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Patrick Vervoorn wrote::
> In article <d4tgea$j9d$1@domitilla.aioe.org>,
> Hansjoerg Malthaner <hansjoerg.malthaner@nurfuerspam.de> wrote:
>
>>Patrick Vervoorn wrote::
>>
>>
>>>Ouch. Looking at other posts (I read all, then started with replying, and
>>>this is first
of yours, it seems he's wearing a Shaftstop.
[...]
>>I could try to trade for Duriels shell. I can't afford an Um rune for
>>Duress, much less the runes for Fortitude.
I got a Duriels shell from a thankful player whom I had rushed a bit. (I
didn't ask for it, it was just luck.) Now my sorceress' merc is wearing
duriels shell and the shaftstop was given to my assassins merc.
My sorceress merc still can't use the bonehew, although he catched up as
much as possible, he's now lvl 78 while my sorc is lvl 79. I think a
socketed helm with one or two flawless or perfect amethysts could solve
the problem, but I didn't try that yet.
> I understand completely. Anyway, I have some spare Duriel's Shells on my
> mules. These aren't the best ones (they are on my mercs), but they're
> better than nothing... Next time we meet, remind me to pull one of a mule.
Thanks, but this weekend I was just lucky
>>I could try to find a 3 or 4 socket armor and plug it with Tal, Ort and
>>Thul to cover the missing resistances. Yet I have nothing close to the
>>600+ defense that Shaftstop has.
>
> That's also a cheap option. Also, the defense on a merc isn't that
> important, in my opinion. Better get his resists up, and loose some
> defense in the process, than the other way around.
In a muling attempt I lost a lot of runes yesterday. It's been the first
time that a game stopped to exist during a character change. The game
was not quite new, I already had muled a few things between characters -
only a pile of runes were left for my rune mule, and when I tried to
bring him in, the game was gone.
Which means that I'm currently very short on runes, the rune mule was
made just for keeping them and not yet filled.
I'll watch out for a 4 socket armor. In the meantime I hope to find a
few more of the low level runes.
Found a Dol in nightmare WSK yesterday. Don't laugh, that my highest
self-found rune so far
😉
[CL/FB Sorceress build idea]
>>Well, we can still reconsider our fire/lightning idea
>
> Which is why i was questioning the fire/lightning sorc.
My sorc grew to clvl 22 now, and it's getting time to decide which way
to go. So far I put all points in the fire tree, and fire ball is
really strong.
Now I must decide if I go for CL/LM or FO/CM as secondary spell combo.
I can defer the decision until clvl ~40 but I think I should start to
build the second element a bit earlier to have a backup in case o
immunes that can appear in nightmare already.
>>Cold mastery has very unique benefits. If we want them, we can't build
>>something without a powerful cold spell.
>
> Exactly, which is why it's so very tempting to include FO in every sorc
> build...
We both have sorceresses who play fairly well even in the later areas of
the game (yours a bit better, mine a little worse).
We can try to use the experience to build even stronger characters, or
we can try to build something new.
I'm really undecided. I'm afarid that FB/CL will be too weak, and I have
to abandon the character soon. I'm afraid that FB/FO will be too strong
and my new sorc could outperform my beloved FW/FO sorc, finally taking
her place.
Maybe I shouldn't start so many new characters?
>>Yes, I completely mis-guessed the effects. I'm now spending all further
>>points on CM which gives the biggest advantage.
>
> Don't neglect boosting your fire damage!
I always wait for two skill points then put them 1:1 in fire and cold
mastery (I do it this way, becuase I'm afraid I'd not split them 1:1 if
I spend them each level).
FO is now somewhere ~330 damage/shard, CM lowers resistence by 60% and
fire wall does 4.9k damage per second (this includes + skill effects
from my equipment).
Act1/hell is fairly easy now, act 2 is ok. I don't play much in act 3
currently, and act 5 provides some real problems. Sometimes there are
archers of the burning dead as guest monsters in the bloody foothills,
and they usually kill my merc quicker than I can kill them, and then I
have to run ... I guess the spearcats will be the same.
