This is an interesting set of questions.
First one is pretty complex as sorcery has multiple facets. First one being its immersion and thematics. I would say Funcom did an excellent job here. When I play a character delving into sorcery, it feels like I’m delving into stuff people shouldn’t be touching. It feels forbidden, it feels like I’m doing something wrong. And it does look amazing throughout the process.
The spells available are kinda hit and miss. Some of them I really enjoy. Spells like the wisp (in its current iteration), Cull Resources, Lightning Storm, etc. Are really good tools to add to my kit. Some spells are kinda meh. And unfortunately some spells just don’t have a use. Spells like the darkness spell, the detect corruption spell, and fire wall. I’d like to see the Ice Bridge go back to its pre-nerf state where you can summon multiple bridges, I’d like to see the mass undead summon get a boost in health. The darkness spell needs a feature added to the game where darkness does conceal you from NPCs. It does nothing in PVE now because of that.
Corruption builds (since you inquired about this specifically) are in a bad spot. I use corruption based builds only enough to have enough corruption to cast my spells, but I avoid most of the perks. They aren’t as good as the ones they replace (except for the health regeneration one). So if I’m cutting out a perk, I make sure its one that isn’t as useful most times. I generally avoid being more than 20% permanently corrupted, mainly due to the stamina loss.
So to answer the question posed, no, corruption builds are never as useful as they are not. If anyone is using one they are either ignorant, play in SP with settings making the game easy mode, or they are doing it simply to have access to T3 spells at the ready and have enough support and resources to justify it.
As someone who has leveled several sorcerer type characters, you cannot reliably level with a max corruption build without making significant changes in how you approach challenges. Meaning stuff you could normally take on at low level just have to be put off till much later. And by then you’re pretty much cheesing stuff.
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