Have I bottomed out?

Sorcerer
1

Hey,

so, I have decided to come back. Everyone said “Season 4 is actually good” and I was like “Oh cool.”

So, when the Season started, I started a Sorc.
Sure, I had some problems leveling, but I think that’s normal considering the difficulty spikes when you change to T3/4 and try to complete season objectives, when they are not designed for your level. All good there.

But now that I am level 100, I feel like I have bottomed out.
I can solo all the non-tormented Summoned Bosses (apart from Lilith)
I can play the Helltides with Mindcage active.
I got to Level 27 in the Pit.

But there’s where my Problem starts:
I feel like there is no easily available, obvious way to get more damage.

I’m currently playing a Lightning Spear/Conjuration Mastery Lightning Build, aka spawning a lot of Crackling Energy, then collecting them to stack Lightning Spears for Conjuration Mastery.

So I get the following offensive Aspects:
Splintering Energy, Storm Well, Battle Caster, Fortune, Overwhelming Currents and Conceited

All the other slots take up Defensive Setups:
Protector for Barrier, Everliving for DR against Vulnerable and Might for just 20% free DR

Boots got Bounding Conduit for faster Cooldowns after Teleporting.

Now, a lot of these Aspects are maxed out.
Only Everliving and SPlintering Energy are not maxxed.
As for glyphs I use:
Invocation (Conjuration Crit Damage)
Charged (Crackling Energy Damage)
Conjurer (Conjuration Damage)
Destruction (Crit Damage)
Reinforced (For the 15% DR when I have Barriers)

So generally the idea is:
I can basically spam cooldowns, Cooldowns give me Barriers, Barriers give me DR, and Damage comes from getting a lot of spears active.

But, I dont do damage? Or at least, not nearly enough to do anything more.
I reckon I could clear maybe Pit T30, but when I look around, people literally tap out Blood Maiden and World Bosses in 1 second.

What am I missing? I know there are no Uniques that support my Build, and the only thing I feel like I can do is Masterwork the rest of my gear, but I doubt, that this will boost my damage by the numbers I need.

What is there left for me to do?

1 Like
2

You are not missing anything. Sorc dps is being ignored. Our multipliers don’t work. Look at US forums. Rapid Fire is bugging and almost instant Blue response that they are working on it.

Sorc is unfinished. Come back for Expansion. If Chain Lightgning is still a wet noodle it will never be good. I uninstalled few days ago. This isn’t worth spending time.

And no Im not rerolling to any "#¤% builds or Classes I don’t enjoy. This is unacceptable.

3

Weird, considering whenever I see Fire Sorcs, they just, quite literally, burn through everything with that new 3-way Incinerate, that they can seemingly sustain forever.

4

Maybe it works. My interest is 100% on Chain Lightning and its unplayable. Also Esadora’s is a joke. Crackling hits 100K max. Im done until Vessel Of Hatred.

5

Well the big problem here is twofold:

For one, sorc is the squishiest squisher that ever squished and even their most powerful builds don’t compensate for that appropriatly with dmg. Imo the only class that has to work compareably hard to get good results might be the rogue.

Second issue: Lightning sorc. I haven’t actually even heard of a build that makes use of lightning spear stacking, tbh. All i see is either orbiting ball lightnings or chain lightning, of which i can only really speak about cl, because same as classmaester. But it is actually playable, it has pretty decent mob clear capabilities… it’s big counter: Bosses. That is where you go from feeling like Palpatine to throwing spagethi

As for how to get more dmg: You basically forgo just about every defensive stat or skillpoint, so long as there is still something that can give you more dps and rely 100% on the good ol’ korean advice: Just don’t get hit.

6

The problem is, there is no defensive stat or skillpoint to give up, because I have already opted into offensive stats where I can.

The most, the very most, I can do, is exchange some aspects that only abstract damage into pure damage, even if I cant utilize it.
(like getting 15% damage off of Aspect of Inner Calm, even though I can never stop moving if I want to utilize the core aspect of this build)

I have tried to see sense in some uniques.
Esadoras seems nice, but giving up +2 Conjuration Mastery is kinda stupid, when I on average peak at 10 stacks of it.
The only alternative would be the one that gives me +2 Conjuration Mastery, but interacts with Frozen Orb. Something I could forgive, but then I lack % Intelligence, which may not be a massive problem, but first I’d need to roll max values on that Unique effect on a 925 Amulett.

Not getting hit is barely an option. It would require constant evation of massive, sometimes unpredictable AoE effects, that would one-shot me if I didnt generate any Barrier or Damage reduction.

I recently removed Aspect of Fortune (a tangible 38% Lucky Hit Buff) for 21% Chance to trigger Shock Casts when my Ultimate is not active.

Alternatives would involve shoving other Aspects around for a +15% on Storm Swell or something like that. Which are neglegible. There is just such a massive gap between top-performing builds and what I am doing, that I’D need to find a way to like x10 my damage, if not more, if I’d wanted to even attempt to be competetive.

I really hoped they’d be doing something about this. It was a problem I had when the game released, but it feels like they are playing favorites with certain classes and builds within those classes.
So much of this build is superficially synergizing, but leading effectively nowhere.

7

The most important aspects are the ones where you get your dmg multiplied when [condition] is met. Like 30% more vuln when barrier, general % more dmg when barrier and the % against crowd controlled enemies. Everything else is a case of “… i really don’t know what to do with this item slot” , which is a situation i ahvent found myself in for quite a while, but i also run 3 uniques.

