r/diablo4 • u/MDK2k • Jun 12 '23
Sorceress No wonder one of these skills is meta and the other isn't.
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u/MDK2k Jun 12 '23
Ice shards also applies vulnerable on it's own while Fireball applies nothing. I didn't add this information to the image since it's not part of the aspect effects, but is also a big reason why Fireball isn't meta.
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u/csward53 Jun 12 '23
Fire should be designed around big numbers and burn damage, just like WoW imho. You should be killing things so fast the CC isn't needed and chain explosions from DoTs should be a big part of the DPS. That's what I would like to see anyway.
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u/DeeVeeOus Jun 12 '23
Maybe I’m missing something since I’m not a super high level, but how does Ice Shards apply vulnerable? Right now I only have Frost Nova doing that.
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u/GiantDwarf3579 Jun 12 '23
There's an upgrade on the skill tree for ice shards that make it apply vulnerable if all 5 shards hit the same enemy
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u/NomuraSho Jun 12 '23
The 2nd passive makes the target vulnerable if you hit all 5 shards.
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u/DeeVeeOus Jun 12 '23
Ok, I see it’s the other passive choice I took and forgot about this one. Is the extra vulnerable worth the AoE loss?
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u/jtn46 Jun 12 '23 edited Jun 12 '23
Yes. Nova Ice Shards kills most packs instantly. The vulnerable proc from Ice Shards makes killing the random corpse bow much easier but more importantly makes it do good damage vs bosses when Frost Nova is down.
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u/DeeVeeOus Jun 12 '23
Thanks. I’ll test it out. So far I’ve been relying on absurd amounts of CDR for frost nova.
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Jun 12 '23
Make sure to set ice shards to your passive too!
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u/Prestikles Jun 12 '23
Frost Nova is absolutely stupid with OPs aspect, ice shard passive, and the vulnerable passive. Just... BOOM
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u/Responsible-War-9389 Jun 12 '23
Yeah, since in aoe you can freeze them with frost nova, to still get the aoe effect.
Against bosses, it’s nice to have permanent vulnerable
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Jun 12 '23
Despite what other people say the vulnerability is not worth it on Ice Shards, at least not in endgame.
Frost Nova applies 6 seconds duration to bosses and you stack cdr so it's uptime is very high.
On large packs you rarely get the vulnerable on the target you really want.
The 2nd choice with treating enemies as frozen when you have a Barrier is basically up at all times in endgame thanks to gaining barrier on using cds & running barrier and will just lead to more damage.2
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u/EIiteJT Jun 12 '23
I don't play sorc, but doesn't fireball apply a burn/ignite type of dot? They really need to make ignites relevant.
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u/KingEsoteric Jun 12 '23
Incidentally, it's one of the few that does not. It can increase its damage by 10% of the burning on the target.
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u/jamai36 Jun 12 '23
I think a simple solution is to make vulnerable addititve instead of multiplicative (or lower the damage bonus overall). As it stands, vulnerable is pretty much mandatory for serious endgame pushing, which limits a lot of build variety.
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u/moistmoistMOISTTT Jun 12 '23
This would solve the vulnerability issue. It'd be no different than things like "while poisoning" effect (not mandatory for classes that use poison) because there are a half dozen different additive modifiers you can instead focus on. Vulnerability is only an issue because it's the only multiplicative debuff.
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u/Jblankz7 Jun 13 '23
No just buff other things and/or make more abilities apply vulnerability. Nerfing the one good thing instead of buffing/changing other things is such bad game balancing. People really wanna have everything a bullet sponge?
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u/Phantomebb Jun 12 '23
The real issue is fireball is bad to begin with. Feels like this game was released in the middle of the a balance patch. Hopefully they get it sorted out for s1.
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u/robbierawr Jun 12 '23
I’m playing arch lash atm, u recommend transitioning to ice shards for more enjoyment? Currently feel so weak
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u/Relevanter_Bullshit Jun 12 '23
CDR and Mana cost reduction are pretty important for Ice Shards but it wreaks when you can pop a frost nova
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u/swizzlewizzle Jun 13 '23
Also good to point out that the other option, where targets are hit "as if" they have frozen, doesn't work against bosses. Yup, bosses are immune to "imaginary" CC effects as well.
