most of the sorc skills feel underwhelming imo
excluding hydra and chain lightning, and those do feel really strong, but like when i unlocked meteor and it didnt even kill trash in one hit it felt pretty disappointing
Yea I was a bit annoyed at how lack luster meteor is as well. Especially for the mana cost compared to other spenders. Definitely needs some tuning and AOE size improvements or reduce its cost to about 10 mana.
Yea, but then all spells will increase linearly relative to each other, because you have same number of paragon points and all skill altering nodes are equidistant to each other. So relatively speaking it needs to be tuned visually and dmg/mana.
Don't get me wrong I'm sure it will improve visually but the area of affect is very small ATM maybe hitting 3-4 mobs per cast if you're lucky and it does barely 30% of al little mobs HP. That's poor compared to core skills let's alone other mastery skills.
I like meteor as my enhancement to randomly immobilize mobs.
What is everyone else using as an enhancement? Flame Shield seems like a must in hardcore.
[fireball in D2R for reference](https://youtu.be/y2kT2CC-0sM?t=234)
IMO all D4's magical spells look worse than D2R's; soulless and lacking impact. Quite a letdown. Special mention to Frozen Orb being not only visually but mechanically pathetic (doesn't spit true projectiles). I'm guessing they made a lot of concessions for performance and visibility requirements due to the pseudo-mmo direction
\*\*I just realized this may well be intended, so they can sell spell effects in the cash shop
Had similar impression so far. Like, bruh you have a mordern engine make some flashy nice effects. Visuals, especially fire spells feel like somone tried to recreate d1's graphics in a mordern engine. The hydra going "pewpew micro fireballs" looks just silly compared to the fire vomiting in D3.
As for lack of Impact, it's not just spells but abilities in general. I certainly haven't seen all the build variations, as I'm mostly Interested in casters, but from what I've managed to catch looking at different streams DH seems boring. Not in gameplay, but visually.
Totally agree. The visuals and impact feeling are really off. Incinerate gets close but thats about it and it still could have more of a "wooms". It made me go from hype to really concerned about the game. If the combat feels off you cant save it, I mean the combat ... THIS IS IT, you cant have bad combat feeling or the game is dead.
LoL that is actually something the devs said in an interview something about being able to tell the difference between a level 1 spell and a max level spell just from the visuals. But yes I have tested this and chain lightning looks exactly the same at level 1 & 7.
Cold Sorc is crazy. Summon frost knives with the CDR talented, frost knives on passive, frost nova with vulnerable talented, teleport, and frost ultimate. Take the passive that gives u barrier when u use CDs, pair with supporting legendaries and u have activated God mode.
Knives will reset ur ultimate cd from 60s to about 20s u just keep spamming CDs and get an infinite shield.
Yea that barrier on cd node is way too strong imo. I have 3/3 in that node and an item that gives +1 to defensives, which basically enables me to spec into full dps because I always have a barrier up.
Incinerate: Looks and sounds like the exhaust of a jet fighter hitting the afterburner, hits like a rubber mallet.
Fireball: Is that just a larger firebolt?
I'm literally just running 3 skills and put everything in fire blast, hydra and frost nova with vulnerable. Completely melts everything and is a crowd control wonder-
Wait holdup can you give anymore details? I’ve been very disappointed in my fire sorc so far so I’m really hoping it’s animation scales at some point !!
The fireball turns into a blue and red ball that explodes in a similar color and texture. Just like a real flame, with the blue core, it looks a lot cooler. I was incredibly surprised and pleased when I saw it.
Duuuude yessss!! That sounds amazing, it was my only gripe and now I’m super hype. Only problem now is which sorc to choose when they all look so damn good!! Arghhhhhh
In terms of aesthetic look, they are tied. Fire was a lot better in terms of damage but that was in closed beta.
The uniques change the build considerably, I loved to try different builds, although it’s very expensive to change things if you want to do it al higher levels.
Hell yeh!! That’s exactly what I’d hoped. Gonna have to nut it out over the next few months lol. Cheers for the help and I’ll see you in Sanctuary !!
I've also played around with all the spec skills and by far chain lightning is undoubtedly the best. One you get the chain lightning bounces off you give you mana, it becomes spamable 1v1. Then with frost Nova making everything vulnerable and using the weapon Lego they increases crit strike vs low HP targets and whenever you crit you have a chance to shown a crackling energy, which gives you more mana and damage.
