Full Dr Sorcie Guide

[Taem]

I'd just like to say that I have a fantastic HTML guide of this with hyperlinks on the items, bold topic and everything. If someone will tell me a way to insert it here successfully, let me know. In later guides, I will finish tips, add a section for alternative items and power skill items, and a pvp and pk section. I first pasted version 1.00 on here.





DR SORCIE GUIDE: v1.01

INTRODUCTION:

Hail friends. I have made countless sorcies in my diablo career and can tell you now without hesitation that the DR sorcie is the BEST build for RUSHING, DUELING, PK'ING, COWS, and EVERYTHING ELSE. Hands down.

This guide is not for the poor and not for people who aren’t getting rushed. If you will, it is a long term goal of your character as this particular sorcie is extremely, yes EXTREEMLY hard to play at lower levels in hardcore with the low HP you'll start off with. If you are looking for a guide more suited towards a less expensive playing style, try this site here.

So what is a DR Sorcie? DR is an acrynon for Damage Reduction. The goal of a normal DR Sorcie is to equip gear allowing her 75% physical damage reduction, have her mana shield absorb at least 60% damage (preferrably 65%), and have a block rate of 75%. In this guide, we break the mold to include 90% resists and still maintain a killer damage rate. This allows us to fear NOTHING! Literally, nothing! With this set-up (and I have thouroughly played it in hardcore), you can tank LE monsters, not fear msle damage or hell diablos fire attacks, fight in duels and not worry about the hidden elemental damage on your opponents charms, stand in the middle of a group of cows and be whispering a friend w/out taking any damage (if you opt for the amulet with at least -18 damage), rush charactesr uncontested and easily, and basically not worry about anything in the world of diablo.


CONTENTS:
1.) Skills
2.) Attributes
3.) Item Checklist
4.) Mercenary Choices
5.) Totals
6.) Tips


SKILLS:

You will have a total of +110 Skill points to use in Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction, all of which you will use! You have the choice of one of two possible MAIN focuses for your character: Charged Bolt and Nova

Charged Bolt: Charged Bolt is my preferred skill with the DR sorcie because it costs very, very little, allowing you minimum energy reserves to survive and more into vitality. It is also MORE POWERFUL than Nova in a one on one situation against bosses; at Level 36, it will be firing off 38 bolts, each doing 29-31 lighting damage. This is equivilant to 38 x 29 = 1102 minimum damage before lighting mastery is applied, assuming you are right on top of the boss, which you will be with this build. As you can see, without Mastery, it is already equally, if not more powerful than Nova with Mastery.

Nova: Nova is a also a great option as it kills approximatly 2.5x faster than Charged Bolt does in cow games which means more experience for you faster. However, this build focuses on rushing, dueling, pking, and cows, not just cows. If you choose to go with Nova, you will need a lot more energy; I'd suggest around 120-160 depending on how often your blasting your nova and how high your warmth is. You might want to hold off on maxing orb until last and put your eggs into warmth first if you do this build to save yourself some points wasted in energy later on.

(-27) Cold Skills:
5 Prerequisites
1 Frozen Armor
1 Cold Mastery
20 Frozen Orb
(-68) Lightning Skills:
6 Prerequisites
1 Static
1 Energy Shield (61% absorb)
20 Thunder Storm
20 Charged Bolt (or Nova)
20 Lightening Mastery
(-15) Fire Skills:
0 Prerequisites
15 Warmth


Frozen Armor: This armor spell is the best for two reasons: Best defense and freezes attackers. It dosent get much better than this. The other two armors retialite, but the damage is ineffective and the chill time is barly noticable compared to a frozen statue.

Frozen Orb: This skill is fantastic for containing cows and the best overall PVP weapon of choice. I'd recommend ditching your ideas of getting a Holy Freeze Merc and practive casting in this manner in cows: Orb, Static, Static, Orb, Charged Bolt, Charged Bolt, Orb, Charged Bolt, Charged Bolt - until the entire mob is dead. They will never touch you, but the beatiful part of a DR sorcie is, it really dosent matter if they do anyways because you will only be taking 18 maximum damage from hell bovines.

Static: Static is a very important skill but hardly worth investing more than one point in. At level 16, its radius is so large, it covers most of the screen perfectly.

Energy Shield: With just one point invested into this skill, you will have a 61% absorb. Combined with your full DR, that amounts to 18 maximum damage from a hell bovine. Its tempting to get rid of guardian angel and throw on a valor, or get rid of Tals amulet and get a +2 sorcie skills, -30 damage amulet. Both are good choices, but not recommended with this build, however, you will be virtually invincible in cows if you do this :D .

Thunderstorm: What is there to say about this skill other than IT ROCKS! Sure, one bolt every 4 seconds dosent seem like much, but in PVP, watch your opponent squeal when your level 36 TS hits him. Also fantastic Boss killer. Leave it on and off you go.

Warmth: A very important skill to keep up. Once you hit level 73, balancing warmth and orb become tricky. You need to find out where you start needing more mana regeneration and where you start needing more damage from orb. Generally, if your focus is cows, do warmth first. If its rushing or Dueling, do orb first.


ATTRIBUTES

Here are the EXACT attribute scores you will need at character level 99:
154 Strength; 159 Dexterity; 60 Energy; Rest into Vitality!

STRENGTH: 156 Strength is required for a Storm shield, which is the highest Strength requirement from any item you’ll be using. Subtract –2 from Shako and you get 154 Strength required to equip all your gear by clvl 73.

DEXTERITY: 186 Dexterity is required for 75% block at clvl 99. Subtract the –15 Dexterity from waterwalk, -2 from shako, and –10 from the KO Rune in your wizard spike and you get 159 Dexterity required.

VITALITY: Everything else goes into here. You should be able to have all the Strength, Dexterity, and Energy you need by level 60. After this point, all the rest of your attributes should go into vitality.

ENERGY: 60 Energy is all you will ever need by the time you equip all of your gear; between +80 mana, 3.5 mana per level, and a 322% mana regeneration rate, you’ll never even see your mana go down!


ITEM CHECK LIST:

These items are the best items you will ever find for your DR sorcie.

Storm Shield (+UM): click the link - the storm shield offers superb cold and lightening resists, 35% damage reduction, and a good block rate. For a DR sorcie, this is her shield of choice, mainly for the damage reduction. With the UM rune added in, your sorcie will now have adequate resists to withstand diablo's fire, survive msle attacks, pk'ing hydra sorcies, and more.

Shako (+BER): click the link - the harlequin crest has +2 skill levels which are very important to the sorcies damage. It also has 10% damage reduction and +life and +mana per level. This headgear helps tremendously making up the mana and life you loose by investing so many points into strength and dexterity. The added BER will bring you that much closer to 75% damage reduction, which is our ultimate goal.

Guardian Angel (+BER): click the link - so why a Guardian Angel over a Valor? The question everyone asks. Well the answer is not as simple as a single statement or image. It comes down to what each provides. Lets start with the valor: It gives you +2 skill levels, great for that added damage, and two levels means hundreds of points of damage. It has -15 reduced damage which means only 3 damage from cows IF they do maximum damage. It has a 30% hit recovery rate, which means NOTHING for a sorceress because of her terrible hit recovery rate. It also has a terrific defense. But most importantly, and the main argument here, it has added vitality per level. The Angel has 30% faster block, which unlike hit recovery, is a very noticable difference in how many hits your sorcie can block per second. It has +15% maximum resists - I can't possibly stress to you what a difference 90% resists is over 75% or less, especially in duels or when rushing! And it has +20% block. With valor, you'll need 237 Dexterity to have maximum block at level 99. With Angel, only 186. Thats a difference of 51 points that could go into vitality; 102 life. Valor gives 0.5 Vitality per clvl, so at level 99, it will give you 49 vitality. Close, but still can't make up for the lost life and especially not the lousy resists you'll have. Is the added damage from valor worth all that? No! The added BER in Guardian Angel will bring you that much closer to 75% damage reduction, which is our ultimate goal.

String of Ears (14%+): click the link - a 14% DR string of ears or better will bring you to 75% damage reduced. Other than this the SOE has a good defense and -magical damage reduction which works great in duels and in chaos sanctuary.

Wizard Spike (+KO): click the link - the wizard spike gives you 75% resists, yes SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT! A whopping 50% faster cast which will bring you down to a 9 FPS cast - perfect for charged bolt or nova. It has +maximum mana and +mana per level - extreemly important for this build with your low mana rate. And it also has a +15% mana regeneration rate, also very important for regaining mana. The other option is to go with an oculus for the damage, but you'll have a hard time making up those resists and you'll be stuck at a 10 FPS cast, which is slow for charged bolt or nova! The added KO rune will bring down your dexterity needs and allow you more points into vitality!

Tal Rasha’s Adjudication: click the link - tals amulet has some much needed +2 skill levels. It also has a whopping +50 life and +42 mana; just what a DR sorcie needs. The 33% lighting resist is also an added bonus. So why not maras? If your using a wizard spike and not an oculus, then your resists are already high enough and you don't to waste yoru time with a maras when tals has more qualities you need. The obvious option is a maras with an oculus, but then you take a serious hit to your mana, which means more than 60 into energy for sure, which means less into vitality. Believe me, you'll be doing enough damage with this set up.

Stone of Jordan x 2: click the link - +20 mana, +25% maximum mana, +1 skill level - there is no alternative. This IS the best there is. 'nuff said.

