1. Foreword
1.1 Introduction
Ah, the sorceresses, an elemental spellcaster who is the native owner of the teleport skill. No matter what your favorite class is you will most likely end up making one of these, or a few dozen, unless you really try not to. In my case I foremost think of myself an amazon/assassin player. However, for some reason when I look over my battle.net accounts there's clearly more sorceresses then either of the two mentioned classes ...
Why is this the case? Because sorceresses are fun to play, fun to experiment with, and above all effective at what they do. With this statement I am of course mainly referring to their effectiveness at magic finding (mfing), but also towards general traveling to and killing specific targets in a speedy manner. This is what this guide is about, a build foremost aimed at killing bosses and other common specific targets, while on a moderate budget.
This is a spinoff from Miladys-Knight's Blizzard-Fireball guide, which I highly recommend to read first. Or maybe it's a spinoff from the pure blizzard build? In any case the term “MeteBlizz” has been mentioned a couple of times on these boards previously, although sparsely. Here I will only present my take on it, which is a lot more chilly then it is fiery.
1.2 Before you continue
This guide is aimed at readers with little, but nonetheless some previous experience in playing sorceresses. It is understandable if the newer players have a hard time following some of my ramblings. However, likewise I will probably end up pointing out the obvious at other times. Don't hesitate to ask if something isn't made explicitly clear, I will answer to the best of my ability.
2. Skills
2.1 Main Spell
Just as the name suggests this is a dual elemental sorceress who shall mainly utilize the Blizzard and Meteor skills. There is a high number of viable combinations and by no means is the presented combination sure to be the optimal one. However, it is one that works and I enjoy playing, and those facts alone warrants the writing of this guide. I will now try to explain the logic that brought me to this selection, firstly let us take a look at the cold spells.
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Cold Spells
Ice Frozen The cold tree has a fairly simple layout
Bolt Armor with three branches: AoE spells, direct
| | damage projectiles and lastly the cold
Frost Ice __ | armors. Outside these branches we also
Nova Blast \ | have cold mastery which helps them all.
| | Shiver
| | Armor Out of these skills the two main options
| Glacial | to use as a main skill would be Blizzard
| Spike | and Frozen Orb. For bosses which are the
| / | main targets of this build, blizzard is
Blizzard Chilling undoubtedly the best skill.
| Armor
Frozen Cold We shall however also be using a second
Orb Mastery spammable spell, namely Ice Blast.
Cold Mastery: Unlike the other masteries the cold one does not directly increase the damage of your spells, instead it reduces the resistance of your opponents. You could argue that the result is the same, and in a sense it is, however this method of doing it is more reliable, which is why the cold tree is a great choice for our main skill. Anything that isn't cold immune will have their cold resistance lowered to a point where your spells will hurt them. This is also true for bosses, who all have more then 50% cold resistance in hell difficulty, but still take high damage from the cold spells because of the influence from cold mastery.
Blizzard: Because of the effectiveness of cold mastery this is the best boss killing spell available for sorceresses. At least until you can acquire items that greatly reduce the resistance of your opponents for the other elements. When cast it immediately causes a number of large shards to rain down within a 3 yard radius of the targeted point. The spell lasts for four seconds and the shards rain somewhat randomly. This means you cannot be sure to always hit the smaller monsters, but against bosses you should on average hit two or three times for each cast. Its cast delay of 1.8 seconds means you can only have about two blizzards active at the same time, but it also means that you can do something else between casts.
Ice Blast: Out of the skills that are possible to cast in quick succession, this is the skill with the highest single target damage in the cold tree. It launches a slab of ice in a straight line towards your target, and while using it will speed up boss killing considerably, it does take some time for it to traverse the distance. It is foremost a blizzard synergy, but also serves as a clear up skill to kill those monsters that blizzard missed. Need I mention that it also freezes enemies?
Ice Bolt: This spell is the somewhat of a little brother of ice blast. It really does the same thing, but with less damage and only a chilling effect instead of the freezing property. While glacial spike would be a more useful spell in itself, only ice bolt gives a damage synergy towards ice blast among blizzards damage synergies.
Other: Left over are the cold armors, which are all potential one point wonders. Personally I only get one point into frozen armor, since it helps to freeze attackers while blind teleporting. If you plan to use Snowclash (unique belt) then you will get Chilling Armor from it without having to spend any extra points.
2.2 Secondary Spell
To justify selecting meteor as the secondary skill we must now clarify one thing: we already have very few skill points left to spend. This build as I imagine it is nearly pure blizzard. We will only do a 20/1 investment into our backup skill, meaning 20 points into the skill itself and one point into the corresponding mastery. There aren't too many skills that can kill effectively in hell with such a low investment. The one most often mentioned in such a fashion is in fact frozen orb, but for obvious reasons Blizzard/FO sorceresses have some immunity problems ...
Now then, instead of sitting here dreaming about a “Fire Orb”, let us review our actual options shall we. To simplify our selection, let us assume a +10 to all skills setup and a faster cast rate of 117%. Given this setup and a 20/1 investment into each skill one at a time, the skills that can obtain an average of 5k damage per second against single targets are:
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Fire Spells █ Lightning Spells
Fire Warmth █ Charged
Bolt | █ Bolt
Inferno | | █ Static | Telekinesis
| | | █ Field | |
Blaze Fire___ | █ | | |
| Ball \ | █ Nova Lightning |
| | \ | █ | | |
Fire___ | Enchant █ | ___ Chain __ Teleport
Wall \ | | █ | / Lightning \ |
Meteor | █ Thunder \_ Mana
| █ Storm Shield
Fire Hydra █ Lightning
Mastery █ Mastery
Charged Bolt: This is the only lightning skill that could actually kill single targets decently fast on its own with such a meager investment. The problem it faces is that to do its full damage you need to cast it from point-blank range, and it will be utterly useless against groups of enemies since it neither splashes nor pierces when used in this fashion. The other lightning skills can outperform charged bolt when it comes to damage against groups, but in turn they're simply lacking single target damage. In conclusion charged bolt is not a good choice, and we should look elsewhere then the lightning tree to find our secondary skill ...
Hydra: It actually has rather respectable damage on paper. With the ability fire 3 fire bolts at once and have multiple hydras out it can in fact kill single targets. The problem of this skill occurs when you are facing multiple enemies. In such a situation its damage will most likely spread out instead of focusing on taking down one opponent at a time. If you can cast a stack of hydras outside the pack and get them to focus their damage it can still kill, but its lack of splash damage makes it a lot less practical then other alternatives.
Blaze: A skill that causes flames to appear in your wake, a cool concept but sadly not very useful. If you run around the same spot I imagine that you should be able to stack up enough flames to do moderately good damage, but that's a far to cumbersome and unpractical method. This will work especially poorly for ranged enemies who don't always head directly towards your position.