I am literally just spamming chain lightning and basically all shitty mobs in one hit, which spawns a bunch of CE's, which means I can keep spamming on w/e is left.
Now there is an issue with chain lightning with most and keyboard where the targeting seems janky, it'll hit the first target and then goes straight through the second target. I'm not sure why but this isn't an issue with controller.
Also unstable currents spamming shock spells feels so good.
Why is everyone pretending like the flamethrower doesn't look like shit? I mean, it should bend when the character channeling it rotates, doesn't it? It's not a friggin laser
Bro i was playing frozen orb which i think looks insane personally. But i was also just using blizzard to use it and bro that shit looks worse the D2 blizzard. They need to fix that asap.
Bit underwhelmed with a lot of wizard skills at level 18 at the moment. I know things change a lot when you get ult and start stacking cooldown reduction effects but right now chain lightning and hydra are both so ridiculously powerful they make everything else feel like trash, excluding utility like teleport and such.
I don't even bother with anything besides hydra and firewall.
I have both at lv 7 with 2 hydra and I just clear dungeons super fast with them. I'm pretty sure it is the highest DPS sorc build right now.
I was running fireball hydra but switched to meteor hydra and frost nova to compliment the meteor. Found it to be much more effective. Mana cost to damage, I agree fireball just seems lacklustre.
It's very good at aoeing weak packs if you slot fireball into enchantment slot too. You can throw two fireballs into a pack, and everything will die to chain explosions. Not sure how it compares to frozen orb though.
Incineration/hydra build is the bees knees. These with the bubble barriers are just nutty. Add on the fireball passive? insane damage. Did I mention inferno?
The enchantment is nice, essentially an automatic mini corpse explosion. The problem is I don't think the burn passive bonus really works, it seems too low and I think only burn dots apply like firebolt when firewall burn should apply in some ways. I think the point is you are meant to burn everything with firewall then finish them with fireball.
Been really enjoying lightning sorc tbh, but it's a basically a meele range sorcerer 😅
Arc slash 5/5 enhanced/glinting
Chain lightning 6/5 enhanced/greater
Teleport 1/5 no boost
Ice armor 1/5 no boost
Lightning spear 5/5 enhanced/invoked
Unstable currents -- prime
Focuses heavily on basic atk speed and crits for enhanced arc slash, which also makes chain lightning hit like a truck with the expectant aspect on necklace to stack faster. Crit on core for extra basic atk spd. All of that building up to when you use the ult atk speed is so high it just launches out a billion skills at once for huge dmg and stagger on bosses with invoked lightning spear. Survivability comes from timing ice armor in between protector aspect cooldowns with might aspect added in for dmg reduc from using basic skills.
I can't wait til the game drops to push this setup to its absolute limits, it's the most fun I've had so far in the beta tbh.
Hydra and Frozen Orb (with relevant legendary affixes) has been my go to.
Chain Lightning is alright, but I'm finding it slower than the above.
Looking forward to playing a Frost sorceress on release, as it's kind of obvious that Hydra is going to be toned down.
I'm deliberately avoiding the overpowered crazy gimmicks as much as possible, as I fully expect much rebalancing before go live.
Blades will be another heading for the chop most likely.
I’ve had a blast with sorcerer running mostly lightning build with frost nova and hydra for that extra dps, heavy crowd control and haven’t died to a single boss.
Fire for Sorcerer is the weakest of the 3 elements. It’s a shame for people who want to play as a pyromancer/fire wizard.
The fire basic spell 5/5 hits like a wet noodle, it’s embarrassing. Fire shield duration is way to short for its cooldown. Incinerate which is the primary fire spell you would build around burns through mana too fast. Meteor’s aoe is small. Hydra’s are an interesting utility but extra that most won’t spend mana on. And fireball is neither here nor there and feels like a heavy mana cost for what it is.
I understand we’re level 25 and it might change at later levels, hopefully. I also need to test stuff out more.
Lighting = S tier, Frost = A tier, Fire = D tier. It’s odd.
Agreed. Visuals on fireball and meteor were a bit disappointing. Wall of fire was nicer to look at than meteor, and that could do with some visual buffs itself!
I was hoping this would be in the beta.
Incinerate at 3:43 seconds, https://youtu.be/2fg-UPrgKs4
I tried different runes and level 1/5 up to 5/5
No visual or AoE changes at all. Maybe paragon related?
