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Hi Everyone,
Welcome to my part 2 of the Sorcerer class analysis. Since the Sorcerers can now be of any tradition, I will try to bring an analysis of how their fare against the main spellcaster of each tradition. This thread is to discuss the Divine versions of the sorcerer.
You can find also find Sorcerer Analysis: Occultism (Part 1) to talk about and compare the sorcerer and the bard.
As previously stated, if you have the privilege the test both the divine sorcerer and the cleric during the playtest, your personnal input will be of great value!
In this second part, I will compare the divine sorcerer to the cleric. For the rest of the post sorcerer will be used, but should be read as divine sorcerer.
This time around, it is a bit harder to judge, it all depends on what is your priority between skills and battle endurance.
Hit Points: 6+CON for the sorcerer against 8+CON for the cleric
Perception: trained for the sorcerer and the cleric.
Saving throws: Sorcerer has Trained in Fortitude and Reflex, Expert in Will, Cleric is trained in Reflex and expert in Fortitude and Will.
Skills: 9+Int for the sorcerer (5+4 from the bloodline), 5+Int for the bard (and replace some skills with Performance).
Weapons: Trained in simple weapon for the sorcerer and cleric, with additional training for the deity favored weapon for the cleric.
Armor: Untrained for all for the sorcerer, trained in light/medium armors and shields for cleric.
Spells: Same spell proficiency and advancements.[/b]
Signature Skills:[/b] 5 skills, with onlye one flexible one for the Cleric, 6 with 5 flexible ones for the Sorcerer.
Resonance pools: Sorcerer has Charisma as a key ability and will probably have 2-4 more points than the cleric across his career.
The sorcerer is the best when it comes to trained skills, and has more flexibility with his signature skills since most of them are linked to his bloodline.
The cleric has more Hit points, is better at Fortitude saving throws, has potentially training in an exotic or martial weapon as well as training in light/medium armors and shields.
The conclusion depends on how important the skills are for you. Both classes have about the same number of signature skills, which means that if that's what you're looking at, they are similiar, but the sorcerer will be trained in more skills (will probably not train them higher).
If trained skills is not that important to you, Clerics are a lot better. With 2 more hit points per level, expert training in Fortitude saves and training in armors and shields, they will withstand a lot more things than a Sorcerer during combat.
Feats: Clerics are getting 2 more class feats than sorcerers with additionnal class feats at 6th and 10th level. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to view the advance and greater bloodline power as mandatory feats for the sorcerer, which brings both the sorcerer and the cleric at the same number of class feats.
Powers: Both sorcerers and Clerics get Spell points and power. The 3 sorcerer powers are from his bloodline and he has no choice in them after choosing his bloodline. Clerics begin with 1 domain power and can gain additional powers and domain with feats. There is also the strange case of Channel Energy, which comes with its own spell points pool and enables the cleric to cast Heal or Harm (chosen at character creation) at his max spell level 3+CHA times per day.
Spell repertoire/casting: If you ignore Class feats, the sorcerer will have at the end of his career 5 cantrips and 4 spells slots of each level with the same number of spell known. The cleric will know 5 cantrips and 3 spells slots of each level while having access to the whole divine spell list.
Same as before, the sorcerer is locked in a lot of his feats because of his bloodline (something that should change).
The Cleric currently has a lot more customization available with 2 additional class feats he has control over. Cleric also has access to an additional class feature when compared with the Sorcerer, and not a small one: Channel Energy, probably the best feature of the cleric.
Because of that, I consider the Cleric to be vastly superior when it comes to class features.
Let us now take a look at the divine spells and how it affects the two classes. Divine spells excels at buffing your ally, healing them and removing harmful conditions.
The sorcerer shines with a few things here:
1 additional spell slot of each level
More metamagic feats: The sorcerer has access to more metamagic feats that can alter spell known, rendering them more flexible or powerful.
Concentration feats: It is easier for sorcerer to keep his concentration on spells.
Counterspell
But the divine spell list has a lot of very situational spells, making the limits in spell known very harsh. The divine spellcaster role is usually one of a healer, and sorcerers will have to use one of their spontaneous heightening each day to Heal or Harm in order to take full advantage of the divine spellcaster role.
The sorcerer also can gain access to Divine Evolution which will give the sorcerer an free casting of Heal at max spell level, bringing the number of spell slots of maximum level to 5 for the sorcerer.
