Recommended Gear Rolls:

Weapon:

Top line:

Increases damage by 9.3% when attacking enraged monsters

Bottom Lines:

Increases damage by 9.3% when attacking enraged monsters

Increases damage by 6.9% when attacking from behind

Increases damage by 6%

Decreases skill cooldowns by 7.2%

Cooldown reduction line: Sorc is a class that gets CD locked easily and this greatly helps with that. Also allows your Mana Boost CD to line up with enrage timings better. If not using a frostmetal or stormcry weapon: Drop the 6.9% Damage from behind roll. Reasoning for dropping this instead of CDR or the 6% flat damage roll, is that you need the cooldown reduction to actually play this class. Also, 6% damage is active all the time (side crits) whereas the 6.9% roll only works from behind and is only 0.9% stronger. However it doesn’t matter too much which one of these rolls you take.

Armor:

Top line:

Increases damage of Meteor Strike by 10%.

Bottom Lines:

Decreases damage taken by 6%.

Decreases damage taken from frontal attacks by 6.9%.

Decreases damage from enraged monsters by 10%.

Raises max HP by 8%.

Meteor Strike line: Meteor Strike is around 25-33% of your total DPS and the most valuable chest line. If not using a frost or storm chest: Drop the 8% HP roll. The other rolls are more valuable.

Gloves:

Increases Attack Speed by 2.25%

Increases Power by 5

Increases Crit Factor by 9

Boots:

Increases Movement Speed by 6%

Increases Endurance by 4

Replenishes 2% of total MP every 5 seconds

Etchings:

There are uncertainties about what etchings are best suited for sorcerers. I will be explaining this based on my personal experience with each etching mix.

TL;DR: Run double energetics this patch. If your ping is good you can also try 1 pumped etching. Keen is no longer the best option.

Important: You can get FREE tier III etchings from 90 tier 3 iod tokens.

Keens

Keen used to be really good but with the addition of more and more crit accessories, it’s no longer the optimal etching and is worse than energetic or pumped.

Energetics

This is my personal favourite build for sorc. Double Energetic is a very different experience while playing this class. With 2 Energetic IV etchings, you gain 10% more attack speed, and 6% cooldown reduction at the expense whatever etchings you had on before.

You will immediately notice the increase in attack speed, and will have to alter your rotation to make sure you are using the priority skills as much as possible, while using fewer filler skills. This is currently the best endgame build for sorc.

Pumped

These are an alternative to energetics if you don’t like having that much speed. However I would absolutely not recommend double pumped.

Accessories:

You want to always run full crit. Run 2 crit rings, earrings and crit neck, with an 8 crit roll on your circlet. If you have them, you can run 2x resized rings from last patch for extra crit from the set bonus. However, sorcerer doesn’t need to run a resized necklace like other classes because you have so much built in attack speed that the 4% extra isn’t worth the loss of power.

The rolls should be 4 crit 4 power on each ring, 4 power on the necklace, and 4 endurance 4% HP on the earrings.

Innerwear

+24/+20 /+16 / crit is optimal for sorcerers.

Brooch

Ideally, you will want a Marrow Brooch. However this is very difficult to get as it only drops one per phase 4 of Harrowhold. The next best thing is a Quatrefoil brooch. It only lasts 5 seconds shorter (15s total) than a marrow brooch, and has the same stats and active effect. They are both vastly superior to either of the other brooches, Quickcave and empowered. If a Quatrefoil Brooch is too expensive for you to obtain, then go with a Quickcarve Brooch on your sorcerer. It is better than empowered because the 12% attack speed and 50 crit are more useful than 40 power during your Mana Boost burns.

Weapon:

Spiteful, Savage, Focused, Forceful/Carving/Pounding

Spiteful, Savage and Focused are mandatory with the exception of Harrowhold phase 2 and 3, where you would replace Focused with either Forceful or Pounding (you should have Carving on already in Harrowhold).

The fourth weapon crystal has 3 options, and they are all situational. I will be brief and then explain it. Carving with solo priest or in Harrowhold, Forceful with brawler or warrior tank + mystic, and Pounding with lancer tank + mystic.

Carving helps greatly with solo priest because you are losing 55 crit factor from not having a mystic present. You should always run carving without a mystic.

