Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

[sirpoopsalot]

Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

I just completed my 'analysis' of this topic, so I thought I'd share it in the sorc forum too.


First, some info/disclaimers:

- I don't have Infinity, Enigma, CoH, Anni or Torch (and likely never will have any of those). The lack of Infinity, and my single-player playstyle, means that single-element sorcs aren't a good solution for me (relying on the merc to kill immunes isn't an option I like). Single-element sorcs might be a great option for you - possibly the best there is - but I pretty much ignored them in my analysis because they don't "fit" for me.

- Otherwise, my item choices are pretty close to unrestricted, including access to ladder-only runewords.

- My emphasis is on efficient item-finding, not on gaining character experience. So this info was designed with solo games in mind (to minimize monster HP).

- Likewise, I wanted a build capable of doing full-clears of the WSK, not just Baal & minion runs.


The Summary: Reviews of 4 different sorceresses designed for this task:
1. Nova/Fireball (200 FCR)
2. Meteorb (full Tal's)
3. Blizzwaller (full Tal's)
4. FO/Nova ("requiring" very good gear, but full Tal's could work pretty well too with a reasonable quantity of +skill charms)

The Link: http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=683498



Questions or comments are welcome.

 

[GreatInRemembrance]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

Meteorb works well for me, personally. I'm constantly doing Baal runs with her.

Go max vit, teleporting to dodge is key here instead of trying to block.

For the minions before Baal:

Wave 1: 2-3 FOs will take care of the entire thing
Wave 2: Meteor, Meteor, Meteor. Start them, spread out some but mostly overlapping, before Baal drops them. After that, try to target the main boss in the middle and continue to Meteor away. Use FB to finish up the remaining skeletons that wandered.
Wave 3: FO is your friend here again. This wave takes a little finesse as you'll be needing to teleport around a bit in between castings so that your merc doesn't get quickly eaten by 8 dfferent Hydras at once. If you have high resists stand your ground when they drop, keep your merc and yourself up to reasonable levels with pots, and blast away until they drop or it gets to hot for either you or your merc and you need to tele away.
Wave 4: Easy, merc tank, FO the pack from optimal distance. Might take a tele or two for a breather for your merc if he gets particuarly surrounded before you thin the pack, but overall very easy.
Wave 5: FO once again. Not hard, but really need to keep an eye on that merc health to make sure he doesn't drop. A little paying attention and it's cake, though. One tip here... if Lister spawns with Fire and Cold immune, as well as some nasty mods like extra strong and Fanaticism enchanted, kill off the rest of the pack with FO first, and then it's up to your merc to deal with Lister. But, you can still help. Static Lister down to 50% is the first step and from there on, use Telekinesis (even if you're only ever put on point in it... which really no reason to put any more into it with this build other than to get Teleport... and use it to keep Lister in Hit Recovery. It makes a huge difference in not only keeping the merc alive but letting him get solid hits in without getting stunned every 2 seconds.

Baal: Static, stay alive, and FO until dead.

Full Tal's should work just fine for this.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

Yes it works and that's pretty much the exact battlepath I chose (with my ~9k fireball, that was a lot faster on wave3 and Baal compared to FO).

But I found Full-Tal's Meteorb was too slow for my liking, since ~60 of my skillpoints were in the seldom-used fire tree (leaving too much reliance on a mediocre FO). The 2nd wave is a nice, easy treat with the Meteorb, but otherwise it's FO-city. So I looked into the other options.

Overall, I'd only rate the Meteorb as mediocre - and it was the least favourite of my builds.

 

[petrov]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

Sirpoop,

What would the FOrb/Nova be like at farming Hell Meph, and the other usual bosses?

Many thanks,

Petrov.

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

- My emphasis is on efficient item-finding, not on gaining character experience. So this info was designed with solo games in mind (to minimize monster HP).

- Likewise, I wanted a build capable of doing full-clears of the WSK, not just Baal & minion runs.

Those are my goals too for my new char. And in addition, I want to make melee/caster hydrid that can clear those iron maiden areas too. And also want to sorc/merc team that can clear those areas more than 20 times in a row without losing merc.

As iron maiden knights/souls are almost always there, so my only option is rogue merc. Physical immunu mages in lvl3 are also painful for act2 merc.

Enchant gives same damage for act2/act1 merc so ranged merc suits better for iron maiden areas. And without enchant rogue merc is kind of weak, thats why testing this kind of build. My testing sorc is only lvl70, just did 1st baalrun and all went smoothly, knights+death lords were there, but both merc and sorc survive whole run just fine. Later I add absorb gear, so both can survive souls attacks and actually its only weak spot at the moment, all other monster drop nicely.

Build is chargedbolt enchant sorc. Shako+CM+vipermagi+3L10fcr amu,spirit,magefist etc.. so far. Later better items.
Only lvl28 Lighting skills and lvl32 enchant so far, but thats enough for baalrunning, later 3xpieces tal etc... for mf, but at moment at lvling stage.
Later can do much aggressive runs, but does more than ok at this stage.

Need to be close while using charged bolt, so robust melee type sorc is perfect for job. Rogue can handle L-immunes, but I have option to melee with CM if she needs help. And later warmth keeps mana bulb full, as insight merc is no option.

Not sure if this is fast enough later with mf items on, but so far looks more than promising. Kills nicely enough, not much mana problems, and merc survives runs. Soloed whole hell, so its versatile for all kind of runs.

edit: soloed 4 times baal, killing all along the way, now lvl74 char, no problems, all kind of monsters go down nicely. So far merc killed all L-immunes fast enough, no need to melee with sorc. Later in full games, its different story.

 

[GreatInRemembrance]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

Sirpoop,

What would the FOrb/Nova be like at farming Hell Meph, and the other usual bosses?

Many thanks,

Petrov.

FO rids us of Meph in about 8 shots (with respectable gear) providing you have the merc capable of tanking it, else you'll find yourself running around a lot.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

@petrov,
as GreatInRemembrance said, having a merc that can tank is important for Meph with FO, but depending on the gear you have, you might be a little faster. With Static Field it takes me 6-10 shots to kill Baal, so I would think Meph could be done in 3 or 4 with static to start... it might even be faster than that...

I didn't run Meph, but I had no difficulties whatsoever when I battled him.


@DH_Amazon, great idea. I've always wanted to try a CM-wielding hybrid but never got around to it. And, I never really considered it as a viable runner since getting good +skills, FCR, damage, resists, some melee mods, and MF seems like it would be a little bit of a stretch for equipment, but I'll have to rethink that opinion... It's interesting that you went with CB over Nova (likely leaving you with a weaker Enchant)...

How's your Enchant damage? It seems to me like LI's would be a little bit of a problem, since so many of your skillpoints would be tied up in CBolt. But I guess Burning Souls would really be the only regularly-nasty LI you'll encounter (and Lister too) in WSK.

A couple of ideas for you to maybe consider:
- Delerium isn't quite a Shako, but it's got +2 skills, 25%MF, +10 Vit, and great crowd control. If you ever find swarms a problem, this might be a good helm for you or your merc.

- FYI one of my melee enchantresses (two-handed Kingslayer/Vengeance build) used an Iron Wolf merc (cold-based). The merc couldn't kill anything on his own, but his continuous use of Glacial Spike was amazing. Every time I encountered tough FI and/or LI monsters, his attacks would work at full force, freezing everything around and leaving me a lot more time and space to take care of things. With teleport it was easy to rescue him from trouble too (when he gets swarmed), and to telebomb things like OK's (after he'd froze the Abyss Knights with GS).

As I said though, the Iron Wolf's killing power is quite stunted. But if you're confident that you can kill everything on your own, he's a fantastic choice for an enchantress - possibly the best there is.

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

@DH_Amazon, great idea. I've always wanted to try a CM-wielding hybrid but never got around to it. And, I never really considered it as a viable runner since getting good +skills, FCR, damage, resists, some melee mods, and MF seems like it would be a little bit of a stretch for equipment, but I'll have to rethink that opinion...

How's your Enchant damage? It seems to me like LI's would be a little bit of a problem, since so many of your skillpoints would be tied up in CBolt. But I guess Burning Souls would really be the only regularly-nasty LI you'll encounter (and Lister too).

At the moment, I play char as caster, merc can handle all immunes quite well.
So no ias-problems yet. I have only max light-resist, rest are near zero, need to fix those before going full melee. Need to skip lvl if full of souls, as haven't found thunder-belt yet. After that, no problem. Couple of souls in throne is no problem, but don't want to clear yet whole lvl with souls yet.

I just recently got lvl to use stormshield, but haven't transferred it yet. I have max block with it, so then its much safer to go meleeing.
And for ias, I need only extra 30ias with CM-Phase, so Stormshield(ias)+Shako(ias) should cover that, or ias gloves+ias jool in stormshield.
I might use CM+Spirit as caster side, and do easy meleeing in that side. And at switch fleshripper+stormshield to tank/melee those heavy hitters.

My current enchant is only 700, but even with that merc kills those souls in 1-2hits, so its hard to reach those in time with melee char before ranged merc. So I just tele couple times, while merc does killing. Or aiming non-immunes with Lightning.

As for mf-problem, I had mf-enchant char in prev ladder with tal amu+armor(ias jool)+belt,shako(ias) and CM-Phase. She went with nova+enchant route, now testing if charged-bolt variant is viable.
Merc was using tal-armor+shako too, so total mf was good.

Haven't found those in this ladder, so its vipermagi at the moment, but its great while playing as caster while leveling this.


I have played around 10... enchant sorcs, so I am quite familiar with those. With full enchant+synergies its 3k... enchant damage, but its way too much in solo games. Now trying to keep enchant damage low enough, so plenty of points to put in L-tree. Even that 63 (20charged,20L,20Lmastery,static,telekines,tele) points is possible, and still got enough points for decent enchant. Aiming for 1.2k-1.5k enchant in this char, and its more than enough for solo games.

Lister if both fire+light immune is problem, merc with threachery+bow damage can handle that, but slowly. I will fix that with fleshripper, its great weapon against those double immunes. Even full game double-immune Lister go down with it.

That Lighting/Charged damage looks little low at stats screen, but with CM its quite good at field. And while rogue with threachery gives constant poison damage, so those heavy hitters do down nicely too. Haven't dediced yet, which bow is best for rogue, now using harmony, but later maybe upped wws(shael+nef).

 

[redground]

Re: Building a good dual-element WSK & Baal runner

Get a harmony bow, kill some crap in you favorite spot and summon some revives (you have up to 20)

If you do so, it will be a huge piece of cake with CL/Orb or Meteorb.