Helm- Nightwings
Wep- Fathom
Shield- Whistan's guard (what to socket with?)
Armor- Ormus +3 warmth
Boots- treks
Belt- arach
Gloves- frostburn
Amulet- Not sure,+2 sorc w/ mass strength?
Ring1- FCR ring
Ring2- Soj
Inventory:
5 cold lifers
4 cold fhr
2 fhr scs
Life/mana scs (remaining)
With this build I should reach 63 fcr and 86 fhr while also trying to have max block.Any suggestions?|||I've used a very similar setup before-- this is a very strong dueling build. I'd definately recommend it and you're very close to the build i was using.
my suggestions (as someone who's spend a lot of time thinking about this particular build):
dump the fcr ring for another soj and find some kind of 2 sorc +fcr amulet to still hit the 63% breakpoint. you absolutely want 2 sojs on this build, you can't get enough +% mana and the skills are really nice.
as for shield-- i wouldn't use whitstan's on this setup. Whitstans is more useful for a base str sorc, but you're using nightwings so your str is already going to be at least 96. So you don't benefit as much (stat points wise) from using whitstans over a higher-damaging shield.
consider at level 95 you'll need the following dext levels to reach maxblock with the following shields:
179 dext = whistans
213 dext = upped visceratuant
234 dext = upped Moser's* (add an additional 4 str over nightwings, though)
238 dext = Artisan's Tower Shield of Deflecting (This is very shoppable so not as expensive as jmods)
as sorcs get 2 points of mana per stat point, you can convert the dext/str saved into mana at a 1:2 rate. So instead of considering the block%, we'll consider whitstans guard to have a mana bonus. Also keep in mind that the FBR breakpoints for sorcs are 27/48 so the FBR difference on the shields is irrelevent.
With that in mind the shields have the following stats:
WHITSTAN'S:
154 defense
+118 mana
1 open soc
UPPED VISCERATUANT:
275 defense*
+1 sorceress skills
+50 mana
1 open soc
UPPED MOSER'S:
393 defense*
+25 all resistances
2 open sockets
ARTISANS TOWER SHIELD OF DEFLECTING:
25 defense*
3 open sockets
*assuming perfect roll, in practice probably a bit less. Keep in mind that contrary to popular belief, defense is FAR from useless for a sorceress.
It's obviously debatable which shield to use. But consider that if you wanted +mana over skills or damage, you could use +mana gcs-- instead you use 9 skillers.
GCs can have up to 59 mana and 59mana + life gcs are considerably cheaper than cold skill lifers.
if you take whitstans over, say, visceratuant, you gain 68 mana but lose +1 all skills. +1 all skills is more than cold skills, as you lose a point of warmth, or 12% mana regen (12% mana regen is IMO worth more than 9 mana).
It is debatable-- if you like to build a defensive char you'll stack mana-- but if you're using whitstans over visceratuant you also ought to also be a few using manalifers instead of skillers. The current setup (whitstan's + all skillers) is not optimal in either direction.
It's actually annoying that these shields are all so close together in terms of usefulness... as you can see i spent a lot of time debating which shield to use on my maxblock/es/orb sorc i made a couple ladders ago.
also lets consider the value of open socket vs skills:
with your current setup (assuming you use a 2nd soj) you have +24 cold skills, putting you at 900 damage orb before cold +% damage. with +80% cold damage (your current setup assuming you socket everything with cold facets). you'll be doing 1620 orb damage. adding another 5% cold damage puts you at 1665 cold damage. in comparison, adding another cold skill level puts you at 1660 cold damage. so an additional cold facet is worth slightly more than +1 cold skills. (the -5% res from both cold mastery and the facet being equivalent)
Therefore your max damage setup would be artisan's tower shield of deflecting (with 3 open sockets for facets), but you give up a lot of defensive stats (defense and either mana or resists).
personally i'd go with upped visceratuant (the 250 defense pushes it over IMO-- a seriously underrated stat for sorcs) but its really quite debatable between this and an artisan's tower shield of deflecting.
as for what to socket it with-- i socketed everything with cold facets but i suppose you could go shael for 1 frame faster blocking.|||WOW,that's a lot of useful info there Millard.
Thanks for breaking down everything in a clear cut way
I have one question regarding the visceratuant,is it required to be upped?Being on NL I'm almost certain it's going to take me an enormous amount of time to find someone who has one.Would a regular visceratuant be ok or would that require too much base dex?|||non-upped visceratuant has much less block than an upped one so there's no point in using it non-upped. And yeah that's going to be tricky to find on non-ladder... might be easier to get an artisan's tower shield of deflecting.|||Sorry for these questions but where can I shop for the tower shield and do I stick facets in all 3 sockets?
What defensive stats am I giving up by using the tower shield?
If I were to use the tower shield should I use a couple of life/mana gcs?|||if i were using the tower shield i'd go full damage GCs with 3 facets, i mean you might as well go all out on damage at that point... although i guess you could do 1 shael and 2 facets for faster block rate... as for defensive stats... you give up a little bit of defense and you require more dexterity to hit maxblock which translates to less mana... so less mana but more damage.
alternatively you could stick to whitstan's guard and use a few life/mana gcs. your damage would be lower but your mana would be higher. its just a tradeoff depending on how much damage you want vs mana.
as for how to get one-- an artisan's tower shield of deflecting-- well you could probably buy one on the market quicker than you could shop one, but if you wanted to shop it yourself you'd need to do this:
roughly one in 5000 tower shields is artisans or jewelers of deflecting, and you can shop them from hell charsi...
the fastest way to do it would be to open a portal to the secret cow level right next to charsi... going through the portal and back should reset her inventory (assuming nobody else is in town). If you can appraise a tower shield every 5 seconds, it should take you on average ~7 hours (!) to find an artisans/jewelers tower of deflecting... still easier to get than a jmod :P ( i wouldn't even use a jmod on this char, anyway... thats 60 extra str to use it... 120 mana > 1 facet IMO. )|||So I decided to go with Whistans because I couldn't find an ATOD or visceratuant.I decided to do a little test duel and it seems I'm weak as hell.I barely scratched a barb even with almost all my gear (1.4k orb).|||i�m no expert in pvp - actually a total noob, but if u didn�t touch him at all, he might just have used sorb gear|||There are a lot of BMers in pub games. Dueling is like that, just ignore them.
if he's not using sorb, should take roughly 15 icebolts (from a frozen orb) to kill him. with one raven (this is not generally considered BM), should take about 25. with 2 ravens, should take about 75. He should still be killable even with 2 ravens though, you just need to avoid his whirlwind with teleport.
although if they're stacking cold resist you're probably screwed (some BMers make +180 resist axes (6 cold res jewels in a 6 soc zerker) and keep them in their stash just to screw with cold sorcs). This will cancel out cold mastery and reduce your damage by a stupid amount.
in any case barbs take a while to kill, you need to not get hit. need to kite and teleport the hell away when he whirlwinds.
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