Pure Melee Sorceress

[Any1]

I'm a little bored and looking for a challenging build. I decided to try a melee sorceress. The other melee sorceresses I've seen use non-melee spells, such as Thunder Storm, Static, Hydra, etc. I've decided to design a pure melee character. I'm looking for feedback regarding the viability of this build.

Skills:

Enchant: 20
Fire Mastery: 20
Lightning Mastery: 20
Shiver Armor: 10
Energy Shield: 10

Stats:

Str: Enough for High defense armor (~150)
Dex: 200+ (for max blocking and AR)
Vit: Rest
Energy: Enough to keep ES going

Equipment:

Weapon1: Lightsaber (30% more IAS for 10-frame speed)
Weapon 2: Lower Resists Wand or Dagger
Shield: Storm Shield or Rhyme Hyperion
Helm: Harley or Rare circlet LL, +stats, resists
Belt: String
Ring1: Raven Frost
Ring2: Rare LL, resists, +stats (dream on)
Boots: War Trav or Gore Rider
Gloves: LoH or Rare 20% IAS, resists, +stats (dream on)
Armor: Lionheart or Shaftstop

I plan on using as many "Shocking" and "Flaming" charms as possible. I have quite a few on different characters. Some poison charms to disable regen.

Merc: ACT-2 Might or Holy Freeze (depending how badly I'm getting crushed)

Shooting for 75% blocking, 50-75% DR, 50-75% Resists in Hell, 20+ LL.

I should say that I can't stand the Hell Bovine and plan to spend no time there.

Will I have enough AR? I know I'll be killing slowly, but is it going to be unexceptably slow (slower than my merc)?

[the Langolier]

>I plan on using as many "Shocking" and "Flaming" charms as possible. I have quite a few on different characters.

IMO, if you are planning on giving this character any items from others, you shouldn't even bother making the character. What is the point of a challenging build if you have all the best items it is going to use?

>50-75% DR

What is that?

[Any1]

I guess we have different defintions for challenging. Some people think anything but HC Ironman is for wussies. All the elemental damage charms I've cubed or found with other characters are legit. I see no reason for not using them. Besides most of them cannot be used until mid clvls, making the first 40 levels very difficult.

DR is physical damage reduce. SS has 35%, Shaftstop has 30%, Harley has 10%, String has 10-15%, Gaze has 15-20%.

Thanks for the response.

[Bun-Bun]

I've done a melee sorc with far worse equipment than that. I think you're on the right track emphasizing fireghtning with lots of life leech. Raven Frost will help with the AR, but you may need more. My el-cheapo solution was an Angelic ammy and two Angelic rings. AR charms might do the trick for you.

I don't know how fast you need to kill to be happy, but don't expect to tear up the world. On the other hand, you've got nice gear, so you'll go faster than I did. I found it a little slow but perfectly acceptable, about the same pace as my Ironbarb.
Not nearly as durable, though. :( On the upside, with all that elemental damage, PI's are a non-issue.

I did use Static. I'd suggest at least one point there to ease the going at lower levels, especially pesky act-end bosses.

[Sir_Die_alot]

With your gear you will probably be surprised about just how strong a pure melee sorceress can be. She will suck in cow level for obvious reasons but she can tear up act 5 ice cave levels quite easily. In fact due to teleport speeding up her movement she is comparible to my hellslayer berserk barb.

Skills:

Enchant: 20
Fire Mastery: 20
Lightning Mastery: 20
Shiver Armor: 10
Energy Shield: 10

Don't forget frost nova. Some short sighted purists insist this is an offensive spell. That doesn't really hold water if you take into account that its barbarian counterpart warcry does more damage than it does. Some "offensive" spell! :P I really suggst giving this a few points. Also in the case of shiver armor I invested in frozen instead because considering the skill points invested to get shiver, frozen adds the same defense.

