Sorc lightning build issues

Sorcerer
1

Hello all

Going to rant about some of the major issues/bugs/malfunctions with the lightning sorc in particular as I’ve been trying to make the most of it and there are glaring problems with this one, it’s hard to believe so many outstanding wrongs have been allowed to stay in the game for such a long time.

First off, Ball lightning, you kind of get forced into using it for any reasonable aoe at endgame as the other options are all target limited, especially such as chain lightning with the target count limitations. The legendary effect that makes it whirl around the character has the damage reduction increased on amulets/2h weapons and higher tier items instead of being decreased.
There are other legendary effects in the game that have reductive rather than increasing ranges, but they seem to be programmed appropriately, in case of this however, if you equip several items with the same tooltip the game will recognise the bigger reduction one as the more powerful and grey out the other.
I’d question the necessity for the effect to need a damage reduction in the first place seeing as it forces you into a melee build hence having to invest into some convoluted shielding to survive encounters in melee range.

Ball lightning spell gets cancelled if the animation hits the wall when rotating around the character effectively nullifying damage from it in any vertical wall dungeons, I can see how it was originally implemented for the straight flight ball lightning so it wouldn’t pass through walls but for the rotating effect it is completely broken as you lose all damage from it if you’re near any vertical walls.
This is considering the fact you’re likely to use the mastery glyph “Adept” if youre rolling with ball lightning to mitigate the middle blind spot on top of the character where the balls wont hit targets, but the 20% range increase will make the balls expand outwards as well making them hit said walls more often again especially in smaller corridors.
Realistically the legendary effect for rotating should be made exempt from wall contact cancellations.

“Enhanced Ball Lightning” effect says the damage rate is increased, but it has a hidden effect of actual damage reduction applied to said skill upon selection.

Second, concerning the paragon board, there are no pure lightning damage reinforcements, only a single node for crackling+lightning damage and this is considering there is the “electrocute” glyph that has no actual use on the board as there are no lightning damage nodes to reinforce for actual benifit in comparison to alternatives.
This is considering lightning does not apply status effects either so does not benifit from condition application damage boosts which then you’re left to steal from the other magic schools, hence wasting your enchantment slots to gain burning/chill application.

“Glinting arc lash” effect does not work on ultimate “Unstable Currents”, you can track how the stunned target damage reduces cooldowns on other skills, but it does not work on the longest cooldown in the whole build, which is admittedly quite dismal.

Honorary mention, not a lightning related issue at any rate, legendary effect that increases damage when barrier is active is still not working, it has the same wording as the stand still legendary damage boost effect, so should be applied as soon as the conditions eg “barrier up” is present, but the character stat screen displays no boost what so ever.

Will update if i run across more issues with said magic school.

EDIT

Highly suspect “Icy Veil” skill, that extends barrier active time length does not work at all, it changes nothing in the tooltip of say “Ice Armor” upon addition in the skill tree, it always stays 6 seconds flat, it’s considerably harder to measure on auto barrier effects for example the “Protection” skill under Conjuration, would assume it’s a dead skill until further notice tbh, and this is again considering lightning build and honestly all sorcerers are heavily dependant on shields as defense as resistances in d4 are currently completely broken.

EDIT 2

As per further investigation I find this reddit post has a very good breakdown for the sorc issues without going into the actual bugs and broken specifics, a must read for the subject.

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/14ldwvp/sorcerer_weakness_discussed_long/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=5&onetap_auto=true

EDIT 3

“Aspect Of Retribution” 40% increased damage (base single item) to stunned enemies seems to apply only to the distant enemies that have an 8% chance to be stunned NOT a modifier to “stunned enemies” in general as the tooltip claims, character sheet stats dont modify on equip.

Very much a misleading tooltip, maybe a major bug?

2

A hotfix was recently released, including on the balance. But I did not notice the balance between the specializations in wizards. There was something, but it was extremely inconspicuous. While Frost sorcerer make high dps and crits with infinite mana, lightning sorcerer run around and collect balls on the ground that restore mana and do their low dps.
To be honest, it’s not clear to me why Unstable currents uses all the lightning skills, including those that are not pumped from the word at all. As there is so little damage in lightning, so also the skills are not pumped - just facepalm.

3

There are some major inconsistencies between the magic schools tbh.
All you need to look at are the conditions applied by type and paragon reinforcement, for example why does chilled get 7.5% boost per slot and burning only 5%, not considering the fact frost skills get a freebie vulnerability addition which is another 20% free damage and lightning gets zero conditions added, yes you can spec into stun, but any time a mob goes immune it’ll negate said effect completely.

The paragon board for lightning does look like someone was working on it, then gave up half way through after making some inconsistent modifications as it just doesn’t add up at all with the missing damage boosters.

Again, some of these issues can be somewhat negated by stealing the statuses from other magic schools, but as mentioned in my previous post there’s a whole lot of outstanding broken spells and mechanics, which noone seems to even be aware of, so no plan to fix them at all I’m guessing.

Another issue i find with the lightning build is the sheer lack of any autoattack damage, for example any buildings/gates are unbelieveably time consuming to down as they’re mostly status immune and the basic skills for lightning you cant rly amp up like ice with a solid burst of attacks.

4

I fully support the author

To be honest, I don’t have the strength to fight anymore, I’ve already tried so many things for lightning. As a result, you get the maximum profit when you use paragon cells from other schools of magic, ice and fire, there is practically no sense from lightning symbols.

Unstable currents - is not such a powerful spell in which it is located, because it uses spells that are not even pumped, which reduces its usefulness to zero. Because spells with minimal damage are used. Instead of using the spells you want.

Cracking Energy - I don’t see the point at all, because it won’t give you the damage that you achieve with your basic skills. Actually, the aspect is useless for him.

Chain lightning - a small amount of jump. In a large crowd, a completely useless spell that is not capable of dealing aoe damage. The aspect for him does not solve the problem at all.

Charged Bolts - is also useless because it only works in a close area.

Ball lightning - is a spell for aoe. But it hits so weakly that it does not solve the problem of large packs of mobs.

Aspect of retribution - does not work. Additional damage is not included in the statistics for increasing damage to Stunned enemies.

Elementalist’s aspect - does not work with Unstable currents.

As a result, we have a low dps with low crit, unlike other specializations and other classes, where people have critical attacks reaching up to 2.5kk and higher. I am very wildly outraged, to be honest. As if this branch was not given due attention, all attention was focused on the branch of ice and period. I’ve been playing for a month, I’ll wait for the next update, it’s impossible to play normally when you kill a large group of enemies for 1-2 minutes, and your friend comes makes a “boom” and kills everything in 1 second with an attack. Thank you very much for the game, I’ve had enough already.
ps. the ass is burning, sorry.

5

Added bugs from my experience:

Arc-Lash targeting after teleport with Raiment of Infinite, if the target is to close here, Arc-lash targets into ground hitting nothing, this can also be seen when you hold the attack and the targeted mob gets closer, Arc-Lash angles downwards hitting less and less, as if the AOE is bad enough.

Teleporting with Raiment, are you supposed to be completely locked when alle mobs literally lock you in place? This is REALLY bad when playing Arc-Lash with the bad targeting.
With Ice-shards, it can be almost impossible to target any mobs “around” you, as they stand on top of you, and you cant target that close.

And when teleporting on to Charger’s when loading their attack, they haven’t started their charge, when u hit them with the teleport it takes damage as if they charged you, one shooting every time. Is this also indented with an armor that stuns when you teleport on to mobs?

Switching to Ice-shards, how come there is still a bug, where it trigger an attack, without attacking? Animation and mana loss, but no attack.

And I can verify that all of the above is still bugs that NEEDS TO BE FIXED ASAP.

Common Blizzard …

6

Simple. Blizzard wants you to play forst sorc so you spam the spell that bears their name, lol. Either that or they literally have no clue how lightning sorc supposed to work, it feels like they havent even reached lvl 50 during tests.

7

There is some sort of delay that happens haphazardly every other teleport that just makes you unable to cast anything for roughly a full second, I don’t think it’s even just the arc lash.

I’m not quite sure what causes it, but you notice it immedietly if it triggers said block, I can’t put my finger on what exactly is causing it as it seems very random indeed.

8

well. this is my 50 cents.

There is only 1 problem with Lightning sorc - they took away ultimate. Originally it was ultimate that is now on Conduit pylon - you turns into ball lightning

and a 1.5 problem - Give us back 3rd enchantment slot

How to play L-Sorc:

  • U dont need Unstable current ultimate. You need stable aspect in your Amulet - 15% chance to activate Unstable current for a moment if Unstable current is not active now
  • U need to have 3 points in 2-3 lightning skills in order to have benefits from Unstable current procs
  • U need 2 enchantments: Arc Lash and Charge Bolt. 3rd slot for Ball lightning. These 3 is a must
  • U need Cracling energy for mana management and extra dmg - I have +300% CE - it hits normally
  • U need Raiment of Infinite Armor
9

upd: and if 1 may - 1 more idea - give CL +1 bounce per lvl up to 10 max

10

*There is the legendary effect for 10% unstable currents trigger, it obviously only casts one random spell on proc
*More of the same, could just increase proc rate
*Enchantments currently necessitate you speccing into chill/burn else you lose out on condition applications
*Crackling enery does not have any relative damage without wasting extra affix slots off of gear, atm is only used to proc cd reductions pretty much, mana management can be had so much easier for example with close range stun paragon for 10 mana a pop, hence Rainment of the infinite, pretty much full mana cap every portal, and youd better select crackling energy affix on portal to add more cd reduction whilst channeling ultimate to get somewhat decent uptime for the ultimate and max cd reduction

None of this still fixes the avalanche of issues present at endgame.

This reddit post has some extremely valid points, and it doesnt even include any of the actually broken mechanics we’ve discussed in this thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/14ldwvp/sorcerer_weakness_discussed_long/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=5&onetap_auto=true

It makes some very valid points.

11

lvl 93, currently, and I have no problems what so ever.

