cheap tank sorc?

cheap tank sorc?

my last sorc sux, as shes always out of mana and even with a full belt i can kill squat, but i've been reading bout tank sorcs alot.. is there a way to make a tank sorc without expensive gear? and what's the best setup for a managable sorc? (know this question get's asked 25324 a second but still :xdrunk: )

i got a bit of eq, but not much low lvl gear and not that much mid lvl (completely no high lvl)....any other way to boost mana and vit at the same time?

 

Hiho,

hope my ideas help a bit ...

my last sorc sux, as shes always out of mana

Well, i think it isnt that hard to gamble for rings and amy which give to mana. So almost any of my casters is using base mana and like +100 mana rings. Just id all rings which drops and try some gambling for rings and amys.

Then u can try to trade for a (cheap) pair of frostburns which give a nice mana boost. A little bit more expensive is a wizzard spike which give a huge boost again at higher levels.

and even with a full belt i can kill squat, but i've been reading bout tank sorcs alot.. is there a way to make a tank sorc without expensive gear?

I've never made a "tank sorc" but my sorces can quite take some hits. I think the most important part is a nice fast blocking. So try to get a whistans guard if resists are no matter. If they are, try a mosars with perfect diamonds. That will give around 70 resists and a quite nice blocking.

Next thing you will need is some life. Just do some normal or nm cow runs and collect charms. Even if those are low life charms, its still better using them, then no ones. Also collect all gems and make perfect gems to cube some new charms. This can give a nice life boost.

Another source for life and mana is of course socketing gems into your armour or helm.

and what's the best setup for a managable sorc? (know this question get's asked 25324 a second but still :xdrunk: )

Kind of a standard gear for my sorces is a vipermagi, wizz spike or a nice sorc orb, mosars shield and tals belt. Then most wear the above mentioned mana rings and some crafted sorc amys. All in all thats not an expensive gear (just the wizz spike i think).

Hope that helped a bit.

BC

 

acctually found a whist. yesterday, might be able to socc it with a diamond to get at least some res and the idea for the rings.. why didn't i think of that? :teeth:

only have 1 pair of frosties on my nec but he needs them so i would have to trade for em

and yes, thanks, it's most helpfull :xgrin:

 

only have 1 pair of frosties on my nec but he needs them so i would have to trade for em

and yes, thanks, it's most helpfull :xgrin:


What realm are you on? If its on europe give me a call (account: battle.cookie) i think i can hand out a pair of frostburns to you. Gotta check my mules first tho.

BC

 

USEast, ladder... shame though..

thankx for the offer

 

How does the recipe work for cubing charms? Could I get a link for this,

Thanks

 

How does the recipe work for cubing charms? Could I get a link for this

Check the cube recipes on diabloii.net.
Somewhere like http://www.diabloii.net/items/horadric_cube.shtml if i remember correctly.

BC

 

I think I have an extra pair somewhere, just look me up *Louisifier

 

wrote it down, at work now, will start searching for you in approx. 5 hours from now...(i'm in europe, don'tknow what time zone you're in :xmile3: )

 

am in NY on US East....... hope it helps

 

Cubing charms is simply 3 Pgems of any kind. It is best to get Hell charms or at least late NM or NM cows ones, and not ones from chests. Cubing charms and what can be had has everything to do with the lvl of the monster that drops it. Charms from Hell cows are lvl 90, Baal Hell 95, monster in Pit Act 1 are 85, and if you get them other places they will be lower. I am not sure of NM cows lvl but it seems they are in the 60's so you best look taht up, and make sure you know where a charm came from before wasting a bunch of gems.

Remember while rolling charms that, sure you may be looking for certain things but keep in mind that some charms you may not need for your sorc might be highly tradeable. Things like sharps and fines with multiple mods, life, skillers for War Crys, Combat Pally...etc. Charms that give you a big resists and some life are always nice to hae laying around.

I have a couple of charm mules and I keep tons of various charms laying around in casse I need them.

There are also things like crafting that can help your sorc a lot. Now with crafting you will produce more junk that you will get good but the potential of godly is always there. I personally like saftey and caster ammys. They require Rals and Thuls, Pemeralds and Amythests. Safety can get you incresed block% 5-10 as a standard varible which is nice, they can also get more block, priz, skills...etc.

One cheap and often over looked item is Nightsmoke. This belt give a nice small 10% Priz and 50% Damage to mana. The mana to damage will mean that if you get your telekenisis to a 1 mana per 1 damage area which I have heard is lvl 17, then if you get hit for 200 damage, 100 is life, 100 is mana, but you will get 50 mana back do to the 50% damage to mana!!!

There are other "vulpine" (damage to mana) but most arent as nice as Nightsmoke. You could upgrade it to Exceptional to get 16 slots also which is always nice and doesnt require uncommon runes.

You wizzy goes a LONG way to helping you make a solid sorc. Frosties and Wizzy combo with a couple nice mana charms can get you set. Dont forget that saphires in Helm or Armor can also help with mana.

I have many friends that play Classic mostly and they have recently started a little xpac. They all tend to want an MF sorc but they have no gear. Well building a viable Hell Sorc is near impossible when you have no gear, so I suggest to them each to just "forget about Hell" Build for NM, and after you get some gear you can either retool, or rebuild for a Hell sorc. If you take this approach you can look at lvl 80 as an "end game lvl" and only get the dex to get max block for this lvl eventually. After that if you eventually go to hell you can have gear add to your dex if you want the block.

You seem to have "some gear" but not a ton. Well, make it a ton and then go on to Hell. NM Meph and Baal drop soo many of the highly used items in this game. This sorc could also probably do runs in the pit or moseleum later, but dont get being a telesorc on Hell Baal runs. Let this little chich just be a "mid lvl gear getter".