Stats:

Str: Enough for High defense armor (~150)
Dex: 200+ (for max blocking and AR)
Vit: Rest
Energy: Enough to keep ES going

A great armor to use is shaft which requires less than that 150 str, arkaines might be worth it but I've never bothered to try.

For your dex don't worry about getting *perfect* block so much. 55-60 is just fine and with a stormshield/ryme hyperion plus the dex required for a lightsaber this will be easy to do.

vit: yeah pretty much everything should go here.

energy: don't bother! between shako and 1 or 2 sojs you will have plenty of mana.

Equipment:

Weapon1: Lightsaber (30% more IAS for 10-frame speed)
Weapon 2: Lower Resists Wand or Dagger
Shield: Storm Shield or Rhyme Hyperion
Helm: Harley or Rare circlet LL, +stats, resists
Belt: String
Ring1: Raven Frost
Ring2: Rare LL, resists, +stats (dream on)
Boots: War Trav or Gore Rider
Gloves: LoH or Rare 20% IAS, resists, +stats (dream on)
Armor: Lionheart or Shaftstop

Lightsaber is a good chioce because you won't really have to worry about attack rating. So what if you miss a boss 50% of the time? They are less than 5% of monsters you will fight.

For your hat definantly go harly, using anything else is sacraficing a lot for small gains.

Consider thundergod's for your belt. More lightning damage extra str extra vit, oh and you can be near immune to the most dangerous element to you. :D

There are only 2 rings that are really worth considering: raven frost and soj.

For boots war travs are a bad choice and gore riders are worse. It may sound silly but try cow kings, extra dex extra fire damage and a little magic find just for giggles. B) Aldur's is another good chioce. Personally though I use sigons boot/glove combo.

For gloves if I ever get around to putting a shael in my lightsaber Hellmouth gaunts would be great. But it is also a nice spot to get some resists.

Armor: definantly shaft. Besides its useful stats it looks too good on a sorc not to use. ;)

[trillium]

I will take issue with your distinction between "melee" and "non-melee" spells. When the sorceress engages in melee battle, whatever spells she uses does not change the fact that she is engaged in the midst of the confusion.

Using a mastery to increase the damage of an element on a weapon, is a spell. To me, it does not matter if you use it for meteor or a spear.

Pure melee would be no spells.

For the record, she can own cows with a belt full of reds, life and mana leech.

[Dagni]

Hmm, I kinda disagree.

While I see your point about it not mattering when the sorceress IS in melee, I would still say that a bow, for example, is still a ranged, i.e. "non-melee", weapon. Perhaps a better wording would've been 'melee-only' vs 'ranged spells'. But, for me at least, that WAS what I interpreted "melee" and "non-melee" to mean, in the context it was used.

If the sorceress doesn't HAVE any ranged spells, then the masteries can only be used for melee. Likewise, if she has Meteor, no matter how many monsters surround her, she could, if she wished, cast it at a distant target.

Pure melee would be no spells.

Melee is simply the opposite of ranged. It just so happens that almost every spell is ranged. So pure melee is no ranged whatsoever.

Still, "non-melee" probably IS a bad phrasing given that, in D2 at least, basically ANY ranged attack or spell can also be used at melee range.

- Dagni

[Any1]

I will take issue with your distinction between "melee" and "non-melee" spells.  When the sorceress engages in melee battle, whatever spells she uses does not change the fact that she is engaged in the midst of the confusion. 

Using a mastery to increase the damage of an element on a weapon, is a spell.   To me, it does not matter if you use it for meteor or a spear.

Pure melee would be no spells.

For the record, she can own cows with a belt full of reds, life and mana leech.

You're confusing "Spells" with the "Range" of an attack. All of a Sorc's skills are spells at some level (i.e. Enchant, Shiver Armor, Energy Shield, etc.). If I don't use any "spells" at all, then I won't make it past normal difficulty. By melee I meant hand-to-hand range where you're inflicting damage on your enemy by directly hitting it with your weapon. That may not fall under your puritanical definition, but fulfills my requirements.

