Ultimate enchantress guide v2.00

Ultimate enchantress guide v2.00

The Ultimate Enchantress Guide V2.00

Preface:
Since no one including myself has my old guide(V1.00?), I have to rewrite the whole thing again. Any inputs / ideas welcomed. Since I typed this out in a short period, if there's any mistakes, or any part unclear / doesn't make sense, let me know. Thanks

Note: If you think you have basic knowledge about enchantress, just go straight to the section you are interested in. Else, I recommand you to read the whole thing. It's worth the time.

Table of contents:

Basic Knowledge stage:
1) Introduction
2) Everything you need to know about enchant
3) Skills description (including a section about Damage goes to mana, ES, and Telekinesis. Also a brief description about werebear)

Character developing stage
4) Skills (compare ZEAL enchantress to Bear enchantress, melee to ranged enchantress)
5) Stats and Equipment
6) Merc

Game Play stage
7) Leveling, pvm, untwinked character
8) PVP (including a section about bear enchantress vs. fire claw druid)
9) Cool pvp ideas. (keep it as a secret for now..)

1) INTRODUCTION:

Enchantress is a sorc build centered around the skill "enchant". All enchantress must (in my opinion) max Warmth , Enchant , and Fire Mastery. Those who don't max these three skills might be called melee sorc, bow sorc - but not enchantress. I'll dicuss the reason why later.
Enchantress is a type of sorc that is capable of something most other sorcs builds are not capable of, that is, the ability to melee or attack with bow efficiently. Basically, enchantress relay heavily on the huge Fire damage and high Attack Rating bonus enchant grants.
With an enchantress you can do at least the following:
Melee with 16k + fire damage easily at a good speed
Shoots out explosive arrow / guided arrow carrying 4k + fire damage
Grant your party member nice fire damage and AR ( hence works great party pvp, and power leveling your friend's low lvl character)
Other ability depends on how you want to build it. (The three important skills will be maxed with just 62 skill points, so people can build different enchantress based on their need).



2) EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ENCHANT

2A) How enchant damage is calculated
When you cast enchant, look at the skill tab where it says skill level is xx and enchant adds xxxx ~xxxx damage, let's refer to the xxxx ~ xxxx damage as the Cast Time Damage. When you perform melee attack, enchant adds the Cast Time Damage multiplied by current Fire Mastery bonus (the fire mastery level at the time of attacking). When you perform ranged attack using a bow, enchant only adds the Cast Time Damage itself to your attack.
Example: If your skill tab says enchant grants 4000 damage and your fire mastery gives + 300%. Then when you melee, you deal out 4000 x (100% + 300%) fire damage which is 16000. Where as when you attack with bow, only 4000 fire damage is dealt. Then, you decide to remove a fire skill charm. So fire mastery level now drops by 1, bonus drops by 7%. You new melee fire damage becomes 4000 x (100% + 293%) = 15720, and new ranged fire damage stays the same at 4000.

Note: The character information screen gives you the correct melee damage. But it gives you faulty ranged attack damage. Don't be fooled by the number.

2B) Enchant is a prebuffable skill.
Knowing how enchant damage works, we should try to get the Cast Time enchange Damage as high as possible when you cast it. And the easiest/ most effective way is to raise skill level. It is important to note that, enchant has increasing gain at high level, which can be observed using a skill planner. You can see the damage difference between a level 45 and level 46 enchant is bigger than that between a level 5 and level 10 enchant.
So what's good prebuff gear? (the equipment you should wear when you cast enchant)

Here's a list that everyone should try to aim for

10 Fire skill Charms
1 Annihilus small charm
Helm: + 3 fire skill circlet (socket it with 2 x + 5 % fire facets)
Ammy: + 3 fire skill ammy
Armor: +3 enchant Omus' Robe with +15% fire damage (socket it with + 5 % fire facet)
Belt: Aranchid Mesh (+ 1 all skill)
Rings: + 1 skill rings (SOJ, bul katho..)
Gloves: Magefist
Boots: Doesn't matter

Now Best weapon / Shield combination
+ 3 fire skill sorc orb with + 3 enchant, + 3 fire mastery socketed with 2 fire facetes, + 1 skill shield with fire facet.
This will result in level 51 enchant, level 48 fire mastery, with 6 fire facets
The Cast Time Damage will be about 4840~5575
Melee fire damage is about 24400~ 28070, where as ranged fire damage is same as Cast Time Damage.

2nd Best weapon/ shield combo
"Leaf" runeword staff with + 3 enchant, + 3 fire mastery
Cast Time Damage is about 4500~5190

3rd Best weaopn/ shield combo
Eschuta;s Templer with + 3 sorc + 20% fire socketed with 1 fire facet, 1 skill shield with fire facet.
Cast Time Damage is about 4370~5050

4th place
Mang Song's Lesson with 1 fire facet
Cast Time Damage is about 4355~5025

You get the idea..

2C) Who / When to cast enchant on
You can enchant on yourself anytime, but you can only enchant your party member if at least one person ( you or the party member) is outside of town. You can enchant on minions, (necro's , druid's , assisents', zon's...), you can enchant on Mercenary. Unless you enchant on a sorc with fire mastery, otherwise, what they'll get is the AR bonus and the Cast Time Damage when they do melee/ ranged attack. You should enchant on every non caster character in your party if possible.

2D) Chracters take the higest level Enchant
That is, when you enchant someone with a level 30 enchant first, then enchant with level 35, the level 35 will replaces old one. If you cast same level enchant, it reset the timer. If you cast lower level enchant, it doesn't do anything. =]

2E) How does enchant works with Explosive Arrow?
When you fire out an explosive arrow against someone, there's this possibility to hit the target twice. First is the arrow itself. If it passes the defense and block, it will hit. And the damage is the physical damage + enchant damage + any other sources of damage it carries. The second hit is the explosion. If target is in range, it will always hit ignoring target defense ( zons can dodge though, I think). The explosion damage is the fire damage you have, usually about the same as Cast Time Damage. Since there are two hitting checks, it is possible to put target opponent in block / fhr lock.

2F) The concept about fire mastery "Double Boosting"
Some people say it's a feature, some say it's a bug.. I think it's just normal and makes total sense.
Firstly, we know that Mastery (fire, lightening) boost elemental damage when sorcs melee. That is, fire (lightening) mastery will multiply any added fire (lightening) damage from charms, equipments when sorc melee.
Now, since enchant is a fire skill, it gets multiplied by fire mastery. And what does enchant do? It adds fire damage to the weapon. You can consider enchant as having an invisible charm that adds fire damage. Then when you melee, that fire damage from the invisible charm (enchant) is multiplied again just like any other fire damage charms would. So it makes total sense to me. And it explains why enchant is not multiplied when you go ranged. (because mastery doesn't boost the added elemental damage when ranged)


3) SKILL DESCRIPTION:

Enchant, Warmth, and Fire Mastery:
In short, enchant has increasing gain at higher level. Warmth is the synergy for enchant. Fire mastery multiplies enchant damage. So... MAX THEM ALL! (besiding boosting enchant damage, fire mastery also boosts any potenail fire spell you might use, and warmth increases mana recovery rate, which works great with energy shield build)

Frozen , Shiver armor:
Depends on your playing style. If you want high defense, max one of the armor. ( I suggest shiver in this case, for higher defense bonus. Some pvm players might want the freeze by frozen armor). If you dont want to spend much on these two skills, put 1 point into one of the armor, works great with the + skills you have. Note, the cold armors are prebuffable skills. The bonus is calculated using the cast time skill level and it stays unchanged until it wears out or you cast it again.

Teleport:
I guess all sorc should have the skill. However, if you KNOW that you'll wear Enigma (or you are a dedicated bear enchantress) you can choose not to put points in it..

Static Field:
Great skill pvm, useless pvp. I think it works great with 1 point in it (helps take out tough targets, fire immunes, bosses). But if you pvp and somehow needs every skill point available, dont put point in it.

Energy Shield, Telekinesis
Energy shield absorbs any physical, magical damage that hits the sorc. Instead of lowering your life, certain percentage of the damage now goes to mana pool depends on the skill level. It doesn't do anything to Poison however.
As Energy shield's synergy,telekinesis lowers the mana cosumption rate for each damage absorbed by energy shield. Without it, for each damage that's redirected to mana pool, 2 mana will be consumed. When telekinesis is maxed, only 0.75 mana will be consumed instead of 2. Therefore, if you want to have a long lasting energy shield, you would want to invest pts into telekinesis.

