[:1]Hardcore Frozen Orb/Fire Ball Sorceress; Socialism’s “Orbitaller”
Justification
Dual-tree builds keep you self-sufficient and efficient (if you read the Hardcore forum… you’d know I’m all about efficiency/aggressive playstyles …and that I’m Awesome [note: general descriptor and character name]). Meteor’s great, but too slow for me. I’ll prune the 4 skill points.
The only cold/fire immunes you'll encounter are random (very, very rare) dual enchantment + innate resistance/immunity spawns.
This reads more like a 'review' than a 'guide' per se. Also, I'm pretty sure this will be my newest (best/most efficient) classic rusher, named "Efficiency".
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Skill Setup
Ice
15 Ice Bolt
01 Frozen Armor
01 Shiver Armor
01 Ice Blast
01 Frost Nova
01 Glacial Spike
01 Blizzard
20 Frozen Orb
12 Cold Mastery
Light
01 Static Field
01 Telekinesis
05 Teleport
Fire
20 Fire Bolt
20 Fire Ball
01 Warmth
01 Fire Mastery
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102 Skill Points, done at level 91 (can’t seem to stay interested enough to take a character past 92)
Shove extraneous points into whatever. Ice Bolt. I don’t care.
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Breakpoints
First, learn about teleporting. Understand why these breakpoints are important, then aim for:
8 frame Cast Rate
- 105% FCR
7 frame Hit Recovery Rate
- 86% FHR
Blocking’s great, but ignored in the particular setup provided (and unnecessary if you have a Call To Arms runeword). This one’s a decent blend of wealth and practicality, but know that I was able to run with 1.1k+ damage Frozen Orb and 4k+ Fire Ball without compromising build tenets/safety. That’s a bit extreme; many setups work well here. I’m leaving those out… mull them over and post your setups; 10 points if you can surprise me!
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Rich (but not filthy) Bastard Gear Setup + relevant notes
Head: Tal Rasha’s Ugly Face*
Neck: Tal Rasha’s Pearl Necklace (10% FCR)
Body: Tal Rasha’s Purple Dino Suit (10% FCR)*
Belt: Tal Rasha’s Makeshift USB-cable Belt (10% FCR)
Weapon: Tal Rasha’s Phallic Object (20% FCR) <facet/all res jewel>**
Shield: “Spirit” Monarch (35% FCR, 55% FHR)
Hands: Magefist (20% FCR)
Ring1: ***
Ring2: ****
Feetsies: Hotspur
Set bonus: 50% all resists, 25% FHR, -15% enemy fire resist, +15% cold damage, nice life/mana adds, +3 skills, etc.
Net effect: need 6% FHR, some resistances
* socket with Sol, Shael, Um, Ist runes or whatever
** socket with cold/fire facet, 15% all resist jewel, Ist rune or whatever
*** Wisp Projector for Baal teleporters… else +120 mana Bahamut ring!
**** Dwarf Star | Stone of Jordan | Bul-Kathos’ Wedding Band | Nature’s Peace | whatever adds to your utility
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Kill stuff
Frozen Orb on left mouse button (but don’t use shift-click while spellspamming) – this never changes
For big-life mobs that stand up to you:
1) hold down the right mouse button (RMB) to cast Frozen Orb
2) without releasing RMB, hotkey to Fire Ball
3) wait for the 1-second-timer from Orb to expire, then without releasing RMB, hotkey to Frozen Orb
4) if enemy still exists, repeat ad nauseum from #2
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Level Progression
This one’s a cakewalk. If you want to play untwinked, this is the sorceress for you.
1-18
Start off by building up Fire Ball (+ Fire Bolt synergy) to a level where you can comfortable 1-or-2-hit-kill things in Act 2.
Sapphires where you can, inventory full of blues, manamanamana.
18-29
1-point-wonder the cold and lightning trees; start liberally using Glacial Spike for crowd control while still blowing things up with Fire Ball. I didn’t bother using my 1-point Blizzard at all.
Save points.
30+
Level 30 = 1 point in Fire Mastery, jam the rest into Frozen Orb and Cold Mastery. Get to 20 Frozen Orb / 5 Cold Mastery then decide how much you want to invest in Cold Mastery. Preference call, really. Note: Mephisto has 75% cold resistance in Hell; Baal has 50%.
Frozen Orb from slvl 1 becomes your primary attack; Fire Ball is just an afterthought for Cold Immunes and helping Orb (in between casts) destroy huge-life-enemies (whee 8-player Izual).
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Mercenary
Emilio, my Normal Act 2 Combat (Prayer) mercenary who wielded a slvl 17 Meditation Insight Cracked Voulge, played hardcore and never died. Why?
- Frozen Orb and Fire Ball are super fast at dishing out damage; he’s rarely overwhelmed
- A very low damage Insight polearm gave me a decent buffer-zone to teleport-rescue him when he was hit with Iron Maiden
- At every available point, I’d jam a huge-defense armor onto him
- Cold keeps things slower-esque
- I paid attention
For glitching endless Baal runs (Conqueror forever!), I snipped out Insight (someone else in your party will have one, guaranteed) for a Kelpie Snare and put a Blackhorn’s Face on Emilio. Slow Baal means dead Baal. I had a Reaper’s Toll, but I found this 95% slow combo solidly effective, so never bothered testing it out.