I will see. There is room to grow. I still level reasonably, fire
mastery needs two or three more points to be maxed, and cold mastery has
a lot of room for improvement, yet I don't expect to get enough skill
points to max it.
Compared to my assassin which is pretty much stuck, despite excellent
gear, my sorc is doing fairly well and has a lot of upgrade options
gear-wise.
I'm gambling coronets. I gambled a few with + 1 skills, but none for
sorcress skills. So I keep hunting for money, running some minor bosses
for items and then gambling the money away on coronets.
>>Fire bolt (Snyergy for fire ball) is available at lvl 1 and you may pump
>>it up all the way to level 12, if you want. You'll want to max it
>>anyways. So you can start easily.
>
> That's how the Fireball guides state it: simply start pumping fire bolt
> from the beginning, switch to Fire ball once that becomes available, and
> keep pumping them until your other options are available (with an FB/FO
> sorc, that's at lvl 30 when FO becomes available). Normal is supposedly a
> breeze doing this.
It is. FB is incredibly strong in the early ares. I'm lvl 22 and can
almost fight my way through the chaos sanctuary solo.
The only problem is mana. I tried to live on base energy as adived by
some sorceress guides. I gave her a lot of +mana items (+20 on amulet,
+17 on rings, +31 on armor, +17 on helm, +7 on shield, +24 on orb and a
few +mana charms). Yet, fire balls fire so rapidly that after a short
while she's out of mana and need to drink a blue potion. Fights are
burst fights, she can take down hordes of monsters quickly but needs
time to recover between fights.
Currently I think base energy is too restrictive, and I'll put a few
points in it, maybe boosting it to 50 and see how that works.
>>Chain lightning comes at 18, when you have to split the point between
>>fire ball and the lightning tree.
>
> It looks interesting on paper, but when I made my sorc, the big problem
> with chain lightning (or the plain lightning for that) is that they use up
> a _LOT_ of mana. You can spam them rapidly, and when my sorc became lvl
> 18, and I spent my first point in CL, I quickly noticed I could only fire
> a few CL's before running out of mana. Not good.
Hmmm ... this doesn't exactly give me a lot of hope.
> It's only now that I'm something like lvl82 or something, that I can spam
> a powerful enough CL, to quickly kill monsters and can also keep it up...
You build you sorc with low energy but a lot of +mana/+energy items,
some of which are not suitable for low level characters. This is a
promising strategy for the late game, but of course hard in the early
levels.
>>But it looks like an easy start and continuously growing power
>>throughout all levels.
>
> Try it out, I'm curious as to your experiences: you needs lot of mana to
> use CL... And this simply is not available at level 18-~40,50... So you
> need to drink a lot of mana potions...
I started with FB, and most likely FB will be my main weapon to the very
end of normal. I'll build the secondary spell 1:1 with skill points
(alternating between FB and the secondary spell) but most likely not use
it much unless there are quite some points accumulated.
>>If you can spend 60+ points on the fire tree, this is a good idea.
>>
>>OTOH if you start with my suggestion, you get the most out of the first
>>40 points, and still can upgrde by adding to FM and meteor later.
>
> The guide I was referring to was an FO/FB one, so that means you only
> spend about 20-30 points in a FO/CM, and 60+ points in the fire tree.
I need to sum them up first, but I think my fire wall/frozen orb sorc
has already more than 30 points in cold skill. FO needs a lot of
prerequisites (6 I believe) so that 30 points only mean 24 for FO/CM
itself. Even if FO is strong, this will limit it's use quite a bit.
OTOH you get a very strong fire ball this way. Unless you run into a lot
of fire immunes (but they are said to be the most numerous), you'll have
a very strong sorceress.
Fire wall is easy on the skill points. It just needs two prerequisites,
and has no synergies, so you can max it out with ~42 total points in the
fire spell tree.
>>>Also very low. I don't know the numbers of my FO/CL sorc, but she has
>>>maxed CL and LM, and has quite a few points in Lightning, and deals, I
>>>think, considerably more damage than the above.
>>
>>Each point in lightning will add 4% damage, according to the calculator.
