Sorcerer early game: skills, stigmas and mana

At a glance

The one thing that drives the build

Keep your mana above 50%. Sorcerer's damage scales off MP thresholds. Crit and damage both drop once you fall under, so a Sorcerer at 30% mana isn't slightly worse, it's a lot worse.

Almost every choice below is downstream of that: which skill sustains mana, which targeting mode refunds it, and why the rotation is built to hover above the line rather than dump everything at once.

Set your targeting mode first

This is the single highest-value setting change, and it is easy to miss.

• Tab-target auto-attacks, and those auto-attacks restore mana between casts.
• Action combat doesn't auto-attack unless you manually click the target.

Use tab-target. The mana it feeds back is what holds you above the 50% line, and the DPS is smoother for it. Action combat feels better for about ten minutes and then starves you.

Feathers and skill points

Collect Monolith feathers as soon as you can reach them. They pay out skill points in bulk, plus titles and enchants. The build below assumes you've collected them. Stigma shards come from AP trading and dungeon drops.

Core skills

Skill	What it does	Why
Flame ArrowLevel 8	Deals 62-62 Fire damage to a target within 20m and restores 100 MP.Active	Your mana sustain, not your damage. It's what keeps the rest of the build running.
HellfirePrioritise	Selects a target within 20m and deals 1137-3412 Fire damage to up to 4 enemies within 4m of the target. Max 3 Charge Levels 20-35 Stagger Gauge DamageActive45s cooldown200 MP	Biggest damage skill you own. Take casting speed first; the DOT line is for later, once you're fighting bosses.
Robe of FlameMandatory	Increases the caster's Accuracy by 100, PvE Damage Boost by 1%, PvP Damage Boost by 0.5%, and Double Chance by 0.2%.Passive	Must-have in both PvE and PvP. Do not skip it.

Three more lines matter and our source names them by effect rather than by skill: the ice cooldown and speed lines, the fire cooldown and cast speed lines, an HP restore, and a 20% attack buff. Level all of them. We haven't matched those to client skill names yet, so they are described here rather than named wrongly.

The skills you spam should be levelled for attack speed. Early on you're not gear-limited so much as speed-limited: your cooldowns are long, so the fix is casting faster rather than hitting harder.

Stigmas

Six stigmas in a linear chain, built for PvE burst and dungeon clearing:

Skill	What it does	Why
Divine Burst	Deals 1140-1140 Fire damage to a target within 20m. 50 Stagger Gauge DamageStigma60s cooldown200 MP	Knockback plus damage.
Fire Wall	Summon a Fire Wall that lasts for 3s at the location of a target within 20m. Deals 1300-1300 Fire damage and inflicts Embers on up to 4 enemies within the Fire Wall area (1x10m) for 10s. Embers: Deals 650-650 Fire Damage over Time every 1s for 10s. Damage over Time amount increases when targets move.Stigma60s cooldown200 MP	Area burn zone. Your clear tool.
Glacial Smite	Selects a target within 20m and deals 1477-1477 Water damage to up to 4 enemies within 4m of the target. 20 Stagger Gauge DamageStigma90s cooldown200 MP	High burst, no cooldown.
Steel Barrier	Grants a 16% Max HP Protective Shield for 60s. Increases PvE Damage Tolerance by 10% and PvP Damage Tolerance by 5% for the shield's duration, and restores 300 Stamina when the effect ends.Stigma60s cooldown	The reason you survive a pull that goes wrong.
Soul Freeze	Deals 1037-1037 Water damage to a target within 20m with a 75% chance to inflict Seal for 5s. 100% chance to inflict Seal on NPC targets. 20 Stagger Gauge DamageStigma60s cooldown200 MP	Chosen over the alternatives for the lower cooldown.

The damage buff that opens the chain is named by effect in our source rather than by skill, so it is not in the table.

Soul Freeze is a deliberate pick rather than the obvious one: at this stage a shorter cooldown beats a bigger number, for the same reason speed beats power above.

Daevanion lines

Go for combat speed, damage bonus and crit chance to the 50% cap, then critical damage. Crit chance is worth +0.44% a point to you against +0.36% for crit damage, and a point past 50% is worth nothing.

Avoid multi-hit chance and multi-hit resist. Sorcerer gets more from flat damage than from multi-hit, so those lines are close to wasted. That matches what the damage model says about this class generally — see the optimised stats screen, which also shows front/back damage boost sitting at a flat +0.00% for Sorcerer. It's a dead stat for you; skip it on gear too.

For enchants, prioritise mana regen, crit boost, Hellfire and Rob of Flame.

Ariel and book costs

The PvE and PvP books are expensive at global launch: roughly 2-3M for PvE and ~40M for PvP. Two lines can be completed for free through Abyss feathers and campaign quests, which is where to start before spending.

Macros

The game has a macro tool built in: Settings → Gameplay → Macro. Used properly it cancels skill animations, which you can see landing in your character's shadows.

The delay setting depends on your ping:

Too short a delay for your connection and the inputs drop; too long and you lose the animation cancel.

The rotation's job is to hold mana above 50%, not to squeeze out maximum theoretical damage. Two things to do by hand:

• Cast Hellfire manually in burst windows. It's your biggest hit and it deserves timing.
• Stop the macro briefly if mana dips, let it recharge, then resume. Riding below the threshold costs more than the pause does.

Where to go next

Blaze comes down by three seconds at skill level 16, and the damage guide has what to level and in what order. For what a stat point buys, stat weights; the gear upgrade advisor ranks upgrades against your own sheet. Gearing covers enhancement order.