Mage Fist: click the link - some will argue frostburns, but you dont need that much mana, and besides, the added fast cast from mage fist is just enough to push you over to a 9 FPS cast rate. Why ruin a good thing? It also has +1 fire skills which helps your warmth rate and it has a +25% mana regeneration rate itself which I think togeather more than make up for the 40% maximum mana from frost burn. A faster mana regeneration is more important than a higher mana rate. The difference is simple: do you like having lots of mana and eventually running out or have a little mana but never running out?

Waterwalk Boots: click the link - the 20% run walk and +15 dexterity on these boots alone almost make them plenty, but to add to that, they have +45-65 life, and a +5% maximum fire resist. With this DR set up, you will have 95% fire resist! PK Hydra sorcie? HAHAHA.. make my day!

10 Grand Charms +1 Lighting Skills
1 Small Charm of Shimmering 5% Resist All
6 x Small Charms of x Crimsion 10% Fire Resist
2 x Small Charm of Balance 5% Hit Recovery

SWAP-OUT GEAR: (FIRE ABSORB) Rising Sun : You can use then when fighting Diablo if you want, but you really dont need it. I like to keep it in my stash when fighting other sorcies. Ill equip a full absorb arsonal and surprise them (see below).
SWAP-OUT GEAR: (LIGHTENING ABSORB) Blackhorns + T.Gods : This gear is GREAT for msle - you actually heal hit points! Also, when fighting another sorcie or trapassassin, swap to this gear for 100% immunity.
SWAP-OUT GEAR: (COLD ABSORB) Luna Shield + Lightsabre : keep these on your other weapon switch. You will NEVER need cold absorb with 90% resist unless you are fighting another sorcie. When fighting another sorcie, swap out your gear for all absorb gear and switch your weapon switch for a surprise. The Lightsabre not only has Lighting absorb +20, but Ignores Target Defense, which makes this a deadly weapon when fighting an absorb sorcie with your absorb gear on :D .

Fastest Cast Frames Per Second
0 13
9 12
20 11
37 10
63 9
105 8
200 7

Optional Items:


I will complete this in a later version.


MERCENARIES:

There are three choices that go well with a DR sorcie. None are wrong, but there are some considerations:

Cold Arrow Rogue: The cold arrow mercenary is truly the best PK'ing friend you will ever have. If you plan on PKing, this IS the choice for you! No, dont even think of the baba's as a consideration because they're not! They move across the screen towards your prey much slower than an arrow, trust me! The cold arrow merc does somewhat okay in cows, but I would not recommend her for rushing as she will die often.

Holy Freeze Desert Warrior: Whats to say about this cheap merc other than LAME? If you can't orb kill your cows, then you dont deserve the comfort of a Holy Freeze mercenary anyways ;) . However, they are nice to have in cows, but I can never tell if their aura actually works on bosses or not since I'm always blasting the boss with my orb and charged bolts.

Defiance Desert Warrior: IMO, the best for cows hands down! You have a FAT absorb between your mana shield and DR, a 75% block, true your hit recovery sucks, but your block rate is outstanding and what else could you ask for? Well, you have 28% chance to get hit in cows at level 83, so why not change this to 5% every game with a defiance mercenary? 5%... Now your a true DR sorcie! Now only do you almost never get hit, but when you do, you almost always block it, and if somehow the attack bypasses all this safeguard, your absorb most of the damage! Dosent get much better than this.

Gear: For my little buddies to be successful beside me in rushing, pk'ing, and cows, they need all the help they can get, and since they help me so much, I give my mercenaries good gear. For the Rogue mercs, I give them 160/60 armor, Vampire Gaze, and a Windforce. For the Desert Warriors, I give them Vampire Gaze, Shaft Top, and a Unique Lance with an Amn Rune in it. I suppose later on I would socket their armor and either put BER's in or UM's.


TOTALS @ LEVEL 73:
· Cannot Be Frozen
· Resist’s:
o +Maximum Resists: +15% (90% Maximum)
o +Maximum Fire Resist: +5% (95% Maximum)
o Fire: +195% (95%)
o Lightening: +190% (90%)
o Cold: +192% (90%)
o Poison: +132% (32%)
· Mana:
o Maximum Mana: +65%
o +Mana: +80; +3.5 per level
o Mana Regeneration: +322%
o Magical Damage Reduce: 10-15%
· Levels:
o +Fire Skills: +7
o +Cold Skills: +6
o +Lightening Skills: +16
· Attributes:
o +STR: +32
o +DEX: +27
o +VIT: +2
o +NRG: +2
· Magic Find: +50%
· Damage Reduce: 75%
· +Life: +115 (+1.5 per level)
· +Blocking: 45% (87% total)
· Faster Block: 65%
· Fastest Cast: 70% (9 FPS)
· Fastest Walk: 20%
· Fastest Hit Recovery: 0% (8 FPS)

TIPS:

I'll update this guide later and include some tips.