Honey I shrank the Sorc

[Rijnswand]

Hello everybody,

my friends and I get together weekly to get some bashing done in LOD, and unfortunately I think i mismanaged the sorceress i am playing so far. I was thinking of emphasizing Chain Lightning with some Fire Skills as a backup and have developed the following Level-26 Sorceress:

Lightning Skills:
Charged Bolt: 1
Static Field: 1
Lightning: 3
Ch. Lightning: 3

Fire Skills:
Fire Bolt: 1
Warmth: 12
Inferno: 1
Fireball: 2
Blaze: 1

Cold Skills:
Frost Nova: 1
Frozen Armor: 1

Mana is at 227, Life at 147.

Now that we reached Act IV, I have to admit that my sorceress colleague (who specialized in Cold) dishes out a lot more damage that I could. While I don't easily run out of batteries (thanks to warmth) in a combat, I still need to spew out much more lightning to deal the same damage as the other sorc.
Investing in Cold (beginning with ice blast) at this point seems pretty far behind; In only two levels I could reach meteor, would that make a difference? Or should I continue leveling up Lightning-Skills and hope for an complementary Staff or item to back up my cold skills?

Any help is appreciated.

[Samka]

Hmm well your sorc may be salvageable, but you need to understand that if you want it to do some damage in hell difficulty, you need to pick your primary skills before putting points down all over the place.

The points in warmth were a big waste (imho), and so you either want a spammable skill (no casting delay) or a warmth synergy skill to minimise this loss. The spammable fire skills have a few synergies unfortunately, and if you're doing lightning in the other tree, you won't have enough points for both. So that leaves you with inferno (which can be quite deadly with a tank up front), or enchant. Enchant is quite cool if you're travelling with a party, and if you can get a nice unique bow like the kuko shakaku, you're set.

Do not put points into cold or you'll almost certainly spread yourself too thin, and later levels will be painful.

Most importantly, you want to specialise in something now, so that you can crush normal and nightmare - and then start putting points into your backup tree for hell difficulty.

[Rijnswand]

Thank you very much for your differenciated reply. I think i'll go inferno in the future, since there is no shortage of tanks in our party.

Thanks again and bye.

[Raziel]

Inferno is bugged. Avoid it like the plague.

I would strongly recommend Enchant. That will help all of your tanks a GREAT deal.

My suggestion (lame though it may be) is to make yourself into a Chain Lightning Enchantress. Max Lightning, Chain Lightning, Enchant, Warmth and Fire Mastery.

[Samka]

What's the inferno bug?

[weirdoworld]

well basically the bug with inferno is that it more often than not does no damage at all

i.e. it misses i spose or shoots right through em

if they start wacking u then ur inferno stops firing straight away

very crappy skill

huge waste of time

btw: i recommend no more than 1 on warmth alow ur items to do the rest!!
trust me

[Caaroid]

Hello

One of the main changes in 1.10 gameplay is that you cannot have a "fun" build and a powerful one at the same time. Even more unfortuntatelly, the number of "fun" builds increased by the patch.

In order to be able to "manage" hell difficulty, you need fully-sinergized skills in most cases, or (rather, unfortuntatelly, and) powerful gear.

There is one exception to this rule: the enchantress. Nobody can deny that she is a fun build (by gods, funnest, can you say that?), and also it is rather powerful. And while you DO have to maximize the synergy for this one; it seems that you already done so anyway.

There is a marvellous enchantress guide floating around these forums, if I did not want to be that cryptic I'd post a link. If you play on bnet, the items "necessarry" for the enchantress (basically a bow that goes BOOOM and a piercing belt) are available for perfect gems (I just bought my razortail yesterday for 10 pgs, and I know that I paid twice as much as I should have, I was just happy at the time :)). A piercing, bow-using enchantress can outkill even a powerful fireball sorceress, AND you make the tanks in your party significantly more powerful. If you also have a chain lightning as a backup skill, you're all set to tear hell apart.

Happy hunting!

EDIT: spelling bad

[arrunique]

If you also have a chain lightning as a backup skill, you're all set to tear hell apart.

Sorry to say chain lightning kind of blows unless it is fully synergized. Even then it isn't all that great. I see one of two ways to handle fire immunes. A freeze or barb merc (I prefer freeze) and maxed static. Freeze merc with Reaper's Toll doesn't even need you. The other way is keep the merc but instead of maxing static go with orb. It is fairly powerful even without synergies. With maxed warmth you can cast almost continuously even with an enchatresses base mana. I agree enchantress is the combination of a fun and powerful build.