Diablo 4 players who have chosen to go down the Sorcerer path have been having a rough go of it for a while now. Sorcerers are meant to be glass cannons, with low survivability but incredibly high damage output.
That’s always been the risk-reward involved in playing a Sorcerer/magic user in Diablo, but Diablo 4 has made their survivability much harder to maintain. Everyone was hoping the pre-Season of the Malignant patch would correct that and give them better ways of staying alive.
Unfortunately, Blizzard had other ideas. The 1.1.0a patch, which went live this week, brought a staggering number of nerfs across the board. The hit to Sorcerers was twofold. First, as a result of a wider flattening of the critical damage bonus, builds that relied on it the most have been hit hard, but no other class has felt the effects of it worse than Sorcerers.
Then, Blizzard also nerfed almost all defensive stats Sorcerers relied on with their armour, which was effectively their only defence against high-level monsters in the game’s World Tier 3 and 4. Adding insult to injury, one of the new items introduced with the patch – which players have been grinding for – has an unfortunate side effect.
The Oculus is a new Unique wand, supposedly a gift from Blizzard to Sorcerer players because of what it offers. “Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free. When you Evade using Teleport Enchantment, you are taken to a random location,” its description reads.
Having your evade turn into a teleport is great in getting out of sticky situations, and the benefit here is that you get teleport “for free” without having to spec into it. The problem is, the game just can’t handle the random teleports that result from equipping The Oculus.
MOTION SICKNESS / EPILEPSY WARNING
As you can see in the video below from Reddit user dreamknoxville, Diablo 4’s camera just cannot keep up with the speed and location change of these short-range teleports. Considering how this effect is going to become a constant when you equip The Oculus, you may get motion-sick just by normally playing the game.
This is what the new Sorc unique gameplay looks like (Flash Warning!)
by u/dreamknoxville in diablo4
It doesn’t help that Diablo 4’s camera is so zoomed in, which accentuates the effects of the shifts further, never mind how these jolts make it harder to track your character and accurately respond to what’s going on.
“Maybe this is why they nerfed sorc. They figure if you’re teleporting all over the place because you can’t control your character, mobs won’t be able to hit you,” Reddit user KF1eLd jokingly wrote.
Season of the Malignant kicks off today. Before you start a seasonal character, you absolutely, definitely need to do this. You’ll thank us later.
