Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ? <

[Skagen]

Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

Hey all first time poster here .. but i hope you will bear with me and help me with my theorycrafting and share your experiences in the pursuit of the "perfect sorc".

Now to give you an idear where im comming from, id start out by going over a few old sorcs i played..

First it was the old classic i think it was back in 1.08 tanksorc with MeteOrb stormshield harle and 3 piece tals and all that jazz it was amazing.. huge damage and could stand in the middle of anything and just take it ! Really enjoyed that character

Lastly it has been the dual dream Zeal variant, setup with guardian angel for 90% all res in hell (thanks to a lot of charms) max block with tower dream shield and guardian, and max zeal speed thanks to 2 IK piece gloves boots set bonus and Ias jewel in the Angel plate.
- Now this character is a real killer much more so then any i played before.. and with max block 90% all ress and well over 1000 life unbuffed she can take almost anything i can think off..

BUT could it be better ? Ive read a great many posts regarding the merits of maxed ES and the PDR gear pieces most prominetly from EpicDeva, and i must say its sounding really impressive...from a defense point of view.. but how to maximise the offensive potential ? it would be a poor choice to go with dream/zeal since you could only use the dream shield not the helmet, and that would also deprive you from using Gerkes another great piece of PDR kit.

So that rules out the fancy-full runeworld builds.. and leaves us back with the plain old "spell-caster" variant.. i just cant seem to see any other option then the staple although a bit boring full lightning (since we will be going into lightning tree anyway) sorc ?

Is it possible to make somethin completely different ? what do you people who have made these "immortal characters" use for offense ? i mean standing still in a crowd of cows and not dying for 15 minutes straight is great.. ill give you that but we cant _bore_ the monsters to death sadly.. so.. what is the most efficient and coolest setup ? I dont care if its expensive or not .. we are dreaming here.. what would you do if you had the pick of the litter ? any piece of kit you could think of? Would you even make a sorc? or would this be better suited on say a paladin or amazon with enigma thrown in the mix?

I cant wait to hear your experiences and i hope to see some people chiming in whos actually tried this type of character.

And if you happen to have made a character acording to these idears please feel free to share with us/me your setup .. gear choices and such that would be great.

Sincerly
~Skagen

 

[lumpor]

Re: Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

Es needs skill points and some gear to make it effective. it's also an inflexible way of protection. 90% resists, max block and that life seems more than enough. Es is more for those who have focused all on offense and use Es to clean up all the defensive lacks they left behind.

 

[redground]

Re: Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

Man, if you kill everything really fast the is nothing left to hurt you, right?

That is why i think a energy shield nova sorc with infinity and 105FCR can pretty much rule hell. Or even a max vita full lighining sorc if you want some INSANE dmg.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

ES makes you significantly MORE susceptible to manaburn and poison-damage monsters, which are moderately common.

As lumpor (basically) said, 90% resists, max block and high life is a very versatile and complete defensive solution. If you can achieve this and maintain great offense, I think you have a more complete sorc than any ES build I've ever seen.

 

[Skagen]

Re: Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

Thanks for the replies guys, but the whole point was to try and make a sorc with the "physical damage reduced by X" quality also known as PDR to take what little damage would get through an ES with max Telekenisis offcourse. I know the paladins make great use of this type of setup in the "Abbot variant" and wanted to know if any of you guys have tried it out and how it works ?

I know EpicDeva has a post running searching for this type of gear so he must have some thoughts on the subject

Cheers
~Skagen

 

[Tigerballs]

Re: Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

Lol or my favorite....

Skills:
20 Fireball
20 Meteor
20 Firebolt
20 Fire Mastery
1 Energy Shield
1 Cold Armour (your choice)
1 Teleport
1 Lightning Mastery
All the Rest in Chain Lightning

 

[lumpor]

Re: Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

The abbot was a build made to become invincible, and at every place available sacrifice offense for defense. You need t focus on defense now. The abbot had much more survivability than required. It's only because it's cool to have an invincible character, not because it's the most effective type of character. You don't need es.

Negating damage is cool and all, but SsoG's tank sorc had free equipment spots and skill points to be able to use it well, and his offense took a blow because of that. It's also much easier to fight without relying on es. If you're able to fight without es, do so.

 

[Skagen]

Re: Building the perfect balance between offense and defense ?

SsoG's tank sorc had free equipment spots and skill points to be able to use it well

Thanks for the input.. ive heard about this SsoG and his tank sorc before.. but i have been unable to find any information as to how he made his character? what gear choices ? what spec ?

If anyone knows please fill in the blanks

Cheers
~Skagen