Forceful is what you will likely use most of the time. Sorcerers use full crit jewelry which means that power is more effective. The more power you stack, the less effective it becomes, and since we have not as much as a gunner for example, Forceful is better than pounding in this situation. I will note here that using Forceful all the time is okay.

Pounding is for that extra little bit of min max. When running with a lancer tank, their Guardian Shout buff adds power to the party members. Power becomes less effective the more that gets built, so a Pounding crystal is marginally better for burns (Mana Boost + enrage + lancer buffs) with a lancer tank. However, if you don’t want to bother then that’s fine.

Armor:



4x Hardy (preferably at least 1x Glisteningly Hardy Niveot)

4x Hardy Niveots are mandatory for everything except for RMHM Lachelith. It is best that you have 160k HP on this boss, and you should be able to reach this with 3 / 4 relentless dyad niveots, 1 relentless IV etching, 4% HP on each earring, 8% HP on your chest, and the maxed out guild HP bonus.

The reason I say 3 Relentless instead of 4, is if you have a Glisteningly Hardy Niveot (which is basically required to play this class) then you don’t have to remove it to use relentless. You could also get a Glisteningly Relentless for this too.

Accessories:



Keen Vyrsks

Use Keen Vyrsks all the time.

Dyad Lines:

Weapon dyads: Here, the two most useful in this order are Poisedly and Relentlessly. If you have 4 Poisedly Dyads in your weapon then it totals up to a bonus of 8.8% damage reduction vs enraged monsters, which is actually 0.3% stronger than having a 5th hardy dyad in your chest. This is very useful.

Relentlessly is not as good as 4x Poisedly, but adds 1359 HP per dyad that you have, totaling to 5436 extra HP, which is about the same as a Relentless Niveot. This is the only other beneficial secondary line, with the exception of resolutely for slaying.

Armor dyads: As I said before, you need a Dyad that has a Glisteningly bonus line. Preferably a Glisteningly Hardy. What this does, is give you 60 MP every second every time you get a back crit. The buff stacks up to 4 times, giving you 240 MP every second. Each back crit will refresh the stacks. Note, you do not have to have more than 1 Glisteningly crystal to easily get 4 stacks of this buff.

Skills / Glyphs:

Fireball Shoot a fireball at one target within 18m.

Don’t use this.

You should not glyph this skill.

Frost Sphere Launches a damaging sphere of chilled air through a line of targets up to 18m, which has a chance to briefly slow the target’s Movement Speed by 20%. Once the sphere reaches maximum range it shatters, damaging all nearby enemies.

This is a decent filler skill and is used while higher priority skills are on cooldown.

You should not glyph this skill

Lightning Trap Set a ring-shaped trap that briefly stuns its victims. Trap lasts 10 seconds or until triggered.

Used only to stun bosses during certain phases, like Aquadrax and Terradrax in Harrowhold.

You should not glyph this skill.

Arcane Pulse Launch a slow-moving pulse at enemies in front of you. Charge up the pulse’s damage by holding down the skill button, then release the button to hit targets in a 21m line. Launches 2 pulses when fully charged. [Enhanced] launches additional pulses while Mana Boost is active.

This is your primary rotation starter, is very high up on your DPS contribution list, and is the best skill during Mana Boost.

Glyph Empowered (damage), Slick (can move while charging) and Keen (Crit Factor buff) Arcane Pulse. The 2.5x crit factor buff is worked out by your base crit factor. Every time you fire this skill, you gain 75 crit factor for 5 seconds, which is huge. You can (optional) glyph the Frost Sphere damage powerlink, but I don’t recommend it, as you rarely actually use Frost Sphere within 5 seconds of Arcane Pulse.

Mana Infusion Replenishes 700 MP every second up to a maximum of 3,500 MP.

Don’t use this skill. You should always use mana pots (Prime Replenishment Portable, Sarberry Deliciousness, or Divine Infusion) if you are running out of mana.

You should not glyph this skill

Meteor Strike aka Fireblast Summons a flaming meteor and bombards targets in a 4m radius circle centered 10m in front of you. [Enhanced] Increased casting time, range, and damage while Mana Boost is active.

