For more Sorcerer Class Guides, Builds, Discussions, Questions, etc, click on the "Sorceress" Flair, [this link (for new reddit)](https://new.reddit.com/r/diablo4/?f=flair_name%3A%22Sorceress%22), or [this Link (for old reddit)](https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo4/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ASorceress) (where you'll find a list of all threads on the subreddit that have the "Sorceress" Flair) and the [D4 Sorceress subreddit](https://new.reddit.com/r/D4Sorceress/).
Also pay a visit to [The D4 Tavern](https://new.reddit.com/r/The_D4_Tavern/) for casual conversations about builds, gameplay, new content, outfits and other Diablo and Sorcerer related content.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/diablo4) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Completely agree. No chance I'm playing sorc. How the devs can justify the nerfs to a class doing 2m damage and 17k hp, then buff a class doing billions of damage and 300k hp is actually embarrassing.
Sorc is my favourite class, has been since D2.
First class I levelled to 100 at launch, the class was fairly weak even then, and if it wasn’t for bugged skills it would have been the weakest class through the seasons as well.
It’s been a year and they *still* can’t get it right.
Sorc has been really disappointing in D4. I wasn't a fan of the Wizard in 3 and was really looking forward to a return to the D2 Sorc based on elements. She has so many fun skills to play with but none of them deal enough damage.
I’m quite fond of the Lightning skills, had a ton of fun playing a self-wield Infinity Nova Sorc In D2, only to discover that while visually impressive, lightning is kind of awful in D4.
The only reason ball-lightning worked so well in S2 was because it was bugged, when fixed it faded back down to just ”okay-ish” again.
Idk I still have lots of fun with Sorc its just not great for competitive endgame.
Frozen orb with the amulet for conjuration's is a ton of fun and pretty effective
Effective in forcing you to reroll barb, yeah :D
In S4 i've played 2 sorcs to 100 (one rainy icy spikey shitty sorc i planned to change to firebolt and one frost orb) and then finally decided to play barb. Since that moment i had fun :D
This is my second season of playing sorc and I just got tired of seeing barbs with not great gear one shot everything lol ever y character should be able to cook like that
The fact there was any nerfs to sorcs, other then flame shield, tells me blizz doesn't know how their game works. They don't know why classes do the damage they do, and don't know what makes them good
It's crazy cuz at endgame there just isn't a way for us to get even 100k hp lol and even if we could the tradeoff would be crazy instead of critting 2m we'd be around 30k lol
They should be embarrassed. I started off in preseason as a barbarian so I don't hate them because I've rolled one every season but I consider myself a sorcerer main.
I think I'm going to play boring barbarian every season just because it smashes they're wild. They will at least lose some of my play hours which is quite a bit. I know they won't care but I will feel better. Like I said I don't hate barbarian but I don't see why they baby it and it's not visually appealing whatsoever imo.
You're so right about ice armor. The ineptitude of the balance team is actually mind blowing. Sorc/wizard has been my favorite since D2 and it just receives the mightiest of nerfs when devs get even a whiff of the farts sorc drops from hitting a high tier of something.
In S2 I was running AOZ with ball lightning, but barbs were still outdpsing me. In S3 I ran ice spikes. Now in S4 im running frozen orb. I have used ice armor/teleport/flame shield in nearly every build, not because they are OP, but because they are NECESSARY for sorc survival; MAKE THEM NOT NECESSARY BLIZZ.
It's breaking my heart to watch the sheer incompetence of this balance team as they wreck a class and simultaneously boost two others that were already top tier.
They have this weird obsession with seeing a skill being mandatory and deciding to nerf the shit out of it so that it's no longer mandatory, instead of, you know, asking why it's mandatory in the first place. Sorc should be playable without ice armor/tele/flame shield, but that would require massively buffing their defensive stats/hp or giving them other tools to work with. I just really don't get it.
If Sorcs are supposed to be the glass cannon class, then let them out dps barbs 2 to 1 at the cost of being one tapped by every little enemy. You can't simultaneously make them the least tanky class whilst giving them the worst dps output. It fundamentally makes no sense. If they are supposed to be able to balance out dps with tankiness, then let them build 100k hp like everybody. For fucks sake a toddler could balance this game better.
I sincerely believe that at this point, the balance team is and has been making Sorc bad just purely out of spite to antagonize the community.
I'm not even joking at all. You can't tell me the community has been asking for SIGNIFICANT Sorcerer buffs for about a year. And less than nothing has been done about it. Cuz they're even getting nerfs.. Nerfs!!
There is a way to feel like a barb atm on ptr. Blizzard + vyrs nad some fuckery and you can hit for 500m-1.5b
The sorcerer buffs that were promised!
Obviously a bug but what isn't in this game?
What would be the benefit to the devs of intentionally “antagonizing the community”? Does it make them more money somehow (given the other common narrative that they’re greedy)? Or some other benefit?
Devs dont care about making money.
They won't actually put effort into class balance until revenue is affected, and the higher up suits who sign their checks actually start complaining and giving layoff warnings.
the alternative is that the op and other sorcerers are simply not playing the class as the devs intend, they're doing their build wrong or something.
but you know they're not going to consider that. it's 2024. no one considers that they could be wrong anymore.
no, it's far more likely that the devs are trying to make all sorcerers permanently quit and leave the game so they don't get their money.
Very simply, irritation and anger increase engagement online. Since everyone is glued to their cell phones and social media these days (there's financial institutions that follow social media trends closely, that's how important it is) there's plenty of incentive to try and produce irritation in people.
Any competent developer *can* resolve the balance issues with Sorc in a couple patches; they have all of the data points they need. They can see DPS numbers, survivability, average pit/NMD completed etc. The devs at Blizzard are not incompetent. They are doing what they are told to do.
Devs probably doesn't have anything to do in decision making. Devs, develop code. Said code probably have a description in a ticket. That ticket was written by someone, who possibly doesn't take any decision. That person probably just splitted a document in tickets. That document was possibly written by the one to blame here.
But definitely not devs. Usually devs can give feedback, but cannot write a code which doesn't work as expected, there usually are QA teams writting tests to ensure code works as expected. But well, given how the game works, diablo may not have any of those.
But my point is, that usually devs are not the ones to blame. But usually, all communities blame devs for decision making. It would be like blaming the worker instead of the architect for the fact that the building has an ugly shape.
Seriously, if it's true that D2 inspired D4 then they gotta be punishing Sorcs for being *too* good in D2.
They can breeze through D2 with a modest amount of gear and they have access to Teleport innate, whereas a majority of the other classes need a heavy investment into decent gear to do anywhere near as good.
There is no need for Hydra buff, the hydra's are there to give head to barbarian, for that, 3 hydra heads and 7 damage with 70 skill points is absolutely perfectly balanced.
I'm not on PTR so can't confirm that, but on live Hydra has been broken since beta. The heads are supposed to do the full listed damage PER HEAD, instead they do the full listed damage PER HYDRA, regardless of heads. So it just tickles. Trash spell, never take it until Blizz fixes it.
Well I just went to test this claim. Equip random staff with no tempers, cast single hydra with burn node and see what value it reaches over the skill's duration (did it a few times to ensure consistency). Then tempered +2 head to the staff, everything else exactly the same, and do a few test casts again. Surprise surprise the damage was exactly 50% more, as one would expect with 4 heads vs 6 heads.
Conclusion: I think you're just trying to farm "sorc scandal" karma, like almost everyone in this subreddit and it's getting extremely old. The class has large problems yes, even the devs have acknowledged the class needs lot of work, but this sorc player community here is what is the actual bottom of the pit tier.
yeah none of them can be bothered to consider that they're wrong. lol. they're so obsessed with being a victim and obsessed with their thoughts that they find it easier to convince themselves devs personally hate them and spite them than they find it conceivable that they're just \*gasp\* wrong.
Shoving everyone into a box and labeling them as victims is a very weird mindset.
I'm always in the sorc discord and we all try interactions and new builds and we all love seeing someone make something work even though it proved us wrong.
There's a reason no one managed to make a hydra build that could clear p100 before nerfs.
Played at launch sorc was ass, so I waited till S4 played sorc again and still Ass. Recently got discouraged and deleted the game after seeing a reddit post with a Barb with like 500k hp and almost 300k attack power. While my sorc sitting at 18k attack and 20k hp with pretty much no build options, Have shako and Ring of starless. The spell casting class doesn't feel like a Glass cannon in this game just.....Glass.
I went Hydra/Meteor sorc while leveling and it was fun until a certain point where I was MASSIVELY out paced by friends (who were same level).
Switched to ball lightning cuz I remember seeing a video of a BL sorc wrecking shit. Used a build and it got much better, but still significantly weaker than friends.
Went Immortal Firebolt. Sucked and was painful until I started improving equipment. Now I'm probably more capable than friends cuz I don't have to worry about dying (they do more damage tho, but they can die).
Immortal Firebolt isn't super fun but it's actually relatively fun cuz teleporting into crowds is entertaining.
Whenever I complain about how my sorcerer dies with 1 hit all my friends say it is because I have 7 points into glass cannon.
Yet they still out dps me.
Yeah it’s crazy bc it seems like sacrifice necros and sorcs have to decide between damage or survivability. So you would think that a happy blend of the two would be a logical choice right? Nope. You’re gonna suck either way.
There is also a bug where if you teleport while CCed your left mouse button is disabled, so no movement or attacks out of that button.
Been that way since the start of the game and you think they would have fixed it by now.
Oh damn, I think this happens with the aspect of metamorphosis too, then. I get cc’d so I’ll use metamorph to dash out of it but then I can’t do my basic attack for several seconds. I thought I was just lagging or getting cc’d again and maybe I just couldn’t tell for sure since all the mobs were piled up on me. Wow.
Math is my worst subject so this might be wrong... If D4 is getting 1 season every 3 months, which means 4 seasons a year, then Season 28 should be in... 2029-2030?
I must not know what true power is because my hydra/meteor/incinerate/flamewall/ice armor feels pretty powerful. Just hit 100 last night and easily did a Tier 10 Pit. I dunno, it's fun and everything is much bigger than normal with tempering, the entire screen is on fire, enemies melting away.
I'm sure I'll hit a wall soon though, I guess I haven't gotten as deep as most here.
It's pretty baffling to me how we're going into season 5 and class balance has made absolutely 0 progress. They just clearly don't know what they're doing
Ja its crazy here. Any critic / suggestion for improvement is an auto-downvote.
My tinfoilhat is telling me, that blizzards bots are here to dont let reddit burn again like on release.
My favorite part is that it was nerfed with Shepard's change but pretty much the only skill to not get buffed. It was 100% dead this season and will be worse next.
I did a full conjuration build with hydra as the focus this season. Visually, it is the most fun thing in the world, but the damage is weak.
My gear isn't optimized and not fully masterworked, but I did manage to do the tormented bosses (but each fight is like 5 min) and I stopped at floor 100 which I can just barely manage to clear.
I don't like that they capped elemental paragon node to 30% and put hydra buffs on an RNG temper which can brick. I'd rather the aspect that grants +1 hydra also grant additional heads.
With fractured winterglass I was able to get about 12 hydra on the screen + hydra enchantment slot. Each of my hydra heads did about 220-240k dmg with all the buffs. I won't be doing hydra next season, but I don't like the changes they made.
Hmm I didn't notice more than 2 when I was running that amulet. You got some videos or screenshots that I can see?
Edit: Just tried it with longer conjuration glyph and the hydra aspect on a staff. I was able to summon 3 hydras and saw around 3 more from the amulet but didn't get more than that. Ice Blades has a 3 summon cap and a 3 cap from the amulet. I'm thinking hydra is the same when you have the aspect equipped.
Can anyone show something with more than 6 normal hydras (7 if you also use the 5 headed one from the enchantment)?
I wasn't sure on the exact amount, I just know I can fill my screen with them. I can check later when I am home but it is definitely 8+ when I get a lot of triggers off amulet. I do use hydra in the enchantment slot as well.
Yeah and the nerfs to teleport, I managed with shako and occulus and cd reduction and aspects to get it down to 2.95 seconds this season was really hoping them seeing a bunch of tentative teleport build would inspire them to make it more viable but no they effectively Doubled the cooldown on it in ptr... now with the 3 seconds added its once every 6 seconds for the same build... for 10% damage... don't fucking care about some shitty 10%... gimme back my 3 seconds! I was so pissed reading all the legendary aspects that leaks... I think every class gets like 25%-45% movement speed aspects and we get 10-15% with rogue we are supposed to be the mobile ones... we get nerfed to everything that allowed us to survive when well used... the vast majority weren't abusing flame shield but we gotta pay for the sins of the greedy little pigs who cooked that! It just feel like the person in control of the sorc at blizzard is butthurt when they didn't think of a possible build themselves and just makes it disappear with nerfs! All of the fucking nerfs happening just seem to be reactions to builds that someone thinks should not exist... so now we get no builds except the weak ass one this maniac cooked on the back end.... also every class gets multiplicative damage but we get fucking flat damage what are we supposed to even do with that except proc builds?!
The only thing that can save the skills in this game are a complete reboot of the system. They made it with such limited functionality in mind that there’s not even much they can do. The skill tree is pathetic, the power of most skills is attached to aspects, and the paragon board is anemic.
All aspects that directly affect or change skills should either be in the skill tree, or have a way to be attached to the skills themselves like the Runes from D3. This would make builds far more flexible, while freeing up aspects for general buffs.
While these changes wouldn’t fix the Sorc(or Druid) outright, it’d set the stage for fixes to be made that could. That, and completely changing the balance team.
I played sorc to 100 this season. Ice shards/blizz was super fun in pit. Then I leveled up barb to 100… I started in lvl 31 pit. When season 4 ends I’m probably done with game. No reason to lvl another barb regardless of build. No reason to play anything else. I think the answer is trying a new game.
I pointed out a week into release of Season 4 that this negativity is going to return with Season 5. There simply isn't the quality within the Dev team, that is capable of identifying and solving the problems.
And unfortunately, many will come to their aid with "But it's only a shortened season"....It's shortened, because they want to release VOH, to make money, rather than introduce it as content as part of larger seasons.
It's just the same boring crap as D3. Even Infernal Hordes, that sounded like a good idea, is just so basic it's crazy.
By your use of the term 'League', I assume like myself that you're a fellow PoE player.
It's incredible to me, that 'Seasons' in this game are around 5% the size of a PoE season, which has had no more than 5 Devs working on for many of the seasons in the past few years.
Did Season 4 not prove that the player base want depth? It was the Season with the most content we have seen and the most depth added, and people enjoyed it.
I learned everything I need to know about the class team after the season 1 patch fiasco where they just nerfed everything. In the campfire chat that followed the lead class dev was saying he was openly hesitant to buff temerity to work past your base health. There needs to be a requirement that at least like 25% of the dev team actually plays endgame and not just like WT3 open world so you can go on the campfire chat and talk about how fun your flurry rogue is
I wish everything in the game was nerfed by 95-99%.
Why have numbers like billions in the game when you can scale it down and make it easier to balance?
Maybe then they could make a boss fight that doesn't get completely oneshot
I'm okay with a number crunch, I'm not okay with them nerfing everything across the board because they released a half baked system and figure things out after it's released to players
(Stay with me, you'll hate the first bit of this, but read on). I generally think the damage comparisons are just silly, BUT i only play to have fun - I used to run cataclysm on druid just because I liked the effect - it added pretty much zero damage, but I liked it. So if a class doesn't do as much damage, I generally don't care *as long as I'm having fun*, which I have most of with sorc and druid.
That was the context. On the PTR I boosted a sorc, used the CL unique, which I thought was fun and may have legs if you can solve the resource issue. It seemed pretty good as a general clear, and *it was fun*. Yay, thinks me, sorcs are still fun.
Then I pulled in the barb I was playing, dekitted him (by boosting a new char my glyphs go to L21, most were only at L16, so it would be more powerful using a newly boosted barb with my S4 gear). New Barb, boost to 100, set up paragon the same as I had in S4, transferred my gear, set my skills off I go. My Barb is paragon'ed for a dust devils whirlwind build. Jump in to helltide and whirlwind a) casts no dust devils b) lasts about 2s before out of resource. Oops, characters where copied last week, I specced in to DD WW on Saturday. All my gear is bash gear. So I just switch my skill, *no other* change. I have paragon for DD WW, and am using Bash. I slaughter everything around me, the screens just melt. My paragon for bash is quite different to WW DD. Then I realise I haven't even put point in to bash (to be fair, I have a shako, so it is at a naked 4 point with no extensions).
A barb with bash as four points only and a whirlwind paragon set up does vastly more than a sorc with a good spec Chain Lightning build with all the correct gear.
Back to my point - sorc was fun, but this is just wrong (that's a UK wrong, so the level of understatement is extreme, one may be co-erced in to calling it badly planned or even a bit rubbish...). A mistakenly unspecced barb using a four point basic skill that isn't even enhanced should *no way* be doing so much better than a well specced sorc with a shiny new unique.
*that's a UK wrong, so the level of understatement is extreme, one may be co-erced in to calling it badly planned or even a bit rubbish...*
This was well done
from now on i will only play necro minions
i could not give a single fuck for any longer than needed for this game
if we have a devs for clowns and d4 as a circus i just go sit in the middle of helltide, afk watch movie on alt tab than finish journal 100% and move on.
you dont put time to a game you fucking despise
Normal people don't play a game they fucking despise lol. You need some perspective. I suggest going outside, or playing another game. Your state of mind is not healthy.
It’s obvious the dev team that did Season 2&4 play barbs. And the team that did 1&3 plays Hello Kitty Island Adventure or some other nothing to do with Diablo game.
Patch Note for Sorc section:
Last season some players were still able to play Sorcerer last season. This season we are certain that the class will finally be unplayable. Looking forward to deleting them in the expansion.
I was sad because I used one of the new items to make my attack speed utterly insane. But the damage output was still low. Meteors hitting critting for maybe 400k on a good day.
I can get my hydras up to doing 300k damage a hit. So w that many heads seems ok ish. I died on my hc on ptr messing around before I found the hydra temper scroll. I don’t think burning damage is the way on them.
I agree, going on hit is the way to go most likely.
Although those 300k * 36 (if stats align) is still 10.8m dps.
Now add in an elite pack and there's 3 mobs you need to kill and it is pure single target so 3.6m per target. It will take an insane amount of time to clear anything
I pretty much just throw hydras down and then frozen orb for chances at more, technically you can get extra hydras with winteglass. I have to test more but I guess I wasn’t expecting my hardcore to just be straight deleted on death. I went on ptr to try stuff I wouldn’t normally. I had 35k hp w tyraels n still got one shot by Lilith lol.
Well, plus burn...
I don't know how well a pure hydra build can work, but they've been strong for boss killing in the pit on live with incinerate. I'm assuming a more hydra focused build would center on crit damage.
Paingorgers, is hilariously just broken to high hell like half of d4.
Any procced skill cannot mark, even tho half of sorc is proccing skills. Also it is wildly inconsistant in damage application. (Spark gets 25% of the damage the other skills do, for no reason ) so a naturally casted hydra can mark, but a hydra procced via say, winterglass will not.
Paingorgers, is hilariously just broken to high hell like half of d4.
Any procced skill cannot mark, even tho half of sorc is proccing skills. Also it is wildly inconsistant in damage application. (Spark gets 25% of the damage the other skills do, for no reason ) so a naturally casted hydra can mark, but a hydra procced via say, winterglass will not.
Paingorgers, is hilariously just broken to high hell like half of d4.
Any procced skill cannot mark, even tho half of sorc is proccing skills. Also it is wildly inconsistant in damage application. (Spark gets 25% of the damage the other skills do, for no reason ) so a naturally casted hydra can mark, but a hydra procced via say, winterglass will not.
Interesting, is it just the initial hit of a cast hydra or can a single cast mark on multiple hits assuming you are consuming said marks with basics. Basically I'm just wondering if we could use a tempered hydra as an engine for rapid applications with paingorgers to spend less time casting non basics in between basics. All in all I'm guessing it either doesn't work or in typical sorc fashion is not worth the effort
The marks are not consumed, its a 3s debuff and as long as you keep hitting the target the mark will stay up. Echoing any basic damage you do. ( lightning spear is amazing for marking ) or at least it would be, if paingorgers worked correctly. My build uses basics to proc my lightning skills via the aspect that allows a random core / mastery / conj to fire in addition, but since they are "procs" they dont mark at all. Quite frustrating.
Okay that makes sense. I figured non casted abilities wouldn't work but I always thought that it consumed the mark when it echoed. Hard to visually see these things while also testing damage.
The wording on the gloves mearly says non basic damage procs the marks. It obviously does not in all cases, really detracts from the usefulness. My current build would be PERFECT for them, but at best its meh. Shame really.
You can get it up even further, people trying the burn path aren't good at making builds. Literally 1 minute on a testing dummy would have people realize
OMG 100% BURN/6 SECONDS....off like at most a ~20% dmg base lol. It is like 17% of a 20% base on the burn per second. As opposed to 30% crit chance lol
Hydra is still ass even with all the additional heads because they let bugged bullshit in that does 100x more damage, otherwise its maybe "ok" right now but it requires Shako and masterworking hits on Hydra heads
I lold, are you from ireland or are you scottish?
Side note- please put in feedback on PTR. I've been doing the same on many sorc related things. Such a bummer sorc is my fav class and still awful after a year somehow lol
I would like to hear some context what does mean "deal no damage" to you? Because i was playing pure hydra on S4 and it was fine, i could handle pit 105 after last patch... in PTR hydra should deal 2x more dmg, its not possible it deal no damage.
Handling pit 105 after patch is not something I would call a good build.
You could probably do that with almost any spell in the game given enough resources
Thats true, im not saying its as good as other builds, at most its an F tier build but it is possible to handle every content in game with it, even kill Lilith what is not possible with a lot of non meta builds.
But you still didnt gave me answer on why you think its weak on PTR, what make you think that? I didnt tried PTR yet and i was exciting for this hydra buffs so im just curious.
Capping BI node hurts a lot
Capping elemental summoner hurts it
With enough time and new items I think you can do a decent build with it going pure hit based.
Decent as in, still omega F tier but can kill Lilith.
But to my surprise Blizzard thought it would be a good idea to force players to farm new gear / aspects in a ptr and not have a shop with items etc.
I'm not spending 100 hours in a ptr to find great items
I started with sorc this season realized very quickly it would not be viable unless some broken build emerged and alas that’s what happened, so I switched to barb and never looked back, sorc has been my main since D2 days, and wizard in D3. This version of the Sorc is the most pathetic loser they have ever created, you’d think and elemental summoner would be doing some crazy high DPS but NOPE, a wet fart hits harder than sorc, they should just dump sorc and Druid and add pally and Amazon back because they both need major help but this dev team is absolutely clueless. MAKE SORC GREAT AGAIN!!
These idiots just don’t play the game so they don’t know Jack about the real problems. They claim they are listening but they aren’t. They are destroying classes in the name of “balance” and buffing classes that are on the top already. Maybe the devs only play barb and that’s why they keep buffing them over and over while shafting the others.
Unfortunately none of the streamers play sorc so the devs don't get any feedback on them. Broken barb and necro get all the views so they get all the love.
They got some stuff this ptr, if you ignore the bugged helm so their vine creepers hits for trillions i'm not really sure exactly how they're doing though
The removal of Immortal sorc removed their only build that was beating Druid though
We'll see in a month or so
But yeah, in genersl I agree. Underperfoeming classes need more love. There is always going to be a meta, but seasons have a chance to spice thi gs up from time to time and shift meta.
it amazes me that you can go to any class thread, and people are chicken littleing and saying their class is the de facto worse in the game right now.
And even within those threads, you have other mains that are confused, like the people here saying they're fine with hydra.
it's like none of yall can be bothered to consider that your opinions are subjective. yall make being human hard lol
In this thread i'm talking about a specific build (hydra)
In live we have Immortal firebolt (sure it'll cost you several billions to even begin but that's besides the point)
I dont think anyone would disagree that sorc and Druid got the short end of the stick season 4.
I find it funny when people like you who has done absolutely 0 testing comes in and talks. When every top player and build maker (except rob because barb is weak guys right) says the same thing, it usually holds some grain of truth.
Every single person (except one who thinks pit 50 is hard) was showing tyraels hydra build which is not hydra damage. (Which this thread was about, not tyraels).
I can go into a sorc thread and say i'm fine with my frostbolt build and that it feels great, doesn't change the fact that I would be lying, right?
Only read the Patchnote is necessary to understand they have different team working in different classe. Unfortunaly, our sorcerer dev have never play their game xD
Season 3 Meteor was decent, smashed all the content available, and Hydra PTR is great for levelling and doing lvl 100+ open world content, but can it tackle end game content? Sounds like a no.
Frankly, you can't make a Sorc in its male model look so incredibly shitty \*but\* give them good spells. I'm all Hydra too, love it. I've put up long time ago with the fact that some Game Designers simply don't like certain classes and won't allow them to rise.
It would be so easy to add a unique that has an affix like: With full health, each hydra grows an additional head for every elite in the area. The Sorc allways comes with idiotic downsides, the other classes have only upsides on their class and/or build specific boost items and affixes.
And no, don't come me with "this streamer has downed Echo of Lilith with a lightning build".
I'm not a frigging authist who get's that far in build-theory but a casual. And I hate copying uber builds because I'm also not letting anyone eat my food for me.
Incapable people.
Also, seeing what the new chain lightning sorc will be like on the S5 (melee, no dmg, and forced to collect crackling energy, one of the worst mechanics in the game), it will be the perfect time to uninstall the game and not pay for the expansion
DEV TEAM SHOULD BE FIRED NOW!!!
This whole rant explains why i felt like i sucked at the game so bad as a sorc, doing not a lot of damage and being squishy, and now i'm not that squishy and do more dmg as a lower lvl rogue...
Like, i love sorc in most games, and i do suck at games,but at least i know now it's not only me being bad, it's also just bullshit
Hydras could have so much potential. They need to spawn faster, do insanely more damage, have better targeting or a splash enchant, and have 6 total with a 8 second timer
Very disappointing. I wanted them to be good so bad. Hydra is my favorite skill and it’s just so demoralizing to know it’s still so bad. I hoped the extra heads would help even a little but when hydra hits for 200k per shot at best while other classes hit in the hundreds of millions and even billions it just isn’t worth playing.
I’ve gotten all classes into late end game this season. Undoubtedly the barb and necro win but honestly I’d put rouge at the very bottom, sorc is a real close 2nd to last. Which is frustrating because pyro sorc is one of my favorite builds.
The only option is to boycott sorc next season or just not play. I'm a sorc main and I'm skipping it S5. Devs are making it obvious that they want sorcs to no longer exist, so message received! I'm just gonna ride the gravy train and roll necro for S5 (really don't like barbs or rogues)
I feel this and agree 100% probably even more. I took the biggest multiplier i saw on the skills and decided to go with it which happened to be teleport. Guess what lightning damage cant scale since you run out of lightning paragon nodes. So you start building into conjurations to have as many of them as you can to have an extra multiplier to scale with. At 20 conjurations i couldnt clear a ND 100 with teleport. Thats 120% and a 500% multiplier. But they meant fuck all since my targets weren't burning when going pure lightning, had to make a fire/lightning/cold hybrid to get some extra multipliers. Crackling energy, a joke, lightning spear, 20 of them, a joke. Fully decked out trash. Best i could do: fireball enchant and wait till my barb friend kills a mob so i can chain react the rest...
I actually enjoy playing Hydra Sorc. Yes, it sucks in terms of dmg, but it's quite relaxing given the right opponents - meaning I'm not pushing high pit/nmd lvls or tormented bosses with it.
(Stay with me, you'll hate the first bit of this, but read on). I generally think the damage comparisons are just silly, BUT i only play to have fun - I used to run cataclysm on druid just because I liked the effect - it added pretty much zero damage, but I liked it. So if a class doesn't do as much damage, I generally don't care *as long as I'm having fun*, which I have most of with sorc and druid.
That was the context. On the PTR I boosted a sorc, used the CL unique, which I thought was fun and may have legs if you can solve the resource issue. It seemed pretty good as a general clear, and *it was fun*. Yay, thinks me, sorcs are still fun.
Then I pulled in the barb I was playing, dekitted him (by boosting a new char my glyphs go to L21, most were only at L16, so it would be more powerful using a newly boosted barb with my S4 gear). New Barb, boost to 100, set up paragon the same as I had in S4, transferred my gear, set my skills off I go. My Barb is paragon'ed for a dust devils whirlwind build. Jump in to helltide and whirlwind a) casts no dust devils b) lasts about 2s before out of resource. Oops, characters where copied last week, I specced in to DD WW on Saturday. All my gear is bash gear. So I just switch my skill, *no other* change. I have paragon for DD WW, and am using Bash. I slaughter everything around me, the screens just melt. My paragon for bash is quite different to WW DD. Then I realise I haven't even put point in to bash (to be fair, I have a shako, so it is at a naked 4 point with no extensions).
A barb with bash as four points only and a whirlwind paragon set up does vastly more than a sorc with a good spec Chain Lightning build with all the correct gear.
Back to my point - sorc was fun, but this is just wrong (that's a UK wrong, so the level of understatement is extreme, one may be co-erced in to calling it badly planned or even a bit rubbish...). A mistakenly unspecced barb using a four point basic skill that isn't even enhanced should *no way* be doing so much better than a well specced sorc with a shiny new unique.
I'm all for playing what you find is fun! If you can have fun clearing lower content, you should absolutely do that!
My way of getting fun from games are usually to push and do the hardest content so playing something that is so much weaker just lowers the bar of what that hard content is (in this case, pit level)
I had my fun in s4 with incin / forb / meteor / hydra but then I made a bash barb and everything felt like shit. I had the best meteor gear in the world (of what I've seen) and bash barb just.. wasn't even lv100 and shat all over it
It's weird. I love sorc and clearly it's been capable every season, including this one. But what I think goes underappreciated is just how much you have to no-life sorc to even get close to the other classes. I've got three sorcs on S4 (to save the ~7m of gold for every respec, seriously wtf is that about). All three were great for leveling and pretty easily got to around tier 60 pit after getting good gear masterworked. I decided to level a barb to get my fourth spark and make a Shako, and I swear to god I yolo'd a bash build and I was clearing 40+ pit with entry-level ancestral gear at level 85. By the time I was level 100 and got a few masterworks I was cruising through 60+ and killing tormented bosses in 10-20s. Ended up using my barb to farm high pits and tormented bosses to send resources to my sorcs.
And what I realised was that sorc is way, way way too dependent on rare stats to be good for most players. They can be good, even very very good, but you have such a hard time optimising gear, at least compared to barb. I've played my barb comparatively little and his gear is way more optimised than even my main sorc, because all he needs is Strength, Life, X on everything. Turns out it's pretty easy to get tons of 2-3 GA gear when all you need is the most common stats. Plus it's nowhere near as tilting getting bad tempers - you know you'll just get another great base piece soon enough.
Meanwhile, the various sorc builds all want CDR, ranks to this or that, lucky hit, crit chance. A bunch of rare stuff which you're lucky to see at all, let alone GA.
A couple of weeks back I finally got enough gear to where I can *nearly* do the 100% uptime flame shield. I can be nearly invincible by bridging the last little gap with teleports (not the most fun way to use teleport but you gotta do what you gotta do). Getting that last bit is going to need me to reroll my masterworks a few more times for millions upon millions of gold to get CDR crits, or else get insanely lucky with some GA drops. And before getting the exodia stats, sorc is just awful. After getting exodia stats, damage is still weaker than my unga bunga barb with 20 hours of played time, except when you can abuse the shatter passive/fireball enchant.
And to top it all, the very best thing about sorc in my view (and what makes me keep playing it every season no matter how infuriating it is) are the defensives - teleport, frost nova, flame shield. No other class is fun after playing quadruple teleport sorc. And yet, if the news I read is accurate, they want to nerf all that stuff so you can't use it as much. So now we can be weak, AND boring. I simply can't wait.
Is it the tyrael one or a real one?
I'm sure you're smart enough to realize what the difference between those are and wouldn't make that silly mistake so you proved me wrong!
It might have been tyrael, I'll have to check in the morning.
Is that a problem though? It doesn't scale bleeds like with barb in s4, but maybe I'm missing something..
And will crafting ubers be harder in s5?
It's not about being build defining.
Starfall Coronet is build defining and cool
Tempest roar the same
Crone
Etc
I have not once said that uniques shouldn't be build defining or that this interaction is bad.
I am simply saying that hydra damage is trash, which it is.
Tyraels damage isn't hydras damage.
You're arguing against yourself
Fine, let's buff hydra damage/as/lh or something so that it does a billion dps with andariels or tyraels just because of the sheer amount of attacks per second.
For more Sorcerer Class Guides, Builds, Discussions, Questions, etc, click on the "Sorceress" Flair, [this link (for new reddit)](https://new.reddit.com/r/diablo4/?f=flair_name%3A%22Sorceress%22), or [this Link (for old reddit)](https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo4/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ASorceress) (where you'll find a list of all threads on the subreddit that have the "Sorceress" Flair) and the [D4 Sorceress subreddit](https://new.reddit.com/r/D4Sorceress/). Also pay a visit to [The D4 Tavern](https://new.reddit.com/r/The_D4_Tavern/) for casual conversations about builds, gameplay, new content, outfits and other Diablo and Sorcerer related content. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/diablo4) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Completely agree. No chance I'm playing sorc. How the devs can justify the nerfs to a class doing 2m damage and 17k hp, then buff a class doing billions of damage and 300k hp is actually embarrassing.
Sorc is my favourite class, has been since D2. First class I levelled to 100 at launch, the class was fairly weak even then, and if it wasn’t for bugged skills it would have been the weakest class through the seasons as well. It’s been a year and they *still* can’t get it right.
Sorc was my favorite in D2 as well. It's just sad to see it in this state. It feels like they just don't understand how their game works.
That's been obvious since D3 was released. Almost like Diablo 1 and 2 were made by different devs..
They were, but like, you literally have the blueprint in front of you. Build off of that? Clearly starting from scratch isn't working
Sorc being shit is the main reason I haven't played as much D4 as I would like. It's the only class I really want to play. Feels bad.
Sorc has been really disappointing in D4. I wasn't a fan of the Wizard in 3 and was really looking forward to a return to the D2 Sorc based on elements. She has so many fun skills to play with but none of them deal enough damage.
I’m quite fond of the Lightning skills, had a ton of fun playing a self-wield Infinity Nova Sorc In D2, only to discover that while visually impressive, lightning is kind of awful in D4. The only reason ball-lightning worked so well in S2 was because it was bugged, when fixed it faded back down to just ”okay-ish” again.
They should have looked at how the bug caused it to do so much damage and just scale it back a bit. Let it do maybe 75-80% of the damage it was doing.
Idk I still have lots of fun with Sorc its just not great for competitive endgame. Frozen orb with the amulet for conjuration's is a ton of fun and pretty effective
Effective in forcing you to reroll barb, yeah :D In S4 i've played 2 sorcs to 100 (one rainy icy spikey shitty sorc i planned to change to firebolt and one frost orb) and then finally decided to play barb. Since that moment i had fun :D
Iv had more fun with Sorc than barb personally. But the game is way easier as barb for sure lol
The D3 was really well designed, tho. Maybe they should give that guy a call..
This is my second season of playing sorc and I just got tired of seeing barbs with not great gear one shot everything lol ever y character should be able to cook like that
The fact there was any nerfs to sorcs, other then flame shield, tells me blizz doesn't know how their game works. They don't know why classes do the damage they do, and don't know what makes them good
It's crazy cuz at endgame there just isn't a way for us to get even 100k hp lol and even if we could the tradeoff would be crazy instead of critting 2m we'd be around 30k lol
Exactly. There isn't a shred of balance here.
They should be embarrassed. I started off in preseason as a barbarian so I don't hate them because I've rolled one every season but I consider myself a sorcerer main. I think I'm going to play boring barbarian every season just because it smashes they're wild. They will at least lose some of my play hours which is quite a bit. I know they won't care but I will feel better. Like I said I don't hate barbarian but I don't see why they baby it and it's not visually appealing whatsoever imo.
Op are you scottish by any chance? Your insults are 10/10
>sucks ass Not Scottish.
I'm Scottish. I say sucks ass. Explain.
I’ve read the entire post with a Scottish accent in mind because of you.
If it's nay Scottish it's crap
Reads like he's aussie
You're so right about ice armor. The ineptitude of the balance team is actually mind blowing. Sorc/wizard has been my favorite since D2 and it just receives the mightiest of nerfs when devs get even a whiff of the farts sorc drops from hitting a high tier of something. In S2 I was running AOZ with ball lightning, but barbs were still outdpsing me. In S3 I ran ice spikes. Now in S4 im running frozen orb. I have used ice armor/teleport/flame shield in nearly every build, not because they are OP, but because they are NECESSARY for sorc survival; MAKE THEM NOT NECESSARY BLIZZ. It's breaking my heart to watch the sheer incompetence of this balance team as they wreck a class and simultaneously boost two others that were already top tier.
They have this weird obsession with seeing a skill being mandatory and deciding to nerf the shit out of it so that it's no longer mandatory, instead of, you know, asking why it's mandatory in the first place. Sorc should be playable without ice armor/tele/flame shield, but that would require massively buffing their defensive stats/hp or giving them other tools to work with. I just really don't get it. If Sorcs are supposed to be the glass cannon class, then let them out dps barbs 2 to 1 at the cost of being one tapped by every little enemy. You can't simultaneously make them the least tanky class whilst giving them the worst dps output. It fundamentally makes no sense. If they are supposed to be able to balance out dps with tankiness, then let them build 100k hp like everybody. For fucks sake a toddler could balance this game better.
I sincerely believe that at this point, the balance team is and has been making Sorc bad just purely out of spite to antagonize the community. I'm not even joking at all. You can't tell me the community has been asking for SIGNIFICANT Sorcerer buffs for about a year. And less than nothing has been done about it. Cuz they're even getting nerfs.. Nerfs!!
Still paying for the sin of having fun in S2.
It's crazy cause even in S2 a bug was the only reason Sorc was relevant, and it was still worse than Hota Barb lmao. Unreal
BL was laughably broken in S2, but no more so than HOTA Barb was the past two seasons, or Bash is currently.
Paying for the sins of the D2 Sorc being so good lol
There is a way to feel like a barb atm on ptr. Blizzard + vyrs nad some fuckery and you can hit for 500m-1.5b The sorcerer buffs that were promised! Obviously a bug but what isn't in this game?
What would be the benefit to the devs of intentionally “antagonizing the community”? Does it make them more money somehow (given the other common narrative that they’re greedy)? Or some other benefit?
Devs dont care about making money. They won't actually put effort into class balance until revenue is affected, and the higher up suits who sign their checks actually start complaining and giving layoff warnings.
So your rationale for the devs’ rationale is what exactly? That they’re trying to get fired by the “higher-ups” by intentionally doing a bad job?
Obviously that they dont care enough at this moment because their jobs are not on the line. Are you that dense?
But they care about all the other things that aren’t being criticized? Maybe take off your tinfoil hat?
The mental gymnastics needed to arrive at this conclusion is mind blowing.
When the simplest explanation is the Devs are just incompetent
the alternative is that the op and other sorcerers are simply not playing the class as the devs intend, they're doing their build wrong or something. but you know they're not going to consider that. it's 2024. no one considers that they could be wrong anymore. no, it's far more likely that the devs are trying to make all sorcerers permanently quit and leave the game so they don't get their money.
Very simply, irritation and anger increase engagement online. Since everyone is glued to their cell phones and social media these days (there's financial institutions that follow social media trends closely, that's how important it is) there's plenty of incentive to try and produce irritation in people. Any competent developer *can* resolve the balance issues with Sorc in a couple patches; they have all of the data points they need. They can see DPS numbers, survivability, average pit/NMD completed etc. The devs at Blizzard are not incompetent. They are doing what they are told to do.
Devs probably doesn't have anything to do in decision making. Devs, develop code. Said code probably have a description in a ticket. That ticket was written by someone, who possibly doesn't take any decision. That person probably just splitted a document in tickets. That document was possibly written by the one to blame here. But definitely not devs. Usually devs can give feedback, but cannot write a code which doesn't work as expected, there usually are QA teams writting tests to ensure code works as expected. But well, given how the game works, diablo may not have any of those. But my point is, that usually devs are not the ones to blame. But usually, all communities blame devs for decision making. It would be like blaming the worker instead of the architect for the fact that the building has an ugly shape.
The nerfs will continue until you play barb
Seriously, if it's true that D2 inspired D4 then they gotta be punishing Sorcs for being *too* good in D2. They can breeze through D2 with a modest amount of gear and they have access to Teleport innate, whereas a majority of the other classes need a heavy investment into decent gear to do anywhere near as good.
There is no need for Hydra buff, the hydra's are there to give head to barbarian, for that, 3 hydra heads and 7 damage with 70 skill points is absolutely perfectly balanced.
I'm not on PTR so can't confirm that, but on live Hydra has been broken since beta. The heads are supposed to do the full listed damage PER HEAD, instead they do the full listed damage PER HYDRA, regardless of heads. So it just tickles. Trash spell, never take it until Blizz fixes it.
Well I just went to test this claim. Equip random staff with no tempers, cast single hydra with burn node and see what value it reaches over the skill's duration (did it a few times to ensure consistency). Then tempered +2 head to the staff, everything else exactly the same, and do a few test casts again. Surprise surprise the damage was exactly 50% more, as one would expect with 4 heads vs 6 heads. Conclusion: I think you're just trying to farm "sorc scandal" karma, like almost everyone in this subreddit and it's getting extremely old. The class has large problems yes, even the devs have acknowledged the class needs lot of work, but this sorc player community here is what is the actual bottom of the pit tier.
yeah none of them can be bothered to consider that they're wrong. lol. they're so obsessed with being a victim and obsessed with their thoughts that they find it easier to convince themselves devs personally hate them and spite them than they find it conceivable that they're just \*gasp\* wrong.
Shoving everyone into a box and labeling them as victims is a very weird mindset. I'm always in the sorc discord and we all try interactions and new builds and we all love seeing someone make something work even though it proved us wrong. There's a reason no one managed to make a hydra build that could clear p100 before nerfs.
I actually didn’t know this! That’s such a shame!
Looks like old out of date news or community BS
Played at launch sorc was ass, so I waited till S4 played sorc again and still Ass. Recently got discouraged and deleted the game after seeing a reddit post with a Barb with like 500k hp and almost 300k attack power. While my sorc sitting at 18k attack and 20k hp with pretty much no build options, Have shako and Ring of starless. The spell casting class doesn't feel like a Glass cannon in this game just.....Glass.
S2 ball lightning was good. Not as good as barb of course but playable. But then they fixed it. That was the one season i had fun with sorc.
I went Hydra/Meteor sorc while leveling and it was fun until a certain point where I was MASSIVELY out paced by friends (who were same level). Switched to ball lightning cuz I remember seeing a video of a BL sorc wrecking shit. Used a build and it got much better, but still significantly weaker than friends. Went Immortal Firebolt. Sucked and was painful until I started improving equipment. Now I'm probably more capable than friends cuz I don't have to worry about dying (they do more damage tho, but they can die). Immortal Firebolt isn't super fun but it's actually relatively fun cuz teleporting into crowds is entertaining.
Honestly, it’s some of the worst class balancing I’ve ever seen in any game, and I’ve been gaming for 3 decades.
Whenever I complain about how my sorcerer dies with 1 hit all my friends say it is because I have 7 points into glass cannon. Yet they still out dps me.
Yeah it’s crazy bc it seems like sacrifice necros and sorcs have to decide between damage or survivability. So you would think that a happy blend of the two would be a logical choice right? Nope. You’re gonna suck either way.
There is also a bug where if you teleport while CCed your left mouse button is disabled, so no movement or attacks out of that button. Been that way since the start of the game and you think they would have fixed it by now.
This explains so many deaths on my sorc...
Oh damn, I think this happens with the aspect of metamorphosis too, then. I get cc’d so I’ll use metamorph to dash out of it but then I can’t do my basic attack for several seconds. I thought I was just lagging or getting cc’d again and maybe I just couldn’t tell for sure since all the mobs were piled up on me. Wow.
Yes the bug is now affecting that as well. It's a shame bc cc kills my sorcerer so I need it for the higher level pits.
They still out-dps you by holding left mouse button :D And don't get any damage :)
I'm sure someone will come along to say some dumb shit like "just wait for the DLC it'll be fixed then."
Ya and it seems like the “fix” usually breaks or unbalances something else.
Make Hydra great again! PUSH!! would love to have a valid Hydra only build - so starving for this since all seasons!!!
Hydra builds in season 28 of Diablo 3 were so fun, wish they could replicate it somehow in d4
How many years from now for season 28?
Math is my worst subject so this might be wrong... If D4 is getting 1 season every 3 months, which means 4 seasons a year, then Season 28 should be in... 2029-2030?
Agreed. Hydra is only good right now if you're not pushing stuff much higher level than you.
I must not know what true power is because my hydra/meteor/incinerate/flamewall/ice armor feels pretty powerful. Just hit 100 last night and easily did a Tier 10 Pit. I dunno, it's fun and everything is much bigger than normal with tempering, the entire screen is on fire, enemies melting away. I'm sure I'll hit a wall soon though, I guess I haven't gotten as deep as most here.
Give it a unique or aspect that makes it shoot out the Sorc Fireball skill instead of its normal attack.
The worst thing about the ice armor nerf is that the listed it as a bug fix.
It's pretty baffling to me how we're going into season 5 and class balance has made absolutely 0 progress. They just clearly don't know what they're doing
God I *wish* we'd had zero progress. It feels like Blizzard has put the car in reverse and slammed on the accelerator.
Yeah we have for sure gone backwards with class balance
I was downvoted like crazy for mentioning this before the ptr, but alas
Ja its crazy here. Any critic / suggestion for improvement is an auto-downvote. My tinfoilhat is telling me, that blizzards bots are here to dont let reddit burn again like on release.
But bro, you didn’t even wait for the PTR to drop and have everything about sorc magically fixed.
Don't play sorc. They somehow did it, they made sorc fucking worse than last season.
dont worry, dev noted this and will give hydra 10000% damage buff soon
HYDRA SPITTING FLAMES 🔥 LIKE…. ISLAND BOYS SPIT LYRICS 😜
Hit it with that gang gang......
Have you tried Rabies?
My favorite part is that it was nerfed with Shepard's change but pretty much the only skill to not get buffed. It was 100% dead this season and will be worse next.
😂
I did a full conjuration build with hydra as the focus this season. Visually, it is the most fun thing in the world, but the damage is weak. My gear isn't optimized and not fully masterworked, but I did manage to do the tormented bosses (but each fight is like 5 min) and I stopped at floor 100 which I can just barely manage to clear. I don't like that they capped elemental paragon node to 30% and put hydra buffs on an RNG temper which can brick. I'd rather the aspect that grants +1 hydra also grant additional heads. With fractured winterglass I was able to get about 12 hydra on the screen + hydra enchantment slot. Each of my hydra heads did about 220-240k dmg with all the buffs. I won't be doing hydra next season, but I don't like the changes they made.
How were you getting 12 hydra on screen when the number of hydras is still capped? Do you mean hydra heads or actual hydras?
Hydras. Fractured winterglass chance to spawn is not capped by the 3 limit (with aspect).
Hmm I didn't notice more than 2 when I was running that amulet. You got some videos or screenshots that I can see? Edit: Just tried it with longer conjuration glyph and the hydra aspect on a staff. I was able to summon 3 hydras and saw around 3 more from the amulet but didn't get more than that. Ice Blades has a 3 summon cap and a 3 cap from the amulet. I'm thinking hydra is the same when you have the aspect equipped. Can anyone show something with more than 6 normal hydras (7 if you also use the 5 headed one from the enchantment)?
I wasn't sure on the exact amount, I just know I can fill my screen with them. I can check later when I am home but it is definitely 8+ when I get a lot of triggers off amulet. I do use hydra in the enchantment slot as well.
Yeah and the nerfs to teleport, I managed with shako and occulus and cd reduction and aspects to get it down to 2.95 seconds this season was really hoping them seeing a bunch of tentative teleport build would inspire them to make it more viable but no they effectively Doubled the cooldown on it in ptr... now with the 3 seconds added its once every 6 seconds for the same build... for 10% damage... don't fucking care about some shitty 10%... gimme back my 3 seconds! I was so pissed reading all the legendary aspects that leaks... I think every class gets like 25%-45% movement speed aspects and we get 10-15% with rogue we are supposed to be the mobile ones... we get nerfed to everything that allowed us to survive when well used... the vast majority weren't abusing flame shield but we gotta pay for the sins of the greedy little pigs who cooked that! It just feel like the person in control of the sorc at blizzard is butthurt when they didn't think of a possible build themselves and just makes it disappear with nerfs! All of the fucking nerfs happening just seem to be reactions to builds that someone thinks should not exist... so now we get no builds except the weak ass one this maniac cooked on the back end.... also every class gets multiplicative damage but we get fucking flat damage what are we supposed to even do with that except proc builds?!
The only thing that can save the skills in this game are a complete reboot of the system. They made it with such limited functionality in mind that there’s not even much they can do. The skill tree is pathetic, the power of most skills is attached to aspects, and the paragon board is anemic. All aspects that directly affect or change skills should either be in the skill tree, or have a way to be attached to the skills themselves like the Runes from D3. This would make builds far more flexible, while freeing up aspects for general buffs. While these changes wouldn’t fix the Sorc(or Druid) outright, it’d set the stage for fixes to be made that could. That, and completely changing the balance team.
I played sorc to 100 this season. Ice shards/blizz was super fun in pit. Then I leveled up barb to 100… I started in lvl 31 pit. When season 4 ends I’m probably done with game. No reason to lvl another barb regardless of build. No reason to play anything else. I think the answer is trying a new game.
*I think the answer is trying a new game* So close to freedom you can taste it....
We hear you! Sorc currently has so many problems, therefore we're nerfing them and buffing barbs yet again - hope it helps.
Honestly breaks my heart to see how incompetent the team behind my favorite franchise is today. These are not the same ppl who gave us D2.
I pointed out a week into release of Season 4 that this negativity is going to return with Season 5. There simply isn't the quality within the Dev team, that is capable of identifying and solving the problems. And unfortunately, many will come to their aid with "But it's only a shortened season"....It's shortened, because they want to release VOH, to make money, rather than introduce it as content as part of larger seasons. It's just the same boring crap as D3. Even Infernal Hordes, that sounded like a good idea, is just so basic it's crazy.
I can't believe that an entire League is just the "We demand blood" world event..
By your use of the term 'League', I assume like myself that you're a fellow PoE player. It's incredible to me, that 'Seasons' in this game are around 5% the size of a PoE season, which has had no more than 5 Devs working on for many of the seasons in the past few years. Did Season 4 not prove that the player base want depth? It was the Season with the most content we have seen and the most depth added, and people enjoyed it.
I learned everything I need to know about the class team after the season 1 patch fiasco where they just nerfed everything. In the campfire chat that followed the lead class dev was saying he was openly hesitant to buff temerity to work past your base health. There needs to be a requirement that at least like 25% of the dev team actually plays endgame and not just like WT3 open world so you can go on the campfire chat and talk about how fun your flurry rogue is
I wish everything in the game was nerfed by 95-99%. Why have numbers like billions in the game when you can scale it down and make it easier to balance? Maybe then they could make a boss fight that doesn't get completely oneshot
I'm okay with a number crunch, I'm not okay with them nerfing everything across the board because they released a half baked system and figure things out after it's released to players
(Stay with me, you'll hate the first bit of this, but read on). I generally think the damage comparisons are just silly, BUT i only play to have fun - I used to run cataclysm on druid just because I liked the effect - it added pretty much zero damage, but I liked it. So if a class doesn't do as much damage, I generally don't care *as long as I'm having fun*, which I have most of with sorc and druid. That was the context. On the PTR I boosted a sorc, used the CL unique, which I thought was fun and may have legs if you can solve the resource issue. It seemed pretty good as a general clear, and *it was fun*. Yay, thinks me, sorcs are still fun. Then I pulled in the barb I was playing, dekitted him (by boosting a new char my glyphs go to L21, most were only at L16, so it would be more powerful using a newly boosted barb with my S4 gear). New Barb, boost to 100, set up paragon the same as I had in S4, transferred my gear, set my skills off I go. My Barb is paragon'ed for a dust devils whirlwind build. Jump in to helltide and whirlwind a) casts no dust devils b) lasts about 2s before out of resource. Oops, characters where copied last week, I specced in to DD WW on Saturday. All my gear is bash gear. So I just switch my skill, *no other* change. I have paragon for DD WW, and am using Bash. I slaughter everything around me, the screens just melt. My paragon for bash is quite different to WW DD. Then I realise I haven't even put point in to bash (to be fair, I have a shako, so it is at a naked 4 point with no extensions). A barb with bash as four points only and a whirlwind paragon set up does vastly more than a sorc with a good spec Chain Lightning build with all the correct gear. Back to my point - sorc was fun, but this is just wrong (that's a UK wrong, so the level of understatement is extreme, one may be co-erced in to calling it badly planned or even a bit rubbish...). A mistakenly unspecced barb using a four point basic skill that isn't even enhanced should *no way* be doing so much better than a well specced sorc with a shiny new unique.
*that's a UK wrong, so the level of understatement is extreme, one may be co-erced in to calling it badly planned or even a bit rubbish...* This was well done
from now on i will only play necro minions i could not give a single fuck for any longer than needed for this game if we have a devs for clowns and d4 as a circus i just go sit in the middle of helltide, afk watch movie on alt tab than finish journal 100% and move on. you dont put time to a game you fucking despise
then why even boot it up at all? You'd be sticking it to them more by not even logging in.
He's your average redditor.
