MF blizz sorc dilemma

[DiabloII]

MF blizz sorc dilemma

Hey! I have quite a dilemma here.... I'm trying to figure out how to make a MF blizz sorc BUT i dunno how many pionts i should put in some skills.
Blizz MAX

​

(obviously)
Tele

​

?????????
Warmth

​

????????
Cold mastery

​

????????
synergies

​

(Max i would think)
energy shield

​

1
cold armr and etc.

​

1

 

[Akukami]

I use my Pure Vita Blizzer to MF Andy, and I can finish her with one Blizz easily. Here are the stats I have maxed:

20 Blizzard
20 Cold Mastery
20 Ice Blast
20 Ice Bolt
20 Glacial Spike
1 Frost Nova
1 Telekinesis
1 Teleport

You can try that build if you want, but that will take you to 92, and I'm sure you don't want any part of that. However, here's an alternative done at Level 80:

20 Blizzard
20 Cold Mastery
20 Ice Blast
20 Ice Bolt
6 Glacial Spike
1 Frost Nova
1 Telekinesis
1 Teleport
1 Static Field
1 Warmth

Forget using a Cold Armor; you're really not going to need it. If you want it, just grab it from a staff, or spend that extra point into it. If you want to use Energy Shield, you can also get that from a +2 Sorc +3 EShield Staff.

For your attribute points, put add as much as you need to wear your gear, get at least 100 base Energy, then add the rest to Vita.

- Akukami

 

[fledgeling]

someone said that PvM you need only 17points in cold mastery after +skill items

 

[Monzee]

someone said that PvM you need only 17points in cold mastery after +skill items

Yep that's right iirc.. The reason being that you can't pierce monsters resistance with more than 100%, which would remove cold immunes. However a lot of people tend to just spend the few extra points in order to do better in pvp. (I always max CM on my cold sorcs)

 

[WarlockCC]

Yes, I remember about the 17 points aswell, though the reason illudes me at the moment. I am not quite awake this early on a monday morning.

I recall it having something to do with only being able to get monsters down to zero Cold resist and few of them actually have cold resist. Meph has a nice bit of it though. So getting that 17 is advisable for a MF sorc.

Say, Akukami, do you get a percentage gold for every +2 sorc +3 skill staff used ? Cause I've seen you advising these left and right.
Seriously though, I agree with you that these are a very good solution for not having to use a point in the prebuff one point wonder skills.

-= Offtopic =-
Fledgeling, mate, long time no talk. Do you ever visit your old stompin grounds, the Euro Realm ?

 

[goomba]

Say, Akukami, do you get a percentage gold for every +2 sorc +3 skill staff used ? Cause I've seen you advising these left and right.
Seriously though, I agree with you that these are a very good solution for not having to use a point in the prebuff one point wonder skills.

it's much like the BO items for baba's.

it's an assload to carry around, but my angellics/mart build baba carries the following spares for buffing the BO

tarn, +2 blue ammy (he uses angellics ammy naturally during mfing), two bo sticks, and a berserker's armor... the down side, is that it's a lot of gear switching just to BO. Normally I'll do it at the start of a flayer run, Durance 2, or only at the river wp if I join a cs run.

 

[Akukami]

someone said that PvM you need only 17points in cold mastery after +skill items

I set him up for PvP as well. :thumbsup:

- Akukami

 

[fledgeling]

I think 1 point into frozen orb with proper mastery could be useful in normal (not sure about the damage tho)

-= Offtopic =-
Fledgeling, mate, long time no talk. Do you ever visit your old stompin grounds, the Euro Realm ?

no, I havent and Im scared that my characters might expire soon

 

[Akukami]

Frozen Orb? Waste of a point?

Never.

- Akukami

 

[purplelocust]

The question of why level 17 cold mastery comes up regularly- there is a link in the stickies to: this thread

---

Here's a summary:

Level 17 Cold Mastery (after + skills) gives -100% resistance to cold. For monsters that have no built-in cold resistance, there is no difference between having level 17 CM and higher level CM as -100% is the lowest resistance that can be taken and 0 - 100 = -100, so level 17 and level 27 cold mastery have exactly the same effect on a non-cold resistant monster.

But for monsters that have some cold resistance (but are not cold immune), additional points beyond 17 are useful. For example, Hell Meph is 75% cold resistant, so level 17 CM gives 75 - 100 = -25% cold resistance, and level 27 CM (after skills) gives -150% cold resistance, which for Hell Meph would be 75 -150 = -75% cold resistance.

