Fire / Ice Sorc Skill choice????

Fire / Ice Sorc Skill choice????

I have built a Blizzard Fire Wall Sorc who was great and killed off Hell Baal quite happily. But the Fire Wall was a bit annoying, great damage (3-4K) but in a small area of the screen.

The guides suggest Meteorb and BlizzBall, i don't see any firwall so i will go with meteor / fireball, but which is better out of FO and Bliz? I like the bliz cos its point, click and deal out some death. FO I haven't used beyond level 3 or 4, so can't comment.

Does it do good damage and how effective is it compared to bliz?

For meteor / fireball i read somewhere you actually use the fireball and meteor is a synergy not a weapon. Is this the case?

Finally the thing i liked about firewall is it has no synergies so its 20 points + pre req and then the rest in your second tree of choice.

Anyone else faced this dillemma and what was your conclusion?

 

I suppose it really depends on what you want to do in the long run. I've been looking around here in SP and the Sorc forum about both Meteorbers and Blizzballers because I wanted to start an MF character tonight.

For just MF, there's a lot of popularity with pure Blizzardsorcs. The Duel-element types are a lot more versatile for general playing but also very good for MFing some areas... it all depends on style of play and where you want to MF. The forum search is lots of help if you put in blizzball or meteorb..

I've chosen the Blizzballer because I really want to pit-run rather than boss run.

Long time ago I played a FO/FW sorc to about level 90+, was lots of fun but that was in 1.09 now and I suspect things are rather different since then.

The idea behind meteor (instead of firebolt) is that its another weapon that you can use as well as being a synergy. (e.g. cast meteor, then FB, FB again.. and so on, just using FB while you wait out the casting time on Meteor).

 

If the target is stationary, Meteor is excellent because the afterflames burn for a long time at high Meteor levels. The combined flames from a bunch of Meteors can add up to some enormous damage, it can actually beat Fire Wall and even hard-stacked Blaze.

I haven´t used any of those fire skills much since 1.09 though.



Frozen Orb is one of my favourite skills, and it´s quite effective even with a moderate number of points in the Mastery. It requires a little aiming, but that is easy to learn (Cast it just next to moving targets, cast it so it explodes "on" big bosses, like the act bosses).

I haven´t used Blizzard since 1.09, so I can´t compare that with FO. Back then, Blizzard had no casting delay, and I had problems because all the ice made it hard to see what was going on in the fight...

 

Disclaimer: The below points only refer to Normal-Nightmare difficutly, I have yet to enter Hell with these skills.

I tend to favor firewall myself as a fire tree skill of choice. More because every guide states you should use fireball or meteor than anything else, so I wanted something different.

I will have to say it does have it's annoying points however, as the width of the area of damage is not very large it is tough in large outdoor areas to use. You have to have a mercenary that can soak up large amounts of damage to be able to keep the monsters stationary long enough for firewall to do it's dirty work. So I normally use it in maze-type areas where the mercenary holds the door and I firewall the entrance. As the monsters are grouped there but most can't attack my mercenary, the damage dealt is fairly high.

As for Frozen Orb, the same character uses that as well. Two timed spells is a bit rough but doable (somewhat). I actually like FO more than Blizzard as FO has a higher chance of hitting an enemy and slowing them down. It is tough to aim sometimes but at the lower levels you can spam it anywhere and it's effective at getting enemies at all corners of the screen.

However I can't say if FO is better than Blizzard as I have yet to max Blizzard (next sorc project actually).

Mainly I lliked the no synergy aspect of both skills, FO's synergy doesn't really add much. Therefore max the skill, max (or almost max) the mastery and the build is basically done before entering Hell.

So for your next build that was going to use fireball/meteor you may want to use FO instead of Blizzard as that leaves more skill points available to invest in the synergies in the fire tree. You would be able to spam fireballs with a meteor or frozen orb scattered in there to slow the enemies down. In theory it sounds like it would work.

 

FO works with just that and the mastery. leaves room for the meteor and fireball. blizz is better, takes more synergies though, still get a max fireball with a maxed firebolt though.

you can just go max blizz, but one element is hard, although a twinked merc with your static can help matters.

 

Blizzard will kill the most effectively in hell because of it's concentrated dmg... FO not so much, it is still good through hell, just not great. But it doesn't need any synergies, if it had some good ones it would be great.

I hate Meteor, the only use this thing has is for Boss killing and even then I like fire ball better. Way too slow casting for me. I have a Sorc that uses firewall but once you get in hell it doesn't kill as effectively. I like it though as it ws my favorite from Diablo. You can also use glacial spike to freeze and fry them it works great if they aren't cold or fire immune...

It seems like the most recent concensus is to go Blizzard and Fireball.

 

Blizz fireball / meteor it is then. My planned stat point allocation are as follows, please advise if i can do something better:

Warmth 10
Meteor 20
Fireball 20
Tele 1
Static field 1
Blizzard 20
Glacial Spike 20
CM 1
FM 1
pre reqs 8, 4 fire (firebolt, inferno, blaze, firewall) 3 ice (ice bolt, ice blast, frost nova) 1 lit (telekenesis)

Total used is 102 points, roughly level 91

+skillers and equipment should mean i can take on most areas. A solid frost merc and off I go.

I guess tal's is what i am aiming for but any good mf, res and + skills is a start

 

Points in warmth are pretty useless, mana pots are cheap. Put those points in CM to get to at least slvl 17 after +skills. The rest looks good.

 

Just what I was going to say.

Also you don't really need stat points into Energy. I suppose you can if you want, but along the lines of using mana potions, just get a handful of those in your stash and your ready to go, youll be going back and fourth a bunch, especially when you first get teleport if you use it a lot, but in the long run you'll be thanking yourself for not using those points into energy.
And this is what I would do:

Fire Skills
1-Fire Bolt
20-Fire Ball (1st fast attack)
1-Inferno
1-Blaze
1-Fire Wall
20-Metor (2nd timed attack)
1-Fire Mastery

Lighting Skills
1-Telekenisis
1-Teleport
1-Static Field

Ice Skills
1-Ice Bolt
1-20 Ice Blast (2nd fast attack) (**Note about ice blast and Glacial Spike. Depending what you want, Ice Blast will do more damage, Glacial Spike will give you more crowd control. If your planning to get her to 99, one could be 19 and the other could be 20 with this set up, correct me if I am wrong. :thumbsup
1-20 Glacial Spike (2nd fast attack)
1-Frost Nova
20-Blizzard (1st timed attack)
1-Cold Mastery

Again this is just me. :azn:

EDIT:
Finding a orb/staff that does a frozen defense skill is useful too, especially if you find nice gear.

 

Stick with that build (minus warmth) and don't be tempted to skip the pre-reqs for meteor and max firebolt instead. I did that and regret it big time. a) My fireball doesn't do the damage it would do if I'd gone for meteor and b) I want to use meteor in a lot of situations but can't, i.e. when Eldritch and crew surround my merc or on wave 2 in Baal runs. Gah.