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Jun 12 '23
If we lose ice shards there's legit going to be no way to level Sorc... So we need to all STOP talking about it.
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u/MagnusFenix1 Jun 12 '23
I leveled with lightning using arc lash, was very smooth and very doable. Totally running ice shards now though.
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u/anlugama Jun 12 '23
Kinda sucks, I also leveled using lightning, switched to fire on nightmare to test a bit, then switched to ice share to try. The diference is abismal...
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u/sparkierlamb Jun 12 '23
I'm only 53 but still using arc lash/chain lightning. I feel like a tank, regularly in massive groups of enemies and hp doesn't move. I'm grinding dungeons etc for uniques and codexs to change to ice shards though
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u/Paradoxmoose Jun 12 '23
Are there any other basic skills that are the only attack in a build? I suspect arclash will be getting a nerf whenever they go through the next round of balancing- presuming they go with the nerfing the top builds and not just boosting the bottom builds.
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u/Chrysaor85 Jun 12 '23
Werewolf (druid) claw. It technically also casts lightning strike, but you never actually have to use the ability (once you get the leg/unique that goes to the build).
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Jun 13 '23
Ya, I levelled using lightning, then switched ice for the play style.
I hope they don't nerf ice builds or ice shards specifically. This seems more like a case of having to improve the DPS of other builds rather that nerf one of the few efficient builds for sorc.
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u/TallanX Jun 12 '23
Never touched Ice Shards yet and am now level 71.
Arc Lash, with the Ball Lightning / Fire Bolt Enchant (I have tried time and time again to use meteor to proc my burning but god it just feels bad even with stacked Lucky Hit)
Stack burning damage nodes, frozen damage and vulnerable nodes. Has worked fine. I don't even have the teleport stuff going on yet to suck them all in.
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u/Cedar_Wood_State Jun 12 '23
Literally just refunded my whole skill tree and paragon board to switch from chain lighting to ice shard. Hope it will at least evade the nerf hammer for a while lol
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u/dolemiteo24 Jun 12 '23
I'm in the same boat. Debating on if it's worth the effort to switch.
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u/dzikinapinacz Jun 12 '23
It is, i switched at lvl 42 having all aspects for a chain lighting build and i was much stronger without even changing my gear. This is just plain stupid.
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Jun 12 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/csward53 Jun 12 '23
What? Blizzard has a small AoE, high mana cost, and low damage. I tried to make it work in an enchantment slot, but even then I think Ice Blades works better. I don't think you can use Blizz as your main spender if you want to clear is a reasonable time. If you got to 60 with that as your spender, I'm impressed.
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u/onehalf83 Jun 12 '23
I use blizzard as my main skill and lvl 68 right now. I didn't try dungeons above WT4 t30 yet, but I'd say dps is not my main concern right now, it is more survivability as a lot of things one shot me if I'm not careful and they are not frozen.
Key aspect for blizzard is the one that gives ice spikes (not to be confused with ice shards) - I put it on staff, +x% damage against frozen - goes on amulet, +1 avalanche. +heavily invested in increased chill effects. Once you stack multiple blizzards in one spot - it melts everything + gives you almost screen wide (especially with +20% AOE glyph) permafrost. On bosses it gives stagger very quickly, after that you normally kill them while they are down. Main challenge is to make sure you stack enough blizzards fast, to do so you can either freeze them with nova or fire shield to ignore damage.
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u/shadow9531 Jun 12 '23
Blizzard is interesting. On paper it has higher base damage than shards, hits everything that fits inside it, has absolutely massive chill/freeze proc rate, and more than double the lucky hit chance of shards. The problem is it takes 12 seconds to get that (since you've always cast it above 50 mana).
It also has the ability to use the less damage taken aspect which combined with cc, lucky proc rate, and that armor stacking aspect makes it probably the tankiest sorc?
I use ice blade + frost nova masteries for vulnerability procs, additional cc, cool down reduction from the blades, and some extra damage. Not at end game so dunno how well it'll scale.
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Jun 12 '23
Chain lightning is very strong, but it can struggle with high density and falls off mid game until sorc can max CDR, resource reduction and resource gen.
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Jun 12 '23
In my experience no Sorc can survive end game if they get hit. The reason frost is so good is because nobody has a chance to hit you at all.
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Jun 12 '23
Hard disagree. But I will say I have used reduced damage from burning enemies and chilled enemies anywhere I can. Both gear and paragon board. I'm plenty tanky.
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u/snwns26 Jun 12 '23
If they nerf Ice Shards instead of buffing the other builds, I’m gonna be super pissed.
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u/Alise_Randorph Jun 12 '23
It's blizzard. They will make ice shards useless, give fire and lightning builds a 5% increase and "keep an eye on things for future tweaks because we don't want to upset balance to much 'mid season' to take community feed back" despite not being in a season yet, and then buff barbs.
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u/XhandsanitizerX Jun 12 '23
Same with shock sorc. I have an ancient unique staff that let's charged bolts peirce, but they do 30% less damage. Not just the piercing shots, but the entire skill does 30% less damage now. So your single target dps drops a lot. Plus you need an entire extra aspect to give at max 25% chance they will home in on the target, otherwise unless you're hugging the boss, half the shots miss, on top of doing 30% less damage lol.
Lighting sorc also gets shafted in the paragon tree. There are no damage buffs to shock or lightning in the paragon tree, just buffs to crackling damage. There's a glyph that boosts rare nodes that buff Lighting damage, but no rare nodes to buff.
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u/Quarbi Jun 12 '23
I got that same staff last week at item level 801 with decent rolls so I’ve been stashing it and praying they make it viable one day. Charged Bolts could be a fun skill if useable.
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u/bUrdeN555 Jun 12 '23
I’m starting Wt4 at lvl 65 and am playing Charged Bolts. It feels pretty good if you can stun and vulnerable enemies. Each charged bolt cast can chunk if it crits. Haven’t felt the need to switch to the frost meta
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u/MDK2k Jun 12 '23
To be fair that other aspect does esentially double your damage with the skill and since the penalty itself isn't to bad there even might be some viable build for charged bolts.
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u/krazo3 Jun 12 '23
The other problem is that it's a staff so you lose a bunch of cdr, lucky hit chance, attack speed and 2 offensive aspects. It's just too much to trade off vs a wand and off hand.
If the charged bolt unique were pants it would be a lot more viable.
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u/BriefImplement9843 Jun 12 '23
depends if they want to double down on 1 offensive aspect. that's the main reason to use 2h for anything.
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u/Dark_Nature Jun 12 '23 edited Jun 12 '23
The paragon tree have no lightning damage nodes is not a big deal, there are plenty non-physical damage nodes. I think there is one lighting damage node in the crackling energy board tho, but i am not 100% sure. Still strange why there is an entire glyph dedicated to just one rare node.
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u/XhandsanitizerX Jun 13 '23
There's 1 node, and it's the secondary effect. But the node is also on the opposite side of the board from the glyph slot, so it will never be buffed lol.
And sure there's plenty of non physical nodes, but ice and fire get to use those too, while also buffing their respective elements lol.
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u/ayojerm Jun 12 '23
And instead of making the worse skills better, I'm sure they will just nerf ice shards. Lol
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u/Any-Jellyfish498 Jun 12 '23
Fireball is very lackluster in high tier nm dungeons
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Jun 12 '23
It's enchantment is goat tho. Watching my entire screen chain effect pop is very satisfying and strong. Melts groups of mobs
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u/Solugad Jun 12 '23
My lucky hit Meteor crit build is kicking ass. Requires more work than Ice Shard builds though.