Numerous sorcerer feats do not bring any value to the divine path, since blasting isn't a great solution for divine sorcerers.
On the Cleric side.
It will be a little bit harder to always prepare the exact spell for the day, but with the number of very good buff spells available from the divine spell list, they should be able to make most of their spell slots matter.
On the healing side, the cleric is simply the best healer of the game, with lots of great feats working with the Heal spell as well as the Channel Energy class feature which brings the total spell slots available for the maximum spell level to 6+Cha, more than the sorcerer has!
The sorcerer might have more spell slots of lower level, but the massive amount of healing that the cleric can do is a lot better than anything the sorcerer can wish for.
The sorcerer has less max spell slots than the cleric, and will have to be very careful with his choice of spell known, at the risk of having spell that will almost never be useful to know.
The only thing the sorcerer has for him is his feats to keep concentration easily, but I'm not sure that his enough to make up for the overwhelming healing power of the cleric.
The divine spell list really gives the divine sorcerer a hard time. He will probably be able to take some useful buff spell, but will have to forget about being able to cast all of the useful remove harmful spells that the divine spell list provides, since these spells are so situational. Lots of his feats are not that interesting with this spell list and he will have to dedicate a spell heightening to Heal or Harm for the rest of his life, bringing the number of spell heightening available to only one, cutting in two his true potential.
With better/more controlled healing, more armors/shield proficiency and the best healing feats in the game, the cleric just dominates the sorcerer on all aspect, even putting to shame the sorcerer's endurance with the help of Channel Energy, bringing the cleric maximum level spell slots well above the sorcerer's one.
It must also be noted that with no way to exclude ennemies from his mass healing, the sorcerer will have a lot harder time to try to fulfill the role of a healer in a group.
The fact that the sorcerer has only 6 classes feats, also makes it almost useless for the sorcerer to try to multi-class into cleric in order to gain access to a few healing feats that would be really useful for him.
The Sorcerer bloodline choice is maybe too big of a choice too soon, it seems like a big threadoff and limits the possibility for future archetype by a LOT.
With only 6 class feats, the sorcerer class is the least interesting class to be going for Archetypes (multiclass, prestige or other).
While retraining is a possibility for other classes in order to mitigate some bad decisions, the bloodline being the main choice for the sorcerer class and the fact that it is singled out as an ability that cannot be normally retrained, it makes retraining unappealing for the sorcerer class.
While other classes only have to bother with designing feats that work for only one magical tradition, Sorcerers are in a special position where their class feat might not be a fitting choice because of its bloodline choice. It makes the creation and balance of sorcerer feats really hard, and the sorcerer definitely would need additional divine feats in order to be viable.
With the occult and divine analysis done, it is becoming clear that the sorcerer of those traditions main drawbacks are that the sorcerer has been built with an arcane tradition in mind, and thus is missing basic proficiency in armors and weapons that can be seen as necessary for caster of other traditions (and we have to keep in mind that the sorcerer also has 2 less hp per level than the classes he tries to challenge).
These general observation about the class is currently making me really afraid of the state of the sorcerer class.
What shocked me the most about Divine Evolution, is that the Paladin gets access to a much better version of it with the Channel Life feat, enabling paladins to use the Heal spell at what would be the maximum spell level - 1 for the sorcerer by using spell points.
Modifying Divine Evolution to be used with spell points instead of a once/day mechanic would help the divine sorcerer a lot. It wouldn't be as good as the 3+Cha of the clerics because it would share the same pool as the one that the sorcerer uses to have his power.
Edit: I forgot to talk about it but the divine sorcerer will be probably in an even worse condition when/if the Oracle comes out, since they will probably get increased HP and weapon/armor proficiency compared to sorcerers, with at least one mystery great for healing.
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Something I forgot to talk about: Yes anathema do exist, and to be honest I'm not that fond of giving better class features in exchange of something that might almost never come up in gameplay.
That's why anathema was kind of put aside in my analysis. For a quick example, it seems logical to me that an Abadar priest does not steal, and it seems weird that all characters that impose on themselves rules to follow do not have any kind of bonus when clerics, druids and paladins can get some.
I know some of you will not agree with me, but I wanted to give an explanation about why I did not talk about it in the main analysis.
And even if we do take into consideration anathema, It seems like it's a small cost to pay in order to have access to the advantages clerics bring to the table.
