Fire sorc help
Travis
the best way to build a fire sorc. I want gear anf stat point and
skill point distributions. I'm basically tired of just killing with
my pally or dodging things with my trapper. so I want to mf with a
sorc. If a fire sorc isn't the best way to go I'd love to hear other
builds.
Travis
Mickey
news:lbbl529480fl9qi05...@4ax.com...
Travis, you need to be more specific here. There are two primary builds for
a fire sorc. Death from above (Meteors) and a FB sorc. The difference being
that the FB sorfc, while maxing FB, Fbolt and pumping FM, has room left for
other skills. Of course, she is also FCR dependant. My rocket sorc is an FB
build, with high levels in GS and some of it's synergies, and some decent
CM. The advatance to this build it two fold. First of all, GS is about the
best defensive weapon in the game, as it really locks em in place. The
second and FAR less obvious advantage is that you can slap on a snowclash,
for for a change, have a granted skill that actually has a value, as the
Blizzard from the snowclash will actually kill because you have points in
the mastery and synergies. Also, once y ou get thue hang of the build, it's
a LOAD of fun to play, especially with the knowledge that you are wandering
around in hell mode merrily killing while have put not ONE point in any
skill higher than level 18. I have a perfsonal distaske for Meteor sorcs
because they are boring, I hate relying on tomered spells, the flotsam from
meteors makes seeing anything in the throne room neatly impossible, and
lastly because they are the build used by 10000000000000 pindlebots :)
Mickey
Travis
Well having seen how exciting a falling meteor is I'm pretty sure
fireball is more exciting. But what types of damage can you get from
FB? my merc will have an infinity stick to help out and I just got
tals armor, for free, and tals ammy. But what else should I look for
for a FB sorc. I'm pretty sure a fcr ring would be better then a soj.
would a 3 skills 20 fire eschuta be better then a oculus? and should
I just look at a 35fcr monarch spirit shield. I'm not sure where to
go for boots and gloves.
could you post a run down of what skills, and stats you used on that
girl of yours mickey. I'd like to compare it to some of the cookie
cutter builds out there.
TRavis
Mark (newsgroups)
> On Thu, 4 May 2006 22:22:32 -0400, "Mickey"
> <XXmic...@XXcomcastXX.net> wrote:
>
> >"Travis" <Notgon...@farfaraway.com> wrote in message
> >news:lbbl529480fl9qi05...@4ax.com...
> >> Okay I have a sorc with no skill points or stat points spent. what is
> >> the best way to build a fire sorc. I want gear anf stat point and
> >> skill point distributions. I'm basically tired of just killing with
> >> my pally or dodging things with my trapper. so I want to mf with a
> >> sorc. If a fire sorc isn't the best way to go I'd love to hear other
> >> builds.
So it's MF you want? Do you have any other requisites?
> Well having seen how exciting a falling meteor is I'm pretty sure
> fireball is more exciting. But what types of damage can you get from
> FB? my merc will have an infinity stick to help out and I just got
> tals armor, for free, and tals ammy. But what else should I look for
> for a FB sorc. I'm pretty sure a fcr ring would be better then a soj.
> would a 3 skills 20 fire eschuta be better then a oculus? and should
> I just look at a 35fcr monarch spirit shield. I'm not sure where to
> go for boots and gloves.
I'll give you my thoughts. Firstly, and most importantly, if you are
going for a fire tree sorc, then I suggest using Fireball as your main
offensive weapon, not Meteor. Meteor is useful for inbetween casts, but
is very hard to control. With the easy to hit FCR breakpoint of 105,
you can spam Fireballs and deal more damage in less time than Meteor,
and kill very effectively. With an Infinity merc, bosses will go down
very quickly. However, this will cost quite a bit of Mana if you're
spamming Fireball, so an Insight merc might be mandatory.
On this same note, if you go for Fireball, Mickey is incorrect about
one thing. Put one point in Fire Mastery, then pump Meteor then Fire
Bolt first, before FM. They are synergies to Fireball and give better
returns (surprisingly) than more points in FM.
But then you have a choice. You can either go for all out fire damage,
with maxed important fire skills (Fbolt, Fball, Meteor, FM). Or you can
go for the cookie cutter dual tree build which is:
Max: FBolt, Fball, Meteor
At least one in Fire Mastery
Max: Frozen Orb
At least one in Cold Mastery (I have 3).
A friend of mine plays this cookie cutter build and it works very well.
Now, because you said you were looking for a MF sorc, I'll just suggest
an alternative quickly. I play a Charged Bolt / Lightning / Frozen Orb
sorc. Stats:
Charged Bolt: 20
Lightning: 20
Lightning Mastery: 20
Frozen Orb: 20
Cold Master: 3
Thunder Storm: 1
Prerequisites and usual suspects: 1 each
I have about 4 skill points left over at lvl 90 because I don't know
what to spend them on.
I find her very effective because there appear to be far less Lightning
Immune monsters than Fire Immune. Charged Bolt is also a great boss
killer when you get right on top of them. A wand of Lower Resist on
switch is a huge help though.
I'm not saying she is more effective than the Fireball sorc, just an
alternative build.
My equipment is as follows:
Shako - PTopaz
+3 Lightning Skills 33% MF Amulet
Occy with a 12% all res jewel (I hate having to keep loads of charms)
Vipermagi 33% all res - PTopaz
Spirit Monarch
Arachnids Mesh
Nagel Ring / Nagel Ring / Wisp Projector (souls) / Natures Peace
(nilly)
40% Chance Guards
Aldurs Boots (Could swap these for War Travs, but I like the life and
extra Fire Res that is lacking on Spirit)
Sorc Torch
Anni
5% all res sc
some other life and res charms.
Obviously an Eschutas with the approriate stats would be more effective
than an Occy at killing, but since this is an MF sorc, you lose 50% MF,
and you lose the 20% res all provided by Occy. That means you have to
make up that res somewhere else which I find annoying. I like space in
my inventory.
> could you post a run down of what skills, and stats you used on that
> girl of yours mickey. I'd like to compare it to some of the cookie
> cutter builds out there.
The GS build does sound cool and I've seen Patrickvs in action. It
kills well. I've never tried a full GS build so I can't say, but Frozen
Orb is a good killer too.
Hope I didn't just repeat everything you know already, but I hope it
helps.
Mickey
My has no infinity and no facets, and does 7k with her FB. As to the rest,
meet me in a game with a completely naked char so I can hand you all her
items, and I will see what she has in the way of skills and stats natievly.
Hard to tell when she's fully dressed. Her gear I can post now"
Hat - Shako
Armor - Viper
Shield - Spirit
Weapon - Eschuta's
Gloves - Magefists
Belt - Snowclas
Boots - Wateralks
Ammy - Mara's
Ring - 18STR, 19 life, 27Mana, 23LR, 24FR
Ring - SOJ
I also have 2 fire skillers, but I don't use them as I am loaded with resist
charms and a gheed's.
Mickey
FuManchu
I tend to prefer single element sorceresses ever since they brought
synergies into the fold. Of the three trees, I would have to say that
fire would be the weakest MF'er in my mind. It is quite fun, however.
Max fireball, firebolt, meteor, fire mastery. If you intend on using
meteor a lot, inferno is another skill to add points to as a synergy.
I'd skip that, max telekinesis (at the end once the other skills are
maxed out) and suggest getting a memory staff for the ES. Strength to
equip gear (156 if you want spirit monarch or stormshield), no dex,
rest to mana (or rest to vit if you are not going the ES route). With
the all mana route, you want to stock up on life charms (or ideally
fire skillers with 45 life for you insanely rich folks), since there
are those mana burn monsters that could make things pretty hairy. I
actually prefer the all vita route since the ES build seems more
suited to PvP in my mind.
The other viable, hell-worthy single tree sorc builds (IMO) are
lightning/chain lightning (which is my favourite and works exceedingly
well if you happen to have an infinity polearm for your merc - for
some reason it seems to benefit the lightning tree more than fire or
especially cold), frozen orber, or a blizzard/glacial spike sorc. A
blizz sorc can be made with very cheap equipment and has quite high
damage without great gear. The orber needs some better gear to give
you enough damage, in my experience. You WILL find monsters immune to
your attacks, and this is where a merc comes in. I can run countess
easily with my blizzard sorc - the merc takes out the cold immunes for
me. I usually help out by using static field to weaken them up first.
GS is great since it freezes the enemy and I agree with some of
Mickey's posts in this group where he suggests that it's damage hurts
more than it seems.
magnate
> Travis wrote:
>
> >Okay I have a sorc with no skill points or stat points spent. what is
> >the best way to build a fire sorc. I want gear anf stat point and
> >skill point distributions. I'm basically tired of just killing with
> >my pally or dodging things with my trapper. so I want to mf with a
> >sorc. If a fire sorc isn't the best way to go I'd love to hear other
> >builds.
