How to build a MF-sorc

[Caaroid]

Are these builds tried, or planned?
I for one find it VERY tedious to kill Lister with Orb (20-1; +6 all); and he tends to be FI CI.

Also your enchantress WILL die from the CIs (witches), since you won't have resists. Let alone MF.

IF you REALLY want to run Baal, make a hammerdin. There is a reason I don't run baal :P

[[wcip]Angel]

Ok, so I won't run Baal. I'll take Andy, Meph and Pindle. But pindle can be Cold immune, can't he? So I *need* something other than just frozen orb + synergies?

edit: I made my decision. I figured I couldn't take the Chaos Sanctuary with 3-14 dmg angelic sickle, so I put 15 points into fireball. I will max this skill along with frozen orb. Should I go for synergies or masteries for the two skills? What's the difference?

[Caaroid]

Don't take me wrong. My favorite sorceress is my fire/cold sorc. It's just that she has 211% MF on switch, and my cold sorc has 485%. If it is your first sorc, (DEF: sorceress is 85+ levels, 800+ life/mana, able to perform well in hell), then I would definitelly suggest a fire/orber.

Whereas a 20-1 orb seems weak, you NEED 20-20-20 in fireball to make it work. So: go meteor-fireball-fire mastery-orb, with 1 point in cold mastery.

Yes, I did try going fire bolt instead of Meteor. Do not do that. Meteor is a great skill to have, and you only 'loose' 2 points to get there (and you have 1 more in your fireball synergy, since bolt is a prereq to fireball). After you reach the 20-20-20, I'd go cold mastery.

Btw, Teleport and Static deserve their 1 point in nearly every build; I think it is needless to mention that. With all that, the build is 94 points, meaning you're done by level 82. That is relatively high, so the order of maxing the skills is not irrelevant: make sure to have a 20 orb by the time you reach hell.

[[wcip]Angel]

Thanks for the input. I was impressed with a regular lvl 15-0-0 fireball when I got it in the river of flame (normal difficulty), but that was probably because I'd been running around killing everything with a crappy melee-weapon. I just completed act 5 normal at lvl 31 and a lvl 1 frozen orb beat the living crap out of a lvl 15 fireball, so I can see how you would need a lvl 30-30-30 fireball in order to make it work.

I think I'll do as you say.

I have 1 point in static field and 1 in teleport. Shouldn't I invest 1 single point in cold mastery, just so my + skill-things can boost it just a wee bit?

[adeyke]

A single point in cold mastery will definitely be well-spent.

[Caaroid]

When I say 20-1, I mean 20 orb 1 mastery. I know it is not consistent with my other (20-20-20) naming convention; sorry. Whenever I talk about Orb, I assume that the moment you put 1 to orb you also put a point to mastery.

[devzero]

The builds i described are planned, i have one that im beginning to like quite a bit now tho.

My current build is 20-20-20 frozen orb, ice bolt and cold mastery. I have 1 point static, 1 tk , 1 warmth and 15 teleport. Currently im building fireball (my goal is 1 fire mastery, 11 fire bolt and rest in fireball).

Pros:
Very nice teleport, costing 2 mana per cast at lvl 23 (with +skills) you can teleport as long as you want, and mana burn monsters will not stop you.
The frozen orb kills anything non cold immune in short order (including Lister and Baal. )
Cons:
Cold immunes. At lvl 82 my fireball is still weak against cold immunes, i have to let my merc deal with them. The cold immune skellies from wave 2, and the succubi when you come down are the ones that take time. (much longer in fact, than Baal and Lister. )

I i where to do the build again, i would skip ice bolt til last. And i would make fireball 12 - 20 - 1 or more. (firebolt, ball and mastery), perhaps going as low as 10 in teleport (if you can get at least +10 all skills from eq, im currently at +8). I would recomend lvl 15 tho, as its soooo much better to have a cost of 1 - 3 mana for tele. I have gone the non block route, and am pretty happy with that.

My preferd skill / stats
str : ca 100 (you can use most nice eq at this str, you always get some +str bonuses)
dex : non
vit : rest
ene : non

Frozen orb : 20
Cold Mastery : 20
Fire ball : 20
fire bolt : 12
fire mastery : 1
warmth : 1
static : 1
telekinesis : 1
teleport : 15
ice bolt : 15

Total : 110, take ice bolt last (14) and the last 10 in cold mastery before that

If you want to do baal runs you MUST HAVE MAX LIGHT RES. Tgods is a very nice choice for protection, giving 85% light res and some absorb. Do nm baal runs til you have nice equipment and at least lvl 70, preferably lvl 75.

Also your enchantress WILL die from the CIs (witches), since you won't have resists. Let alone MF.

Err nop, witches are phys dammage, you keep out of reach by positioning the merc, and teleporting. And since you wont need mana or shield, you should have about 900 life. Your merc should take them alone, enchanted bow is just to speed thing upp. (not to mention speeding upp your mercs killing speed.)

IF you REALLY want to run Baal, make a hammerdin. There is a reason I don't run baal

Hammerdins runing baal is possible, ive done it. My cold sorc does it faster and more reliable even tho she's not an ideal build (and with more mf). The hammerdin with enigma could possible do it faster and more reliable (baring mana burn monsters stopping you.). But by the time i can afford an enigma, i wont do much mf baal runs :D

[Caaroid]

If your main (all) concern is skel mages, go firewall instead of ball. Might work out better.

[Obi2Kenobi]

I say do pump the orb synergy. As you said, you're only killing those bosses, which are never cold immune, so you don't need other damage skills for them (Baal runs are another story). Since I don't use ES, that leaves me with tons of extra points. My ex-MF sorceress had ~14 skills points left over that I didn't know what to do with. :)

Note: She died to a TP trap (Might Ventar+Slow Computer=Dead sorceress), not monsters, so don't be blaming my build

[Obi2Kenobi]

Also your enchantress WILL die from the CIs (witches), since you won't have resists. Let alone MF.

Err nop, witches are phys dammage

Actually, they use Blood Star, which is magic damage.

/edit: Er, I think they do, at least...

[devzero]

To be quite correct, I seem to recall a post where someone said the dammage is physical, and thus blockable and affected by might/fanatism, but it is converted to Magic dammage before resists apply. I am however to lazy to go search several message boards to find that thread again.

The point however is that its not elemental dammage, so your elemental resist wont matter one way or the other.

As for firewall, yeah it might give more dammage, but its a pain to position and you cant chain cast it while casting orb. Both are probably nice tho. The level fireball i describe above will equal about 1k dammage per cast, and with at least 63% faster cast (sacrificing a little mf for killing speed) you should do fine against cold immunes in 1-2 player games. I only mf bosses in 1 player games so thats no problem.

[Caaroid]

To be quite frank, my most effective baal-running strategy has been teaming with a good friend of mine. I teleport, he casts hammers. Works very fast :)