I actually think the skill tree is pretty cool. Though I do wonder how long you will be able to keep the skill going with these mana costs.
Backfire and Tendrils are my favorite parts of the tree, but the the whole Escalation section is interesting as well. It seems a cool way to up its damage for a build that goes all in on mana regen.
No, this is great and thank you for the feedback. While we really appreciate people telling us when they enjoy decisions we make the critical feedback is what helps us make the game better. This is exactly what we’re looking for with posts like these so please keep the feedback coming.
If there are particular nodes, bits of functionality, or branches that stand out as something that could be improved upon please share that with us. We’ll discuss the feedback that we receive this evening on Disintegrate in tomorrow’s skill design meeting.
Well, that’s one of my biggest issues with it right now. I mean, at level 90, you have a base of 90 mana. And because mage is otherwise so bad right now, in my experience, you don’t have a whole lot of room to gear for +mana. You really have to gear for either +damage or +survivability. So, base cost is 5, which brings you down to 85, then 20 mana per second, that’s 4 seconds, unless you have some serious mana regen. And that’s if you stay away from all cost increasing nodes!
If you take any of the nodes that increase the cost, that’s going to make it utterly useless against bosses unless the damage is greater than pre-nerf black hole.
I really, really don’t like the way the devs have gone lately with every damn point you spend being a tradeoff of some kind. And yes, I know I’m exaggerating, but there’s way too much of that in this game.
I don’t know, maybe this just isn’t the game for me…
Yeah I haven’t really gotten any builds to end game yet because the performance always drives me away so I wasn’t sure how much mana and mana regen you could get. Well I like the concept of the tree assuming the numbers aren’t too harsh. I figured if they design the skill with a mana cost this high there must be some way in the final game to support it.
Maybe I’m judging to harshly right now. A few months ago, mage was incredibly fun, and viable, and both trees were in a good spot. Now, after the latest few patches, it’s just terribad. Maybe I just don’t know how to build a mage, but I also notice that no one else is posting any good mage builds, so maybe it’s not just me.
It’s my favorite Archetype, and I’m a little depressed about how overwhelmingly bad it is right now, and this skill is just more of the same that took it from being fun and viable to where it is now; utterly useless.
Edit: I say this in the context of comparison to my “Army of the Dead” Necromancer. She’s not a whole lot of fun, but she’s very powerful and definitely viable. Just so you know what I’m comparing to when I say utterly useless.
The baseline Mana Regeneration is 10 / second.
That’s fair, and definitely something we can discuss at one of our meetings.
It stems from us wanting to offer both transformative and high impact nodes on our trees, but needing to balance that with restricting how much raw power comes from specialization trees. ARPGs are in large part an item hunt - and if specialization trees are too strong, that leaves less room for items to be powerful. We can tone down the number of trade-offs available, though the removal of downsides may require other adjustments.
Having playtested it internally, my experience was that with some investment in items and passives it wasn’t difficult to cast Disintegrate as much I wanted. My Sorcerer had around 200 Mana. Focus has no cooldown and took ~ 3 seconds to get him from 0 to max.
In total the above cost me Pierce and +4 Mana drain / second. The Pierce was offset by the increased range & slows, while the ignites and explosions made the skill more fun.
Thanks for the reply, Sarno, but as a developer myself, I have to just put it out there, you guys can’t make everyone happy, and you know that. As much as I liked Last Epoch a few months ago, it just may not be the game for me going forward.
At the end of the day, you guys need to make the game you want to make, and let old complainers like me move on. If enough other people are saying the same things I’m saying, then sure, look at changing your design. I’m saying this because I notice you guys saying a lot that you’ll bring complaints up in internal design meetings. It seems like you’re never going to have time to do anything other than meet.
In short, what I’m trying to say is, sometimes the customer is wrong. And if what I want from the game doesn’t coincide materially with the game you guys want to create, well, I either need to suck it up or just play another game.
That being said, it won’t stop me from coming on here and posting the things that I don’t like, but, ya know, take it with a grain of salt. From me, and other people on here saying that you’re doing it wrong.
Im not sure how it feels, because i havent played it yet, i assume the character holds the button pressed and cant move at this time. It would be interesting to have a node, which allows the character to move freely while casting, maybe at 30% reduced speed.
Also some form of damage mitigation while casting, maybe a shield is projected as well or some form of lifeleech.
only thing i can say,make items for each character aswell as mana/life leech on hit to restore our health & mana because this is a big issue for me at least.were allready lacking of items im playing a warpath build and cant get paste wave 65 because of getting 1hitted because my life doesnt regenerate fast enough to survive the hit.
i only want more items items items 
for each class & each build 
I think we can’t talk much at the moment as we can’t say if we’d like it or not without playing the skill ourselves. I think it’ll be really fun to play. My only hope is that the skiil would be viable early on without having to invest too much in mana regeneration. But it’s ok if it worth it.
