Sorc got to be good tough?u seen leaderbord at sc waves? 800+ SORCERER? Im playing warpath i even cant get to 70+😅
Cascade don’t feel that great. With the mana comsuption and the lack of mana efficiency node, the buff will stack against foes where the buff is not needed.
Moreover, I don’t understand why it’s behind Praesidium. Same for Subvention behind Twinbeam. There is often a “theme” on a branch, but not there. So I don’t understand why I should spend points on the previous nodes to unlock the further ones.
For Twinbeam, it would be fun if one beam is only fire and one is only lightning (and both become fire or lightning if we take the nodes to convert all damage).
By the way, Infernal Ray and Electrify should be further on the branches to prevent someone to take both. You only need 6 points to unlock both and have a paradox (it could become a void ray exploding in a black hole though).
(If we convert all damage to fire, do we keep chances to shock?)
I don’t understand why Amplification and Unbridled Power can have up to 5 points.
Why Laser Focus doesn’t reduce width of the beam? With such a name, it’s an effect we expected. With such a name, we could even expect the skill to not pierce before and becoming piercing with that node.
Instead, it’s a massive nerf of the ray. And the tooltip is not clear: does the mana regen replace the mana comsuption of the skill or is it -20 + 10 mana/sec while damaging enemies? (And not even +10 per enemy :’( )
That’s actually a bug (one of which I’d mentioned in my post, but I’d missed the other one).
Sarno, when does patch 0.7.4 come out? Is it early November? 
We’re not yet ready to announce a release date.
Currently I expect us to release it mid-November-ish. That’s a guess - not a promise. 
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Please add some items aswell 
The will to have meaningful nodes is commendable of course, but the trade-offs proposed in this preview are way too harsh. Let’s take a look at the main offenders.
Glass cannon could result in taking 144 % increased damage while channeling Disintegrate (provided we can reach enough mana regeneration to sustain channeling it at Tier 3). Since we are channeling, we cannot do anything to defend ourselves against incoming damage. We already take more damage because we don’t dodge incoming attacks and can’t use defensive skills to mitigate incoming damage while we are immobile and channeling. Adding a damage increase effect on top of that isn’t going to bode well for us. In every ARPG, channeling builds are known for the need to mitigate damage more than non-channeling builds, with the exception of movement channeling skills (aka Spin2Win). On top of being a very bad choice to make, the damage bonus we gain is 33 % lesser than the damage increase we take. This cannot work.
Escalation/Amplification/Unbridled Power : the mana drain penalty is extreme. You said base mana regen is 10/second. The skill costs 20 mana/second at Tier 1, making it 60/second at Tier 3. Even with Laser Focus and Hyperfocal, we would still be losing mana at an alarming rate, and Laser Focus kills our damage to provide meager mana regeneration.
Laser Focus : the net gain is negligible in that it won’t offset the additional channeling cost that comes from other nodes, and we have to sacrifice 70 % of our damage output for that.
All in all, the trade-off should exist between nodes and not inside them. I really appreciate having to choose between different playstyles, but what’s the use of having to spend points on skills if different nodes just cancel each other out or destroy our viability or damage output to offer a meager bonus to something else ?
Having to take Laser Focus to alleviate the increased mana cost from Escalation, while sacrificing a huge portion of my damage output that is granted precisely by the node that is responsible for bumping my mana drain through the roof is the perfect example of why this design doesn’t work.
I think the tree is fine (Overall as an idea and Concept), and I can imagine that it plays well too while leaving interesting choices playstylewise, too.
I feel, for myself, and maybe also for other People, that the general theme of the mage as he finds himself now with the skills currently available, is that you have mostly “shoot” skills that lack diversity in the way they are played (as skills and therefor as how the mage plays itself).
That leaves less room for the mage to be a mage. To also be tactical in more adverse ways that highly differentiate from each other. Right now, the mage feels - despite the many skill choices (in regards to damaging skills like fireball, Meteor, orb, etc) - that there`s not much choice in playstyle other than differentiating melee with spell. So either you go melee, or you cast. But you cast damage, and for me most damage skills feel the same the way they are cast and played out: Cast, deal dmg, cast again. Positioning, Timing ain´t important. Its mainly: dish out damage.
The only skill that feels more tactical and changes the Gameplay dynamic a bit, for me, is the orb - for it can be prolonged via decreasing its Speed, therefor it being a longer-lasting Duration-spell skill that is dealing damage over a few seconds (without being a “DoT”).
Spells that deal Damage over a period of time (not necasserily “DoT”) - but something like… a firestorm, a hurricane, a Blizzard, a Lightning-storm in a targed area, that deals its Damage in X seconds. A stationary Hydra, a thunderstorm that strucks enemys in the Cloud, or something.
A “click-and-Forget” and “use-other-abilites-too-during-its-duration”.
I love mage for being a kiter, or having a feel of the kiter! Black-hole comes closest to that, although it is very different in its concept and purpose of usage - its mainly crowd control and high CD, which is fine - but thats not what I`m pointing at.
For me, right now it feels bland because all his abilities - albeit being different - “feel” like the same, as in, there`s not much choice… the only choice is, “with what will I deal Damage with”, but not “how will I deal Damage differently and therefor play my mage differently”. Which skills i will use will not alter my game-Play much, because the differentiation between the skills is more a matter of “how much dmg and mana does it cost”, but not necasserily “how will it make me play my mage differently in the way I deal my damage and survive”. For it plays differently in the sense that there´s another visual skill coming from my mage when I press that button, yes, but not to the degree that makes it interesting and fun as in, I have to play and move my mage differentl, not in the sense that gameplay-Dynamics really change.
Other classes do this quite well, IMO. They feel diverse with each of their dmg-skill-choices, because they all more or less allow for different game-play and do different things that matter. Mage mainly does damage, so there`s not as much choice involved, other than Maybe being Ultra fast and efficient (cast Speed, dmg, mana reg).
E.g., lets say we have a thunderstorm skill that Costs 60-80 mana or something and lasts 4 seconds, dealing moderate amount of Damage in an AoE over its duration. It`s not meant as a crowd-control like black-hole is; its mana cost are expensive, because it actually is a strong damage-dealing-skill. It IS meant to be played around, so its cooldown is shorther than its duration.
I could think of many skills like that that would have good Synergy with current skills in the game, making for a looot more viable and different builds and playstyle-combinations than there are atm (in my opinion) for the mage. Disentigrate does a good Addition to that I feel, since it offers alternative mechanics (quite the opposite of the above, which is: stand still and deal damage over time (which isnt DoT)).
E.g. Any type of Elemental-Hydra - medium mana cost (35), long Duration (6-7s), Shorter cooldown (2-3s), medium damage Overall (can have multiple on the field, 2 or 3 total), stackable in damage with medium range
Any type of storm (firestorm, Blizzard (Cold), lightningstorm) - high mana cost (60-70), medium Duration (4s) and cooldown (3s), non-stackable in damage, high AoE
Some other Kind of this, like a Hail, or a fire-eruption, middle-high in mana cost (45), middle in Duration (5-6 seconds) and low in CD (2-3s), stackable in damage with medium range and damage-output
Its stationary and viable as a damage-skill, and it can be combined effectively with all the “spam” spells that youve got - fireball, Meteor, orb, etc. Glacier and meteor too feel more like a fireball skill than it does like this “stationary-duration-based” skill, therefor being on the same tactical-skill-choice-chart as the other “cast-and-hit” skills essentially (except melee-mage-skills and the defensive ones ofc, they of course do alter play-style wise^^)
I`d wish for more variety in active damage-spells playstyle-wise. Disentigrate does a good Job with this! I think in that regard, we Need no more “shoot” skills (which I see Meteor and glacier also being such), and more like this (disentigrate offering different mechanicsplaystyle-wise).
Elemental nova does a good Job in adding to the variety, although its not my favourite skill on its own and its not ranged-and-kite-ish, but it adds to the way a caster could be played, it combines good with a melee based mage because it profits from being up-close, and is nice with spells that make you less mobile, therefor “force” you to be more up-close at least sometimes - like disentigrate, therefor adding interesting Juices to your play-style-possibilities.
As you see in your example: There are a lot of people up there in arena waves with a warpath build, personal skill has a big impact. Sure you CAN build sorc builds that work but with a ton more effort then other builds. I’m pretty sure there are people out there who could push Druides in hundrets of waves just by using bearform and right click because the use the right items.