Cold mastery does nothing to remove cold immunity- that can be done only with Conviction or Lower Resist. Once Conviction or Lower Resist "breaks" the immunity, then cold mastery is very useful but without help, cold mastery is irrelevant for cold immunes.

So if you are mainly killing normal monsters, then there is no point in having your CM above 17, but if it is important to kill cold-resistance monsters like Hell Meph (75%CR), Hell Diablo (50%CR), Hell Duriel (95%CR) then points above 17 are useful.

---

My opinion is that since a Blizzard sorc is bound to spend a fair amount of time killing Hell Meph, then investing in CM to bring it above 17 is a good idea, but opinions vary on this.

 

[goomba]

the strategy I am currently taking, is to leave CM at lvl 17 until other blizz synergies are maxed. after which point I'll 'finish' cold mastery. I don't do a ton of pvp, and the last few cs runs I did, it seemed like I did most of the killing already, at only lvl 83...

not trying to too my own horn, but it seems like a lot of the public cs runs are full of people with completely no skill at the game.

my sorcs are usually doing teleporting/seal popping duties as early as mid 30s level. I was doing BO- duty last night for the brief amount of time I was on line, and there was a lvl 63 blizzer in the game (or so her name said) that died teleporting (I leapt in) and I honestly don't think she cast a single blizzard during the entire run. (I also had to leap to pop the seals on infector, and de seis)

seriously...

er, end rant

 

[gasher]

I have had many cold sorces and some of them have bliz spec but I never spent more then 10-12 points on CM. As long as you are only MF-ing it is not really important to max anything besides blizzard and glacial. You can not hurt cold immunes anyways even with maxed blizzard and it matters little if it takes few static, 2-3 blizzards and dozen of spikes ( you can shoot them at bliz cooldown ) to kill da boss. Instead you could use these points in other tree and become two or even three elemental or boost your telekinesis (ES). But then again, I am seldom doing any PvP - I find it way boring - what a silly way to compare link and eq. If you like PvP however, you certainly want max synergies to get some lucky single-shot kills.

By the way , guides like that , invest 20 points here and there are pretty much useless when you starting from scratch after long pause and dont have hordes of friends to boost you up. What I am doing may not be useful for eveyone but when building (initial) MF-sorc, practically I put 1 point to every skill out there ( cept firewall side ). In case of bliz sorc, extra points go to glacial until level 30. Then every extra point goes to CM until about 10. Until level 42, level 1+skill orb will do fine, boosted by mastery. After that you can start raising Blizzard/Glacial/etc until you feel that it is at adequate level. After that if you still have points you can use, there choice of taking other element to allow you kill immunes. Some of reasonable choices include LM/ Nova and Enchant/Warmth.

 

[goomba]

mfing in nm CS, and/or nm cow games can yield you truly "end game" (but not elite) items for a sorc.

shard/magefist/twitch are the essentials, and 'affordable' for getting a sorc to be useable in even hell cs runs. even a triple p diam shield will suffice with this build, even tho a pward is better. fcr/rez rings can be gradually improved upon as you lvl/mf, as can the hat/ammy/belt/boots.

purists will laugh, but even such things as the face mask of horror can assist a newb sorc build, what with the rez all and the str added. to a point, I agree with you about being adaptable when not having gear, but I am long past the point of "every skill on the tree" mode, that I did with my very first char, a summoner so long ago (I still have him, lvl 80)

*Shrug*

 

[Akukami]

I have had many cold sorces and some of them have bliz spec but I never spent more then 10-12 points on CM. As long as you are only MF-ing it is not really important to max anything besides blizzard and glacial. You can not hurt cold immunes anyways even with maxed blizzard and it matters little if it takes few static, 2-3 blizzards and dozen of spikes ( you can shoot them at bliz cooldown ) to kill da boss. Instead you could use these points in other tree and become two or even three elemental or boost your telekinesis (ES). But then again, I am seldom doing any PvP - I find it way boring - what a silly way to compare link and eq. If you like PvP however, you certainly want max synergies to get some lucky single-shot kills.

