Thor's Mistress is another version of the melee dual dream sorc, usually made as bear- or zealsorcs. She has learned the ways of frozen orb, but Thor has taught her some other tricks as well..
This build is inspired by the Bodomsorc, but with few key differences. This build is EXTREMELY gear dependant, with almost no substitutes available for the items (that said, I'm sure you can come up with plenty!).
Skills: Fire treeWarmth - 1, it's a one point wonder.
Skills: Cold treeIce bolt - 20, synergy for orb
Frozen armor - 1, one point wonder.
Prerequisites for orb - 4.
Frozen orb - 20, this is our main/backup attack.
Cold mastery - 1 to X, depending on level, cold skillers and doom percentage.
Skills: Lightning treeStatic field - 1, one point wonder.
Telekinesis - 20, synergy for ES
Energy shield - 1, to protect from melee and to reduce elemental damage.
Prerequisites for ES (tk not included) - 4, includes teleport.
Lightning mastery - 20, used to boost our lightning damage from dreams.
The build should be somewhat ready at around level 84-92, depending on gear access, mainly hinging upon what percentage of enemy cold resist reduce one's Doom spawns with - if you decide to use it. I mentioned some gear there already, but here's a list with more accurate explanations for the not-so-obvious choices:
Headpiece: Dream, preferably with higher end resists and FHR, in an item with less than 157 or 119 str req.
Amulet: Angelic Wings, comes with 20% damage to mana and gives 75 life when used with the ring from this set. The damage to mana is very beneficial to this build.
Shield: Dream, preferably with higher end resists and FHR, in an item with less than 157 or 119 str req. We also want at least 40% block and for the shield to be light, monarch if you use spirit on switch, otherwise troll nest is nice.
Boots: Sandstorm Trek, Aldur's Advance or rare trires boots, one of the few spots where we have options. Aldur's Advance comes with life, fres, nice frw and 10% damage to mana but Sandstorm's give str, fhr, vit and huge poison res with ok frw, personally I'd go with Sandstorms if the trires boots weren't an option.
Rings: Raven Frost/SoJ/10fcr100manaring and
Angelic Halo, the latter for nice AR boost with the amu and 10 dex, the former for mana, cbf, dex and AR. See "gloves" part for explanation when to use SoJ. See the (switch) shield part for explanation when to use 10fcr 100 mana magic ring.
Belt: Up'd Nightsmoke, gives a little mana, 10@ and a whopping 50% damage to mana! This is one of the key items for this build.
Gloves: Another spot with choices that affect other gear as well, either
bloodfists, magefist or frostburns. Bloodfists basically offer more offensive power with some defence as you aren't required to use a 15 ias jewel in your chest socket (so you can cham it and switch the raven to a soj or 10fcr ring). Magefists give some regen and fcr to have a bit easier time teleing (mobility and thus some safety). Frostburns give more raw mana for damage buffering (safety). I prefer bloodfists. Choice pretty much boils down to what weapon/shield you will use as switch.
Armor: Guardian Angel, this gives us 30 faster block rate and 20 increased chance of blocking and 15% increased resist cap for all resists. The socket option is somewhat free, but 15@ & 15 ias jewel is recommended.
Weapon A or B: CtA in a phase blade (no repair costs, fast), yes, weapon, not switch. CtA gives 40% Ias and prevent monster heal alongside with the usual bonuses of which battle cry has been grossly underappreciated. Even at level 6 it reduces enemy defence by 60% and enemy damage by 30%, lasting 24 seconds. Currently my sorc has 2341 AR unbuffed, with less than perf raven and at lvl 86. Using the 60% as a reference number, Baal's defence drops to 1139 in hell and with that AR the chance to hit is 64% without accounting his block - but since we got a strong orb it's better to use that anyhow. If we use demon limb to prebuff enchant the AR will jump past 7.5k, which is plenty enough to hit just about anything in PvM, but usually that isn't necessary. 8% ias needed for 10frame attack, either from socketing or bloodfist gloves. It's not that annoying to use when it's also the actual weapon of choice, you should be able to get about 90sec BO out of it, depending on the levels of the CtA.
(Switch) Weapon B or A: Doom in a war spike as a weapon (BA is ok if you're after resale value and you don't mind losing an attack frame if you decide to swing with it). Doom gives us the fancy holy freeze aura, +2 skills and reduces the enemy cold res by 40-60%. This saves some points in cold mastery and the aura is very nice to have for survivability reasons. If the sorc is high level and you don't care much for the aura then it's a good idea to replace this with some other weapon, preferably
death's fathom for a nice increase in orb damage.
(Switch) Shield: Lidless if you go for the 118str req build or
Spirit for the 156req build. It's a question of how caster -based the build is wanted to be. I will list a few different setups.
