Sorc Build

[Zakarum]

Okay. I am sometime going to build a sorc and I've never attemted a caster character before. I've checked the AS an I think I want to build either a Meteor Sorc or a Frozen Orb Sorc. I'm not quite sure yet because I don't know which skill is better. If anyone has any good builds/item combo's list them here. Thank you

[Epi]

Since you will need second element (at least!) in Hell anyway, why not use them both? :)

Anyway, my favorite (in 1.09) was Frozen Orb + Chain Lightning, but I'd also tried a lot of other combinations, and most of them worked pretty good. You can select any two skills from these list (should be from different trees), and with heavy investment into them (and corresponding mastery) you'll get
Frozen Orb or Blizzard
Firewall, Meteor or Hydra
Chain Lightning, Nova or Charged Bolt *)

*) CB, despite being lvl 1 skill, works pretty good, but only when you have enough +skill items.

Note that in 1.09 there were no reasons to put more than one point into Cold Mastery (at least, for PvM), so build with one skill from cold tree might be completed earlier. However, in 1.10 CM may lower target resistance below zero, and it's much more effective against resistant monsters, so you'll probably want to max it eventually as well.

And, of course, keep in mind that I listed only "mainstream" combinations. You can try more exotic variant build, but I wouldn't recommend them for your first sorceress.

EDIT: Forgot to mention - if you meant to play 1.09 and want to give Chain Lightning a try, CL didn't use Fast Cast but was affected by IAS on your weapon instead (so 4-shaeled Cho-Ko-Nu was the best weapon). This is changed in 1.10, though.

[Wrathraven]

^^^^^^^^^^ you are forgetting the most improved skill on the Sorc arsenal, Fireball. Even with modest synergies (20 firebolt, 20 FB, a few points in mastery) and +skills, you can do obscene damage. At comparable levels/skill synergies, Fireball completely blows away CL and CB for damage and killing power (haven't tried Nova in 1.10, though it didn't get any synergies so I'd assume it's the same as 1.09). If I had to make a new sorc tomorrow, for 1.10 ladder, it would easily be a Fireball/Orb sorc, without question.

[Epi]

Well, my advice was based on my 1.09 expirience; back then Fireball was more of variant skill.

It may be changed in 1.10 indeed (hadn't tried it yet), but from the numbers it doen't look like FB will blow away CL completely :P - don't forget that CL hits multiple targets (up to 9 even without any skill adders), and the jump radius was greatly improved in 1.10.

[roguebanshee]

(20 firebolt, 20 FB, a few points in mastery)

Why not do 20 Fireball + 20 Meteor instead? You'll need 4 more points for that to prereqs but you get 2 high damage skills and Meteor is really great vs groups of ranged.

[Rataxes]

Pumping Firebolt early on not only makes the starting game from 1-12 a lot easier, but also gives you a supercharged Fireball right off the bat at lvl 12. Imagine getting a Leaf staff with +3 Fireball at lvl 19 with +168% Dmg from Firebolt synergies, you could be firing off 400 dmg Fireballs before you even step into the Act 2 Sewers. Firebolt instead of Meteor quite simply makes everything a lot easier up until at least lvl 40, and saves skill points.

[Wrathraven]

Why not do 20 Fireball + 20 Meteor instead? You'll need 4 more points for that to prereqs but you get 2 high damage skills and Meteor is really great vs groups of ranged.

pretty much everything Rataxes said. Skill points are at a premium now, more than ever, and 3 wasted points on prereqs are a lot. I agree 100% that pumping Meteor would give you two useable skills, but a good Fireball is really the only fire attack you need. Gives you more points into Mastery or whatever your second skill is, or can bear some of the enormous burden of getting ES (for non-lightning users that is)

[roguebanshee]

I played a bit around with the Sorceress synergy calculator by MadScientist (check this thread).

The question seems not to be wether you should choose Fireball & Firebolt or Meteor & Fireball*, but rather how many points can I afford to invest in a single tree if I want a useful secondary spell?

