Sorceress (and really any spellcaster) is miserable to play
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I have been attempting to level a Sorceress (my fourth alt so far) this league after having a good time with one last league. I started early on with lightning spells, the spark -> firewall combo of course. I then switched into fire spells around act 2.
I don't really want to continue this character after reaching act 2 cruel after a grueling experience. I had planned on getting into Chronomancer with some life recoup stuff. If my entire tree is invested into fire damage, penetration, ignite magnitude, and spell damage, then why do my spells do SO LITTLE DAMAGE. Seriously, I think all spells need a 2-3 times multiplication to their base damage. As for defenses, I tried to balance evasion and ES for a while but eventually switched to just energy shield. I had about 1k life and 1.5k ES by act 2 cruel. That of course didn't really matter when I needed to use incinerate to kill white mobs, who gleefully ripped my character apart while I slowly cast my 850 DPS ability at them. Perhaps I should have done armor or AR/ES but I didn't want to spend a ton of resource to start over on my gear. I leveled a Stormweaver just fine last league, though I had the same miserable leveling experience, I at least was able to tolerate it enough to get to maps. I can't continue on. I attempted to fully pivot into a quarterstaff setup to brute force the rest of the campaign but that didn't really work out. Spell casters are UNPLAYABLE in this state. If I can't make it work with the seemingly obvious combination of support gems and passive tree investment, something is very wrong. Also, "making it work" isn't dying repeatedly and doing so little damage but still beating campaign by pure attrition. This is not fun, and is bad game design. Last bumped18 апр. 2025 г., 13:20:35
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Yeah, casters are terrible. In SSF Dawn of the hunt, almost no one is playing casters. Below are the percentage of players playing caster classes.
Blood Mage - 0.5 percent Stormweaver - 0.6 percent Chronomancer - 0.8 percent Infernalist - 1 percent Only the lich is doing well at 16 percent. It makes sense that the newly released ascendencies will be more popular but it doesn't fully explain the low numbers for sorcerer class. The class just feels bad to play. |
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" Sounds like you dont have the correct wand/shield Fire sorc is perfectly playable, if you are struggling in the campaign with ... really anything sorc it doesnt have anything to do with the game. Mash the clean
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" half of them are ED (which is nice, but falls off in lategame) and the rest some form of minions. |
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Having played both, will agree the spell damage is garbage. Felt like a watergun even with full currency investment. Ice walls below enemies for single target was better than most? Even then, it's a slog. Felt like at most 50% of the damage of martial characters.
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it is absolutely ridiculous that with how much investment I've put into my mage, they release one "patch" that makes it unplayable now.
I've lost all desire to play this game if they're going to be this unpredictable. That comment about starting off weak and feeling like you're a "god" by late game was a bunch of garbage. |
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Agreed.
Even with a +2-3 wand, and fully invested into damage on the tree, fire spells are too weak in the campaign. Plus fire is a purely offensive archetype so it should absolutely do more damage. It's a glass cannon without the nukes. edit: Well you get your nuke(flameblast) at 52. But it's on a 15 second cd and all your other spells don't compensate enough. Последняя редакция: imphilxd#4709. Время: 17 апр. 2025 г., 02:41:52
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Okay guide gamers here, I wont show my build but heres something to help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWWsNQgqarU&t=134s Fire spells do NOT do little damage either. Its on your build to fix that W mods by the way. Mash the clean Последняя редакция: Mashgesture#2912. Время: 17 апр. 2025 г., 12:53:49
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" Why do I need to rely on a "bugged reaction" with Ember Fusilade to make a elemental damage type viable in campaign? Your feedback is not constructive and you are hand-waving MASSIVE problems with game balance in your replies. My character has okay twink gear, such as The Searing Touch which I used from lvl 18 until cruel and for big ignites weapon swap (incinerate for single target), and now a wand with +3 to fire spells, spell damage, and lots of cast speed. I also have +spell levels on other pieces of gear (amulet), and skill gems of appropriate level, support gems etc. I know how to play the game and build a character. I can only fix with skill so much, as you have implied it is a skill issue. I have played a Smith bone shatter to lvl 90 this league and it was 1000x easier and faster than the one caster archetype I have played in 0.2. I felt the complete opposite way last league with Titan and Warbringer. |
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I agree the damage and performance overall is horrible. As a sorc, the only way to have the survivability and damage for T16s and ubers would be MoM + EB + Archmage.
However, with these three your mana regeneration is negative. Cast two spells and you're completely OOM, spiraling your damage and survivability down the drain. The only alternative to spark sorc was someone playing evasion + CoC meteor, but even the author admitted they lack the damage to run any meaningful single target encounters. It doesn't help that the only way to scale your damage is with the same lightning and crit damage pieces every meta class uses, making the cost for a caster unbearable to perform adequately at mid tier content. I tried being open minded early into the league, as I was hopeful there was a solution. How ever, having tried four different builds it's undeniable that sorc is absolutely unplayable right now. I genuinely feel, for the first time, that the developers haven't touched half the classes in 4 months. Последняя редакция: gouca#2388. Время: 17 апр. 2025 г., 12:50:05
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