empyreal sorc vs sage?

[Zunymitshu]

wondering what you're thoughts are on this. The empyreal class has some great bonus spells, good resistances including conviction. My only complaint is that the class doesn't have persuasion as a class skill. I don't care for the spells so much with Sage, but the synergy with int and the knowledge skills is nice.

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

These are modifications of the Celestial and Arcane bloodlines for the most part

Empyreal is probably best used for cross class sorcerer/cleric builds mostly used for the Mystic Theurge build involving it.

The Sage works just fine, though is it better then base arcane? i'm not so sure but i have zero probelms with it.

All in all both are fine but i still prefer a straight sorc over either of the archtypes for a pure sorcerer.

[dwarfpcfan]

currently restarted and playing a sage sorcerer right now, works well. Having int as primary casting stat to me is just useful as it allows me to invest every point in their and get more returns then charisma as you never have enough skill points. The arcane bolt at level 1 is decent as level 1-3 damage dealer and the bonuses to combat casting and free magic missle all make the sage sorcerer pretty reliable.

That said, even if I picked sage sorcerer now as a matter of just wanting to try it out. For sheer front loaded power, the sylvan sorcerer is probably the most powerful thanks to it's animal companion.

[Sotanaht]

Yeah Sylvan is best by far. It also has some of the best free spells. Entangle, Hideous Laughter, and Vinetrap all get a lot of use. Vinetrap is a lot stronger in this game than it's supposed to be in tabletop, it's basically Hold Monster that works on things that would normally be immune to both Hold Monster and Stinking Cloud. Plus being Conjuration, that means you can spell focus conjuration and max the saving through for both stinking cloud and vinetrap, giving you reliable CC against just about anything.

[OnlyOffensive]

any sorc is powerfull, except arcane bloodline ( it doesnt work ) all other stuff is just details.

I usually find animal companion rather bothersome, their growth, the fact that they can die etc. Having ranger one is enough for me.

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

i think people put to much stock in the animal companion... i haven't had any instance where i needed it, or required it. On top of this Sylvan archtype is a variation of the fey bloodline 90% of the stuff you get from that archtype is attained from the feybloodline ON top of it the feybloodline has one of the best arcana for enchantment focused caster in the game. +2 Compulsion means you can stack it with spell focus for a +4 compulsion spells that's pretty much all your late game hard CC enchantments, like hold monster, dominate person, ect.

So is the animal companion nice? sure at the begining of the game... i however do not believe they will be as good late game when things have crazy to hit and damage numbers or heavy CC i do intend to do a playthrough to see how well they scale but i personally don't think they are needed unless you are new and think you need the help.

As for Sage, you GIVE up your arcana for the scaling Int, and the arcana says anytime you apply a metamagic feat you increase the DC of that spell by 1. So be aware you are gaining int scaling BUT losing potential spell DC in the process...

I'm not sure everyone is aware that archtypes take things aware from the base class in exchange for other abilities NOTHING in an archtype is free and you always have to give something up to gain something.

[OnlyOffensive]

i wish you could tell which spell is "compulsive". Sure some of enchantment but WHAT. I actually asked it some time ago and people told me those subtypes almost nonexistent in this game.

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

Originally posted by OnlyOffensive:

i wish you could tell which spell is "compulsive". Sure some of enchantment but WHAT. I actually asked it some time ago and people told me those subtypes almost nonexistent in this game.

Yea it should tell you the subschool however! any spell that " compells " enemy to do something is a compulsion, i think charm list of spells is pretty small to non-existent in this game. Most enchantment spells are compulsions only a small amount that aren't. My advice just do a google search for the spell its probably close to the pen and paper counterpart.

[Zunymitshu]

Originally posted by AzureTheGamerKobold:

I'm not sure everyone is aware that archtypes take things aware from the base class in exchange for other abilities NOTHING in an archtype is free and you always have to give something up to gain something.

Isn't Herald cleric the exception? You gain nothing I see that you couldn't get normally, but you lose a domain.

[76561198249640122]

Originally posted by AzureTheGamerKobold:

i think people put to much stock in the animal companion... i haven't had any instance where i needed it, or required it.

Yeah I really agree with that. Animal Companions are pretty crazy in this game but shaping your entire arcane caster around it seems pretty strange to me, I want my caster to be thoroughly focused on casting.

My favorite Sorcerer is probably the Serpentine Bloodline one, which allows you to use most of your humanoid-specific enchantment spells on monsters and animals. It really makes spells such as Hideous Laughter or Hold Person shine.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by AzureTheGamerKobold:

i think people put to much stock in the animal companion... i haven't had any instance where i needed it, or required it. On top of this Sylvan archtype is a variation of the fey bloodline 90% of the stuff you get from that archtype is attained from the feybloodline ON top of it the feybloodline has one of the best arcana for enchantment focused caster in the game. +2 Compulsion means you can stack it with spell focus for a +4 compulsion spells that's pretty much all your late game hard CC enchantments, like hold monster, dominate person, ect.

So is the animal companion nice? sure at the begining of the game... i however do not believe they will be as good late game when things have crazy to hit and damage numbers or heavy CC i do intend to do a playthrough to see how well they scale but i personally don't think they are needed unless you are new and think you need the help.

As for Sage, you GIVE up your arcana for the scaling Int, and the arcana says anytime you apply a metamagic feat you increase the DC of that spell by 1. So be aware you are gaining int scaling BUT losing potential spell DC in the process...

I'm not sure everyone is aware that archtypes take things aware from the base class in exchange for other abilities NOTHING in an archtype is free and you always have to give something up to gain something.

