Working on a tiefling fire sorceror, incomplete thoughts in heroics

[ValariusK]

So I presently have a level 8 Tiefling fire sorc now who should get to level 10 fairly shortly. I have 13 racial AP bonus (all but tiefling plus a +2 tome).

Some experiences: I wanted to like the darkness thing, but it's really annoying to use. Maybe that'll change once I have quicken. So watch this space.

Ash: Ash is really good with improved scorch---which btw appears to affect all your scorches, not just your SLA scorches. What this gives you is the ability to disable fire immunity more or less at will. Scorch is an AE. With castable and SLA scorch you're in business. Downside: it shares a cooldown with your SLA scorch from fire savant.
What I think will work though is just putting 1 point in racial scorch so as to get improved scorch, and putting the 3 into the racial SLA.

Improved scorch is a strong buy though. I think it's an enhancement justifying a build.
the Incinerate enhancements are also strong buys. +4% spell crit and +4 more for fire, sign me up.

I'm going to also try to make Infernal sovereign (electric) work. Why electric? I figure that since I'm going to be wearing the burnscar sash more or less all the time from 10-20, my acid spell power is going to be really good anyway. And electric has some good spells to round out my offense.

I'm seriously considering only taking one savant. If I take electric savant, it nerfs earth, which hits meteor swarm if I recall. And I get to inherit my fire spell power on electric anyway. So the question is, what to spend those AP on?

I'm contemplating actually burning a bunch in EK. For 11 points, you get a pretty serviceable spellblade and 20 universal spell power. for 21 points, you get a better spellblade (d8s) and 30 USP. For 31, (d10s) and 40 USP. 40 USP is pretty respectable. But how to spend 31 points for good value in EK for a sorc?

41 fire 31 ek and last 8 in racial might be a pretty good build. Lots of spell power, a great secondary through infernal sovereign, and a good backup in acid. And the melee option for finishing off the weakened might be decent. I think the tiefling d4 d6 and d8 at 75 50 and 25 all stack.

Any thoughts?

[Thilanas]

I've just finished three racial tiefling PLs as a sorc, so thought I would share my view on a few of these points.

Racial enhancement felt very strong, particular being able to bypass fire immunity at low levels where your variety of spells is very limited.

I had much less RAP so I couldn't pick up improved scorch until about level 4, but from there ran only fire up until level 12 where I would respec to wind. The reason behind this was ball lightning + chain lightning, I felt fire overall lacking up until about level 17-18 or whenever it is that you get delayed blast fireball.

By sticking to one element I could easily pick up the crit % bonus in tiefling and have enough AP to get sprint boost from falconry.

18-20 AP pretty much went to waste, but as this was just for heroics I wasn't overly concerned. Similarly didn't bother too much with level 9 spells.

Very unsure what sort of AP split I would want at 20 for going through epics so sorry i can't help you there

[ValariusK]

I've just finished three racial tiefling PLs as a sorc, so thought I would share my view on a few of these points.

Racial enhancement felt very strong, particular being able to bypass fire immunity at low levels where your variety of spells is very limited.

I had much less RAP so I couldn't pick up improved scorch until about level 4, but from there ran only fire up until level 12 where I would respec to wind. The reason behind this was ball lightning + chain lightning, I felt fire overall lacking up until about level 17-18 or whenever it is that you get delayed blast fireball.

By sticking to one element I could easily pick up the crit % bonus in tiefling and have enough AP to get sprint boost from falconry.

18-20 AP pretty much went to waste, but as this was just for heroics I wasn't overly concerned. Similarly didn't bother too much with level 9 spells.

Very unsure what sort of AP split I would want at 20 for going through epics so sorry i can't help you there

Did some more testing once I got quicken. The darkness thing just isn't for me. Too slow to deploy and I don't go static for 30 seconds between moves. Next level I'll get level 5 spells and infernal sovereignty in electric to boost a ball lightning. Level 10 ball lightning should be 10 (d6+5), or around 85 before spell power. Level 10 fireball being 11 (d6+3), or around 71.5 before spell power.
At level 12, fireball becomes 12 dice, ball lightning also 12. Chain lightning steps in at 12(d6+6). at level 14 the old friend db fireball shows up (d6+7), and is going to be 18 dice from the start.

