The Sorceress is one of the strongest classes in PvE of Lost Ark. She is also quite useful in PvP. She deals a lot of damage at great distances and can especially handle groups of enemies very well. We at MeinMMO have taken a close look at the class for you and reveal what is important.
What kind of class is this? The Sorceress is a ranged fighter who acts with magical damage and uses a large staff. She has many AoE abilities that are based on specific elements.
Especially in the early game, it is easy for you to control your enemies and quickly eliminate them. In the endgame of Lost Ark, the Sorceress is a sought-after support and provides your group with a lot of damage.
Her identity skill consists of two different aspects. You collect magical energy as you deal damage to enemies. You can then activate it with X to perform a teleport or “blink”. The jump then consumes 30% of your energy.
Alternatively, you can activate the ability with Y, which provides a massive boost to your damage, but completely depletes the energy.
In comparison to all other classes, the Sorceress can withstand very little damage, which is why you will likely activate your identity skill most often with X to jump away. Currently, the Sorceress is the only mage class in Europe focused on damage, which will change in July with the Arcana.
For which game content is she useful? The Sorceress especially shines in PvE. With her enormous area damage, she can swiftly annihilate whole hordes of enemies. She is also quite effective against bosses.
In PvP, the Sorceress is somewhat of an adjustment period. Here, you must use a completely different build than you would in PvE to be successful.
While the Sorceress ranks in our Tier List at PvE in A-Tier, which is the second-best, she must yield to B-Tier in terms of PvP. Nevertheless, she is quite fun to play.
This is how the Sorceress plays
What are the two builds? In the long term, you can play the Sorceress in two different ways. One build particularly focuses on the heavy casting skills of the Sorceress. You must charge these beforehand, making the magician considerably slower. The other build completely forgoes such skills and uses only the so-called “instant casts”. This means you forgo a bit of damage but move faster.
Both builds are well playable in the endgame but require different prerequisites from you. We will explain these in more detail later in this guide. At the beginning, you play a mobile Sorceress, with which you do not have to think much during the leveling process and can swiftly take down most enemies.
All Skills of the Sorceress
At this point, we would like to give you an overview of all the skills of the magician. However, we will omit the exact damage numbers, as these also depend on your attributes and already allocated points.
Fire – Costs 74 mana: Shoot a wall of fire forward that remains on the ground for some time and pulses. It deals initial damage and then causes briefly lasting area damage.
Energy Discharge – Costs 61 mana: Fires a sphere of concentrated energy that pierces your enemies and deals damage. You can activate the skill again to fire a second, stronger charge.
Lightning Vortex – Costs 80 mana: Creates a sphere of lightning that remains in place for 3 seconds and pulses. If an enemy is hit, it is pulled into the sphere, where it takes additional damage.
Frost Call – Costs 110 mana: You must hold this skill for it to work. If you hold it for the maximum duration of 4 seconds, it hits all enemies in the radius 9 times.
Gust – Costs 85 mana: Creates a whirlwind that is shot in a cone away from you and deals damage three times. The enemy is knocked back.
Angelic Jubilation – Costs 96 mana: This skill unleashes a tidal wave on your enemies, originating from you. It hits enemies in its path and deals damage to them. If it hits an enemy already in the air, the wave keeps the enemy airborne.
Inferno – Costs 96 mana: Creates a pillar of flame that rises from the ground and deals fire damage to enemies within the explosion radius.
Punishing Strike – Costs 119 mana: Calls down a massive thunderstrike from the heavens onto your enemies and deals lightning damage in a large area.
Gravitational Inversion – Costs 91 mana: Creates a field around you that lifts enemies into the air, briefly holds them there, and then violently slams them down. The ability deals double damage to your enemies and grants you super armor.
Frost Shower – Costs 77 mana: A quick ability with no casting time that deals water damage in a cone in front of you and also grants you super armor.
Lightning – Costs 110 mana: If you hold this skill, it fires a massive lightning beam that you can steer with your mouse at a 50-degree angle. It hits your enemies 5 times within 2 seconds.
Esoteric Reaction – Costs 110 mana: Creates a crystal at your cursor that pulses three times before ultimately exploding, causing area damage and knocking back enemies.
Hoarfrost Arrow – Costs 105 mana: Rain icicles fall in a rectangle in front of you, causing water damage and hitting enemies multiple times.
Explosion – Costs 119 mana: After a long casting time, you shoot a meteorite at your enemies that explodes in a massive inferno, dealing massive damage in a large area.
Switch – Costs 14 mana: You receive 30% less mana regeneration, but gain a shield that redirects all damage from your health to your mana. However, you lose 330% mana relative to the health points you would lose.
Envika’s Power (Awakening) – Creates a large sphere of lightning energy that deals damage in a wide area and pulls all enemies together before the sphere explodes and knocks your enemies away.
Call of the Apocalypse (Awakening) – Causes meteorites to fall from the sky for 8 seconds. If an enemy is hit by an impact, they take fire damage and are thrown to the ground.
