Sorcerer

Elemental and Stardust

The Sorcerer’s split is two talent paths on one Staff rather than two weapons.

Elemental is the fire-ice-lightning path. In the launch-window patch Deep Freeze and Flameblade both had their activation wind-up sped up, Flameblade’s visual effects were corrected to match its actual damage hitbox, and Thunderstrike’s effective hitbox was expanded.

Crystal Icebolt is the interesting one. Its base cooldown came down — but the cooldown timer now starts after the bolt finishes firing rather than the moment you activate it, which removes the ability to abuse the Arcane Charge talent to spam it at high frequency. A buff and a nerf in the same line.

Stardust is the chanted-spell path. The Chant Guard talent increases chanting speed for Stardust spells and means the first attack you take will not interrupt the chant, on a cooldown. Stardust Torrent’s casting phase benefits too. The developers had to publish a correction to that talent’s in-game description at launch, so read it from the patch notes rather than the tooltip.

The entry barrier

Nearly every general change was aimed at making the class easier to survive on, not stronger. Fire Bolt, Thunderstrike and Meteor Charm now allow fast-casting with no channel when your energy is depleted — while still granting the fast version’s energy recovery. Arcane Armor’s channel time was reduced, and Windcraft received both a larger area of effect and a faster cast.

Those are the changes you make to a class where new players die during the animation.

Where it stands

The developers called the Sorcerer’s kill and damage data relatively balanced, so this is not a weak class. It is a demanding one with a specific, acknowledged problem — Ice chain control in extreme scenarios — and a documented gap between playing it badly and playing it well.