[ValariusK]

More thoughts on darkness.

As I see it, even though the benefits can be large (3 mmr, 15 MRR cap, 3 to all saves 30 USP, +2 dcs on evo and conjuration), I'm just totally unwilling to change my playstyle to accomodate it. That's especially true given how much it costs in AP.
To tempt me, it'd need to drop as fast as consecrate ground does in epics. Right now even with quicken it feels dog slow.

[Lonnbeimnech]

I've just finished three racial tiefling PLs as a sorc, so thought I would share my view on a few of these points.

Racial enhancement felt very strong, particular being able to bypass fire immunity at low levels where your variety of spells is very limited.

I had much less RAP so I couldn't pick up improved scorch until about level 4, but from there ran only fire up until level 12 where I would respec to wind. The reason behind this was ball lightning + chain lightning, I felt fire overall lacking up until about level 17-18 or whenever it is that you get delayed blast fireball.

By sticking to one element I could easily pick up the crit % bonus in tiefling and have enough AP to get sprint boost from falconry.

18-20 AP pretty much went to waste, but as this was just for heroics I wasn't overly concerned. Similarly didn't bother too much with level 9 spells.

Very unsure what sort of AP split I would want at 20 for going through epics so sorry i can't help you there

You get chain lightning at 12 and DBF at 14.

[ValariusK]

Up to 12th now. Have chain lightning. Will test that and some sorceror fire savant t5s tonight.

Coming to a weird realization---sorc cores are awesome. Sorceror t5s other than the fireball sla are kinda meh. Awaken fire vulnerability is kinda redundant, and +1 evo dcs might be sorta nice, but it's not really crucial. And I can see the fireball sla paling into insignificance in epics, where I'm tossing DB fireball and meteor swarm more. Maybe with mastery of fire it'll get more of a day in the sun post 24. Too bad there's no good candidate for T5s for a build like mine other than savants. EK really wouldn't fit well.

[tinyelvis]

I personally dont see the tiefling as a very good sorcerer race. The race bonuses are too few, or too cumbersome to take advantage of (since Ob Darkness is slow to use and impractical for any but 2006-7 era sorcerer who hunkers down behind a tower shield.). I tried but could not make SA darkness work. I never once over hundreds of mobs saw even one blind guy. So, thirty five bonus fire damage and the redundant SLA (why for the life of me didnt they give it a scorching ray?)... just is not enough enticement. Besides, fire is too weak a line with only DBF and no cheap good ray spell (heck, the capstone for acid or fire inhibits the other and the power of meteor swarm, and God forbid if you tie in electric)

I think this race might make a good melee race in heroic where darkness and ash can be of value, as well as a huge boost to melee damage on properly buffed toons. 200% SP damage buff is amazing.

But I did find one positive: You can Tri-spec Air, Cold, and Fire again now very well (So long as Air is your main).

Sorry folks. Fire just does not work and play well with others.

[ValariusK]

I personally dont see the tiefling as a very good sorcerer race. The race bonuses are too few, or too cumbersome to take advantage of (since Ob Darkness is slow to use and impractical for any but 2006-7 era sorcerer who hunkers down behind a tower shield.). I tried but could not make SA darkness work. I never once over hundreds of mobs saw even one blind guy. So, thirty five bonus fire damage and the redundant SLA (why for the life of me didnt they give it a scorching ray?)... just is not enough enticement. Besides, fire is too weak a line with only DBF and no cheap good ray spell (heck, the capstone for acid or fire inhibits the other and the power of meteor swarm, and God forbid if you tie in electric)

I think this race might make a good melee race in heroic where darkness and ash can be of value, as well as a huge boost to melee damage on properly buffed toons. 200% SP damage buff is amazing.

But I did find one positive: You can Tri-spec Air, Cold, and Fire again now very well (So long as Air is your main).

Sorry folks. Fire just does not work and play well with others.