The people I suggested this to that used it are not regretting it one bit. Each of them were sondering what skills. Well I suggested Blizzard. Reason for this is both Blizz and its synergy Glacial are usefull skills. Glacial stops things like a wall when its hit, and with both skils maxed kills very promptly. Also, this skill has proven to be VERY viable in Hell and especially good in thos Baal runs that eventually you may get to. Orb is still nice but I have done hundreds of runs around Blizz and Orb sorcs and there really is no comparison IMO!

Fire is another way to go, but cold is so hard not to chosse which likited gear as it slows things down.

 

Don't forget the absolutely lovely caster amulet recipe. RAL+Amethyst+jewel+amulet can net you some pretty decent Sorceress amulets and RAL being so easy to get, you'll have quite some tries too!

It's not Mara's of course, but in efficiency vs. price, it's hard to beat!

Good luck!

 

i guess i could cube some stuff with my necro (only high lvl i have) lvl 78, think i should use him or the sorc to cube cause he might get me some high lvl req....
"* sigh...What's wisdom..if you don't know it *"

 

As far as mana goes, there is a crossover point at which it's more efficient to fcus on mana regen (especially at lower levels) versus capacity. I built a hammerdin early last year and wanted performance over +mana techniques but still be abel to keep cranking those hammers out with the concentration aura running. I went with faster regen equipment instead of +mana and I found out that I rarely ever ran out with constant casting. You can always add points in warmth for a sorceress, but I NEVER add more than one until my sorcs are in their 80's where I can tell if they REALLY need more or not. Most of the time it's a waste when dumping tons in there early on, but this also depends on play style.

Here's some options for mana regen:
Crafted caster belt or Glooms Trap
Magefist
3-socket helm, 4-socket armor with perfect skulls
3/4-socket shield with eth runes

What made the difference with my pally was the socketed armor: 7x19% faster regen = 133% and 7x5=35 life regenerate. I rarely ever had to quaff a health potion since my life was steadily replacing itself. I realize I was sacrificing up to +3 to all skills for Pskulled-armor, but I made it up for the loss of damage by being able to cast longer length of time non-stop. Most of my sorcs wear armor and helms socketed with Pskulls and it's a helpful bonus that allows me to invest points elsewhere.

I keep a good store of grand mana charms around (+45-55 mana) if I find myself running out before I can regen. That means I've gone too far with regen and need some +mana equipment. Every build has to determine this balance point to their own liking. It's good to rely on your equipment for mana needs until your character is high-level where you can begin to remove that equipment a little at a time and start investing stat/skill points judiciosly until you find a balance that fits well to your play style and doesn't waste points that could be more useful elswhere.

 

Regen is totally based on mana/life pool. 300% regen is slow on a pally, fast on a sorc but still not fast enuff to lower your mana pool needed.

No amount of reasonable regen can make 500 mana perform like 1000 mana on a sorc, especially when considering ES, and that Sorc spells cost like 3 times that of a pally. A hammerdin can fly around and smoke everything with 300 mana and a sorc cant do much with 300 mana or 500

Offensive power is life to an extent, and when discussing Pallys they only need Mediaton and Redemption and a few items to creat a pool to work with. Mediation with 1 point is a hugh regen % when Redemption can load up a pally from almost zero to full like a full juv if you have those +3 skills you sacraficed.

As for casters in general i would take frosties over magifists any day unless I just couldnt get a decent cast rate without magis.

 

Definately use your higher lvl character to craft. Yes you might get some items that your sorc will have to grow into but those will be very nice when she gets there. Also when crafting try to use items either gambled/shopped by your high level char or found in hell as the ilvl of the item determines how many random abilities the crafted item gets. (Note for shopping you want to shop in hell for the highest ilvl potential. Gambling might not matter but out of superstition i do it in hell )

 

Cookie is getting into an expert in crafting
the charm + 3pgems is something i really recommend...

good luck..

 

Point taken. I never realized that regeneration rates were based on mana pool size. My hammerdin was built for 1.09, not 1.10, and 40 castings of BH drained my mana pool of ~300 and that was just enough to wipe out a group of cows but not much more. Regen would about double the amount I could cast before draining out. In case you're wondering, my pally didn't use meditation or redemption - his focus was on full-time concentration and with his setup he didn't really need meditation. Back then, when I did run out of mana regen seemed faster with Magefists than frosties. At some point I began to swap regen for more +skills until it became too cumbersome and I had to fall back on regen. I suppose my experience from that far back is now irrelevant to some extent, especially to sorcs with which I never delved into the technical details of.

 

I don't recall the exact formula, but it's something like this;
With no regen your pool fills to full in 3 minutes regardless of how much mana you've got.
So with 100% mana regen and a pool of 500, you are gaining 500 mana/90 seconds or 5.5/sec I believe.
With 1000 mana and 0 regen, you gain it back at the same rate, but your mana pool will drain slower (regen at the same speed, but more to start with).
I might be remembering wrong, but I believe that that's how you check for efficiency.

Also, as stinger pointed out, nightsmoke = good belt on a tank sorc.
If you can afford it, Naj's Light Plate is probably the best item for an ES/TK build there is, and if not Nightsmoke (upgrade for 4 rows of pots) is probably the best alternative. Most sorc builds don't profit overy much from the %dmg to mana, since normally ES drains 2 points for every point of damage taken, and the drain is before resists/DR whereas the return is after it. But if you can get the synergy to below 1 point per damage the %dmg to mana really does a GREAT job of keeping the orb full while taking hits.

 

If u want to make a tank sorc make sure u use shaft if u can afford one. I tried shaft on the last sorc i made and noticed a huge difference in tanking. Also make sure u have energy sheild with high telekinesis and warmth.