Death's Fathom setup (offensive):weapon: Death's Fathom (socket of choice, resists or more dmg)
helm: Dream
shield: spirit (over 33% fcr)
armor: GA (chamed)
boots: Treks
gloves: bloodfist
ring1: 10fcr 100+ mana ring
ring2: angelic halo
amu: angelic wings
belt: up'd nightsmoke
switch1: CtA pb
switch2: Dream
pros:
- very good orb damage
- good resists in caster mode
- easy to reach 142FHR bp with few charms in caster mode
- good mana in caster mode
- 63 FCR bp for smooth teleing in caster mode
- 10 frame attack in melee mode
cons:
- no slowing aura in caster mode
- bad resists in melee mode, overstacked in caster if fixed with charms
- 156 str req to wear spirit
Doom setup (defensive):weapon: Doom (War Spike or BA)
helm: Dream
shield: lidless
armor: GA (15@ 15ias)
boots: Trires boots with fhr (good luck finding) or treks
gloves: bloodfist
ring1: raven frost
ring2: angelic halo
amu: angelic wings
belt: up'd nightsmoke
switch1: CtA pb
switch2: Dream
pros:
- good orb damage
- aura to chill enemies in caster mode
- 118str req
- similar resists in both modes with charms
- 10frame attack in melee mode
- requires less levels to be effective
- can switch Doom to melee weapon and strike with it too
cons:
- requires charms to fill up resists
- less mana
- lower fcr
Stats:Str - enough for gear
Dex - enough for max block
Vit - everything else
Ene - 0
Damage to mana explanation:Since our lightning skills will be somewhat low, (the damage from dreams result in 1-35k for example) we will be able to buff ES in our melee setup. This will result in a level 7 ES, which takes 50% of the incoming damage. We then have 70% - 92% damage to mana from gear, depending on choices and sockets. Let's take a hit of 1000 melee damage with 80% dmgtomana and 50% ES. 500 goes to mana, but thanks to 20 hard points in telekinesis it's transformed to 375mana. The 500 damage that then goes to our hit points generates 400 mana due to 80% dmgtomana, effectively reducing the received melee damage by 50% without any mana loss. It's like a 50% melee damage reduction with one "sacrifice" (the belt, the amulet is good otherwise too).
Overall Defences:Elemental attacks still hurt our mana, but far less than they would on a 95% ES build. Mana burn is obviously still dangerous, but since we are focusing our efforts on increasing life, there's a friendly buffer zone. If the resists are worked up they will all be 90 and be of some use even if your mana shield is lost, also without ES on any hits made by melee monsters will regenerate mana thanks to high damagetomana, so teleporting away will be possible. Then there's max block and battle cry. If one feels like battling with high melee damage monsters up close, just battle cry and their damage will be reduced by somewhere around 30%, that is outgoing damage. This means that with 50% ES you're receiving 35% of their melee damage, which is not bad for a caster class.
Merc:The best option for a merc (in my opinion) would be a normal/hell combat merc for prayer, equipped with lvl 17 medi insight polearm. All the hits made by trash mobs and their missiles (even elemental) will be quickly regenerated. It's funny feeling to be fired upon by dozen skeletal archers without having to worry about it.
Comments:This character aims to be a hardy caster, some kind of a battlemage. It's not going to do the most damage (around 650orb, 900+ with fathom, 1-35k melee light damage) or "pwn" 8-player games and it's not even as simple to play as it could be.. But personally I enjoy actually getting to "play" a character instead of spamming certain skill over and over. This character is simply fun - that's why I decided to share it.
P.S. This is not a guide per se, if it were it wouldn't be so messy :P It's just that I haven't seen a build like this before so I would like to hear people's opinions even though I have a sorc like this myself.|||http://web.archive.org/web/200708140...ews.php?id=564
Q: Is damage to mana % effective in combination with energy shield?
A: No. Since damage to mana is now subtracted from the actual damage you take, in our fire ball example, it would take (1500/25)*100 = 6000% damage to mana in order to restore the lost mana. The higher your energy shield gets, the less you benefit from %damage to mana.
A formula for this is:
Damage to mana/Damage to life*100 = Amount of DmgToMana% needed to fully restore lost mana|||Instead of just posting a random quote from somewhere, one should understand it beforehand.
We are using 50% ES, not full.. Thus in that case 75% DmgToMana is sufficient to replace it thanks to 20TK.
20TK means that ES uses 0.75 mana for every point of damage it receives, thus the 500 damage going to ES in the 1k damage example is transformed into 375 mana. We are still receiving 500 damage to our health, which causes our 80% DmgToMana to activate and to give us 400 mana. So while DmgToMana gear is somewhat useless with 95% ES, it is not so with partial ES.|||It's basically Bodomsorc with less points in ES
IMO there isn't much reason not to use Passion on a Dream sorc of any kind. You hit big, thus speed shall increase your performance drastically.
Also, using Infinity on merc will negate the need for FO (although you don't have to get rid of it if you like it), negate the need for Battle Cry on CtA (and saving time at each mob) and greatly enhance your attack damage.
