The One on One series is a collection of comprehensive interviews with people influential in the Diablo I/II community. This interview's subject is
, webmaster of the Sorceress Source, a superb strategy site dedicated to the Sorceress class in Diablo II and home of his hefty Complete Sorceress Guide. VV is widely regarded as the scene's top expert in Sorceress knowledge, mechanics, and strategy.
Bolty: Thanks for this interview, VV. For starters - can you tell us a little about yourself?
I've spent the last 11 years or so in the college scene of the greater New York Metropolitan area, undergraduate and then grad school. I picked up a Bachelors (CompSci and Philosophy) along the way, and have spent the last 6 years in particular doing research at a Cognitive Science lab. This has turned out to be a great gig, since I have access to multiple high-end PCs with T1 connections; almost enough to eliminate the lag on Bnet. I've taken advantage of all this nice hardware by using it to do a lot of testing of game mechanics, as well as play around with all kinds of experimental character builds. Unfortunately, this lab position is about to end and instead I have to start teaching "Logic and Critical Thinking" to undergrads this Fall. Bleh. That won't be a good gig, since I don't think I can work D2 into it at all. Also, you're not allowed to drink anything stronger than coffee while teaching. ;-)
Bolty: Where did you come up with the name "VenomousVixen?"
I dunno. I think in this case I was looking for something that sounded a bit evil, but in a spiteful kind of way. I remember coming up with a list of what I thought would be good character names back when the game first came out. 'VenomousVixen' was on it, and it happened to be the one I chose when making my first realm char. The irony of it is that Sorcs don't have any poison attacks. That felt awkward to me, but people would comment on the name when I used to hang out more regularly in the public Bnet channels, so I decided it was a keeper.
When I first set out to write a Sorc guide, there were already about a half-dozen in existence. But they all were lacking in various ways (stemming partly from the fact that some of them were written during the original Beta), and my feeling was that something was needed to fill in the gaps, as well as cover existing ideas in a more objective way than past authors had done. It's one thing to have a build or two that you like, but it's quite another to act as if your favorite build is all there is to a character class. That was my starting point: an attempt at objectivity. It was an incredible challenge that I still don't feel I've mastered.
As is the case with many projects that get out of control, it started out small, conservative, and when first published, "the author swore there would be no more to it". LOL. :-) Even then, it weighed in at ~30 pages, which seemed like possibly too much at the time. But slowly, tiny bits and pieces at a time, it grew. And grew. Someone would tell me I left something out, so I would patch things a bit. A couple of days later, I might learn a new trick; another sentence or paragraph would go in. In that way, and still to this day, it grows.
Bolty: What makes you such a fan of the Sorceress class?
In a game that requires not all that much skill, I feel that the Sorceress offers the best chance of forcing you to use skill while playing, in the form of tactics and strategy. You're not just clicking on monsters until they die. You also have to be on the move (or be ready to move at a moment's notice) while doing this. True, that's still not exactly brain surgery, but back in the 1.05 days, I had more than one person tell me a story of literally falling asleep at the keyboard while Whirlwinding their high-level Barb through the River of Flame. That doesn't happen when playing a Sorc.
Bolty: Let's get down to business. The Sorceress was the most-changed of the original five classes in patch 1.08 and Lord of Destruction. Could you give a short synopsis of why she's so different now?
The Sorceress is more interesting than ever now primarily because there is a broader range of options for skill choices. In the past, most players got Static Field and then added 1 or 2 spells to that. Now, not only can you easily do without Static Field, but other spells which were too weak to be used effectively in Hell difficulty are now viable. It's not so unusual now to see Sorc players using several different hotkeys while playing through an Act.
A second way in which Sorcs are different (in the Expansion) is that you have greater control over the level of difficulty. How so? Well, it's not as easy as it used to be to block things with your shield, and your response to this problem dictates how hard you want the game to get. You can choose to buy a melee hireling (i.e. a merc), in which case, he will "tank" for you and so it's difficult for you to die in most scenarios unless you make a really big mistake. At the other end of the spectrum, you can choose to use a staff and not buy any hireling, which means that you have to be much more careful than ever about avoiding the monsters. Even small missteps can cause you to get attacked or mobbed by monsters. Between these two extremes, you can try to get various levels of shield blocking and maybe change what type of merc you use to something that doesn't tank as well for you. This middle ground is fairly wide and varied in its possibilities, allowing you to make adjustments between the two extremes.
And of course, there are the spell timers. Most of the graphically-intense spells have limits on how frequently you can cast them. Most people had gotten used to spamming their high-powered spells as fast as they could. That tactic often doesn't work too well anymore, when it's even possible.
The fourth and final change I'll mention is that Sorcs now get a new class-specific item: orbs. They're basically 1-handed staves; we've seen them before. In effect, it's like using a staff and a shield at the same time.
Bolty: What do you personally think about these changes? Good or bad?
The toning down of Static Field, while increasing the power of most other spells, is an excellent general change that greatly improves the replay value of this class. In the past, the Cold tree was the predominant choice for spells other than Static Field. But now, a wider array of viable spells are available in all three trees. This is a beautiful thing, and I hope it brings out more creativity among Bnet players in general.
Unfortunately, it's mostly downhill from here. Because Static Field is capped at 50% of the monsters' HP in Hell difficulty, it's now a questionable choice for anything other than 1 skill point (to be raised by +skills items). It needed a nerf, but was over-nerfed. As for the increased damage of other spells, people by now have figured out which spells turned out OK and which are overpowered. Everyone loves to complain about the damage output of the new Fire Wall and some other spells, and rightly so. But really I'm not too worried. Blizzard knew they would have a tough time balancing the damage of these spells, and we should expect no less when so many changes are made at once. I have faith that Blizzard will fine tune these problems to a more acceptable level.
I have mostly negative feelings about the new hirelings (i.e. mercs). It's Sorcs that benefit most from having them, but having them makes the game too easy. "OK then, so let's not use mercs." But now you're left with blocking that's so bad that you might as well not have a shield. Oh, you can get your blocking percentage back to what it was in classic D2, but at the expense of at least 20% of your Stat points into DEX. That's a huge number of points, and Sorcs usually have no other reason to invest in DEX as it is. Anyone who wants their Sorc to have decent blocking will almost surely be spending a significant number of Stat points in all 4 areas: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Energy. This is crazy. If you're playing solo, your options for Sorc design thus become more limited and problematic than they first appear. Decent blocking is too hard to get, and so you're largely stuck with the two extreme cases I mentioned above: get a melee merc, or have no merc while having virtually no blocking either. Indeed, Blizzard seems to be trying hard to push players down the merc route, when they aren't pushing players to party. When you have a tank at your disposal, the inherent weaknesses of the Sorc class are all but eliminated. Play without any help and it then becomes much more clear just how the defensive capabilities of the Sorceress were seriously nerfed.
The spell timers are an interesting issue. Most people understand intuitively that the reason they were put in was because it was an easy technical way for Blizzard to make games less laggy. I'm all for making games less laggy, and I don't really mind that some spells have timers on them (lag issues or not), but Blizzard created a new problem when trying to eliminate the old one. The spells that have timers on them are typically just the ones that you want to stack heavily in order to get the best effect from using them. Ummm, hello? This is a big problem for Fire Wall and especially Blizzard in "pure" solo play. Without a tank in front of you (i.e. something to hold the attention of the monsters), Blizzard has a hard time hitting things now. Even with a tank, most ice shards will miss unless they're falling on a densely packed group of monsters. And the short duration of Fire Wall makes it especially hard to keep monsters in the fire long enough unless you try to tank the monsters yourself, something which Sorcs are not inherently built to do very well. I think this problem with Fire Wall will become more apparent after Blizzard nerfs the damage to something more reasonable than it is now.
Bolty: So, would you say that the "Tweaker" Sorceresses, those which attempt to get the fastest cast speed as possible, are "dead"?
They aren't dead, just sulking in the corner. Back when Static Field and Frozen Orb were each waaaay overpowered, fast casting of course became very popular. Now, the main spells for this style of play are no longer the most powerful ones: Charged Bolt, Nova, the cold projectiles, and Fireball. Not exactly a "who's who" of damage output, eh? However, factors such as the new Lightning Mastery are now in play. Nova, and to a lesser extent Charged Bolt, can now be used by a fast caster to great effect. The reason why you see a lot of Nova tweakers right now is because their old equipment (fast cast, SoJ/Frostburn, etc.), which is normally hard to find in the Expansion, is being reused via character conversion into the Expansion. This gear, which produces a large mana pool and fast mana regen, makes Nova a viable spell for speed casters. Although Nova is a relatively inefficient spell in terms of its damage/mana ratio, having that massive mana pool gets around this problem. If it weren't for the fact that converted items are allowed into the Expansion, there wouldn't be quite as many Nova Sorcs out there, and most of them would still need a merc to tank for them, given that Nova is somewhat dangerous to use. Mercs are thus a factor here as well. Spells such as Nova are no longer dangerous if you've got a tank. I can't say enough how much mercs ruin various balance issues with the Sorceress.
Bolty: What do you think of orbs as compared to staves?
I like orbs, but the situation with Sorceress class-specific items in general... what a fiasco this is. Aside from the new javelins/pikes with bonuses to Zon skills, this new class-specific item is the only one that is a correction of a previous oversight, rather than a brand new addition. Sorcs had staves but they were rather underused because the weapon+shield combo was so much more effective. Having learned from this, Blizzard decided to make one-handed staves. This would allow Sorcs to have a class-specific item as intended while retaining their shields (however un-Sorc-like this looks). So really, what you have is two class-specific items, one of which is inherently superior to the other, but only one of which can be used at a time. So Sorcs, who depend on their skills more than anyone, effectively have only 1 class-specific item, and just at a time in the game's history when choosing multiple skill trees is a more popular and advisable strat than ever. Can you say "imbalance"? I knew you could. Barbs, who are more dependent on equipment than skills, can, like Sorcs, wear up to 3 major skill-granting item types at the same time: weapons, helms and ammies. Pallies can have 4 (by adding shields to the previous list). The other major spellcaster in the game, the Necro, gets to wear 4 such items, two of them Necro-specific, while retaining a blocking percentage. (Because you know, shrunken heads are world famous for their ability to deflect the attacks of axe-wielding demons.) Even if you somehow felt that the new blocking equation increases variety by making staves almost as practical as orbs, you're still stuck with being able to wear only 1 class-specific item at a time. Why not give Sorcs more help with their skills, since they need it at least as much as any of the other classes? The current situation makes no sense.
Bolty: Well, do you think that rune words in Staves such as the famous "Leaf" can help make them useful? If YOU could build a rune word for a staff, what mods would you put on it? I agree with you that staves are better looking for Sorceresses and argued in favor of them months ago when we all first heard about the addition of orbs.
Rune word recipes seem to be the only way to make staves useful right now, unless Blizzard introduces lots of new uniques. The crucial fact that one must understand before attempting to create a usable staff is that, being only one item, it will inherently have fewer mods than most weapon+shield combos. This is the major thing that killed staves in CD2. A lot of people thought that what killed staves in CD2 is their inability to block, but that's not quite right. For let's suppose staves had the ability to block. You still wouldn't use them most of the time! Why? Not enough useful mods. Only the most godly of these hypothetical rare staves could've done more for you overall than a good rare wand/scepter combined with a 3-diamond shield.
