some questions (that I assume are basic) about sorcs

[Corev]

where to begin.....I'm not new to the game, just new to casters. I'm planning out a 2nd toon that I've already sorta started on. At first my grand plan was to get my tr's done and play into max lvl as an archmage wizard. Between the low spell points and casting times etc I'm starting to think all my buddies are right (they've been screaming at me the entire time to just go sorc). Why archmage? hate the pm playstyle and have always conceptually not been an ek fan. So I have some questions about sorcs before I commit.

Is it possible/realistic to have a sorc who is both a great nuker AND good at cc? A simple example that comes to mind would be can I hit the dc for flesh to stone in mod norm or hard and still nuke really well, or am I looking at sacrificing one or the other? I am obstinate about builds and have decided that this will be pure sorc, so given the state of their feats, how doable or not doable is this?

how useful is the harper tree for a sorc? Am I looking at spending almost the entirety of my enhancements in my savant trees, or am I looking at a savant/harper split for greatest nuke effectiveness?

related to last; what would the enhancement setup look like for a primary fire secondary air savant? I realize the sla's will be useful lower levels, but am i ditching them higher lvls or no? again the pesky harper tree, some ok-ish boosts for casters but will I just get more bang for my buck out of savant trees? to clarify my intent, I'm looking for maximized dps, but probably not a toon that solos high end ee, just maxed dmg and probably soloing lower end ee content.

last question is about race. I see a lot of people are fans of toasters. IF I can in fact, be both a great nuker and good at cc, is a toaster feasible given the cha loss? I've done some research and i get the whole quicken reconstruct benefit with a toaster, survivability etc. What I guess I'm looking for here is someone who can definitively say "yes you can be a toaster and still pull off that cc" or "nope, you have to choose cc or survivability, human for cc toaster for survival" or "nope, it's nukes or gtfo so choose what you want".

I've done what research I can (I think) and seem to be at a bit of a standstill, so any insight anyone can provide is most appreciated.

[Wizza]

where to begin.....I'm not new to the game, just new to casters. I'm planning out a 2nd toon that I've already sorta started on. At first my grand plan was to get my tr's done and play into max lvl as an archmage wizard. Between the low spell points and casting times etc I'm starting to think all my buddies are right (they've been screaming at me the entire time to just go sorc). Why archmage? hate the pm playstyle and have always conceptually not been an ek fan. So I have some questions about sorcs before I commit.

Is it possible/realistic to have a sorc who is both a great nuker AND good at cc? A simple example that comes to mind would be can I hit the dc for flesh to stone in mod norm or hard and still nuke really well, or am I looking at sacrificing one or the other? I am obstinate about builds and have decided that this will be pure sorc, so given the state of their feats, how doable or not doable is this?

Very doable. It can be done in many ways as well: you can go Earth savant in Exalted Angel to get max DC and Immune to petrification with the savant core. You can be any other savant with Transmutation focus feats in Divine Crusader and still be immune to petrification and have meaningful DC. You can also be in Draconic, Fire/Air savant and forget the immune to petrification and just have meaningful DC, which is what my Sorcerer with a couple of feat swaps. You can also have Earth secondary and go up to Core 5 to get the Immune to petrification.

how useful is the harper tree for a sorc? Am I looking at spending almost the entirety of my enhancements in my savant trees, or am I looking at a savant/harper split for greatest nuke effectiveness?

Zero. You will spend everything in the savant trees since you want two elements. You may be able to pick some T1 but I didn't on my Sorc.

related to last; what would the enhancement setup look like for a primary fire secondary air savant? I realize the sla's will be useful lower levels, but am i ditching them higher lvls or no? again the pesky harper tree, some ok-ish boosts for casters but will I just get more bang for my buck out of savant trees? to clarify my intent, I'm looking for maximized dps, but probably not a toon that solos high end ee, just maxed dmg and probably soloing lower end ee content.

Probably over 40 AP in the Fire tree and over 30 in the Electric tree, depends if you want T5 Fire or T5 Air for the wings. SLAs are your bread and butter to be honest, both Fire and Electric SLAs are super useful. The fire ones to get your Immolation stacks up and the damage from Fireball is not bad and the Electric's Lightning bolt SLA can do up to 2k damage to multiple mobs for 6 sp.

last question is about race. I see a lot of people are fans of toasters. IF I can in fact, be both a great nuker and good at cc, is a toaster feasible given the cha loss? I've done some research and i get the whole quicken reconstruct benefit with a toaster, survivability etc. What I guess I'm looking for here is someone who can definitively say "yes you can be a toaster and still pull off that cc" or "nope, you have to choose cc or survivability, human for cc toaster for survival" or "nope, it's nukes or gtfo so choose what you want".

I've done what research I can (I think) and seem to be at a bit of a standstill, so any insight anyone can provide is most appreciated.

BF is the easy button of a class. Bladeforged actually haven't the -2 con and you can have reconstruct to heal you quickly with Quicken with zero problems. Mind you that if you are a WF/BF, you cannot use the Sorcerer capstone. Or, to explain it better, using an Elemental Form will make you IMMUNE to Reconstruct so be very aware of this. It comes down to personal preference anyway.

[Eth]

Is it possible/realistic to have a sorc who is both a great nuker AND good at cc? A simple example that comes to mind would be can I hit the dc for flesh to stone in mod norm or hard and still nuke really well, or am I looking at sacrificing one or the other? I am obstinate about builds and have decided that this will be pure sorc, so given the state of their feats, how doable or not doable is this?

This is actually just a choice of your epic destiny, which is nice, because you can always change it around.
If you want max DCs, Exalted Angel is the way to go.
If you want the best nuker, go Draconic Incarnation.

From personal experience - a Sorc in EA is still a better nuker than a Wizard in Draconic.

If you happen to have the best gear available you don't need to make any sacrifices for MoD.
I FTSed beholders even on EE without any problems, without any feats or twist to increase my transmutation DC. With max equip + exalted angel you are already at 65 - 67 DC in any school (while those are enough for beholders they are not for vampire knights though on EE).
For EN or EH it's even less of a problem.

how useful is the harper tree for a sorc? Am I looking at spending almost the entirety of my enhancements in my savant trees, or am I looking at a savant/harper split for greatest nuke effectiveness?

I'd say 7AP for +1 cha, 4 universal spellpower and 10 HP is the sweetspot here. More are almost always better spend in a savant tree.

[Blackheartox]

This is actually just a choice of your epic destiny, which is nice, because you can always change it around.
If you want max DCs, Exalted Angel is the way to go.
If you want the best nuker, go Draconic Incarnation.

From personal experience - a Sorc in EA is still a better nuker than a Wizard in Draconic.

If you happen to have the best gear available you don't need to make any sacrifices for MoD.
I FTSed beholders even on EE without any problems, without any feats or twist to increase my transmutation DC. With max equip + exalted angel you are already at 65 - 67 DC in any school (while those are enough for beholders they are not for vampire knights though on EE).
For EN or EH it's even less of a problem.


I'd say 7AP for +1 cha, 4 universal spellpower and 10 HP is the sweetspot here. More are almost always better spend in a savant tree.

I agree with what you said, i am pretty sure that i can do the cc as bf 18 sorc in ee mark if i twist in 2 char and use all my items +exalted.

What i do tho with harper is grab int to hit for monk debuff strike
Need the char anyways and tested, now my to hit with starting 16 int is enough for anything in ee.
Dont need accuracy item or whatever.
Oh i added some screenies how it looks at cap, tbh pretty impressed myself.
Will do some dps tests after im back to my own country after work.


Opener, first of all, you can selfheal easy as human sorc given that you can play in exalted.
Requires 1 twist slot tho, but elemental form kinda makes up for defense +wings synergy.
As sorc you actually have only 1 way to build, that is cc with nuking.
Its generally the best playstyle as sorc currently and most effective so i think you will have lotsa fun with sorc.
YOu can with some experience solo any ee content in game.
Issue is only sp, 10% less from ele form usually forces people to multiclass and swap to bf and wf.
Good thing about bf and wf is that you can get "harmor" proficiency with 1 feat aka addie body
Bf bdw has no penality to char and is overall better suited for reckless play imo.
Kinda like a easy button if i was to be precise.
Drow and human also make excelent choices.
Ap wise, honestly it really depends what you want.
There are different approaches, i personally really like to spend a few points for 1 char in harper, you dont need to but its a ok choice since it gives you some spelpower hp n such.
What you want tho is atm to go fire as main or 2ndory focus, given how much power hides behind a fully stacked imolated target +empyrian.
Imo must specialization currently.
2nd focus depends tho, if mark of death then acid for bdb and petri immunity.
If general questing, then elec for vulnerability.

[Lonnbeimnech]

You aren't going to have many points to spare if you plan on having 2 sorc trees filled, and imo, if you are planning on doing EE you will want to take adamant body and put those spare points in arcane spell failure %, you can get 15 from wf /bf, and another 10 easily from ek, which means with a blue slot or cannith crafted arcane fluidity item you are at 0 asf and 100+ prr. That will serve much better than 10 spell power and 1 cha.

This also works on an elf, would be tougher on other races.

[Blackheartox]

You aren't going to have many points to spare if you plan on having 2 sorc trees filled, and imo, if you are planning on doing EE you will want to take adamant body and put those spare points in arcane spell failure %, you can get 15 from wf /bf, and another 10 easily from ek, which means with a blue slot or cannith crafted arcane fluidity item you are at 0 asf and 100+ prr. That will serve much better than 10 spell power and 1 cha.

This also works on an elf, would be tougher on other races.

As much as i like the prr pass and consider it game breaking i also dont think a sorc, a properly played sorc requires addie body.
If you have wings and dcs, you dont need addie body at all.
I mean i would suggest it to new players, but personally i would not waste a feat on it and i would not waste feats to make a fleshie armor able. It is just a horrible approach, unless you want to splash palie or whatever and get it for free.
But i also consider pure sorc more potent then 2 palie splash since i can count on my fingers the very few times where i wished that i had saves from palie.
THe cost to reduce spell failure can be used so much better, sooo much better.
I dont even pick recon as bf, it just costs to much ap for my taste, no offense whatsoever and you just wasted 11 ap..

I would suggest this approach, play addie til you learn, then swap to no armor and focus on dcs.
But i would not suggest addie since (monk splash ftw)

[Theoutlaw_JoseWalles]

I went with this split for the synergy with the AoV (Angle of Vengeance) tree and fire savant tree. Ill be going force as a secondary option if fire fails since it also procs the Aov goodies . Im going with max, emp, quicken, heighten, sf:evo, sf:enchant, and greater sf:enchant . I haven't really gave much thought to what Im going to do once I get into epics but since I haven't got anything in my arcane tree Ill prolly go with Draconic.

My original plan at end game was to cast hold monster and nuke em with fire twisting in sense weakness and if that doesn't work Ill be redoing the enchantments feats and going full throttle nuker . I hope this helps homie and as far as builds go were all 1 lvl away from the worst frecken build of all time