Enchant: This is an interesting skill, and could potentially do the most damage out of all, if you had enough party members to cast it on. However, without a proper investment I fear this skill will simply not cut it while you're limited to yourself and your mercenary to apply it. That said it might still be worth one point to give your hireling an attack rating bonus.
Fire Wall: One of my favorite spells in Diablo 1, and it is in fact still quite strong in Diablo 2. It obviously causes a wall of fire to spring forth at your targeted point, just as it did in Diablo 1, however the duration has been reduced greatly. At most you will be able to have two firewalls affecting a target at once, and it doesn't take long to get this “stack” casted. This means that you will quickly reach your maximum fire damage output, which is both a good and a bad thing. Let us get back to this in a moment, and for now move on to mention the last considered alternative.
Meteor: After a slight delay this skill will make a meteor fall down, causing direct fire damage in a 4 yard radius, and also leaving patches of flames burning around the point of impact. The impact damage aside, the flames of this skill is the direct opposite from those of fire wall, they last long but do low damage. This characteristic means that it takes a longer time to reach the maximum damage potential, since you have time to stack a lot of flames before the first ones run out.
So which one is better? I cannot directly answer that question, but I do know which one I prefer. Above all meteor is easier to use since the AoE isn't a line of flames, but instead a somewhat circular area around the point of impact. With some simplifications we can receive an estimate that meteor should start out with around 45% of the DPS of firewall, 100% after about 8-10 seconds, and end up near 200% after 23-24 seconds. These numbers of course are only a rough estimates, and a proper comparison could swing the favor slightly in any direction. I will however provide a small example to show that the numbers are not completely randomly guessed:
Let us once again bring up out +10 to skills example. Consider a case after 18 seconds from when the first meteor landed. Since the duration of the fires of a level 30 meteor is 18.5 seconds we should now have obtained approximately max of our DPS potential. With a casting delay of 1.2 seconds we should have casted about 18/1.2 = 15 meteors. This gives 15 stacks of flames meaning about 15*830 direct DPS from those, and we also have 3779/1.2 DPS from the direct impact damage. In total this sums to around 15600 DPS for our meteor. A single level 30 firewall would have a DPS of 4606.5 and stacking two of them gives 9213 DPS. From these numbers we receive 15600/9213 = 1.69 thus your meteor stack should be doing around 70% more damage. Again this assumes 20/1 investment and disregards casting times, the math is rather crude to say the least, but the truth should be somewhere along those lines.
Another thing to notice is the fact that the flame part of meteor is only synergized by inferno, and not even pure fire sorceresses invest into that skill. That means that although our impact damage will suffer greatly from the lack of synergies, the flames take a far less serious hit from the 20/1 investment when comparing your meteor to that of a pure fire sorceress.
So now we have both our main and our backup skill, this should be a good time to summarize the build's skill outline. We will return to discuss a bit more on the usage of our selected skills in the strategy section, but for now let us get on with the summary.
2.3 Skillpoint distribution summary
Just as all other builds, at level 99 we would have 110 skillpoints at our disposal, but leveling up to that point is a tedious process and we really should not aim that high. Let us first determine the cornerstone skills of the build and then work forward from there:
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Cold Spells Lightning Spells Fire Spells
20 Blizzard 1 Static Field 20 Meteor
20 Ice Blast 1 Telekinesis 1 Fire Mastery
1+ Cold mastery 1 Teleport 5 Prerequisites
1+ Ice Bolt
2 Prerequisites
A total of 73 skillpoints, which is reached in your mid sixties when quest rewards have been taken into account. However the above is not all there is to it, specifically you must note the plus signs on the values for cold mastery and ice bolt. They should obviously not be left at level one, instead you should aim for level 27 cold mastery after skill bonuses, and work towards maxing ice bolt. Level 27 cold mastery gives you -150% enemy cold resistance, and the reason to aim for this level is mainly because the average cold resistance among all non cold immune monster types lies somewhere around 50-60%. It also so happens that quite a few of the monsters at commonly ran target locations have 50% cold resistance, including venom lords and minions of destruction. That said, there are a couple more skills that you need to consider that were not mentioned above.
Warmth (“Optional”): This skill increases mana regeneration and should be considered a one point wonder. I may list it as optional but that is only because it isn't needed theoretically. For example you could (pronounced as should) be using an insight mercenary which gives you enough mana regeneration, or you could be using the phoenix runeword to restore both your mana and health in regular intervals. In any case I would put a point in here, and unless you can find a really good reason not to then I suggest you do as well.
Frozen Armor (Optional): The armor skills of the cold tree were mentioned before as possible one point wonders, and I would personally recommend placing a point in frozen armor. The added defense is not really a big deal in my opinion, but freezing attackers is. Above all this is useful for blind teleporting, where it can save your life to have your attacker freeze for a moment, giving you enough time to teleport out before their next attack.
All in all with maxed ice bolt and high cold mastery you may not be done until you are in your nineties, and even then we are assuming a rather good amount of +skills from your equipment. If you are on a lower budget stopping at level 17 cold mastery might actually be a better choice. This will give you -100% enemy cold resistance, which is a nice and practical number. Against monsters with zero cold resistance level 17 obviously is optimal, since you cannot lower your enemies resistance more then down to -100%. Still, my personal preference is and will stay at level 27, if they aren't cold immune then opponents should simply die fast, regardless if they have 0% or 99% cold resistance.
3. Stat points
3.1 Strength
Since the addition of re-specifications you can now reset your statpoints to make sure you optimize them even if you make some “mistakes” early on. For this build the needed strength is fairly straight forward. Your final goal will most likely be 156, which is needed for the monarch type shields. If you don't plan to use a monarch the question gets trickier, but in any case you should only get as much strength as your equipment needs, nothing more. Some other values to keep in mind are 95 and 84, which are the requirements of a pair of “War Traveler” boots and the armor from “Tal Rasha's set” respectively.
