Hydra/cold = Best MF sorc. superior to meteorb or bliz/firewall

Hydra/Cold = Best MF sorc. superior to meteorb or bliz/firewall

Sections:

1.Introduction

2.The Build

3.Skills

4.Progression

5.Stats

6.Gear

7.Max Block

8.Magic Find Section

9.Corner Trick, Wall Trick and General MF/playing pointers

10.Final Thoughts

11.Thanks

1.Introduction:

I played Diablo a lot before there were synergies. I stopped for years, then picked it back up again. Before making my characters, I knew I would need an mf character. Who better than a sorc? After reading the guides, it seemed like the recommended model was meteorb. I made that sorc, and she was not that great. Using orb was fine for any non-cold immune, but for those I was basically screwed. I could tommy-gun fireballs and pound pots, but that is not practical. And meteor was only practical against meph.

Thus the wheels in my brain started working. Before synergies, I had a hydra sorc that I loved. She could moat trick meph just like a meteor based sorc, but also handle other creeps way better than the meteorb. I remade her in this new version, and instead of going one skill tree, I went cold also. Now, she is my most versatile char.

If you still need more convincing, scroll down to the mf section where I lay it out nice and clear.

This is also my first guide.

2.The Build

This sorc has skills that are not bogged down by spatial inertia. Hydra is like a trap. You are like a trapsin who can tele without enigma and who has a good cold skill. With hydra, you can have four going at the same time. You can box people in. You can cast them all on top of meph, every fire ball hits!

For the supplemental cold skill, bliz is damage against groups and orb is for people who like to run around a lot. I used bliz with my current sorc which does the job, but I go back to orb in a heart beat (from playing the meteorb sorc). It is just a funner skill.

You can play this sorc untwinked(with stuff you find). If you do this, you will probably do around 1k per hydra’s fire bolt and 1k bliz or 250 orb(which sounds low but is enough).

3.Skills

20- Hydra

20- Fire mastery

20- Fireball

1- Warmth

20-Blizzard

Or

20-Orb

1-Cold mastery

1- Teleport

Prereqs

Fire Bolt

Enchant

Ice Bolt

Ice Blast

Glacial Spike

Frost Nova

Telekinesis

That is 90 skill points or 91 if you choose orb. That means you have some choices, because there are still 20 more possible points. I recommend getting shiver armor. The defense bonus is the best of the 3 armors and it freezes the target that hits you, which is fairly nice when you are teleing around durance level 2 and one of those little dudes hits you.

Your best bet for the rest of the points is fire bolt or cold mastery depending. This depends on how often you use your cold skill. If you use it a lot, choose cold mastery. If you mainly do meph/andy runs, then go with fire bolt. If you choose fire bolt, you should consider investing some points into that in your early levels 1-11, until you get fire ball so your char does a little better.

4.Progression: Raise your fire tree until that is complete. Then start the cold tree. Keeping that in mind, get teleport as soon as you can.

5.Stat- Strength for whatever need to get gear. Then get vit. No dex, Maybe energy, but realize you will need to mana pots anyway when you mf. Think of it like this...either spend a little time each run buying mana pots and have higher total life, or lower total life with more total mana. You want more life.

6.Gear-Other than magic find or +1 skills, I look for faster hit recovery (FHR) charms. This is important when you tele around durance 2: when you get hit, you recover faster, thus tele away sooner.

7.Max Block? - no, just get FHR. Then you do not need to waste points into dex. You are not a mellee char, so dont get close to creeps.

8.Magic Find Section (The reason you choose this sorc over meteorb)

Hell Meph:

You tele around durance 2, find the entrance to level 3, and make a tp outside. Don’t be embarrassed to pound mana pots teleling around. My sorc has the one column health pots and the other 3 mana pots. You tele to meph, draw him over to the moat, and tele over. You run away from the moat until he is in the edge of your screen. Now you start casting hydras on him.

The reason this sorc is better than meteorb: All is well mfing until the council is casting hydras on you. Here is meteorb’s and bliz/firewall’s weakness and this sorc’s strength:

Meteorb:. You can meteor the council, but they are running around. You start orbing them, but then you get the dark lords involved, who are cold immune. They move around a lot so it is a pain in the *** trying to kill them. Meteor is not practical because they are moving, and you get yourself killed playing fireball duel. All the while, the council is casting hydras which are hard to escape. You are dead in a matter of seconds.

