Hands down the sorcerer so far are my favorite class to play in Diablo IV so far. It melted bosses and exploded trash creatures out of existence. It was thrilling to command the power of fire and watch the world burn around me.

I do hope Diablo IV chooses to buff classes like the barbarian over nerfing ones like a sorcerer. I could have more than likely played on a higher difficulty while playing the sorcerer and been fine. So I do fear they going to nerf it a bit.

Part of the reason I thought playing the sorcerer felt OP is that I had some armor and weapons set aside in my bank for him to use from when I played a barbarian. The items you end up looting tend to have no or low-level requirements.

That however quickly became apparent to not be a such factor as I thought it would be. By the time I ended up replacing those items I was not just doing more damage I was melting the screen of creatures around me.

I would not be shocked if that ends up changing somewhat at least in terms of items. It felt like they had upped the experience levels gained so we could test levels without having to leave the first region or spend forever grinding. I can only assume that scaled the weapon drops as well but perhaps not the required level for them.

The first skill I went with was fire bolt. Despite this fact, I only ever put one point into the base of it. Even then creatures would not last long. I ended up going to gain 2 extra mana when a fire bolt hits burning creatures for further point spending in Its branch. Getting the burning effect on things was something that ended up playing rather well with the skills picked.

Not that long after I could tell the sorcerer was going to be in a tier all on its own. I was slaying dungeon bosses like they were nothing and rarely picking up all the health potions that were dropping. Granted I was drinking them in rapid succession early on but I knew whatever I was hitting would be dead sooner than I’d run out of them.

Picking up the fireball attack in the core part of the tree made me feel so powerful. I also thought that was going to be the skill I would max out. While I never did fully max it out as I found even a more powerful spell to spend my skill points on. It was amazing at taking out large packs of creatures.

Later on, as I spent more points and ended up getting armor that was meant for a Sorcerer I started to realize just how much damage one could tank. I would sometimes kill a dungeon boss so fast that the entire floor would be riddled with healing potions and I might have only used one or two of them.

One large advantage the Sorcerer has over say the barbarian is range. While I did not always kill everything before they got within damage range of the sorcerer it’s not like it mattered. I would just shoot a couple of fireballs and the massive AoE (area of effect) damage would wipe everything out.

The next point I could spend I put into up to 50% increased fireball radius the further away my target was. Making my sorcerer even more of a devastating threat that roamed this game. I think I only got killed during world events but that will be in a different post about those.

I then ended up selecting 10% extra damage when dealing with a burning target for a fireball. Since I was already lighting them on fire with fire bolts any time I needed mana. This just seemed like a great way to ensure whatever I was attacking would not be around for long.

I’m not sure if they ended up upping the legendary drop rate or what. As my sorcerer ended up finding quite a few. The items also seemed to be far more interesting for them. Such as critical strikes with a core skill netting me 32% attack speed. As if I needed to be attacking even faster than I already was.

It was also rather nice that by the time I would have to walk a short distance anywhere, I was already on full mana. Making every encounter I had I did not feel the need to reserve some mana in case I ran into trouble.

While there would be lots of moments where I ran out of mana and had to cast quite a few base attacks of fire bolt to get more. It’s not like even my basic attacks could not kill a normal single creature in a couple of hits without even trying.

I was not all just fire skill and damage either. I ended up putting a couple of points into Teleport which was a lighting skill. This came quite in handy later on when using this character for fighting a world boss. As it allowed me to quickly teleport out of harm's way.

I also picked up a fire shield that made me immune for two seconds from damage while also damaging anything that hit me. I never felt the need from a defense point of investing further into that line of skill. I do think if I would have kept playing at higher levels I would have spent further points increasing its duration.

It was at that point I did not even need to cast anything other than Hydra since it cost mana. I could just spawn two of them and take a sip of a drink IRL (in real life) while watching them do all the work for me. This class was almost auto-pilot for the lazy.

Oddly enough when I went to Purveyor of Curiosities to spend my currency I kept getting legendary over and over again with increased maximum hydra by one. That effect only counts once though so I only could have a maximum of two.

That was perhaps for the best. Granted due to the decreased duration I think there would have been a huge demisting return rather quickly if I could have had a third hydra.

Hydra was also the peak of the sorcerer. Once I got up to my ultimate skills I was rather disappointed. I ended up going with Inferno which has quite a long cooldown of over 40 seconds to start with. It summons a giant serpent.

While it looks amazing. It was rather lame. A further skill point invested into that part of the tree allowed the serpent to pull creatures into it that was called Prime Inferno. If I did not spawn the serpent right in the middle of the creature it was not going to take damage without that upgrade.

Final Thoughts

Other Content

• Diablo IV Early Access Beta | Starting As A Barbarian
• Diablo IV Early Access Beta | Taking A Look At Different Systems
• Diablo IV Early Access Beta | The Early Madness

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Diablo IV. This was during the early access beta. Things are subject to change.