Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

[TempestTenor]

Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

I am very intrigued by Zarhrezz's Energy Shield Sorc guide and I want to build one myself. The gist of the build is to dump all your stat points into Energy, use a very high level Energy Shield, wear lots of Damage Reduced By X and Magic Damage Reduced By X items, and tank anything that doesn't Charge or have mana burn :smug:

Zarhrezz's guide leaves it up to the reader to decide which offensive spells to use for the build. I've decided I want to use Chain Lightning as my offensive spell. I've always wanted to build a Chain Lightning Sorc and CL seems fitting for this build because I will be heavily invested in the lightning tree prereqs for ES anyway. I've got a number of questions for you all:

1) First and foremost, has anyone tried any variant of Zarhrezz's ES build before? Has anyone tried Zarhrezz's ES build using Chain Lightning? What did you think of the build?

2) I will need 20 hard skill points in Telekinesis and Energy Shield. That leaves approximately 50 skill points to spend elsewhere. I took a look at the synergies for Chain Lightning and saw that Lightning Mastery gives a much better bonus to CL damage than any of its synergies. My plan is to max CL and LM and put any leftover points into Lightning. I'll have approximately 6 points in Lightning by level 90. Will Chain Lightning do enough damage with only half a synergy and fully maxed LM?

3) Is CL effective against bosses?

4) Is it worth it to spend the extra point in Nova and the extra point in Thunderstorm just to acquire TS?

5) How much FCR is adequate for Chain Lightning? I've included the breakpoint chart below for reference:
Lightning / Chain Lightning / Inferno Faster Cast Rates
FCR % FPC
0 19
7 18
15 17
23 16
37 15
52 14
78 13
117 12
194 11

6) For those who have played this build before: how much DR and MDR is necessary?

7) The popular consensus in the guide's comments section is that blocking of any kind would be bad for this build because this sorc will have a slow block rate. But Gerke's Sanctuary and Lidless Wall are so tempting...:jig: Plus she'll have an incredibly low chance to block anyway since I'll be leaving Dex at base. What do you think?

8) I'm having a hard time deciding what to use in the weapon/shield and armor slots. Here are some possible configurations I came up with:

• Eschuta's Temper, Gladiator's Bane, Lidless Wall (a balance between offense and defense)
• Eschuta's Temper, Que-Hegan's Wisdom, Gerke's Sanctuary (Que-Hegan's has MDR and FHR)
• Eschuta's Temper, Ormus's Robes, Gerke's Sanctuary (probably more damage than Que-Hegan's)
• Eschuta's Temper, Iron Pelt, Lidless Wall (low str requirement. Can dump approximately 50 more points into energy, which translates to about 200 extra mana after +% to mana bonuses. A bit less DR and MDR than Gladiator's Bane)
• Eschuta's Temper, Gladiator's Bane, Gerke's Sanctuary (lots and lots of MDR and DR)
• Memory, Gladiator's Bane (no shield)
• Memory, Iron Pelt (no shield, less DR and MDR, but more mana)

Which configuration should I pick (not that I have the higher end items at the moment...)? Got any other configurations to suggest?

9) For the other item slots I'm going to go with

• Head: Griffon's Eye (if I can ever get one :rolf or rare Circlet. I strongly disagree with the guide's assertion that Harlequin's Crest is the best helm for this build. The only mods of use on Shako are the +2 skills and the bonus to mana. We can get that and more from a good rare Circlet or something entirely different and even more useful from Griffon's Eye.
• Amulet: Caster amulet
• Gloves: Frostburn
• Rings: SoJ x2
• Belt: Arachnid Mesh
• Boots: Silkweave

Anybody have any different ideas?

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

1. haven't tried it.

2. With 40 in TK/ES, you're going to have a hard time building a strong (enough) attack in chain lightning... a very hard time.

3. not especially. Even at its best, it's medium-low on the effectiveness scale for bosses. With only ~45 points in CL, you're going to take a while to kill everything, especially bosses.

4. not in this case - you'll need every point for synergizing your attack

5. For me, 78 as a minimum, 117 preferred, 194 is best... it's a slow spell, so every little bit helps... with your PDR & MDR needs, I think 117 is the highest feasible chance.

