I decided I'd drop in and explain a few things about Sorcery DPS and how it can be used to its full potential. I'll try to cover a couple of the points of contention that still exist as to load outs, but I will say this: Most of the viable load outs will look almost exactly the same. First, I think the power is best catered to Rifle or Hand Blasters. Like most balanced powers (does not HAVE to lean towards Might or Precision), however, a player can definitely still use One Handed and do well spamming Focus Blast. (Remember, this is pre-nerf talk, here. Don't know how bad 1h is gonna get hit yet) The basic is true for all power sets: Run your buff. Sorcery has Weapon of Destiny. That's just DPS 101. Oh, keep Karmic Hex on your bar. Great to clip and in adds can help set up a PI. You do NOT need Phase Dodge. Phase Dodge will slow you down. The animations for Sorcery are so short that Phase Dodge's cool down is literally too long to clip with it consistently. You can cater your utility belt/consumables/powers to this and try to clip as fast as possible, but there's no way even a 3-troller set up will keep you powered, and the damage you do would not be anywhere close to a good ratio to your power in. First and foremost are the passives: Circle of Destruction and Soul Well. The way Sorcery is built, it caters to abusing only a couple of powers. It has very strong burst damage with very short cool downs, making it very fast-paced and rhythmic in play-style. If you're really only going to be spamming 2 or 3 powers, you have plenty of room for DoT's and passive powers of the sort, so Circle and SW are perfect for that. Honestly, if there were any more, they'd be involved as well. That's 3 powers in your load out that you need to be effective. The next is Shard of Life. This is one of the powers you can spam over and over. That's because Shard hits hard as an AoE and has a short DoT that it applies on targets in its range. It is the only ranged attack that also has a DoT for Sorcery, and it has a very short cool down. This means you can reapply it almost instantly, making it a burst-y power and an essentially on-going DoT in the background as you keep applying it through spamming the power. That makes four in your load out. The rest are up to you... sort of. There's a dispute happening between two powers for the 5th slot in a strong Sorcery DPS load out: Transmutation and Vengeance. Transmutation is Sorcery's next ranged AoE. With a hard-hitting, soft-splitting, full-ranged effect, it makes for a very powerful addition to your load out. It's short cool down and fast animation make it also very clip-friendly. This power is great for groups of adds, like those in the tunnels of Nexus and Paradox, and it still hits fairly harder than most other powers on an individual target as well. So many people like it for these reasons. Vengeance, on the other hand, hits significantly harder on a single target. It is not an AoE, so it will not show you the sheer amount of numbers on the screen as Transmutation will, but it will hit harder on whatever it does hit. The importance of this is how, in high tier content, you're usually doing single-target fights anyways! Why would you NOT want a power that hits harder on an individual target, bringing it down faster? You still get to hit trash mobs with your DoT's and you still have something to hit them individually rather hard. My solution to this? Switch mid-raid. You pick up Transmutation on your way to Shard and you pick up Vengeance on your way to Weapon. You already have them both. Open up your Load Out tab and switch quickly. (Obviously, this isn't possible for something like An Epic Odyssey, where adds are rare but still exist, so you have to make your judgement call there.) Your last power is really up to you. This is an open slot that a lot of people tend to fill with the generic Double Grenade combo with finishers (Final Ruin, in the case of Sorcery), or a super charge of some sort, or a third power to spam like you would Transmutation or Shard. The Final Ruin combo is simple: Grenade Launcher - Final Ruin - Jump - Grenade Launcher - Shard/Transmutation/Vengeance If you do this fast enough, you will see an extra Grenade Launcher damage and the first tick of Final Ruin's damage without actually seeing any animations. Essentially, set up your DoT's and then do this combo as your spam, switching between Shard and whatever other power you picked as the 5th in your load out at the end of the combo. The problem with this power is that you get the small initial tick from FR and an extra Grenade tick for the power cost of a full FR. It's extremely power hungry, only works with 3 trollers, and the ratio of power-in to damage-out is kind of whacked out. The benefit is massive damage increase because of the almost invisible animations. If you're fast enough, your character jerks for half a second and then does the animation of the last power, and you see all the damage from all those attacks. To save on the power-starvation, you can choose to go with a super charge. Flight players might pick Vacuum Bubble. (I'm gonna be honest here, NONE of Sorcery's super charges are really any good. You can go with Baleful Transmogrification but it's tick are few and it's damage small.) Some people can go with another power that might benefit them, like maybe Neo-Venom Boost as a buff (but this would be power hungry) or Soul Storm, which is a ranged AoE that locks you in a bit of an animation (interrupting it cancels out the damage that hasn't already been thrown out as projectiles). I've seen it hit everyone for quite a bit in the first and final encounters of Nexus, but it does seem to split rather heavily. You can also just take both Vengeance and Transmutation to make up your last two powers and not have to pick. Or you can just shove Phase Dodge in there and call it a day.