You'd be surprised. On a tiefling fire sorc you can break fire immunity more or less at will. And you only put 1 point into ash (although at low levels its fun before you have scorch SLA in sorceror), so you can get the fire immunity breaking on scorch. BTW that enhancement works on ash, scorch sla and regular castable scorch. And being able to use your fire power on electric is really nice. Right now at level 17 I've got a devastating barrage of dbf, fireball sla (meta'd up), regular fireball. Stuff just evaporates. Looking forward to meteor swarm next level.

[Hobgoblin]

I personally dont see the tiefling as a very good sorcerer race. The race bonuses are too few, or too cumbersome to take advantage of (since Ob Darkness is slow to use and impractical for any but 2006-7 era sorcerer who hunkers down behind a tower shield.). I tried but could not make SA darkness work. I never once over hundreds of mobs saw even one blind guy. So, thirty five bonus fire damage and the redundant SLA (why for the life of me didnt they give it a scorching ray?)... just is not enough enticement. Besides, fire is too weak a line with only DBF and no cheap good ray spell (heck, the capstone for acid or fire inhibits the other and the power of meteor swarm, and God forbid if you tie in electric)

I think this race might make a good melee race in heroic where darkness and ash can be of value, as well as a huge boost to melee damage on properly buffed toons. 200% SP damage buff is amazing.

But I did find one positive: You can Tri-spec Air, Cold, and Fire again now very well (So long as Air is your main).

Sorry folks. Fire just does not work and play well with others.

its 35% of your base damage not 35 damage.

they give you +2 cha with no drawbacks

wand and scroll mastery is always nice in a race tree

4% crit for 1 ap? ya i will take that

the other stuff? ya i like it but its not game breaking. im mostly in sorc trees and dont get a lot in race trees.

and you know that you double dip with metor storm? both acid and fire work well with it.

so i cant see how you say that it is a bad sorc class. it is solid at minimum and great with fire.

my only wish with sorcs is to improve the t5.

air
wind dance is good - but everything else is kinda meh.

water
icy prison is fun and good cc..... but you already have good cc as a sorc

earth
acid blast sla is good thats and earth grab is fun but again cc is not a weakness of sorcs

fire
i want to like heat death i really do. i just have so many other nice spells that i dont put this in the rotation..... fireball sla is good as well but everything else is meh

sry for the off topic there but i think you are underestimating it.

[Hjarki]

Darkness: Mobility is too critical for virtually any build for this to be a viable solution. That being said, I think that Scoundrel tanks deserve a look since they're primarily based around standing still and taking a beating - and a 20% miss chance not subject to True Seeing plus Displacement (which, sadly is) and +5% Dodge is a valid investment for that sort of build (not on topic, but worth mentioning).

Ash: The racial Scorch isn't very good. For that matter, I don't find Scorch particularly relevant after a certain point. The ability to break immunity with Scorch is fantastic - right up until the point you hit level 12 Sorcerer and can do it anyway. The same is true for high heroic/epic Druids/Sorcerers due to their in-class immunity breaking. I want to like this a lot, but I just can't because most of the builds that use elemental damage can replicate its functionality.

Infernal Sovereign: This tends to become a lot less effective as you level up because copying spellpower isn't enough. You also need to copy spell critical. Because these two are linked on gear, it's tough to use your exceptional Fire spellpower for your non-exceptional other elemental damage and still cast them at full critical.

Eldritch Knight: The first three cores in EK get you +65 Spellpower (a bit less since most of that is the spellcasting implement and you're probably carrying an implement anyway) and +30 hit points. That's a pretty strong choice even if you never swing your weapon. If you want to get tricky, you can grab Eldritch Accuracy for your Snowball and stack Vulnerability on your target in the not-widely-used Dart-and-Orb fighting style. While your dart will still be doing (mediocre) Strength-based damage, that's not really the point. You've got free Quickdraw, so you might as well do something between spell casts.

