Good PvP skills for a sorc

[schwaidy]

Hey, I've made a variety of PvM sorcs, but with 1.10 I thought it would be neat to make my ladder char a

pvp sorc (i can only play sorcs, it has to do with an obsession with teleport). I was wondering if there

were other valid offensive PvP skills besides the traditional TS and FO. Usually I play in those mass PvP

games. Any help would be appreciated, thanx.

[Archon_Wing]

I can't really think of much, since many skills would be difficult to do against a human target. It would be pretty hard to cast a firewall on a moving target, for example.

One I can think of is Hydra. Yes, it's infamous for despicable practices, but it's a decent attack in pvp. The idea is to lay them as traps while you go after them with orb/ts. With teleport, you can often lure unwary opponents to them. It's also much more flexible then many other attacks.

I'm not exactly an experienced dueler, so try experimenting. ;)

[schwaidy]

Thanx for the reply

As I understand it most people pump their lightning resist when dueling because it's basically the only way

to avoid thunderstorm. So, would it be worth it just to put one point in it and then save the rest. Perhaps

that way I might be able to make opponents think they need to pump their LR while I save skill points?

[lemekim]

If you want to try different skills, you can try Blizzard for one. It's potentially devastating spell, especially when combined with %enhanced cold damage items. People have been able to use it successfully in 1.09, and in 1.1 it's potential damage is mugh higher then that of FO; but it's harder to aim and use.

Looking at other spells on the cold tree, Ice Blase can reach very high damage at high levels; about 7k or so. Combine it with some of the %enhanced cold damage items, and it can kill some less prepared duelers in 1 blast. You would have to ignore Glacial spike synergy, since it only increases the freeze duration.

Moving to fire tree, another spell to consider is Fireball - while hard to aim and use, it can with proper items reach 16k damage, or 400 pvp damage with max fire resists.

As was mentioned, Hydra is a good spell as well.

Another spell that I see has potential in 1.1 is lightning, since it's now affected by cast rate, and is able to get 5 to 32k damage, about the same as the fireball.

On the defensive side, improved Energy shield (higher %) with telekinesis as it's synergy (less mana per point of damage) can provide you astonishing survaivability.

As for putting a point into TS, it's not a bad idea. You can even put a point into the mastery as well, and let +skill items give you at least some damage; so if someone recognizes that your TS level is low, they won't be able to just take off all lighting resists and ignore it.

[schwaidy]

Hmmm blizzard....

I thought the problem with that skill was that it was supposed to be really hard to target. If it's hard to

target monsters with it won't it be extremely difficult to target players? Also, in pvp players only take 1/4

damage from everything except poison right?

[Archon_Wing]

Absolutely. Even mid-level TS wreaks havoc if you don't have decent Lightning resist. (Indeed from experience) The auto-hit simply makes it hard to ignore. You could just max Ts without mastery, or spread points between mastery and TS.

[Archon_Wing]

Well, if they take 1/4 from all sorc attacks, that's not an issue, is it? :)

Yes, blizzard misses. However, it is effective against those who try to just stand still and pelt you. *cough* pubbie Amazons *cough*. It's also a way of dealing with necros that bone wall themselves in. Frozen orb doesn't pierce it, and TS hits the wall.

[lemekim]

And to add, while Blizzard is hard to aim, it is also hard to dodge. With firewall or hydra, you can see that there is fire on the ground, or 3 heads shooting at you, so you can dodge it. With blizzard, the shards hit randomly in the area, so even by looking at the blizzard itself its impossible to determine where the next shard will strike. Add desynch, and you are bound to get a few hits.

[edit: just to note, the pvp damage in 1.1 is 1/10, not 1/4 =\ ]

[schwaidy]

Thanx for the responses.

desynch? Whats that mean?

So overall what build would you recommend? Do you think I should go for blizzard or fo (or maybe hydra)?

Thanx for all the input

[lemekim]

Desynch - essentially lag, but it is more then that. It's what happens whenever a characters position (you or me) on your screen differs significantly from the actual position on the server. For example, paladins who are using charge for prolonged distances might look like they are 2 screens away from you, but in reality they are right next to you. Another example would be monsters surrounding you, and while on your screen you were able to get out from the circle, on the server you are still stuck between all the monsters and are getting hit.

As for the skill to choose, you also have to consider how many skill points you are willing to put into that skill and how many into supporting skills, such as warmth, teleport, energy shield, and now telekinesis. Blizzard requires heavy investment (60-80), whereas FO only requires 20-40.

Also you might want to consider how good are those skills for leveling. Are you able to use the skill to level fast, or are you going to be a very slow leveler? Although in this case, I think all skills are good for leveling.

[Chaerophon]

Well, the only other builds that I have ever seen in competitive duels have been nova and hydra. Nova sucks for duelling, period. On the other hand, if used correctly, Hydra can be used very efficiently. In particular, in my early days of duelling, a way-back lounger by the name of Chaosmongler used to be able to kill me using a bow, hydra, and TS as I suffered terribly from a.) lag, and b.) inexperience/a tendency to "press". However, against a seasoned orb/TS dueller with a close to optimal (legit as can be certain) setup, hydra is no contest.