ES sorcs have good survivability (except vs manaburns) because of the insane mana regeneration the sorc can get when she has a large mana pool. A good charmset and decent energy in stat split is all you need for survivability, instead of making big sacrifices in the damage (CtA Insight vs Passion Infy) and utility (Nightsmoke Angelic's GAngel vs Arach Highlord's/crafted ammy VMagi) departments.
The thing about survivability is: unlike killing speed, there's a point after which it just doesn't improve anymore. That's why SSoG's abbot isn't a very popular build, though this example is pretty much extreme. My own Dream sorc runs around with a vita/energy ES build, no block, Prayer/Infinity merc, a crappy life/mana charmset and everything else towards killing speed and FCR. She doesn't have trouble surviving, so MB + DTM + Meditation are not really needed
|||I agree that the basic skill setup is quite similar and as mentioned, the inspiration has come from that build (: Regardless I believe it's different enough to warrant another thread.
Also when it comes to efficiency/killing speed, this build is obviously lagging behind, especially for not using infi as stated in the OT:
Quote:
This character aims to be a hardy caster, some kind of a battlemage. It's not going to do the most damage (around 650orb, 900+ with fathom, 1-35k melee light damage) or "pwn" 8-player games and it's not even as simple to play as it could be..
So I also agree there, it's not needed but I feel that it's a good compromise between power and survivability, even though for players used to certain playstyle it may feel way too slow.
Another difference with the bodomsorc is that since orb is pretty strong, it can be used as main attack instead of continuous melee. It may be a bit of "waste" of the dreams, but it's nice to have strong attacks with two elements. I guess I am a bit of a survival freak because I was actually considering making that SSoG's abbot one day
EDIT: Depending on gearing, it's also possible to get enchant and put a few points there to get one's AR past 4k without having to resort to demon limb (I for one hate prebuffing with items that aren't readily available). Making hitting stuff once again easier (no need to battle cry necessarily).|||I think the flaw in your logic is that you're, by design, taking more damage-to-health than a 95% ES sorc. You seem to be counting on the regen of Insight+Prayer alone to counteract all the damage you're taking with a melee sorc.
While that might be tenable for a 95% ES sorc with some iPDR, your sorc will literally be taking 10x as much damage to her red orb, and with no decent source of leech (and even Dracs is less than ideal without Passion to quickly trigger the CtC LT) you're not going to be able to survive very long, especially not in high-player games.
Also, while the DtM from Nightsmoke does work very nicely from mitigating the impact on your blue orb, you have to take more damage on your red orb to make that happen - which is kinda the opposite of what you want to do
|||I believe that taking part of the damage to health is a strength, mainly due to elemental attacks hurting full ES as bad as they do. It's more cost effective for the resistances to do their job. You could say that this sorc is taking infinitely more damage to the red orb than a 95% ES sorc, because ES sorcs often take zero thanks to pdr by x and mdr by x.
I don't think the comparison stands because a "free" 50% damage reduction is better than nothing, no matter how much more damage that is in comparison to 95% ES sorc. Also there's the difference of max block, which reduces incoming physical damage even further.
To illustrate let's take a hit of 200 elemental damage. 95% ES sorc loses 142.5 mana and
0 health due to mdr by x. The 50% ES sorc with 90 resists loses 75 mana and 10 life. Now mana is easier to get for sorcs than life and lack of mana doesn't outright kill you, but in essence it's more efficient.
Same thing with melee damage, hit of 200. 95% ES sorc loses 142.5 mana and 0 health.
50% ES (dmgtomana) sorc loses 0 mana and 100 life - but such a hit happens only ~25% of the time (let us not include defences for sake of comparison) as opposed to ~90% of the time (60 dex, 40% block shield) for the non-blocker. To make those figures comparable the 95% ES sorc's result must be multiplied by 3.6 (because that's how many times more often it happens), thus we get 513 mana vs 100 life.
I agree that tweaking the level of ES to the optimum would be beneficial, especially against melee attacks (so that melee attacks would use some mana and a bit less life). In playtesting the prayer from the merc has been very sufficient to keep life higher than 80% until all the enemies are dead OR until they proc confuse. If we include the use of doom, those enemies are going to be hitting very slowly and thus ensuring that the regen is sufficient.
Other benefits include better survival against mana burners after the burn is done. I know that to compare those setups we'd be needing someone capable of calculating what kind of setup provides the highest effective life.
|||MF lost its magic with the last patch - the value isn't really there anymore. On an Hdin you're effectively planning to be in Enigma as soon as possible either way. With the adjusted rune drops, its actually practical to find all the runes you need, albeit painful unless you're lucky.
|||Put on a bunch of +mana gear (stuff with any grade of sapphires in it) and blow stuff up with your ranged spells. Don't be afraid to invest in low level spells as respecs will be available.