By the way , guides like that , invest 20 points here and there are pretty much useless when you starting from scratch after long pause and dont have hordes of friends to boost you up. What I am doing may not be useful for eveyone but when building (initial) MF-sorc, practically I put 1 point to every skill out there ( cept firewall side ). In case of bliz sorc, extra points go to glacial until level 30. Then every extra point goes to CM until about 10. Until level 42, level 1+skill orb will do fine, boosted by mastery. After that you can start raising Blizzard/Glacial/etc until you feel that it is at adequate level. After that if you still have points you can use, there choice of taking other element to allow you kill immunes. Some of reasonable choices include LM/ Nova and Enchant/Warmth.

I disagree. You're wasting points if you think that spreading out your points into other trees will benefit you later on. The fact is that there is no one Sorc that can be effective in killing everything, so boosting points in mass PvM killing skills is much better than simply "diversifiing." The current MFer I have right now is a Maxed Orber (FO, CM, IB) with a point each into Telekinesis and Static Field, and I'm maxing Teleport right now. I gave her 100 base Energy and dumped the rest into Vita. (That's right, I have no points into Str or Dex.) Also, I've managed to max all of her resists in Hell except for Poison, which I am working on getting gear for. My target MF areas are Andy and Meph, and I take them out very easily, even in a full game.

The reason why I level CM is simply to wipe out other MFers in the same game as me. I recently ran into some Level 85 Orber using the GSkin/Ward Combo with Enery Shield and loaded BO in one game, and right off the bat, I knew she was going for Andy and Meph. However, she hosted me, talked crap about killing me if I decided to steal her drops, loaded her BO, threw her EShield up, and went after Andy. Too bad I was waiting for her at Level 4 after I'd already killed Andy and took the drops. We traded Orb shots, and to make a long story short, she left naked crying, "HACKER, HACKER."

Think about that when MFing with other competing Sorcs around. :grin:

- Akukami

 

[seralph]

Doing a little math on the mechanics of coldmastery results in a simple anser. I know it's not a propper mathematical formulation but i think more people are capable of reading it this way.

For monster with no coldresist the damage increase by 5% per lvl (except for the first) and for monsters with more than 0 resitst by at least 5%. So you can see 5% as a lower bound for the enhancment of damage till lvl17.

For lvl 18+ every monster will have resists <= 0 after aplaying the mastery and therefore the damage will increase by 0 - 5%. So the 5% are a upper bound.

Blizzard's synergies add 5% damage per hardpoint spent. The conlusion is that a lvl 17 coldmastery is a must have. Points into the synergies are a waste before. After lvl 17, synergies and mastery switch their role regarding effectifness. So max all synergies before getting a lvl18 or higher coldmastery.

It's a diffrent story for PvP since people can stack resists.

 

[fledgeling]

for a started, blizzard-sorc is actually possible to level-up (especially if you join cow games), because you actually can kill the monsters and you dont have to rely on other players that much, who 90% of the time are total idiots and deal with the monsters slower than your sorc with level 1 ice-bolt (leveling an orb sorc for example)... the sad fact is that they are usually barbarians...

keeping base strenght is very hard for a beginner, because it means running naked, even if you use cathan rings+amulet and wear a face of horror.
unless you get 10str/dex rings with resists almost instantly..

I think a goldskin for a starting sorc is better, because you manage to stack some resists and can use MF items elsewhere (milaberga shield etc)
gs+ward combo is ok - no fhr and higher strenght, but actually the character is playable

it's just two ways of facing the problem:

MF for some time quickly without fear of getting killed (you wear the goldskin etc) and then remake the character - in theory this path takes longer
but actually I never even bothered to level up my MF-sorc again, despite her being really really bad in many ways. she still gets the job done, despite having 103strenght with items and a point in every fire spell/not enough mana

OR

make a base strenght/dexterity sorc and be unable to equip your items for days, due to lack of strenght. I think it might affect your killing speed...
playing will be fun too

I disagree. You're wasting points if you think that spreading out your points into other trees will benefit you later on. The fact is that there is no one Sorc that can be effective in killing everything, so boosting points in mass PvM killing skills is much better than simply "diversifiing." The current MFer I have right now is a Maxed Orber (FO, CM, IB) with a point each into Telekinesis and Static Field, and I'm maxing Teleport right now. I gave her 100 base Energy and dumped the rest into Vita. (That's right, I have no points into Str or Dex.) Also, I've managed to max all of her resists in Hell except for Poison, which I am working on getting gear for. My target MF areas are Andy and Meph, and I take them out very easily, even in a full game.