This is your highest damage contribution skill. It has a whopping 11647.93 base damage (including the chest roll 10%), and a “bloodlust,” or “execution” HP scaling effect. In layman’s terms, the lower HP the boss is, the more damage Meteor Strike does. (The other skills that have this effect are Arcane Pulse, Void Pulse, and Nova). This skill is normally around 25-33% of your damage and should be prioritized over everything else except Lightning Strike, Void Pulse and Hail Storm (we’ll get into this later).

Glyph Carving (Crit chance), Hastened (cast speed) and Energetic (cooldown) Meteor Strike.

Backstep Quickly back up out of harm’s way

One of sorcerer’s 4 iframes. (The others being Warp Barrier, Teleport Jaunt and Stone Skin).

You should not glyph this skill.

Flame Pillar Summon a column of flame in front of you that burns enemies within 3m.

Sometimes during Mana Boost, with a bunch of speed buffs on like arush, rootbeer etc, you will get badly cd locked if lightning strike doesn’t reset. That is the only time you should cast this skill; when everything else is on cooldown.

You should not glyph this skill.

Mana Barrier Cast a magical shield that absorbs up to 17,346 damage for 45s. Costs 1 MP per 50 damage the shield absorbs. Ends when the shield reaches maximum damage or you run out of MP.

It gives you a 17346 HP shield that only works on the caster. Basically a personal mini Kaia’s Shield for Sorcs. Some might consider this skill useless and not bind it but I disagree. It’s useful in 3 particular situations and possibly more. If you don’t have enough HP to take a sphere on Lachelith, and it would get you enough, you can use this instead of potting. Secondly, for the LKHM second boss, you need 150k HP to tank the full bar wax AOE thing. This skill has saved my life more times than I can count on this boss, when either the priest doesn’t use Kaia’s Shield, there is no priest, or your HP didn’t get topped off and you would die otherwise. Finally, it may be useful on Phase 4 of Harrowhold for the mechanic known as “spread” or “meteors.” If you aren’t full HP and the healers are having trouble, you can pop mana barrier to give yourself some extra HP to take the initial damage of the meteor landing and then use a pot afterwards.

However useful this skill may be in niche situations, you should not glyph it.

Lightning Strike Calls down a 15m line of lightning bolts in front of you, damaging opponents in its path.

This skill is pretty much the bread and butter of Sorc. Spamming lightning strike resets after each other is actually higher damage per second than casting meteor strike. This becomes less apparent as the boss goes below about 30% HP and meteor strike starts doing more damage. I will cover the actual rotation system later in the guide but just know that this is your main skill. One thing to note is that “highest damage contribution skill” does NOT equal “highest damage per second.” Meteor strike may do more overall damage than this skill, but if you factor in damage versus casting time, then lightning strike is a better skill. On a typical breakdown, this skill would be around 15-20% of your DPS depending on the amount of resets you had. Note that this is one of the two ping based skills on Sorc, the other being Flaming Barrage. It’s no where near as ping reliant as barrage, but if you are on 200ms+ you will notice that your lightning strike resets are slower than a low ping player. You can macro it which helps a little.

Glyph Carving (Crit chance) and Persistent (reset chance) Lightning Strike.

Void Pulse Launch a powerful sphere at a single target within 21m.

This is a simple skill: it fires a ball that does damage to a single target. This is actually one of the few skills that sorc has which isn’t an AOE (area of effect) attack. A situation where this can be annoying would be the 2nd boss of RMHM when the spider can sometimes block your void pulse from hitting the boss if you are not careful. Void Pulse is the one of the highest damage vs casting time skills on Sorcerer and should therefore be prioritised.

Take both Energetic (cooldown) and Carving (Crit chance) on void pulse.

Mindblast Briefly puts targets to sleep in a 4m radius centered 10m in front of you.

PvP skill, useless

You should not glyph this skill.

Retaliate Leap to your feet while attacking your target. You can use this skill only when knocked down. You become briefly immune to knockdown, stagger, and stuns.

Use to get up if knocked down

You should not glyph this skill.

Painblast Up to 5 targets within a 4m radius centered 10m in front of you take 516 damage every 2 sec for 10 sec. Does less damage to other players.

Use this only if literally every other skill is on cooldown. It’s has the worst damage vs casting time of any skill (except burning breath).

You should not glyph this skill.

Painful Trap Set a trap that explodes when stepped on. Trap lasts 10 seconds.

See flame pillar. Use this if literally everything else better is on cooldown

You should not glyph this skill.

