For no apparent reason, Blizzard nerfed Diablo 4's weakest class, the Sorcerer, and gave it few meaningful buffs to compensate.

The new pre-season 1 patch attempts to level the playing field by hammering the core stats and skills on which the most powerful builds depend. All of the endgame sorcerer builds use burn damage to make it easier for enemies to crit. Even the builds that primarily cast cold spells needed a single fire skill to counter the speed with which all other classes slice through endgame monsters.

Its skill, Devouring Blaze, had its critical damage bonus nerfed and its bonus to immobile enemies, which was important to most Sorcerer builds, cut by less than half.

"Devouring Blaze was the talent that made Sorcerers do almost no damage of all classes," explained Reddit user LeagueTweetRepeat.

"It's like putting duct tape over the cracks in a wooden shed to keep the cockroaches out.

For Sorcerer, it was so bad out there that he had to use bugs to defeat the game's most difficult boss. Aspect of Control provides a significant boost to damage against stuck targets, but its bonus is tripled against staggered bosses, an inaccurate trait that streamer Northwar used to finish off Uber Lilith in almost a single hit! The bug, and the sorcerer's, was a result of the bug. This bug, and the dreams that Sorcerer felt were potentially powerful, were shattered.

Once you get up to World Tier 4 (Torment), the hardest difficulty in Diablo 4, enemies hit you like a truck. Most classes have skills and bonuses to armor that prevent them from crushing you. Sorcerers are different. They must rely on stacking gear with damage reduction stats and bonuses to barrier skills to survive. So, of course, Blizzard nerfed that too.

"We have seen skilled players frequently slaughter monsters many levels above them." We want to support this, but the current situation is beyond what we believe is right for the long-term health of the game."

Nearly all defensive stats found in gear have been reduced. Every class will now have to devote more resources to skills and stats that will help them survive the most difficult nightmare dungeon tiers. However, without significant buffs to barriers and base stats, sorcerers will suffer the most. As one Reddit commenter put it, the nerf will turn all classes into glass cannons.

"They dug up the Sorcerer's corpse so they could kill it again," Chuckycheeseburger wrote of the change.

Sitting at the top of the Sorcerer's patch note obituary is The Oculus, a new uber-unique staff taken straight from Diablo 2. This ultra-rare weapon will be really strong if you're lucky enough to find it, but with all the nerfs its unique abilities feel like a middle finger to the class: evade using the Teleport Enchantment and you'll be taken to a random location.

"Evading with a teleport enchantment will take you to a random location.

Our only hope is that the Season 1 "malignant heart" will compensate for this significant power loss. Sorcerers, keep your fingers crossed. The Season of Malignancy begins tomorrow.