>>
>>Again the question is how many points you can spend. Withing the 40/40
>>limit that I used you can't get more out of chain lightning, I think.
>
> Exactly, and this is precisely the reason I'm questioning why a
> Lightning/Fire sorc is going to work: you simply need too many points to
> get a potent spell out of both of them. So it's one, or the other, and
> then you get to FO/CM for your backup skill, with SF as a cheap 3rd
> backup.
I'm afraid a tri-elemental build will not be possible if FB+synergies
and CL+synergies are chosen as primary and secondary attacks.
> Of course, the challenge is in the Fire/Lightning sorc, not in the rather
> standard FO/CB build.
Right. The only question is, if we want to accept the challenge, or
chicken and go to the easy way of FO/CM + additional spells
>>Yes. Finally you just don't have enough skill points to max three
>>elements, actually not even for two.
>
> Yup, which is why you need to start making compromises, and could end up
> with two fizzlers of attacks.
This reminds me "The specialist learns more and more about a smaller and
smaller area, until he knows everything about nothing. The generalist
knows lees and lees about a bigger and bigger ares until he knows
nothing nothing about everything"
Obviously both extremes are not desireable. The question is, which kind
of compromise is good for us? Finally there even might be different
'best' solutions for different players.
> Heh.
😉 I wasn't trying to reach the impossible, I was trying to make
> clear that maybe a Fire/Lightning sorc is a bit of a problematic build to
> make powerful.
The monster library at the arreat summit pages says that many monsters
have lower lightning resists than fire or cold resists. We should not
only look at the damage, but also how many monsters we can hurt, and how
badly we can hurt them. Lightning doesn't look so bad overall, even if
the total damage numbers are not as impressive as for fire.
Maybe Blizzard tried to balance the spells and the monsters, just many
players don't know the numbers and therefore simply choose the attacks
that sum up to the biggest figure?
> I've also read plenty of guides which descrive a _single_ tree sorc, which
> is a sorc that has to play in teams, because while she is _very_ powerful
> in one element (a fully maxed and synergized Blizzard, or meteor, or
> firewall is extremely powerful), she's in big trouble once she runs into
> an immune monster.
It's good for clan players. Not for us, becuase we never know of what
characters the next party in the next game will consist. Alsom, the more
we want to play solo, the more we need versatile characters.
So a single-tree sorceress is no option for me. Dual-tree is my
compromise. Tri-elemental might be possible with a very careful
selection of spells, particularly in terms of prerequisites. Overall I
doubt the doability. My fire wall/frozen orb/charged bolt sorceress
suffers too much from the 13 points that went into the charged
bolt/lightning mastery, and only once(!) so far charged bolt was needed
to kill a double-immune boss.
I'd really advice against a three elemental build, unless you can do
magic with only a few skill points, like static field.
> So the next step is dual-tree, and there you're quickly locked in only a
> few options.
I think it's not so few, just considering the attack spells:
Fire ball/fire wall/meteor are all fine fire spells.
Charged bolt and chain lightning are both nice.
Frozen orb and blizzard are also both nice.
So this is 3*2*2 = 12 spells out of which you choose two from different
trees, so you have 12 options with theses spells.
How about nova? It also seems a cheap option in the lightning tree, and
could be used as well as charged bolt?
>>If we advance from a few more levels (say 94 and all quests) you can
>>distribute a total of 105 points (IIRC).
> What I'm thinkg of is:
>
> 20/15 FO/CM (35)
> 20/20/20 FB/FB/FM (60)
> 1/1/1 SF/Tel/Warmth (3)
>
> Prerequisites I don't know off the top of my head, so I'll assume 5, so
> the above would cost about 35 + 60 + 3 + 5 = 103 points. Hmm. Difficult,
> but doable, and already quite potent, even before doing it exactly like
> that.
Yes, that'll be very effective in both fire and cold damage. If I decide
against lightning, I'll try this.
> Lightning is fun, but needs ~50 points to become potent (maxed LM+CL, and
> some points in LI). So Lightning can also only be combined with FO again.
Ok, so we should abandon the idea of a fire/lightning sorc ?
> Regards,
> Patrick.
--
c.u. Hajo
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