6. With high level ES, I think 15-25 PDR would be lots. I don't know about mdr... probably the same

7. Lidless Wall sucks for blocking. Gerke's can be decent, but as you said, without points in dexterity there isn't much you can do... I'd focus on your other needs and leave the block to be whatever it turns out to be.

8. Use the Memory on weapon-switch (for a prebuff), but not as a main weapon. I'd pick Occulus over Eschuta's any day of the week, even with the teleport. I'd also pick Wizardspike over Eschuta's any day of the week. I was thinking Gerke's & Gladiator's seems like the best to me, but I think you'll want some offense on your armor... Gerke's & Ormus then.

9. Griffon's is best, but Shako is good too... you'll still appreciate the +life around mana burners - a lot. For what it costs, Shako is very tough to beat. Otherwise, if you're going to stick with Chain Lightning, I think all of your other gear will need to be focused on offense. A Nature's Peace ring comes with a couple of nice things for this type of build though, so you might look at one of those.


Different Ideas:
Ditch CL and choose an attack that'll do ok with 40 points... There really are only 3: Firewall, FrozenOrb, and Nova. Several others can be tolerable (Fireball, Blizzard, Meteor, etc), but chain lightning isn't even one of those. Chain Lightning, in my experience, needs at least 60 skillpoints to be at all worthwhile, and more than 60 is strongly preferred.

If you can get a bunch of +skills to Energy Shield and keep it in your stash, you might be able to skimp a little on your "hard" points in ES. For example, Ormus Robes & a good Memory staff are +12. Throw on Powered circlets & amulets, and you're up to +18. Throw on a bunch of +skill charms... I believe level40 is as high as you need to go with ES, so if you keep things like that in your stash you can skimp (somewhat) on the points you actually spend in ES.

 

[Stevomoo]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

another possible skill is charged bolt it takes 6o points to fully synergise so should still be pretty powerful with 50

 

[TempestTenor]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

1. haven't tried it.

2. With 40 in TK/ES, you're going to have a hard time building a strong (enough) attack in chain lightning... a very hard time.

3. not especially. Even at its best, it's medium-low on the effectiveness scale for bosses. With only ~45 points in CL, you're going to take a while to kill everything, especially bosses.

4. not in this case - you'll need every point for synergizing your attack

5. For me, 78 as a minimum, 117 preferred, 194 is best... it's a slow spell, so every little bit helps... with your PDR & MDR needs, I think 117 is the highest feasible chance.

6. With high level ES, I think 15-25 PDR would be lots. I don't know about mdr... probably the same

7. Lidless Wall sucks for blocking. Gerke's can be decent, but as you said, without points in dexterity there isn't much you can do... I'd focus on your other needs and leave the block to be whatever it turns out to be.

8. Use the Memory on weapon-switch (for a prebuff), but not as a main weapon. I'd pick Occulus over Eschuta's any day of the week, even with the teleport. I'd also pick Wizardspike over Eschuta's any day of the week. I was thinking Gerke's & Gladiator's seems like the best to me, but I think you'll want some offense on your armor... Gerke's & Ormus then.

9. Griffon's is best, but Shako is good too... you'll still appreciate the +life around mana burners - a lot. For what it costs, Shako is very tough to beat. Otherwise, if you're going to stick with Chain Lightning, I think all of your other gear will need to be focused on offense. A Nature's Peace ring comes with a couple of nice things for this type of build though, so you might look at one of those.


Different Ideas:
Ditch CL and choose an attack that'll do ok with 40 points... There really are only 3: Firewall, FrozenOrb, and Nova. Several others can be tolerable (Fireball, Blizzard, Meteor, etc), but chain lightning isn't even one of those. Chain Lightning, in my experience, needs at least 60 skillpoints to be at all worthwhile, and more than 60 is strongly preferred.

If you can get a bunch of +skills to Energy Shield and keep it in your stash, you might be able to skimp a little on your "hard" points in ES. For example, Ormus Robes & a good Memory staff are +12. Throw on Powered circlets & amulets, and you're up to +18. Throw on a bunch of +skill charms... I believe level40 is as high as you need to go with ES, so if you keep things like that in your stash you can skimp (somewhat) on the points you actually spend in ES.

