Melee sorceress!

[tyren]

Melee sorceress!

Hello ladies and gentlemen. I'm pondering about a few things regarding melee sorcs and I'd hope you guys could lend me some advice, although I have played some melee sorcs like IK-sorcs and stuff I thought I'd give it another slightly more "serious" go.

This whole idea spawned again after I spotted some of the "newer" runewords mainly Passion with it's +1 to Zeal and Berserk, and Fortitude runeword.
I made a Passion in a Cryptic Sword and it ended up quite well, atleast for my standards :thumbup: so this seems like the obvious choice of weapon or are there any other ones I'm forgetting here, maybe Hexfire with it's +3 to fire skills?
Speaking of skills I was planning to go with Enchant and its synenergie Warmth aswell as Fire Mastery however that is only 60 skillpoints, what about Hydra is it too +skill depentant?... what if I went with Ice Blast or Glacial Spike or Frost Nova to kinda act as a secondary skill to freeze enemys and possibly aid in taking down fire immunes?

And finally how should I go about the other equipment, focus more on IAS than FCR I suppose? Any input you can give at all is appreciated here! :coffee:

Woa that turned out to become a lot of questions for my first post here on these forums, please bare with me. <3

 

[PepsiMan]

Re: Melee sorceress!

If you're meleeing, IAS is important. Hexfire might make a decent prebuffing weapon, but you should probably make Leaf in a +3 to enchant staff for better results.
Don't bother with Hydra.
Passion can work, but since you do mainly fire damage, you should consider a heavily shael'ed phaseblade, as your physical damage may not matter.

For your remaining 40 points, you could get Frozen Orb as a support skill, or Energy Shield if you felt like it.
I think getting +fire damage on your equipment can also boost your damage.

Speaking of added elemental damage, Lightning-based enchantsorcs are also an option. Usually, they use Dual Dream helm/shield plus infinity, but you might be able to make it work with large amounts of on-gear/charms lightning damage.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Melee sorceress!

Equipment:
- I really found having a decent breakpoint for Faster Hit Recovery to be 'essential' to my melee sorcs. I'd aim for at least 42 FHR, with 60 FHR being strongly recommended, and 86 FHR being even better.

- As PepsiMan mentioned, a lot of your damage will be elemental, and not as much will be physical. The Fortitude armour will definitely help, but that doesn't change the fact that having a fast attack is strongly desired, since your damage will be (relatively) comparable whether you use a cracked bonewand or a Passion Cryptic Sword ... so you should focus (somewhat) on IAS to get as fast of an attack as possible, so you can deliver that high-end elemental damage quickly.

- Otherwise, you're a melee sorc, so you want melee-mods. Dracul's Grasp (gloves) have LifeTap which is always handy for meleers, and are 'almost essential' too. After that, crushing blow, +life, leech, resists, cannot-be-frozen, AR etc.

- However, teleport will remain your primary source of crowd-control, so having some FCR is still a good idea. Fortunately, Fortitude comes with 25 FCR, and that might be enough for your purposes.


Skills:
- Hydra = no. You'll already have good fire damage; you need a backup element.

- The Berzerk on Passion is a decent choice, but not a spectacular one. That would leave your skillpoints to pursue a defensive option like Energy Shield & Telekinesis, but I really, really dislike ES.

- Even with Fortitude, your physical damage will likely be mediocre. You can try to boost that with items like GoreRiders (boots), Highlord's Wrath (amulet), a Might-aura merc, etc., but even then, I'm not convinced it'll be entirely reliable... I tried the 'enhanced physical damage approach' with my Zeal-sorc, but I wasn't that impressed with the results. However, I was using a 'Passion' Phaseblade and didn't have Fortitude at the time, so maybe your results will be vastly improved over mine - you'll definitely have higher physical damage.

- As PepsiMan said, you can spend points in Lightning Mastery, and load up on +lightning damage items/charms. (ditto for cold, but getting higher cold damage in melee is harder). You could also look at a 'Kingslayer' runeword on weapon-switch for the access to 'Vengeance'... coupled with the masteries, you can get really decent supplemental damage. I tried this weapon as a primary on one of my melee sorcs and really liked it a lot... Unfortunately you won't have enough remaining skillpoints to reliably build a good 'attack' spell in the lightning tree.

- In the cold tree, FrostNova will help with crowd control, but won't kill anything unless you synergize it fully. Glacial Spike or Ice Bolt might work, but without synergies, I think their damage will suck badly too. Frozen Orb remains a great choice for a backup, considering the ~30 skillpoints you'll have available, and it's likely the one I'd choose if you want a 'killer' in the cold tree.

 

[tyren]

Re: Melee sorceress!

