I've always considered charged bolteress to be something of a silly skill, but my friend made a charged bolteress recently, and he can easily take on hell meph. His charged bolt, lightning mastery, and synergies aren't even maxed.
I've been considering making a charged bolteress//orb sorc, to replace my current fireball//orb sorc.
Charged bolt ends up casting 20 somethign bolts, each dealing more than 300 damage (using the equipment I will be using). Is this all viable? Here is what my skill plan would look like.
Frozen Orb: 20
Charged Bolt: 20
Lightning: 20
Lightning Mastery: 20
Cold Mastery:1
Static Field: 1
Telekinesis: 1
Teleport: 1
Energy Shield: 1
Chain Lightning: 1
Prereqs to Frozen Orb: 5
Total of 93 skill points. By the time all this is maxed, I'll be at level 80. Any further skill points will be put into cold mastery/ice bolt.
What do you guys think? Viable?
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Viable, yes. Durable... depends.
CB is best used at close range. Are you prepared to tank Lister's pack? :)
Best used at close range? How do you figure?
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The closer you are, the more of your bolts hit your target. Sure, they will spread out and cover a larger area as they go, but the up close, concentrated hits do the most good.
-Griselda
Why can't we all just get along
--Pete
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I would use Charged Bolt for crowd control and Orb for lone monsters. If I was taking out a pack, I would just back up and cast charged bolt.
...Right?
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Quote: I would use Charged Bolt for crowd control and Orb for lone monsters. If I was taking out a pack, I would just back up and cast charged bolt.
...Right?
Right. It's just you would do damage :)
Consider, that regular monsters in hell can have 16k life in single player games. If you hit a monster like that with only 1-2 sparks per cast, you will not kill them. Lister's pack, in particular, is composed of monsters each having 22-33k life in single player!
Besides, Orb is wonderful for crowd control... if I were you, I'd use Orb for crowd control and CB for lone monsters ;) Heck, I'd use orb for everything!
Anyway, if you DO make a charged boltress, do take precautions. We've been through this a million times already, but do block! Or make a fireballer, they are infinitelly more powerful in most cases (well, not against the countess, but I guess you see what I mean).
I already have a fireball/orb sorc, and it's my most powerful character. I just want to try something new. I don't see why I need to make her a blocking character though.
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The only way to kill things using Charged Bolt is to cast at them from about 1-2 steps away. Even more effective at point blank. I gaurantee you 100% that you need to have Max block % and also lots of FHR if you are going to play a CB sorc. Like previously mentioned if you fire off CB from far away you will be lucky if more than 2 bolts hit a particular mob. You might be able to make it through NM using that tactic but in hell you are not going to kill anything. They heal too fast. And if you don't have max block and FHR you are going to die before you get the chance to kill anything.
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Alot of the problem has already been stated, but I'll put this in:
I deleted my CB Sorceress the second the patch came out, as they capped the maximun amount of bolts cast. I want from >30 to 24(which is the cap, IIRC). I made a test character in 1.10, and it just wasn't as *fun*. Oh well.
BANANAMAN SEZ: SHUT UP LADIES. THERE IS ENOF BANANA TO GO AROUND. TOOT!
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You don't need to make her a blocking character.. you could try to make her an ES character. If you can get the gear. But since ES ties up 2 of your skill slots, it will be a weaker character, although you won't have to worry about block and stun.
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Just in case you're not already aware of it, here's a Charged Boltress Discussion in the dii.net SPF. Theres a build there by Lira Lindiriel, who I think knows of what she speaks. B)
What if I just don't get hit?
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How exactly are you going to manage that? I've got a paladin with level 25 holy shield, and all the defense he can get without defiance, and he still gets hit. A lot. So much so that his 900 hp is not enough.
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Generally, you just move your character out of the way.
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05-18-2004, 03:27 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-18-2004, 03:27 AM by Griselda.)