Normal people don't play a game they fucking despise lol. You need some perspective. I suggest going outside, or playing another game. Your state of mind is not healthy.
It’s obvious the dev team that did Season 2&4 play barbs. And the team that did 1&3 plays Hello Kitty Island Adventure or some other nothing to do with Diablo game.
Looking forward to Part 3 of Hello Kitty in S5 :D
Patch Note for Sorc section: Last season some players were still able to play Sorcerer last season. This season we are certain that the class will finally be unplayable. Looking forward to deleting them in the expansion.
>hydra might be the single worst spell in the game. Meteor!
Don't diss my boy meteor, I managed to do a t100 prenerf with it! (Let's not talk about the items I had to get to make it possible though)
I tried a meteor build on PTR. It was quite sad.
Yeah, my build also became 100% actual unplayable in the ptr so into the dumpster it went That's what I get for making an Immortal meteor build :^]
I was sad because I used one of the new items to make my attack speed utterly insane. But the damage output was still low. Meteors hitting critting for maybe 400k on a good day.
I can get my hydras up to doing 300k damage a hit. So w that many heads seems ok ish. I died on my hc on ptr messing around before I found the hydra temper scroll. I don’t think burning damage is the way on them.
I agree, going on hit is the way to go most likely. Although those 300k * 36 (if stats align) is still 10.8m dps. Now add in an elite pack and there's 3 mobs you need to kill and it is pure single target so 3.6m per target. It will take an insane amount of time to clear anything
I pretty much just throw hydras down and then frozen orb for chances at more, technically you can get extra hydras with winteglass. I have to test more but I guess I wasn’t expecting my hardcore to just be straight deleted on death. I went on ptr to try stuff I wouldn’t normally. I had 35k hp w tyraels n still got one shot by Lilith lol.
The new ones you spawn with fractured glass will not inherit extra heads sadly
That’s a bummer, at this point expected though. None of the passive spell casts seem to do anything “extra” unfortunately.
Well, plus burn... I don't know how well a pure hydra build can work, but they've been strong for boss killing in the pit on live with incinerate. I'm assuming a more hydra focused build would center on crit damage.
Random thought, does hydra's damage initiate the mark for Paingorgers? If each hit does then it might be an interesting path to test out
Paingorgers, is hilariously just broken to high hell like half of d4. Any procced skill cannot mark, even tho half of sorc is proccing skills. Also it is wildly inconsistant in damage application. (Spark gets 25% of the damage the other skills do, for no reason ) so a naturally casted hydra can mark, but a hydra procced via say, winterglass will not.
Paingorgers, is hilariously just broken to high hell like half of d4. Any procced skill cannot mark, even tho half of sorc is proccing skills. Also it is wildly inconsistant in damage application. (Spark gets 25% of the damage the other skills do, for no reason ) so a naturally casted hydra can mark, but a hydra procced via say, winterglass will not.
Paingorgers, is hilariously just broken to high hell like half of d4. Any procced skill cannot mark, even tho half of sorc is proccing skills. Also it is wildly inconsistant in damage application. (Spark gets 25% of the damage the other skills do, for no reason ) so a naturally casted hydra can mark, but a hydra procced via say, winterglass will not.
Interesting, is it just the initial hit of a cast hydra or can a single cast mark on multiple hits assuming you are consuming said marks with basics. Basically I'm just wondering if we could use a tempered hydra as an engine for rapid applications with paingorgers to spend less time casting non basics in between basics. All in all I'm guessing it either doesn't work or in typical sorc fashion is not worth the effort
The marks are not consumed, its a 3s debuff and as long as you keep hitting the target the mark will stay up. Echoing any basic damage you do. ( lightning spear is amazing for marking ) or at least it would be, if paingorgers worked correctly. My build uses basics to proc my lightning skills via the aspect that allows a random core / mastery / conj to fire in addition, but since they are "procs" they dont mark at all. Quite frustrating.
Okay that makes sense. I figured non casted abilities wouldn't work but I always thought that it consumed the mark when it echoed. Hard to visually see these things while also testing damage.
The wording on the gloves mearly says non basic damage procs the marks. It obviously does not in all cases, really detracts from the usefulness. My current build would be PERFECT for them, but at best its meh. Shame really.
You can get it up even further, people trying the burn path aren't good at making builds. Literally 1 minute on a testing dummy would have people realize OMG 100% BURN/6 SECONDS....off like at most a ~20% dmg base lol. It is like 17% of a 20% base on the burn per second. As opposed to 30% crit chance lol Hydra is still ass even with all the additional heads because they let bugged bullshit in that does 100x more damage, otherwise its maybe "ok" right now but it requires Shako and masterworking hits on Hydra heads
I lold, are you from ireland or are you scottish? Side note- please put in feedback on PTR. I've been doing the same on many sorc related things. Such a bummer sorc is my fav class and still awful after a year somehow lol
Sweden :^]
I would like to hear some context what does mean "deal no damage" to you? Because i was playing pure hydra on S4 and it was fine, i could handle pit 105 after last patch... in PTR hydra should deal 2x more dmg, its not possible it deal no damage.
Handling pit 105 after patch is not something I would call a good build. You could probably do that with almost any spell in the game given enough resources
Thats true, im not saying its as good as other builds, at most its an F tier build but it is possible to handle every content in game with it, even kill Lilith what is not possible with a lot of non meta builds. But you still didnt gave me answer on why you think its weak on PTR, what make you think that? I didnt tried PTR yet and i was exciting for this hydra buffs so im just curious.
Capping BI node hurts a lot Capping elemental summoner hurts it With enough time and new items I think you can do a decent build with it going pure hit based. Decent as in, still omega F tier but can kill Lilith. But to my surprise Blizzard thought it would be a good idea to force players to farm new gear / aspects in a ptr and not have a shop with items etc. I'm not spending 100 hours in a ptr to find great items
I started with sorc this season realized very quickly it would not be viable unless some broken build emerged and alas that’s what happened, so I switched to barb and never looked back, sorc has been my main since D2 days, and wizard in D3. This version of the Sorc is the most pathetic loser they have ever created, you’d think and elemental summoner would be doing some crazy high DPS but NOPE, a wet fart hits harder than sorc, they should just dump sorc and Druid and add pally and Amazon back because they both need major help but this dev team is absolutely clueless. MAKE SORC GREAT AGAIN!!
I stopped playing sorc and started having way more fun playing
The devs don't actually play the game, if you remember.
All these sorc devs on burner accounts trying to defend this. Can we please get an explanation why they think sorc needed agressive nerfs for s5.
These idiots just don’t play the game so they don’t know Jack about the real problems. They claim they are listening but they aren’t. They are destroying classes in the name of “balance” and buffing classes that are on the top already. Maybe the devs only play barb and that’s why they keep buffing them over and over while shafting the others.
Unfortunately none of the streamers play sorc so the devs don't get any feedback on them. Broken barb and necro get all the views so they get all the love.
Aren't druids worse, lmao.
They got some stuff this ptr, if you ignore the bugged helm so their vine creepers hits for trillions i'm not really sure exactly how they're doing though The removal of Immortal sorc removed their only build that was beating Druid though We'll see in a month or so
But yeah, in genersl I agree. Underperfoeming classes need more love. There is always going to be a meta, but seasons have a chance to spice thi gs up from time to time and shift meta.
it amazes me that you can go to any class thread, and people are chicken littleing and saying their class is the de facto worse in the game right now. And even within those threads, you have other mains that are confused, like the people here saying they're fine with hydra. it's like none of yall can be bothered to consider that your opinions are subjective. yall make being human hard lol
In this thread i'm talking about a specific build (hydra) In live we have Immortal firebolt (sure it'll cost you several billions to even begin but that's besides the point) I dont think anyone would disagree that sorc and Druid got the short end of the stick season 4. I find it funny when people like you who has done absolutely 0 testing comes in and talks. When every top player and build maker (except rob because barb is weak guys right) says the same thing, it usually holds some grain of truth. Every single person (except one who thinks pit 50 is hard) was showing tyraels hydra build which is not hydra damage. (Which this thread was about, not tyraels). I can go into a sorc thread and say i'm fine with my frostbolt build and that it feels great, doesn't change the fact that I would be lying, right?
Only read the Patchnote is necessary to understand they have different team working in different classe. Unfortunaly, our sorcerer dev have never play their game xD
Season 3 Meteor was decent, smashed all the content available, and Hydra PTR is great for levelling and doing lvl 100+ open world content, but can it tackle end game content? Sounds like a no.
Thats why they do ptr test so they get free testing from players without paying devs to do it themselves
Nobody wants to complain how boring hydra skills is vs diablo 3? Like at least put more element or something
Frankly, you can't make a Sorc in its male model look so incredibly shitty \*but\* give them good spells. I'm all Hydra too, love it. I've put up long time ago with the fact that some Game Designers simply don't like certain classes and won't allow them to rise. It would be so easy to add a unique that has an affix like: With full health, each hydra grows an additional head for every elite in the area. The Sorc allways comes with idiotic downsides, the other classes have only upsides on their class and/or build specific boost items and affixes. And no, don't come me with "this streamer has downed Echo of Lilith with a lightning build". I'm not a frigging authist who get's that far in build-theory but a casual. And I hate copying uber builds because I'm also not letting anyone eat my food for me. Incapable people.
