As many of you know, Sorcerers are easily the weakest class in PvP. The current issues with Sorcerers are their overall squishiness, lack of damage while not being able to support enough to make up for it, and a somewhat weak skill set in general. Here are my suggestions to improve many of the Sorc's skills.
1] Arcane Shield
While being a very strong ability to soak up a lot of damage and granting invulnerability, and allowing Sorcerers to be more aggressive, it has one flaw, and as many people before me have noted, it is the Displacement Wave (knockback) upgrade. This upgrade is, in general, useless because Sorcerers need to shield before entering a lot of fights so they don't die, meaning no one is going to be knocked back (and this is true for PvE as well). As many people in the community have suggested, this should be replaced with an upgrade providing immunity to all movement-impairing effects for a couple seconds (perhaps 5). Aside from this, there aren't too many other issues with it, except possibly increasing the damage reduction a little bit.
2] Fireball
This is a Sorcerer's bread and butter AoE skill. It does halfway decent damage, stuns, and applies a bit of damage over time. As of right now, I don't have any suggestions for it except to increase its base damage slightly. The Scorch (hit reduction) upgrade is a bit sketchy, but it does have its uses in PvE.
3] Frost Bolt
Now before you read this, I am NOT going to suggest a stun. There's already enough stunning being done in PvP, and to add another would, IMO, make the PvP arenas less interesting, less fun, and more stuck in one place for a long period of time. Ice's slow should be increased to a 70% snare on charged attacks, decaying by 10% every 0.5 seconds and ending after 3 seconds. This will really improve Sorcerer's effects in clashes, being able to cripple enemy rogues while not being too overpowered. The Arctic Shatter upgrade (I believe this is the correct one) is completely useless in PvP, and has little to no use in PvE as well. It should be replaced, but I have no ideas for this at the moment.
4] Curse
Curse is already a very good skill - in my opinion the best support skill - that a Sorcerer has at the moment, however I have an issue with one of the upgrades. As of now, rogues cannot be debuffed damage unless it is more than 10%, rendering the Words of Weakness upgrade useless. It will only reduce the damage of Warriors and other Sorcerers, the latter of which will generally not attack anyway because of the high damage it causes when using Fireball or Frost Bolt with the damage over time upgrades. Either increase the debuff % in the upgrade to 15-20% or we can introduce a silence (unable to use skills) that lasts a short time. I'm just not sure if this would be overpowered the way the game is played right now.
5] Lightning Strike
Lightning is the hardest hitting skill of Sorcerers. The only issue is 2 of the upgrades on it - the one that applies the AoE effect, and the stun upgrade. The stun upgrade is pretty useless, since you have to charge it for it to work, and Fireball always stuns (and gives stun immunity), making the upgrade a bit redundant. I am not sure at the moment what to replace it with, perhaps an armor debuff. The AoE upgrade is useless in PvP, however can be useful for fast runs in PvE. My suggestion is to allow lightning to have a 25% chance on charged attack (does not require a mob to be killed by it) to attack all enemies, however its damage should be reduced by 50% if more than 1 enemy is hit.
6] Lifegiver
Lifegiver is a decent skill in PvP, but the mana and health over time upgrades need to go. They heal so little that I can't even see why they exist. My suggestion: one should be replaced with a movement speed boost of 25% (to all allies) for 3 seconds after use, and the other a 50% armor bonus (to the caster only) for 2 seconds. Many Sorcerers don't use heal because they will die immediately after using it. The movement speed helps to kite warriors and be more mobile in clashes, and the armor buff (applied only to the caster so it isn't overpowered) helps so that you don't get 1 shot immediately after healing.
7] Gale Force
Gale is actually a very strong skill, and is very overlooked by many Sorcerers. My only suggestion to this is that the dash does not make you sort of stuck when you are near the end of it.
Thanks to Robhawk for the suggestion.I have to say gale is a nice skill BUT 1 thing should be changed: 50% armor buff WITHOUT the need to charge it!
Why? When i play, its the same if 1on1 or clash, i want the armor buff to happen but i also dont want to dash forward all the time! For now when i dont charge gale i dont dash forward and i dont get armor buff. When i charge it i get both but i dont want the "dash forward". So when "50% armor buff" upgrade happens when charged and non charged it would be great !
It should be this way:
uncharged gale = 50% armor buff + 25% speed increase
charged gale = 50 % armor buff + dash forward
edit: Since rogues have shield and warriors have curse: Replace the 2 useless heal upgrades with a mini-juggernaut and/or VB.
8] Time Shift
No changes needed.
These suggestions are meant to improve the PvP mechanics of Sorcerers. The numbers and percentages are meant only as a suggestion and tool of reference, and they are not concrete. Also, the suggestions try to maintain Sorcerer's performance in PvE as well.
If you have any other suggestions or would like to constructively criticize my suggestions, please leave a reply! It will help us all.
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