[tinyelvis]

You'd be surprised. On a tiefling fire sorc you can break fire immunity more or less at will. And you only put 1 point into ash (although at low levels its fun before you have scorch SLA in sorceror), so you can get the fire immunity breaking on scorch. BTW that enhancement works on ash, scorch sla and regular castable scorch. And being able to use your fire power on electric is really nice. Right now at level 17 I've got a devastating barrage of dbf, fireball sla (meta'd up), regular fireball. Stuff just evaporates. Looking forward to meteor swarm next level.

Actually no, I would not be surprised. I am speaking from experience... both in sorc play and with tiefling past life. Level 17.. how are you fairing in Savarath? The best thing about my tiefling was I had a chain lighting, Freezing sphere, and then if needed DBF with plenty of support SLAS. My fire and cold were equivalently high buffed. My electric, of course, was main and much higher.

I experimented with points spent to get to higher tier tiefling buffs but either they were too impractical (Ob Darkness), too cost intensive for what they bring (infernal Sovereign), or too redundant (ash, improved scorch). I liked the crit bonuses, but again they come at a high cost (at a min you need to spend 12 - 17 APs to get them all).

While playing a tiefling sorc, I abandoned the racials entirely (except for core) and spent the points in Eldritch Knight instead. Each core there buffs universal power. Once I did this my fire, cold, and electric all increased. It was the first time since the implementation of enhancement trees (almost a decade) that I could triple spec my sorc again. This, imo, is the only reason to choose the tiefling race as a sorcerer.

Finally, if you are going electric with your fire.... dont plan on using meteor swarm. If you setup like I suggest above, you can cast cold and fire a few levels over your level and of course electric very much over. However, your Meteor swarm at heroic cap can cast as low as level 10 or so. Even with just acid and fire your meteor will get debuffed if you use capstone.

Fire is still not well.

[tinyelvis]

its 35% of your base damage not 35 damage.

they give you +2 cha with no drawbacks
True but so do plenty other races (in fact, Aasimar gives you 5 quickly and cheap (albiet 2 less at creation).

wand and scroll mastery is always nice in a race tree
Available in Eldritch Knight tree and they dont coexist. I find it very hard to spend any points in tiefling race tree before I finish with my eldritch knight spending.

4% crit for 1 ap? ya i will take that
Actually you pay 12 to 15 for this. Nice to have but it is not cheap as you imply.

the other stuff? ya i like it but its not game breaking. im mostly in sorc trees and dont get a lot in race trees.

and you know that you double dip with metor storm? both acid and fire work well with it.
Did you know that the capstone debuffs this (even with acid/fire). Where as the main spell for other spec'ed sorcs gain levels for a net +4 level gain difference over the fire spec'd. So, meteor swarm is by far the worst best spell in heroic play.

so i cant see how you say that it is a bad sorc class. it is solid at minimum and great with fire.
Have I given you vision? Can you see now?

my only wish with sorcs is to improve the t5.

air
wind dance is good - but everything else is kinda meh.

water
icy prison is fun and good cc..... but you already have good cc as a sorc

earth
acid blast sla is good thats and earth grab is fun but again cc is not a weakness of sorcs

fire
i want to like heat death i really do. i just have so many other nice spells that i dont put this in the rotation..... fireball sla is good as well but everything else is meh

sry for the off topic there but i think you are underestimating it.

No, I am just accurately representing it. Don't get me wrong, I love fire. In days of old it was king. However, the oppressive and arbitrary hand of development came down hard on it long ago and it still has not recovered in the heroic game.

[Hobgoblin]

No, I am just accurately representing it. Don't get me wrong, I love fire. In days of old it was king. However, the oppressive and arbitrary hand of development came down hard on it long ago and it still has not recovered in the heroic game.

got it. you only know one way to play and refuse to open your eyes to any other possibilities.

ok back to squelch for you

[Hobgoblin]

sry op for the derail

[ValariusK]

Level 17-20 went very fast. I did the ES quests not Shavarath. Why? Because if you do the 24 saga quests you get about 300K xp when you turn in both sagas, which allows you to mostly skip level 19. Also, a LOT of the stuff in Stormhorns is weak to fire. Meteor swarm was truly withering when I used it. So Fire rocks for Tieflings, at least in a heroic racial life.

