Some thoughts on state of sorc after cold mastery nerf

Recently hit 99 on a cold sorc this season (wound up 121 on SCL), didn't have enough Wealth to transition to lit sorc early so just had to go with it. You guys know those moments, you could save your runes and potentially never get there or spend them and at least get going with something half-decent.

Anyway, I didn't find CM nerf much of an issue in P8 games through 94/95 because with a full party of various classes cold immunes get blasted like everything else. But once I started solo'ing TZs on P8, that's when the nerf hit me pretty hard in certain TZs. Noticeable like everyone thought but still manageable. Even at 14k dmg w/ 3 cold facets I would occasionally skip certain mob types for efficiency on P8 whereas before in S2 it was a steamroll.

The thing is, if cold sorc wasn't so nuts last season I don't think the nerf would have bothered me - I think it's only that recent comparison in my mind affecting me because compared to pre-Sunder days, cold sorc is in a much better state.

Like S2 cold sorc had it all - relatively cheap gear, easy 105FCR, so fast out of the gate. The cost of DFathom and Nightwings for example compared to lit sorc gear is just so much cheaper. And it's much harder for lit sorc to gear with both expense and FCR shenanigans. Teo this season went main-hand 2H Infinity

Scythe, zero FCR in weap/shield slots,

Um'd vipers,it was hilarious but it was a lit sorc and still carried. 3 Bers is a chunk. I think he was 10 hours faster than Llama was hitting #1 in S2 and Llama had pretty close to BIS cold gear, broken

Cold Mastery, and a better FCR BP.

So cold sorc is back to being a stepping Stone to lit sorc for competitive ladder - that's what Teo just did but as I keep reminding myself, it's much better than it was before sunders and there are meme builds aplenty like xbow sorc and so on. If I could lobotomize that small portion of my brain that remembers how good cold sorc was in S2 I might just pull the trigger ^^

And given that cold sorc was so cheap and powerful in S2 and then nerf'd - will Blizz do the same to S3 builds like Mosaic sin. Mosaic is incredibly cheap with

Gul

Mal and Backes was top in HC ladder using it. Will they nerf Mosaic sin before S4 and create yet another new cheap powerful build for hype. Is that the new cycle. Are they really going for balance or are they going for cycles of imbalance and hype.

Good write up! I will never chase another meta build again after what they did with Cold nerf. Was really looking forward to that non-gimped setup and spent quite a bit of time building up near perfect cold sorc gear on NL, only for it to be nerfed before getting a chance to test it on NL. Will just have to chalk it up as another bad investment and ignore all the hyped up metas going forward.

I think the future of d2r will be these slight skill adjustments every season to keep the meta shifting. This season is ma assassin, next season it’ll be ww barb, then poison javazon, etc.

They’ll probably never completely nerf anything, just end up buffing one type of build for a single season, so the cold sorc is probably at it’s “stable position”

If that makes any sense …

Zero187 wrote: 1 year ago

hyped up metas

Nate wrote: 1 year ago

I think the future of d2r will be these slight skill adjustments every season to keep the meta shifting. This season is ma assassin, next season it’ll be ww barb, then poison javazon, etc.

Yeah I think for non-ladder players there's some risk of not being able to play a build at it's "height" before it gets nerf'd - especially if they nerf S3 builds like Mosaic / MA sin before S4 starts then it will be more of a trend since cold sorc was nerf'd. Blizz really seems to pile it on trying to get everyone into season ladder - like the way they do non-ladder where NL doesn't even get the latest runewords until another round of season runewords comes out.

lowkey wrote: 1 year ago

Recently hit 99 on a cold sorc this season (wound up 121 on SCL)....

I just hit 91 cold sorc. Which would you suggest I spend my remaining skill points on... CM(currently 15) or Blizzard synergies?
Which has the better bang for the buck, so to speak?

Cold Mastery -> Enough to get to -195 res including your gear (facets, Nightwing...)
More is only for immunes and working at 20% -> Not worth it.
Less is non optimal.

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

Cold Mastery -> Enough to get to -195 res including your gear (facets, Nightwing...)
More is only for immunes and working at 20% -> Not worth it.
Less is non optimal.

Thank you.

Makes me want to make a new sorc

Depending on where you usually farm.
Monsters usually have around 50% CR that is why people put points into CM to reach -150%
If you farm

Mephisto in the first weeks of ladder, then CM till -175% is still ok

Agreed, points in CM to -150 are really a must for cold sorc.
Above -195 is too much. Between those two it's more of a "nice to have" stuff.

BTW Doom should help a lot against immunes.

Doom is a bit of an underrated weapon. It has a massive -cold res on it. It has definitely become more useful now with the 1/5 effect of

Cold Mastery on sundered enemies.

Death's Fathom is still obviously better against non-immune enemies.

Mosaic is so getting nerfed sooner, rather than later. Being certain of it is the only thing stopping me from creating a Mosaic Assassin this ladder season.

Mosaic has two options imo, it either gets nerfed which in a Blizz-controlled world is more likely than not a nerf into being entirely pointless again.
Or it doesn't get nerfed, in which case it remains too OP to truly still be fun.
Either one was reason enough for me to not really want an MA sin for S3.

As for the actual topic...sorcs are fine, including cold in its various forms. Not that that was ever really in question.

Just yesterday I resettet my dual sorc back to pure coldness. A lot oder tun!
Even though judgiing by her name Magica_de_Spell should be a light sorc…

noob here , is there a way to have precise stat about % of character played during season 3 . should we really assume assassin (because of Mosaic) really get closer to sorc and pal ?
edit : sorry about the off topic of my message here

I think its over-nerfed

Nerf it was ok, but not that much

mockingbirdreal wrote: 1 year ago

BTW Doom should help a lot against immunes.

We could say it's a "cold" version of Infinity. But to be honest I have never seen a sorc with a Doom ...

Infinity is still the only real help because the ACT 2 Merc is able to equip Polearms.

Death's Fathom and Infinity Merc with Frost Aura still stronger.

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Mosaic has two options imo, it either gets nerfed which in a Blizz-controlled world is more likely than not a nerf into being entirely pointless again.
Or it doesn't get nerfed, in which case it remains too OP to truly still be fun.
Either one was reason enough for me to not really want an MA sin for S3.

As for the actual topic...sorcs are fine, including cold in its various forms. Not that that was ever really in question.

What is so OP for the Mosaic assassin? It takes time to build charges and you must hit at least every 15s to keep them. As far as i have been able to compare with my friend with an assassin it is on par with a sorc for the speed farming, less than a smiter for uber so I dont see much of what is OP. It seems that they only made a playable build for assassin from my point of view but maybe i am missing something. Anyway even with this build, assassin is my least favorite class and i get bored by it.