Glacial Retreat Freeze the ground before you as you leap backward, briefly decreasing the Movement Speed of your target by 70%.

One of Sorc’s three movement skills. Similar to priest’s fiery escape, meaning that it is purely a movement skill, and not an iframe. Glacial retreat is extremely useful for getting around. With the burst of celerity passive that Sorc now has, this skill is very fast too. A practical application of glacial retreat is dodging un iframable attacks. If you ping is high, you can’t use Backstep to easily dodge something like Lachelith’s donuts at the last second, because it might lag or rubberband and the server will think you never moved, even though the iframe will go off. The same applies on Atrocitas with the colored circles debuff mechanic. If you try and Backstep out late with high ping, you’ll die. If you use glacial or jaunt to get out, you won’t. However, you can Backstep out or back in early and you’ll be fine. If your ping is low then ignore this.

You can (optional) glyph Blazing (increased cast speed of Arcane Pulse) Glacial Retreat.

Mana Siphon Charge up your attack by holding down the skill button, then release it to take MP from targets within 18m. While charging up, you can move at full speed.

Don’t use this skill

You should not glyph this skill.

Flaming Barrage Press the skill button once and mouse over to lock on to up to 4 targets within 18m, then press the skill button again or left-click to shoot at all targets.

This is the other ping reliant skill on sorc. Unlike lightning strike, it actually requires low ping to be utilized properly. Even with high ping, it’s still a good filler but you should prioritize frost sphere over this if your ping is over 200.

Glyph Hastened (cast speed) Flaming Barrage.

Nerve Exhaustion [PvP] Weaken up to 4 players within 15m and prevent them from using any skills for 5 seconds. Knockdown or an attack on a target ends the effect. Click the skill button once and mouse over to lock on targets, then click the skill button again or left-click to shoot at all targets. Using this skill on a target cursed with Time Gyre will remove the Time Gyre effect from the target.

PvP skill don’t use this.

You should not glyph this skill.

Burning Breath Shoot a fiery blaze that inflicts 3,120 damage every 2 sec for 10 sec for up to 1 targets within 15m. Deals less damage to other players. Press the skill button once and mouse over to lock on targets, then press the skill button again or left-click to shoot at all targets.

??? XD

You should not glyph this skill.

Mana Volley Up to 4 targets within 15m lose 30% of their total MP immediately and 206 further MP every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. This only affects other players. However, hitting any target replenishes 30% of your total MP. Press the skill button once and mouseover to lock on targets, then press the skill button again to shoot at all targets.

If you ever are completely out of mana with no potions off cooldown and no mana charge from the priest, then use this over any of the other mana skills. It’s a lock on skill which gives you a lot of mana back but you should never have to use it.

You should not glyph this skill.

Time Gyre Briefly immobilize up to 3 targets within 18m. Prevents other players from using evasion and movement skills. Knockdown or an attack on a target ends the effect. Click the skill button once and mouse over to lock on targets, then click the skill button again to shoot at all targets. Using this skill on a target cursed with Nerve Exhaustion will remove the Nerve Exhaustion effect from the target.

PvP skill only only.

You should not glyph this skill.

Teleport Jaunt Teleport a short distance in the direction the camera faces.

One of three movement skills, and a complete life saver. I love this skill. Sorc is one of only two classes to be blessed with teleport jaunt. Even though it has a long cooldown, Sorc more than makes up for it with other survivability skills. It’s basically a fantastic repositioning skill that when used correctly will help you stay glued to the back of a moving boss.

It’s like an aimable backstab for sorcs which now is directional so you don’t even have to turn the camera to aim it.

You can (optional) glyph the Energetic (cooldown) Teleport Jaunt.

Hail Storm Summon an icy storm 12m in front of you for 10 seconds damaging all targets in 6m radius. Slows targets by 10% per hit. Effect stacks up to four times.

This is a great skill. It has the highest damage vs casting time of any skill, and once thrown down on the boss, does automatic damage. You have to stay looking at the back of the boss for it to continue back critting. It does NOT work like archer rain of arrows. You can throw it down on the front of the boss, go behind and face the back of the boss and it will start to back crit. You don’t have to worry about placing this skill behind the boss; you can reposition and the skill will adapt to your new position. If you are behind the boss and look away with your camera, if your character’s body isn’t facing the back of the boss, or aren’t behind the boss for whatever reason, then hailstorm will stop back critting until you look back or return to being behind the boss. Note that Noctenium makes this skill’s already fast casting time even faster, but does not change the damage of the skill.