BTW, what does this mean:

"When the sorceress engages in melee battle, whatever spells she uses does not change the fact that she is engaged in the midst of the confusion."

I'm serious, what is your point with this sentence?


Sire_Die_alot, I like your suggestions for Static and some equipment.

[Hammerskjold]

>Using a mastery to increase the damage of an element on a weapon, is a spell. To me, it does not matter if you use it for meteor or a spear.

To me, the Sorceress Mastery is a passive. Much like the Barbarians Weapon masteries.

[trillium]

Interesting.

"You're confusing "Spells" with the "Range" of an attack."

Well, that would be true if the opposite of "melee" actually was "ranged." Really, the opposite of melee would be to not fight at all. So, a ranged or melee attack is much more similar linguistically than you portray in your argument.

For all those asserting that a mastery is a "passive" spell, try this: Make a sorceress with zero Lightning mastery and take her round act 5 nightmare with a Baezil's Vortex. Make a sorceress with lightning mastery and do the same. Which one kills faster? How passive is that?

If your argument of ranged and not ranged is so brilliant, what about static? Static is not a ranged spell. It would be a radial spell. There are many of those, too.

For the record, she's a sorceress! They are all spells.

And by the way, as for the puritanical comment, it is you who made the assertation of PURE.

[Hammerskjold]

Passive as in once you put a skill point in it, it needs no selection and consumes no mana.

>For all those asserting that a mastery is a "passive" spell, try this: Make a sorceress with zero Lightning mastery and take her round act 5 nightmare with a Baezil's Vortex. Make a sorceress with lightning mastery and do the same. Which one kills faster?

And I can go with two barbarians armed with (insert favorite affixes) Swords. One with Sword Masteries and the other without. I would make a safe guess that the one with the Sword Mastery invested has some advantage over the one without.

>How passive is that?

Well all skill points does -something- at one level or another. So if you want a skill\spell that does absolutely nothing, I guess they would be the skill\spells that you do not have.

>For the record, she's a sorceress! They are all spells.

Well that's half right. Technically any skills that consumes mana can be considered spells. Amazon Jab, spell. Barbarians Whirlwind, spell. Paladins Zeal, spell. Holy crap, D2 is pretty much full of spellcasters!

If I had any technical ability to mod the game, I'd make the fighters class of D2 base their Skills that has a physical component on Stamina, instead of Mana. But I'm kind of lazy right now, so I think I'll just wait for 1.10 instead.

[Any1]

Interesting. 

"You're confusing "Spells" with the "Range" of an attack."

Well, that would be true if the opposite of "melee"  actually was "ranged."  Really, the opposite of melee would be to not fight at all.  So, a ranged or melee attack is much more similar linguistically than you portray in your argument.

For all those asserting that a mastery is a "passive" spell, try this:  Make a sorceress with zero Lightning mastery and take her round act 5 nightmare with a Baezil's Vortex.  Make a sorceress with lightning mastery and do the same.  Which one kills faster?  How passive is that?

If your argument of ranged and not ranged is so brilliant, what about static?  Static is not a ranged spell.  It would be a radial spell.  There are many of those, too.

For the record, she's a sorceress!  They are all spells.

And by the way, as for the puritanical comment, it is you who made the assertation of PURE.

Well I don't think I'm going to convice you of my point of view. I find your arguments both on the defintion of melee/non-melee, and passivity kind of circular and confusing:

"Really, the opposite of melee would be to not fight at all."

"Which one kills faster? How passive is that?"

A "passive" skill is supposed to make a character more effective. In this case, fire mastery will make Enchant, a melee skill, more deadly. It could of course just as easily boost Firewall or Meteor, which are ranged attacks. The fact that a Mastery influences ranged attacks (as well as melee), doesn't mean it can't be applied to a pure melee build.

