Sounds pretty balanced to me. Seems as though you made a glass cannon and in the first instance of any respectable opposition your character proved to be thoroughly ill-conceived.
Then I’m glad you’re not an ARPG designer.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it true that all the sorcs you mentioned are inferior to their shieldbreaker versions, and except Pyran, also their purifier versions? I’d say it’s demo that’s on the rise, not sorcerer.
As for your mage hunter, PRM is a great skill. AAR is also a great skill, now. But truth is if those skills were on another mastery then those builds would be even better.
True, most of the times it’s Demo carrying Arcanist (never thought we would live to the day where you can say that, lol) or Ulzuin or Pyran carrying. But Arcanist compliments those very nicely and I don’t know much faster Shieldbreakers would be, look at @Shoot2033 Sorc’s videos. Arcanist’s Star Pact + mirror makes those builds very versatile.
I think we are coming pretty close to Arcanist being “fixed”.
That’s not balance. That’s homogeneity.
I beg to differ. Star Pact gives cdr and nothing else for non-cold (should support elemental instead imo). It is “nice” and it does help defensively with Mirror and Blast Shield but imo it really doesn’t really compare to the power of Mandate. And whatever else there is in arcanist doesn’t make up for no rr. I’m not saying give arcanist rr. I know that’s off the table. But there should be more stuff to make up for it. More stuff like Iskandra relic with monster dmg boost.
I actually played that sorc of Shoot’s. Great build but maybe unplayable for most people. 10 active skills piano, gotta watch cooldowns, etc. Totally a max dmg setup. And all in all its results are only mindblowing because it’s arcanist. If it was a max dmg setup on a shieldbreaker or purifier you’d yawn at that 6 minutes. Isn’t that telling?
Well, you are probably right then. Star Pact does add damage to Cannister Bomb specs and synergizes quite nicely with -2 seconds to Blast Shield cd stat on Ulzuin.
how can you even use that experience as a way to judge balance? You said you were playing an unfinished build, we have no clue what your resists are and what your overall setup is. There are also different tiers of mobs, theres basic trash mobs which are generally walked over, then theres, elites, heroes etc. For example you might have been fighting trash mobs which did pierce damage, but you might have 80% pierce resist making their attacks feel extremely weak then you go fight a boss which does cold damage and for all we know your cold resist could be at 30%.
It’s the same in almost all ARPG, trash mobs are… trash lol
I know how Star Pact can change the game. Before the aether nerfs almost every binder took it instead of Reckless power.
But I still feel like there’s something missing from arcanist in order for it to be a fully fledged support mastery. Maybe changing +%cold to elemental on Star Pact. Maybe removing the total dmg penalty on Maiven. Maybe buffing the IEE line for more dmg.
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Total damage penalty on maiven would be a nice start, but it seems to be a thematic choice the devs wish to keep so we’ll see how that goes.
Buffs to IEE wouldn’t be out of line. The question is more “what gets added?” given a lot of the existing stats are simply low usefulness stats that won’t improve builds if they were scaled higher. The base skill’s main offering is flat damage but of the worst kind, elemental. Either you convert it or the values are so low it doesn’t do anything for you. The second node gives dots, which again most builds won’t care about, % damage which isn’t usually a priority in skill choices, and aether res which alone isn’t enough to usually justify investment here. The third node’s popularity for its crit damage speaks wonders about the value of the stat as well as the lack of other appealing options in various portions of the arcanist tree.
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The problem with the second node of IEE is that you only got 33% chance to roll your dmg type. DoT builds that want that flat are builds that rely on high wpn dmg nukes with cooldown (like cold ABB breaker - fun but gimmick). The fact that only every third nuke would use that flat makes this skill pretty useless.
The only scenario when this thing might be useful is DoT builds that rely on wps autoattack (a’la Bloodrager) where many hits per second make the 33% chance less of a thing. But arcanist will never be any good for any kind of autoattack (no attack speed). And even if this wast an issue, the scaling of dmg is still just too low. I’ve never seen a well made, polished build that would push the second node of IEE more than 1p.
Also, tri-elemental DoTs but I’ve never seen such a thing.
Another thing, aether res. Great, everyone loves aether res. But it so happens that much of arcanist gear and devos already got aether res. Why not pierce res?
You take reckless on elemental builds?
Even burn Sorcs takes usually Star Pact 
This is used exclusively on Aether builds. No sane Fire Sorc or Templar or Mage Hunter will ever take it. Another thing, Aether builds that need attack speed on Reckless power are pretty weak, it’s Krieg’s Battlemage and gimmicky Theoden scepter auto-attacking spellbinder.
Bonemonger Mage Hunter is a fan too.
Not unviable to use it on a Physical Build, either.
E: Spam BWC Sorc absolutely uses RP, btw.
E2: Chaos FS Sorc also goes for RP.
Those are very gimmicky builds. First two you have mentioned. (Also, who would use it on a Physical build, really? Why?) Spam BWC sorc is so outdated as a concept, and it’s been outdated since forever. No place for it in the current meta.
Chaos FS sorc? Again, some extreme gimmick I haven’t even heard off. All your examples make Reckless Power look bad if anything, because it seems like it’s an Exclusive skill for a bunch of Cronley’s Hideout farmers from 2017.
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Didn’t realize something has to clear crucible in 3 minutes to be worthy of acceptance.
What does Crucible even have to do with this? Those builds don’t even come close to being potent endgame content farmers, I doubt you can do well with Chaos FS sorc or Physical build that decided to give up 15% of it’s damage in Ugdenbog roguelike.
The conversion is often detrimental. But the AS/CS could potentially be of use to a skill that has already seen 100% convert through a transmuter or item. I can’t think of any concrete build examples, at this time - but I could see that being an exception.
Edit: that said, this idea is really a work-around to the basic problem of the Exclusive. It is kind of the same with both exclusives, in order to avoid the detrimental conversion. (if you don’t want aether or cold conversion).