Thanks for the replies.
I completely overlooked 6 shaeled phaseblade, I can totally see that working quite well :>
Hydra is out of the question then, and probably ice blast and glacial spike too, I came to think of one of the chilling armors in the cold tree for some defensive purposes although I have never once before maxed any of those and seen the results and as sirpoopsalot wrote frozen orb is probably my best bet. I might not go with Fortitude it's just one of my possible approches to jack up the damage every single way I can imagine wich is not completely unreachable (read: expensive).

If I were to add charms for more elemental damage mainly lightning I suppose, small charms would be best right?

 

[stephan]

Re: Melee sorceress!

A passion Phase Blade will never attack slower than a shaeled PB and if you up the Zeal level and got some IAS it will be remarkable faster.

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Melee sorceress!

A passion Phase Blade will never attack slower than a shaeled PB and if you up the Zeal level and got some IAS it will be remarkable faster.

2nd that

Max speed with phase is 10fpa (48 ias needed). So you need to be bearsorc or under decrepify curse to get any help with 120ias phase.

So passion much better. And even those other 1-hand weapon can reach 9 frame attack, so avoid non-runeword phase blades.

I have done melee sorc with hydra backup, retired at lvl89, she did just fine.
Just avoid areas where fire-immunes. Hydra kills annoying iron maiden knights, so some use for that spell. For example Reapers toll merc with enchant is so fast killer that real backup for immunes are not needed. For example he can clear full game travincal easily alone, what ever immunes there are. Hard to do faster job with melee sorc.

Biggest 'problem' with melee sorc is merc, act2 merc is so fast killer with high enchant that is so hard to kill faster with sorc.


edit:
My best 'melee' sorc so far is my current one. She has charged bolt (350 damage with 105fcr and -52% L resist) as backup. Enchant gives only 1.3k (not enough points to make full synergies) but thats enough to clear pits/at,travi temples,river etc.. in full game while Reapers Toll merc helps. And with lightning I can safely kill iron maiden cursing knights, only real pain for melee sorcs.
Its 'melee' or half melee half caster as I wanted melee sorc that can clear chaos too without 'any' (iron maiden curse slow down whatever you try to do) problems.


Passion is fastest weapon for puree melee char without any caster spells. It kills fast with or without dreams. Its good starting point, can't go wrong while picking that as weapon.

There are so many options for melee sorcs, no best build, depends what area you want to run. Just use good merc, it makes your job much easier. But its fun build whatever route you choose.

 

[Gandolph]

Re: Melee sorceress!

Question:

What about Phoenix? The stats look good for an enchantress, especially if her merc is using Infinity. What am I missing besides IAS? Could you use Grief/Phoenix combo? The redemption aura would keep both your globes full.

Phoenix stats:
Weapons
100% Chance To Cast level 40 Blaze When You Level-up
40% Chance To Cast Level 22 Firestorm On Striking
Level 10-15 Redemption Aura When Equipped (varies)
+350-400% Enhanced Damage (varies)
Ignores Target's Defense
14% Mana Stolen Per Hit
-28% To Enemy Fire Resistance
20% Deadly Strike
+350-400 Defense Vs. Missile (varies)
+15-21 Fire Absorb (varies)

Shields
100% Chance To Cast level 40 Blaze When You Level-up
40% Chance To Cast Level 22 Firestorm On Striking
Level 10-15 Redemption Aura When Equipped (varies)
+350-400 Defense Vs. Missile (varies)
+350-400% Enhanced Damage (varies)
-28% To Enemy Fire Resistance
+50 To Life
+5% To Maximum Lightning Resist
+10% To Maximum Fire Resist
+15-21 Fire Absorb (varies)

 

[MizzouVic]

Re: Melee sorceress!

what do you play in? Uswest? east? single? ladder or non-ladder? I was just wondering.
Best option in my opinion is dual dream with light mastery, not a lot of points, huge amount of dmg, along with a 95ias phaseblade and turn into a bear, make yourself a bear sorc! lots of fun. If you are uswest non-ladder, pm me, I can show you my bear sorc and give you an idea how to go about making one.

 

[tyren]

Re: Melee sorceress!

what do you play in? Uswest? east? single? ladder or non-ladder? I was just wondering.
Best option in my opinion is dual dream with light mastery, not a lot of points, huge amount of dmg, along with a 95ias phaseblade and turn into a bear, make yourself a bear sorc! lots of fun. If you are uswest non-ladder, pm me, I can show you my bear sorc and give you an idea how to go about making one.

Unfortunately most of those runewords are out of reach for me, I just don't have that kind of wealth.

Im playing on EU SCL but I'm sure your melee is really awesome, you dont see many bear sorcs afterall! Stylepoints for that imho :thumbup: