Quote: Awesome. So are the skills viable?No :)
Ever since D1 I loved chain lightning (well, in D1 everyone loved cl...). So when D2 came about, I kept making fireball/chain lightning sorceresses.
In 1.09 I had two CL sorceresses (one with the shael pase blade, the other with a CKN), and they both were more than enjoyable. I was awaiting 1.10 with rather high expectations, and it turned out that in vain. And yes, I made some CL sorceresses since then, and I still use the skill since it is so darned pretty, but beyond nightmare there are serious problems with it.
First of all, you need like 80 points to make it start working. I had a 60-point CL sorc (nova-cl-mastery), and she killed significantly faster with the now-useless nova than with CL.
The other thing is the pitiful damage it deals. Pitiful, I mean in comparison to other spells, like fireball.
Say you devote your gear to a single element. An 80-point fireball build would do ~15k damage/hit at level 40, while a 100-point CL sorc would average 6k. And with fireball you also have a timered 30k meteor for the stationary enemies, whereas the lightning tree only has Lightning at 15k/hit (true, with a spread of 15k, meaning that you can score nasty 1-hit-kill PVP victories with the proper gear).
It also feels 'slower' than other non-timered spells, but it must be just some visual thingy.
With that said, I am playing a nova sorceress right now, who is as underpowered as anyone, and am having a blast (even when I am sober) playing her. Just because the math does not add up, it does not mean she won't be fun. Besides, if you want to do countess runs, lightning is THE only way to go (she tends to be FICI in hell, and even with an Eaglehorn it takes uncomfortably long for my merc to finish her off).