Not a fan of this tree. Lightening seems to get the short end of the node stick. Shock being as bad as it is right now I find these nodes not that great. Unless shock changes. Over all not a very interesting or good tree but others seem to have laid that fact out good.
In don’t understand all those negative post.
For me the tree feel really interesting.
Don’t forget the new passive give for class specialization: +30 mana and lmana cost = increase damage for mage.
i don’t play mage for now (I can’t play a lot). But my full melee spellblade is my best char (ward leecher).
I feel the Tree allow you to use the skill as many viable ways.
You have many way too make aoe or single damage and to make hight damage/hight mana or medium or low to spam.
I really like the lighteneing way with the interact with enother skill.
Tendrils is very interesting to make desintegrate as fuel to the other skill.
Praesidium is very interesting too to make the skill as primary.
Backfire feel really fun.
I really love all the tree and all the concepts.
The number feel right to me, but is hard to say without testing.
I really want to play it
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Class specialization isn’t there yet so it don’t count for anything. They can still change it to something like fire skills improve the dmh of ice skills and ice skills the dmg of lighning skills and so on. Don’t count in stuff that isn’t there.
The raw tree looks like “Go for more dmg with insane high mana costs” or “Go for utility and do medium wannabe aoe” or “Whatever you try to accomplish it isn’t working” kind of builds. Don’t forget with this skill you root yourself and depending on the ability to animationcancel it this makes you more vulnerable to ranged attacks. If they implement a sustained dmg that keeps you in place I totaly miss stuff like “increased resistences while channeling” and stuff like that.
So far i would use EVERY other spell over desintegrate even when I absolutely LOVE this kind of skill. It’s just to flawed and the only meaningfull dmg increase skyrockets the cost of the spell far to much on paper when you consider dmg/mana spent. Sure if the base dmg of the skill is insanely high everything is fine but it would be rather braindead to implement a channeled skill like this with a high ammount of base dmg.
Praesidium give ward during channeling.
How can you say that without testing:
It is indeed a risk but the opposite is true too, that could be a wonderfull skill that allow many things
With all the possible ward retention out there, there ward is still faster gone then generated even on heaviely ward relient builds. Maybe I do something wrong but I don’t understand why people think ward is in a good place. On top of it it seems like it isn’t enough vs the increased weakness to ranged attacks.
I can tell this because there isn’t that much synergy in the tree from my point of view. You can go the pure dmg route with the increasing beam stages adding in a second beam or add a bit of utility like some AoE proccs and stuff but with 20 points in the skilltree it’s hard to make that skill meaningfull compared to other spell options. I still think you’ll be better of with the 100% pierce chance fireball spell because at the end of the day it makes the same thing like desintegrate but in a bursty rather then a sustained way.
Sure everything can change when the skill goes live depending on the base dmg of the skill but I still don’t see that much room for interactions in the skilltree that are meaningfull.
I would advise dev’s to do a final look at skill and passive tree balance and performance after all skills, gear, classes, network multiplayer, and enemies have been added to the game a month before release, so that you can get the game to a state, were the majority of players are content with not only the amount of build diversity you can play, but also how effective those builds they are playing, perform on the way to looting end game gear once you hit level 100.
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Hello, Travelers! As you can probably see there were a lot of updates to Disintegrate between this preview and its release in 0.7.4. The design team would love to hear your feedback. Many of us on the design team love this style of skill and we want it to feel great.
Note:
Today, internally we have buffed its base damage by 43%. This is not live yet.