[DrawingGuy]

Darkness: Mobility is too critical for virtually any build for this to be a viable solution. That being said, I think that Scoundrel tanks deserve a look since they're primarily based around standing still and taking a beating - and a 20% miss chance not subject to True Seeing plus Displacement (which, sadly is) and +5% Dodge is a valid investment for that sort of build (not on topic, but worth mentioning).

I agree that Darkness is too clunky to use. Tanks do have another incentive to go Tiefling: Rebuke. A no-save knockdown against anything that hits you is quite powerful, plus the fire damage proc can hit respectable numbers with enough spell power.

Ash: The racial Scorch isn't very good. For that matter, I don't find Scorch particularly relevant after a certain point. The ability to break immunity with Scorch is fantastic - right up until the point you hit level 12 Sorcerer and can do it anyway. The same is true for high heroic/epic Druids/Sorcerers due to their in-class immunity breaking. I want to like this a lot, but I just can't because most of the builds that use elemental damage can replicate its functionality.

Actually Improved Scorch is AMAZING all the way to cap. Remember, Scorch is a large AOE. You are making EVERYTHING it hits vuln to fire, and you can cast it every 3 (spell) / 5 (sorc SLA) / or 10 (tiefling SLA) seconds. And anything that is already vuln to fire is now taking 5% more damage. Didn't test scientifically, but this seems to STACK with the Sorc fire vuln. Improved Scorch is game changing for Fire Sorcs, or fire based casters in general. While it is true that the racial version of the Scorch spell itself is weaker than other options, someone with enough racial past lives can get this at level ONE, which is stupid powerful at that level. Load it up and use it until you can replace it, then take it to 1 ap and use Sorc's instead. The nice thing is the fire immunity removal and sorc SLA have the same timers...

Infernal Sovereign: This tends to become a lot less effective as you level up because copying spellpower isn't enough. You also need to copy spell critical. Because these two are linked on gear, it's tough to use your exceptional Fire spellpower for your non-exceptional other elemental damage and still cast them at full critical.

While copying the critical as well would be amazing, this still does two things:
- Frees up gearing if you're diving into two DPS spell pools. Equipping a single crit item is much easier than trying to fit a everything you want, especially with Slave Lords crafting.
- Fire Spellpower is simply higher. You're getting a fair chunk from Tiefling cores, you can quickly equip and unequip Spiral for a 50 fire power / 20 fire crit buff that remains after you unequip. Add in things like Acid and Electric do not have as strong Spell Power / Insightful Spellpower items like Wild Flame, the ability to have Burnscar Sash and still full power electric (though Electric sorc tree hurts Meteor currently), and you are not only saving gear, but making those other options stronger than you could otherwise. Cold and Fire sorc doesn't mix, but the belt advantage on something like a Druid or Wiz would apply as well. Of course with Scoundrel, there is no belt for Sonic, so that's a large boost for them on top of the other gearing advantages of fire.



@TinyElvis: (too lazy to recapture in quotes)
** 4% crit for 1 ap? ya i will take that
Actually you pay 12 to 15 for this. Nice to have but it is not cheap as you imply. the other stuff? ya i like it but its not game breaking. im mostly in sorc trees and dont get a lot in race trees.

That would be a problem if that was all you were getting. The cores are giving you CHA and spell power. You can also snag a no-save trip guard which boosts survival (it is equivalent to Wind Through the Trees, only available to others as a 29 feat or 28/29 raid gear). Improved Scorch, which the spend also unlocks for you, is game changing. "Game Breaking" is more questionable as Fire was one of the most resisted types, so has had some favoritism in gear (plus the fact that both Divines and Arcanes use it), and now you can suddenly use it easily. Tiefling is pretty amazing.


** Did you know that the capstone debuffs this (even with acid/fire). Where as the main spell for other spec'ed sorcs gain levels for a net +4 level gain difference over the fire spec'd. So, meteor swarm is by far the worst best spell in heroic play.

It does indeed, and that will undoubtably be fixed in the Sorc pass. But you know what you can do? Just don't activate the stance. The capstone still gives you the CHA and the +1 fire caster level. Not getting the additional extra so you don't then lose 3 to your meteor is an easy sacrifice imo. Just do that and enjoy the numbers.

** Have I given you vision? Can you see now?

Hopefully this, and the comments to Hjarki let you see now. Tiefling has changed the game for Fire Sorc letting them use their attacks with impunity. All low and mid reapers through heroic and epics were a joke as trash died in 1-2 attacks in an AOE, and I could hold aggro off monks and other melees with how much damage I did due to the extra vulns and spellpowers Tiefling netted me. High Reaper is the only thing that's an issue, and that is no fault of Tiefling, as the massive DPS penalty makes the SP costs too heavy for any DPS caster (except Warlock, but that's part of the reason everyone plays them).

[tinyelvis]

I agree that Darkness is too clunky to use. Tanks do have another incentive to go Tiefling: Rebuke. A no-save knockdown against anything that hits you is quite powerful, plus the fire damage proc can hit respectable numbers with enough spell power.

Agreed, the biggest disappointment.

Actually Improved Scorch is AMAZING all the way to cap. Remember, Scorch is a large AOE. You are making EVERYTHING it hits vuln to fire, and you can cast it every 3 (spell) / 5 (sorc SLA) / or 10 (tiefling SLA) seconds. And anything that is already vuln to fire is now taking 5% more damage. Didn't test scientifically, but this seems to STACK with the Sorc fire vuln. Improved Scorch is game changing for Fire Sorcs, or fire based casters in general. While it is true that the racial version of the Scorch spell itself is weaker than other options, someone with enough racial past lives can get this at level ONE, which is stupid powerful at that level. Load it up and use it until you can replace it, then take it to 1 ap and use Sorc's instead. The nice thing is the fire immunity removal and sorc SLA have the same timers...

Instead of casting two spells to affect your foe, just use one spell that your foe has no immunity to on him. Plus you will have better range on this one spell (scorch has the low range and AOE of cone of cold). Casting like I suggest increases your engagement range (typically striking foes before they can react) enabling you to follow up if needed before the foe gets to engagement range. This is critical for me in higher reaper play. Further, once the enemy is on you, it is a whole lot harder to direct your cone than a circular AOE spell on foes. Finally, against targets where you need to use all the might of your main power (boss or crown), Improved scorch has low range meaning you will need to close on tough foe. Where as, AEW works just fine with better range. I am not saying it does not work as advertised, I only claim that improved scorch is too costly for what it is given the redundancies and limitations.


While copying the critical as well would be amazing, this still does two things:
- Frees up gearing if you're diving into two DPS spell pools. Equipping a single crit item is much easier than trying to fit a everything you want, especially with Slave Lords crafting.
- Fire Spellpower is simply higher. You're getting a fair chunk from Tiefling cores, you can quickly equip and unequip Spiral for a 50 fire power / 20 fire crit buff that remains after you unequip. Add in things like Acid and Electric do not have as strong Spell Power / Insightful Spellpower items like Wild Flame, the ability to have Burnscar Sash and still full power electric (though Electric sorc tree hurts Meteor currently), and you are not only saving gear, but making those other options stronger than you could otherwise. Cold and Fire sorc doesn't mix, but the belt advantage on something like a Druid or Wiz would apply as well. Of course with Scoundrel, there is no belt for Sonic, so that's a large boost for them on top of the other gearing advantages of fire.

Everything is a trade off. I and other point to Eldritch knight. For just 11 points you can get more than 20 universal SP points, 30- 50 hp boost, a power clicky buffing to 30 more power points, and an improved shield. For me, this is much better than points spent in the tiefling racial tree.

When I used to bike a lot people would ask me, "hey should I spend a couple hundred dollars buying expensive titanium rails for my seat... they are half a pound lighter." My response was always the same. Just improve your diet and lose a few pounds of weight yourself. I dont use the burn scar sash. And unless it scales with level, never plan to. By level 14, I am running with items that buff two elements to +90/13% (and with tiefling I run three). Before spending your points in tiefling tree, I suggest you lose some weight. Use a better item buff to your power. You will see more of a gain in fire power.