3.2 Dexterity
There are not may pieces of equipment that we need to consider that have dexterity requirements, and I personally prefer not to go for blocking with this build. On hardcore you may wish to consider blocking, but most of you can probably skip any investment into dexterity. In any case the only number to keep in mind that I can think of is 75, which is the requirement of “Wizardspike”. Other then that you will have to use the block formula if you wish to utilize blocking:
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Blocking
Total Blocking % = Min( [(Blocking * (Dexterity - 15)) / (Character Level * 2)] , 75)
Dexterity investment for 75% block with a selection of shields:
cLvl Whitstan's Gerke's Spirit Ward Visceratuant* Stormshield Moser's*
85 162 188 193 193 206 212
86 164 190 195 195 208 214
87 165 192 197 197 210 216
88 167 194 199 199 213 219
89 169 196 201 201 215 221
90 171 198 203 203 217 223
91 172 200 205 205 219 225
92 174 202 207 207 221 228
93 176 204 209 209 224 230
94 178 206 211 211 226 232
95 179 208 213 213 228 235
* = Upgraded versions
cLvl = Character Level
3.3 Vitality
We do not wish to spare the skillpoints required to make an energy shield build, and because of this life is your focus, not mana. Thus, just as most other builds this is where you spend most of your points, since vitality is the stat that provides more life when increased. If you find yourself running out of mana while leveling you can choose to divert some points from vitality in favor of increasing your mana pool, but once you have obtained a high enough level and end game equipment this should no longer be needed.
3.3 Energy
As almost all other builds we aim to keep this stat at its base, unless we really hunger for more mana. Once your reach level 25-27 there are runewords available that can increase and replenish your mana pool well enough without the any extra points into energy. Before these levels you can use sapphires socketed into your equipment and/or tir runes to maintain your mana pool. In the end stages of this build you will also not be using very mana intensive spells, as such you should respec to base energy later on if you spent any points here while leveling.|||4. Equipment
4.1 Build Goals
As mentioned in the introduction this build is aimed at magic finding, more specifically to run bosses and superuniques. It does a rather poor job as an area clearer, when compared to lightning or frozen orb users. At least this is the case in games with a lower player count. When the number of players start increasing, then blizzard starts to work better then frozen orb in my opinion, since the FO user will have to rely on their focused orb rather then assume that the spray is enough to get most kills. On a higher player count it also is more comparable to medium budget lightning, it is still more work aiming, but in terms of killspeed blizzard really is the skill that suffers the least when the player count increases.
So what do we need to make our skills effective? Above all we require a large chunk of +skills, and enough faster cast rate to effectively cast teleport and our non timered spells. It goes without saying that our resistances should be maxed, since we will surely be hit with a lot of elemental damage. For the same reason it is also helpful to have some faster hit recovery, to get us out of the trouble that blind teleporting can land us in.
While keeping these basic offensive and defensive mods in mind the build should also aim for a good amount of magic find. Some might argue that keyruns in combination with getting torches and socketables are more profitable, but mfing is still a very effective way to acquire wealth. The joy of finding a rare unique or set item is really worth experiencing, and there are, after all, many equipment slots where runewords cannot be placed.
All in all we hope to achieve the following:
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FCR Frames │ FHR Frames
0% 13 │ 14% 12 * At least 10 or more +skills
9% 12 │ 20% 11 * 300% or more magic find
20% 11 │ 30% 10
37% 10 │ 42% 9
63% 9 │ 60% 8
105% 8 │ 86% 7
200% 7 │ 142% 6
Again I will mention that this is a medium budget build, if you can afford the high budget runewords then a pure lightning sorc is likely better for you. Despite this I will be listing some high budget options in the item sections, because no guide is complete without them. For the complete practical setup I would aim for with this build, skip down to section 4.3.
In the following section I will be listing the items sorted mostly by the amount of fcr they can provide, but also a few other criteria when suitable. Those of you who have read one of my previous guides will hopefully feel right at home, for everyone else: I welcome you to the world of overworked formatting.
4.2 Equipment selection
Time to decide which items to use, and that of course implies reviewing a lot of different options. Gear selection has always been one of the biggest parts of playing diablo games. Regardless of your skill selection you will almost never be able to clearly see which items benefit you the most, and this time is no different. I highly recommend experimenting with different gear pieces if possible. I have personally gone down the rather easy road of using the full set of Tal Rasha. However that doesn't mean it is impossible to create a superior setup from a selection of uniques, I only know that if possible it is at least rather hard to do.
I feel the need to mention Tal Rasha's set specifically here, it is a great choice and will serve the build quite well. That said it is unpractical to list each and every set item in their specific categories, instead I will not be writing the individual parts into the lists at all. Use the full set setup mentioned in 4.3 as a pointer to compare against when constructing a setup from this section. Also for untwinked play a bit more tips on cheap equipment will be given in the stragegy section of the guide.
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4.2.1 Headgear
_ A helmet is more then a means to protect your head. For
_./│\._ a sorceress it is also an item holding powerful magical
// │ │ \\ enchantments. With the right helm your mind will stay
││__│ │__││ focused even in the most heated battles, and your spells
││ │O│ ││ will gain in power.
││ └-┘ ││
[\__ __/] There's actually quite a lot of good helmets available,
│\ │_│ /│ good looking ones a bit less so. Choose wisely and make
│ │ │ │ sure your choice doesn't ruin your hair.
│_│ │_│
25%: Griffon's Eye
20%: Rare Circlet OR Magic Circlet
00%: Harlequin Crest OR Nightwing's Veil OR Other
Griffons Eye may be the helm that provides the highest amount of faster cast rate, and it does provide +1 to skills, but the other mods would be completely wasted on our sorceress. This helm should be used for lightning builds, not a dual elemental character who uses cold and fire damage. Only mentioning it for the sake of completeness, and just in case someone somehow designs a setup where the extra 5% fcr is really needed in the helm slot.
Rare circlets can make for some of the best helms for a lot of builds, and this holds true also for a MeteBlizz sorceress. You should specifically look for 2 skill, 20 fcr and additional mods such as resists and/or stats. They can also spawn with 2 sockets if you're really lucky, if not then at least you can add one yourself using that quest reward from act five.
Magic circlets are not too attractive for this build, since it is a dual element build. For single tree spellcasters they can sometimes be preferred over rares since they can have +3 to a specific tree. However, in our case the +2 to all sorceress skills that can be found on both rares and magic circlets is more useful.
Harlequin Crest, which is commonly called “Shako”, is an excellent helm for this build assuming that you don't need fcr from your helm slot. The only thing it lacks is resistance, and the stat bonus cannot really be considered worth mentioning, but next to the skills, mf and mana/life bonus that is of course just nitpicking.
Nightwing's Veil is the helm that boosts your cold damage the most, and still doesn't disappoint on the fire aspect. This is the helm you should choose if you are building to maximize damage, but personally I think it is a bit unnecessary for PvM use.
Other helms than the ones mentioned above can be considered for a variety of reasons, the build really only needs a bit of focus on skill bonuses, to make the low investment into meteor viable. While you level you should use all and anything beneficial you find, or if that fails, run countess in nightmare until you can make yourself a “lore”.
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4.2.2 Amulet
You cannot become a sorceress without a stylish amulet.
_.--∞Θ∞--._ Fancy jewels are always a plus, preferably blue or red
( ) to match your casting capabilities, but green can of
'-o∞∞Ω∞∞o-' course always be used in a tight spot.