Hi design team! I spent about 4-6 hours testing this out yesterday (all on stream in case you want my more detailed thoughts and reactions), and I think this ability currently has three major flaws. One is scaling, which it looks like you are already addressing. The second has to do with the options we have to increase Disintegration’s damage, and the trade-offs that need to be made. Let me start by saying I am not against trade-offs. I know some people were upset about trade-offs during the skill preview, but I think they can and often are good game design. However, in this instance, the trade-offs are incongruous. Here is what I mean by that…in order to get reasonably good damage from this ability, the player must take escalation, amplification, and stored power. These nodes all create a delay of some sort before the player can reach maximum damage, or in stored power’s case, any damage at all. (backfire is even more egregious…it took so long before a proc that I couldn’t find a pack of mobs that would live long enough to use it). This play style isn’t bad in and of itself, but it requires the player to stand in one place for extended periods of time in order to maximize damage, but sorcerer is also a squishy clase and LE is a game that punishes players for standing in enemy mechanics. Galvanized Defense and Praesidium will help allow the player to stand in one place for longer, but it costs half of the total skill points in order to take just these two nodes, substantially limiting the player’s ability to maximize damage and completely taking a bunch of potentially interesting nodes off the table as the aforementioned defense nodes become mandatory (and the glass cannon node has no use in this play style, yet is locked behind nodes that require said playstyle). Another option is to take nodes that slow and shock, however even if these nodes are effective, they will provide no protection from the player towards any ranged attacks, and many of the most powerful attacks in the game are ranged and are used frequently by the enemy. I think for this playstyle to work it either needs to be faster or tankier than it currently is. Extension would help by letting the player attack from farther away but there isn’t any room for it. Stored power and backfire just feel really bad right now, and I don’t know that I would want to use them even if they were performing well (if backfire procced often I probably would, but the .8 second delay for stored power frustrates me). My final point is this; by making Disintegrate a DoT that is also channeled, you have removed a lot of the fun build options. It can neither crit nor be effected by cast speed, so the only thing a player can do is increase damage. My favorite builds either crit a lot or have high cast speed (or both), but there is no path here for either. The attack can also be dodged by enemies, despite being a DoT, so it doesn’t even benefit from the one thing that makes DoTs scary to players when used by enemies, and would therefore be a positive when dealing with enemies who have dodge.
I hope this helps! I really want Disintegrate to be great 
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Great feedback, McFluffin. Thank you!
I spent another 2.5 hours today focusing directly on Disintegrate and trying to make whatever viable skill tree combination I could think of in the arena. Here are my thoughts:
-Inferno has a tiny area that will only hit a small number of enemies, and not until they are already in melee range. The damage is also not noticeable
-Tendrils damage is not noticeable
-Using Galvanized Defense and Praesidium together is still not enough to channel in one place for long enough to benefit from the nodes mentioned in my previous post. Even with a build that prioritized defensive passives and was at 95% glancing blow it was still too squishy, even on the first waves of the arena. If Disintegrate had built in damage reduction from the start (say 20-30%) plus those nodes that might be enough.
-Putting Twin Beam, Amplification, and Escalation together resulted in passable damage (although still far below even a decent meteor build) but would drain 200+ mana in under 4 seconds, which means we get the tier 3 version of Disintegrate for less than 2 seconds before oom. I didn’t use stored power either. Had I tried, it would have likely been under 3 seconds and 1 second respectively. As it was, I usually went oom before even a white monster was killed. This was also with a level 51 wand at 125% base spell damage, a tier 4 spell damage/mana cost, and a tier 5 fire damage affix.
-I couldn’t work Extension into any of these builds. I know it’s useful, but there just wasn’t enough room/too much performance loss for an already under performing skill
I hope this helps!
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Hey-hey. I`ve put some Hours into the skill, leveling a spellblade with Focus on hybrid. Lvl 58 so far, disentigrate and shatter strike are my main. My experience so far has been the following
In General: I found no way for desintegrate to be really viable other than the “shot-gun” variant that I`m using now (amplify, glass Canon, intensify all max). I got stored power, and galvanized Damage max. Because I have to tank potentially (especially ranged) heavy attacks, and every second that I take this big risk has to be worth it (“has” in regards to I really have to Play like this to be efficient). Mana-wise (170 mana), I can cast it for 7 seconds and get the highest damage Pretty fast due to intensify.
Twin beam just doesnt do it for me in this regards, because it is not worth the 5 Points I have to spent to get there, and the +8 mana on kill also doesnt do it. 7 Points for not much in comparrison - it feels like. I tried to see if each beam does individual Damage, so that the -30% dmg would actually do 140% total Damage on bigger enemies. Didnt seem to be so (I dont know though). Its nice and neat with the wider beam, but no, its just not efficient. its already good AoE. So much Investment for less Damage again is too one-sided. If it actually hit biggere enemys twice with reduced dmg each (70% twice with each beam), it might be worth spending 7 Points there and not somewhere else.
I didnt go with the slow or fire at all - but some word regarding slow: they dont Keep ranged from me, and melee`s aint a big Problem with desintegrate (because they usually come at you and “face” your beam head on. ranged usually just stand there in distance, deal tons of dmg, and are NOT in a line, therefor not as easy to kill or to hit whilst you take tons of potential dmg). I end up going melee mostly for ranged enemies, because its dangerous
Laser Focus: I would either remove or buff the mana reg display. I reg 10 mana when I do Nothing per second, and dealing Damage with desintegrate to Regenerate 10 mana feels odd. What I mean by this is that either I assume that I have to balance my mana-spent to use disentigrate as a main dmg spell, or I use it as a mana Regeneration with the Addition that it deals Damage in the middle-ish area.
I´d personally cast an inferior desintegrate to restore my mana though, because it creates more choices. And that is what you want when you trade-off so much damage
So I´d probably buff it to 20 mana/sec or something, and drop the second node to 3/3 Points with the same mana % scaled… so not +25% per Point but +40% and see how that feels.
I dont see myself using desintegrate just Standing there with my mana doing almost nothing at all; I dont know why I should choose that over dealing significantly more Damage - its not worth the trade-off. Gotta make it worth. I love the idea of making desintegrate more of a secondary skill with Laser Focus, and more tactical in nature mana-wise.
Stored power - I actually like it. I dont mind the delay so much, since having to stand there for seconds isnt significantly better or worse with +0,8 seconds more, and I get good dmg for the trade-off
Damage is good without being significantly too bad or too good either (as far as I can tell and compare to my shatter strike). Its really the Survival that lacks. I`m personally reliant on my ward Generation (which I have lots of through being a spellblade anyways, so I usually stack it before, or gain ward after casting disentigrate through immediatly joining melee-battel again (ward on melee hit).
If I didnt like the art and mechanics of the skill so much, it would have probably been too hard a skill to use for me personally, as there are simpler ways to deal same or more damage without that much risk.
Tendrils is really bad or does not work, but probably because it Needs the skill-tree to be properly viable (?), which in this case I dont know if I like that. I`d rather have it optional, like with static . So it could be split into two nodes… the first gives tendrils, 3/3, +25% chance to ZAP enemies, and then a node after that requires 2 in tendrils or something, that changes it to lightning strike and adds the last +25%. Since you can inherently hybrid as mage, I dont want to be forced or unable to take a node just because im melee and I havnt specialized the skill necassery for a node to be viable. It works with the shaman because he follows a theme (e.g. werebear caster will use ice thorn), but im not using Lightning strike.
If it doesnt use its specialization tree, then the dmg is just bad, and I`d think About buffing the dmg and allowing the specialization tree with Splitting the nodes like in the static tree
Then the defense::
Since you REALLY are at risk, I`d make galvanized defense a 10-12% dmg reduction per Point, require 1 for searing Plasma/Twin beam route, and 2 for the stored power still. And cap it at 3/3. Because you REALLY are at risk, it is NATURAL you are FORCED for defensive. Its not really optional, so it should be “easier accessible”. 5 Points is huge to give away. 3 Points feels better for the gain (the gain being minimal anyway; 35% reduction for taking all hits is not that huge in reality).
I would think About more defensive choices that make sense somewhere. E.g. gain a net 10% Chance to dodge ranged attacks while casting desintegrate (your “basic” dodge Chance is seperately so you really have 40% Chance to dodge when maxed out). 4/4, total, 40% or something. Maybe place it behind “stored power”, since stored power Needs you to be more vulnerable with the 0.8s delay, so making it accessible after making yourself more vulnerable would Maybe balance it well and give it some fore-thought - “do I want dodge, and is it worth delay and +mana cost?”
Built-in defensive stats for desintegrate (on top of the nodes) sounds plausible too, as an Option.
Extension would be nice, but as McFluffin has mentioned - no way to work it into the build.
Overall I like it, but it Needs few more Adjustments to make it a less “heavy” skill to use ! Which isnt bad in and on itself, of Course 
Hope that helps as well! Cheers
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