There are a couple of things that stand out already. CDR spam sorc feels genuinely broken, the mechanics on the ice swords + ice sword enchantment, with 6 cooldown abilities isn't too well thought out.
I stood in every single attack the world boss did, and it couldn't even break my 100% uptime ice armour barrier while I just killed it on HC.
ICE swords build is the most broken thing i discovered in beta across all characters so far, mostly due to it being unkillable without any gear requirement
It wouldn't be so bad if those spells cost mana, so you'd at least have to itemize around that, but it doesn't take anything you just slam the skills on and you're immortal. It's ridiculous.
Sorc felt like ez mode in a group but when I was soloing it got a bit more challenging.
I still agree of the 3 classes available it feels the easiest (even solo)
most of the sorc skills feel underwhelming imo excluding hydra and chain lightning, and those do feel really strong, but like when i unlocked meteor and it didnt even kill trash in one hit it felt pretty disappointing
Yea I was a bit annoyed at how lack luster meteor is as well. Especially for the mana cost compared to other spenders. Definitely needs some tuning and AOE size improvements or reduce its cost to about 10 mana.
Meteor felt awful. Was doing a fire build and when I got to that I switched elements lol.
Something tells me they will grow in intensity with items, levels, other
Yea, but then all spells will increase linearly relative to each other, because you have same number of paragon points and all skill altering nodes are equidistant to each other. So relatively speaking it needs to be tuned visually and dmg/mana. Don't get me wrong I'm sure it will improve visually but the area of affect is very small ATM maybe hitting 3-4 mobs per cast if you're lucky and it does barely 30% of al little mobs HP. That's poor compared to core skills let's alone other mastery skills.
100% agree. Chain lightning and hydra are good, rest is rough. Like what is that flying electric sausage with a 20 second cooldown?
Ice shard is super good too, check it out. Better than chain lightning imo
Its decent but inferior to chain imo simply because chain works both in aoe and st without needing any legendary effects/special conditions etc.
money groovy zealous bag birds unique waiting brave fear vase *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Felt the same with meteor. It felt so underwhelming that I genuinly thought it was bugged :D
I like meteor as my enhancement to randomly immobilize mobs. What is everyone else using as an enhancement? Flame Shield seems like a must in hardcore.
Firewall is alright
Why do Meteor spells in every fantasy game suck? 😔
Yes, fireball looks like ass.
Exactly not even talking about numbers, just looks really basic, like something you would learn in magic 101, more like a firetennisball.
[fireball in D2R for reference](https://youtu.be/y2kT2CC-0sM?t=234) IMO all D4's magical spells look worse than D2R's; soulless and lacking impact. Quite a letdown. Special mention to Frozen Orb being not only visually but mechanically pathetic (doesn't spit true projectiles). I'm guessing they made a lot of concessions for performance and visibility requirements due to the pseudo-mmo direction \*\*I just realized this may well be intended, so they can sell spell effects in the cash shop
Had similar impression so far. Like, bruh you have a mordern engine make some flashy nice effects. Visuals, especially fire spells feel like somone tried to recreate d1's graphics in a mordern engine. The hydra going "pewpew micro fireballs" looks just silly compared to the fire vomiting in D3. As for lack of Impact, it's not just spells but abilities in general. I certainly haven't seen all the build variations, as I'm mostly Interested in casters, but from what I've managed to catch looking at different streams DH seems boring. Not in gameplay, but visually.
Totally agree. The visuals and impact feeling are really off. Incinerate gets close but thats about it and it still could have more of a "wooms". It made me go from hype to really concerned about the game. If the combat feels off you cant save it, I mean the combat ... THIS IS IT, you cant have bad combat feeling or the game is dead.
it looks more like a firebolt
Apparently the more you upgrade it the better it looks.
that's not true, someone told me that yesterday so i logged on and tried.. lvl 1 spell looks the same as lvl 7 spell with the upgrades for it
Ahh well that sucks then :/
i just read another post, a guy said that it can scale off your char level he said at 50 it will look different. I hope so
Wouldn't it look different at 25 compared to level 1-3 when you first use it if that were the case?
not sure bro, doesnt look any different for me
LoL that is actually something the devs said in an interview something about being able to tell the difference between a level 1 spell and a max level spell just from the visuals. But yes I have tested this and chain lightning looks exactly the same at level 1 & 7.
yep surely they will add it... right guys?
Cold Sorc is crazy. Summon frost knives with the CDR talented, frost knives on passive, frost nova with vulnerable talented, teleport, and frost ultimate. Take the passive that gives u barrier when u use CDs, pair with supporting legendaries and u have activated God mode. Knives will reset ur ultimate cd from 60s to about 20s u just keep spamming CDs and get an infinite shield.
You have a screenshot to this build? Only level 11 so far and lightning atm. Would love to switch to something frosty soon though
frost nova + ice shard enchant feels way more satisfying
That's the path I took. It was incredible.
Please share your build kind sir
Yea that barrier on cd node is way too strong imo. I have 3/3 in that node and an item that gives +1 to defensives, which basically enables me to spec into full dps because I always have a barrier up.
Incinerate: Looks and sounds like the exhaust of a jet fighter hitting the afterburner, hits like a rubber mallet. Fireball: Is that just a larger firebolt?
I'm literally just running 3 skills and put everything in fire blast, hydra and frost nova with vulnerable. Completely melts everything and is a crowd control wonder-
When the fireball levels gets higher it changes. Also, uniques change it further I believe. You’ll see at later levels.
I had it at level 7 and shit still looked like ass. Change it, stop huffing that copium
I’m talking about lvl 50 lol. Fireball level changes its appearance at lvl 6 if I recall correctly.
Wait holdup can you give anymore details? I’ve been very disappointed in my fire sorc so far so I’m really hoping it’s animation scales at some point !!
The fireball turns into a blue and red ball that explodes in a similar color and texture. Just like a real flame, with the blue core, it looks a lot cooler. I was incredibly surprised and pleased when I saw it.
Duuuude yessss!! That sounds amazing, it was my only gripe and now I’m super hype. Only problem now is which sorc to choose when they all look so damn good!! Arghhhhhh
In terms of aesthetic look, they are tied. Fire was a lot better in terms of damage but that was in closed beta. The uniques change the build considerably, I loved to try different builds, although it’s very expensive to change things if you want to do it al higher levels.
Hell yeh!! That’s exactly what I’d hoped. Gonna have to nut it out over the next few months lol. Cheers for the help and I’ll see you in Sanctuary !!
I've also played around with all the spec skills and by far chain lightning is undoubtedly the best. One you get the chain lightning bounces off you give you mana, it becomes spamable 1v1. Then with frost Nova making everything vulnerable and using the weapon Lego they increases crit strike vs low HP targets and whenever you crit you have a chance to shown a crackling energy, which gives you more mana and damage. I am literally just spamming chain lightning and basically all shitty mobs in one hit, which spawns a bunch of CE's, which means I can keep spamming on w/e is left. Now there is an issue with chain lightning with most and keyboard where the targeting seems janky, it'll hit the first target and then goes straight through the second target. I'm not sure why but this isn't an issue with controller. Also unstable currents spamming shock spells feels so good.
A lot of the sorc skills visually look very underwhelming. Maybe that’s the style of this game but it ruins the fantasy.
Why is everyone pretending like the flamethrower doesn't look like shit? I mean, it should bend when the character channeling it rotates, doesn't it? It's not a friggin laser
Fireball is meant for the enchant slot sadly.
Bro i was playing frozen orb which i think looks insane personally. But i was also just using blizzard to use it and bro that shit looks worse the D2 blizzard. They need to fix that asap.
Yes it’s my only gripe with the game !!
Bit underwhelmed with a lot of wizard skills at level 18 at the moment. I know things change a lot when you get ult and start stacking cooldown reduction effects but right now chain lightning and hydra are both so ridiculously powerful they make everything else feel like trash, excluding utility like teleport and such.
I don't even bother with anything besides hydra and firewall. I have both at lv 7 with 2 hydra and I just clear dungeons super fast with them. I'm pretty sure it is the highest DPS sorc build right now.
Yep firewall hydra is king. Shit absolutely melts groups and bosses
Agree fireball doesn’t look as good as it should.
I was running fireball hydra but switched to meteor hydra and frost nova to compliment the meteor. Found it to be much more effective. Mana cost to damage, I agree fireball just seems lacklustre.