/┌▲┐\
d◄]O[►b While looks may be important don't forget to make sure
\└▼┘/ it has useful magical enchantments, such as resistance,
└o┘ skill increases and faster cast rate.
20%: Crafted
10%: Rare OR Magic OR Crafted
00%: Mara's Kaleidoscope OR Rare OR Crafted
Crafted amulets have the potential to become the best amulets for this build, but getting a good one can be a long an cumbersome process. A perfect craft would have 2skills, 15-20fcr and on top of that stats and resistance bonuses, needless to say they are expensive to buy and near impossible to self-craft. Another craft to keep in mind if you are aiming for max block is the safety crafted amulets. These increase your base block and can this way lower the dexterity requirement for maximum block.
Rares are just like crafts, but have a slightly lower maximum potential since they cannot get more then 10 fcr. Rares are likely to become your best friends during untwinked play, and a rare amulet with 2 skills can help a great deal. Look for resistance and stats as extras, but I would argue that the skill bonus is essential before all else.
Magics cannot have quite the number of mods as rares, and do once again loose out against them since we do not wish to focus on single tree bonuses. Use whatever you find if in need, but don't aim to hold on to one of these forever.
Mara's Kaleidoscope is the only unique amulet I will name explicitly. It has the triple useful mods we commonly look for when our faster cast rate needs have been satisfied, but both crafts and rares can beat it. Other unique amulets do not quite compare to Mara's, and should thus only be temporary solutions if you do decide to use them.
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4.2.3 Armor
Although your magic can serve as protection against almost
____.┐__┌.____ anything, it doesn't hurt to add another layer of defense.
\____│ │____/ This is especially true if the armor comes with some useful
\__╚╤╤╝__/ enchantments such as adding resistances and giving skill
│_.┤├._│ bonuses.
│_.┤├._│
/\.┤├./\ Heavy: Lowers run speed by 0.4 yards/second.
/\//││\\/\ Medium: Lowers run speed by 0.2 yards/second.
\/ \/ Light: No penalty, thus choose light armors if possible.
30%: Skin of the Vipermagi
25%: Stealth
20%: Ormus' Robes OR Que-Hegan's Wisdom
00%: Chain of Honor OR Skullder's Ire OR Other
Skin of the Vipermagi is the perfect mid-level armor and also very commonly used as the end game armor of choice for many sorceresses. It not only provides the most fcr, but also does so while giving +1 to skills and up to 35 to all resistances. Add a socket into this armor for extra resistances or a bit more mf and you're all set.
Stealth cannot really compete with vipermagi as an end game option, but the combination of its low level requirement and ease to make yourself makes it a must to utilize early on. Make one for yourself and your mercenary if you don't have anything better, and simply throw them away when they're not needed anymore.
Ormus' Robes seems interesting to say the least, but I personally don't like it too much except when used for specialized builds, such as for an enchantress. While the damage increasing mods do look alluring, you have to keep in mind an armor with +skills would not only increase the active spells levels but also the masteries.
Que-Hegan's Wisdom is another armor that cannot compete with vipermagi, however it does provide quite a few some useful mods. If you don't have a viper but happen to find this armor then don't hesitate to use it, the skill bonus, fcr, mana after each kill, and fhr can serve you well.
Chains of Honor should be considered only if you for some reason wish to tweak this sorceress beyond what I would consider a standard budget. It does a very good job on this build with its +2 skills and high resistance bonus, not to mention the strength and mf. However just as stated, it does so at a price.
Skullder's Ire's most outstanding feature is of course the huge amount of magic find it carries, and together with the +1 to skills it makes for a fairly solid armor when neither fcr nor resistances are an issue. Socket it with a perfect topaz for even more mf if you wish.
Other armors that could potentially be of use include pretty much anything with skills, resistances or magic find. Use what you find useful and discard the useless, just like always.
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4.2.4 Gloves
____ ____ One would think that wearing gloves would affect our
| | ) ( | | spellcasting negatively, since they usually restrict finger
| | / \ | | movement. However, they can actually have to opposite
(OO=) (=OO) effect if enchanted properly.
/ / \ / \ \ While protecting your hands may be their main task, you
((( ∩ | | ∩ ))) should still make sure to get a pair that provides some
\\\)└┘ └┘(/// other type of benefit.
20%: Magefist OR Trang-Oul's Claws
00%: Chance Guards OR Frostburn OR Rare
Magefist is a fairly clear first hand choice for the build. On top of providing 20% fcr it also gives a bonus to our fire skills, not to mention that it has a rather low level requirement. I cannot stress far enough how much every +skill does for our fire side, get these gloves if possible.
Trang-Oul's cannot really compete with magefist in my opinion, but they have both faster cast rate and some cold resistance. The partial set bonus of +18 fire ball is sadly capped at +3 for sorceresses, which is a bit less useful then the potential +skills possible from the 2 item slots it would require.
Chance Guards provide a good chunk of the gold and magic find mods, but nothing more worth mentioning. If you aim to maximize your magic find then these are the gloves for you, otherwise my advise is to stay clear of them.
Frostburn 40% increased mana, nothing less and nothing more. These are more useful on an energy shield build and are surely not worth specifically looking for. However, when playing untwinked they can help a bit by keeping your spellcasting going longer between mana potions.
Rares cannot provide any useful skill bonuses or faster cast rate, but a combination of stats and resists may be worth holding on to for a while. If nothing else do keep picking them up and identifying them, just in case you find something worth using on a different character.
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4.2.5 Belt
_________ Not only can your belt serve as a holster for a variety
/ _______ \ of potions, it is also an important piece of equipment
(\/ \/) for exposing your slim waistline.
(\ ∙╫-∙║∙∙)/) For best results use slim leather belts, avoid anything
\ ∙╫-∙║∙∙)/ to bulky and heavy.
20%: Arachnid Mesh
10%: Crafted
00%: Goldwrap OR Snowclash OR Rare
Arachnid Mesh provides three solid bonuses, namely +1 to skills, 20 fcr and lastly also 5% bonus to mana. As the only belt that provides a bonus to all skills it is also one of the most used end game belts, however its high level requirement also means you will have to wait quite a while before you can equip this beauty. If you plan this into your build also make sure you plan what to use before you get to this point.
Crafted belts, or rather caster crafted belts specifically, can provide you with up to 10% fcr and also a lot of significant other mods such as stats, resistances and fhr. Good ones are expensive to trade for and difficult to make on your own, only plan to use one of these if you have one already have one available, since they are hard to craft.
Goldwrap is a common magic finder belt, since it has the highest amount of magic find out of all belts. It is both easy to find and cheap to trade for, its low requirement is also a plus. You can upgrade it to get four more potion slots.
