The Sorcerer, arguably Diablo 4‘s weakest class, has received a significant nerf courtesy of Blizzard’s latest patch for the game.
Diablo 4‘s patch 1.10a has launched in preparation for the game’s upcoming Season of the Malignant. However, it looks like Sorcerers have to deal with a malignancy of their own, now that one of their staple abilities has been nerfed.
Devouring Blaze was a cornerstone of many powerful late-game and endgame builds, allowing Sorcerers to deal additional critical strike damage against burning and immobilized enemies. Making enemies more vulnerable to critical strikes in this fashion is crucial to a wide range of endgame builds, even builds where you primarily use cold spells (via PCGamer).
According to the patch notes, Devouring Blaze’s bonus critical strike damage has been “reduced from 10/20/30% to 7/14/21%”, while the bonus critical strike damage to immobilized targets has been “reduced from 25/50/75% to 10/20/30%.”
Diablo 4‘s Sorcerer may rank highly in our best classes list, but only because its impressive damage output made up for the magic user’s fragility. It would appear that this nerf has made Diablo 4’s resident glass cannon all the more brittle.
This nerf compounds nastily with Blizzard’s nerf to defensive Affixes. Being the squishiest of Diablo 4‘s classes, Sorcerer builds often rely on defensive items to help improve their survivability, since they lack access to the protective abilities and self-healing often used by other classes.
Citing concerns that “skillful players are frequently slaughtering monsters many levels above their own”, Blizzard has opted to begin “shifting power to many offensive Affixes from defensive Affixes.” Though the developer acknowledged that this will “make our end game content more deadly”, it’s fair to say that Sorcerers are disproportionately affected by this balance change.
Sorcerors have often been on the receiving end of Blizzard’s nerfs, having their skills toned down in almost every patch. Though Sorcerors have received some minor buffs along the way, too, these have never been sweeping enough to make up for the nerfs. However you slice it, Sorcerer players are stuck with the short end of the stick, at least for now.
Diablo 4 ranks among one of the best RPGs of recent years, but we at TRG also rate the game’s slick multiplayer, rating it among the best co-op games out there. If you’re a sorcerer main, you’ll likely need a buddy or two, anyway.