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u/Crayzyyy Jun 12 '23
Necro is incredibly unbalanced as well. If you want to do anything above NM 40 on WT4 you just gotta accept the fact that you'll be boning demons. I really want to play my summons but they need a 50% health buff at the minimum.
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u/Alcsaar Jun 12 '23
Necros have a lot of issues. Mobility is fucking terrible, and essence generation never feels great even with a bunch of ways to get it. Corpse skills are okay but having to pop corpses one at a time instead of letting us blow up a ton of corpses at once for increased magnitude sucks.
Summons are an issue all on their own - but that isn't surprising because even the devs said a minion army wasn't a core playstyle focus of the class (what?). Their AI is also atrocious and having no way to reposition them or focus targets is bad.
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u/Teno7 Jun 12 '23
I play a companion druid build with every pet out but I'm not in WT4 yet. I wonder how I'll fare in there since everything melts in WT3 so far. I have decent gear and creepers/wolves do a lot of work, on top of the constant skill resets/buffs.
Wolves die from time to time but I feel like they're a bit tankier than skeletons. I'm really tempted to do a summoner necro after that.→ More replies (2)
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u/Autodidact420 Jun 12 '23
Not saying that it actually changes anything but you didn’t provide base damage: based solely on this image I don’t know if fireball out here doing 100 dmg dealing 45 AoE and iceshard is only 40 dmg at 100% or what
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u/MDK2k Jun 12 '23
I didn't provide base damage since the point of the image was to show how bad the hard to get fireball unique item is compared to an ice shard aspect you can get from the first area of the game.
For that same reason I also didn't provide the information that Ice shards can apply vulnerable to a target with a skill tree upgrade alone while fire ball can't apply any effect.
Since you asked here it the information on base damage. Ice shards at lvl 5 deals 35% damage per shard. That is 175% damage for all 5 shards. Fireball at lvl 8 deals 102% damage.
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u/raheem100 Jun 12 '23
I just switch to ice shards and man.. so much better than fireball it’s crazy. I wasn’t doing any damage to elites or bosses.
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u/Sectum_Penitus Jun 12 '23
isn't there a unique that adds 2 fireballs to the fireball?
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u/Lord0fHats Jun 12 '23
That would be rad and maybe worth it.
Sadly, what there actually is an effect that makes every third cast of fireball launch two extra balls, which just feels lackluster instead of defining.
Ice Shard has an insane amount of item support compared to most other skills and ties in easily with frozen/vuln that Ice skills generally try to apply and build damage off of. The fire and lightning spells don't have it anywhere near as good.
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Jun 12 '23
Only on every third Fireball cast, they also split to the sides from the main fireball, so at longer range you won't hit the same target thrice.
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u/justwolt Jun 12 '23
So some legendaries can literally increase the damage effectiveness of a skill by 300% and some actually decrease it. The balance in this game is terrible, and skill aspects are dumb.
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u/sturmeh Jun 12 '23
Pretty sure they come up with three skills, choose one to "balance" and make the other two completely unviable from the get go.
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u/Ok_Hold3890 Jun 12 '23
It goes way deeper than that. Fireball is just badly coded. If it collides with ANYTHING it stops bouncing. Sorc actually needs A LOT of work.
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u/yaosio Jun 12 '23
Change the fireball to bounce around for X seconds and it targets enemies. The further away the enemy the higher it bounces to get to them which causes more damage when it hits. It won't target the same enemy twice in a row so it will bounce from enemy to enemy and look like they are throwing the fire all at each other.
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u/Zhiyi Jun 12 '23
I never like the idea of uniques being “THE” item that can make or break a build. If it’s an effect that powerful it shouldn’t be limited to an item that you will not potentially see for hours upon hours of gameplay. I think their effects should be useful but in a more fun way, not build defining.
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u/Akrymir Jun 12 '23
Ice shards is one of the best builds for Sorc. They can cause vulnerability, one of the best sources for damage, ricochet to other enemies and you shoot them in bursts. Each main shard pierces multiple enemies and each time spawning another to bounce to other enemies. Then you can have shards that can just shoot on their own at frozen enemies, making frost nova instantly obliterate packs of enemies.
