I just started playing Ladder. My first character is going to be a Magic Finding Sorc, so I can get back on my feet.
I was originally planning on rebuilding my old MFer, a Fire/Ice sorc. The skills went/will go like this:
20 Fireball
20 Meteor
20 Frozen Orb
Rest in fire mastery, utilities, and prerequisites.
I got into quite a row with somebody in my game yesterday. He said that the only viable Sorc's are mono-tree. I said that a sorc that cannot kill a fourth of the monsters in hell is hardly viable.
He got me thinking however. Since I plan to be doing Meph runs exclusively, do you think it is worth my while to start a new sorc for my MFer? If I were to do this, I would go mono cold. My skill tree would probably go something like this:
20 Frozen Orb
20 Ice Bolt
20 Cold Mastery
20 Energy Shield
The reason for the 20 ES is that I will be playing totally untwinked, as I have NO items whatsoever (again, first Ladder character) and since I will most likely have negative resists in Nightmare AND hell, I couldn't care less about the bug. If you can think of something better for me to max, I'm open to suggestions.
The main question: should I rebuild a mono cold sorc for my Mephing (I'm scared to because going through Hell would be difficult if I was soloing it), or continue with my Fire/Ice sorc?
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HI!
I found that the best mephi-runners are cold sorceresses (if you manage to keep away from the CI blood lords, that is). My cold sorc uses a fully sinergyzed ORB, with maxed teleport (a 1-mana teleport means you can find meph easily), but my friend made a better one.
So far the consensus seems to be (at least among us), that the best meph-runner is a 20 orb 20 mastery 20 teleport 20 TK 1 es build. If you pump your ES to such heights, you might have trouble staying alive. This build, however, teleports for "free", so the worst that can happen to it with no mana is the inability to cast orb. With your skill plan, a 20-ES 1 TK solution would mean that stray hits would drain your mana rather quick, ensuring certain death.
I have just built a 20-es sorceress. She has 20 in TK as well, and maxed orb with a single point in mastery. Her goal is to have a level 40 es (95% damage goes to mana); she is at ES level 35 right now (90% absorbtion) and is doing fine. Apart from mana burn monsters and Blood Mana nothing ever kill her (she is level 72 in Nightmare). The problem with this build is, that you need a LOT of mana (I am at 2k right now, and it's not enough), you need very specific equipment (level 40 es? come on!), and your MF will be ~ 350 at best. Taking all this into consideration, I'd suggest instead the previous build, the one with max orb/mastery/teleport/TK, and a single point in ES.
Hope you'll find that build just as usable as we do.
Why would you rather max TK than ES?
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To survive. If you max TK, only 72% of damage goes to mana, if not, then 200%. If you max ES, most of the damage you take gets doubly subtracted from your mana, resulting in lovely insta-deaths. (Again, unles s you have a mana-intensive sorceress. Me ES sorc is now lev 75 with 2500 mana, over 350 energy and is fun, but your average sorc is just not built along these lines).
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05-31-2004, 12:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-31-2004, 12:12 AM by lfd.)
unrealshadow13,May 30 2004, 10:32 PM Wrote:Why would you rather max TK than ES? Because Energy Shield by default takes twice as much of your mana as the damage it is absorbing[1]. Points in telekinesis reduce the multiplier.
According to the Arreat Summit (hohoho, hahaha), 8 hard points in telekinesis will have reduced the multiplier to 1.5, and 16 hard points in telekinesis will have reduced it to 1 (i.e. for every point of damage absorbed, only one point of mana is deducted).
[1] Is "damage before resistances" used to work out how much mana to deplete? I seem to recall discussion on the topic, but I haven't used Energy Shield on a 1.10 sorc.
Edit: Too late. ;-) but whilst there is an edit button, there is no 'delete post' button for us mortals that I can see...
You don't know what you're talking about.
Righto. I don't want to put more than one point in Teleport because I need the 19 points to max out Ice Bolt (remember, very few +skills)
Here is my new skill plan:
20 Frozen Orb
20 Ice Bolt
20 Cold Mastery
20 TK
1 ES
Edit:
More like an update really, but I didn't want to double post.
Past level 8, ES starts giving you diminishing returns. Pre level 8, you get 5% dr per point. Past that point, you get like 3%.
If I were to bring ES only up to slvl 8, would I put my remaining points in TK, or spread them between TK and Tele?
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Quote:Is "damage before resistances" used to work out how much mana to deplete? I seem to recall discussion on the topic, but I haven't used Energy Shield on a 1.10 sorc.
Yes, this is the reason why many feel that ES has been nerfed in 1.10 -- and for normally built sorceresses this is actually true. If I recall Jarulf's post correctly, the damage mecahnics go somehow like this:
(1). PVP penalty
(2) ES/Bone armor/Cyclone armor
(3) Straight damage reduction (MDR and DR) -- I am sure up to this point
(4) resistances
(5) % absorb
...
So if one puts too many points into ES, one's mana will take gargantuan hits. (Personal experience with my ES sorc: amongst the non-mana burning monsters, the most dangerous are the balrog infernos, since they melt your mana away like there's no tomorrow. I wish they were using the player skill Inferno -- if it is bugged for us, why not for them? :)
There is a guide at another site detailing the setup for an ES sorc, you can find a lot of useful info about ES in that article.
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Quote: Righto. I don't want to put more than one point in Teleport because I need the 19 points to max out Ice Bolt (remember, very few +skills)
That was the main reason for me to maxing teleport ;)
IF you don't have a huge mana pool, finding Mephisto might get tedious. Then again, you'd kill faster, if not safer (not safer since you need 2x mana to teleport away, and with an active ES you might not have that much to spare :P).
Keep us updated how your build worked out!
So do you think I should distribute the remaining 12 points between TK and Tele, or all in one?
After Orb, what is my first thing to Max? I've been putting points into Cold Mastery. Should I focus on CM, or Ice Bolt? When should I max what?
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Look, if I were you I would not put any points into Ice Bolt for now. Wait until hell to see if she is powerful enough without the synergy (I usually find that my orb sorceresses are), and if she is, you can go and make a 20 tk 20 teleport build like I suggested :P
If not, you can always start pumpung the points then.
Unsynergized, with my current +skill equipment (I can't count on much more, I've just been lucky so far), Frozen Orb does barely 300 damage. Still no Ice Bolt?
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With a maxed mastery, that is 500 damage. Per shard. You can hit mephisto with 6-10 shards with each orb. 5k damage/sec seemed enough for me :P. Anyway, do try it out. Save the skill points.
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If you have 300 FO damage, every point in the synergy will just increase this by 6. It's not an especially strong synergy bonus.
Everything helps *grumble grumble* but I'll take your word for it. I've got a few points in the synergy already -_-; but I don't want to restart.
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Quote: Everything helps *grumble grumble* but I'll take your word for it. I've got a few points in the synergy already ; but I don't want to restart.
In case of the synergy, you're absolutely right. This is also true to pumping TK. IF, however, you decide to take my advice and max teleport, you have to note that a few points don't help. It's either max or none; it reaches 1 mana ~level 2x, and before that, wasting 10 skill points so that you can teleport for 10 mana instead of 20... does not sound too reasonable to me :)
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Get a nice rare diadem of Teleport. Teleport for zero mana. Stock up on your Ort runes though.
"I may be old, but I'm not dead."
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unrealshadow13,Jun 1 2004, 08:53 PM Wrote:what's a diadem? Clicky
Don't worry. You won't feel a thing...until I jam this down your throat!
-Dr. Nick Riviera
Have you read the FAQ, Etiquette, or the Rules yet?
And why would I need ort?
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