"Required" maybe not, but you are talking about basically a full extra character in your party. Do you NEED a 7 man party instead of a 6? Do you even need 6? Regardless of whether or not it's REQUIRED it's very obviously an improvement.

As for late game, Animal Companions scale VERY well with buffs. Their base stats improve much more than normal characters in order to keep them somewhat on par with all the magic items you are supposed to equip. By design, an animal companion should be about 2/3rds as effective as a fully-geared martial character of the same level. The trick is that buffs compete with gear.

Take for example Shield of Faith, which adds a Deflection bonus to AC. 90% of characters who care about AC will already be wearing a Ring of Protection, so Shield of Faith will probably grant at most +1 AC to that character. An animal companion however cannot wear rings. His default stats are already designed to compensate for not wearing rings, but then he gets the full benefit of the Shield of Faith as well, allowing him to basically "double dip" on that slot. The same applies for Natural Armor/Barkskin/Amulet of Natural armor, Armor/Mage Armor, weapon enhancement/Magic Fang, Strength Enhancement/Belt of Giant Strength/Bulls Strength. Then to top it all off they get Animal Growth which regular characters (even wild shape druids) simply can't have at all. Once you've fully buffed an animal companion his effectiveness is easily 4/3rds of what you would expect from a Martial character instead of the 2/3rds the companion is designed for.

Originally posted by vicethevandal:

Originally posted by AzureTheGamerKobold:

i think people put to much stock in the animal companion... i haven't had any instance where i needed it, or required it.

Yeah I really agree with that. Animal Companions are pretty crazy in this game but shaping your entire arcane caster around it seems pretty strange to me, I want my caster to be thoroughly focused on casting.

My favorite Sorcerer is probably the Serpentine Bloodline one, which allows you to use most of your humanoid-specific enchantment spells on monsters and animals. It really makes spells such as Hideous Laughter or Hold Person shine.

Serpentine Bloodline is really amazing at low levels where you have to deal with lots of enemies that are immune to your Hideous Laughter/Hold Person, but don't yet have Stinking Cloud or Hold Monster which they are not immune to. Once you get those later spells, the Serpentine Bloodline loses its edge completely. At that point there's a stronger argument for the Undead bloodline, as the Undead are still immune to both of those later spells as well. However the Sylvan Sorcerer gains Vinetrap, which functions like Hold Monster and which Undead are NOT immune to, so they gain the same advantage of that bloodline as well.

[Waylander]

So whats the best bloodline for an Spell Damage oriented Sorcerer build?

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Waylander:

So whats the best bloodline for an Spell Damage oriented Sorcerer build?

The best bloodline for the worst sorcerer build is either Gold or Red Dragon. Both of them add +1 damage per die for Fire damage spells, which make up the bulk of all damage spells. The rest of their abilities range from useless to unnecessary, but that's the only thing you can choose that will improve your damage anyway.

[Waylander]

Okay, so whats the best Sorcerer Build in your opinion?
I want to play a damage Caster Class. Glascannon like. :-)
Played melee classes the last years in PoE, Tyranny, Divinity. So this time i want to start with Ranged. And Caster. :-)

[Yaldabaoth]

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

Originally posted by Waylander:

So whats the best bloodline for an Spell Damage oriented Sorcerer build?

The best bloodline for the worst sorcerer build is either Gold or Red Dragon. Both of them add +1 damage per die for Fire damage spells, which make up the bulk of all damage spells. The rest of their abilities range from useless to unnecessary, but that's the only thing you can choose that will improve your damage anyway.

I would say that Blue/Bronze is better. While Fire has more spells, Lightning is just plain better. Chain Lightning is a crazy good spell.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Yaldabaoth:

Originally posted by Sotanaht:

The best bloodline for the worst sorcerer build is either Gold or Red Dragon. Both of them add +1 damage per die for Fire damage spells, which make up the bulk of all damage spells. The rest of their abilities range from useless to unnecessary, but that's the only thing you can choose that will improve your damage anyway.

I would say that Blue/Bronze is better. While Fire has more spells, Lightning is just plain better. Chain Lightning is a crazy good spell.

Chain Lightning is just pure damage. Yes it's party-friendly, but so is Fire Snake, the only drawback is it's a Line spell. Fire gets Sirocco, which also means that grabbing elemental focus: Fire for even higher DCs makes sense.

Originally posted by Waylander:

Okay, so whats the best Sorcerer Build in your opinion?
I want to play a damage Caster Class. Glascannon like. :-)
Played melee classes the last years in PoE, Tyranny, Divinity. So this time i want to start with Ranged. And Caster. :-)

There are two things that casters do well. Buffs, and "save or suck" spells. A "save or suck" spell is one where if the enemy fails his save, he may as well be dead, so things like hold person/monster, stinking cloud, and sirocco are all amazing spell for that reason. Hit Die and Action Economy, not to mention spells per day, mean that your blaster wizard simply won't be able to do enough damage to even make those spells worth casting. You are comparing the ability to take an enemy out of the fight on turn one vs the ability to do 20% of an enemies HP in damage, there's no comparison.

I will add that I see some good arguments for Arcane Bloodline. They get more spell to select at higher level, better concentration checks and at level 15 they can boost the DCs of one of their schools by an extra +2. Imagine Sirocco with +2 from Evocation spec, +2 from fire spec, +2 from arcane bloodline, over +10 from charisma, +1 from using metamagic with arcane bloodline, +1 from the ring of circumstance, and another +2 from a robe of fire. Aint nothin gonna get up from that.