So really, the foremost problem is one of having enough good mods. This deficiency can be overcome in the Expansion if (and only if) the "sum" of the mods on the staff is comparable to what you could get from a weapon+shield combo. And what can you get from your weapon+shield? The shield itself can give ~50% resistance to all, for example. An orb can potentially have heavy skill bonuses along with further resistances, a casting speed bonus, or significant mana/life increases. A staff has to be able to do all of these things in one package, and perhaps more, keeping in mind that it is already inherently "inferior" because it can't block hits.
Don't ask me why they can't block hits though. Blocking is a classic medieval fighting maneuver with staves, and the D2 universe has a gothic theme to it, so why wouldn't a Sorc have any clue about this? Meanwhile, the Necro, gladiator that he is, has managed to turn a shrunken head into something better than a buckler, when in fact he doesn't even need shield blocking because he usually has minions to act as bodyguards.
Anyway, let's look at the unique Jo staff Razorswitch as an example. It has: 30% fast cast (nice), resist all +50% (not too bad, could be better), magic damage reduced by 15 (not too bad, interesting), +175 mana (very nice, perhaps too much), +80 life (very nice), attacker takes damage of 15 (LOL). So, what's wrong with this item overall? At least this: no skill bonuses. Normally, what you hold in your arms comprises a large portion of your skill bonuses. Razorswitch could be made into not just a good staff, but a great one, if there were some useful skill bonuses on it. That is an example of what a good staff would look like. And since blocking percentages aren't at all good for the Sorceress right now, a staff like this would be a viable alternative to weapon+shield combos.
Bolty: The Sorceress is now thought of as the most powerful class in the game. What, in your opinion, led to her being able to climb the ladder the fastest?
There are several factors here. First, Blizzard has yet to settle on good numbers for the damage output of certain spells. Spells like Fire Wall and Nova can dish out an insane amount of damage now in a short span of time, which only gets worse when you start adding in the masteries. Second, as I said before, mercs make things too easy for Sorcs. Sorcs become nearly invincible heavy artillery. Third, there are some terrain issues with Act V. I think all players will agree that the Bloody Foothills are a playground for any decent Sorc player. Even without a merc, she can hardly be touched because she can simply teleport to higher or lower ground as needed. What ranged attacks there are to worry about are not that powerful either. A Sorc can level in the Bloody Foothills for a good long time before having to move on. Then there's Nihlathak's Temple. Talk about easy Experience. Mostly slow monsters. Merc clogs the hallway. You get the idea. Fourth, Sorceress equipment from CD2 translates fairly well into the Expansion. You can build a new Sorc using your old equipment and you'll be perfectly fine doing so. Melee chars, on the other hand, need much more life/mana steal and damage output than before, and so their old equipment doesn't perform so well now. Fifth, monster resistances in Hell right now affect melee chars worse than Sorcs I think. A Sorc with 2 trees typically has at least 1 powerful weapon to use against most monsters, and likely there will be little or no resistance to that elemental weapon. But global physical resistance is a real pain all around for melee chars, to say nothing of physical immunities. (Yet another issue that pushes players to party even if they don't want to.)
Bolty: Pretend you're Tyler Thompson, lead designer of Lord of Destruction. If you had the ability to "balance" the Sorceress out for patch 1.09, what changes would you make and why?
OMG...how do I limit myself here? Thank you so much for asking this. ;-)
Some skill issues:
Tone down Fire Wall damage. Increase spell duration while decreasing FW size. There's more than one way to fight lag. You don't need a FW that's 2 screens wide, but you would like one that lasts more than a blink of an eye.
Meteor is a real problem. For pure solo play, it's harder to hit things now because the blast radius was nerfed. But because there's also a timer on it, you can't spread Meteors out over a wide area to get around this problem. So, not only is it easier to miss things now, but missing is more costly in terms of lost time. (Imagine trying to use this while on the run from fast monsters.) If Meteor is a main attack spell, this situation can be a real pain. I think the end result is that Meteor is harder to use than it should be in pure solo play. This can be fixed by increasing its blast radius to what it used to be. But then we might have a problem with Sorcs who play with a merc/party. If you increase the blast radius, it becomes too easy to hit lots of things at once, since they all cluster around the tanks. If this turns out to be too powerful, then the damage can simply be nerfed. This would balance things out for both pure solo and merc/party play. But the key idea, again, is to increase the blast radius and work from there.
Revamp Blizzard. Get rid of the damage-per-shard system and instead have it be a broad area-of-effect like Fire Wall, where you take damage pretty much anywhere you stand in the flames. The old system is now terrible with a short duration + timer, since quick monsters can often run right through the falling shards without being hit, and you can't stack the spell enough times to "brute force" your way through this problem.
Figure out what you want to do with the Ice Blast vs. Glacial Spike tension. Right now, these two skills are roughly equal in their overall effectiveness, with maybe a slight edge going to the lower-level spell. Increasing the blast radius of GS might tip the scales back towards the higher-level spell, which is not a bad thing. More importantly, increasing the blast radius of GS is a natural way of differentiating these 2 skills a bit more clearly, so that people can better understand why they're choosing either one over the other.
Increase Blaze damage to enable it to compete more with Fire Wall. But then again, so many targets in Act5/Hell can't reasonably be killed with Blaze (e.g. Baal, Death Lords, Imps, catapults), maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
Nerf Charged Bolt after slvl 16. The damage progression across slvls suddenly ramps up now at slvl 16, but it was fine the way it used to be.
Thunderstorm is pretty damn nice now. :-) But nerf the damage a little bit, and/or something that more directly tones it down in a PvP context. Getting insta-killed by some PK's TS would not be my idea of fun. Also, clean up the graphical glitches that now plague TS. People get confused when it looks like the job of TS is to shoot monsters that are already dead.
Now that Thunderstorm has been improved, improve Chain Lightning in a similar way. If I shoot an slvl 20 CL into a big crowd, I expect something close to 9 hits, dammit, not 1-9. It's problem enough we have to cope with a widely varied damage range per hit as it is. The damage range is fine, but the spell needs to hit more consistently. Also, speed up the spell. It was claimed in patch.txt that CL's base speed was increased, but in fact, it's slower now than ever before.
Nova was the only offensive Lightning Tree skill that worked appropriately with the old Lightning Mastery: Nova was expensive, but LM could bring its mana cost down to something reasonable, relative to the damage output. LM is now changed; maybe Nova's mana cost should follow suit. While it's true that LM still serves to increase the damage/mana ratio, a base cost of 30+ at high slvls is a little bit high. Again, this is one of those problems that some people don't see because they've converted their uber-equipment from CD2. If Nova is too expensive in theory, a Sorc with Frosts+SoJ wouldn't notice that in practice.
Perhaps cheapen the cost of Teleport. Again, not having the old LM hurts here, and hurts more when you're under the effects of Magic Iron Maiden.
The 33%/50% cap on Static Field (SF) in NM/Hell makes sense against boss monsters, since Sorcs always had too easy a time with them. But the cap as currently implemented ruins SF for general use. The problem is that several other spells can now dish out large amounts of damage; why bother with SF if it can bring a monster down to only 50% HP? You might as well not bother with SF and instead use something else from start to finish. Give me a reason to invest points into this skill. One way to fix things is to make a distinction between bosses and normal monsters. The cap against normal monsters needs to be lowered. An alternative idea is to make SF work at half-strength (if at all!) against boss monsters. However it's done, the key idea, again, is to make the distinction between bosses and normal monsters, since it's mostly against boss monsters that SF has the problem of being too powerful. It also wouldn't hurt to give the monsters outside of Act IV some lightning resistance.
Increase the base damage of Enchant. And make the spellcaster's Fire Mastery work with Enchant when she casts Enchant on an ally. Right now, FM doesn't apply. Like I need another reason not to bother with Enchant? Which brings me to...