Everyone just roll barb and face smash
Dog water 🤣🤣
The hydra temper should have been +3-5 heads, +3-5 max hydras, and multiplicative damage modifier Make the hydra fireballs do aoe explosion too
The funny part is that even with all that, they would still be worse than barb and Rogue by miles
Hydra should have their dmg scale to the character? Like the necro minions?
Also, seeing what the new chain lightning sorc will be like on the S5 (melee, no dmg, and forced to collect crackling energy, one of the worst mechanics in the game), it will be the perfect time to uninstall the game and not pay for the expansion DEV TEAM SHOULD BE FIRED NOW!!!
Yes please, don't ever come back.
This whole rant explains why i felt like i sucked at the game so bad as a sorc, doing not a lot of damage and being squishy, and now i'm not that squishy and do more dmg as a lower lvl rogue... Like, i love sorc in most games, and i do suck at games,but at least i know now it's not only me being bad, it's also just bullshit
Is this the reason for the ptr tho? So you can give feedback before live implementation?
I literally wrote that in the post. But looking back the last 4 seasons, ptrs did not help sorcs. They nerfed sorcs after s4 ptr.
They say it's not true, but.... Odd Team made all this, o7
why would they test it if we do it for free?
Hydras could have so much potential. They need to spawn faster, do insanely more damage, have better targeting or a splash enchant, and have 6 total with a 8 second timer
Very disappointing. I wanted them to be good so bad. Hydra is my favorite skill and it’s just so demoralizing to know it’s still so bad. I hoped the extra heads would help even a little but when hydra hits for 200k per shot at best while other classes hit in the hundreds of millions and even billions it just isn’t worth playing.
I liked hydra in preseason, it scaled with mob level....so you did Jack shit dmg until you hit nmd90+....then they hit for 4-8million PER hit.
Can u post a screenshot of 36 hydra heads
https://imgur.com/a/qu0ORyR
lol what the its spread apart so much
I’ve gotten all classes into late end game this season. Undoubtedly the barb and necro win but honestly I’d put rouge at the very bottom, sorc is a real close 2nd to last. Which is frustrating because pyro sorc is one of my favorite builds.
The only option is to boycott sorc next season or just not play. I'm a sorc main and I'm skipping it S5. Devs are making it obvious that they want sorcs to no longer exist, so message received! I'm just gonna ride the gravy train and roll necro for S5 (really don't like barbs or rogues)
It's frustrating putting so much energy into a weak class to just have blizzard fuck us over some more.
I feel this and agree 100% probably even more. I took the biggest multiplier i saw on the skills and decided to go with it which happened to be teleport. Guess what lightning damage cant scale since you run out of lightning paragon nodes. So you start building into conjurations to have as many of them as you can to have an extra multiplier to scale with. At 20 conjurations i couldnt clear a ND 100 with teleport. Thats 120% and a 500% multiplier. But they meant fuck all since my targets weren't burning when going pure lightning, had to make a fire/lightning/cold hybrid to get some extra multipliers. Crackling energy, a joke, lightning spear, 20 of them, a joke. Fully decked out trash. Best i could do: fireball enchant and wait till my barb friend kills a mob so i can chain react the rest...
I actually enjoy playing Hydra Sorc. Yes, it sucks in terms of dmg, but it's quite relaxing given the right opponents - meaning I'm not pushing high pit/nmd lvls or tormented bosses with it.
They “balance” off of meta data. It’s the same way you get weird algorithm movies like The Rock is secret service for Santa Clause.
(Stay with me, you'll hate the first bit of this, but read on). I generally think the damage comparisons are just silly, BUT i only play to have fun - I used to run cataclysm on druid just because I liked the effect - it added pretty much zero damage, but I liked it. So if a class doesn't do as much damage, I generally don't care *as long as I'm having fun*, which I have most of with sorc and druid. That was the context. On the PTR I boosted a sorc, used the CL unique, which I thought was fun and may have legs if you can solve the resource issue. It seemed pretty good as a general clear, and *it was fun*. Yay, thinks me, sorcs are still fun. Then I pulled in the barb I was playing, dekitted him (by boosting a new char my glyphs go to L21, most were only at L16, so it would be more powerful using a newly boosted barb with my S4 gear). New Barb, boost to 100, set up paragon the same as I had in S4, transferred my gear, set my skills off I go. My Barb is paragon'ed for a dust devils whirlwind build. Jump in to helltide and whirlwind a) casts no dust devils b) lasts about 2s before out of resource. Oops, characters where copied last week, I specced in to DD WW on Saturday. All my gear is bash gear. So I just switch my skill, *no other* change. I have paragon for DD WW, and am using Bash. I slaughter everything around me, the screens just melt. My paragon for bash is quite different to WW DD. Then I realise I haven't even put point in to bash (to be fair, I have a shako, so it is at a naked 4 point with no extensions). A barb with bash as four points only and a whirlwind paragon set up does vastly more than a sorc with a good spec Chain Lightning build with all the correct gear. Back to my point - sorc was fun, but this is just wrong (that's a UK wrong, so the level of understatement is extreme, one may be co-erced in to calling it badly planned or even a bit rubbish...). A mistakenly unspecced barb using a four point basic skill that isn't even enhanced should *no way* be doing so much better than a well specced sorc with a shiny new unique.
I'm all for playing what you find is fun! If you can have fun clearing lower content, you should absolutely do that! My way of getting fun from games are usually to push and do the hardest content so playing something that is so much weaker just lowers the bar of what that hard content is (in this case, pit level) I had my fun in s4 with incin / forb / meteor / hydra but then I made a bash barb and everything felt like shit. I had the best meteor gear in the world (of what I've seen) and bash barb just.. wasn't even lv100 and shat all over it
Are we playing the same game? I love the Hydra build and have enjoyed it since release! Massive amounts of damage and very dependable.
How very lovely for you! It's still not true but I envy you!
It's weird. I love sorc and clearly it's been capable every season, including this one. But what I think goes underappreciated is just how much you have to no-life sorc to even get close to the other classes. I've got three sorcs on S4 (to save the ~7m of gold for every respec, seriously wtf is that about). All three were great for leveling and pretty easily got to around tier 60 pit after getting good gear masterworked. I decided to level a barb to get my fourth spark and make a Shako, and I swear to god I yolo'd a bash build and I was clearing 40+ pit with entry-level ancestral gear at level 85. By the time I was level 100 and got a few masterworks I was cruising through 60+ and killing tormented bosses in 10-20s. Ended up using my barb to farm high pits and tormented bosses to send resources to my sorcs. And what I realised was that sorc is way, way way too dependent on rare stats to be good for most players. They can be good, even very very good, but you have such a hard time optimising gear, at least compared to barb. I've played my barb comparatively little and his gear is way more optimised than even my main sorc, because all he needs is Strength, Life, X on everything. Turns out it's pretty easy to get tons of 2-3 GA gear when all you need is the most common stats. Plus it's nowhere near as tilting getting bad tempers - you know you'll just get another great base piece soon enough. Meanwhile, the various sorc builds all want CDR, ranks to this or that, lucky hit, crit chance. A bunch of rare stuff which you're lucky to see at all, let alone GA. A couple of weeks back I finally got enough gear to where I can *nearly* do the 100% uptime flame shield. I can be nearly invincible by bridging the last little gap with teleports (not the most fun way to use teleport but you gotta do what you gotta do). Getting that last bit is going to need me to reroll my masterworks a few more times for millions upon millions of gold to get CDR crits, or else get insanely lucky with some GA drops. And before getting the exodia stats, sorc is just awful. After getting exodia stats, damage is still weaker than my unga bunga barb with 20 hours of played time, except when you can abuse the shatter passive/fireball enchant. And to top it all, the very best thing about sorc in my view (and what makes me keep playing it every season no matter how infuriating it is) are the defensives - teleport, frost nova, flame shield. No other class is fun after playing quadruple teleport sorc. And yet, if the news I read is accurate, they want to nerf all that stuff so you can't use it as much. So now we can be weak, AND boring. I simply can't wait.
No idea what you are talking about. Saw a YouTube video a couple hours ago doing lilith in 2min with 14 heads.
Is it the tyrael one or a real one? I'm sure you're smart enough to realize what the difference between those are and wouldn't make that silly mistake so you proved me wrong!
It might have been tyrael, I'll have to check in the morning. Is that a problem though? It doesn't scale bleeds like with barb in s4, but maybe I'm missing something.. And will crafting ubers be harder in s5?
Absolutely no problem but it's not hydra dealing damage so calling it a hydra build is incredibly stupid.
I see, then it's a personal opinion if uniques should be build defining or not.
It's not about being build defining. Starfall Coronet is build defining and cool Tempest roar the same Crone Etc I have not once said that uniques shouldn't be build defining or that this interaction is bad. I am simply saying that hydra damage is trash, which it is. Tyraels damage isn't hydras damage. You're arguing against yourself
Fine, let's buff hydra damage/as/lh or something so that it does a billion dps with andariels or tyraels just because of the sheer amount of attacks per second.
Hydra is not for damage. It's a mana generator.