Drwo Sorcerer advice for returning player

[KiriJolith]

I played this game in beta and up until I believe the dragonscale robes were the thing to grind for. Needless to say It's been a very long time since I've played. I have a lvl 16 Drow Sorc and I'm pretty lost on where to begin. The enchantments are my biggest question mark. Obviously they are specialty trees but it seems somewhat pigeon holed at first glance, for example if I do all fire and have to face fire elementals am I just hosed??


Any advice is greatly appreciated

Cheers!

[Lonnbeimnech]

I played this game in beta and up until I believe the dragonscale robes were the thing to grind for. Needless to say It's been a very long time since I've played. I have a lvl 16 Drow Sorc and I'm pretty lost on where to begin. The enchantments are my biggest question mark. Obviously they are specialty trees but it seems somewhat pigeon holed at first glance, for example if I do all fire and have to face fire elementals am I just hosed??


Any advice is greatly appreciated

Cheers!

if you focus on fire enhancements, you are not limited to only casting fire spells. you can still take things like acid splash, finger of death, color spray, flesh to stone etc etc

yes you will be weaker against fire immune mobs, but they can still be killed

also worth mentioning, that there is a tier 5 ability that lets you strip one mob at a time of fire immunity, and that at level 20, by turning into a fire elemental you can remove fire immunity from anything by hiting it with a fire spell (the first spell does no damage, but the mob becomes vulnerable for a few seconds, so just keep spamming them)

[C-Dog]

... It's been a very long time since I've played. I have a lvl 16 Drow Sorc and I'm pretty lost on where to begin. The enchantments are my biggest question mark... if I do all fire and have to face fire elementals am I just hosed??

When you left, the META for Sorcies was 2-savant, usually fire-air or air-cold. Now the "best" spread is 1 savant with ~2-3 dozen points in Eldritch Knight for a significant boost in durability.

By far the most powerful choice is Fire with Tiefling racial bonuses; for 16 AP, Tiefling gets an innate enhancement that removes any invulnerability to Fire whenever they cast Scorch, which can be both a spell and SLA, removing that issue entirely on that target "for a short time" - which is usually more than enough. (Along the way those 16 AP add to Fire several additional ways.) AND you still have the Sorcie Tier 5 Awaken Elemental Weakness, which adds 15% damage as well as removing an immunity (for a short time). Boom.

However, if you are non-Tiefling (e.g. Drow!) you lose all that, so don't be too fast to dismiss Air. A Heightened Electric Loop can be effective into Epics, and is a great Crowd Control addition. However, whichever way you go, without Tiefling/Fire, more than 1 target that is immune to your chosen element becomes problematic (altho' with Air, you can go with both Electric and Sonic!). Elemental Weakness has a long-ish cooldown, so against a wave of immunes, it's just not something can rely on (until you are L20 and have your elemental form, which takes care of that.)

One big part of the solution is found in the improved EK tree - Force. EK adds some nice Force boosts, so Magic Missiles, Force Missiles, Chain Missiles et al become a solid fall-back (hey, it works for Famine Reapers!).

Beyond that, there are several non-DC spells that can be useful (some including CC effects), such as Waves of Exhaustion, Otto's, Wail of the Banshee, the "bludgeon" half of Meteor Swarm, Power Word: Kill/Stun, Polar Ray, etc. etc. A target delayed is a win, especially if you're in a hard-hitting group.

I've also seen some Sorcie builds that squeeze in some (very) basic melee ability, to hammer on a target once it's been stunned (and EK adds to this), but it's debatable whether that's an improvement in much of anything except flavor. But it's definitely impressive to see a sorcie carving something up, though.