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Thanks for the analysis.
I basically agree with you in all major points.
The spell list alone makes a divine sorcerer almost unfeasible. The divine spell list not keeping up was my biggest concern when they announced the "pick a spell list"-bloodlines and it's depressing to see it come true.
I could see the sorcerer being a good arcane caster*. Occult and Primal could also work decently enough. Divine on the other hand is something I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot-pole.
*I'm talking pure spells and spell-focused feats here, ignoring all other aspects of the class like skills and the like.
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The divine list is just so...small.
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They are mostly viable as a class. They just need a few tweaks. Divine bloodline is the only one that is not viable.
In fact occult sorcerers are in a pretty bad place when you compare them with bards.
The two big issues are the mandatory bloodline powers and the class feats that seems to have been designed with the arcana spell list in mind.
Had a divine sorcerer in our playtest group (lvl 4 adventure), could see the guy in action. Spiritual weapon turned to be the main source of dps, which makes the character a bit of martial-like at lvls 3-4 (and the spell is going to become less relevant later, as far as i can see). 1st level spell were all going for heals, and without access to cleric-like features such as Healing Hands the sorcerer proved to be a really weak healing option (note: quick alchemy elixirs turned to be better, even though they cost resonance).
The demonic bloodline power was irrelevant (and from what i see, getting angelic bloodline would leave it just as irrelevant in most imagineable situations).
Only good thing with the divine sorcerer is that the guy can use wand of heal many times a day due to high Resonance point pool. This is nice, but not really enough to make a build fun to play.
You might want to edit your posts - Sorcerers being trained in the Bloodline skills is a mistake that’s meant to be corrected in the FAQ, and Sorcerers also gain spell points whenever they gain new Bloodline powers (same rate as the cost of the new power).
I like your threads. Keep it up. For now i share much of your concerns, and i will be asking my players to run more sorcerers.
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You might want to edit your posts - Sorcerers being trained in the Bloodline skills is a mistake that’s meant to be corrected in the FAQ, and Sorcerers also gain spell points whenever they gain new Bloodline powers (same rate as the cost of the new power).
I like your threads. Keep it up. For now i share much of your concerns, and i will be asking my players to run more sorcerers.
Seems like the skill part got copied wrong anyway, I'll redo it and post it soon.
For the powers part, I know that sorcerer gets more spell points when they gain a new bloodline power. The issue I'm having is that clerics can freely choose what kind of power they want to get (get new domain or second domain power), while sorcerers have no choices.
Something that could be great for sorcerers would be a crossblooded feat which same as the domain expansion feat would allow you to acquire the base power of another bloodline. You could limit the crossblooded choice by tradition (ex: divine sorcerer can only cross blood two divine bloodline).
Then you could remove the mandatory advanced/greater bloodline power with feats that enable you to get the advanced/greater power of a bloodline you have access to.
If you like these threads you should know that I'm going to post the primal sorcerer this week, and next week will be arcane sorcerer (I will probably post it in the "wizard vs sorcerer" thread since it already exist). A final thread about General sorcerer appreciation will probably be added afterward. It would be healthy to have a thread with no comparison to other classes.
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So... here's my update on Skills comparison now that we know that the sorcerer only has 5+Int skills training.
Skills: 5+Int for the sorcerer, 5+Int for the cleric
It seems to me that the Cleric is in a better position than the Sorcerer, since Religion will most likely be important to learn uncommon spell or rarer, as well as to identify the spells that your adversary is casting as well as creatures.
It becomes even more evident if you take a look at the spell signature of the divines sorcerers:
Angelic: Diplomacy, Intimidation, Medecine, Religion
Demonic: Athletics, Deception, Intimidation, Religion
This means that sorcerer can be good at social interactions, but clerics with Cha as a secondary skill can be quite decent with Diplomacy as well as being really good in Medecine and Religion.
Since the main use of a Divine caster is the healing part, the Cleric is better there.
If your party really lacks social interaction skills, the sorcerer might be a good alternative, but it seems to me that clerics skills are better suited for its role.
Here's a question: Is 9 extra spell slots = channel energy?
At 20th level a cleric is likely to have 16 charisma at a minimum thanks to how ability boosts work. That's a minmum of 6 channel energy a day. That's 6 times 17d8+7 for a single target (501 healing for single target healing).