Note: Mana reduction from Energy Shield is calculated after the pvp penality but before resistance is applied. Because of that, a high damage elemental attack such as fire ball will drain your mana pool. It is also imiportant to know, that energy shield disappears once your mana is drained completely.

WEREBEAR, LYCANTRHOPY
These two skills are granted by the runeword weapon "BEAST",
When you transforms into werebear, you get physical damage bonus, life bonus, defense bonus. Lycanthropy increases the life bonus and the duration for which you will stay in werebear form.
It is important to know that in werebear form, attack speed is mainly character dependent / weapon ias dependent / weapon type dependent. The main reason why people want to transform into werebear is the life bonus and fast attack speed, defense and physical damage bonus are also plus. There are some disadvantage about sorc werebear though. That is, you can't cast spells such as teleport, enchant, etc.. when you are in were form. You need to unshift in order to cast those spells. All you do in were form is basically normal attack. Also you might block slower in bear form. More discussion about werebear will be in section 4.

ZEAL:
This is a skill granted by the runeword weapon "Passion".
It's about the same as zeal for pally, only that sorc needs more IAS than pally does just to hit as fast.
I am not sure about the zealing speed vs IAS though. Also I dont have the information about the fastest zeal speed for sorc.

SPECIAL TOPIC ABOUT DAMAGE GOES TO MANA, ENERGY SHIELD, AND TELEKINESIS

Some people claim that with Damage goes to mana, high level Energy Shield, and maxed Telekinesis you can build an invulnerable sorc. WRONG.
Let's see how they work..
Firstly, damage does to mana ONLY WORKS with physical damage. Since it's usually the elemental attack that drains mana pool, it's already not very appealing.
Secondly, even if it does make a mana-replenishing combo, mana burn monster can still suck up your mana bulb.
Thirdly, energy shield is capped at absorbing 95%, so you will take 5% of damage no matter what.
Lastly, it doesnt' work anyway.. here's the proof.

Assume you have a level 40 energy shield (since absorbing % is capped at 95% at level 40), maxed telekinesis, and 50% Physical Damage Reduction. (PDR)
Now an attack of 1000 physical damage hits you
95% goes to mana -- hence 950 goes to mana, 50 goes to physical.
mana reduced = 950 x 0.75 (Telekinesis) = 712.5
life reduced = 50 x 0.5 (PDR) = 25.
So to make up for the mana lost, you need 712.5 / 25 = 2850% damage goes to mana. Which is impossible.

Assume you have level 20 energy shield, maxed telekinesis, and 50% PDR
Again an attack of 1000 physical damage hits you
75% goes to mana -- hence 750 goes to mana, 250 goes to life.
mana reduced = 750 x 0.75 = 562.5
life reduced = 250 x 0.5 = 125
So to make up for the mana lost, you need 450% damage goes to mana. Still impossible and you are already taking 25% of the damage.

Therefore, it's not a good idea to have high% damage goes to mana with energy shield and telekinesis. If you think, you'll find out they work for opposite purposes kinda of.


Other related skills:

Hydra - great 1 point wonder. It works pvm as an enemy detector (so you dont walk into burning soul blindly), it distracts enemy group. It works pvp because it makes certain character block / dodge. It might stun opponent, it might scare opponent, and it actually does a bit damage since you maxed Fire mastery and hopefully has a lot of + fire skills.

Lightening/ Cold mastery
If you want to use weapons that grants these two kinds of elemental damage, the mastery will boost those damage when you melee. If you are using skills in these two trees, go for it..

Frozen Orb, Thunder Storm, etc
These skills provide 2nd form of elemental attack.. whether to get them or not is up to you.. ..


That's it for today.. tired

Continue tomorrow

 

Thx for reposting your guide wy4251!
Even some more useful information to the Enchant guides that are out there already(like Mongo Jerries )
*cheers* :thumbsup:

I am in the process of building a ranged Enchantress

STICKY please?!