Snowclash does provide a significant boost to blizzard and is also somewhat iconic of a cold sorceresses. On top of +2 blizzard you will also be given chilling armor for free when using this belt, possibly freeing up 3 points to spend on blizzard synergies that you would otherwise have spent in the cold armors. Personally I prefer frozen armor so it is not as significant of a boost for me, but nevertheless it is to be kept in mind. Did I forget mention that it also makes you to be a lot more durable in cold conditions?
Rare belts are similar to crafted in that they can provide you with fhr, resistances and stats. However they cannot come with any fcr, and therefore a top rare will be inferior to a good craft in my opinion. Useful during the stages before you find something like snowclash, but should “rarely” be a final choice.
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4.2.6 Boots
_.-._ _.-._ A good pair of boots is a necessity for any and all
(_ _.'│ │'._ _) magic users, magic has a tendency to leave your
|/=\__/ \__/=\| enemies in a rather messy state. Ice magic is a bit
|=| │ │ |=| cleaner then the others, but the shards can be
}=) │ │ (={ surprisingly sharp, so you still need to watch your
/=/ ] [ \=\ steps.
/=/ .' '. \=\ Focus on resistances, magic find and frw,
(__.' '.__) but stats and fhr aren't bad enchantments either.
Other mods: Silkweave OR Sandstorm Trek OR Crafted
Resistance: Aldur's OR Rare
Magic Find: War Travelers OR Rare
Silkweave stands as an oddity among boots in that it provides you with 5 mana after each kill. This is a rather useful mod to have if you have yet to get yourself other means of keeping your mana supply up. On top this mod you also get an increased mana pool and some frw, not the most amazing boots out there otherwise, but very good considering their low level requirement.
Sandstorm Trek is a very well rounded pair of boots that only really lacks in the magic find department. Best used on mana shield sorceresses since it only provides poison resistance, but its combination of frw, fhr and stats still makes it worthy of consideration.
Crafted boots are overall very uncommon, and you'll probably have a hard time finding them if you're looking to trade yourself a pair. However, that doesn't mean that they cannot be useful, specifically the caster recipe could create a rather interesting option. The static mods of a caster craft provide a mana pool increase and bit of mana regeneration. Top it all of with some good random mods such as resistances and/or frw and you've got yourself a cheap set of starter boots, or potentially end game material.
Aldur's Advance should probably not be considered as a top choice, but the combination of high frw, life and fire resistance isn't a bad one. They can also help you get out of a bad situation by replenishing your mana when struck, possibly enough to let you teleport away.
Rare boots can provide the high amounts of resistance and still have decent magic find. Definitely make sure to pick up any you find and identify them. While most will be crap and barely worth the gold the merchants offer you, there's still a chance of finding a gread pair that could either be happily used or traded for a small fortune.
War Travelers have the highest magic find of any boots and also some useful secondary mods such as frw, vitality and strength. Fairly easy to find and quite commonly traded, can be somewhat expensive if going for perfect ones, but usually the price will still be within reach for most players.
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4.2.7 Rings
__ Your rings can be nearly anything you want them to be
_.-/\/\-. in terms of magical enchantments, but you can only use
/ _.\/\/-.\ a maximum of two, because any more would just look
( / /| silly.
\|-.__.-' / You should first of all make sure you reach your desired
'.____.-' fcr breakpoint, and then go for skills, resists and/or stats.
Magic Find: Nagelring OR Magic OR Wisp Projector
Cast Rate: Rare OR Crafted
Skills: Stone of Jordan OR Bul-Kathos'
Nagelring does provide up to 30% mf, but not much more. Use this ring only if you really wish to maximize on mf, while on a budget. Perfect ones are of course more a lot more expensive then the bad ones which are often just thrown away, but even perfect ones are dropped often enough to keep the price down.
Magic rings can potentially reach up to 40% mf, however again they should only be used if you really wish to go for high mf. If you can afford to trade for these I would rather suggest to make use of the skill increasing rings instead, your meteor damage can use the boost.
Wisp Projector is a rather expensive ring to use just for the magic find it has. However, if you are running baal or other soul infested areas you will surely find its lightning absorb quite handy.
Rare rings are what I think most sorceresses will end up using since decent ones are fairly easy to find. Look for fcr, stats and resistances above all else, but if you're lucky you can get a bit of mf here too.
Crafted rings serve the same role as rares, but by using the caster recipe you ensure yourself to get some mana boosting mods. They can potentially beat rare alternatives, but are of course harder to get hold of.
Stone of Jordan would be my skill increasing ring of choice for this build, but it is rather expensive. Apart from the +skill it also gives a hefty bonus to your mana pool, and it can be equipped as early as level 29.
Bul-kathos' Wedding Band stands as the second possible ring that can provide a bonus to our skills. Instead of the mana increasing mods found on a SOJ it provides some life biased on character level. Since we cannot utilize the life steal that mod would be wasted on our character, and the life bonus is not too significant. Still if you cannot get SOJs then don't hesitate to use a BK if you get one.
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4.2.8 Weapon
.-. Your weapon is your focal point while casting most spells,
( ) and it is obviously of vital importance to have a high
'-<\ class item to channel your magic through. Its ability to
\\ kill in melee combat is of far less importance, after all
\\ why would you bother hitting someone when it's so much
\) easier to just blast them into tiny pieces?
50%: Wizardspike OR Suicide Branch
40%: Heart of the Oak OR Eschuta's Temper
35%: Spirit
30%: The Oculus
20%: Death's Fathom OR Rare
00%: Call to Arms
Wizardspike is far from an ultimate choice, just something to use along the way. It has a tremendous amount of all resistance, and shared first place when it comes to giving faster cast rate, but no skills. If you happen to come across one while playing untwinked you can use it on switch for safer teleporting, but your main weapon should really give at least some skill bonus.
Suicide Branch is similar to wizardspike, but has +1 to all skills instead of a large portion of the all resistance. Use only if you really cannot find anything else.
Heart of the Oak (Hoto) provides a solid combination of skills, resistance and faster cast rate. While this runeword does require a vex rune, making one yourself still isn't to far fetched. With the increased drop rates of 1.13 and the possibility to cube two gul runes into a vex this is one of the easier runewords to make out of those that require high runes. The only real downside aside from the cost is its lack of magic find.
Eschuta's Temper cannot really compare to heart of the oak or the oculus in my opinion. It can potentially provide +3 to sorceress skills and some extra fire damage on top of the faster cast rate, and it can be socketed unlike a Hoto, but sadly it lacks resistance. My advice would be to only put this orb to use if you happen to find a +3 one and got nothing better available.
Spirit made in a sword is a very cheap and efficient caster weapon, make sure you get one as fast as possible when you are playing untwinked. With its +2 to all skills, 25-35% faster cast rate, 55% faster hit recovery and a huge mana bonus it can go all the way from level 25 into hell difficulty if it needs to.
The Oculus gives you bonuses similar to the more expensive Hoto, just a bit less faster cast rate and all resistance. However, unlike hoto, it does provide you with a decent amount of magic find, and for this reason it is in my opinion the best single piece one-hand weapon for this build. Its chance to cast teleport when struck can be both a blessing and an annoyance, and while I personally think of it more towards the later, it isn't enough of a problem to throw oculus aside for.
Death's Fathom doesn't quite fit into my image of this build to be honest. It is expensive to trade for and this build isn't meant as a high budget project. It also lacks magic find which in my mind is the main aim of this sorceress. Despite this it must however be mentioned, no wasted mods on it and superb cold damage increase. If you find one don't hesitate to use it, however also keep the option of trading it away in mind ...
Rare orbs are seldom, but nevertheless sometimes able to keep up with the other options. Look for +2 to all soreceress skills and 20% faster cast rate combined with good staffmods (meteor and blizzard foremost).
Call to Arms isn't mentioned as a suggestion for your main weapon obviously, just as a switch weapon to gain the barbarian warcries it provides. Battle orders will increase your life substantially, making blind teleporting a lot safer, and battle command will raise all your skill levels by one. The last one, “battle cry”, also has its uses, but they are more situational. If you ask me this is where to aim your wealth first when trading your way into the high rune valued levels.
Notes on staves
Using a staff instead of the standard weapon/shield setups is of course possible, but more often then not such a choice is more for the sake of style then efficiency. Within the realms of runewords we can find that a Leaf staff is a superb staff for the leveling fireball user, but also insight and memory staves can have their uses. Heart of the Oak can be made in a staff, and that could probably lift a few eyebrows since I doubt more players have noticed that fact.
As for unique staves there are the elite Ondal's and Mang Song's, both which hold skills bonuses and some faster cast rate, but lack resistance. Chromatic Ire is a decent mid-level staff if you happen to find one, good skill bonuses and resistance along with some cast rate, not to mention the “mini battle orders” in the form of 20-25% increased maximum life.
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4.2.9 Shield
┌─────────┐ While they may not be to stylish, there's no doubt
\\'._.'// they have many other uses. In our case the shield
// (O) \\ probably isn't a weapon nor a attack deflecting wall
\\ V // but it can nonetheless contribute to both offense and
\\ // defense with enchantments to increase our cast rate,
\\_// resistance and spell levels.
\_/
Cast Rate: Spirit OR Lidless Wall OR Splendor
Blocking: Stormshield OR Moser's OR Whitstan's
Other: Phoenix OR Sanctuary OR Rythme
Spirit (25-35% faster cast rate) made in a shield gives mostly the same bonuses as the previously mentioned weapon version, however it becomes even better since three of the four runes will be providing resistances instead of elemental melee damage. In my opinion spirit is to good to pass on for this build, even if it does have a requirement of at least 156 strength since the lightest non-paladin shield that can have 4 sockets is a monarch. Did I forget to mention how cheap it is to make?
Lidless Wall (20%) should mainly serve as a leveling and/or temporary shield while you work towards a spirit. If you can find or trade for one it will be very helpful during nightmare difficulty, and it does fill the roll of a “mini-spirit” perfectly.
Splendor (10%) is yet another step down from lidless, however it beats both spirit and lidless by quite a lot when it comes to how easy it is to get hold of one. If you've got nothing better by the time you reach nightmare then run the countess for runes and make one of these.
Stormshield can of course be used if you really want to ensure your safety while teleporting. With high chance to block, 35% damage reduction and decent resists it makes for a good hardcore shield, but in softcore I would rather suggest going for something to help your offense.
Moser's Blessed Ciclet, even when upgraded, cannot compete with stormshield in regards to safety. However, for lower levels the non-upgraded version can serve a max-block build quite well. With two open sockets it allows for some customization, though most of us will probably just throw in two perfect diamonds for more resistance.
Whitstan's Guard has the highest blocking percentage and will require the lowest dexterity investment to reach maximum block out of all shields. That said it is not a shield I would personally use for this build ... still worth mentioning nonetheless.
Phoenix is one of the two main “unlimited mana” solutions available, the other one being the use of an insight mercenary. While it does provide a large chunk of negative enemy fire resistance and could be offensively useful for our meteor, the gain is too low compared to the price. If you can afford this shield then you might may be better off making a different build.
Sanctuary isn't recommended unless you really need the resistance boost it provides, even then I'd advice to look your other equipment spots over and see if you can get the resistance elsewhere instead. Spirit is too damn good to throw aside just for a lack of resistances ...
Rythme stands alongside splendor in regards to how easy it is to make one, and they have very similar mods. The difference is that rythme has resistances and higher blocking while splendor has cast rate and +1 to all skills, obviously I prefer splendor myself.
4.3 Complete Setup
Unlike what I did in the gunslinger guide I'm only going to list a single setup this time. This setup is what I personally use and think all other setups should be compared to in the end. That said I will not call it perfect. I did not purposely build this setup based on my choice of skills, in fact it's the other way around. This equipment setup was used as a starting point while I experimented (using multiple respecs) and tried to find a backup for blizzard that could handle itself well enough with a 20/1 investment.
I present to you, the basic, the obvious, the standard, the slightly more then darn common complete setup:
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4.3.1 Complete Setup Horadric Crest
___
Guardianship A_/_ _\_ _ Adjudication
\ \( U U )\ //
\ \ ~ / V �
Lidless ☼ \ ___ ___ ___
Eye \ '--> /\_/o\_/\ | ▼ | Spirit
\ / A A \ \_/
|___|
Magefist
__ __ � ===o= � _ _
) | | ( Any Any |_||_| War Traveler
/ \ / \ Fine-Spun / )( \
\__U U__/ Cloth (_/ \_)
Inventory: Annihilus, Hellfire Torch, Gheed's Fortune
Switch: Call to Arms, Spirit
In total this setup should give you:
- +14 to all sorceress skills
- 95-105% Faster cast rate
- 80% Faster Hit Recovery
- 85-105% All Resistances + (40/75/108/35)
- 218-258% Magic Find
- 3 Open Sockets
- 2 Open Ringslots
Depending on your spirits faster cast rate you may have to devote a ringslot towards faster cast rate to reach the 105% breakpoint. Other then that you are free to use the left over sockets, ringslots and inventory space for more +skills, resistance and/or magic find. If you wish you can push yourself onto the 86% hit recovery breakpoint by getting another 6% somewhere, but I personally don't think it is necessary to go that far in PvM.