Transmute, Shard, Soul Storm. Bursty. Vengeance if you want to see a big number rather than more little numbers. Wrath, as well. Condemn if you want to focus on one thing but see lots of little numbers.
I switched out Condemn for vengeance. Using Venge, Shard, Transmute, Soul Storm, Final. I'm temporary using soul well just for using soul well. Havent' thought about using a DPS sc. Not really a fan of WoD. But I have it so i can still use it. I am starting to actually use more power. The burst is definitely notable.
Your load out is definitely much more burst. Your powers are based on hitting harder faster rather than building DoT's. My only thing is that, some powers obviously hit harder than others, or at least about the same. The cool downs and animations are short so you might as well stick with the most powerful attacks over using the rest. WoD's buff/extra ticks of damage are useful as extra ticks amongst the damage you're already doing. But if you can replace the damage, by all means. WoD is another sort of passive damage that I talk about in the original post. But that is just ONE way of doing it.
Transmutation has been doing alot if damage on single targets for me. At 2800 might i was getting crits of 1000. Does veng crit for higher?
Yup. I see numbers of about 1100 from Transmute, and 1800 from Vengeance. These are average numbers, non-crit.
Correction, my might was 2300 before. I'm now at 2575 or something like that. Mutton, what is your opinion on using soul siphon to spread bad karma? Waste of a power slot? Right now i have circle, wod, shard, soul well, final ruin and trans. I might swap transmutation for veng for boss fights with no ads If the devs would make shard apply bad karma, my loadout would be perfect, but there is still that spread of pi missing
I'm not against Soul Siphon at all. I just think that usually I'm trying to focus my damage and Weapon of Destiny applies the BK to the target I'm trying to focus on anyways. But there's nothing wrong with having Soul Siphon. My load out is: Soul Well - Weapon of Destiny - Circle of Destruction - Shard of Life - Transmutation - Vengeance I'd be able to toss in a Power Point into Soul and switch it out back and forth with Vengeance for single target rooms if I were to run it. So, yeah, I'm definitely not against it.
Just did EO with the league and I really like the results of using Venge over Condemn. This rotation and loadout was mainly for using rifle. Before, when I was taking advantage of CoD, Soul Well, and few other dots, it was only because i was using OP 1h. And it really manipulated my results. After switching all this out, and using the rifle, the burst loadout is definitely what I would prefer over the Dots rotation.
What exactly was the load out? I was thinking of changing to Hand Blasters and going with a much more burst-y load out.
Venge, Transmute, Shard, Soul Storm, WoP, Final Ruin. I focus Venge and Shard more on single and Mix Transmute with adds. Nothing special but I enjoy this loadout.
That looks nice. I'd imagine you could do the Final Ruin Double Grenade trick with everything but Soul Storm. I'd prob switch Soul Storm for Soul Well or Circle in less stable fights. But other than that, looks good.