The Sorceress in the Leveling Process
How do I play the Sorceress most effectively at the start? At the beginning, it is important not to shoot wildly around you with everything you have. Many of your skills have a long cooldown and also longer casting times.
So it’s best to pull a swarm of enemies behind you before you stomp them into the ground with your AoE effects.
At the start, you should focus on the skills Fire, Lightning Vortex, and Frost Call. They provide a lot of area damage and have comparatively low cooldowns. However, as you progress through the leveling process, you will exchange two of them. But this is not a problem, as you can reset your points for free at any time.
Right at level 12, you will let the Lightning Vortex go. You will keep the skill on the list, but remove the points and set them on Inferno. A skill that will accompany you until the end of the game.
At levels 14 and 16, you will get the skills Punishing Strike and Gravitational Inversion. You can safely level both; they are still part of your main damage skills later on. Feel free to take your points off Frost Call for this.
At levels 28 and 32, Hoarfrost Arrow and Explosion will come. You will always want to have both skills available.
Which equipment is good at the beginning? You should rely on the values of crit, specialization, and agility for the equipment. While crit ensures that you land more critical hits, specialization helps you deal better elemental damage.
However, you should not overlook agility either, as this primarily benefits you from shorter cooldowns in your skill set.
How do you distribute your skill points? Make sure to always unlock the next tripods. This happens at skill levels 4, 7, and 10. The points you require to level these skills vary from ability to ability.
- At the very beginning, you can put your points into “Fire”. In the first tripod, you initially select “Ignite”, which causes your enemies to burn as soon as you hit them. Later, when you have a bit more abilities, swap the tripod for “Enhancement of Torment”. This ensures that you and your group deal 6% more damage to enemies hit by fire for 8 seconds.
- If you play more solo, leave Fire at level 4. If you are often in groups, bring Fire to level 7 and then add the tripod “Flame Charging”, which significantly increases the radius of “Fire”.
- From level 14, you will receive the ability “Punishing Strike” – bring it to level 10 as quickly as possible; it is one of your best abilities. Focus on the tripods “Wide-angle Attack”, “Inevitable Fate”, and “Mage Enhancement”.
- As a second priority, you should boost the skill Inferno. You should also bring it to level 10 and equip it with “Tear Acceleration”, “Flame Area”, and “Fire Power Enhancement”.
- Once you unlock Explosion at level 32, you can take the points from Inferno and invest them in Explosion to bring it to level 10. Choose “Ignite”, “Counterfire”, and “Mage Enhancement” for this.
- If you have points left, you can distribute them according to your preference. However, we recommend boosting the skill Gravitational Inversion with the tripods “Wide-angle Attack”, “Cloudy Blessing”, and “Weakness Detection”.
- As for the Awakening skills at level 50, both spells of the Sorceress are viable. However, we recommend focusing on Envika’s Power, as it can be used more purposefully than the random meteorites of the other spell.
This leveling build is especially suitable for massive area damage. It is optimized for monster groups and not optimal against bosses or in PvP.
The Sorceress in Endgame
In the endgame, there are various builds for the Sorceress, all of which are good in their own right. However, we want to focus on the builds revolving around the two engravings.
The Reflux Sorceress: Focuses on the Reflux engraving, without which this build does not work as well. It ensures that you drop one of your identity skills (the Y-skill) and instead receive more general bonuses.
The Reflux Sorceress has more mobility, as she can use all her magical energy for the jump. Furthermore, she excels in sustained damage rather than in short burst windows. As main attributes, you focus on crit and agility for the Reflux Sorceress.
You mainly rely on the skills Fire, Frost Call, Punishing Strike, Gravitational Inversion, and Esoteric Reaction. A detailed guide on this build can be found at maxroll.gg.
The Igniter Sorceress: This build relies on the Igniter engraving of the Sorceress. It fundamentally does the exact opposite of the Reflux engraving. It ensures that your identity ability (Y) is enhanced. You get up to 50% less cooldowns and 50% more damage as long as you are in this form.
In comparison to the Reflux Sorceress, the Igniter Sorceress relies more on burst damage, as you cannot maintain continuous damage. Your burst window is whenever you have successfully charged your Y ability.
The Igniter Sorceress loses some mobility, as you should not use your X ability to maximize your damage. Additionally, in this build, you have more downtimes during your skill rotation. The main attributes of the build are specialization and agility.
Your main skills here are Frost Call, Punishing Strike, Esoteric Reaction, Explosion, and Inferno. A detailed guide on this build and how to play it can be found at maxroll.gg.
Both builds can be played in both an instant cast and a long cast variant. Depending on what you choose, you should prefer different engravings that complement your class engraving. It is therefore difficult to give a general tip; however, the usual DPS engravings like Wrath and Cursed Doll are suitable.
What do you think of the Sorceress? Do you enjoy the area damage and the heavy skill effects, or do you prefer to focus your damage on another class? How did you level the Sorceress and which build are you currently playing in the endgame? Which engraving do you prefer? Feel free to let us know in the comments here on MeinMMO.
All guides to Lost Ark, including builds and general beginner tips, can be found here:
Lost Ark Guides: All tips, tricks, and builds in one overview.
