I've not played a sorcerer since the adjustments made to casters. Heck, I've not played a sorcerer since before fire savants even existed. But many a year ago I enjoyed playing a fire specialized sorcerer enough that I did three sorcerer lives with it. After reading much grief in these forums on how the sorcerer was now unplayable I've decided to test that hypothesis. Recently TR'd from an Alchemist (another supposedly nerfed into the ground class - spoiler alert, it's perfectly fine) I will be exploring the class here focusing on gameplay choices and how it handles content.
Never having played a Tiefling sorcerer before this is my preferred choice both for the racial fire power affinity, the look of the avatar, and the racial past life (charisma). Starting abilities are fairly straightforward here, you drop 20 into charisma and take an 18 constitution. This is why casters always feel a bit tanky, they only have two stats on which to focus. Spell choice through the first three levels (we get a rather spartan 2 choices at level 1 then 1 at 2&3.) are Sonic blast, Nightshield, Jump then whatever you find more useful out of Expeditious Retreat, Feather Fall, Charm Person, or Flaming Bolt. DPS casting in reaper Borderlands/Harbor is focused on a Maximized Burning Hands SLA and Sonic Blast (for the stun can be situationally maximized for full DPS). This simple combination mows down mobs being strong enough for me to reaper solo Borderlands including some rather unlucky triplicate reaper spawns. Sidebar - I swear the low-level quests spawn an inordinate number of reapers. If I can solo quests on reaper with a level 2 caster what are we going to be doing at level 12? The key item right now is the Tattered Gloves from Captives which gives 12% Fire Lore. This is an incredible ML2 item.
A few items to pick up that are useful are a wand of blur. Since getting spells at low level can be a laborious process for the sorcerer it might be a while before you have blur. At the very least you, or I anyway, won't have it at 4. A resist energy want is also useful here for the same reasons. Blur is especially useful since the standard tactic is getting masses of mobs close to you so can knock them all out with Burning Hands. Burning Hands is a spectacular spell since it seems to have no maximum number of targets it can hit as long as they are within your limited just beyond touch range. My level 4 spell choice will be Scorching Ray. Scorching Ray has always been an ace of a spell at low levels capable of knocking out red names. It also complements our Burning Hands tactics rather well. I can use the SR to knock out those Kobald shamans who resist rushing you while BH takes out the cannon fodder.
My initial impression of the sorcerer revisit is that it feels far stronger at levels 2 and 3 than a class that gets increasingly more powerful as it levels than you'd think.