Hi guys, here is a Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 Sorcerer Build and Fire Sorcerer will likely feel pretty bad early on until you get some cast speed/cooldown reduction, as it has much slower clear speed. I would recommend sticking to Lightning or Ice until at least ng2/3 unless you enjoy the playstyle already.
This is intended for pushing higher ng. Fire Sorcerer benefits from the Healing Flames upgrade, granting 1/2/4% of your HP when scoring a spell critical hit. This is one of the best sustain upgrades in the game, combined with persistent abilities in Flame Wall and Elemental Orb, triggering the healing many, many times per skill use.
Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 Sorcerer Build
Skill upgrade priority
MAX: Fire Mastery + Flame Wall with at least 1 point into Innate Power and Elemental Affinity
MAX: Innate Power + Elemental Affinity
MAX: Discharge + Elemental Orb, your preference here. Discharge is more dps / clear, but Elemental Orb will make the wisp floor much faster.
Stats
You want to invest into Focus until you meet your cape’s requirement (you will need higher Focus to find better capes however)
You want to invest into Intelligence until you at least meet your gear’s requirement. If you want more damage, invest more here.
You want to invest into Vitality to bolster your hp, both to increase your maximum hit taken, and to increase your healing through Healing Flames.
There is no specific best ratio, this comes down to how you feel about your runs.
Equipment
Mainhand (dirk, wand): Powerful | Destruction
Offhand (any tome): Powerful | Destruction
Helmet: Keen / Stout | Alacrity
Body: Keen | Celerity
Gloves: Stout | Celerity
Boots: Insightful | Speed
Cape: Stout | Supremacy
You can move 1x Insightful around, so long as you have it somewhere. If your int gear requirements are too high to equip before Keen applies, replace with 2x Insightful and invest your attributes into int instead.
You can experiment with alacrity / celerity, 2x celerity + 1x alacrity feels good to me.
Chapel
Blessing of Prowess if you have mana issues
Blessing of Might if you lack damage
Blessing of Protection if you want to be safer
Magic Shop
I always start with Healing Flames for safety, but if you don’t mind taking on a bit more risk, you can instead begin with Mana Surge for your mana sustain. Scorching Ray is technically the best starter option as it removes two other options from the pool, if you don’t mind having to find both Healing Flames and Mana Surge.
Drinks
Elemental Breakfast / Hearty Meal
ng0: Impetuous Apprentice (25% cdr / cast speed) + Ambitious Adept (25% spell crit) + Gulch Burner (25% fire damage)
ng1+: Impetuous Apprentice (25% cdr / cast speed) + Ambitious Adept (25% spell crit) + Dark Desire (20% damage)
High ng: Impetuous Apprentice (25% cdr / cast speed) + Ambitious Adept (25% spell crit) + Sudden Death (50% spell damage, lose hp on cast)
Orb upgrades
Your priority will vary depending on your NG level.
DO NOT PICK
Volatile Flames: This does NOT scale with anything. Worthless.
MUST PICK
Mana Surge is always a must pick if you did not start with it.
Healing Flames levels are great to improve your hp/s
Scorching Ray is a must to let your Discharge scale with your element.
Adaptive Orb lets your Elemental Orb use only your Fire element, increasing your DPS.
From here, everything else mostly comes down to preference. Feel it out!
Playstyle
Early in the run, you will mostly be using Flame Wall to kill monsters. Drag them into it, circle around them. Once you find Mana Surge, you can begin spamming your Discharge for faster clear, which will either easily be sustained by itself if you have a large mana pool, or by using Flame Wall to refill your mana.
This build can play safely by corner camping, or rushing through levels dumping spells on enemies to keep your hp up.
WISPS
Sorcerer’s worst nightmare, these little guys have 2000 base resistance to their own element, scaled by 33% per NG level. The most reliable way of dealing with Fire wisps, if you have Adaptive Orb, is to use your Elemental Orb without casting fire spells, removing your Affinity. It still sucks, but what can you do.
Alacrity VS Celerity
What’s the difference between Cast Speed and Cooldown Reduction?
Ccast speed affects two things: the frame delay between button press and skill activation, as well as the refresh rate of spells. 100% cast speed effectively “speeds up time” by 2x for spell cooldowns, and thus works as cooldown reduction. Sources of cast speed are additive.
Cooldown reduction directly reduces a spell’s total cooldown, as you’d expect. Sources of CDR are multiplicative.
Cast speed and cooldown reduction are multiplicative with each other, and so you want both. CDR on suffixes is generally better than cast speed, unless you use charging skills. Below are example formulas.
Cast speed: 40% body, 20% cape = 1 + 0.4 + 0.2 = 1.6
CDR: 15% helmet, 15% gloves = 0.85 * 0.85 = 0.7225
Spell cooldown = 10,000ms = 10000 * 0.7225 / 1.6 = 4,516ms (rounded up)
Spell castpoint = 300ms = 300 / 1.6 = 188ms (rounded up)
We optimally want CDR on helmet, gloves and body, and boss damage on cape.
TIPS
You can bind Discharge and Elemental Orb onto the same key to spam both (if you can sustain the mana cost).