fireball orb sorc

[joeja]

fireball orb sorc

just thinking about making a fireball/orb sorc so thought i'd see what you think of the build, haven't started her yet but just planning her out atm

final equip is gonna be:-

full tal set
war traveller boots/marrowalk boots/eth sandstorm trek's
spirit monach
40% chancies/frosties not sure yet

not sure which booths yet because the wt's are on my mf sorc and the sandstorms are on my druid, although i do have some non eth sandstorms as well so maybe i go with them

skills, this is what i am planning to do

in brackets is + skills from set/spirit

cold tree
frozen orb 20(28)
shiver armor 5(13)
cold mastery 15(25)
pre req's 6

fire tree
warmth 5(13)
fireball 20(28)
fire mastery 15(25)
pre req's 1

lightning tree
telekinesis 1(9)
teleport 1(9)
energy shield 1(9)
pre req's 3

that's 93 skill points which should be lvl 86 ish with 3 rad/izule quests done

any further points will be spent either cold/fire mastery or warmth maxing the mastery's first i think.

just thought that this might be an interesting way of doing it, instead of the normal metor/orb

left click would be the fireball with right click attack being orb

anything that's fire and cold immune would be down to the merc to slaughter

merc

thinking about act 2 freeze merc to slow things down with eth cryptic axe (obedience runeword) probably andy face and gladiators bane armor, as that's what i have lieing around atm but once i start getting some better stuff i'll upgrade as i can.

opinions and suggestions more than welcome, in fact wanted please ^^

 

[PhatTrumpet]

I've made a few of these on Hardcore, I even soloed one on single player, so here are my thoughts.

I would probably go with Sandstorms for the FHR, otherwise Waterwalks. I usually like to save my Wartravs for chars who benefit from the added damage, but it's really up to you.

1 in Shiver Armor should be enough.

You're kind of at a strange point with your Cold Mastery. The absolute minimum is slvl17 with +skills, meaning 7 points invested. I believe the next number to aim for is slvl27 with +skills, or 17 points invested, since this maximizes your effectiveness against Baal. The next one is slvl 32 for Meph I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I usually do fine with slvl 17 since I tend to use fire on Baal and already have a separate pure cold sorc for Meph. This maximizes your effectiveness for general PvM (can't lower resists below -100%) and also saves you points for boosting your Fire Ball damage, which is really your primary spell.

1 in Warmth should be enough.

With Fire Ball you actually gain more damage from investing in synergies, at least until your Fire Mastery with +skills on is 10 less than the number of points invested in synergies. You should be maxing Fire Ball, putting one point in Fire Mastery while letting +skills take care of the rest, and also maxing Fire Bolt. If you go to a skill calculator you'll see that this yields the most Fire Ball damage. Then you can start putting remaining points in Fire Mastery (technically you'd want to divide your points between Meteor and Fire Mastery, but that would require wasting points on prereqs and would make your build look more like Meteorb, which sort of defeats the purpose).

If you're a big fan of EShield, you're going to want to take the points saved in Warmth, Shiver Armor, and Cold Mastery and place them in Telekenesis. EShield boosted by +skills with only lvl 1 TK is not very efficient in my opinion. I actually don't even use ES on dual tree sorcs so that I can ignore TK and spend the saved points on damage synergies.

Get Cold Mastery where you want it (either 17, 25, or 32) and then leave it. Spend remaining points boosting your Fire Ball damage.

I much prefer Orb on left click (timered, more of a safety skill... if you're running along and get charged by a pack it'll chill them and slow them down) with all spammable skills on right click (Fire Ball, Static, Teleport, etc.).

That's another thing: you didn't list a point in Static Field.

I love freeze mercs, but it might be unnecessary with this build since you have Orb. I would probably go with Defiance since, having no block, you may need him to tank for you, and the high defense from Tal's and Shiver Armor will really start to add up. The gear you listed is actually a rather nice setup (CBF, FHR, PDR, MDR from Glad's Bane; ias, leech, and +skills from Andy's; CB and good dmg from 'Obedience').

I think that's everything.

 

[joeja]

thanks for the help, to be honest i just sort of knocked that up on a skill calculator but didn't have much time to play with the settings too much

it was just an idea that came to me whilst i was at work so can still do some tweeking at home before i build final version online

will take your advice and see what i can come up with, see where it get's me

i'll post back once i've managed to spend long enough online to do it lol

 

[AnimeCraze]

magefist + 35 spirit + full Tal's = 105 FCR BP, so drop the chancies.

I would still max meteor, although it wastes 3 pre-req points, since it is just so useful in special occasion (like dropping down 10+ at the desired boss, usually Diablo, before he spawns). It is a synergy anyways.

 

[joeja]

i'll think about the magefist, and i've taken PhatTrumpet's advice as well

don't want to use metor as that's just the clasic metorb sorc, wanted to do something different and see if it works

the magefist is also good for the + to fire skills so maybe go with that

well i've looked at phat's way and mine and sort of gone with mine but with taking his advice as well, i'll post back once she's made it to lvl 85 with how she's doing

 

[AnimeCraze]

I know what you mean, but I ended up using fireball 95% of the time with my meteorb sorc anyways. Your fireball needs to be stronger, though. Mine reached 7k with virtually same equip setup + anni + torch (+13 fire, +12 rest). Even before anni + torch, it reaches 5k damage. That's with 1 synergy + full mastery. You can probably get more damage by putting in 30 points or so into synergy and 10 or so into mastery, provided that you have good amount of +skills.

 

[joeja]

i'm gonna take that adice with the magefists, and slight change of plan for skills as well

cold tree
frozen orb 20(28)
shiver armor 1(9)
cold mastery 7(17)
pre req's 6

fire tree
warmth 1(10)
fire bolt 20(29)
fire ball 20(29)
fire mastery 15(26)
pre req's 1

lightning tree
static 1(9)
telekinesis 1(9)
teleport 1(9)
energy shield 1(9)
pre req's 3

last sk to work on will be fire mastery

takes me up to lvl 90 ish which isn't tooo hard lol

stat's i'm going with min str with treks bonus probably around 139 i think will work that out as i go, get mana pool to 500 and see how she does if i need more i'll put more in and rest to vit dex stay at base.

i'm hoping i can get cheep torch and if i can get the runes anni as well, even if they're both worst possible the +skills is all i'm after realy

not sure if i'm gonna use sorc for rushin or mf'ing or both

 

[AxlStrife]

Re: fireball orb sorc

i'm gonna take that adice with the magefists, and slight change of plan for skills as well

cold tree
frozen orb 20(28)
shiver armor 1(9)
cold mastery 7(17)
pre req's 6

fire tree
warmth 1(10)
fire bolt 20(29)
fire ball 20(29)
fire mastery 15(26)
pre req's 1

lightning tree
static 1(9)
telekinesis 1(9)
teleport 1(9)
energy shield 1(9)
pre req's 3

last sk to work on will be fire mastery

takes me up to lvl 90 ish which isn't tooo hard lol

stat's i'm going with min str with treks bonus probably around 139 i think will work that out as i go, get mana pool to 500 and see how she does if i need more i'll put more in and rest to vit dex stay at base.

i'm hoping i can get cheep torch and if i can get the runes anni as well, even if they're both worst possible the +skills is all i'm after realy

not sure if i'm gonna use sorc for rushin or mf'ing or both

My 86 uses a similar skill setup (Meteorb build Quick FAQ (by Eilo Rytyj) with full vita) and the 105fcr setup (too poor for infinity rw or sojs, so insight works well for practically infi-cast tele and 2x 30 nagels help with drops)... and it works perfectly fine for everything. I got lucky enough to get a 19/16/7 anni from Uber D while countess running and her FB damage (no facets or torch yet ) is 5.7k-6.2k on LCS and meteor sits at 12k on LCS(only used on meph since merc tanks. takes about 15 seconds when you get to him (static til half life then meteor 3x-4xFB, repeat)while it takes Andy about 7 FBs (2-3 seconds on average)).

Her Orb damage is a little lacking since I put nothing into CM and only have a 1/2/1 Tal's Orb (ugh) so it takes a lil bit to clear Throne Wave 4 and 5, but as long as you have orb on left, tele on right. Before wave 4 comes tele right beside baal and keep your merc in front of you. That makes the creatures come up the stairs, one at a time, and it's easy pickin's from there as long as your merc has max fire res and you tele to get your merc out of trouble. If Lister spawns FI/CI prepare to shell out some cash unless you keep a life tap wand in yoru inventory. Baal's not too tough, same as meph but takes a li'l longer.

EDIT: First torch of the season pops up 12/13 sorc, making her damage:
FB: 7121-7794
Meteor: 14807-15452
Orb: 512-536

about 1/4th increase to fire damage and 1/8th cold damage, makes a good bit of difference on Meph runs (drops about 2 cycles off the routine) and Andy run (very slightly, 1 FB, but the FO clears faster if I don't get the sweetspot where I want it).

Definitely viable.