I am a Frost Orb Sorc, and I run into quite a bit of trouble with cold immunities. Most of my points went into the various synergies/cold mastery with Frost Orb being the peak of my talents. I also dropped a few points into the lightning tree, telekenesis/energy shield/chain lightning. I've been moving all of my extra points into CL, and havent been doing all that much damage to the ones that are immune to cold. What am I doing wrong? Gear is as follows:
Shako
D-Fathom, 1 socket- What do i put into the socket? :/
Sanctuary Shield
2 x SoJ
Arachnid Mesh
Frostburn
Chains of Honor
Mara's
Sandstorm Trek
1-2 charms with +cold skills
Switch:
Stormshield/Call to Arms
Merc: Nada :/
I'm just coming back guys, don't be too harsh please. I also dropped 1 point into Warmth for obvious reasons, mana problems are a beast to deal with. Any help at all is appreciated.|||I forgot to add, I've looked over various guides but none are for orb-sorcs specifically and all of it is debatable or to your discression. I'd like something concrete, almost cookie-cutter.|||If your having trouble with CL, just respec to a meteorb build. Fireball and Meteor with F-orb is a little less skill dependent.
And don't bother maxing cold matery and don't invest more than one point in ice bolt. Orb works good enough maxed alone with mastery taking away at most -100% resistance.|||First off, since you have enough stats to equip a stormshield, ditch that and equip a "spirit" runeword one (or alternatively, a lidless wal/splendor) to increase battle orders from call to arms
second, if you want to play with frozen orb, then either go meteorb (very popular and strong build) or frozen orb/chain lightning. Pure orb sorc is viable, but you need a strong mercenary to deal with cold immune monsters. Most people go with an act 2 defense merc hired in nightmare difficulty for the holy freeze aura.
Popular merc gear setups include an "Insight" Polearm (cryptic axe and colossus voulge are popular choices, but pretty much any ethereal 4os elite polearm will do), an ethereal "fortitude" armor and some sort of life leech helm (vampire gaze, andariel's visage, etc.)
either way, for cold skills you want to max frozen orb and pretty much just put 1 point into all prerequisites to it and 1 point cold mastery.
For lightning skills you want to at least max lightning, chain lightning and lightning mastery.
For fire skills you want to max fireball for sure. Some people argue about whether or not you want to max fire mastery or fireball synergies (meteor/firebolt). Personally I wouldn't worry too much about it because the results vary according to your gear. you should be fine maxing fireball/fire mastery/meteor.
of course both builds greatly benefit and pretty much require 1 point wonder skills such as static field, teleport and warmth
After maxing the core skills, you have a few options:
1) spend the rest of your points into another synergy for your core lightning/fire skills (blow the rest of the points into charged bolt or fire bolt)
2) focus on the cold tree, getting as much cold mastery as you can till you reach a minimum of level 17 cold mastery (-100 resists), you probably want more than that if you want to run specific targets (like hell baal IIRC) but slvl 17 is an acceptable mark to achieve. once you reach an acceptable cold mastery level you might want to focus on the synergy for frozen orb (ice bolt) and again, this is much debated as sometimes it's more worthwhile to put points into cold mastery than it is to put points into ice bolt, but that is something you can read yourself here in the forums (use the search function!)
sorry for the wall of text, and hope that helps!|||Thanks a lot, you guys.
Although, I still have a few questions. You made it seem like it was viable to spec into both fire and lightning trees to deal wih cold immunes, but shouldn't one or the other not work fine? I know grabbing necessary talents such as warmth/telekenesis/teleport is paramount, but what about shields? I use frost shield and energy shield combined, and i'm wondering if this is still useful or a no-no?
Also, my Death's Fathom has a socket in it, and I have no idea what to put into it as a few of the stats on gems/runes have been altered slightly and I don't really know what to do with it.|||I wouldn't split your skills 3 ways.
Max Frozen Orb, and enough Cold Mastery to get -100 resists.
Then either go to the Lightining tree:
Max Lightning, Chain Lightning, Light Mastery
Or Fire Tree:
Max Fireball, Meteor, Fire Mastery
Regardless of what route you go, make sure you get a point in Warmth, Static, and teleport.
In order of skills to max, I would go: Max Frozen Orb, Max your back-up skills (light or fire) Then put the rest into Cold Mastery until it reaches -100% After that you can work another synergy for your back-up attack as synergizing Frozen orb is a waste IMO.
I would socket the Fathom with an Ist. Since you are playing PvM, MF is nice
If you don't want MF, you could socket your Fathom with a 5/5 Cold facet (or light/fire depending which back-up you have) Possibly an Io, Lum, Ko, or Fal to help you reach any stats you need/want.
EDIT: I say "back up" skills, but I tend to use it more often than Frozen orb. Shoot a Frozen orb into a pack, then Lightning/Fireball them once they're slowed. IIRC Frozen orb still slows cold immunes.|||Quote:
Thanks a lot, you guys.
Although, I still have a few questions. You made it seem like it was viable to spec into both fire and lightning trees to deal wih cold immunes, but shouldn't one or the other not work fine? I know grabbing necessary talents such as warmth/telekenesis/teleport is paramount, but what about shields? I use frost shield and energy shield combined, and i'm wondering if this is still useful or a no-no?
Also, my Death's Fathom has a socket in it, and I have no idea what to put into it as a few of the stats on gems/runes have been altered slightly and I don't really know what to do with it.
I think he was saying use fire OR lightning tree.
A merc with an Insight polearm is definitely something you want to have. A pure FO sorc doesn't really have any mana problems, but once you start relying on a spam skill (FB or CL) then the mana pool drains fast. The Insight merc solves that problem, and makes a nifty little meat shield to boot, holding the baddies in place while you lob spells.
Not sure what I'd put in the Fathom. A 5/5 elemental jewel would probably work well.|||If you want to use Orb as primary skill then you have to work on a backup skill that would work with few skill points invested. If you have Max Orb, Ice Bolt and a decent level of Cold Mastery you won't have more than 40 points to invest in a backup tree. CL surely doens't cut it with 40 points. The options here are Fireball, Firewall and Nova. IMO Fireball is the best here, because it's spammable between Orb timers, and does high damage. In my case you may want to respec your skills. The Orb-it-aller guide is more or less a Orb-Fireball guide if you're interested, even though it's more oriented to a untwinked playing|||Thanks for all of the help everyone, I'm understanding this a lot easier.
My next problem lies in my stat points. I've done all of the lam-Esen quests for every difficulty, so keep in mind I have the +15 stats on top of my normal stat points for a level 85.
I was told to invest enough into strength for my armor, and enough into energy for a comfortable amount of mana, and the rest into vitality. I don't have mana problems considering I have warmth, and I have Battle Orders which work great when combined. Should I redo my stats as well as my skills, or am I okay in stacking for health instead of mana?|||Like Redsnerts pointed out, I meant fire OR lightning, not both. For your death's fathom, either put a rainbow facet jewel (-5% enemy resist/+5% skill damage, look for the cold ones
) or an IST rune if you plan on killing bosses for magic find.Energy shield is a whole different issue and build, I would advise against using it if you specialize in fireball and frozen orb. it might be halfway decent if you choose frozen orb + lightning skills because you can use +1 lightning skills grand charms to compensate for less skill points in energy shield while boosting lightning and chain lightning damage, however to get the most of it you also need to have maxed telekinesis (it's a synergy). There is a thread on the stickies "Making energy shield work for you" make sure you read it.
As for the cold armors (from the cold skill tree) you can get a pretty decent boost by putting 1 point into either shiver or chilling armor (the higher level ones), most people don't bother with them, though.
Finally, your stats for every non-energy shield build are:
enough strength to equip your gear
dexterity either zero or enough to achieve max block (I wouldn't bother unless you're playing hardcore)
vitality every single point you can muster
energy zero
you should only put points in energy if you're using energy shield, if you're not then points in energy are a waste because an insight polearm on your merc will let you replenish your mana at a very acceptable level.
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