Who cares? there, the essence will most likely be that the chance of the block will be increased. And to collect ward, without ward retention it makes little sense. And you don’t have enough points for it, because you still need to collect the action time and reduce the rollback. As I understand it, it will turn out 8 seconds cooldown and 4 seconds duration. That is, 50% of the time your defense will be many times less.
Another new patch another mage/mage->sorcerer change disappointment/nerf. I have been playing sorcerer since i started few months ago and i am have been following closely all the changes. It is starting to feel really disappointing… Without being disrespectful but anyone calling this a good change (judging by the flame ward skill tree) has played mage->sorcerer only for a limited time or does have any idea how mage->sorcerer end game defensive builds/tools work and mage->sorcerer defense overall.
It seems a huge nerf again on few aspects:
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Looking at the tree you have to basically choose between Block chance/block protection/ward on block build(Glacial Reinforcement and previous nodes to it) or play with Dilation->Energize->Recollection-> Prismatic buffer while currently you have both of them via having both skills fire shield and ice ward and their trees…
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Mage damage is already bad/horrible compared to the other classes and currently you are forced to take as many passive nodes as you can that improve damage in order to be somehow competitive. Changing ice ward/fire shield with passive tree nodes forces you to sacrifice damage passive nodes which will in addition hurt the already bad sorcerer damage. Many would say that we will have a free skill slot but lets be honest @AbstractGaze is very right saying that it will only leaves us with this - “And in return we get another empty slot on the skills panel” since beside a very few skills(fire ball/meteor/volcanic orb/teleport/focus/fire shield/ice ward) the rest is just bad/unusable for a good end game build and very few people would ever consider trying those skills. Moreover you only need one of the fire ball/volcanic orb/meteor + teleport + Focus+ 2 defensive skills(fire shield ice ward) and when the 2 defensive skills are combined in flame ward will be left with 1 unused/rather useless skill slot.
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Judging by the skill description i hope that only the 30% less damage and the retaliation will be will be up for 3 seconds upon activation and other passive buffs from skill tree will be maintained permanently(same as how ice ward works now). Because if all the effects from the skill tree are maintained only for 3 seconds with 10 seconds cooldown that would be huge nerf in uptime(without having to invest in skill tree nodes that improve the uptime and CDR affixes in gear) compared to the permanent maintained buffs from fire shield/ice ward currently.
Mallar
Level 82 Sorcerer
Sorry but for my melee build, ward generation and ward on hit does need a lot of ward retention that is already given by inteligence. I just need to get as much ward as I am hit. There is build that does not want to cumulate ward but to use them to only mitigate damage
You nn to make the passives in good order, the problem with mage are the following 2:
- Survivability
- Every skill besides Meteor and Focus is grab!
A personal third would be, that killing two Fallens just to have to rechannel your Mana slows playspeed too much!
Ofc These 3 work together: U have to stop all the time to rechannel mana, and while u do so, u are super vulnerable: MB that´s intendend, but then there should be a skill like black whole, just with a way shorter cooldown.
Don´t get me wrong, I enjoy Last Epoch a tone, just not much help in telling u all the time! 
Kind regards
Daniel
I disagree. I have a sorcerer black hole/ meteor build lvl 92 and its quite functional. You just don’t see it on the leaderboard cause its an old char. I’ve hit wave 200+ with it.
Try a few different skills and try all the different branches. The sorcerer can synergise well just gotta find that balance just like any class.
Also there is a node on the new skill tree to get 50% increased duration (putting active time almost to 5 seconds) I don’t see this as a nerf to the sorcerer at all. Its actually a defensive buff.
2 Likes
The proper response to this is to spell out exactly why the remaining skills are “just bad / unusable” and to think of ways to incorporate these otherwise unseen skills into a “usable” end-game build (however we want to define “usable end-game”). I’m sure the devs don’t want there to only be 3 usable skills and the remaining 20+ skills to be useless filler + noobtraps. I have started to provide feedback on Primalist skills and I’m positive people want to hear feedback on the other classes as well.
Always looking forward to hearing new content on the way. 
2 Likes
If I didnt try/test mostly everything would i post such a confident and detail post?? When was the last time you played with your mage->sorcerer? 10 patches ago?? What is your gear? There are many factors. I am speaking about the case in which you are commenting on 0.74 mage->sorcerer situation with very good gear for either meteor or volcanic orb top builds…
Judging by:
“The sorcerer can synergies well just gotta find that balance just like any class.” It seems you have not played your mage->sorcerer recently . Sorcerer is a mess in which you basically struggle just to find a way to somehow make the class work :). Speaking about optimization and top build across all classes is just not on the table currently.
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Played it yesterday…
Crap for gear…
Could easily be viable…
You got me… i know nothing.
Must be the 10 levels my mage has on yours that made mine so much better.
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All the issues with mage->sorcerer are already discussed in multiple topics + discord Mage channel. I am very sure that the devs are already aware of mage->sorcerer issues/problems overall and in particular with most skills+skill trees and passive tree nodes. Even in the channels shown above there are good suggestions on how to improve the class overall. I am just trying to express my opinion on the matter that the things they did to mage->sorcerer class somehow leaves it in more or less in the same position. Buffing something nerfing something and the class stays nearly in the same situation overall. My point of view is that the changes from the last few patches strictly speaking about mage->sorcerer are not pulling the class from the not so good situation/position that is right now and it is possible to make the situation worse.
Of course it is possible that i am wrong we will be able to comment/discuss it more objectively/accurate once the patch is live and we test all those changes properly. For now all we can do is speculate. Although the worries i had and expressed about desintigrate that it wont be viable looking at its skill tree before 0.74 went live turned to be quite true which reside in another post and can be checked.
Mage->sorcerer issues:
Bad/low base/overall damage on skills beside fireball/volcanic orb/meteor. Bad/horrible skill design/mechanics/functionality overall(especially compared to how good avalanche is performing in direction of how the skill work mechanic/design/functionality wise - not speaking about dmg here). To many x% increased bonus of something with too big y% reduce of something else skill tree nodes. A lot of skill tree nodes not making any sense at all. The situation in which you are forced to take all increase 50% damage + increased 50% mana cost points just in order to do normal/somehow ok damage which brings skill costs to 50/70/100+ basically forcing you to play with Focus skill mandatory with a special skill tree node just so you can sustain casting your skills.
Passive tree… oh Passive tree. So many nodes improving freeze rate/chills and stuff like this while they become quite useless at monolith of fate 70/80+ and arena 250/300+(this is in case we are using the current freezing chance formula). Not a single ward retaliation nodes in sorcerer tree. Not a single node improving BASE DAMAGE of spells. Overall weak +damage nodes. Bad->horrible 2 last tiers of passive node trees(the top ones). Very weak cooldown reduction last tier node (taking in mind the current formula of CDR). I am sorry i dont have the time to give the feedback skill by skill/skill tree by skill tree node/Passive tree node by passive tree node. But i think you can get the overall idea where/what the issues are.
Sorry for going a little more off topic with speaking about mage->sorcerer overall performance.
Maybe you misunderstood my point. I never said my mage build was bad or yours. Never even compared and honestly it doesnt matter that much. Have not played arena since the ladder reset only pushing monolith currently and it is looking good. My concerns are that the changes from the last few patches does not feel favorable for the class overall situation/performance or making an appropriate level of impact the class needs. Try playing Bear swipe Druid or Physical Avalanche build and compare the differences to any Mage->Sorcerer build you choose and probably you will start understanding what i am speaking about .
Ive played all of the above. I’m only saying there are viable builds for sorcerer. Yes most builds for it oack damage and almost all builds are glass cannony but again. There are ways to do 40k crits on the mage and feel op at times.
Im actually surprised your telling me to try the swipe werebear when you must have seen it at the top of the ladder… with my name in it. lol
Heya, we’ll likely be going with 5 Ward on Block.
When I know when the nominal DPS or skill-specific damage will come in, this xyz% system doesn’t understand anything and how bad my damage is, I just want to know how much damage my ability is and my character’s total damage. .
Unfortunately, this is a huge amount of work.
It’s included in Phase 2 of our Early Access Forecast, but it won’t be ready for Patch 0.7.5.
3 Likes
Thanks for the quick response! the good that will be implemented at least in the future! good job 
2 Likes
I haven’t played sorcerer, but the stats and options on this skill look tasty. Compared to acolyte’s ward generation, which needs a lot of investment and lots of managing, this one button skill looks much more enjoyable. One button, get huge damage mitigation. Simple.
Yes this skill seems quite comparable to the sentinels “Ring of shields” which is a very versatile useful skill.
Base skill: duration is a little freaking short even with the + 1,5 seconde for a 4,5 sec it would get with the duration node i believe… Dunno… Need real test to give a better feedback, my opignon may change.
Art : superb i love it !
Skill tree : over all nice but i guess the lightning tree must be dissociate from the cold one and have this own exclusive tree.
Thank you for new stuff
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My first impression of the mage was that their defense comes from actively using skills to control the battlefield. You can sense this when you first get static orb to knock enemies back. The downtime of this new buff plays into that role to force smart and interactive gameplay choices instead of simply refreshing a buff timer.
As the skill trees advance, I commend the dev team for giving players meaningful choices.
2 Likes
i have to agree with boardman on most of what he has said.
this game has started moving into a huge meta fest worse the POE by far.
a sorc literally has to be one or two builds to even be effective otherwise your shit.
i don’t like playing fire sorc but apparently thats the only option or nova which i am not really interested in. black hole was fun but got completely destroyed.
i honestly dont even enjoy playing my sorc anymore its like i invest so much time into building a specific build and then they nerf it so i start all over and have to grind up the spells again to get the spec trees fleshed out only to find out that its not going to work becuase i have 0 sustain. Honestly sorc is just broken unless you only use one of two builds that are viable. I was really looking forward to this game but i have not touched it in a few months after the last big patch i played for about 30 min and just shut it back down again.
1 Like