Bliz/firewall: The council starts casting hydras on you. You respond with bliz, but while avoiding the hydras you get the dark lords get involved. The dark lords are cold immune. Here is the fun part, merc or not. Without a merc, they constantly move out of the firewalls. Annoying. They are attacking you and the council is casting hydras, you are dead. With a merc, lets say you kill the dark lords and the council. Then you go for meph, which is the reason you are there in the first place. You are casting bliz on him across the moat, but your merc wants action also. What does he do, he gets as close as he can to meph. Meph starts pounding him and you try to save him with health pots to no avail. Your merc is dead, you spent a lot of time dealing with this, if you run into the dark lords on another run, you have to rehire him, which he will die by the end of the run anyway because of meph.

For this sorc: The answer is hydra. There are no fire immunes in durance 3.

You get meph to the moat, and unfortunately you rolled the council right at the top of the point. They start casting hydras. You cast hydras back, and move around to avoid the fire bolts. Unlucky scenario, you unfortunately attract the dark lords. You cast hydras near them. That takes care of them in seconds. You finish off the council, then you take care of meph. Worst case scenario, you roll a fire immune unique council member in the point of the map where he will attack when you get meph to the moat. In that scenario, you just use bliz instead of hydra.

Point of story: easier mfing, better items faster, better characters, funner diablo. Now you can make decent char of another class. :-)

9.Corner Trick, Wall Trick, and General MF/playing pointers: When you can mf hell meph. You are going to have to pound pots teleing around durance level 2 until you find level 3. Make tp before you go in. Tele to meph, have him follow you to the moat, tele to the other side, and start dropping hydras on his ***. If you see that the council is at the point of the map where they will attack when you tele over the moat, just use the corner trick. This is a little harder to arrange, but basically where meph spawns there are a ton of corners in the middle of the map. Just have meph chase you up the stairs to a corner, then tele to a point diagonal from the corner. So he wants to go directly to you, but he is in a corner so he cannot. Then cast hydras on him. You will also need to drink a couple mana pots while you cast hydras on him. If you want to MF Hell Baal, this char is good for clean up, ie if you just have to kill baal. Keep a wall of the map between you and baal, and cast hydras beyond the wall. This way you do not die with that blue pointer attack. This is the "wall trick."

On fighting cold and fire immunes, a good strategy is to spam them with telekinesis to keep them in hit recovery lock while your merc finishes them.

10.Final thoughts: For all of you naysayers about this build, just try it. It is mainly an alternative to the classic sorc build for mfing or rushing a char. She may not get double digit k fire or cold damage, but she gets the job done.

11.Thanks: Nightfish. http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=349093 Some of the best guides available.

SnickerSnack for noticing I meant shiver armor instead of chilling armor.|||All three of your suggested attacks are timered skills, which will make your killing slower especially against mixed immune packs. I have no doubt the build works well, but hydra is pvm is more of a fun skill than anything else.

I'd advise against unsynergized Blizzard. Even with 1 maxed synergy, it's still on the weak side (Blizzballer build). If people choose Blizz, however, I suggest ignoring Fireball and maxing Glacial Spike instead. Most hydra-related builds don't bother with synergies since the % is pretty low.

No specific gear suggestions? I'd recommend tal set. Works wonders for dual element sorcs. Since your build is all timered, 63% fcr is probably enough. Tal's alone will cover 50%, so with Spirit/Lidless, you're free to use your glove/ring slots for whatever you're lacking. Chancies/Nagels to boost MF through the roof, Frosites/Sojs for crazy mana...

Try Insight on your merc to take care of your mana.

You should try Meteorb with at least 105 FCR. My Meteorb sorc never had any trouble at all except in Baal's throne room (pesky fire immunes Minions of Destruction!), although I'll admit it's the sorc build I like the least. With good/optimal gear, a Meteorb will be more "efficient" than hydra/orb in 90%+ of D2's areas. After all, it's a classic cookie-cutter for a reason |||I agree with Scudstorm that Meteorb generally are more effective (although the hydra build would kick butt for hardcore). And in regards to running Mephisto (which you focused on in the guide) I'd still take a blizzsorc to any dual-tree build.