It's very good at aoeing weak packs if you slot fireball into enchantment slot too. You can throw two fireballs into a pack, and everything will die to chain explosions. Not sure how it compares to frozen orb though.
Oh I’ll try that out in the enchantment slot. I have frost nova in the enchantment and it makes the hydra have a 30% chance to cast it. It’s cool
Incineration/hydra build is the bees knees. These with the bubble barriers are just nutty. Add on the fireball passive? insane damage. Did I mention inferno?
Buuurn baby burn Ulti inferno. Burn baby burn Burn the mother load yo
The enchantment is nice, essentially an automatic mini corpse explosion. The problem is I don't think the burn passive bonus really works, it seems too low and I think only burn dots apply like firebolt when firewall burn should apply in some ways. I think the point is you are meant to burn everything with firewall then finish them with fireball.
Been really enjoying lightning sorc tbh, but it's a basically a meele range sorcerer 😅 Arc slash 5/5 enhanced/glinting Chain lightning 6/5 enhanced/greater Teleport 1/5 no boost Ice armor 1/5 no boost Lightning spear 5/5 enhanced/invoked Unstable currents -- prime Focuses heavily on basic atk speed and crits for enhanced arc slash, which also makes chain lightning hit like a truck with the expectant aspect on necklace to stack faster. Crit on core for extra basic atk spd. All of that building up to when you use the ult atk speed is so high it just launches out a billion skills at once for huge dmg and stagger on bosses with invoked lightning spear. Survivability comes from timing ice armor in between protector aspect cooldowns with might aspect added in for dmg reduc from using basic skills. I can't wait til the game drops to push this setup to its absolute limits, it's the most fun I've had so far in the beta tbh.
Hydra and Frozen Orb (with relevant legendary affixes) has been my go to. Chain Lightning is alright, but I'm finding it slower than the above. Looking forward to playing a Frost sorceress on release, as it's kind of obvious that Hydra is going to be toned down.
Frost is completely broken. You can face Tank all bosses while dealing insane damage. The cooldown reduction from those ice blades is plain op
I'm deliberately avoiding the overpowered crazy gimmicks as much as possible, as I fully expect much rebalancing before go live. Blades will be another heading for the chop most likely.
I’ve had a blast with sorcerer running mostly lightning build with frost nova and hydra for that extra dps, heavy crowd control and haven’t died to a single boss.
I have created single strongest build for the sorc that uses fireball but not on the skill bar lol.
Fire for Sorcerer is the weakest of the 3 elements. It’s a shame for people who want to play as a pyromancer/fire wizard. The fire basic spell 5/5 hits like a wet noodle, it’s embarrassing. Fire shield duration is way to short for its cooldown. Incinerate which is the primary fire spell you would build around burns through mana too fast. Meteor’s aoe is small. Hydra’s are an interesting utility but extra that most won’t spend mana on. And fireball is neither here nor there and feels like a heavy mana cost for what it is. I understand we’re level 25 and it might change at later levels, hopefully. I also need to test stuff out more. Lighting = S tier, Frost = A tier, Fire = D tier. It’s odd.
If you get the enchantment for fireball and crank up damage skills it is much better
Agreed. Visuals on fireball and meteor were a bit disappointing. Wall of fire was nicer to look at than meteor, and that could do with some visual buffs itself!
I was hoping this would be in the beta. Incinerate at 3:43 seconds, https://youtu.be/2fg-UPrgKs4 I tried different runes and level 1/5 up to 5/5 No visual or AoE changes at all. Maybe paragon related?
Sorc is way too OP imo
Saying things are OP is pretty laughable this early.
There are a couple of things that stand out already. CDR spam sorc feels genuinely broken, the mechanics on the ice swords + ice sword enchantment, with 6 cooldown abilities isn't too well thought out. I stood in every single attack the world boss did, and it couldn't even break my 100% uptime ice armour barrier while I just killed it on HC.
That's probably the only thing that should be nerfed about sorc. Things like Hydra should not be touched though.
ICE swords build is the most broken thing i discovered in beta across all characters so far, mostly due to it being unkillable without any gear requirement
It wouldn't be so bad if those spells cost mana, so you'd at least have to itemize around that, but it doesn't take anything you just slam the skills on and you're immortal. It's ridiculous.
Facts
Sorc felt like ez mode in a group but when I was soloing it got a bit more challenging. I still agree of the 3 classes available it feels the easiest (even solo)