Sorceress (and really any spellcaster) is miserable to play

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Mcpanman#6276 написал:

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.

Thats just one way to play it. You can play fireball with it as well, though single target will be smaller. (what I am currently doing).

The bugged interaction you can just not do and youll still deal massive damage with it.

And you also dont need to do cold convert youll just lose out on 2 additive damage nodes on the tree and a single support gem (expends your freeze for more damage) on a skill.

But to say that fire spells dont deal any damage is not the case.


Mana though, you touched on, the other hand. Yes youll have to battle with it. I think its a good thing that casters have to manage some sort of resource. You shouldnt just GET things all the time.


Ill admit Ignite, is ... weak asF its getting the POE1 treatment of bleed before we had aggravate. It just does not deal enough damage.

So it sort of forces you into a single playstyle for spells (crit hit). Which to be fair its EA.


Edit: I just saw "campaign viable" in your post. You dont have the correct supports slotted into your skills if you are having trouble with fire skills in the campaign. You say your gear is fine so its really down to your supports/tree at that point.

Try to do a t16 delirium map 4/4 ritual or juiced breach at the same time that u try to "manage ur mana" xDDD i really think that the ppl saying sorc is playable didnt even try to do real hard content, and they think we complain about not killing final boss of act 3 or smthing like that...

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Mashgesture#2912 написал:

Edit: I just saw "campaign viable" in your post. You dont have the correct supports slotted into your skills if you are having trouble with fire skills in the campaign. You say your gear is fine so its really down to your supports/tree at that point.

You are the only person in this thread and on this website saying this. Have you PLAYED a Sorceress this league? I am curious how you leveled and how that went, since you seem to be certain that it is just fine and dandy.

In reality though, less than 1% (conservative, anecdotal estimate) is even playing a spell based (not minion) archetype. There is either something very wrong with player expectations for the archetypes gameplay, fundamental design flaws, or both. I will cast my guess for "both".

I can assure you no matter how I arranged my supports, the point I am trying to make is that I should not be struggling this much to deal elemental damage in the campaign on a spell casting alt.

You can explain away and make excuses all you want, but the bottom line is that spells are FUNDAMENTALLY flawed, weak, and extremely under tuned to borderline unplayable in almost all content.

It is so easy to scale a attack based character in this game compared to a spell caster. This is not good and spells should be improved. This is my feedback.

This is an extremely bad season. The last APRG game that was this bad was called D4. It's only been about 10 days, but I'm already thinking of giving up.

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Mcpanman#6276 написал:

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Mashgesture#2912 написал:

Edit: I just saw "campaign viable" in your post. You dont have the correct supports slotted into your skills if you are having trouble with fire skills in the campaign. You say your gear is fine so its really down to your supports/tree at that point.

You are the only person in this thread and on this website saying this. Have you PLAYED a Sorceress this league? I am curious how you leveled and how that went, since you seem to be certain that it is just fine and dandy.

Yup sure did. And there was absolutely no hickups in the campaign, despite full ssf.


Make sure to get +gems and then load up on %spell damage, and %fire damage.

Get "gain extra as shock or chill" mod on the wand as well, to take advantage of 30% damage from echoing frost and thunder. Same with Storm breaker.

Stack crit/crit mag, coasting.

Thats what I am doing at least.


If you go stormweaver pick one of the all damage contributes to X so you can apply ailments outside of ignite a bit easier. You can take both but I think one is fine, as a single convert on the wand can take care of shock or chill, and then the ascendancy can take care of either shock or chill. Can put a convert(embitter) on solar orb too to make it easier (what I am doing for chill) as I took shaper of storms for my ascendancy.

Have to agree, sorceress feels like a PoS, at least, against many bosses. I have no trouble clearing out the trash , so to say, but the damage against bosses is just weak, let alone, that i feel the sorceress is gimped in many ways straight out the gate.

For eg: my warrior has Leap Attack, Trample, and Charge. All good (trample not so much) at getting out of tight spots.

Meanwhile, the sorc has no mobility skill what so ever, aside from a janky PoS skill (Lightning Warp) that is only useable on a cullable creature. Wtf even is that dumb ass shit, is my opinion.

Then, curses that last 6 seconds, so you cast it , have time to move, and watch it expire.

Lol. I dunno man, i feel like the devs have not even played their own game at all, i mean, AT ALL!

Right now i'm playing a spellcaster, a witch infernalist ; i'm at the end of act 3 in cruel and it does not feel miserable to play ; it feels the same way for me than the previous league.
I'm playing with physical spells (bone cage and bonestorm) and I oneshot most white mobs, 3 shots rare ones, and it takes less than 30s for bosses.


I know it is not end game, and i still have to see later. But in 0.1 i was playing a blood mage, without archmage, and sure it wasn't easy... In fact, without playing one of meta builds (arc archmage, ice wall overkill, or abusing choir of the storm) all end game was also pretty miserable.

I'll tell you when i see end game ^^

It’s very clear that the Archmage nerf alongside giving EB a huge downside was not play tested. Grim Feast was also straight up removed meanwhile Ghost Dance continues to make ES/EV extremely hard to kill for just 30 spirit. They continue to only give ES these weak stun threshold nodes when what the top of the tree needs is things like reduced bonus chaos damage taken, reduced damage from projectiles, etc.

Anyone playing an Archmage build last patch should have known that without Archmage or massive Demonform stacks, you did pathetic damage. The buffs they gave spells in return were a joke, and some like Arc randomly got nerfed.

Too many support gems for spells give harsh downsides. Chain literally halves Arcs damage and its iconic more damage per chain was removed and even at 15% chain support was barely worth it. Scattershot has a ridiculous downside with not only 35% less damage, but 20% less cast/attack speed.

Now, support gems for utility skills are decent, like Strip Away etc. It’s just that there’s barely anything good for clear skills.

I think cold spells are in a decent spot because of crit scaling but some of frost walls damage should be given to the others. Fire is suffering and only good with bugged interactions, and Arc and Spark are in a bad spot. I personally don’t think the caster meta will be healthy as long as a spell like Spark exists. If Spark is good, its too good, and everything will get nerfed because of it - which is what happened in .20.

I think if they reduce mana cost scaling, give some better support options, and improved the defensive passives on the top half of the tree, spells would be ok. I think the top half of the tree is having to spend too many points on passives that don’t really do much. For example, Kite Runner gives 3% ms, proj speed, and proj damage. Meanwhile the topside equivalent just gives proj speed, no damage or ms. Most spells have less base crit than attacks, so crit nodes are already less impactful for anyone not casting cold spells or is a blood mage, we don’t have power charge crit scaling. The 40-60% ES nodes all have downsides and ES is just empty health that takes double chaos damage. The topside has no DR, which means you’re spending more on defensives instead of damage like the bottom side of the tree, which can be extremely tanky with just 7k evasion and 2k es with Ghost Dance.

Anyways tldr I don’t really think the solution should just be increasing the base damage numbers, theres a lot of things wrong with spells and the topside of the tree.

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drallcom3#6603 написал:

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NomadicMyrrh#1672 написал:

Only the lich is doing well at 16 percent.

half of them are ED (which is nice, but falls off in lategame) and the rest some form of minions.

True, true, and true. Also, at 0.2 launch Lich was way above 20%. Has done nothing but decline over time as everyone figured out minions suck and chaos dot falls off. Started minions gave up. Started completely over with chaos dot, but at this point I can no longer tolerate the un-fun. So, I watch the forums for any kind of good news, which there never seems to be any, and choose to do other things in my free time. Current state of POE2, no point in playing.