Excellent info! That's exactly what I was looking for: someone to tell me whether or not CL would be viable with ~50 skill points. Well, I've never built a Nova sorc before either so I can switch my main skill to Nova instead :yes:

Some counter questions for you:

1) Is Nova a viable main skill in 1.12 and does it follow the same FCR progression as normal spells?

2) I think you may have misunderstood my point about shields (question 7). It's been said that blocking is bad for this build and that one should not use a shield at all. So my dilemma is trying to figure out if using a shield will hurt this build. Do you think there's any validity to the argument that shields are bad for this build because of the lack of fast block %?

3) Why do you prefer Occulus to Eschuta's?

4) Excellent point about skimping on ES hard points. I'll have to play around with some item configurations to see if I can do this. Would this even be necessary, however, if I switch over to Nova?

 

[Stevomoo]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

having a shileld is not bad it is just the blocking that sucks, so as long as you dont pump dex for blocking there is no problem, spirit for example would be good for this build skills and mana with crap blocking

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

1) In small games Nova can be quite powerful, but as more people join and monster life increases, Nova slows down. An Infinity polearm can help a lot, but even then you might be stretched in full games.

2) I was trying to say that you should choose a shield that appeals to your other needs (PDR, MDR, +skills, +mana, resists, etc.), and don't worry about the blocking. If you don't spend points in dex you won't block enough attacks for the slow-blocking to get in your way.

Basically, Stevomoo covered it... a shield is generally a good thing (and Spirit is one of the best). As long as you don't try to go for max-block with the wrong shield, the shield will help you much more than it hurts. That said, a polearm-wielding Nova sorc with Infinity (for the Conviction aura) or Insight (for the Meditation) isn't a horrible idea.

3) The +damage on Eschuta's adds on top of your mastery... so you go from ~450% damage from Lightning Mastery to ~470%... not really a big improvement. If you look at the other things that Occulus provides and compare them, I personally feel it's better across the board (though I'm one of the perverse few that likes the added defense of the random teleport).

4) With Nova you'll have lots of points for ES/TK, so you don't really need to skimp. I'd still max Nova, LM, and TK before finishing ES, but at a reasonable level you should have the points for all four, at least. You should even have enough left-over to throw a point in Thunderstorm pretty easily.

 

[guface]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

1. I actually tried one one the CL/ES build. Absolutely awful. Couldnt kill anything in hell. This was my first ladder char though so I didnt have much wealth to play with but still...awful

2. as for shield, max block is not worth it imo. Better off in energy for a huge pool. A shield wont hurt if its getting 5% chance to block. The lidless wall is almost perfect for this build. I dont think the extra strength is worth it when you can have much more energy.

3. Nova has been nerfed and its pretty weak now. Still doable but I would recommend using infinity if you have that wealth.

4. The other skill you can use is charged bolt. CB, light and LM is around 65 skill points, leaving you with enough to put in ES/TK. Also light skillers help immensely too, as will a +3 light ammy.

5. I notice that with enough PDR/MDR you dont need to reach lvl 40 ES. Having more ES does mean you can wear less PDR/MRD though. The overkill zahress used includes gladiators and archangels of everlasting ammy, sol'd hats etc. With something like say 20 PDR, and lvl 40 ES, a monster needs to do more than 400 damage in a single hit to dent your health bar. Same applies to the MDR - although there is a massive range for magic damaging monsters now, gloams being the main example. Check the arreat tables for monster damage and you can find the right balance.

 

[TempestTenor]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

1. I actually tried one one the CL/ES build. Absolutely awful. Couldnt kill anything in hell. This was my first ladder char though so I didnt have much wealth to play with but still...awful

2. as for shield, max block is not worth it imo. Better off in energy for a huge pool. A shield wont hurt if its getting 5% chance to block. The lidless wall is almost perfect for this build. I dont think the extra strength is worth it when you can have much more energy.

3. Nova has been nerfed and its pretty weak now. Still doable but I would recommend using infinity if you have that wealth.

4. The other skill you can use is charged bolt. CB, light and LM is around 65 skill points, leaving you with enough to put in ES/TK. Also light skillers help immensely too, as will a +3 light ammy.