You should glyph Energetic (cooldown) Hail Storm.

Stone Skin Encases your body in stone for 5 seconds, protecting you from all attacks and dropping all aggro, pressing the skill button a second time cancels the effect.

This is an interesting skill, and one that a lot of sorcs forget about. I will start by saying that it has exactly the same iframe coding as Warp Barrier. What I mean by this, is that whatever you can or can’t iframe using Warp Barrier, will be the same with stone skin. It’s basically a 5 second Warp Barrier with a 3 minute cooldown. Your emergency “oh shit” iframe button.

Practical application of this would be on RMHM last boss, if she does two tail spins in a row, Warp Barrier will be on cooldown. If you are not confident using backstep to iframe it, then you can use this. IMPORTANT NOTE: you can cancel out of stoneskin by pressing the skill a second time while turned into a statue, meaning you don’t have to wait all 5 seconds to get out of this skill. The skill is also an aggro drop, and gets you out of combat. Just cast it and then cancel it and you will no longer be in combat. It is possible to do this to switch brooches mid fight and double brooch again, but I really don’t recommend doing this. You lose more DPS doing the stoneskin cancel than you do just continuing to hit the boss.

I don’t recommend glyphing this skill because even with the glyph, the cooldown is still quite long, and you barely use this anyway.

Nova Unleash a massive explosion 7m in front of you, which deals huge damage to enemies within 6m and with a chance of knockdown. You take only half damage while using this skill, and having a high resistance to knockdown and stagger.

This is a very good “supporting” skill for your other skills and does very high damage by itself. However the innate crit chance of the Nova skill is actually quite low, being around 50-60%. It has the same crit glyph as Arcane Pulse, except it last for 4 seconds instead of 5. A very useful application of Nova is that it works like mystic’s corruption ring. You take half damage while casting this skill. If it’s off cooldown and you can use it to tank something, then go for it, but I don’t recommend saving Nova to tank a hit.

You should always glyph Hastened (cast speed), Keen (Crit Factor buff), and Energetic (cooldown) on Nova, and you can (optionally) glyph Grounded (endurance) on Nova which helps a lot if your gear isn’t that great, especially in Harrowhold. This glyph gives you 12 endurance, and it’s up for most of, if not the whole fight once you cast it, because the duration of the glyph is longer than Nova’s cooldown.

Warp Barrier Cancel all damage for 1 sec and recover 5% of maximum MP. Mana Boost II does not apply while Warp Barrier is active.

This skill used to be really strong, but this patch it isn’t that useful. There are a lot of things you can’t iframe with it, like the ‘S’ attack on RK9. It can still iframe most of the red aoes however. If you have it glyphed, it’s a 2 sec invulnerability spell, but as of the VSNM patch, they increased the cooldown a lot. An example of how broken this skill used to be (or rather was, since this is an older dungeon) the Nightmare Dakuryon (2nd boss) fight in Shadow Sanguinary (Hard Mode). By abusing Warp Barrier you can do something similar to the following video. (Pre revamp gameplay. Ignore the rotation):

Please note that as of the Sword and Hoard patch (warrior revamp), using Warp Barrier before Meteor Strike as a means to boost dps during Mana Boost is no longer worth using. Warp now removes the attack speed of Mana Boost for its duration, whereas it did not before this patch.

Mana Boost Increases Attack Speed by 30% for 15 seconds and skill damage by 20% when attacking monsters. The following skills are enhanced while Mana Boost II is active:

– [Arcane Pulse IX]: Generates additional pulses.

– [Meteor Strike VII]: Increased casting time, range, and damage.

This is a beautiful skill. It’s where most of your DPS comes from. Firstly, you should time this skill so it at least lines up with boss enrages. You can also wait for the lancer to use their adrenaline rush and guardian shout buff and make sure you Mana Boost with those buffs on for massive damage. Ideally, you should coordinate this skill to line up with your lancer’s Adrenaline Rush.

Not only does Mana Boost increase the damage of EVERY skill by 20% and increase your attack speed by 30%, it also drastically increases Arcane Pulse’s damage, while giving it an even shorter cast time, bumping this skill up to the very top of the priority list during Mana Boost.

