01-26-2005, 06:28 PM
Fire/cold is my usual build; 20 points in Frozen Orb plus a pumped-up fire skill of some kind. Lightning is tougher to work with due to its wildly inconsistent damage, and single-tree sorcs will be crushed somewhere along the line in hell.
I'll leave recommendations on published guides to people who've read a lot of them. Personally, I like the following framework:
20 Orb
1+ Cold Mastery
10-20 Warmth
1+ Static Field
1 Teleport
... plus prerequisites. Many players advocate going with less Warmth, but I detest being a slave to the bottle, so to speak. With a beefed-up Warmth, you can sling Orbs around without sucking down blues every few seconds.
As for fire spells, that's up to you. I've seen Fire Ball, Meteor, Fire Wall, Hydra ... it depends on what you're comfortable with. If you want to spam something, go with Fire Ball. If you prefer to hide out and snipe (like me) Hydra is right up your alley. If you're confident your merc and your Orb can keep the monsters more or less in place, Meteor and Fire Wall can destroy them. It's all about play style.
I'll leave recommendations on published guides to people who've read a lot of them. Personally, I like the following framework:
20 Orb
1+ Cold Mastery
10-20 Warmth
1+ Static Field
1 Teleport
... plus prerequisites. Many players advocate going with less Warmth, but I detest being a slave to the bottle, so to speak. With a beefed-up Warmth, you can sling Orbs around without sucking down blues every few seconds.
As for fire spells, that's up to you. I've seen Fire Ball, Meteor, Fire Wall, Hydra ... it depends on what you're comfortable with. If you want to spam something, go with Fire Ball. If you prefer to hide out and snipe (like me) Hydra is right up your alley. If you're confident your merc and your Orb can keep the monsters more or less in place, Meteor and Fire Wall can destroy them. It's all about play style.