4.4 Hireling
While this build doesn't need quite as much mana as a lightning sorceress, it does still benefit the most from an desert mercenary carrying an insight polearm. Doing this will give you the meditation aura which increases your mana regeneration by up to 700% if you roll a level 17 aura. Compare this to the 222% that the warmth skill gives at level 17 and it should be clear why getting this aura is a comparatively much more effective way to maintain your mana pool.
Now there's just another small thing I have to mention, which I'm sure most of you already know about. Prayer is a synergy of meditation, and by equipping a mercenary who has that aura you will receive both prayer and a synergized meditation aura. Utilizing this effectively means double the rate of life replenish compared to a prayer mercenary without insight, and thus I highly recommend to use this type of mercenary.
The “combat” act 2 mercenary from normal and hell difficulty are the ones that have the prayer aura. For more information on the various auras check out arreat summits page on hirelings.|||5. Strategy
5.1 Normal
Since both our main skills are not available right away it is highly advised to get a temporary main spell during the early stages, preferably fire bolt and then switching over to fireball. Using those skills will give you consistent high damage at a fairly low mana cost, but until level 12 you will lack a AoE damage spell. Going this route enables you to utilize the leaf runeword to its fullest and I think it is the strongest untwinked sorceress possible during the 19-23 interval.
Charged bolt, lightning and then possibly chain lightning can also be used, but those require more mana and have less consistent damage. However charged bolt is the best first level spell, and it does quite well on its own up to level 12 when lightning becomes available. If you choose this option you should definitely get yourself a few tir runes and socket them into your equipment for the extra mana after each kill.
If you cannot or really do not want to utilize respecs then the option available is to level like a standard blizzard sorceress who mainly uses ice bolt and ice blast until 24. You can gain some AoE damage at level six from frost nova, which can be worth spamming now and then in act 1 while monsters still have low life, however doing so is rather mana intensive.
Regardless which route you choose the general tips below are always relevant:
- Don't hesitate to spend some stat points in energy to help you during leveling. If a respec is planned later on you should only worry about reaching that point.
- Throwing weapons like javelins, knifes and potions are your friends, utilize them while they're still useful. They are particularly useful during the early stages of act 1. Also keep a few stamina potion ready to refresh yourself when needed.
- Use static! No matter which leveling build you choose, static field should be used against the tougher opponents.
- Countess drops runes, and runes she shall drop. Run her in normal and make yourself some low level runewords like stealth, leaf and possibly nadir.
Once your leveling build has brought you to the desired level for a switch into another skill you once again need to make a decision on how to progress. Blizzard works great in baalruns, however it is a commonly known fact that frozen orb completely obliterates nightmare. Both skills can obviously handle both tasks, however I personally still prefer to use FO at this point for untwinked play. Blizzard can do more direct damage to packs like the minions of destruction, but in the large open spaces of nightmare FO's high area of effect really does make life easier.
5.2 Nightmare
Regardless whether you decide to use blizzard or FO, I can at least state that you don't have to invest heavily into meteor right away. The cold immune monsters don't start appearing in any threatening fashion until act 5 of nightmare. Take your time playing through nightmare, get yourself a �spirit�, �splendor� and �lore� by running the countess. Also make an �insight� polearm and �smoke� armor for your prayer mercenary, this will greatly help in keeping him alive and kicking.
These runewords should make act 2 and 3 rather uneventful, since you're way overpowered compared to what you'd normally be at this stage. There are some resistance issues however, thus you could decide to go with another shield instead of splendor to increase those. �Ancients pledge� can if needed be made directly from the runes received in act 5 quest 2 of normal difficulty, but personally I think the life regeneration of an insight wielding prayer mercenary should be enough to keep you alive. This is especially true when you've restated into near pure vitality, since spirit and insight will handle your mana demands decently well on their own.
Once you reach mephisto it is advised to target him for some better equipment. I'm not saying it is absolutely needed, but even with the previously mentioned runewords hell difficulty magic finding would still be far too dangerous. If you wish you can use repeated quest drops to increase your chances for good drops from mephisto, or you can continue onto act 5 and include eldritch, pindle and shenk into your runs. I will not go into to much details since there's more then enough guides on the topic of untwinked magic finding, but quest dropping mephisto entails killing him only in games where the quest cannot be completed, or in other words, another player who has already done the quest must create the game.
It is highly recommended to spend some time leveling in nightmare before you head over to hell. If you've used FO up to this point switching to blizzard for nightmare baalruns does help your damage quite a bit, unless you're twinked to the bone and FO is still killing the last two waves decently enough.
5.3 Hell
Here I will assume that you've switched to the skill selection described in this guide. I will now describe the features and strategies that makes this build a proper competitor to the more vidly used other dual elemental sorceresses, and not just a theory crafted flicker of my imagination. I must firstly underline the fact that this was aimed at magic finding in 8p games, including baal and diablo. Secondly I must press the issue that this isn't a balanced character, your cold side vastly outperforms your fire spells, always pick your targets keeping this fact in mind ...
First feature: massive cold damage
This build does a great job in the areas where a pure blizzard sorceress works. This includes andariel, mephisto and ancient tunnels, which alone can bring in more than enough wealth for most players. The ice bolt cast by this sorceress should be equal in terms of damage to the one of a pure blizzard build, and having that will greatly increase boss killing speed in 8p games.
Second feature: stackable fire damage
The longer an enemy takes to kill the more flames can be stacked on him. If nothing else the psychological effect of seeing your opponents life drop faster and faster is helpful to have while you mourn the fact that you couldn't one-hit kill them.
Third feature: delayed backup spell
Meteor doesn't land instantly when cast, instead it gives you just enough time to bring down the opponents life as much as you can by the use of static field. I'd actually go as far as to call static your main spam skill while using meteor. Even if static cannot bring down your opponents life more then it has, don't waste that delay by just waiting for another meteor. Use the delay to reposition yourself, or check if any worthwhile items are on the ground.
Tactic one: hotspot
Create a hotspot by repeatedly stacking meteor flames in one small area, and then use your mercenary to lure monsters to and keep them in this spot. Of course this is mostly only useful on melee mobs, but there's plenty enough of those to make it the main fire tactic. Use it for running eldritch and shenk with this type of sorceress, also in baalruns you should prepare a fiery area for the second waves skeletons to stand on before they even arrive.
Tactic two: wide area flames
Sometimes rooms will just be too damn scary to stay in for any extended period of time, meteor can be used there as a fire and retreat tactic. Simply fill a large enough area with flames to be sure that they'll hit most of your targets, then retreat to safety and let the flames do their thing. During the process of setting this up you can use the spell delay to dodge attacks, either by walking or teleporting, cast static as you see fit and safe. Perfect against a throne room full of hell witches, who don't have much life, but can pose a serous threat if you don't keep moving around to dodge their projectiles.
