the problem is that to raise the dps, you are forced to switch either to another specialization or you are forced to use symbols and a paragon of another specialization, you seem to play with lightning, but you are not lightning at all, but a bad hybrid is not clear from what assembled
Ive played Chain Lightning on my sorceress so ill try and provide some insight.
My 1st struggles with CL build happened in Tier 3 when I tried to level up to get into Tier 4. My Lightning wasnt killing fast and I started having trouble with Elites. So i redisigned my build to be like this:
- I focused my build on stunning with shock skills, this included lightning spear and legendary aspect that gave me 14% chance to cast extra free shock spell if heroic is inactive.
- Since enemies were stunned often (VERY often) I used ball lightning enchantment, which i had a rank 5 and it paid off being my primary source of damage. Once it procced it even dealt with eites and bosses.
- The ammount of Cracking Lightning drops I had was surreal, I was always at full mana and charges during encounters.
But once I got to lvl 65 and did capstone dungeons, I learned in Tier 4 CL is bad. My damage in relation to enemy damage was complely out of control.
I tried charged bolts and it didint provide much damage. Due to Supressor elites (globes of invulnerability) my Spark had to go in place of Arc Lash and… Arc Lash was my main horde killer, while CL was ST or 2 target spell.
Eventually i got dropped staff of Lam Essam, which lets charged bolts pierced.
This is where i chaned builds and GOD it was a total rework.
And this was when i realised that damage in this game is BS. Dont focus on damage. Focus on debuffs. +50% to close enemies, +50% to stunned enemies, this is what made my charged bolts ticke or destroy. And this is why Fire and Shock spells are bad, they dont get debuff synergy Ice does.
So I changed to Ice build. Now i do what ? No damage. Unless enemy gets frozen, than my +60% vs vulnerable, +100% vs crowd controlled, +60% vs frozen, +50% vs burning makes my ice shards into nukes.
Teleport in, Ice Nova and Ice Shard enchantment blows enemies up.
Changed to Chain Lightning and… I have trouble with regular open world monsters. With Ice shard build, im still missing 2 glyps, but as level 83 i can complete nightmare dunegeons where enemies are level 94 relatively easily.
Problem are only “pillars” i must destroy as i cant get them to freeze and they soak like 50 casts, and dungeon Bosses, because they it usually takes me about 100 casts to get them to 50% HP, when they get stunned for 5 seconds. And in that 5 seconds i blow him up.
Remember, Damage to crowd controlled, damage to stunned, damage to burning, damage to immobilized, damage to injured, damage to close targets is the way.
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facepalm, it’s not normal when your character needs to collect so many debuffs to deal the same damage as other characters.
and also keep in mind that your enemies cannot stand constantly in the camp or freeze, sooner or later they will get unstoppability and then your damage drops very much, again, while other characters have no problems with damage and they do not have such problems as unstoppability
While those other characters deal periodic damage on Lilith’s echo for 3-5 million damage, I personally watched the game against Lilith on the Robber
so that you understand, my crit damage on Lilith is 15-20k, it’s just ridiculous =)))))))
Exactly.
All because Rogue can have bonus vs close enemies and bonus shadow damage and aspect for damage on his bow when having flurry build.
Barbarian can have 4 weapons each giving him +% damage to close enemies, +% damage to bleeding enemies, +% to core skills, +% damage.
Sorceress ? Saddly only debuffs. From fire bolt, all elemental classes have burning debuff. Fire adds low proc chance to immobilize, Lightning has decent chance to Stun but it hits everyone while killing nobody. Ice has it all and can stun with teleport.
Fire spells lack about 60% of pure damage, Lightning lacks 40% of damage.
Sorceress lack 80% of HP
If you have trouble killing open world monsters with chain lightning then you are probably just using a copy/pasted leveling build. CL is perfectly fine for anything up to about NM tier 50 once you switch to a build that applies both burning and chill. Firebolt/ Frost bolt enchanted CL does like 3-4 times the damage of Firebolt/CL enchants.
You are rude and show no tact or diplomacy . Calling people ignorant is not cool. You tone is aggressive and not helpful in this forum .
Yes, it sucks that lightning needs to add cold and fire enchants, but that’s unfortunately how blizzard coded damage to work.
Fact is that status effects like chilled and burning are way too impactful on overall damage. A good example of this is the chilled/frozen effect. A frozen enemy counts as both chilled and frozen, so something like the hoarfroast passive that adds 9% damage against chilled and 18% damage against frozen actually gives a 27.5% DPS increase against frozen enemies. Simply adding the Control glyph and penitent greaves pushes this up to 1.85x the damage.
Keep in mind, this is before any sort of additive damage like +damage vs cc or +damage vs chilled. This is why dropping the chain lightning enchant is absolutely crucial to late game damage.
By trouble I meant compared to Ice Shard that often clears the group in 1 or 2 casts, where CL cant have that unless its down to remaining 1-3 enemies.
One advice here: Ice Shards or nothing.
Sorcerer is only about Ice Shards in endgame. Sad, but true.
I just posted this in the US forum.
So (finally) here we go, an endgame chain lightning sorcerer build/guide on Maxroll.
What do you think of it? It is stated that this build seems to work in WT3, WT4, NMD, but it also says other builds (ice shards) are better for higher level NMD pushing.
Personally, I would not take the teleport enchantment, but rather frost bolt as enchantment (1st enchantment is fire bolt, to apply burning. Burning instinct paragon board is a must then) and then go for Permafrost and Hoarfrost skills. This massively bumps the damage.
Teleport in (stun with Raiment), frost nova (freeze), and melt the mobs with chain lightning. If you need some more damage, activate flame shield (in combination with aspect of binding embers) to immobilize the mobs additionally. Aspect of control does the job here.
I have been running an all lighning build + frost nova from lvl 35-70.
I have been blowing up everything.
Not sure about the very end game content, but im sure I can keep it till lvl100
spark, chain lightning, TP, Frost nova, lignting spear, unstable Currents
I guess there are builds you can play to complete the game and even reach lvl100. It depends on what makes you the most fun to play or how fast you wanna progress leveling up. In the Endgame at lvl100 there are just 3 Builds
- Ice Shards
- Blizzard
- Arc Lash
But since the last patch… erm … its waaaaaaaaayyyyyy harder … and not that much fun as a Sorc… I cleard NMD 70+ before … now it takes way longer to clear even a NMD 65+