Important note regarding Meteor Strike: Mana Boost turns meteor strike into a 5 hit skill with 4 small hits and 1 big one. The downside is, the cast time is much longer. You shouldn’t worry about trying to get 3 “meteor showers” during Mana Boost, as it is less damage vs casting time than regular meteor strike, or spamming lightning strike resets. It is more important that you get 3 buffed Arcane Pulses off rather than 3 Meteor Showers.

Glyph both Energetic (cooldown) and Lingering (duration) Mana Boost.

Recommended Glyph Builds:

My Standard dungeon glyph page:

Mana conservation glyph build: I recommend this build if you don’t have a glistening or just don’t want to spend as much gold on pots. You will probably still be potting a lot as this is a sorc after all.

You can also unglyph warp barrier completely and take the hail storm mana glyph if you feel you don’t need warp.

Rotations:

(These rotations were built assuming the boss does not move)

The first thing to remember is that you should always start a rotation with Hail Storm, and from then on, cast it off cooldown. The reason I say this is because the cast time is so short and it’s free damage.

Starting rotation (Mana Boost)

> > > > >

Ideally, Lightning Strike would keep resetting but unfortunately this will never happen you will need to know what to do if lightning strike doesn’t reset at all, so let’s take a look at that:

> > > > > > > > > > > FILLERS > > REPEAT

These two are the filler skills and should always be replaced with a Lightning Strike if it is off cooldown.

You would have to either forego, or use more skills depending on your attack speed buffs at the time (Lancer Adrenaline Rush + Root Beer etc), and your etchings. I do highly recommend using Lein’s Dark Root Beer for Mana Boost.

Outside of Mana Boost

The following assumes that Lightning doesn’t reset. You would still spam Lightning if it resets. Cast Arcane the instant it comes off cooldown and repeat the rotation.

> > > > > > > > Filler > >REPEAT

Important note: If you are having trouble fitting in all of these skills, the most important thing is that you get the priority skills off.

If you play with high ping then you will have to replace flaming barrage with frost sphere or just not use it.

Ideally, if you were guaranteed lightning resets, you would use something similar to this:

Final note regarding rotations: These rotations are a guideline. They work on paper if you assume the boss is a sandbag (doesn’t move). Of course you will have to use re positioning skills sometimes and won’t be able to perfectly get the entire rotation off 100% of the time but you can certainly try. If you got perfect reset RNG against a boss that moves a lot such as Perimos, you would still use Meteor Strike, as you want to get it off before the boss turns around. Then you can re position and continue using Lightning Strike. Instead of going > > you would just AP into Meteor Strike because you want to get Meteor off as soon as you can before the boss turns so you don’t risk a side or back crit.

Tips & Tricks:

Elin is the best race for sorcerers. The animations are significantly faster. Becoming an elin if you are not already is recommended.

Increase your FoV (Field of View) if you haven’t already. I recommend 80+ FoV and at least 100+ FoV in Harrowhold. To do so, go to your TERA installation folder then find Client/S1Game/Config and open S1input.ini. Add these two lines: Bindings=(Name=”end”,Command=”fov 100″) and Bindings=(Name=”home”,Command=”fov 80″). You can enter another button for the keys. If you use Shinrameter then you’ll have to change home to something else. End still works with Shinra. Personally I play with 100 FoV all the time.

You can iframe out of the casting animation of nova, the charging animation of arcane pulse, and the ending of the animation of meteor strike with both backstep and jaunt.

Flaming barrage will not back crit unless your character is actually facing the boss’ back, not just your camera. Same with hailstorm, and the 2 projectile skills; void pulse and frost sphere.

Nova tanking: I mentioned this before, but you can use nova to take half damage while casting it. For example, a Lachelith Hard Mode enraged donut (in>out) can be easily tanked using nova even with guile gear.

Bind your lightning strike to something easily spammable that you can press without effort.

A common misconception is that sorc is the ‘squishiest’ and weakest class in terms of defense. This is entirely untrue. Sorc is actually one of the tankiest DPS classes in the game short of zerker and gunner. Our base endurance is so high that we can survive a lot of things in mid tier gear that Leather classes can’t.

