Force Blast:An already great skill made even better, and I hope this change will convince more Sorc players to give it a chance. Force Blast isn't useful all the time, but it makes doing certain things a whole lot easier.
Fusillade:It didn't really need a boost, but I'll take it.
Vengeful Power:The extra 5% DR really isn't much, all things considered.
Living Flame:I used to be a huge fan of this skill, but the truth is, Living Flame just can't compare to other Sorc passives for the following reasons:
> Life is not a viable means of defense for a Sorc because Sorc will always have shit Life.
Fire-based casters with maxed Living Flame will top out at about 12k Life (about 11k with Fire/Lightning). Fire-based melee builds can bump that up to about 15k with maxed Moonstrike (about 13k with Fire/Lightning). This is only about 2k more total Life than non-Fire builds. This isn't nearly enough to make Life a defense option comparable to Defense, DR, CtB, Avoid, or an army of tanky summons.
> Living Flame is only acceptable in Mid-Game.
In Early-Game, the bonuses are too little to notice. In End-Game, the bonuses are too small to matter, especially in Ubers when you're being spammed from off-screen by mobs who can take almost half your Life per hit.
> Sorcs don't really need Regen.
While Living Flame's Regen is quite useful for Blade Spirits when paired with the Lightning tree, Sorcs themselves don't benefit much from it. They already have 2 native instaheal sources that cost only 1 point apiece. And again, in Ubers with hard-hitting enemies, Sorcs can't regen fast enough to counter the onslaught.
Base defense boost:What was the point? The boost is marginal while leveling and evens out at clvl 120, so Sorc ends up with the same base defense at clvl 120 in 1.3 that she had in 1.2. Besides, Sorcs are usually running through all of Hatred and most, if not all, of Terror anyway. Even Melee Sorcs.
Frost Essence:This was the most disappointing change of all.
The only rationale for removing Frost Armor was:
[Frost Armor's Defense+DR bonuses] were extremely synergetic with the lightning and poison passives and also incredibly powerful, to the point where any optimal caster sorceress would always be X + cold.
And...?
Frost Armor created a synergistic environment that worked on multiple levels, with multiple specs, across multiple builds. If choosing Cold was really necessary to build an optimal caster, what does that say about the desirability of other trees? Yes, Frost Armor was good, but no one can argue it made Sorc op. Instead of killing Frost Armor, and thus killing the primary reason for choosing the Cold tree in the first place, why not instead look at why its synergy was so good and try to replicate it across other trees?
But beyond that, losing Frost Armor affected more than just Sorc as a PC. Here are some of the additional benefits Frost Armor had:
> It made Sorc summons viable from the start with minimal investment, while never making them op. Unlike Barb--whose summons are used offensively, or Necro--whose summons are used both offensively and defensively, Sorc summons are only used defensively. Having summons that could survive combat from the start let the player focus on building and playing their Sorc instead of wasting time micromanaging their summon count.
> It allowed for the use of a wider variety of mercs, especially Rogues, instead of having to rely on the standard Abjurer/Bloodmage for melee builds or Barb for caster builds.
> It made Cold-based Sorcs a welcomed addition to party play, since Frost Armor boosted the survivability of the entire party.
I could go on.
With Frost Essence, all of that is gone. Replaced instead by an aura that gives Cold res and summoned minion damage. Seriously...? Having enough Cold res was never an issue, and more Summoned Minion Damage is useless if the summons can't survive long enough to hit anything. Yes, Sorc summons can still be made fairly tanky with enough investment, but Sorcs just don't have the points to spare. Each point spent boosting summon survivability is one less point that could be better spent on a secondary source of damage (which Sorcs absolutely need) or an additional layer of defense.
Frost Armor is gone, and Sorc as a class is worse because of it. All this change did was lower the bar for what an alleged “optimal caster” is and shift that from Lightning/Cold to Lightning/Poison. Can we expect nerfs to those trees in 1.4? You know, because synergies...
Sorc has been consistently unpopular, especially casters. And replacing Frost Armor with Frost Essence won't do anything to change that.
Bottom line: if Frost Essence is here to stay, then it needs to do a helluva lot more to be a worthy successor to Frost Armor. So here's what I propose:
Possible Solutions to Frost EssenceOption 1Go all in and make Frost Essence a full-fledged summon-boosting aura.
> First, reduce the aura's Summoned Minion Damage to +10% and have it scale at +10% per Base Point. Cap it at +100% if necessary for balance reasons.
> Second, nix the pointless Cold res and replace it with Summoned Minion Res. Either make it a straight +25% from the start, or start it at +5% and have it scale at +5% per Base Point, up to a max of +25%.
> Third, do 1 of 3 things:
>> Give Sorc summons access to the Life bonuses from Sorc passives, or...
>> Give Sorc summons a base defense boost roughly equivalent to what Frost Armor offered, or...
>> Add summon-only Defense and/or DR boosts to Frost Essence. Have the Defense boosts scale with Skill Points, while the DR boosts scale with Base Points. Cap them as necessary for balance reasons.
Option 2Keep Frost Essence as-is and give Sorc summons additional bonuses per Base Point in a specific passive. For example:
> Vengeful Power: +1% additional DR per 2 Base Points (capped at +10%).
> Living Flame: +10% Max Life per Base Point.
> Warp Armor: +1% additional Avoid per 5 Base Points.
> Snow Queen: +15% Defense per Base Point.
Option 3Bring back Frost Armor. I know that's not gonna happen, but I had to mention it.
Obviously, these are just early-stage ideas and they would need balance tweaks. But the point is, something like this would still keep Sorcs themselves squishy, while still allowing them to keep that implicit layer of defense without the need for heavy investment into summons, and without making summons op. At the same time, it would give the player the option to end up with strong summons should they choose to invest in them.