Improve the cold armors, or else eliminate them. The three of them collectively take up a full 10% of the complete list of Sorc skills, but they have very limited value. Beef up Chilling Armor so that it isn't a waste of skill points like it is now. Increase the freeze/chill times of Frozen/Shiver Armor. These are great skills in theory, but no one stresses out over not having them in practice. Again, why throw away a full 10% of the available Sorc skills? If, instead of the cold armors, there were blank spaces right now in that branch of the Cold tree, would anyone notice?
Find the guy who fixed Hydra and Thunderstorm have him work on (1)-(13). Those two spells are beautiful now. Oh no... I'm getting veklempt... *sniff* *sniff*
Some item issues:
Allow a greater variety of items to have skill bonuses on them for the Sorceress. Quite frankly, I thought Blizzard was going to make some circlets Sorc-only, or perhaps some amulets. If not Sorc-only, then at least add skill tab bonuses to some additional item type. A Sorc with more than 2 trees doesn't get enough help from her orb, unless (or perhaps even if) it's an insanely good one.
The HP/mana auto-mods are not bad on orbs, but think about including casting speed as a possible auto-mod. Casting speed is always a good thing to have, and you can't get it through Stat points. The auto-mods that can appear on the other class-specific items (e.g. resistances) make more sense because you can't get them through Stat points.
Remove Sorc skill charges from Sorc items. It is very rare indeed when having a charged skill on an orb is potentially useful. Usually, either the charge is too low in slvl or I've already learned the skill, in which case, why do I need the charge? These should be removed and are as much a mistake as having damage or Attack Rating mods on orbs.
Remove Telekinesis and Teleport charges from any and all items in the game. Blizzard seems to have no idea what a can of worms they've opened in Multiplayer. Many players, no matter what the class, are using Telekinesis to greedily snag items from the ground. The problem was bad enough when unscrupulous Sorcs were doing it. Also, part of the challenge in playing a melee class is to know when you're in over your head. If a player can overzealously engage a tough mob but then recover from the mistake by simply teleporting out of danger, that's just too easy. Blizzard's claim that the skill charges are there to "advertise" the skills of the other classes underestimates the already-existing knowledge of players and the willingness of others to learn each class separately. Oh, and Lower Resist is another good candidate for removal.
Other stuff:
Find a way to penalize Sorcs for using mercs. Mercs should still be available for players who want them, but make it so that players have at least some incentive to leave their tanks behind. Right now, there is really no reason for you not to have a merc, other than style issues or perhaps some misguided attempt to make it appear as if "YOo got D2 skillz". Make it so that there's actually a practical decision to ponder here, a trade-off of some sort. The strength of the Sorc class is the need for smart tactics and strategy. Mercs take most of this away, especially when playing "solo."
If you take a look at the Life/Stamina/Mana that Sorcs gain per level up, and again at those effects as gained per Stat point invested in Vitality/Energy, it's clear that Sorcs come up short compared to the other 6 classes. Why do things this way? Balance this out by giving Sorcs a little something more, probably mana-wise.
Related to the other classes, Sorcs are too difficult to level up in their earliest stages. Many players, especially newbies, become confused as to how they're supposed to play a Sorc when they have almost no mana to start the game with, to fuel their puny spells. Something should be done about this. A larger base mana pool would be a good idea. This could be used in turn to balance out the deficiency I was complaining about in (2).
Currently, Magic Iron Maiden is cast only if max mana >= max HP. Since Sorc builds are now tending towards more HP and less mana than in the past, there seems little point to having MIM in the game. Make it so that MIM can be cast under a wider range of conditions. MIM is a good idea that needs better implementation.
Bolty: Do you think the way that Chain Lightning and Lightning are now affected by weapon swing speed is a bug or a feature?
I suspect it's a bug. When they tried to make CL faster, they seem to have changed its animation type. For example, it's now also affected by Holy Freeze, just like weapon animation is. I doubt they intended that CL should be affected by things that regular spell casting is not. In any case, Blizzard needs to clarify its intentions here. Otherwise, people won't know how to plan their CL Sorc builds.
Bolty: Immunities. Overall, were they a good or bad idea?
Monster immunities are a good idea, just as they were a good idea in classic Diablo. But the implementation in D2 still needs to be worked on. Make magic and poison immunes more common. Also, the immunities are too predictable now. If I know in advance what all the monster immunities are, then this may unduly constrain what trees/skills I choose for the long run. Find a way to vary the immunities a bit more, so that (for example) you can play often in the later half of Act5/Hell and avoid being stuck using (or not using, as the case may be) the same skill over and over and over again when facing a monster pack. Classic Diablo solved this problem by using a clever technique known as "monster variety". This would be a good idea for D2 as well. But in lieu of this, randomizing their immunities on a per game basis would be cool. As things stand, you unfortunately already know pretty much what to expect in every playing area, which hurts the effectiveness of immunities, as well the replay value of the game in general.
But the main problem with immunities right now is that they aren't supplemented with resistances to other damage types. Most monsters in the game are such that if they have an immunity, they have little or no resistance to anything else. To a Sorc player, who will typically have at least one strong tree to use against almost any given monster, immunities are often little more than a mere annoyance rather than a strategic challenge. It becomes much too easy to kill things. Compare Act IV and Act V. Act IV is fairly well-balanced against the Sorceress because there are some monsters that have decent resistance against multiple damage types. In Act V on the other hand, it's typically either immunity to something or no resistance to it at all. You can see how the ability to easily get around immunities makes Act V a joke for Sorcs. Elemental resistances in general need to be raised in order for immunities to be truly effective. Right now, immunities are interesting only when you come across mixed monster packs that you can't separate out into distinct groups according to their different immunity types. This situation doesn't happen often enough though.
Bolty: Do you think there's any point to using Energy Shield anymore, thanks to the cover mercenaries provide?
If you're going to use a merc, then clearly there is less of a need for Energy Shield (ES). The current monster AI is such that they will often "not see" your merc and come directly for you. But the tactical adjustment here is easy: simply keep trying to hide behind the merc. The monsters will get entangled soon enough, after which the only real threat to you is ranged attackers, which you can dodge.
Aside from the merc issue, a big problem I see for ES is that current Sorc builds tend to focus somewhat less on mana than before. That being the case, you have less mana to support an ES, which in turn makes it potentially dangerous to use due to excessive mana drain relative to the limited size of your mana pool. This is yet another way in which the defensive situation for Sorcs has really eroded. Nowadays, if you have a merc, your game is mostly about pure offense.
If you don't have a merc, then bumping up mana to support an ES makes sense. But those Stat points have to come from other places, which in turn reduces DEX, which reduces blocking percentage, which increases the number of hits you take, which in the long run increases the amount of mana you lose through ES. A nasty little circle isn't it? Better Vulpine items may help a little bit here, but it would be better still if Sorcs were given a half-decent chance to have a half-decent blocking percentage. That would help much to keep ES from draining your mana dry.
Bolty: When using timer skills, the need for mana regeneration is greatly lessened. Some Sorceress builds now need far less mana than before, being playable with only a few hundred mana points. What do you think of this new dynamic, and of the great prevalence of mana potion drops in the Expansion Set?
Well, I think this is a godsend for Hardcore players. They no longer have to worry about having precise equipment setups (Twitchthroe, SoJ, and Frosts were very common) in order to have "optimized" builds. With a merc, they can skimp on Energy and DEX and dump most of their points into Vitality. And they can do this naturally, without having to make assumptions about what their equipment is. Their lives become a little easier and more flexible now.
Mana potions do seem to drop more often now don't they? This makes life a lot easier for low-mana builds that use somewhat expensive spells, but at the same time I have to admit that I hate having to drink potions of any kind and would rather not if that could be avoided. Myself, I pick them up only as I feel I need them. I try to assume I won't have them while I'm playing.
Does having them in abundance make things too easy? This is yet another issue that cleaves according to whether or not you're using a merc. If you're like me, you don't keep mana potions in your belt; you keep them as spares in your inventory. It therefore takes time to drink them, time which you don't always have when playing solo. But with a merc, you can have time to drink a mana potion, read the newspaper, and bake a batch of cookies while your merc toils away. In this scenario, having the potions "always" be there makes things too easy. It's hard to run out of mana in any meaningful way.
Note though that timered skills are not by themselves what causes players to go for low-mana builds. That line of reasoning is relevant only if every one of your frequently-cast skills is timered. If you use, say, 1 timered skill and 1 non-timered skill, then you can still run out of mana in a hurry if you're quick with the hotkeys. A more direct reason why low-mana builds are more viable now is simply that the mana cost of most of the expensive skills has been lowered. It's almost as simple as that. The idea that the timers themselves are what's driving the movement towards low-mana builds is largely a fallacy. As long as at least one of your often-cast spells is non-timered and you're doing a good job of alternating between spells, things aren't so much different now than they were in CD2, in terms of mana consumption. If on the other hand you use nothing but timered spells, or you're simply slow on the hotkeys, then yes, mana consumption significantly decreases.
It if does turn out that you're not using all that much mana, and you have a tank and maybe some mana potions, then this all seems very useful in that you can now divert points from Warmth to your attacks spells, perhaps even developing a new skill in a third tree. But the irony here is that if you have a merc and two skill trees, then you're usually already well-off enough as it is. You'd be saving up skill points that you don't really need because your two trees, even if not maxed out, would already be more than what's needed for the job. The natural thing to do for most players, it seems, is to try to max out 2 trees. But I hope people see that 3 unmaxed trees is also a viable strategy.
Bolty: Will you be updating your Sorceress guide to reflect the massive changes placed upon her? When can we expect an update?
Updates are already being worked on. The guide as a whole will be getting another general overhaul sometime soon as well. It's gotten too technical in some parts and I fear I've left the newbies behind a little bit in those places, or could help them more. In yet other places, it needs more and better technical analyses for those who lust after that sort of thing. I hope to have most of the new version done by the end of the summer, with some parts of it going up before then. And as always, it's a work in progress. To be honest, despite all the positive feedback I get, I'm nonetheless motivated by a constant sense of inadequacy about the guide. Even of the pages I like, none ever feel quite right to me. There's always more work to do.
Bolty: In conclusion, do you like how popular the Sorceress class is now, or do you prefer the days before when the Barbarians and Amazons were the most-played?
Cheese in a different form still tastes like cheese. I admit that I wish there weren't as many Sorcs out there. Variety is best for the game, especially in terms of replay value. As soon as people start to think that one class is underpowered/overpowered, they tend to choose their classes accordingly. The Bnet masses in this way tended towards WW Barbs, and then to Bowazons (Conc Pally often in tow), and now Sorcs are the hot ticket. Sadly though, I predict this latest development is here to stay. The fact is, it's hard to find a more powerful force in the game than a Sorc with a tank. But since Sorcs can buy their very own tanks now, they can do "solo" what you'd ordinarily need a small team of players to do. They can just cast Fire Wall or whatever on the mobs in front of the merc and then sit back and watch as mostly everything dies fairly quickly. As long as there are mercs, that tactic will never change, and it works very effectively in most situations. Indeed, if it wasn't for the current Experience bonus for partying, Sorcs would have no practical reason at all to party with anyone, and in fact, that's exactly what's often happening now in public games on Bnet. It's difficult to underestimate how much of an imbalance this merc issue is among the classes, and it appears to be permanent problem for the Sorceress.
Bolty: Thanks so much for taking the time for this interview and for your work in educating us all about the Sorceress with your guides, VV!
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