A sorcerer will have the following for single-target healing:
9) 83.5
8) 74.5
7) 65.5
6) 56.5
5) 47.5
4) 38.5
3) 29.5
2) 20.5
1) 11.5
Grand total = 427.5
So Channel Energy > 9 extra spell slots.
If a cleric devotes all of their resources into channel energy they will actually get 7 uses of channel energy, each channel energy will deal 18d8+7 hit points (healing hands feat) and once a day they'll get to add an additional +36 hit points for one of those channel energies. This is a total of 652 single target healing per day.
A sorcerer who devotes all of their feats into improving their heal spell will be able to cast 1 extra 9th level heal then they otherwise would, which brings their total to 511 hit points.
The only way in which you could say that a sorcerer equals a cleric in terms of extra resources for healing is the fact that a 20th level sorcerer will likely have 4 extra resonance points per day. If you translate 3 of those resonance points into a wand of 9th level heal then that gives the sorcerer an extra 250.5 hit points of healing for a total of 678 healing.
So only by the sorcerer using costly wand charges can they equal that of a cleric when it comes to healing. I'm not sure whether or not this is a good trade off.
To the OP. Something tells me Oracle will be a prestige class for dvine spell casters.
This is my thinking as well (although perhaps a regular archetype and not a prestige archetype). Paizo have left themselves open to multiple dedication feats. I would expect an Oracle archetype to have multiple dedication feats that give them a curse, spell point pool (based on CHA) and then a power related to their curse. They could then take feats to reduce the penalty their curse provides and to give them an extra domain (what PF1e called a mystery).
Hi All,
I am interested in this one since I had intended to play test a divine sorcerer in a party that might already have a cleric (rather than replacing them as a primary healer, becoming a secondary heal/buff maybe with some flexibility into the offensive spells)
Then again I don't know how well that will work/compliment more than having a second cleric for example. I'll give it a go and see how it plays out.
One thing though, Staves have a bit of a different investment than wands (since you don't run out from what I can see, they just have x number of uses per day depending on resonance points.) Is there for example a staff of heal?
I guess what is a bit surprising for the Angelic bloodline is that there is not a straight up heal which might be able to compete with channel energy (perhaps it would be better to replace with a heal that works in a different way?
unless the angel bloodline is suppose to less be intended for healing and more offensive divine fury type thing, but then the bloodline powers would need to be more geared to that I would think.
I'll give it a go and maybe report here.
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Here's a question: Is 9 extra spell slots = channel energy?
That's a trap. You're comparing a lvl 20 cleric with a lvl 20 sorcerer which is the best situation for the sorcerer. If you compare at lvl1 for example, the cleric has 3+CHA channel which means that the cleric has a larger advantage. The sorcerer will close the gap during his career but will never exceed the ability of Channel energy.
If a cleric devotes all of their resources into channel energy they will actually get 7 uses of channel energy, each channel energy will deal 18d8+7 hit points (healing hands feat) and once a day they'll get to add an additional +36 hit points for one of those channel energies. This is a total of 652 single target healing per day.
Let us not forget all the other cleric class feats that can improve Heal and channel energy, like communal healing, Improved communal healing, selective energy (a sorcerer will never be able to exclude enemies from his mass healing), etc.
If you translate 3 of those resonance points into a wand of 9th level heal then that gives the sorcerer an extra 250.5 hit points of healing for a total of 678 healing.
So only by the sorcerer using costly wand charges can they equal that of a cleric when it comes to healing. I'm not sure whether or not this is a good trade off.
Wands are limited to 4th level spell which means that this part of the analysis is wrong.
The next best thing is the staff of healing which will enable the sorcerer to cast one lvl 7th heal spell as well as one lvl2 heal spell with the staff charges.
One thing missing from your analysis is the fact that in order to be correct, the sorcerer must either learn Heal at every spell level or have used one of his two spontaneous Heightening on Heal every single day.
Hmm so I suppose the advantage might be more 'sorcerer will be able to have more resonance to spend on other items and get full use out of the staff'?
I think comparing directly healing the cleric will likely win out each time.
Is it worth doing a comparison that is not heal based? So the question is can the Sorcerer build in a significantly different way that might be unique and take advantage of a divine spell list when compared to the cleric (I suspect the answer might be a no though given the above comparisons)
That's a trap. You're comparing a lvl 20 cleric with a lvl 20 sorcerer which is the best situation for the sorcerer. If you compare at lvl1 for example, the cleric has 3+CHA channel which means that the cleric has a larger advantage.