I do agree with you about Static. That utilizing it would definitely be going outside the pure melee build. I'm not sure whether that'll be incorporated in the final build or not (it wasn't mentioned in my original post). I just said I liked Sir_Die_alot's idea about having one point in Static (or an orb with +skills to Static) to deal with end-of-act bosses . This would be a last resort in case I can't make it past Diablo, for instance.

[kandrathe]

Main Entry: me·lee
Variant(s): also mê·lée /'mA-"lA, mA-'/
Function: noun
Etymology: French mêlée, from Old French meslee, from mesler to mix -- more at MEDDLE
Date: circa 1648
: a confused struggle; especially : a hand-to-hand fight among several people

[Guest]

Its so sad that every good and intresting post has to turn into a "the defenition of *** is this:" war...

[Sir_Die_alot]

Any1,
I wasn't the one who suggested static, that was bun-bun. :) This I do consider an offensive spell so it didn't get any skills with my sorc. Typically once people start using offensive skills as a melee sorc they don't stop and just end up with a weak nova/ts sorc or something. :P It's your char though feel free to do whatever is fun. :D


Trilliun have you really thought about what you have typed?

Using a mastery to increase the damage of an element on a weapon, is a spell.

Technically they are all "skills" and all characters have "skills". How you use them depends on if you are melee/ranged/spellcaster. Does a fanaticism using paladin automatically become melee because fanaticism increases melee damage? What if he uses a bow? He is using a "skill" to enhance his damage so by your definition he must be using a "spell". If it is only elemental based that counts what do you consider vengeance? Try telling every vengeance paladin you see that they are not melee characters. Probably the best reply you can expect for that one is "LOL N00B!".

Melee = The damage medium is a melee weapon, such as a sword
Ranged = The damage medium is ranged, such as the arrow from a bow
Spellcaster = The medium the damage is inflicted through is the skill iteself. It won't cost durability on a weapon or arrows from a quiver.

For all those asserting that a mastery is a "passive" spell, try this: Make a sorceress with zero Lightning mastery and take her round act 5 nightmare with a Baezil's Vortex. Make a sorceress with lightning mastery and do the same. Which one kills faster? How passive is that?

Make a barbarian with zero masteries and take him round act 5 nightmare with a big mace. Make a barbarian with mace mastery and do the same. Which one kills faster? How passive is that?

Being a passive skill does NOT mean that they do not work (who would invest in them then?) it means they work without any stimuli aside from the related generic action. You don't need to cast natural resistance, you don't need to hotkey critical strike. A passive is always active, the word "passive" is used to describe how you use them, passivly, or without initiating them.

[Any1]

Any1,
I wasn't the one who suggested static, that was bun-bun. :)

My bad. :-)

[Sir_Die_alot]

That's right! Check yourself before I have to give you some lessons with my melee-sorc-be-good-stick!

*pulls out broken ethereal Felloak*

[Guest]

I have the solution to the argument.

Do whatever you enjoy. IF you wanna use frost nova do it. Whatever makes the game more fun for you. That is what variants are all about.

"Legit" variants crack me up anyway.

Blizzard did not intend for you to make melee sorcies. You hacker!!!! (just kidding)

have fun best of luck

[Sir_Die_alot]

I was joking with the melee-sorc-be-good-stick... The broken ethereal Felloak was suppose to give that away. :P Of course he should play his own way that's what I said originally. :D

[Occhidiangela]

The contribution of zero-value-added-needle-sticking posts like the one you just made.

The folks engaged in the conversation did not seem to be overcome by indignation by kandrathe's insertion of a little clarity of definition. Why should you? Have you got a chip on your shoulder over another thread's contents? Why contaminate this discussion with your irritation over that thread?

Sometimes, clarity is aided by remembering what words mean, or by reviewing what words mean. It helps, sometimes, to use as much precision as one can to try and get one's ideas and points across. Friend kandrathe was adding some value, your post, and for that matter now mine, add zero value to the discussion at hand, which is melee sorceresses.

In short, get the chip off your shoulder, you surely have far more to add to this discussion board than carping about Grammarianisms, don't you? :D Sure you do!