Help me with my lightning sorceress

[PokerFool]

Help me with my lightning sorceress

I am making a Lightning Key runner sorceress. I want to be able to run all three key runners (But If this lightning sorc isn't good for the summoner, I have a blizz sorc that will work well for that).

I was planning on making charged bolt as her main attack skill, but I am seeing that charged bolt may not be good enough. I tried running the countess with her at lvl 73 and got smoked. Now granted, I didn't have merc, my gear kind of sucked (I had only +7 to lightning skill), but I died within 3 secs of teleporing into the countess room.

Right now, I am at Level 83. I have the following skills:
20 Charged Bolt
20 Lightning
20 Lightning Mastery
1 warmth
1 in other lighting pre-reqs

For sure, I think I can get +11 for +skills (+1 armor, +2 spirit shield, +3 light ammy, +2 headgear, and I have either an occy or a +2 eschuta)

I have about 25 or so skill points unused. I am thinking of one of these directions:

1) Max out Chain Lightning and go Lightning based only. Chain Lightning would be my main skill. This should be fine for Countess. I think this would be fine for Nil. Not too many light res monsters right by Nil, right? Does Nil ever spawn Light res?

2) Max out Frozen Orb and put the rest of my points in Cold Mastery. This won't help against the Countess, so I would have to use Charged Bolt or Lightning. Advantage here of being a dual ele sorc is kind of nice.

So what should I do? Can I run The Countess and Nil with a strictly Lightning based sorc?

Thanks

 

[Robobaby]

Re: Help me with my lightning sorceress

You can run pretty much anything with a strictly lightning based sorc provided you have either:

1) A really well decked out merc

or

2) Infinity runeword.

Lets assume you can't afford the cost of building Infinity. 'Well decked out' to me means something like the following:

1) Insight runeword in an ethereal elite polearm. Preferably superior and with a good ed roll from Insight.

2) Ral'ed or Fire resist Jeweled Andarial's Visage. 10% life leech.

3) Upgraded, um'ed ethereal Shaftstop.

Countess as a single tree light sorc - the only thing you ever vaguely need to worry about is archer mobs on level 5 spawning lightning immune. If you max block its easy. I haven't tried it without but I'm guessing it will slow you down alot.

Cold can have a hard time here given how often minions spawn cold immune. You will rely on your merc to do the killing for you so he needs to be well equipped but it will be fairly slow unless you have a fortitude or something.

Summoner - Not much to say. Most everything here is fire immune and easy to kill. Only problem is how long it takes to find the Summoner if you go in the wrong direction.

Nihil - bring a nature's peace if you do it with a light sorc. Biggest danger is undoubtedly Nihil's CE and the Bone Spear like attacks from Tomb Vipers and the invisible clouds of death they leave behind. If you teleport around alot as you are killing you can die really really fast here.

Tomb Vipers are lightning immune quite alot. Nihil can spawn Lightning immune and when he does it makes the run somewhat uhhhh difficult and very slow. Its usually better to just exist and try again (which is easy because Halls of Pain has exits that spawn in consistant locations and you can tell where Nihil is in Halls of Vaught because of the eye pictures on the walls.)

Cold is probably better in situations like this because all Nihils minions spawn cold immune so you aren't giving him any cannon fodder for his Corpse Explosion. On the downside, you don't want to get mobbed so when you teleport around, the tomb viper poison will hurt you.

To summarize:

1) You are making a key runner. The point is speed and safety at running only a handful of areas with roughly the same baddies.

2) Roll either straight cold or straight lightning but don't do both at once because you can't fully synergise your most powerful attacks and it makes you alot weaker (epecially if you rely on lightning). Both can work great versus nihil but there are different tactics. Since this is about speed, killing power is everything. I never found cold/lightning builds to be particularly effective without insanely good gear putting them out of the reach of most players. Even then, a single tree cold or lightning build is usually way better but just relies more on a killer merc to kill things that you cant.

3) If rolling with lightning you need to max out chain lightning and nova synergy before you even begin to do serious lightning damage. You seem to have a good number of plus skills so get that up to +13 or +14 or so and you will hit 20k lightning which is high enough that you are beginning to blow things over in hell in 1 hit.

4) If you get mobbed by Tomb Vipers around Nihil and you are getting blasted by those spears the best thing you can do is stand still or teleport back the way you came. Dont move around alot trying to strafe the spears because you will die really fast. As a light sorc you really need a nature's peace otherwise Nihil's CE becomes a big problem. A cold sorc doesn't really need one (since you won't be able to kill any of his minions anyway).