My advise would be to invest not much more than 45 points in a single tree, while making a 20 Firebolt/20 Fireball/20 Fire Mastery (or Fireball/Meteor/Mastery) build will give you an impressive attack it will also leave you more or less useless against any Fire Immune. IMO you should always put points into prereqs for both your main attack and your secondary attack before pumping any synergies.

*Meteor does more than twice the impact damage of Fireball with an equal amount of points invested including prereqs and some nasty afterflames (which have synergy with Inferno) but it also has a casting delay(built in dodge timer :P)

[Wrathraven]

My advise would be to invest not much more than 45 points in a single tree, while making a 20 Firebolt/20 Fireball/20 Fire Mastery (or Fireball/Meteor/Mastery) build will give you an impressive attack it will also leave you more or less useless against any Fire Immune. IMO you should always put points into prereqs for both your main attack and your secondary attack before pumping any synergies.

What you do is max Fireball/Firebolt by lvl 60 or so, and all the while add points to your secondary skill. Something like Orb, while soaking up lots of prereqs, is effective without maxing its one synergy (Ice Bolt), and major investment in Cold Mastery. Blizzard is also good, and doesn't have nearly as many prereqs. CL isn't as effective as the other two without heavy synergy investment, but it or CB is still usable in Hell. The point being, you'll have more than enough points to invest in a second skill.

[Zakarum]

okay...what I'm thinking about doing is building a fireball/orb sorc w/ maxed warmth and fire mastery and maybe 5-10 points in cold mastery. how's that sound?

[Occhidiangela]

I would suggest a Fire Lightning Sorceress.

Pick a fire skill, I would use Fire Wall, but that is just me.

In Lightning, pick as Much Static Field as you want and as much T Storm of Charged Bolt as you want, your choice. Satic is to overcome insane regeneration rates of Hell Diff. Since you are unable to use mass "PMH" your SF will substitute.

Equip your merc as best suits you, but consider that all lightning and fire damage is done by you, have him/her do everthing else.

Double Fire and Lightning Immunes can be a pain, so keep that merc alive with pots!

[StateOLuvNTrust]

You really, really, really don't need a second tree. My blizzard sorc breezed through the game solo, all leveling done on players8. I'm pretty sure there's only one case in which you absolutely have to kill a cold immune to proceed: hell ancients--and they were a joke. Up through most of A1 hell you can remove cold immunity on almost everything with good cold mastery and a lvl 2 lower resist wand--lvl 3 is also sold sometimes, although I've never found those anywhere but Lut Gholein--and I usually carry one in my backup slot for most of my leveling anyway. A few quests require you to kill monsters that always spawn cold immune in hell, but a holy freeze merc owns them if he has a good weapon (Bonehew spawned the first time for me from a chest in A2 hell when I was on lvl 60. It's popped up no less than 3,000 times since then, not to mention almost every other elite spear/polearm, but I ended using the new thresher--33% chance to cast decrepify lets him further smoketh most enemies, and usually removes phys immunity in the off chance that I run into a cold/phys immune and get a warm feeling at the though of killing him). To help out on countess runs (which, fortunately, should always be done on players1 if you're rune hunting--and of course you ARE rune hunting if you're doing countess runs) I made a +3 fire wall +2 fire mastery leaf staff, and even that can kill her minions, although my main reason for making it was to entertain myself. I got really tired of "G! G-O! G-O-M-E-R-C you got power! You got it! Goooooooo MERC!"--so I fire wall instead. Enough of that shameful business.
I stress that this was all done solo in single player. With a party to help out it would be even easier. Stick to the areas with few/no cold immunes if you like clearing whole areas, but personally I've found that clearing areas doesn't level me anywhere near as fast as targeted superunique runs. I leveled from 86 to 87 in an hour with our dear old friend pindleskin (nerfed, but not forgotten!).
But maybe this sort of thing isn't for everyone... I refused to spend on the prereqs for energy shield and so I have to cast it with a +3 lit skills +3 energy shield staff i keep in my stash, or in my backup slot for repeated short games. My style is... stingy, very stingy.

[gekko]

I refused to spend on the prereqs for energy shield and so I have to cast it with a +3 lit skills +3 energy shield staff i keep in my stash, or in my backup slot for repeated short games. My style is... stingy, very stingy.

First off, last time I checked energy shield uses your current skill level when checking, not the slvl from time of casting. So if you have zero points in energy shield, then you have no energy shield -- unless you keep that +3 energy shield staff in your primary slot all the time. It's a display bug that keeps the little ball above your head.

Second of all, I disagree with you that one tree is enough. Sure, you CAN get through with enough cold mastery, but why bother? If you've picked cold as one tree, you definately have enough points to get a skill from the fire or lightning tree and boost it's mastery to respectable levels (eventually, of course).

The only way I could think of that would leave you short of skill points would be a max warmth / cold armor / cold mastery / blizz or orb sorc. However, since both of those killing spells are timered, there'd be no reason to max warmth. And few sorcs will max a cold armor. Point is there's no reason NOT to pick a skill from a different tree to round out your sorc.

gekko

[StateOLuvNTrust]

I remember the display bug you're talking about, but 1.10 buffing changes actually un-nerfed energy shield (buffing didn't work on TS even in 1.09, despite what a lot of people thought. I haven't checked to see if does in 1.10, although I know buffing works on cold armors). In 1.09 you could use a staff to cast a high level energy shield, but if you had no points in ES and switched to your primary slot the shield would go to lvl 0, and you notice this pretty quickly when you die with full mana. In 1.10 you can cast a shield with zero points invested and then switch to primary weapons. You will still lose mana when you get hit and notice substantial damage reduction.
I know you can get 2 usable trees, but I don't see the point. You can more than double your killing speed by opting for one tree, and it really isn't necessary to be able to kill all monsters. You still CAN kill pretty much anything with a merc, and when cold immunes get mixed in with vulnerable monsters he will end up killing a few of them, but you're always free to leave them behind and go find something killable. If you don't like doing that, there are a few areas where cold immunes never pop up, and, more importantly, there are more areas where there are always very few cold immunes. Chaos sanctuary is one of the best places to level in the game for any character that's tough enough to deal with it, and the only cold immunes are the few oblivion knights that spawn with the fire immune melee knights. A merc can kill them very fast if you static them and tele-aim your merc at them when they run, or use telekinesis them to stop them from running. Or, you can ignore them. I'm usually able to do that comfortably. I also level in worldstone with very few problems.
The main point is: if you can vastly increase your killing speed without serious problems, why not do it? Would you rather be able to kill most monsters very fast and ignore a few of them, or be able to kill everything at a moderate speed? You're not any safer by being able to kill cold immunes. If you're fighting dangerous monsters, some of which are cold immune, you're going to lessen the danger more quickly by being able to take out the non cold immunes much faster than you would be able to if you went 2 tree, and also much faster than you would be able to take out the cold immunes with a fire tree. An old lesson I learned playing Starcraft: the trick isn't spreading your resources out to prepare for any situation, but knowing what situations to prepare for. In Diablo 2, you have the distinct advantage of being able to choose what situations to fight in, and so the most effective builds are going to be those that choose their battles and prepare for them accordingly.

[whyBish]

the trick isn't spreading your resources out to prepare for any situation, but knowing what situations to prepare for. In Diablo 2, you have the distinct advantage of being able to choose what situations to fight in, and so the most effective builds are going to be those that choose their battles and prepare for them accordingly.

That is so true... I have a 'lightning only' sorc and am having no problems (I have 1 point +skills in frozen armor, 8+skills in warmth, but am using 1 point +skills+light skills in static, max CL/max TK, high mastery, 10 ES). I have a defiance merc and am kitting him and myself out with nice high def gear. Any light immunes get fed to the merc. Not quite as easy as a cold sorc, but having prepared to tank, and remembering to use the mercs physical 'elemen' definately helps.

However for a first time sorc user I would recommend max orb with whatever they want from one of the other trees as their main spell. (with the standard static field/teleport... E.S. is not worth points IMO unless TK is maxed).