-mana stacking lightning spell builds), especially spells that were already questionable (like Arc / Ball Lightning) or require combo gameplay (like Lightning Warp / Lightning Conduit). Here is also feedback about specific lightning Sorceress skills and combos: Arc - lost a lot of single-target damage from removed damage increase for remaining chains and is also planned to no longer shock enemies and instead create an explosion when hitting shocked enemies. These changes combined would make it likely not viable as a primary spell (as shock application is crucial for lightning builds) and most likely a complementary spell to other spammable lightning spells like Spark and Ball Lightning. Such approach has pros and cons, but there is already AoE consumer of shock (Lightning Conduit) and another one is not that needed and there should be several main spammable lightning spells to pick from, so consider not implementing that planned change and just properly buffing its damage and bounce speed (which are the main issues about this spell). Ball Lightning - affects low area, does low damage and is bad against moving targets (and enemies can move very quickly in this game) since they simply quickly leave its area and don't take much damage. If it is to become a competitive option these issues should be addressed - increase its damage, area of hitting enemies and consider adding more support gems that would tweak movement speed of projectiles / make affected piercing projectile move slower after hitting first enemy etc. Orb of Storms - can be useful if played around and being hugged while spamming lightning skills, but has very low effect on its own and promotes limited area gameplay that is quite risky, especially in endgame. Consider buffing both its area (so that character using it has more space to move in) and its personal damage (so that even if player can no longer stay in its area it can provide some output on its own). Since total number of its bolts is limited anyway and can stay similar, that would allow a bit more movement freedom while using it while still keeping its total power level similar. Lightning Conduit - was overnerfed to the point where casting Comet (which does not require shocked status) with same cast time and animation would deal more damage to the pack, especially against larger packs where additional bolts get diminished. Needs a damage buff to provide a proper reward for its shock consuming effect. Monk Lightning builds / skills
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While still having solid basics and mechanics these builds were nerfed / powercrept to the point where even if using all the shock build / consume rotations and Power Charge combos you would be significally inferior to Lightning Spear builds in clear speed (being able to hit 1-3 enemies with Tempest Flurry / Storm Wave compared to Lightning Spears and their bolts hitting half if not most enemies on the screen), risk (playing mostly melee when Lightning Spear builds can play mostly from range) and survivability (attempt to execute Tempest Bell combos often in melee range when Lightning Spear can just press Barrage while staying at range every X seconds for similar gains) and the effects that made lightning monk builds work (Tempest Bell, Charged Staff and Heralds) were all significally nerfed without any compensation buffs to basic skills. As a result even Invokers currently prefer to play spear over the recommended quarterstaff and such balance is way off. Monk's lightning skills could use another tuning / design pass. Suggestions for general improvement of lightning Monk builds: - Buff base damage of lightning monk skills, especially those that involve higher risk gameplay like Tempest Flurry. - Consider increasing area of effect for some lightning monk skills (like Storm Wave, Siphoning Strike etc) to increase clearing speed and compensate for lack of chaining effects among monk's lightning skills compared to lightning skills from other trees. Here is also feedback about specific lightning Monk skills and combos: Tempest Flurry - was nerfed to the point where it does comparable dps to basic attack (which also has no cost). Could use a damage buff. Storm Wave - was buffed with increased chance to shock, but is still severely inferior as a clearing skill to Lightning Spear that has more range, covers much larger area / number of targets with its secondary bolts and on top of that can consume Frenzy Charges for increased effect. Consider buffing Storm Wave's area of effect to bring it more in line in clearing speed with both Lightning Spear and spammable chaining lightning abilities from other trees. Siphoning Strike - is still useful as a Power Charge builder, but its shockwave area is still too small, especially compared to other shock consuming skills like Lightning Conduit and Primal Strikes. Area of shockwave could use a boost. Falling Thunder - its Power Charge boosted effect is good, but basic effect's area is very small and could use a boost. Charged Staff - lost a lot of power in 0.2 and might be even undertuned now for a Power Charge consuming skill, especially for skills with slower attack speed. Consider increasing its damage bonus a bit and extending range of its wave to 8 meters (to align it with Storm Wave's range, since currently Charged Staff's wave has shorter range and might not even hit all the intended enemies that were targeted and hit by Storm Wave). Gathering Storm - has good effect if you use it as engagement tool and execute its perfect timing, but is quite bad as a travel skill - it is channeled, covers very low distance outside of perfect timing and can be easily disrupted by enemies. Consider extending its basic dash distance to be more in line with Vaulting Impact and Thunderous Leap, so that it can be used more reliably as a travel skill even if you miss the perfect timing or can't afford to channel it that long. Monk Frost builds / skills