> >
> I tend to prefer single element sorceresses ever since they brought
> synergies into the fold. Of the three trees, I would have to say that
> fire would be the weakest MF'er in my mind. It is quite fun, however.
> Max fireball, firebolt, meteor, fire mastery. If you intend on using
> meteor a lot, inferno is another skill to add points to as a synergy.
> I'd skip that, max telekinesis (at the end once the other skills are
> maxed out) and suggest getting a memory staff for the ES. Strength to
> equip gear (156 if you want spirit monarch or stormshield), no dex,
> rest to mana (or rest to vit if you are not going the ES route). With
> the all mana route, you want to stock up on life charms (or ideally
> fire skillers with 45 life for you insanely rich folks), since there
> are those mana burn monsters that could make things pretty hairy. I
> actually prefer the all vita route since the ES build seems more
> suited to PvP in my mind.
As soon as 1.10 came out I saw the synergies and made a single-tree
fire sorc as my first character. As soon as she was high enough level
to use Leaf (17? 19?) she chewed through the rest of Normal and the
whole of NM, pausing only very briefly to let her merc kill FIs in late
NM. She equipped a Memory staff at level 43.
As soon as she got into Hell she became infuriating to play. So many
FIs, and nothing to do about them. I slogged through Acts I-III, and
retired her in Act 4 in frustration. I had invested too many points in
the fire tree, there was no viable way to start a second tree, and
there were too many FIs for her and merc to kill.
Do you have a solution to this? I know there is a runeword for a merc
weapon that gives the merc a conviction aura, but I've never tried it
(I don't think I have the runes for it). Does it help with FIs in Hell?
Yours intrigued,
CC
~misfit~
Infinity, 4 socket polearms; BER MAL BER IST.
IMO the elementalist this weapon most helps would be a lightning attacker
as, in the small amount of testing I've done, LIs are broken more often than
any other element. It does break a lot of FIs as well with CIs being broken
less than anything else.
Bear in mind that we're talking normal monster types here, bosses very
rarely, if ever, get their immuities broken.
There's a hint in the runeword that this stick is best used with a lightning
attacker:
"-(45-55)% to enemy lightning resistance. (Varies)"
That's on top of the level 12 Conviction aura.
I have one, made it for my Freezealot, who's cold attack doesn't seem to
benefit much from the weapon. If it didn't do big damage (+255-325% ED) and
have big CB (40%) I'd probably swap it out. As it is I've loaded my pally up
with lightning damage charms and the Stormlash he's using does respectable
lightning damage (as well as Static Field, that's a lightning skill huh?) In
effect my Pally is a dual-elementalist now, cold and lightning. with a large
chunk of physical thrown in.
--
Shaun.
FuManchu
>
>As soon as she got into Hell she became infuriating to play. So many
>FIs, and nothing to do about them. I slogged through Acts I-III, and
>retired her in Act 4 in frustration. I had invested too many points in
>the fire tree, there was no viable way to start a second tree, and
>there were too many FIs for her and merc to kill.
>
>Do you have a solution to this? I know there is a runeword for a merc
>weapon that gives the merc a conviction aura, but I've never tried it
>(I don't think I have the runes for it). Does it help with FIs in Hell?
>
becomes a force to be reckoned with. An eth infinity elite polearm is
great as it will help break the immunities of some creatures. I find
this more helpful to a lightning sorc. That being said, I have a
blizzard sorc that runs countess. Her merc has an eth CV insight
polearm and he takes out the cold immunes. An eth reapers toll is a
great weapon, as are bonehews and other similar gear. Placing enough
life leech on the character help significantly, as does having decent
resists, or damage reducing. Levelling your character and the merc up
manually without the benefit of Baal running in hell will make this
harder to accomplish, of course. The merc needs to be mid-80's at
least to become powerful enough to survive and hold his own, IMO.
Al Smith
Jewels, rings, amulets and charms can provide a broader range of
elemental damage, if you have made the mistake of committing
yourself to only one elemental attack. Hell is tough. It's got
immunities, regeneration, plus large loss of points when you die.
I'm finding that you really need more than one elemental attack,
or an elemental plus a physical, if you are fighting alone.
~misfit~
IMO it's not so much the merc becoming powerful, it's that his resists scale
with clvl. Unless you can give him RA as well as LL and high damage/defence
then you need to level him (and yourself of course as he can't be higher
than you [BCM exceptions noted])
--
Shaun.