5. I notice that with enough PDR/MDR you dont need to reach lvl 40 ES. Having more ES does mean you can wear less PDR/MRD though. The overkill zahress used includes gladiators and archangels of everlasting ammy, sol'd hats etc. With something like say 20 PDR, and lvl 40 ES, a monster needs to do more than 400 damage in a single hit to dent your health bar. Same applies to the MDR - although there is a massive range for magic damaging monsters now, gloams being the main example. Check the arreat tables for monster damage and you can find the right balance.

Charged Bolt might be an idea to try. Is it viable without Infinity and Griffon's Eye? For that matter, is Nova viable without Inifinity and Griffon's Eye?

That's a good point about not maxing ES. By increasing MDR/PDR you would no only save skill points in ES, but save mana every time you get hit as well. I took a look at Arreat Summit and couldn't find any reliable information on Will O Wisps: http://battle.net/diablo2exp/monsters/act5g-willowisp.shtml. I'm fairly certain that Will O Wisps do more than 42-108 damage per hit :tongue: Has anyone been able to figure out how much damage those guys actually do?

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

42-108 is their melee damage. Their lightning is something like 400-500, I believe.

 

[RighteousRyan]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

I don't think Lightning and ES/Static is possible. Not enough points.
Here is my guide to FrozenOrb ES/Static http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=691711

 

[TempestTenor]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

Thanks for the info on Will O Wisps, Sirpoop. And thanks for the idea on FO, RighteousRyan, but I kind of wanted to try a lightning tree sorc for now. I'll save FO for later =)

Is Charged Bolt viable without Infinity and without Griffon's Eye? Is Nova viable without Infinity and without Griffon's Eye?

Edit: Also, is Fast Hit Recovery necessary at all with this build? Does the hit recovery animation play only when a character loses a chunk of HP or does it also play when the Sorc loses a chunk of mana from ES?

 

[McCain123]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

Charged Bolt might be an idea to try. Is it viable without Infinity and Griffon's Eye? For that matter, is Nova viable without Inifinity and Griffon's Eye?

Charged bolt is viable without Infinity and Griffon, but you need quite some +skills. Torch, Anni, +3 Ammy, +3 Circlet, some skillers and you kill everything that is not lightning immune, quite OK. The beauty comes to play, when you start to carry that green stick. Muhaha, you´ll kill everything in 8 player baals with ease and Baal goes down, before the non teleporters are there. However you´ll have to go with the risk of mana burners. They can ruin the fun, as a physical damaging monster, with mana burn will always empty your complete mana pool. Even in normal act 1 where they do like 1-3 damage, they will empty 4k mana in one hit. Nevertheless you should try that build, as it is a hell lot of fun. See "Blue Sorc" in the sorc library for details.

 

[TempestTenor]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

Unfortunately I'm playing Single Player so no Anni for me...and I'm not nearly rich enough to do Uber Tristram runs so no Torch either ha ha. Plus I neither have Infinity nor Griffon's Eye. But whatever...I'm going to try a Nova build anyway (and a CB build afterwards).

How much PDR and MDR do I really need for Zarhrezz's build? He recommends at least 20 for PDR and a little less than 20 for MDR. Taking a quick look at Arreat Summit, the hardest hitting physical damage monster (that I could find) is an Act V guest Megademon dealing 108-189 physical damage per hit. With a 95% ES, the maximum amount of damage a Megademon can do to the sorc's hit point orb is only 9.45. There is pretty much no information on casters' magic damage, but SirPoopsALot estimated Will O Wisps at 400-500 damage per hit. After a 95% ES the max damage there is 25. Are Zarhrezz's estimates of ~20 PDR and <20 MDR at all accurate?

Also...how do Infinity-wielding sorcs get enough Fast Cast to hit 105%?

 

[DH Amazon]

Re: Need lots of advice on an Energy Shield and Chain Lightning sorc!

Also...how do Infinity-wielding sorcs get enough Fast Cast to hit 105%?

Magefist,Vipermagi,Griffon,3L+10fcr amu,arach,2x soj gives nicely 105 and lots of mana and plus skills. (or with 20fcr amu and 2x10fcr rings if no fcr in armor)

Or something like that as max is 135 fcr, so you can 'lose' that 30 somewhere.