Echoing what @LilBagOfBunnies said. Find a build guide that looks interesting and use it for a while.

When I started I just kinda picked whatever skills looked fun, only sorta paying attention to trying to synergize what I was picking. Hit a wall around where you did and used an Icy Veins build that carried me through the campaign into T3. It was shocking how much stronger I was with streamlined abilities. At that point I felt like I understood my class and skills much better and started successfully being creative with my build and tweaking things. Just cleared the capstone and moved to T4 using a build inspired by the cookie-cutter one but with my own pizaaz.

If you haven’t already, switch to world tier 1. There’s definitely a lull in gear around those levels but stick with it - it gets better.

if you have no gear and are kinda stuck at the moment why dont you group up with a friend and do a few dungeons by just running behind them. then as soon as you have a few rares it should be better again with survivability.

i played my main sorcerer to 80 without any problem at any point but to be fair i did spend maybe half of the time in a group with friends. Then i played a Barb mostly solo till 50, again without any problems. i found it even easier since i had almost all codex-aspects unlocked from my main and could just slap an aspect on every item without much problems. Again i understand this is probably different for you with your main only reaching 35.

If you want, write me a message with your diablo names and i add you as a friend and we can group up a bit.

Don't get discouraged! Diablo games have always had "power plateaus" where sometimes difficulty rises to a point where it feels like a wall, but you just need to shake things up! It's a game mechanic that forces you to reevaluate your builds. You didn't do anything wrong, it's just part of the game so don't sweat it.

What I learned early on was that sorcs are all about applying vulnerability and crowd control and then applying extra damage through those debuffs via your character's passive abilities. Frost Nova is basically KEY to every sorc build.

If you're curious, I just made a post asking other Lemmy users what their sorc builds were here: https://lemmy.ml/post/1471224

Basically, pre-lvl 50, what I would do is start each encounter with a hydra, which applied burning damage to everybody. If my Inferno ult was up, I would use it to vacuum up crowds into a big group, at which point I would then hit them with the Frost Nova. Now they're all bunched up, vulnerable, and frozen. I then use Chain Lightning and it's bouncing around that tight pack of enemies doing most of my damage. Now what's even cooler is that if you put Fireball into one of your enchantment slots, each enemy you kill now explodes into a fireball, so now you've got all these enemies essentially killing themselves by blowing themselves up like a box of grenades.

Don't ignore your critical strikes, lucky hit, vulnerability, and burning. There are a lot of sorcerer passives that give you benefits whenever those trigger. It's all about finding those synergies.

If it's gear you're concerned about, do some random events, gamble some obols at the curiosity vendor, or heck even drop down to World Tier 1, do some aspect dungeons and you'll get better loot in no time.

It gets better, power plateaus are normal and part of the game! Keep going!