Frozen Orb MF against Cold immunes?

[Blue Eagle]

How does a Frozen orb sorc do against cold imunes?

[adeyke]

Er, she wouldn't do anything against cold immunes, what with them being cold immune and all.

If you also have a non-cold skill, that could be used to damage them. But then it's that alternate skill that matters, not the frozen orb. You should still have some points left over to invest in such a skill. Plenty of them are viable.

[Caaroid]

I have a frozen orb MF sorc, and just as adeyke suggests, she deals with cold immunes utilizing her secondary skill.

Her skill plan is:
20 bolt
20 orb
20 mastery
20 teleport

Yes, the key to cold MF-ing is that you only kill non-cold immunes. If you run Mausoleum, Ancient tunnels, Andariel r Mephisto, you'll have no troubles from CIs. If you really want to take out that single CI in your way, that's what yoiur merc is for.

[ryan4nayr]

Even after maxing FO & a few pts. into CM, there are *plenty* of skill pts. leftover for a secondary skill. Many go for Meteor since, like FO, fcr gear isn't quite required. The 9k fire dmg looks neat-o too :D

Personally I've gone through the road less travelled, Ltng. Haven't regretted it.

P.S: Caaroid, why max tele? Are you building her to regen mana per tele during PvP?

[Guest]

I made a fire/orb sorc, but without so much emphasis on Orb... Here are my skill points...

20 orb
2 cold mastery
20 fireball
20 meteor
16 fire mastery (still maxing)

Rest of my skills are in utility spells and prereqs.

She works out fine.

[Caaroid]

Caaroid, why max tele? Are you building her to regen mana per tele during PvP?

Hehe, well, the idea came from there, yes. But for different reasons.

As I mentioned in my previous post, when I MF, I only kill the non-cold immunes. Since around Andariel there are hardly any CIs, and the blood lords around Mephisto can be avoided, and neither the Mausoleum nor the Ancient Tunnels host CIs, this is not a great sacrifice.
On the other hand, what I kill I want to kill fast. Maxing cold mastery makes a HUGE diference, so I basically 'wasted' 40+ points on the build, the remaining ~ 40 are hardly sufficient to build up a skill that helps you kill fast. See, the key to successful MFing is to kill as many things in the given time frame as possible, while wearing as much MF as possible. Thus maxing the synergy for orb lands us with 60+ points spent.

Now what can one do with ~ 20 points? max static, now that's a fine way to go, but I prefer to don as much MF as possible. Wearing a lot of MF (both on equipment and on charms) leaves your mana pool rather small. (I have 566 life and 470 mana, 8xx life with oak from my brand-new Nature's Peace. I love that ring!)

Since I do not use the "external game feature" MH, it does take quite a few teleports to find Mephisto. It is a huge asset that I don't have to spend the 8 mana potions I had to use previously just to find his lair. This saves a trip to town, and allows me to use my life-setup on the belt (full rejuv-healing-healing-mana; instead of the mana setup full rejuv-healing-mana-mana). This adds to the durability of the character.

My strategy against him is to go toe-to-toe (at times this requires to kill the council, since if you go too deep in the central cavern the Blood Lords come out; but killing Bremm 'n' Co. with a maxed orb is finger practice). While fighting, I compensate for my lack of mana with mana potions (I can cast about 12 orbs before I go totally dry, so I am basically fighting from potions all the time).

All in all, it is a rather fun build, and is a HUGE help when having to find something (i.e rushing people through the game). Free teleport gets you addicted rather fast.

PS: My firend fell in love with my character, and decided to make an improved version. His char has 20 orb 20 mastery 20 TK 20 Telep 1 ES, since he has 800+ mana and can afford the stray hits. There the 20 teleport serve not only as a convenience feature but also as a safety solution: he never goes so low on mana so that he cannot teleport away from danger. This character proved to be especially durable.

edit: spelling

[ryan4nayr]

All in all, it is a rather fun build, and is a HUGE help when having to find something (i.e rushing people through the game). Free teleport gets you addicted rather fast.

:lol: You must've loved it when LM used to give a mana cost bonus instead of a dmg bonus.