If you're looking to try something new, why not try a new secondary skill as well instead of orb? If you are trying out an unfamiliar skill like charged bolt and you're very familiar with your secondary skill, you may be tempted to just use orb on everything that's not cold immune, just because you're used to it. That might leave you with the impression that charged bolt isn't very good, or very much fun, simply because you didn't use it as much as you thought you would have. It also might slow you down as far as developing tactics that can make charged bolt more effective.
I played my charged bolt sorceress in 1.09, so I'm probably not the best person to recommend a secondary skill. But, for what it's worth, I used meteor with charged bolt, and it was great fun.
Why can't we all just get along
--Pete
As fun as it would be, there just aren't enough skill points to bring either skill to full ownaging power. Frozen Orb has a weak mastery, and a pathetic synergy, so to gain near full efficiency with orb, I only have to max the skill itself. If I was going CB/Meteor, I'd want to max out Meteor, Charged Bolt, Lightning Mastery, Fire Mastery, Fireball, Firebolt, and Lightning.
:-\
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05-18-2004, 03:56 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-18-2004, 04:05 AM by Chesspiece_face.)
Griselda has a good point. One that can be easily transferred onto the rest of this threads topics. If you are expecting to use Charged Bolt much like you do Frozen Orb you are going to fail. If you really want to use Charged Bolt as your main skill the first thing you need to do is change your play style. Charged Bolt does not play like Frozen Orb or Fire Ball. To use CB effectively you need to be standing next to the mobs you are shooting. If you are standing next to the mobs you WILL get hit. If you are planning to use CB from far away, then why bother using it at all. Just go back to the skills that work better from far away.
The CB sorc, while it did gain a lot of good synergies, is not as powerful in 1.10. In 1.9 it was a viable character, mainly because of the minimal skill point allocation that went into making a good CB. In 1.10 you have to dedicate yourself to obtaining every synergy to make it worth while and by doing that you minimize the other secondary skills you can obtain. Personally i think that Fire Wall is a good secondary skill for the CB sorc. It was what i used back in 1.9 and it carries well into the 1.1 environment with the same usefulness.
The main problem with Fire Wall is that it is hard to get your targets to stay in the flames for any period of time. Well with a CB sorc that problem is pretty much negated. You are already going to be in the fray by using your CB so the targets will be stationary. Toss down a Fire Wall and pound out the CBs while you wait for FW's timer to run out. Rinse and Repeat. The key is to find the skills that operate well together. CB and FO are inherantly different skills and playstyles to use them well. By choosing to mainly be a CB sorc you inherantly need to change your playstyle. The main change is to create a castor character that can take hits well. If you can take hits well than you've overcome the biggest burden a CB sorc has. The easiest way to take the hits is to obtain max block rate. Although other methods have been mentioned I think that Mana Shield is far to skill point intensive to be an option. And a un-maxed synergy Mana Shield will more than likely kill you before it saves you.
Edit: also to respond to your last post, Fire wall only needs the 20 points in FW and then the 1 point into Fire Mastery to be more than effective. It is the same skill investment as your FO and it will be much more helpful to the playstyle of a CB sorc.
This is getting to complicated... I'm not going to make a CBeress...
You say that CB was stronger in 1.09.
???
Did they reduce the damage it deals? If not, then it's better in 1.10 then it was in 1.09
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05-18-2004, 04:08 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-18-2004, 04:13 AM by Chesspiece_face.)
CB in 1.1 does more damage with synergies. Unfortunately they capped the amount of bolts it fired to 20 and they raised the strength of mobs by A LOT. In 1.9 you could have a maxed strength CB with only 40 points invested leaving you to put all additional points into a secondary. In1.1 you need 60 points to max it's effectiveness.
CB is still a viable skill but in 1.1 there is much more emphasis on correct build and playstyle to make it effective whereas in 1.9 there was a little more leway. (sp?)
edit: The reason that CB became a good build was that in 1.9 some people sought to find a viable skill that could do decent damage for good mana cost that didn't operate on a timer (newly added feature in 1.9). CB does good damage when you add all the bolts to a couple targets, it is low mana, and doesn't have a timer meaning that, theoretically, you can do much more damage to a few targets within the same time/mana cost that it would take to cast 1 or 2 FO.
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