Hybrid Theories

[arrunique]

Hybrid Theories: Building a functional two tree sorc

I would like to discuss how to build a sorc which can accomplish the following goals:

1. Have a high level of safety for hardcore play
2. Not depend on any particular gear
3. Be able to solo through the entire game, first quill rat through hell Baal
4. Do enough damage to be a contributor to party play, other than with static
5. Handle MF runs in the Pit or Tunnels or Crypt during multiplayer games

In looking at the skills I’ve concluded that Orb is the mandatory main damage skill for any hybrid. The only thing it doesn’t have going for it is that it is not an artillery skill so you can’t cheese Mephisto with it. I’m planning to do area MF runs rather than boss so this isn’t a problem.

Prereqs to Orb and the other utility skills (static, warmth, teleport) will consume a total of 9 skills. I’m planning on investing another 49 points into Orb for a total of

20 orb
18 ice bolt (17 synergy and 1 counted in prereqs)
12 cold mastery (-75% resists)

I’m planning on a total of 5 skillers, 1 helm, 1 amulet, 1 armor, 2 orb

Planning to a realistic level of 75 that leaves a total of 26 skill points to invest in my secondary damage skill.

I considered a few alternatives and there doesn’t seem to be any other minimum investment skill that could do enough damage to not slow the killing speed to a crawl. All of the lightning and fire skills are just too weak without a lot of synergies to back them up. I could max static and let my freeze merc do a lot of the work (freeze is better than might for the defense). Since I’m not expecting to have better gear than I could shop for he probably won’t be that buff.

Then I thought of something that could bring everything together, why not hybrid with Enchant and a bow? That would give me an excuse to invest a bunch of points in dex so I would have a lot of block, it would help my merc, and the synergy points in warmth would mitigate the need for a lot of mana.

So the question I’m posing is this: Would a hybrid enchantress match the killing speed/survivability/playability as a hybrid fireballer?

Fireball or lightning bolt seem like very weak secondary hybrid choices.

[whereagles]

I think you're better off with orb + synergized hydra. You can solo just about anywhere with those two skills and it's an excellent setup for hardcore, since you can shoot many baddies off-screen.

[Wyrm]

The 2% Orb synergy doesn't really seem worth while to me. Those points would be more useful in a synergy skill that would actually be useful. If you only plan to use the other skill when going against cold immunes, you could always nix the Ice Bolt points (giving you 43 for a secondary) and go with Thunderstorm and Lightning Mastery. Or you could use Nova, but that's not a very HC friendly skill (even though it is fun to use, and I did make one in HC, 1.09 though). Or you could even go with something like Firewall/Mastery.

[gekko]

I'm going to agree with what's already been said, and add a bit.

Enchant without HEAVY investment in both warmth and fire mastery is almost useless, particularly if you don't have a bow with both exploding arrows and piercing attack.

Orb doesn't need points in its synergie(s) to be effective. Frankly, even the points in cold mastery can be better spent. I would second the suggestion of hydra -- hydra + fire mastery would give you a solid fire based attack skill. While it won't be nearly as powerful or quick as fireball with synergies, it's a very safe attack to use.

My sorc from 1.09 is still very much effective (granted, she also has very good equipment). She is very effective using maxed orb (with 1 point spent in cold mastery and no surplus points in synergies) and a nearly maxed hydra with maxed fire mastery and no surplus synergies. Is she as fast as a 1.10 fully synergized fireball sorc? No. She is, however, more than viable.

gekko

[Chesspiece_face]

Regarding your plans for the cold tree. you are better off losing all the extra points in Ice bolt and maxing out Cold mastery if you want to use Orb as your main damage attack. max Cmastery gives you -115 cold resist iirc, the increased chance that you will lower the mobs resist below 0 will add more damage overall to your Orb than any amount that you get from synergies.

Since you say you want a character that is survivable in hardcore and you also say you won't have any suped up items to back you up i would reccomend putting some points into Energy Shield. Admitingly i haven't played much D2 since 1.10 came out but in HC you need all the defense you can get your hands on and you won't have it from handed down equipment. A couple skill points there could save you a lot of headaches. 7 at the most will give you 50% damage to mana. it really depends on how you feel comfortable. I've never played a HC sorc without some in Energy Shield.

I agree with the above poster that going the enchantress route would be too dependant on high lvls in warmth and a decent bow. with your item restrictions i would try to pick a skill setup where you can get the most bang for you buck solely from skills. Also since you are going HC you don't want to waste any Stat points on things you don't absolutely need. All extra stat points get shoved into Vitality. Being a sorc you are already going to be using a good amount of energy points, and you need strength to wear appropriate armor. At this point Dex is just unneccisary spending.

as far as your secondary attack goes, you really only have the fire tree to choose from. All the viable lightning skill require too many synergies to be efficient and with the limitations on skill points you need something that will work with your strong points while using as little points as possible. Depending on what you feel comfortable with, this gives you either Hydra or Fire wall. With your limited skill points Fire Wall would be stronger but more interactive, while Hydra would give you the option to fire and forget. Both are strong and equally viable depending on play style.


If i were to take your ideas and run with my playstyle i think i would come up with a build something like this:

Cold:
20 - Orb
20 - Mastery
5 - Prereqs

Lighting:
5 - Static Field
7 - Energy Shield
5 - Prereqs

Fire:
5 - Warmth
16 - Fire Wall
2 - Prereqs

total: 85 points at level 75

but that's me.

[arrunique]

you are better off losing all the extra points in Ice bolt and maxing out Cold mastery

I would agree cold mastery is great however I'm not sure getting it below -100% is that necessary. I'de like a code expert to chime in here by these are my assumptions with it:

1. Non-champion/unique/boss Monsters have either 0 resist or Immunity to cold.
2. Resists can't go below -100%

So getting CM to more than 17 (including skillers) is a waste because the extra -%s would only function on the occasional cold enchanted non-immune unique. Even if say 1/4 of monsters had as much as 50% cold resist the extra cold mastery would be wasted on the 3/4 of monsters which have no cold resists.

That is where I came up with my 10 in cold mastery. I'm planning ahead for when I get my thrift store skillers (+2 sorc orb +1 lore hat +2 magic amulet). If I happen to gamble for a +2 circlet or find a nice armor like vipermagi I'm still "optimized."

I think the synergy points are worth it because I'm planning on using orb to do area MF runs in multiplayer games. In a 6-8 player games the champions and uniques have a LOT of hitpoints so all the damage helps. For meph/andy runs the extra damage is a saftey factor because a quicker kill time means less chance of being attacked.

Depending on what you feel comfortable with, this gives you either Hydra or Fire wall

I agree. I mathed up enchant with a skill planner and it looks pretty weak without a real skill commitment. I'm starting to warm up to firewall because maxed wall and fire mastery give some pretty sexy damage numbers. And it would make leveling cake because a +2/+3 2 socket fwall staff could easily be made into Leaf for an early boost. Firewall has another advatage of being able to moat-cheese meph.

i would reccomend putting some points into Energy Shield

I am not a big fan of eshield after using it in softcore. It seems like I just ended up dead with no mana instead of just dead. I didn't see it as a big help until I got about 1k of mana and +11 lightning skills (on a lightning sorc). It would also cost 3 valuable skill points in useless prereqs. I would rather rely on keeping my freeze merc between me and the baddies than on a defense which could potentially prevent me from teleporting away at a crucial moment. From what I have been reading shield is really good if you are willing to commit skill points to telekinesis which as a hybrid I'm not.

[whereagles]

Hydra is much easier on your nerves than firewall :D

[Chesspiece_face]

Hydra is much easier on your nerves than firewall

I agree to some degree. I personally love a good fire wall, and if Orb is going to be the main attack you can pretty much assume that everything is going to be chilled and moving slowly, greatly increasing the time mobs spend in the fire wall and taking them out that much quicker. My experience with Hydra is i drop a couple and then train the enemies around the hydras. I would rather take a small risk at the beginning of the fight to get my firewalls up instead of increasing the duration of each fight while running circles around my hydras. Not only that but, unless they changed things, for mobs that have long death animations the Hydra keeps firing at them until the animation is over which is wasted time it could be killing other stuff.

For many of the same reasons i choose to use Energy Shield I also choose Fire Wall. My reasoning is: the longer the fight goes on, the more likely I will get hit with an attack i didn't foresee/or get into a situation i wasn't ready for. The EnSheild offers me the protection to cover the small risk at the beginning of the fight and the Fire Wall acts to shorten the fight after that point. It's not for everyone, but i'll throw down with FW.

Also, in regards to cold mastery, I don't know if you can go below -100% resists or not but once you get to hell mode where everything has huge resists anyway you are better off having the extre - cold resist then the extra damage. Whats the use of extra damage if it just gets resisted? if an extra 10 or 20 to - resist can bring that mob down to 0 or negative resists your damage is doing more bang for it's buck. plus I'm not sure, how it works now, but i thought -115% resists could take off immunities. Anyone know? It doesn't matter how much damage you do with your spell if the mob is immune. but if you can get rid of that immunity you spell will acually do some damage and also allow you to chill those mobs giving your secondary attack spell more efficiency.

[arrunique]

but i thought -115% resists could take off immunities

I had an Orb/Fwall sorc in softcore and was turned off because cold immunes move too fast in hell to feel the full burn. That was before I discovered the joys of the holy freeze merc.

I also had maxed Cold Mastery and found that it does not break immunes. Conviction does and so does Lower Resist. Think about it, if Cold Mastery could break immunity why would anyone play a fire sorc?

the longer the fight goes on, the more likely I will get hit with an attack i didn't foresee/or get into a situation i wasn't ready for.

There are only a couple of things that will be able to hit a well played sorc. Offscreen archers, espcially a5 quill rats because their missles are practicly invisible, and melee damage from a bad teleport. Since this is hardcore I can assume I won't be making blind teleports that leaves archers. Quill rats/burning dead can be taken care of by teleporting past the missles and backing up a step so your merc takes the beating. Gloams/black souls are neutralized with maxed light resists. Piercing slingers are only in the act 5 surface areas so partying through those areas and never speaking of them again solves that problem.

I guess it is a matter of personal preference. I would rather take a hit and retreat than take the chance a hit will drain my mana ball and I won't be able to retreat, so surviving the first hit means dying the second one.

And since I'm playing hardcore, if I get into a situation where I need the 25-45% damage resist to save me I'm doing something wrong anyway.

[whereagles]

If you have a merc good enough to tank monsters and little lag, firewall may be better. But quite frankly, I tried both and the only redeeming factor of firewall is you save some points to maximize static...

[JustAGuy]

I also had maxed Cold Mastery and found that it does not break immunes. Conviction does and so does Lower Resist. Think about it, if Cold Mastery could break immunity why would anyone play a fire sorc?

Correct, Cold Mastery does not break immunes. Conviction and Lower Resist break immunes with a caveat; if the amount being subtracted isn't enough to put the monster lower than 95%, the Conviction/LR doesn't break the immunity. My Avenger's level 27 conviction doesn't break the cold immunity for lots of things, the one that sticks out in my mind are the mages in the Chaos Sanctuary. A real pain, when they IM me, and my Cold Sorceress friend can't do a thing to help.

As for Lower Resist, the same applies, except it breaks less immunities since it subracts less from the monster's resistance. Stack Lower Resist and Conviction together, though...

[arrunique]

My Avenger's level 27 conviction doesn't break the cold immunity for lots of things, the one that sticks out in my mind are the mages in the Chaos Sanctuary. A real pain, when they IM me, and my Cold Sorceress friend can't do a thing to help.

Keep a kuko or glimmershred and dragonscale/tiamat on swith?