  • aspect in amulet gives you 15% chance to cast Unstable Current - that is great - I have like entire screen in different lightning spells - combined with passive that gives %to stun by any shock skill - I keep everything CC until the end
  • dunno, why I need chill\burn enchantments - I use lightning and I want to make it even more effective. And u kinda need that Arc Lash ench to keep everyone in stun and mana regen
  • Crackling energy is not that week if you have +300% to its dmg and other lightning buffs (at least according to my experience). And it gives you mana and x15 dmg increase(and that is huge). And situations when you out of mana are not that rare - it really helps
12

Only lvl 71 here but my arc lash sorc is just fine verses T3 mobs. I have followed a build that incorporates a little bit of fire namely the burning arrow selection at the start of the skill tree - however this is not on the skill bar…
It also puts points into other skills but they aren’t added to the skill bar either they are for when unstable currents kicks off and I trash everything or mostly everything within the timeframe of the spell.

I don’t know what T4 is going to be like, I attempted to move up at 69th and moved straight back down to T3 when I noticed the mobs were all 73+.

Edit: I have my aspects in place and have Esu’s Heirloom and Rainment of the Infinite in play and having the aspects in certain positions gear wise does make a huge difference.

13

Sounds like a decent lvl 60 sorceress :wink:

Chain Lightning has high drop rate on Cracking Lightning, but buffing CE with Paragons is nowhere as strong and Buffing Bolts.

You dont use Charged Bolt enchantment, as its proc rate is very low, damage doesnt cover it and like most Lightning, its uncontrollable and thus unreliable. Ball Lightning enchantment is what Ball Lightning needs - a single proc usualy can dea 3 times the damage normal cast would, as only the enemy is moving not the Ball. Also BL has fast attacks to the point of having high chance of proccing stun, effective BL enchantment is your primary damage dealer.

Second Enchantment goes to fire bolt. Lightning damage has high crit chance, use it with bonus crit damage to burning. Also, give your self Burning passive to be able to proc immobile - this is your major damage buff.

Also, get staff of Lam Esam - not only your charged bolts pierce, it also has lucky hit to restore mana ! And the lucky roll is dont with each single hit of each single Charged Bolt ! Additionally if you have Lightning Nova upgrade - it also rolls lucky hit when it hits each enemy seperatly !!! Arc Lash hitting several enemies - each hit enemy rolls lucky hit !!!

You are basicly endless mana, with high number of lucky hit rolls for stun.

If you have Stable Aspect, you can cast etra spells, You use Lightning Spear with stun on crit upgrade and ice nova as well as Raiment of Infinite Armor teleport stun you are walking stun lock.

The bad side is… Ice spells have +9% damage to Chilled and +18% damage to Frozen, best Lightning do is pitty damage when stunning enemy.
Ice spells also have +12% damage to vulnerable and Ice spells can maintain permanent vulnerable on enemies.
Ice Spells have bonus damage to Elites.
Lightning trries to match it with CE, but CE needs a board which is a waste of point.
Also, Ice Shards with its piercing aspect, ricochetes on frozen has better ST, Cleave and AOE than Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning merged together.

14

I’m currently playing Light sorc at lvl 91, using arc lash, ball lightning, unstable currents, teleport, frost nova and ice armor. There is one thing i completely don’t understand and that is why does my Ball Lightning deal less damage the more Increased Attack Speed i have?? It clearly says that Ball Lightning damage rate is increased by 200% of your attack speed bonus, but the more attack speed i have the less damage ball lightning deals. How does that work? Is this how it’s supposed to be? I’m losing my mind over this.

15

It’s basically supposed to be only a proc trigger increase, where you get more hits at the same damage level.

16

Well that really sucks in that case. Also noticed that Legendary node Ceaseless Conduit intelligence bonus to crackling energy damage doesn’t display in the stats… Or maybe it doesn’t even work in that case, as my CE damage with the legendary node should be over 320%. Instead it just displays all the gear bonuses and rare paragon node adds

17

*I do use the legendary effect for extra lightning triggers as well, I won’t go as far as to claim the screen is full even with my high attack speed from gear and basic skill boost and using a one hander, CC cannot be kept to the end, monsters will go immune eventually if you do any reasonably high push, we’re not complaining about world tier difficulty here!
*If you don’t use chil/burn you’re getting no base damage boost effects, lightning has none in the paragon board apart from crackling energy, it’s literally broken as theres no lightning + damage on dedicated boards, stun again isn’t possible to chain on high lvls as mobs will become immune and mana reg can be had with stun triggers as easily
*Crackling energy has a separate damage booster, which contributes nothing to your other skill damage which is an insane waste in itself, to get it to a viable dmg output from damage modifiers on gear will gimp your main skill damage, again mana can be had from stun triggers, eg teleport with rainment aoe pull stun and passive triggers.

I’m not sure we’re comparing apples to apples here, how high of a nightmare level are we comparing here, I never complained about clearing your base level dungeons or world tier, we’re talking about end game high key pushing and other classes will casually do considerably higher when equally geared for comparison.

18

I concur. Someone in charge should read it.