The reason why I level CM is simply to wipe out other MFers in the same game as me. I recently ran into some Level 85 Orber using the GSkin/Ward Combo with Enery Shield and loaded BO in one game, and right off the bat, I knew she was going for Andy and Meph. However, she hosted me, talked crap about killing me if I decided to steal her drops, loaded her BO, threw her EShield up, and went after Andy. Too bad I was waiting for her at Level 4 after I'd already killed Andy and took the drops. We traded Orb shots, and to make a long story short, she left naked crying, "HACKER, HACKER."

Think about that when MFing with other competing Sorcs around. :grin:

- Akukami

WOW I was really astonished by reading it!!

I have a similar story to share!
3days after the reset I allready had 2sojs and I managed to kill diablo with 1 hit on hell and of course won 1v7 duel games, you know like 7people versus me
there was this palladin with conviction, 2orb sorcs, 1firesorc, 1blizzard, 2barbs and a charger
actually diablo clone spawned in the game, but due to my stacked resists (250 stacked, 95% fire res etc) I killed him easily and procedeed to own them

I hope you were astonished by this boring story, while I was not

I can give you more advice if you plan to make a sorc from scratch and have just started - be such a cool 'dude' like Akukami!

seriously this forum needs a "brag" subforum, where the kids would debate *EDITED*

 

[Dacar92]

Would you guys grow up please? Man! The longer I am here the more astonished I am at how childish some people can be. Let's just get along. I don't care if you hate each other. IGNORE. If you don't like the others here then leave. I am tired of dealing with children. I have two of my own, that should be enough.

 

[Creon]

*Words*

- Akukami

I've never figured out is if more players in the game helps with boss drops. I know it generally makes monsters drop more items, but I don't know if that applies to act bosses.

 

[seralph]

The odds of nodrops decrease with more players in the same game for act bosses too.

 

[Akukami]

for a started, blizzard-sorc is actually possible to level-up (especially if you join cow games), because you actually can kill the monsters and you dont have to rely on other players that much, who 90% of the time are total idiots and deal with the monsters slower than your sorc with level 1 ice-bolt (leveling an orb sorc for example)... the sad fact is that they are usually barbarians...

keeping base strenght is very hard for a beginner, because it means running naked, even if you use cathan rings+amulet and wear a face of horror.
unless you get 10str/dex rings with resists almost instantly..

I think a goldskin for a starting sorc is better, because you manage to stack some resists and can use MF items elsewhere (milaberga shield etc)
gs+ward combo is ok - no fhr and higher strenght, but actually the character is playable

it's just two ways of facing the problem:

MF for some time quickly without fear of getting killed (you wear the goldskin etc) and then remake the character - in theory this path takes longer
but actually I never even bothered to level up my MF-sorc again, despite her being really really bad in many ways. she still gets the job done, despite having 103strenght with items and a point in every fire spell/not enough mana

GSkin is pathetic on a Sorc. Even when I was starting out, the thought of wearing the thing didn't cross my mind. If anything, a Twitch + Priz Bone Shield Sorc is much better to go with since you can add more to Vita w/o worrying about Str. Btw, if for those of you wondering where that added Str is coming from, find a 2-Sock Cap and throw 2 PAmethysts in there for an easy 30 Str to begin with. With Twitch, that makes it an easy 40 Str at Level 18. Note that I have added 0 to Str.

For my current MFer that I recently made, I did the same exact thing, except that I added to Energy until it was at 100, and dumped the rest into Vita. In Hell, I have maxed Res except Poison, and I have 0 MF. That's right, my MFer has no MF. Why? A certain member on these forums shared an MF idea with me, and right now I am taking full advantage of it and have found several godly Rares using this method.

Also, why would you make a Sorc to MF then remake it later? We all waste time on this game, but we might as well be efficient in doing so.

Would you guys grow up please? Man! The longer I am here the more astonished I am at how childish some people can be. Let's just get along. I don't care if you hate each other. IGNORE. If you don't like the others here then leave. I am tired of dealing with children. I have two of my own, that should be enough.

Aww, you should be thankful that you have your two little bundles of joy! :grin: Also, I don't know what fledge's problem is, but I sure hope he gets over it in a hurry. It's a game, and he seems to take it more personally than the rest of us. :shocked:

- Akukami