I have a level 55 sorcerer on it and am thinking of playing him as my main once again in C5. I would like to know your opinions on sorcerer's in C5 in the 3 different aspects listed below.
Sorcerer, like all nukers, is still very good in pvp because he can deal massive damage. But when the enemies are halfway intelligent in higher level pvp, they will get mdef and resist buffs, and the damage a nuker deals to them will be greatly reduced (to like 400-500 damage per nuke for the standard main nuke). This hurts all nukers, but especially the sorcerer, since sorc gets only one vortex nuke, and that one at lvl 77 (while the other nukers get their first vortex nuke at 76 and another one at 77) and since sorc has no standard overhit nuke like solar flare. Also, the sleep&cancel nerf hit them, too. Buffed archers > buffed nukers in pvp. Still, sorc is good.
2) PVE
Good for soloing or two-boxing. Not so good anymore in large parties, because you will run out of mp eventually, unless you have a recharger. Sleeping Cloud and Sleep nerf hit sorc (and sps) very hard, since sorc and sps often did crowd control via sleeping cloud.
3) AOE Partie's (am I still usefull)
The mega-train AOE parties of C3 no longer work. AOE nukes have a limit of 20 targets now, so nobody does aoe nuker groups on 1/2 hp mobs anymore because it simply is not worth it (when you pull small trains, exp is worse than if you simply solo somewhere, and if you pull huge trains, it becomes very dangerous because it takes long to kill the mobs and because tank aoe hate is ALSO limited to 20 mobs). But aoe on multi-hp mobs still works quite OK - e.g. I did aoe trains at Giant's cave on my sub together with one or two dwarves and a SE, and we also did some aoe in catacombs. So it still works, just not as good anymore as it was a while ago.
PvP =
Archers normally outpower you, but surrender to fire brings you a long way
PvE =
Although sleep casts a lot slower, its still viable in certain situations. Going a pure M attk build will help keep up your mp and make you good in groups or solo-duo
AOE =
What Varaya said. AOE is a lot more dangerous then it used to be.