Back critting from the side: I will use perimos as an example. If you are standing behind the boss slightly to the side, as long as you are facing in the direction parallel to where the boss is facing currently, then your skills will back crit, not side crit. However, if you aim diagonally towards the boss’ back, then it will be counted as a side crit WebKasino.AT.

Back critting from the front as boss turns: When some bosses turn around, their “back hitbox” does not update to the new position until they have finished the turning animation.This means you can still back crit for a small window after the boss has turned. Note this only works on certain bosses. These include, but are not limited to, Atrocitas, Malgarios, Lachelith, Brutal Iron Giants, Naga Battlemasters, and Onyx Hydraths. An example for Lachelith is when she uses the secondary laser and is in the process of turning to face the person with secondary aggro. Her back hitbox doesn’t update until she has finished turning and begun the laser animation.For Harrowhold phase 1, this trick works on Terradrax (yellow) and Umbradrax (red), but mainly Terradrax when he does the turning swipe. His attack speed is naturally very low. The higher a boss’ attack speed is, the faster their hitbox updates, and the smaller window of time you have to back crit the boss from the “front.”

When doing ghillieglade on sorcerer, you stand here to side crit Banyakas and do more damage.



In Harrowhold phase 4, you can survive both rock phases, the rock ring and single rock without

behind behind a rock. You can stand in the fire and not die just by using stoneskin. However this is almost useless as the landing will kill you anyway. Only do this if someone accidentally breaks the rock on your side during the single rock mechanic, then you won’t die.

behind behind a rock. You can stand in the fire and not die just by using stoneskin. However this is almost useless as the landing will kill you anyway. Only do this if someone accidentally breaks the rock on your side during the single rock mechanic, then you won’t die. Just because the class is a ranged DPS, doesn’t mean you should always DPS from range. The ideal range for a sorcerer to DPS from is about 4-8 meters. The furthest possible range you can be is 12m, any further and nova won’t hit the boss (with the exception of Atrocitas which has a 15m hitbox on nova). The reason it helps to be close to the boss is that if it turns you can simply backstep or glacial through the boss without having to burn 2 iframes to cover that much distance. You can also use jaunt if you are further away but it’s completely situational and up to you which movement skill to use.

Arcane pulse walking. The glyph of the slick on arcane pulse allows you to move while charging. This is extremely useful for repositioning without interrupting your damage. A practical application of this would be moving slightly to the side so you don’t get hit by Atrocitas’ stun jump, or walking out of a Lachelith donut. However please note that you are forced to release the charge on arcane pulse as soon as the bar reaches full. There is a horrible animation lock on this skill so be careful. You can iframe out of the charge but not the actual skill.

Do Island of Dawn. I am serious. If you are new to the class and having trouble with positioning yourself behind bosses, try doing Island of Dawn BAMs. It is a fantastic way to practice positioning and attacking a moving boss. You might find it annoying at first, which it is, but after a while you’ll be much better at chasing the back of a boss, plus making a bit of gold in the process can’t hurt.

Gameplay Videos and Skill Breakdowns

Note: These are old bosses, but the class hasn’t changed since I made these videos. However I will try and make new ones when RK9 Hard Mode is released.

This is a Lachelith run I did for the guide. Note that I have more lightning strike hits than meteor strike. This should almost always be the case even with below average reset RNG. Meteor strike is always the #1 damage contribution unless you get some crazy reset RNG, but the other skills vary a lot. Arcane pulse is sometimes the #2 skill, if you get good crit during mana boost. If your lightning never resets then it won’t be so high up. If you are randomly really lucky and get 90%+ nova crit then it will be #2 or #3, since its base damage is really high. And finally if you have low ping then flaming barrage will make up around 8-10% of your total DPS.



Here is another breakdown example where my arcane pulse was higher up the list because it had better crit during mana boost:



Here is a video I made to showcase what I’ve described in the guide in effect:

In this next video, watch the second burn (third enrage at 2:18). I started my Mana Boost rotation differently, because Arcane and Meteor were on cooldown. This is perfectly fine, because it’s better to get

Mana Boost to line up with Arush than to wait to start the rotation normally. Also, the high number of Lightning Strike hits indicates that I got above average reset chance.

This final video is of Nightmare Lachelith in RMHM. It shows positioning tricks and how you fight the boss as a Sorcerer. The run goes badly in the end DPS wise, but hopefully it helps: