I found this guide by Zharous that i had saved - i hope he doesn't mind me posting it!
The Damage-Reduced Sorceress Version 1.1
Author: Zharous
1.09
Updated: October 2002
Navigation
Introduction
Statistics
Skills
Equipment
Introduction
The goal of the damage-reduced sorceress is to wear Stormshield. With Stormshield, Shako, and enough dexterity to maintain 75% blocking, your resistance to physical damage should be higher then any other character in the game. For example, with decently high magic-find and only 45% damage reduction, 75% blocking, 61% energy shield, total physical damage reduced will be 94.6%. With Shaftstop and 75% damage reduction equipment, total physical damage resistance can be brought up to 97.5%. * In comparison, the best most other classes can hope to reach is 93.7% with 75% blocking and 75% damage reduction alone. The only comparable classes are amazons with almost half their skills in dodge/avoid/evade or barbarians with their incredibly high defense.
What this means is that a sorceress built using this guide is able to act as her own tank for timed spells, surviving in hordes of cows without problems, teleport across and through any group of monsters without taking damage. This sorceress will never take much damage from anything in the cow levels, even most aura bosses, and will require nothing more then a few regular healing potions to stay alive. This makes leveling a character to 99 much easier and less stressful. This also makes having a large "life buffer" less important, which is the key to my suggestion to keep vitality at base. This also makes this a perfect character for players who suffer with a lot of lag from poor connections. This character lives for the cow levels and is quite fun during the late development stage of level 75-99 unlike many other character types. I have three meteor sorceresses, all now at level 99 on USWest created roughly to this guide, and other then lag-disconnects, have never died in the cow levels once.
The only problems with this build are the extremely low life and the lack of ability at low levels. Until this sorceress reaches the mid 30s and can start using life charms, this character is incredibly weak. Also due to the lower vitality levels later in the game, elemental damage can pose more of a threat then usual. However once your character reaches the high 60s and 70s, the abilities of this character will start outstripping any other sorceress build, and by the high 80s and 90s, will no longer require any life charms at all.
This character was never designed for player vs. player gameplay. If you want to kill cows very quickly and obtain a huge number of charms, gems, jewels, and the occasional set or unique item, perform "Meph-runs" "Pindle-runs" or "Baal-runs" very quickly with a nearly invulnerable character with high magic-find, or power-act other players, this is an idea build. It is fairly easy to make a few modifications as described below with a higher level of vitality and a lot of points into cold mastery to use this character as a decent dueler against physical damage classes, but any character built 100% for PvP play will inevitably be stronger.
This guide also assumes you will be using this character for magic finding while playing, and a majority of the equipment recommendations are based on this.
* Total Physical Resistance is calculated via the formula: Resistance = 1 - (1-X)(1-Y)(1-Z)
X represents damage reduced percentage in decimal rating (eg: 0.45), Y effective blocking rate, Z is energy shield rating
Statistics
Between the 505 stat points that are given in the course of the game itself and the 80 stat points that are given out to a level 1 sorceress, you have 585 points here to utilize:
Strength: 156 by level 73 for Stormshield
It is recommended to use equipment to boost your strength here, using items such as War Travelers or charms with secondary mods to save stats. There is no danger of body popping, as long as none of the +str items used are in your weapon or shield slots and you can safely hold Stormshield when you start playing. If you follow the equipment guide below, it is only necessary to actually increase your strength to 144, since the 1.09 Shako and War Travelers give you +12 to strength alone.
If you socket Stormshield with a Hel rune, or a -15 req jewel, or the absolute best item: a -15% req, 15% resist all jewel, the strength requirements fall to 133. This means you will have 23 more stat points available for either vitality or energy. A clean or an Um'd (+22% resist all) Stormshield is fine however, since an extra 46 points in life will rarely make a difference in surviving or not, and can be replaced by two 20-life small charms. However perfectionists may want to go this route.
Dexterity: 179 at level 73 when you first start using Stormshield for 75% blocking, 237 required once you reach level 99.
Other equipment worn will lessen the requirement here, and with Shako and Tal Rasha’s belt, you should only need 215 actual points into this stat.
The formula to determine how many points you need in dexterity for blocking is as follows:
Shield Blocking X (Dexterity - 15)) / (Character Level * 2) = Total Blocking
For Stormshield (unique monarch), this calculates to the following: (Monarch = 42 blocking + 25 increased = 67%)
67 (x - 15) / (99 X 2) = 75
67 (x - 15) = 14850
x - 15 = 222
Dex @ lev 99 = 237
A good inexpensive shield to use until reaching level 73 is Whitstan’s Guard. Only requiring 53 strength and usable at level 29, this is also a good replacement shield if you wish to place almost 100 extra points into
either vitality or energy. The calculations for dexterity run as follows for Whitstan's Guard: (set round shield = 25 blocking + 55 increased = 80%). But since Whitstan's is bugged, the actual blocking rate comes to 87%.
87 (x - 15) / (99 X 2) = 75
87 (x - 15) = 14850
x - 15 = 173
Dex @ lev 99 = 186
Vitality: Base (or 100 to 200 points) (1 point = 2 vit)
Why base? This is viable for players who can play low levels dangerously or with groups when starting out. On average, the equipment you will pick up later including Shako, Tal Rasha’s amulet, Oculus, and War Travelers increase your vitality considerably. Adding points into vitality returns the least benefit when compared to any of the other stats. For example, you would have to put 10 stat points into vitality to receive 20 life, a similar gain which you could obtain by a 1x1 small charm in your inventory. Every bit of damage that comes out of your mana is “recovered†almost instantly. If you follow the high-energy shield level recommended below, you'll find that your damage from life is incredibly minimized, and healing potions used while playing cow levels will have the maximum effect. Finally, a base-vitality build is better in the long run for a pure PvM sorceress since at high levels around ~90, you can safely take off all life charms and still take out any target in the game easily without help.
With only eight small 20-life charms and around ~500-600 life, a level 73 sorceress with Stormshield has sufficient life to survive and deal out damage to cows with ease. In addition, the resistances provided by Stormshield negate the need to hold as many resistance charms normally held by other sorceresses. For PvP characters, simply hold as many life charms as you can get hold of – you should easily be able to reach over 1000 life using base vitality and life charms alone, and this moderately high vitality base plus a large mana base is hard to beat. The absolute best charms to use would be duel life/mana charms, and specifically small 20 life/17 mana charms would strengthen this character incredibly, although good ones are nearly impossible to find.
If you decide to exclusively use Whitstan's Guard, which saves you 61 points of strength (156 down to 95 for War Travelers), and 49 points of dexterity, you can either throw these 110 extra points into vitality. Damage reduce equipment is still very handy to reduce the mana penalty of energy shield, so you will end up with an overall weaker character in terms of both life and energy. The 35% damage reduce of Stormshield or the 30% of Shaftstop are both fairly equivalent, and either will reduce the mana penalty of your energy shield by a similar percentage, so Shaftstop alone is a good alternative if you are willing to give up a large amount of magic-find.
On the other hand, you can place about 100-200 points into vitality. This makes it easier to level at low levels then a base-vitality sorceress, and you will be better equipped for occasional dueling and surviving elemental attacks from act bosses when doing magic-find runs. A high-vitality version of this sorceress can also use much-cheaper mana charms instead of vitality charms to boost their stats. If you are going to use a large number of points into vitality, you are obviously sacrificing energy to do so, so level 1 energy shield is important. You are not really saving many skill points by doing this however, as you will need a much higher level of Warmth to survive well with less energy. The only area you will need excessive amounts of mana is cow leveling, so you can swap on a large number of mana charms for either magic-find charms or life charms, when playing in other areas of the game.
Energy: Everything else (or moderately low, Base to 100 points) (1 point = 2.0-3.8 mana)
With a high energy shield, and high warmth, your mana should absorb most of the damage you take from physical or elemental damage. With Frostburn and two Stones of Jordan, every point placed into energy will return 3.8 mana, and with most damage being absorbed by your mana through a high energy shield, adding points into energy returns a far greater benefit then vitality does. By level 99, you should have around 250 points in energy.
If you are using a low or a base-energy build with high vitality, you will always need to wear a large number of mana charms, preferably 59-mana grand charms, that you will never be able to take off while running through the cow levels, even with a large investment into warmth. However, if you want to build a sorceress that can act as a 75% DR dueler with Shako, Shaftstop, and Stormshield, taking out physical-damage opponents with orb, this route is a good one.
Skills
Cold Skills
20 Frozen Orb (Not required at all for cow games when this character is full strength, use any other spell you wish here - however frozen orb is a great secondary spell)
5 prerequisites for frozen orb
1 Frozen Armor
1 Shiver Armor
1 Chilling Armor (oblivion knight ranged attack repulsion)
1 Cold mastery (~69% - 73% piercing with skill items)
Lightning Skills
1 Static Field (wide enough radius when boosted with skill items)
1 Energy Shield (~10 with skill items or 52% damage absorb - moderate to high vitality)
7 Energy Shield (~16 with skill items or 61% damage absorb - base vitality)
5 pre-requisites for energy shield
Fire Skills
5 Prerequisites for Meteor
20 Meteor
20 Fire Mastery
9 Warmth (Should be around 250% with skill items)
Only 96 out of the 110 provided skills are given in this guide, so depending on your personal preferences you can put the last 14 skill points into shiver armor (higher defense), energy field (higher percentage damage absorbed), static field, or warmth. If you want to duel with this character, place all these extra points into cold mastery or hydra.
Why use Frozen Orb? This spell is very useful in most acts, and still works well in pvp and cows, but won’t be needed as much after acquiring Stormshield. Frozen orb is incredibly overpowered for normal and nightmare games, and is very useful for completing quests or leveling a sorceress from levels 30 through 70. Also, Frozen Orb is often the most effective spell for taking out fire resistant or fire immune bosses. This spell however is completely replaceable for cow-leveling, since at high levels, you will not need to orb them first to slow them down, and in fact, may kill them faster if you let them quickly move to congregate together in a tightly packed group. Meteor/Nova, Meteor/Charged Bolt, Meteor/Enchant/Shiver hybrid melee characters are good alternatives.
Why use Meteor? Meteor and Nova work the best for clearing thickly packed groups of monsters, such as the cows in the cow level since both skills do damage in a wide, circular area and the damage is not stopped, or absorbed by monsters. However, while nova requires quite a few faster cast items to deal out enough damage and requires tons of mana, meteor does an immense blast of damage instantly, and can be used with magic find items easily. In addition, it can be thrown to any area on the screen, and meteor’s burning damage can be stacked up. The sole problem with meteor, it’s casting delay, becomes irrelevant if you can personally round the cows together and ignore their attacks while calling repeated meteors down on them.
This spell has a very long cast delay, and unlike every other spell in the game, there is also a long delay between the initial casting and when the spell actually “arrivesâ€. This arrival delay causes non-DR sorceresses to constantly run around, often scattering the monsters or causing the meteor to miss completely, hence the perception that Meteor is a worthless spell. However, on the positive side, this spell does both a tremendous initial explosion damage, and a stackable burning damage. If you call down multiple meteors, this stackable burning damage, which covers a wide radius, can be quickly multiplied to do much more damage then firewall does Meteor is also cast over a very slow interval, with a 1.2 second casting delay. This means that your casting speed is rarely affected by lag or by the partial “stunlock†you will experience when jumping into a group of cows. This “fire and forget†technique is far simpler, and lets you spend more of your time using static field and aiming your shots instead of staying out of the cows, which you would have to do with Nova to keep your spell usable.
For example: At level 33 Meteor/level 33 Fire Mastery, you’re initial explosion damage is 6860 (avg) and the fire damage is 1575 per second for 20 seconds. Throw down 6 meteors in the same spot, which would take around 7 seconds, and you have a WIDE, CIRCULAR area doing 9450 damage per second, which will last for another 13 seconds or so before diminishing. In comparison, Firewall at the same skill level (level 33/33) does about the same damage per second and starts doing it immediately (9117 damage/sec) but does it in a much smaller field. Also, firewall lasts exactly 3.6 seconds, never increasing, while the burn duration of Meteor keeps increasing with higher skill levels.
The best tactic I have found for 8 player cow games for a DR sorc is to round the cows into a tight mass, similar to what a javelin-based Amazon would do. Then while standing to one side, proceed to cast repeated meteors down immediately next to yourself on one side of the horde, as they move towards you. Small tightly-packed groups can be dropped almost instantly with "teleport next to them, meteor, 3X static, meteor arrives and drops all of them. For larger groups, alternate between static field and meteor without moving, and the entire group of cows should drop within seconds. Similar to Javazon tactics, this works far better when staying away from other players, and utilizing the thick “packs†of cows that already exist when the level starts. But unlike a Javazon, you're killing speed will never be diminished by smaller groups, and in less then full games, you're speed will actually increase considerably. If you run across bosses, simply orb or meteor them to death, you can still usually still ignore almost any cow boss' attacks. Pay particular attention to their modifications however, if a boss is "cold enhanced", meteor will do more damage, if "fire enhanced" or "aura enhanced, cursed, extra strong, extra fast, mana burn" you may want to orb from a safe distance.
Cow-running MFind Equipment
Helm: Shako
Armor: Tal Rasha's / Skullder's Ire or Shaftstop (PvP)
Weapon: Oculus (Ist rune) (+3 Skills & 80% Mfind)
Ali-Baba w/up to 2 Ists (1-99 Mfind + 60%) ~ 159% Mfind max
Gull Dagger = 100% Mfind
Shield: Whitstan’s Guard / Stormshield (lev 73+)
Gloves: Frostburn / Chance Gloves (lev 73+)
Belt: Tal Rasha's / String of Ears
Amulet: Tal Rasha's / Mara's (with Skullder's Ire)
Rings: 2 SOJs
Boots: War Travelers
Charms: Several life charms, more for low level sorceresses, replace with fire skill charms later
Magic Find / Normal gameplay setup:
Helm: Shako
Armor: Tal Rasha's
Amulet: Tal Rasha's / Mara's / Tancred's (78% mfind with boots)
Weapon: Wizardspike/IstIst AliBaba
Shield: Stormshield (67% blocking) / Rhyme'd Hyperion shield (64% blocking)
Gloves: 40% chance guards
Rings: 2 Sojs or 30% Nagelrings (you will still have plenty of mana at high character levels)
Belt: Tal Rasha's (extra set bonus of 65% mfind) or Thundergod's vigor
Boots: War Travelers / Tancred's (30% walk/run with amulet)
Charms: No skill charms needed, small magic-find charms, fire & poison resist charms if needed
Other good charms include magic-find charms, fire skill charms, or duel life/mana charms. Using 4-5 fire charms to increase your meteor/fire mastery skill to level 33/33 or above (6860 average damage per hit, 1575 burning damage per meteor per second for a 20 second duration) seems to improve your chance of dropping a group of cows in 1 hit. Beyond level 35/36, there seems to be little benefit other then increasing the burning damage and burning damage length or the speed in dropping bosses.
Feel free to customize the equipment described above. Besides a high-blocking shield such as Stormshield, there is little else you absolutely need. This suggested layout is very powerful, gives you a good combination of magic-find and skill equipment and resists without crippling your character in any way.
Power-boost equipment for special occasions are Shaftstop and Guardian Angel, both being very viable alternatives if you do not desire to constantly wear high magic-find armor. Shaftstop increases your damage reduced percentage from 45% to 75%, effectively reducing your "damage taken" percentage from 55% to 25%, more then doubling your resistance to physical damage. Great for PVP play, and surviving in cow games until you are high enough level to use Stormshield. Guardian angel is another fantastic alternative that provides a great 20% increase in blocking which will save you a ton of points into dexterity if you decide to use it exclusively (237 dex for 75% blocking at level 99 without, 186 dex with Guardian Angel). In addition, it will boost your resistances from 75% to 90% when combined with other resist equipment and charms, effectively reducing elemental damage to only 40% of their normal strength. If combined with absorb equipment, Rising sun, raven frosts, thundergod's vigor for example, you will be totally immune from elemental attacks and even healed by them. With either 133 or 156 strength for Stormshield, the 118 strength requirements for Guardian Angel or the 92 strength requirements for Shaftstop are not a problem.
I'm sure someone has over -200% with all their + skills (assuming that's possible, I'm to tired tonight to look up/figure out what slvl that would be.