Not trying to brag, but I've tried virtually all the dual-tree MF sorc builds (literally ~25), so I can give a fairly experienced opinion on "best". I still prefer my FO/Nova sorceress as a more versatile, safe, and overall effective dual-tree MF sorc. I'd put her against any of the more popular dual-tree cookie-cutters, in any area of the game. Although, the differences in speed and effectiveness among the cookie cutters is really pretty insignificant, so personal playstyle preferences are as important as anything.

Although it's not nearly as popular, Frozen Orb is among the very best primary skills. FO can match power & speed reasonably well with Fireball, Blizzard, Lightning/CL, and the other "primary" cookie-cutter mainstays. And you can build FO up to quite strong and still have lots left over for creating a strong backup in Nova or Fireball.|||Meteororb maintains its popularity for many reasons.

I've played primarily sorcs and sins and while not as many variations as Poop, this is what I can tell you from experience.

The primary strength a sorc have over a trapsin is that you direct where your damage goes. Where traps are more versatile, one cannot guarantee where they will fire. A sorc on the other hand can focus its attacks on a priority target (ie nil). Also, a sorc can make use of -res gear as they are directly using the skill.

So by relying on hydras as a main attack, you lose out on one of the best aspects of a sorc. Don't get me wrong, I think the prospect sounds interesting, but I don't see superiority. Of course, I run a well-geared pure lite sorc with infinity merc, so she can effectively solo baal anyway.

As far as your tactical breakdown, I normally just teleported past the council entirely and went straight for Meph. I never used the moat trick, I didn't like the idea of him possibly casting ranged attacks and really, never needed it. Not using a merc never made much sense to me outside of uberland. For some builds or poorly geared mercs, he'll have a hard time surviving. But really just get him up close so he focuses his attention on merc, and kill him relatively quickly. See if he dropped anything worthwhile, and there you go.

In Durance 3 I have seen fire immune council members if my memory serves me correctly, although it may only be the supers spawning with mod, I can't say for sure.

As far as mfing is concerned, without ideal gear, I'd rather do NM than Hell. There are some nice items that still drop in NM (like hoz, soj, wars) that can get you what you need for Hell running. After a running a pure lite sorc though, I can't ever go back to a dual tree. And I say this with Frozen Orb being one of my favorite skills. It's too bad that their are cold immunes in hell in just about every place I like to hunt.|||Thanks for your comments, they are much appreciated. Thanks for the more definitive gear selection.

I am definitely writing this from a poorer players perspective, where obtaining runes above gul is a marked achievement. (I recently figured out how to 'get rich': hellforge quest in hell, and trade those runes with other items up for higher runes. I would say my wealth is a ztorch, storch, a jah and ber.) I would love to make an infinity (Ber + Mal + Ber + Ist), it would just take me raising around 8 chars to hell, hell hellforging, and, if lucky, getting some decent higher runes and trading up for the 2 bers and ist.

I do use insight (Ral + Tir + Tal + Sol), a cheap useful runeword. I use this mostly when rushing people. When I mf, I generally mf meph hell, and my merc usually dies fast.

Also, I completely agree about orb, and how it is a good primary skill. It is one of my favorite skills. I also think it only needs 20 skills points and 1 point in cold mastery to do the trick.

Thanks again for the feedback!|||I'm gonna try a hydra/FO sorc with full Tals once.

Currently i have a Blizzard/firewall with full Tals one and she's kicking serious butt everywhere.

Tried Meteorbers before to but she doesn't really suit me.|||I haven't quite forgotten the trek to building wealth and it still surprises me to think of what I came from to what I use now.

One plan of action one might consider is key running. Since a keyset equals a pul, and 3 keysets go for an hr, it can help one get the gear he or she needs. An added bonus is that while going for those tkeys, the countess may drop hrs herself.|||A trick for the countess: never wish what you really wish her to drop.

When I run her for keys and mid runes she only gives me tal's, and when I run her for specific runes (ral tal thul ort amn mostly) she only gives me hel's and keys |||I've never played a hydra-bliz sorc but Hydra-Orb works great. I started hardcore a couple of days ago with a summoner druid and am am about to make a hydra-orb sorc.

You didn't mention fireball, but you'll have a fireball to spam too. With untwinked gear Hydra is a little slower than other builds generally. But with great gear she'll move pretty much just as fast and she is a whole lot safer in many areas.

Have fun with your sorc and thanks for taking the time to make a guide. |||Thank you for the support and comments. I am glad this guide was useful.