Well if you're unwilling to compare at the sorcerer's most favourable level, it seems a bit dishonest to compare at the cleric's most favourable level. Would you settle for comparing at 5th level?
Sorcerer will heal 61.5 vs a cleric's 88.5 (cleric has charisma 10 at this level). This gives the sorcerer 4 extra resonance points, they need to only spend 1 on a wand of heal charge to equal the cleric. If the cleric has 12 charisma (not unreasonable) and decides to use his new resonance point on a wand of heal, then the sorcerer will need to devote 3 resonance points to equal the cleric.
Let us not forget all the other cleric class feats that can improve Heal and channel energy, like communal healing, Improved communal healing, selective energy (a sorcerer will never be able to exclude enemies from his mass healing), etc.
Communal heal does +1 to +9 heal per channel. Not that great IMO. Improved communal healing doesn't improve that and only redirects that. Selective energy does give the cleric the advantage for mid-combat channeling.
Wands are limited to 4th level spell which means that this part of the analysis is wrong.
Well bugger. I thought the entire point of resonance was to get parties to use at-level wands? Sorcerers are screwed then when it comes to trying to match a cleric. If you want to be a healer just skip sorcerer and play a cleric and get better saves. That's disappointing.
One thing missing from your analysis is the fact that in order to be correct, the sorcerer must either learn Heal at every spell level or have used one of his two spontaneous Heightening on Heal every single day.
Yes. If a sorcerer wants to equal a cleric in healing they will need to devote resources into healing. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
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Seems to me the divine sorcerer needs some kind of theme it can excel at when compared to a cleric. At the moment, the cleric is better at combat builds and healing, and the divine list doesn't have enough oomph to make
the sorcerers extra spells/level count. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but maybe some more bloodline feats to make them more angelic/demonic might be thematic?
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That's a trap. You're comparing a lvl 20 cleric with a lvl 20 sorcerer which is the best situation for the sorcerer. If you compare at lvl1 for example, the cleric has 3+CHA channel which means that the cleric has a larger advantage.Well if you're unwilling to compare at the sorcerer's most favourable level, it seems a bit dishonest to compare at the cleric's most favourable level. Would you settle for comparing at 5th level?
I am not unwilling to compare at higher level, you cut the part of my argument where I was saying that it gets better for the sorcerer at higher level. But we always have to keep in mind that most game will probably be played at 10th level and lower, where the cleric advantage is at its highest.
Yes. If a sorcerer wants to equal a cleric in healing they will need to devote resources into healing. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Except that while the sorcerer will devote resources to healing, it is free for the cleric since channel energy is a first level class feature. Some could argue that the clerics has no choice in the matter since channel forces them to devote energy to healing, but healing is a big part of divine casters.
Seems to me the divine sorcerer needs some kind of theme it can excel at when compared to a cleric.
There are two things that the sorcerer could be good at but it's complicated to analysis and will need testing from players. If you do play a divine sorcerer try to look into:
- Concentration spells: the sorcerer has great feats to easily keep concentrating. That means that the sorcerer could be a better buffer, but the divine spell list is one with many useful spell to learn and the sorcerer is very limited.
- Counterspelling: I'm not really a fan of counterspelling and it will require quite a few feat investment for it to work and there might be a few blockers. Sorcerer aren't going to be the best when it comes to the religion and divine spellcasting identifying, plus the current system requires you to take a reaction to identify the spell before you can counterspell which takes a reaction too. There is a feat that allows you one free identify spell per turn but if the sorcerer doesn't manage to identify it, that means he can't counterspell it, and there is always the chance that you identify the enemy's cantrip which is a waste of time to identify.
Why not just give them Channel Energy powered by Spell Points? It makes for an interesting trade off between the powers you want to use.
That is one of the thing I proposed in order to balance things out. Divine evolution should grant you the possibility of casting channel energy with your spell points instead of once per day.
Just to raise the question... a cleric can feasibly focus on healing, dump Wisdom to 10 or 12, and buff Charisma and physical stats, making their armor and weapon proficiencies, as well as HP, more valuable.
How big of a difference do spell rolls and spell points make for these classes?
I really liked sorcerers in PF1 and I don't like them so much in PF2 yet.
The bloodlines do not feel impact full enough, just getting spells/powers is meh and changes happen too seldom. I want body transformation and the like, mechanically not by RP/description.
I feel it is a missed opportunity to flesh the class out more regarding its key feature, evolutions are not good enough. Especially with so many shared feats with the wizard.
Let the divine version channel more, and get abilities to harm/heal better, give the bloodlines some exclusive or higher rarity spells from the abyss or whatever their source of power is.
Give the class some love! Make it distinct and featureful with less generic choices.
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Just to raise the question... a cleric can feasibly focus on healing, dump Wisdom to 10 or 12, and buff Charisma and physical stats, making their armor and weapon proficiencies, as well as HP, more valuable.
How big of a difference do spell rolls and spell points make for these classes?
Spells rolls isn't that important when you don't want to target enemies. You are right that you could build a Cleric with lots of Str/Con and make a great battle cleric by dumping your wisdom. You won't get that much spell points, but that might not be that bad since Channel Energy seems better in most case, while powers are more situational.
I'm not sure giving divine sorcerers channel energy would work. Firstly, it is treading on the toes of the cleric (which is contrary to the design ethos for class design) and secondly, clerics would still have access to better armour and hp, so I think people would still play cleric by preference.
Sorcerers need something unique that only they can do that provides a theme to build around. Bloodlines make a good start, but more would need to be done to make them viable.
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The issue is that there needs to be more healing sources than clerics, and right now the divine sorcerer isn't that great of a healer when compared to it. If you want a sorcerer that heals, you're probably better with a primal sorcerer in order to have a more sorcerer friendly spell list (Sorry, My week was busy, I'll probably post my primal sorcerer analysis on Monday).
Giving channel energy as a power that uses spell points would be a huge step in my opinion, the fact that it will share spell points with the bloodline powers would be a nice limitation and the cleric should still be able to do more things with his channel + his domain.
Or Paizo could give divine sorcerer a regenerative healing option instead of normal healing. You could even make it work exclusively in encounter mode by explaining that this power comes from the sorcerer blood boiling with excitement or something like that. A regenerative healing ability that requires concentration and can only target a single user could be interesting. That way a sorcerer would be a better in combat support for single target while the cleric would be a group healer.
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I've been giving this some thought while the forum has been down. While regenerative healing is an interesting idea, it doesn't solve the wider problem, which is that the non-arcane sorcerer doesn't work very well. While they get more spells than their counterparts, all of their various counterparts (Cleric, Bard or Druid) get powers and weapon/armour proficiencies which simply make them a better choice.
That's why I am more than ever convinced that sorcerer needs something that will cost class feats (so it will cost arcane sorcerers something) but which is thematic and unique to sorcerers. I still think advanced bloodline Feats are the best fit for this, such that e.g. angelic bloodlines can become more like an angel or draconic bloodlines can become more draconic, but at the cost of metamagic, etc.
Needless to say some thought needs to be given to when such Feats become available and what they are, but it seems like the basis of a solution.
I just built the angelic sorcerer for P2 of the playtest and boy am I disappointed.
There's virutally no treasure a sorcerer (of any type) cares about worth anything. I ended up with a staff of healing, bracers of armor, and two wands of heal because I literally couldn't spend money (the spell list for Divine is garbage: literally nothing I'd ever cast more than twice except Heal).
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Personally I believe that Sorcerers have many problems, but giving them Light Armour proficiency would help with some of the drawbacks of the Primal and Divine lists.
This is the biggest drawback a Divine Sorcerer has - his defenses. Sure you have access to Shield - +1 AC, but beyond that... no Mage Armour, no General Feat until 3rd level to pick up an armour proficiency, and most of his actions (Demonic bloodline power, only offensive cantrip, and most powerful damaging ability) are melee oriented.
Harm is pretty powerful for a single-action spell, and if you take Reach Spell you can make it into a Ranged Touch for enemies with strong Fort saves... but otherwise the Divine list falls a little short on spells that are always useful. Even if the Sorcerer HAS a deity, compare Divine Wrath (4d8, average of 18 damage, level 4, H(+1): 1d8, average of 4.5) to Fireball (6d6, average of 21 damage, level 3, H(+1): 2d6, average of 7 damage).
In general I feel the Divine list is a bit lacking, and not just for Sorcerers.
The Evolution feats for me are pretty disappointing - they should do something different rather than just trying to make you like the other class.