@TinyElvis: (too lazy to recapture in quotes)
** 4% crit for 1 ap? ya i will take that
Actually you pay 12 to 15 for this. Nice to have but it is not cheap as you imply. the other stuff? ya i like it but its not game breaking. im mostly in sorc trees and dont get a lot in race trees.



That would be a problem if that was all you were getting. The cores are giving you CHA and spell power. You can also snag a no-save trip guard which boosts survival (it is equivalent to Wind Through the Trees, only available to others as a 29 feat or 28/29 raid gear). Improved Scorch, which the spend also unlocks for you, is game changing. "Game Breaking" is more questionable as Fire was one of the most resisted types, so has had some favoritism in gear (plus the fact that both Divines and Arcanes use it), and now you can suddenly use it easily. Tiefling is pretty amazing.

Yes but gains are redundant, equivalent or higher in other trees, or just dont seem to work (i.e. darkness and blinding folks).


** Did you know that the capstone debuffs this (even with acid/fire). Where as the main spell for other spec'ed sorcs gain levels for a net +4 level gain difference over the fire spec'd. So, meteor swarm is by far the worst best spell in heroic play.

It does indeed, and that will undoubtably be fixed in the Sorc pass. But you know what you can do? Just don't activate the stance. The capstone still gives you the CHA and the +1 fire caster level. Not getting the additional extra so you don't then lose 3 to your meteor is an easy sacrifice imo. Just do that and enjoy the numbers.

** Have I given you vision? Can you see now?

Hopefully this, and the comments to Hjarki let you see now. Tiefling has changed the game for Fire Sorc letting them use their attacks with impunity. All low and mid reapers through heroic and epics were a joke as trash died in 1-2 attacks in an AOE, and I could hold aggro off monks and other melees with how much damage I did due to the extra vulns and spellpowers Tiefling netted me. High Reaper is the only thing that's an issue, and that is no fault of Tiefling, as the massive DPS penalty makes the SP costs too heavy for any DPS caster (except Warlock, but that's part of the reason everyone plays them).

I really dont see how it has changed the game. Fire is the problem. Fire resistant mobs are more common than any other mob. Hell, go to white mountain and you will still find this old trend occurring. Demon trash have ridiculous high fire resistance. Books... lol... books made of paper attacking you only take normal damage. Why? Fire does not work with any off element but acid, and even there the capstone debuffs your top spell. The tiefling does very little to address that in a new non-redundant way (outside of allowing you to spec well for three elements). A big disappointment to spell casters, but a potential boon for fighters.

If there was no drow, human, dragonborn, aasimar, or half elf race, than I would definitely choose a tiefling as a sorc race.

[Lonnbeimnech]

I don't see how the capstone nerfing your main spell is a negative for a heroic life, since you get the capstone and then empty your TR cache and tr again without even casting meteor swarm.

For epics, the thing is, while it's true that you are losing caster levels from being in fire elemental form, you also gain caster levels to meteor swarm levels IF you also invested in a few of the acid cores, so caster level balances out with the other lvl 9 elemental spells if you took the first 3 acid cores, 11 AP, or higher if you went deep into acid.

On top of that, meteor swarm has a 3 second cooldown instead of 9 like the other spells, has a max caster level of 30 instead of 20 like the others, and is AOE with the range of a ray spell.

It's a great spell.

[DrawingGuy]

I really dont see how it has changed the game. Fire is the problem. Fire resistant mobs are more common than any other mob. Hell, go to white mountain and you will still find this old trend occurring. Demon trash have ridiculous high fire resistance. Books... lol... books made of paper attacking you only take normal damage. Why? Fire does not work with any off element but acid, and even there the capstone debuffs your top spell. The tiefling does very little to address that in a new non-redundant way (outside of allowing you to spec well for three elements). A big disappointment to spell casters, but a potential boon for fighters.

If there was no drow, human, dragonborn, aasimar, or half elf race, than I would definitely choose a tiefling as a sorc race.