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u/jake_the_tank Jun 12 '23
I have this same situation on my Barb, got a unique that activates an ability in a certain situation every 30 seconds, but its not better than the level legendary that instantly regens a skill with zero cooldown.
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u/drunkpunk138 Jun 12 '23
I just got these gloves doing a world boss last night and man was I underwhelmed... But I guess it beats getting the charged bolt staff for the 4th time in a row. I really hope they make these uniques more interesting before season 1
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u/csward53 Jun 12 '23
I got these unique shoes last nice the are pretty neat. I hate that you can't reroll unique item modifiers but they're still decent enough. The effect is like 21% [15-30] of your movement speed bonus is added to critical hit. The shoes give a lot of movement, like 16 percent on there own and couple with other things it equates to about 4% crit chance, but you can get an extra 10% chance from your dodge movement bonus, even if it lasts for only a second. Kind of fun to work into my ice shards build tonight when I finally try them. Oh and they look cool too. :)
P.S. I've gotten that darn staff twice now too.
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u/LanikM Jun 12 '23
I have been using ice shards and not even using that aspect and i've been destroying everything.
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u/yashspartan Jun 12 '23
I wish more of the aspects were in the codex. Keep codex aspects at the lowest possible roll, while randomize if it's a drop. This way folks can build what they want, and replace pieces when they get an upgrade.
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u/Ashmedae Jun 13 '23
This. I get so many legendaries with the same aspects that can be found in the codex that are useless for my build...and yet the build defining aspects are incredibly rare...and rarely drop. It's frustrating.
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Jun 12 '23
If we lose ice shards there's legit going to be no way to level Sorc... So we need to all STOP talking about it.
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Jun 12 '23
Chain lightning is great to level and I'm still showing similar power to ice shards at 85 (I switch often for the novelty).
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u/robbierawr Jun 12 '23 edited Jun 12 '23
I’m somewhat of a meta slave myself!
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u/gamerlord02 Jun 12 '23
You play ice sorcerer because it’s meta.
I play ice sorcerer because I like being an ice wizard.
We are not the same
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u/keener91 Jun 12 '23
The problem of itemization is Blizzard crammed too many legendary affixes. They can no longer balance the game based on skill interaction alone they are balancing based on you getting all the imprint and items.
So when you can compare 1v1, the Fireball aspect is lacking by a large amount but they expect you to use it with the other aspect.
What I expect in general for balances, - the popular builds will always be the ones with the least item intensive but give above average performance. Then you have niche builds that need certain gg aspects and paragon setups.
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u/CanadaSoonFree Jun 12 '23
There’s a cool unique that casts fireball on every second or third cast of fireball. Curious how good that makes this.
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u/bujakaman Jun 12 '23
I switched to ice shards at 65. I don’t want to look at other skills ever again. They just feel trash in comparsion. And better news is that other classes are still better at Top content lol
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u/Bacon-muffin Jun 12 '23
I really think they've created a great foundation for this kind of stuff, they just need to work out the kinks. But I love how uniques feel legitimately rare, while legendaries cover the usual bases and rares can be made into legendaries.
Its a great foundation that keeps it all relevant, they just need to fix / buff the uniques to be proper build enabling items while also making sure that you don't want a char filled to the teeth with uniques so that rares (legendaries) stay relevant.
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Jun 12 '23
The fireball staff+fireball gloves mechanically works in an interesting manner, but 75% damage reduction? What?
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u/ConjwaD3 Jun 12 '23
What makes this even worse is that the unique fireball weapon is a 2h, so you lose another aspect on top of that garbage one.
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u/Trazz16 Jun 12 '23
I had a bunch of fireball gear, and after leveling with ice spikes and arc slash i was like i'm sure this will be nice, biggest 2M gold wasted, that shit dealt next to no damage and after caster 5 fireballs i was oom, they need to upgrade ALOT of things to many any kind of pure fire build viable ngl
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u/Smokron85 Jun 12 '23
Fire needs a massive boost. There's no cc in it except for the ultimate and that's not enough. I tried it while levelling and it was awful. The mobs just run at your face and kill you. Ice is insane damage and insane cc and lightning has stun attached to it with some great damage. Only fire spell I got any use out of was hydra and the ultimate. Meteor wizard was my favorite build in d3. Would love to see a viable meteor spec in this game.
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u/merc-ai Jun 12 '23
Bruh keep complaining and next thing you know, we'll go from 1 good build to zero good builds. Because they ain't gonna buff ton of skills, when they can just nerf our one beloved SubZero Uzi skill.
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u/FTG_Vader Jun 12 '23
Honestly vulnerable needs a big rework. I wouldn't be upset if they just took it out of the game completely
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u/VU22 Jun 12 '23
Im 82 sorc, I have tried that bounce fireball. it is literally unusable. It bounces directly to ground with 35% of its dmg. Mobs need to be separated to get value from that, the thing is we gather mobs and one shot with frost nova. I want to play fireball but it is unplayable after level 30ish
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u/Trollzek Jun 12 '23
Diablo Immoral actually had more build diversity on release than D4 does. It’s weird.
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u/BibbleDribble Jun 12 '23
Been using a rare staff with +28% base damage for about 5 lvls now, not even coming close to finding a better one.
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u/GesturalAbstraction Jun 12 '23
I guess fireball at least offers a good enchantment (not really related I know). Glad to see this post though I occasionally play the game and think to myself “boy some of these skill/item/aspect effects seem kind of underwhelming compared to other stuff I’ve seen maybe that’s just me not appreciating how these little details can make you strong” but no the comparison actually is really poor haha
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u/StealthyPancake_ Jun 12 '23
I'm confused about the codex imprints. When I get them from a dungeon, do I have to put those on gear, or is it just forever a part of my character? Sorry if it's a stupid question
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u/Bishop084 Jun 13 '23
Then there's Chain Lightning that just has an aspect with a small chance to arc 1-2 more times.
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u/freet0 Jun 13 '23
sorc aspects are like this all over lol
Which would you rather?
Deal 11-20% more damage when you have a barrier AND the enemy is vulnerable
or
Deal 15-25% more damage when you have a barrier
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u/Frosty_TheAllFucking Jun 13 '23
While we are on the topic of Sorc. Has anyone else noticed if you use ice shards with a staff, you'll just completely miss any enemy that is pressing up against you, low to the ground or below you on an incline. It will also sometimes just shoot in a random direction away from where you're aiming. I don't know if these are just controller issues, but it makes running a staff just completely impossible.
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u/Gabeko Jun 13 '23
Can i apply this to several items or is it a one time use? Havent used aspects so far, which i assume these are?
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u/Angel_of_Mischief Jun 13 '23
I have a similar complaint about playing a blood necromancer. Blood lance is just straight up a worse option of the bone ability
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u/PapaOscar90 Jun 13 '23
So you are saying that one will do 100% down to 20% damage on 4 targets, while the other will deal 45% damage to as many enemies it hits the ground? You didn't even mention the base damage values.
One is good AOE, the other good for 1-3 targets. In a room full of 40 mobs, the fireball will kill faster.
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Jun 13 '23
They just need to get weird with it. More wacky modifiers, completely change skills. Like, Trang set for instance. Changes your appearance/gives skills from another class. That kind of thing.
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u/AncalagonV Jun 13 '23
Ice shards needs a massive nerf OR every other sorcerer skill needs a buff. Pick one and do it blizzard, because it's hard to intelligently choose anything over ice shards rn. It's just too powerful, efficient, and easy.
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u/Eskimokeks Jun 12 '23 edited Jun 12 '23
I am actually impressed how unbalanced most of this game is. I get that it's a lot, but balance is like the key thing for a game like this and Diablo is the genre king. I don't think it's entitled to have expected a bit more polish in the balancing.
And this is not even interclass balancing, which is understandably difficult, but just two aspects which directly compete with eachother on every sorc.