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These builds currently provide low damage output and rely on clunky and mostly small area of effect tools, which makes them badly suitable for clearing and inferior even to Sorceress frost builds that are not that competitive themselves. As such, monk frost builds could use improvements too. Suggestions for general improvement of ice Monk builds: - Increase base damage of Monk frost skills and if needed reduce modifiers to freeze build-up to compensate. Good example is Wave of Frost - while its freeze buildup is decent its damage output is so low that instead of bothering with its freeze mechanic (that gets also diminished after each freeze) you can just play lightning build or high level Ice Sorceress build with Ice Wall and Comet and clear much faster. - Add Power Charge builders and spenders for frost monk skills to enable alternative playstyles. They can even cover a specific niche - large area clearing that ice monks currently don't have much tools for. - Add more support to ice builds within monk weapons and archetype like implicit ice damage quarterstaves, synergizing mobility skill and so on. Here is also feedback about specific ice Monk skills and combos: Frozen Locus -> Wave of Frost -> Glacial Cascade: at first glance seems like a decent combo where you put the crystal and jump backwards then freeze enemies with Wave of Frost and jump even more backwards getting right into range for Glacial Cascade and then shatter both enemies and crystal with several Glacial Cascades. Idea is decent, but output is lacking - by the time your ice monk would execute such combo on enemies a fellow Lightning Spear build has already cleared the whole screen and even fellow Ice Sorceress can do a similar freeze combo, but from range, much faster and much safer. If this combo is to become competitive it should provide good payoff for added complexity and melee range - deal more damage and cover larger area. Glacial Cascade: Monk's freeze consume tool that is vastly inferior to Cold Snap - Cold Snap can be used anywhere on the screen while Glacial Cascade has fixed and limited distance for final spike and requires repositioning to shatter every frozen enemy, especially if they are at varying distances from the Monk (and all that while freeze timer is ticking), Cold Snap has access to AoE application via Frostbolt explosion while Glacial Cascade does not and Cold Snap is quick to execute while Glacial Cascade is much slower. As such Glacial Cascade needs mainly QoL improvements to bring it in line - player should be able to spawn final spike early if frozen enemy is closer than its maximum travelling distance (for example - final spike could be spawned at position of player's cursor if it is closer than maximum travel distance of final spike and at its usual maximum distance otherwise) and there should be a way to vastly increase area of final spike for reliable AoE freeze consuming. That could be achieved for example via making Glacial Cascade able to consume Power Charges and spawn much larger final spike if a charge is consumed - that would both cover the AoE freeze shatter niche and Power Charge consuming ability for frost builds niche simultaneously. Ice Strike - was overnerfed to the point where using basic quarterstaff attack that is free would provide more dps than using this ability that consumes Mana. Needs a damage buff. If you have additional feedback you can post it in comments below. Thank you for reading! Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Apr 11, 2025, 9:54:05 AM Last bumped on Apr 17, 2025, 6:54:57 AM
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Some additional feedback:
- Elemental and even in general spells currently often have too high mana cost, especially at 20+ level where each level adds like 13% multiplicative increase and increased gem levels are currently primary way to even scale spell damage in endgame. For comparison - 20 lvl Lightning Spear (attack with spell-like mechanics) costs 49 mana, 20 lvl Arc (spell with similar chain mechanics) costs 93 mana which is almost double the cost and 20 lvl Fireball (spell with similar projectile into bolts mechanic) costs 118 mana that is close to triple the cost of attacks with similar mechanics. That is one of the reasons why spell builds can struggle with mana costs (even those that don't focus on stacking mana and don't add additional cost increases) and as such most spells should get similar cost reduction to what attacks and marks got recently including spells from Ascendancies like Elemental Expression (which is not played much specifically because of too high mana consumption). - Spells also lack item modifiers to scale them. For example gloves have prefixes that can scale attacks (X additional damage of specific element added to attacks), but there are no analogues for spell scaling. That should be fixed. - While game also has Ascendancies and classes that promote elemental hybrid attack / spell playstyles like Invoker and supposedly Druid builds soon it also provides too low support in itemization for them - most item modifiers