It still boggles me that despite seemingly getting the shaft in 1.10, FO is still a great skill. Guess I better not jinx it. :ph34r:

[Caaroid]

It still boggles me that despite seemingly getting the shaft in 1.10, FO is still a great skill. Guess I better not jinx it.

Well. Orb is not THE cold skill to use anymore, it is ONE of the cold skills, so yes, in that regard it did get the shaft. However...
Consider that you want to use Blizzard, or Glacial, and consider the investment needed for that. They are powerful choices for the all-out Cold sorc, but you can make orb work with as little as 26(?) points. It is also easy to use, and effective against all non-CI enemies (whereas blizzard is lousy against stationary tergets.

Don't try to PVP with Orb, though :)

[Dozer]

Frozen Orb used to be timerless - now THAT was fun. Building sorceresses with 50 strength and 100% of the other points in Energy, and No cold immunes...... Ahhhh, those were the days. =)

[shavenlunatic]

20 teleport

Could i ask why???

[Obi2Kenobi]

He's got energy shield, for one, so when he is hit, he can still teleport out of there.

[xStongBadx]

I am new to the forums, so if this was already discussed please forgive me:

I built a blizz/fireball sorc and she has no problems in hell.

20 fireball
20 meteor
20 glacial spike
20 blizzard
1 fire mastery
1 cold mastery
1 warmth
1 in teleport
1 in static
1 in each prerequisite

If I come across a dual fire/cold immune monster, I static and let merc finish it off.

Blizzard is far superior to orb for 2 main reasons:

1. you dont have to wait for blizzard to traverse across the screen to hit monsters, it starts damaging them on cast.

2. the range is incredible! cast toward edge of screen and monsters offscreen start dying.

Incase you don't think I have enough synergies in this build, ponder this for a moment:

I do solo runs on Andarial, Mephisto and Baal while other people are doing Baal runs, trades, whatever.

Just my 2 cents.

[gekko]

Blizzard is far superior to orb [...]

That's a bit much of a claim to make.

Both blizzard and orb are good skills. In some situations, one or the other is "far superior" to the other. For example, against fast, small targets, blizzard is almost useless.

That being said, you are absolutely correct to say that blizzard is a more than effective killer. I disagree, however, that blizzard is, point for point, far superior to orb (particularly when you have only 25-30 spare skill points to invest in the cold tree).

gekko

[xStongBadx]

By my actual gameplay results blizzard worked better for me. Having tal rasha's full set gives extra %s to assist in delivering damage. My equipment boosts cold mastery to an acceptable level and i basically timer fire blizz on right click and blast away with fireball on left click between blizzards. As far as fast moving targets go, blizzard works very well against them. Seems like your chances to hit them increase when they are moving versus standing still. If monsters are fire immune, I switch left click to glacial spike keeping blizzard on right click. If they are cold immune, I switch blizzard to meteor on right click and keep fireball on left click. Try it and you may agree that orb is inferior.

[Wyrm]

Frozen Orb used to be timerless - now THAT was fun. Building sorceresses with 50 strength and 100% of the other points in Energy, and No cold immunes...... Ahhhh, those were the days. =)

What was the 50 for? Most people stopped at the 45 req for Magefist.

But you're right, that was fun, especially when you had a zon cast slow missiles on you.

[crumpuppet]

I'm still playing with a lvl85 cold sorc started waaaaay back in 1.06, all the way through all the patches and the expansion. She started out lightning, but then I discovered frozen orb (didn't know it was so cool, played solo). Because of this, she's got a lot of wasted skills, but still manages to kick some serious ass.

My tactic with cold immunes is usually ignore them, except if I really have to kill them. If I have to, I use fire wall and static field, sometimes even nova.

These skills work because I have 100% faster cast: Skin-Vipermagi (30) + Wizardspike (50) + Lidless Wall (20). After playing with this char, I struggle to start new sorceresses, because it's so irritating to start out with such a slow cast rate.

Another thing is, with a 100% faster cast, teleport becomes absolutely crazy. If you've got enough hit recovery, you can pretty much get away from anything, especially cold immunes. This is commonly known as "running away", but I prefer to think of it as a "tactical retreat" :)