Note: I chose a Combat (Prayer) mercenary to quest through the game with (in parties/groups). If all you're going to be doing is MF runs or boss killing, smarten up with a Defensive (Defiance) mercenary.
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Ratings
(1 = crappy, 10 = sweet)
Untwinkability = 9
Like every caster, you're heavily dependent on the availability of mana to do the majority of your damage. Like most casters, this probably means beating down "fallen" packs with javelins/sticks/fists for a good 45 minutes before you'll even consider investing in mana potions.
Don't skimp! Fill that inventory with blues and you'll be all set.
Playstyle = 9.5
Ridiculously easy to play since your spells fire in straight lines – just aim in the general direction of baddies and they die. If you’re experienced with proper teleport technique and have a solid enough (broadband) connection to not -need- the supersafety of Orb/Teleport/TK, this build is probably the absolute best magic finding character you can start a season with.
Seriously. If I still did ‘magic find’ runs, and you gave me an Enigma and a 35% FCR Spirit Sacred Targe on day 1 of a new ladder, I’d still choose to build/play this character untwinked over the Hammerdin. Without hesitation.
With infinicast Teleport (slvl high enough + mana pool large enough + regen rate fast enough to let me teleport indefinitely), I held down the RMB and never let go… I’d teleport in place while waiting for the group. Enemy pops on screen = hotkey to Frozen Orb, Glacial Spike if necessary, Fire Ball, Frozen Orb, etc—meanwhile, the RMB is still depressed from 10 minutes ago.
Gotta love aggressive characters. This one’s so powerful, though… you risk getting bored by level 92 with the repetitive linear aiming and Baal run monotony.
Durability = 8
Really, really tough to kill this character if you know your sorceresses. Stick to the tenets of safe teleporting; you’ll do fine. Might be wise to get “Battle Orders” cast before you teleport through the Claw Viper Temple in 8-player Hell untwinked, though.
Magic Find = 10
This character unlocks the full potential of the Tal Rasha Sorceress set without compromising damage, speed, or applicability (immunes). Enough said.
In sum, the milkshake produced by this build brings all the boys to the yard because it:
- doesn’t require dangerously close proximity [Nova, Charged Bolt]
- doesn’t have an overly irritating timer [Blizzard, Meteor, Fire Wall]
- doesn’t have problems ‘hitting stuff’ [Blizzard, Hydra, Fire Wall]
- doesn’t have pitiful base damage [Lightning, Chain Lightning]
- doesn’t require a more-than-double-digit IQ to aim [Fire Wall, Blaze!?]
(that said though, the above also qualify as reasons why you'd want to use 'harder' skills)
OkThanksGoKillStuffGetRichSendCa$h!
Socialism
- achieving Rockstar status, one day at a time|||Haha! Soc, did you remake Awesome again?|||Quote:
Haha! Soc, did you remake Awesome again?
Awesome's still in the 5th iteration, so no -- but soon! I'll probably churn out my 200% FCR Nova/Fire Ball "review" and other painful memories before I rebuild Awesome (again) though.|||Remember when you told me I should "Finish" something before I quit? I've decided to play this girl untwinked in AB games. Once she's 91 (Your finishing point in the guide), I will be done with this game.
So thank you sir for helping me push towards a character idea.|||Just curious, and hope this isn't too nitpicky, but why the points in Ice Bolt? At only 2% per level, that's only +30%.
You could take those 14 points, reduce CM to 8 or so given +skills, and throw them all into Fire Mastery, giving a base of 19, a 156% increase.
Again, not trying to criticize, as I'm admittedly a noob lol, and even given Orb's massive AoE, not every shard is going to hit, whereas the increase in Fire Damage almost certainly will since you're sniping with Fireball.
And I'll admit I'm no master at targeting FO so it explodes on the bad guys either.
[edit] Weird too, I was using a skill calc that says its got accurate numbers, but when I max Fireball plus both synergies (Meteor and Bolt each giving +14%) the damage numbers are less than if I max one synergy and Fire Mastery. Is there something fishy going on here?|||The firebolt/meteor synergies only add to the base damage of the fireball, whereas fire mastery adds to the total damage (including bonus damage of synergies).|||If that's the case, why not max Fire Mastery instead of Fire Bolt? Or do like a 10-10 split or whatever is optimum?|||Maybe what he has there is optimum? Or maybe he didn't bother doing all the math to min/max the character because it didn't need to be min/max'd to do what was required? If you feel the need to max it all out then feel free, maybe he'll even update the post if you find it considerably better to split points differently.|||Oh I'm no expert, I fiddled with a calc and got some numbers is all, Socialism seems like much more of an expert than I lol.
My problem is I have Character Restart Syndrome hehe, exacerbated by my lack of knowledge when it comes to playing in Hell Difficulty. I don't mind hunting for items, but I don't want to build a character that will be gimped from the start.|||This build will be fine in hell, really, anything well thought out will do fine. The only time you really need to worry about every point is if you plan on doing Ubers, but even then there are really only a few builds that can do them effectively, and one or two points misplaced generally won't break you.
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