scale either attacks (added X damage of Y element to attacks, attack speed, + X levels to melee skills) or spells (increased spell damage, cast speed, + X levels to spell skills etc) and if you scale one part of such build you automatically neglect the other. There should be more support for hybrid or multi-elemental builds within item modifiers and if needed they can have slightly lower values than specialized modifiers to compensate for versatility - skill speed (that affects both attacks and spells), elemental damage increase, + X level to all elemental skills etc. There are even specialized uniques for such playstyles like Collapsing Horizon, but it is also undercooked - deals implicit physical damage on supposedly elemental focused build (so is inferior even to basic Crackling Quarterstaff in compatibility), increases elemental damage of only attacks and so on. These items should be iterated upon to provide enough support for the builds they are supposed to enable. Regarding Collapsing Horizon - to properly support hybrid elemental spell / attack playstyle it could deal implicit elemental damage or damage type of specific element, increase elemental damage in general instead of only attacks and likewise. Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Apr 10, 2025, 2:58:16 AM
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A big patch which will buff the class is coming
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Maybe, but looking at the announced changes like Arc being unable to shock, buffing explosion radius of Frostbolt and making Eye of Winter get also buffed from elemental orb spells with same extremely low base damage I'm not sure that they even understand what issues are with spell / elemental builds. That is why I created this thread - to give them analysis of current state of elemental builds and offer solutions / food for thought.
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I fully agree with this. I made a demonstration of those problems earlier in another thread commenting the interview with Zizaran. This post is spot on. It targets and captures the actual issues with Sorceress / Monk very well.
Last edited by KaiGrandMaster#5011 on Apr 10, 2025, 3:02:10 AM
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Some additional feedback about existing underused elemental Spirit Gems and and possibility to make them more compelling or build enabling:
Arctic Armour - provides retailation hits against melee attacks with damage comparable to spell autoattack at the cost of 30 Spirit. Currently it is not viable as neither offensive option (retailation damage is small and requires frequently getting hit and since monster damage is very high in this game you avoid that as much as possible and accordingly actively prevent it from triggering) nor defensive option (it provides zero defensive benefits). As a result this Spirit gem is not played much and could use improvements. Suggestion: Make it also reduce physical damage taken by X% (like it does in PoE1, but without being stationary since that condition might be quite a bad idea in game like PoE2 that promotes active movement and dodge rolling). Such change can make it much more viable as hybrid option that combines defense and offence (like Wind Dancer) and help early game Sorceress builds that can be very squishy. Cast on Ignite / Freeze / Shock - were nerfed to prevent passive bombing builds, but the way they were nerfed (simply blank reduction in energy gained) was not right as it literally made them not worth the Spirit cost for most builds. Take Cast on Shock - you now need to shock 200 white enemies to trigger 1 Lightning Conduit and that is simply not worth neither the time nor the Spirit cost. Energy gain for these skills (and potentially Elemental Invocation too) should be increased (especially against white / common enemies) and potential to abuse with meta builds should be prevented in other way like adding internal cooldown for their triggers. Elemental Conflux - very RNG based increase that only multi-element builds can decently benefit from (since they have 2/3 chance to get a right element instead of 1/3), but multi-element builds are currently not viable enough since like mentioned above there is not enough support for them in itemization. Making them more supported and viable could make this Spirit gem see some use, but even then it could be boosted for reliability like also providing significally reduced bonus to other elements too, so that you would still gamble for the fitting for your build element(s) being boosted most, but get some value even if RNG is harsh to you and keeps giving you wrong element(s). Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Apr 10, 2025, 6:41:07 AM
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Feedback about latest changes:
- Arc change to pulse from shocked enemies and no longer shock by itself is controversial since while it can enable new combos for lightning spells this change also turned in into a support skill that is badly usable on its own (as shock status effect is too important for lightning builds) and that would leave niche of wide area AoE clearing tool for lightning spell builds badly covered, especially in early game since Spark is too erratic and has low amount of projectiles early and Ball Lightning's area is very small. Its main issue is also slow bouncing speed that was not addressed at all. Suggestion: Increase bouncing speed of Arc and revert the pulse change, but instead create a support gem that would be applicable to chaining spells (so that it cannot be applied to already overperforming chaining lightning attacks like Lightning Spear) and allow to trade shock buildup for similar pulse from shocked enemies. This is a reasonable compromise - people who want to use Arc as a main skill would be able to do so and people who would like to enable the pulse on Arc or other chaining spell would be able to do so via this support gem. - Frostbolt explosion's area increase is nice, but its main issue of bad single-target damage was not addressed and frost spell builds in general lack spammable single-target focused options (the only other one is Freezing Shards and it is diminished against smaller enemies where several projectiles can miss). As such - consider buffing damage of Frostbolt's projectile itself. - Increased freeze buildup for Frost Nova is a good change that should make AoE freezing for cold spell builds much better. - Increased duration of exposure for Incinerate is something, but this change won't address the main issue - low and delayed damage of Incinerate and big risk of using it in endgame where channeled and staged spells are particularly dangerous to use. Its damage should be buffed to provide proper reward for both risky and delayed damage gameplay. Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Apr 11, 2025, 2:07:18 AM
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Some additional feedback:
- As expected, just making Eye of Winter getting buffed by orb spells without increasing damage did not achieve much since people who played it already found ways to stack elemental grounds to buff it and did not receive much gains. This spell just needs a plain base damage buff and if needed for balance you could limit number of impacts that can hit same target per second like you did for some other spells. - Mana Tempest becoming compatible with all spells for versatility is nice, but becoming a sitting duck and losing all of your mana in the process should not be required to deal competitive damage with spells when attack builds can just run around and throw their Lightning Rods and Lightning Spears for similar or even bigger output. Please provide alternative ways to scale spells or increase their base damage. Last edited by Volsal#8024 on Apr 11, 2025, 9:39:27 AM
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I too have some feed back for sorcerer
COLD -cold spells are too slow at doing damage and leave you defenseless. a) coldsnap has to wait for frostbolt to be near the monsters b) frostbolt could be viable but unless you have snakepit it wont explode until it runs into a wall that is not a frost wall c) issue with comet is the cast time and how easily interrupted you are while casting it. only way to attempt to keep yourself safe is frost wall but that doesn't always work as some monsters are unphased by it. this clear is also very slow like it takes 3 spells and about 5 secs to kill 5 monsters at most at a time. d) eye of winter could have been good, but it does less damage than frostbolt does even with getting the additional damage from passing through orbs. by the way if frost bomb is considered an orb then why do some support gems like overabundance that effect solar orb and orb of storms not work on it? d) some adds can still do their abilities while being frozen such as teleport and periodic abilities. LIGHTNING -lightning spells are sooooo weak or not working as intended a) spark had so many layers to make it strong prior to dawn of the hunt. it had 3 specific passive nodes, spark itself, archmage, and mana and energy shield stacking on items and uniques. the patch double nerfed eldritch battery. it already had a kiss-curse effect of you have no ES but now you have more mana. and now on top of that your mana costs are doubled. archmage had the damage bonus halved but cost stayed the same. on top of that the quality on it only reduces spirit reservation instead of adding to damage. to give an example i had eldritch battery active and archmage as well and with spark having inspiration (30% cost reduction) and 2000 mana it cost about 400 mana to cast spark. now onto spark itself. spark damage got severely nerfed in multiple ways. the damage on spark got nerfed itself, the number of projectiles halved, the speed reduced but you can quality it to get the speed back. on the items that typically were used for it we have: dream fragments with the increased %mana halved, mana on rings nerfed, ingenuity buffing rings nerfed, the ES from everlasting gaze nerfed, and if you want to use mind of matter with eldritch battery or archmage you are screwed. using them not only do spells cost double, they cost an additional 6.5% of your mana pool on top of that while having 50% less mana recovery rate. b) arc does not work properly or do enough damage to keep you alive. it also has the same mana issues as spark with archmage and eldritch battery. after the 0.2e patch arc does not apply shock but when hitting a shocked enemy it is supposed to do an aoe explosion. i tested it out and the explosion never happens (no visual to let you know this is happening and no damage happening other than the initial arc damage.) also the shaper of storms ascendancy states that all damage contributes to shock chance so arc should be contributing to shock chance with that ascendancy node. frostbolt does apply shock with it and i have no other way to apply shock with frostbolt other than shaper of storms. the electrocute support gem with arc did apply towards electrocute properly. c) ball lightning with lightning warp can do some damage but puts you in harms way enough to not want to play the build. d) all the lightning builds leave you defenseless to the swarming from melee or ranged monsters. FIRE -fire builds are less tried out because respeccing is expensive and the passive tree is not very favorable to fire spells. the only good nodes i saw reminded me of D4 where you do increased damage to burning enemies a) solar orb is uninteresting and does not do much in the way of damage in endgame. i did use it in campaign as a way to do damage as i was running for my life from mobs and bosses. b) fireball was the one spell i "was" interested in trying since i have a Sire of Shards staff but with using it the amount of damage from it was so small and unimpactful in killing mobs. I think to fix that staff it should have a suffix on it of +1-4 levels to all spells. i am sure that if i used archmage and eldritch battery i will have the same mana issues as its base mana cost is 118 at lvl 20. c) firestorm looks like it could be viable, but you can only have one up or 2 with overabundance but less duration. its size is also not very big and again leaves you defenseless to swarming and the damage also seems kind of low. d) flameblast is not it. never do i want to be close to use it and nor do i want to use it with solar orb. no channeling ability is viable in this patch. e) incinerate- no channeling is viable in this patch. Things that could be changed to improve sorcerer - all spells other than comet, cold snap, and lightning warp probably need to have their damage numbers increased. - remove the double mana cost on eldritch battery. this would make it a node worth taking with mind over matter. - fix arc so it works with the Shaper of Storms Ascendancy node and that the explosion works. - archmage needs a buff on the damage. i would say keeping the mana increase to spells is fine if eldritch battery does not double the mana costs. maybe move it to 4% and i think the quality of it should be reverted to adding maybe adding 1% more damage at the 20% quality instead of the spirit reserve reduction. -spark should go up to maybe 13 projectiles instead of 9 or give it back the projectile speed and make quality the +4 projectiles. - add a support gem that makes it so spells do not pierce but do more damage. keeps with kiss-curse theme that like 90% of support gems have. this would make fork a viable gem for a lot of spells like frostbolt for instance other than needing the snakepit ring. -more fire nodes for fire spells. most of the fire nodes are far away from the starting point for sorcerer. also no ascendancy currently makes use of the fire spells really. - sire of shards staff to make it viable for endgame give it +1-4 all spells. GGG said that we should want to have the highest level of gem but a big part of sorcerer's power comes from having the highest level of spells so losing up to +7 levels of spells to not having a wand or a focus is a big dps loss. - maybe a spirit gem that gives a some sort of defensive property. with sorcerer it is easy to get swarmed when trying to cast spells. cold spells are the only one with any sort of defensive mechanism like frost wall impeding monsters or freezing them but their real damaging spells take time to activate like comet or waiting for frost bomb or bolts to get in place to coldsnap. also stuns from monsters touching you interrupt any spell from going off way to frequently. - frozen monsters should not be able to teleport or activate their skills even if they are periodically happening otherwise what good is freezing. - firestorm should work more like blizzard does in D4 i think. no limit to how many. this could make it more viable to use. - flameblast should work more like frostbomb but on yourself or on solar orb. maybe it makes the solar orb blast more frequently and at a large burst aoe. this would make it more interesting and potentially usable. - incinerate. i dont know what to do to make this ability good. its not fun in D4. it is never fun to stand still and channel while mobs are destroying you as they swarm you. maybe something with solar orb where incinerating increases the damage and size of the orb greatly. - Also i am poor. respeccing cost so much gold when you can't effectively clear waystones quickly. I would love to be able to try new build ideas more frequently. |
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Some additional feedback:
- In addition to being inherently weak and requiring damage buffs, Incinerate lacks combo gameplay that is present for almost all other spells. In addition to buffing its damage consider also adding interaction with some other Fire spell(s) - for example Incinerate could "fan the flames" of Solar Orb and make it larger (increasing area of both orb itself and its explosions) and stronger for each second Incinerate affects it (if needed - up to some threshold). - Sorceress skill tree provides too limited access to exposure skills - Frost Bomb's effect is fine, but Fire Exposure requires long and risky channeling of Incinerate and Lightning Exposure is just absent until high level support gems. Consider adding more sources of elemental exposure to Sorceress skills - Fire Exposure could be for example attached to Solar Orb's Ignite part or to Living Bomb (to give it more value in endgame) and Lightning Exposure could be attached to some payoff lightning spell, so that it is accessible, but limited. |
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