New post because I replied to this guy and I didn’t want to, my response was a general one not directed at them.
Too much damage by mob clusters and special monsters’ abilities for any skill which requires the player to be a sitting duck to work. Unless you can somehow gain enough ward to not be eviscerated in less than a second the skill will be probably fun to use but very weak.
First thing that came to my mind is:
You can take “Infernal Ray” and “Electrify” what happens if you pick up both?
Isn’t the initial channel cost pretty high or does the spell itself deliver insane dmg? Thinking about a mage with let’s say 400 Mana who would drain herself in seconds if she took the dmg steroids. Getting most dmg out of the skill seems to cost 96 mana/sec from my point of view… that’s nuts!
The “Inferno” node seems pretty much useless you simply don’t want enemys near you as a ranged caster.
How does this skill work with the teleport node that makes the next cast free? Is it just the initial cost or can you Desintegrate the world after a teleport?
Well if the base damage of the skill is high everything might be fine, if the damage is low it might not be used that much.
It looks bad tbh. I cannot see anything unique in the skill tree it looks the same as every other sorcerer skill. You are pretty much forced to go with high mana cost build to make the skill damage somewhat good compared to the other skills and of course achieving enough damage to push Arena/Monolith of fate(assuming it has similar base damage as other end game sorcerer skills like volcanic orb). It will synergies with the new sorcerer skill tree mastery but still(assuming the mastery bonus is working with mana drain skills)…
The only interesting and good nodes seems to be Twinbeam and Backfire.
The so-so choices are Tendrils, Escalation + Amplification .
The terrible skill tree nodes are Laser Focus(this is one of the worst skill tree nodes i have seen for the sorcerer skills), Subvention.
The rest is just mainstream kind a ok.
Missing nodes:
No + add critical chance for the lighting tree. No nodes that would allow your beam to create laser beams to enemies standing in a few meters around the main beam or after the main beam hits a target etc…
In general the skill needs a touch before it achieves its final release version.
P.S I am planning to release my frozen orb - volcanic orb build for all the guys that are struggling to find a viable sorcerer build. And yes i can agree that there are very few viable builds for end game currently for the sorcerer.
Mallar
Level 80 Sorcerer
It would be cool to see a node in there where you can get damage scaling per mana pool (ray scales with your max mana amount).I liked how shield throw had a node which scales it with your block chance it would be cool to see new abilities have similar function option.
Overall I like what I see tree and want to play and I also with players feedback.
The worst thing is: After Fireball every spell that was added to the game feels lackluster. Mechanicly everything is fine but I miss the glascannon feel from other games. Sure you can build a fulltank mage here what’s a flaw by itself in my eyes but with all the crappy dmg numbers we see from the mage it looks like the class is on the reciving end.
You can make things work with the mage but why should someone do this if every other class has easier and saver as well as more damage dealing builds? It feels a bit like mage classes are for the masochists out there.
The wizard class is lackluster, not in the mood to build anything that makes you marvel at playing, lacking more powers of devastation until magician is enviable powers, when when we were children and even today we dreamed of having, with more elemental powers. diversified with modifiers that really modify the ability that makes it look great … but maybe it’s me dreaming too much … 
Sorry bad english.
Sorc got to be good tough?u seen leaderbord at sc waves? 800+ SORCERER? Im playing warpath i even cant get to 70+😅
Cascade don’t feel that great. With the mana comsuption and the lack of mana efficiency node, the buff will stack against foes where the buff is not needed.
Moreover, I don’t understand why it’s behind Praesidium. Same for Subvention behind Twinbeam. There is often a “theme” on a branch, but not there. So I don’t understand why I should spend points on the previous nodes to unlock the further ones.
For Twinbeam, it would be fun if one beam is only fire and one is only lightning (and both become fire or lightning if we take the nodes to convert all damage).
By the way, Infernal Ray and Electrify should be further on the branches to prevent someone to take both. You only need 6 points to unlock both and have a paradox (it could become a void ray exploding in a black hole though).
(If we convert all damage to fire, do we keep chances to shock?)
I don’t understand why Amplification and Unbridled Power can have up to 5 points.
Why Laser Focus doesn’t reduce width of the beam? With such a name, it’s an effect we expected. With such a name, we could even expect the skill to not pierce before and becoming piercing with that node.
Instead, it’s a massive nerf of the ray. And the tooltip is not clear: does the mana regen replace the mana comsuption of the skill or is it -20 + 10 mana/sec while damaging enemies? (And not even +10 per enemy :’( )
That’s actually a bug (one of which I’d mentioned in my post, but I’d missed the other one).
Sarno, when does patch 0.7.4 come out? Is it early November? 