This statement here tells me you don't understand just what Teifling is doing. Tiefling SOLVES the fire problem. The "redundant" solution of Savants is single target and on a 20 second cooldown. Tiefling is giving you fire vulnerability and fire immunity removal on MULTIPLE moves (2 SLA and a spell) in AOE which have cooldowns as low as THREE seconds. This is game changing. I don't care if it's iron golems, fire eles, demons: CC as I run up > Scorch > DBF and Meteor and watch everything die no matter what it was. So, yeah, I consider that a game changer. I took a sorc from 1 to 30, and outside of a temporary stint in Electric during middling heroics to take advantage of the levels Electric Bolt and Ball are OP at, I was Fire. It was stupidly easy, and I didn't even bother with CC most of the time in heroics as it all just died in 1-2 shots anyways. The only "problem" with a Tiefling Fire Sorc is if you want to play high reapers. R10 takes your spell damage down from 5 figures to low 4 figures, and spending 100 SP to do 2k damage to a boss just isn't worth it. But this is a concern for DPS casting in general, so if your goal is high reaper gameplay, races that maximize you DC casting like Dragonborn are best unless you enjoy sucking down SP pots. I still did well in high reapers as I had DCs in the 100-110 range, but I could feel the difference between builds where I had 110-120 DCs. Tiefling is still one of the best options for DPS casters, and #1 for anything fire spec.

Also in regards to the concerns of scorch range, pfft. It is still plenty long range to kite with as well as stay out of cleave/pbaoes, anything you CCed isn't dangerous anyways, and bosses die in seconds outside of high reapers (and there you should have someone else tanking keeping aggro off you). Between 27 dodge and displacement (I also don't ignore AC), I could just stand there and fight bosses and easily kill them before they got me (though still easy to kite when I had to).

One thing I did learn is as Tiefling solves the fire problem so completely, I never even bothered casting my acid spells outside of the early levels, so would go purely fire and DC casting for spell and enhancement choices in the future. This also means someone without a bunch of racial PLs could still afford Tiefling and Fire Sorc trees, as well as meta efficiencies and/or EK. No reason to dual-spec Savants (outside of Force of course to boost Meteor, Arcane Pulse, and any ruins).

[tinyelvis]

I don't see how the capstone nerfing your main spell is a negative for a heroic life, since you get the capstone and then empty your TR cache and tr again without even casting meteor swarm.

For epics, the thing is, while it's true that you are losing caster levels from being in fire elemental form, you also gain caster levels to meteor swarm levels IF you also invested in a few of the acid cores, so caster level balances out with the other lvl 9 elemental spells if you took the first 3 acid cores, 11 AP, or higher if you went deep into acid.

On top of that, meteor swarm has a 3 second cooldown instead of 9 like the other spells, has a max caster level of 30 instead of 20 like the others, and is AOE with the range of a ray spell.

It's a great spell.

I am glad you brought this up. So you want to spec for meteor swarm. At 18th level, you are probably 40 pts deep into your main fire line and then you go 22 to 24 points into acid (you are still not as fully spec'd in your top spell as the other three elemental specialists, but whatever. And, its my understanding you also need to buff force). That leaves you around 4 to 6 enhancement pts starting your 18th level with only another 8 left to pick up before you hit 20. .

You are spec'd for meteor swarm and it will work for you, now do you really want to put those extra points into tiefling as opposed to eldritch knight? With Every level you earn at this point you outgrow scorch even more. This was my dilemma with tiefling. I would in fact play at level 20 while others I played with caught up before TR too, and still I only ever could justify buying the core enhancements. IF I was lightning/fire spec'd, my casting level of Meteor at 20 was level 10.

Now you might say, make your main acid... and that is a better approach in my opinion too. But then I ask myself why play the race that buffs fire then? Play the race that buffs my main spell (i.e. dragonborn or something else). I blew like 3 million gold and also dragon blood potions playing around with enhancements and spells trying to make the tiefling at heroic with fire work for me. I could not. And this is before considering all the fire resistant/proof mobs and bosses.