That being said, I don't imagine that there will be any sorcs with "optimal" setups on the ladder for quite some time, particularly if duping continues to be monitored and punished. Thanks to this fact, a hydra/TS sorc might be more successful than would otherwise be the case in most 1.09 clan/tournament/"legit" duels.

As for public duelling... I wouldn't even bother. I haven't been involved for quite some time, but I'm sure that if you visit the PvP forum on Dii.net you'll run into several duelling communities that are a hell of a lot more fun - certain overpowering equipment setups are restricted (e.g only one raven vs. sorc, no rising sun ammy allowed, etc.) and the general calibre of the competitors is FAR superior to that of the average battle.net patron. Idiots still tend to come and go, but for the most part, they don't cheat, whine, or generally annoy to anywhere near the degree of those to be found in pubby games.

[schwaidy]

Thanx for the responses and the info on the dueling community.

I had a hydra sorc once and I tried a few duels with it. Although I didn't have TS I didn't find hydra to be

especially effective, but maybe it's just me. I think now I'm mostly trying to decide between FO and

blizzard. One of my concerns about using blizzard is that I'll have to sink so many points into it and its

synergies to make it as effective as possible. Hmmm....looks like I'll have to think more about the overall

build.

Thanx again.

[kier]

I have made a pvp hydra sorc before, and my current sorc has max hydra/mastery but I find meteor is an ok skill to use. The fire lasts a long time, and if you cast the meteor in existing fire the oposition will not know it's coming before it's too late.

The reason hydra isn't good is because of fast chars. If a char can run fast enough it can usualy escape with only 1 or 2 hits, meaning you have to run away :P .

Blizzard is a good skill as aiming is'nt too much of a problem, you just have to hope for some luck :huh: Just keep lots of 5% faster run/walk charms in your inv and then if anyone tries to follow you just cast it a couple of yards in front of you and carry on running, they generaly will run into it before thinking "oh sh...."

[whereagles]

Sorcie has only a few effective pvp skills. Most skills are hard to aim and easy to dodge, so there's really little left to try out besides frozen orb.

For 1-on-1, orb/thunderstorm is prolly the best. And you can even skip thunderstorm, which is really only worth it vs ama.

For team-vs-team, orb/hydra is very good. Hydra is important because it prevents corner campings. Camping is hard to do 1-vs-1, but easy in tvt. Hydra has the strategic advantage of keeping opponents on the run, something which is very important in tvt, so that's why it's recommened. Thunderstorm is the alternative, but making TS passes in tvt is rather risky unless the opponent is isolated (rare).

For 1.10, my guess is sorcie build will become pure orb. Thunderstorm and other skills cause piddly damage after the huge 1/10 pvp damage nerf, so there's little reason to use them. Instead, improve on the sorcie's defense (energy shield and perhaps telekin/teleport) and offense (ice bolt synergy, more cold mastery). For anti-camping you can put 10 into blizzard and it shd be fine. Cold charms' price predicted to sky-rocket :)

[lemekim]

I forgot to mention... Depending on how Blizzard decides to leave cold mastery, cold skills might become the skills of choice or people will abandon them in favor of other skills.

If the cold mastery continues to behaive in 1.1 as it does in beta, as straight substraction akin to Lower Resists, instead of taking a % of resists, like it does in 1.09, then people will be able to minimize any cold damage by putting on high amounts of cold resistances.

You might say that in ladder, people won't find the uber items that will allow them to counter cold mastery. Well, all they need is a 4 socket armor with 4 thuls, and a 3 socket shield with thuls; all easy to get items. And if the sorceress would be pure orb, she would be, well, screwed.

Of course, the Blizzard might change their mind, and the listing on Arreat might still be true about cold mastery lowering by %. But several things would not make sense then. For one, all the items which reduce enemies cold resistances will be somewhat useless, since the cold mastery will bring everything near 0 resists anyway. Also, a sorceress would never have a problem with cold immunities, since -100% resists would always de-immunize them. Such a build would be simply broken.

In short, if cold mastery remains as it is in 1.09, you should probably go with some cold skill. If cold mastery becomes akin to LR, you might want to look around before making the final decision.

[schwaidy]

Thanx for the continued input everyone.

So I think blizzard is basically out as it would cost 80 skill points to pump it and all of its synergy skills.

So as presuming cold mastery stays the way it does in 1.09 I guess I'll be using fo. Whereagles, you

mentioned that skills like thunderstorm won't do enough damage since damage is reduced 1/10, but thats

no different than fo. After all, with fo and its synergy at 20 it only does around 400 damage, so about 40 in

PvP. Am I missing something?

Thanx

[schwaidy]

Cold Mastery and items with the magic property "Lowers Enemy Resistance" now applies to immune monsters.
Cold Mastery and elemental piercing have been changed to a constant amount.

Just found this on the arreat summit. Well, That could change dueling a bit (and monster hunting)