Orb + shield sorceress feedback
Damage loss is too great
- Fastest cast speed with orbs is 7fpc, compared to 4fpc with a staff for basically the same amount of FCR. So with an orb you can only ever reach up to 57% of the dps potential compared to a staff.
- On top of this the stat budget of staves is vastly superior. A rare staff can spawn with up to 12 skills, 125% spelldmg for an element & 50 pierce for an element. A rare orb caps out at 5 skills, 50% spelldmg and 50 pierce.
- General spell caster shields are sorely lacking. The only decent TU shield (Ivory tower) requires 300str, which you cannot afford at that stage of the game. Rare shields spawn with no caster mods AT ALL. Runeword options are also non-existent until Destruction when you can use a Qor to make avatar. The best shield you can use in the mid game is an honorific, which is rather disappointing. A good SSU / SSSU shield exists but such rare drops cannot be taken into account for a normal build.
- You will have vastly less energy than a staff build.
So not only are you punished with a hard limit on your damage via slower animations (acceptable) you are also doubly punished due to the poor stat budget on orbs, the absence of caster shields and a much lower energy attribute.
The defensive upside is not worth it
- Rare shields have no good defensive affixes. The best you can get is Enhanced defence & resists. They do not have any of the affixes that would make them desirable to an orb sorceress - no TCD, no %dex, no %DR, no additional block.
- Runeword shields are also underwhelming in terms of defensive stats for a sorceress. The only good option being the Khalim's protector. Good defensive options exist in the SU+ department, but most of them require strength or are prohibitively rare (grim icon).
- Reaching maximum block on a ranged spell caster with incredibly tanky minions (benefit from passives, ice elementals have a godly aura also) and high defence is simply not worth it in the current state of the game. Defence has big diminishing returns with block (block is checked after hit check) and is in general the superior stat because it caps at 95% (not to mention that it can be increased without sacrificing energy points).
- With incoming attribute squish on charms getting a decent block percentage (let alone close to 75) will be too hard and suboptimal for all builds apart from fire + poison.
I get that in vanilla d2 the orb + shield was meta due to good stats, no cast rate penalty and easy to cap block. However I think that orb builds are too punished in median for no good reason other than being different to vanilla. What is the point of having 5 different orb types when the vast majority of them (even SU) are bad and they are paired with 0 good types of caster shields.
Suggestions Brainstorming
- Make orbs appealing in another indirect way. When slain procs that aren't overpowered, good oskills that are worth taking the huge damage hit to make a build with.
- Or a stat budget increase. For example the orb runeword with Divine apparition (Kabbalah) fits the above cool oskill category and has good affixes, but the stats are just too low. Maybe adding spell damage/pierce affixes to general shield affix pool.
- Or perhaps a new item type. Special shields which have a very high energy requirement (not sure if possible with softcoding) and spawn with caster affixes, have runewords & su with caster affixes. Provides a good itemisation tradeoff - high energy to equip so low block because less dex, but have good offensive power. Also could increase build variety for other classes e.g. caster druids with shield.