Tactic three: standard fireball/meteor combo
While you're stacking flames using meteor and static has already done its job there's nothing stopping you from throwing in a bit extra damage using fireball. It's not much but it can still help a little bit in taking down a high life cold immune. In lower player games even your fireballs can be noticeable on their own against low life targets if you've got enough +skills.
6. Last words
6.1 Author comments
Seriously ... did I need this many words to describe the build? Surely not. But sometimes I do get a bit stubborn about what I must achieve before I consider something done. I really wanted to write a sorceress guide, since it is one of my favorite classes. However, it seamed like everything had already been done, all setups tried, all skill combinations explored. For a game this old that is of course understandable, especially for a class as popular as the sorceress.
As it stands this guide isn't really unique in any way. Neither the items, the skills nor the concept are new. Still, I would claim that the skill combination is at least under-utilized. I searched for �meteblizz� and got very few results, hopefully this guide will breathe some more life into the term. If not, well I hope I've at least managed to entertain a couple of people.
Ascii art has probably become a requirement for my guides as of now. Doing them in a single guide is one thing, but now that I've made a second one in the same style you'll expect me to continue, right? I do somewhat enjoy drawing them, but a few items are just annoyingly hard to get right. I'm rather unsatisfied with the orb, too simple and too few details. Sadly I couldn't manage to draw the detailed shaft of anything above eagle orbs in this resolution, keeping the shaft in line with the circle midpoint becomes a big problem while aiming not to leave ugly gaps.
The armor, gloves and boots on the other hand were awesome this time around. For the gloves I really wanted fingers, but no matter how hard I tried five fingers in that resolution looked wrong. So I rotated the gloves to hide one finger, and instantly I could use some very fitting curves instead of the straight lines I had tried before. The armor was probably the easiest. I wanted to have hip armor this time around, so that was the first step. Afterward it was a fairly straight road working towards the shoulders using mostly simple straight lines, just added some details here and there. The boot concept was to have some kind of high boots, kinda like sandstorm trek. Couldn't manage to do them directly next to each other as I did in the gunslinger guide, so just drew a single boot and mirrored its image.
Ah, the full setup ascii art, here I aimed at some comic relief here by using the less then seriously drawn tal mask. Also note the boxing gloves, the �magic wand� orb and the socks for shoes. Everything done with very low effort on my part, just a small and low detail style. Not sure my concept is fully visible in them all, but nonetheless I tried.
6.2 My own sorceress
Nothing proves the viability of a build more then showing it in action, thus I provide the video below. I'm using the standard setup, some cold skillers and also quite a few small charms for more magic find, still leveling her. The video will only show me running Baal once, but I think that should be enough for a demonstration.
6.2 Useful Links
This section will be edited to contain useful links to both external guides and single posts I believe would be worth reading for anyone reading this guide. It may look empty starting out but I'm sure I'll fill it out eventually.|||nice guide, well thought out alternative to meteorb
only suggestion for improvements I can think of would be a couple of damage/resist comparisons with full tals vs one or two choice alternative selections.|||Thanks, to be honest the thinking came at the end. Wanted a powerful blizzard for bossruns on 8p, and just blindly restated over and over to see which skills worked as decent backups at a low investment.
Will have to get back to this after a while and add corrections where needed, I'll honor your suggestion and add more complete setups with some damage comparisons once I do.|||Good stuff. After I got bored of my light sorc I tried various dual-tree build and found that Blizz worked the best. I would definitely include FO in any untwinked build, but if you've got slightly more points to spend or good equipment then Blizz is just so much more effective at higher player counts. In areas where you have to use both attacks it's I found it much easier to place Blizz while teleporting around and taking care of the cold immunes, while with FO you have to constantly reposition yourself if you want to use it optimally.|||Nice guide! Will have to eventually try it out (though my character backlog is pretty big at the moment!).
One suggestion; I see you advocate 1-point Frozen Armor. Iirc Frozen Armor freezes your enemies for a short period of time _after_ they hit you, while Shiver Armor chills enemies at the start of their attack animation causing it to prolong.
Seems to me that both have their uses, though I think I'd opt for SA if I were to use one of them. Blindly teleporting into a pack of dolls, I think I'd rather have them chilled before they hit me rather than frozen after.
Do note that I've never actually used SA in this practice, only FA, so I can't attest for its effectiveness.|||Quote:
Good stuff. After I got bored of my light sorc I tried various dual-tree build and found that Blizz worked the best. I would definitely include FO in any untwinked build, but if you've got slightly more points to spend or good equipment then Blizz is just so much more effective at higher player counts.
FO is fine up to nightmare baalruns if you ask me. It's against the two final waves I usually end up preferring blizzard. Both for untwinked and twinked play I'd say going FO first is a good idea now that we can just respec later, in either case FO totally destroys nightmare after all.
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In areas where you have to use both attacks it's I found it much easier to place Blizz while teleporting around and taking care of the cold immunes, while with FO you have to constantly reposition yourself if you want to use it optimally.
Yeah, the repositioning needed when using FO can indeed be quite tedious. However, there's also times where doing it makes for some quite enjoyable aspects of playing an orber. I'm mainly thinking about how you can make a few monsters (andy/duriel) walk along with the orb to make them take more damage then a standard "full orb". Part of me still wishes that this would be more effective then just blasting away with blizz/ice blast ...
Quote:
Nice guide! Will have to eventually try it out (though my character backlog is pretty big at the moment!).
One suggestion; I see you advocate 1-point Frozen Armor. Iirc Frozen Armor freezes your enemies for a short period of time _after_ they hit you, while Shiver Armor chills enemies at the start of their attack animation causing it to prolong.
Seems to me that both have their uses, though I think I'd opt for SA if I were to use one of them. Blindly teleporting into a pack of dolls, I think I'd rather have them chilled before they hit me rather than frozen after.
Do note that I've never actually used SA in this practice, only FA, so I can't attest for its effectiveness.
Good point. To be honest I haven't experimented with them much either, will have to do so before I add a mention of it to the guide. It's just one more point after all, so it's not a large extra investment, will defiantly look into it.|||Very nice guide, i much prefer this build using Blizzard over the regular Meteorber build using Frozen Orb (which feels clumsy and slow in comparison imo). Most people are scared about using Blizzard paired with another element as it has so many synergies, but imo Blizzard with only one synergy kicks FO's butt due to it's responsive casting, AOE, duration of effect and hit effect monsters receive when getting hit (not to mention it's potential sick damage).|||Wow awesome guide! I've always wanted to use blizzard, just afraid of not getting a decent secondary skill thats hell viable. Definately gonna respec and try this out
oh and btw, great artwork
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