Tribaults will (pants)
Starless skies (ring)
and tal rashas (ring)

With the entire thing revolving around just keeping my enemies perma stunned until death and for the rest of the time running in circles screaming like a little girl… which makes it so terrible against bosses because non-cc’d enemies take but a fraction of the dmg

So as far as the build goes rn, i can easily drag my face through pit lvl 50 within a couple of a minutes… and then i reach the boss and have to work harder to not get oneshot and deal the necessary dps, than i used to need when cutting edge raiding.

8

While I ran a Tal’Rasha Build in D3, I do not like the non-Lightning-Skills in D4. so it’s off the table, because 15% is kinda low for a full slot.

You are also running an Uber, which I am not even in reach of getting because I cant do Tormented Bosses.
I could try Tribaults if I actually dropped them.

Apart from that, I would move Storm Swell to Amulet for 15% more against Vulnerable while Barrier, and replace it on my Focus with 25% while I have barrier, but that is not gonna multiply my damage by enough to compete with Barbs holding Whirlwind for 0.5 seconds and one-shotting the blood maiden.

9

Ubers drop from non-torment bosses aswell. I haven’t killed a single one of those either … since well, as i said,the build is literal garbage against bosses and i am not interested in a 15min slug fest.
As for rashas, i proc it with firebolt enchantment (literally do not have a base skill on my bars and both mandatory points are in firebolt) and ice blades

And yea, no, you wont ever reach what barbs and necros do rn as a lightning sorc. Completly forget about that

10

Same here playing for the frost orb sorc. I can solo 40 pit depending on burst damage of the final boss. Then that’s it. No progress.
My necro + barb friends can do uber duriel, I do nothing to it.
I can grind pit but depending on final boss that may be a loss of time.
Zero progress, just hope for super drops from helltide.
I mean why bother, battlepass is done, I can do destroyer in the next few world bosses and thats it. Two weeks of season for me.

11

its the punishment for D3’s wizard always on top :slight_smile: (not every season tho but most of them)
Ofc it is not fair, i play only wizard / sorcs also, and this unbalanced garbage is beyond words compare to D3 balance

12

Heh pit 27… wow such an achievement. No but seriously, sorcerers are still broken. They lack a crap ton of dmg output because things are not working as they are intended. This will most likely continue for many more seasons and I have chosen never to go back to Sorcerer until those fixes happen. Personally have loved sorcerer always as a character and enjoyed my fair share of hours in D4 with it but unfortunately as it is constantly broken and missing either defensive or attack power because of it; no point playing it. Just go straight up to the holy trio of barb, necro or druid and get to the endgame at least a little easier.
The game is empty when it comes to feeling of progression after hitting 100 because it is only grinding the gear into better stats and even that is impossible because nothing drops.

13

I don’t understand the logic behind this. So sorc does ton of dmg but needs to blink away, consider positioning. But the first does not apply so… just the donwside.

14

This is because D3 and D4 games always suffered from the same problem: only one (maybe two with some luck) builds are viable for each class. Blizzard dictates the build you should play each season.

If some build is good in a Season, the next season that build will be nerfed and other will be buffed, this way you are forced to change the build. What happend to ball lightning? It is useless now.

It is not your fault. I’m sure you have maximized and perfected your build, but no matter what you do: lightning now cannot compete with Blizzard or Frozen Orb builds.

15

Because I do like Necros, I thought I’d play a Darkness Necro.
You know. Just to double Check myself.
Ultimate Shadow alone causes Bloodwave to tick for multiple Millions every secons.
Not to Speak of Blight using Ebonpiercer.

And my build isnt even optimized. Or at least I guess so, because I am still not outright oneshotting bosses. I only have X’fals Masterworked, which I already guess is a suboptimal ring slot, but I like the “haha big aoe” effect.

But I also dont think that this is a “Oh this season that, next season this” thing, because I feel like when it comes to Sorc the builds I like have never been strong.
I dont like playing Sorcs in Melee. I want to be a ranged caster, or at the very least a mobile little rat running around collecting funny balls until I have like 10 stacks of COnjuration Mastery from Lightning Spears alone.

It always seemed like Firewall/Incinerate and any Frost Build just outscaled what ranged lightning can do.

I dunno.
It’s really depressing, that I have now played 2 really fun Necro Builds (Blood Lance in Season of Blood, and Shadow DoT this Season) but Lightning Sorc is just ineffectively flopping around on the floor.

Edit:
Since I am not allowed to double post:
I picked my Sorc back up today, leveling Exploit so I switch from the generic Crit Glyph to the Vulnerable Damage glyph, in hopes this helps me avoid hitting diminishing returns as hard.

Edit 2:
I hope Blizz let’s me post this as a new Reply. (they did not)

I dont know why, but something weird is going on.
I was using Wand+Focus for most of the time, because, well, it added 23% Lucky Hit, on a build requiring Lucky Hit to spawn Crackling Energy.
But I visually prefer staves, so I just made one.
I waited until I dropped one with a default Max-Roll Vulnerability Damage (80%) I rereolled the Max Health for Damage (not max Roll) and Tempered.
And even though my Temper Rolls were pretty bad, it more than doubled my Attack power.

So. Does Blizzard just discriminate against 1h + Focus?

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