 

Some notes:

- The equipment section is not too practical. Say you have the gear you mention to cast a slvl 51 Enchant. You'll then be spending a few minutes at your chest swapping out almost all of your gear for gear that you can actually fight with. Which has the disadvantage of a few minutes to get ready to fight and half your chest being full all the time. Not a problem to do occasionally when you're playing through the game (seeing how long Enchant lasts) but definitely a no-go when doing runs. By the time you're ready to go, another character will have cleared the target area. How my ES Enchantress works/is going to work (she's low level still) is to wear combat gear with pre-buff weapon on switch. Cast from switch, hit weapon switch and be ready to go. Only one weapon in stash (Nord's to swap for Passion Phase when facing alot of Fire Immunes).

- There's alot of confusion/misunderstanding about ES. You are right about Damage goes to Mana, it's a pretty useless mod (even moreso under ES) and in 1.10 it also lost its use as a refiller for after being mana burned (Mana Burn now occurs after Damage goes to Mana, so you'll be at 0 mana even with a few 100% of Damage goes to Mana). It is however possible to gain a virtual immunity to damage with ES, but to keep the ES up you'll need extreme amounts of mana. From experimenting, I can say that hell Mephisto in a 3 player game is not able to take down a slvl 40 ES with slvl 20 Telekinesis, slvl 10 Warmth and 2440 mana before dying to slvl 33 Frozen Orb/slvl 30 Cold Mastery. This is a base Vitality build, meaning 110 Strength for Gladiator's Bane, the rest in Energy. Gladiator's Base is the way to go in ES builds, since 20 points PDR/MDR translates to the first 400 damage from a hit not affecting your life at all. To be really on the safe side, socket a Sol in the Bane; together with a Memory staff, the first 540 damage from any attack will not affect life. I'm not sure how this works exactly for attacks that deal both elemental and physical damage in one hit; if both sources are treated seperately, either part of the damage will have to be over 540 to deal damage to life, otherwise it's the total damage of the attack. Either way you'll have to go looking for really painful thingies to take damage to life.


Looks good otherwise. Personally, I'd say always 1 point in Lightning and Cold Mastery for melee builds. Even with 1 points invested and a little +skills, they'll greatly increase the added damage from other elemental damage sources.

 

Would this make enchant still viable for ranged enchantresses?

I always thought that the damage from your enchant (skill damage) was multiplied by your mastery ánd all fire/lightning damage from your equipment and charms were multiplied by the correct mastery.
Is this correct and what is the exact difference with going melee?
Thanks for your guide by the way, nicely written, easy to read, just this thing is a little unclear to me.

 

Few bits missing in the guide and here the explanation.

For Melee there is a hidden feature that adds Fire Mastery another time!
For Ranged Chars Fire Mastery is only applied 1 time, but imho that is still enough.
Also masteries are applied to charms when you use ranged attacks, not only in melee!

 

zarhrezz

why is glads bane the best armor i dont understamd?
i would think ormus or COH is best.

please advise
stef

 

Simple Stef, look at its stats!!!!
I'll count Glads Bane as one of the top choices too.
Insane Def

Defense: 1255-1496 (varies)(Base Defense: 375-481)
Required Level: 85
Required Strength: 111
Durability: 135
+150-200% Enhanced Defense (varies) (!)
+50 Defense
Cannot Be Frozen (!)
30% Faster Hit Recovery (!)
Poison Length Reduced By 50%
Attacker Takes Damage Of 20
Damage Reduced By 15-20 (varies)
Magic Damage Reduced By 15-20 (varies) (! good with high resists...)

 

Damage Reduced By 15-20 (varies)
Magic Damage Reduced By 15-20 (varies) (! good with high resists...)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

so i take it that these stats used with energy shield OWN... figure:

2400 dmg enemy attack
pvp penalty 2400/6= 400
max energy + skills so you absorb .8*400 = 80
then 50% DR = 40 dmg
then -27 dmg (SOL rune in glad bane) = 13 dmg

Is that the reason why glade bane owns? the same can for the negating dmg from elemental attacks as well...

so is that the logic as to why glad bane owns for enchantress?

thnx
stef

 

Yes I Do Believe It Is. I Am Just Recently Coming To Light On This Fact Myself And Will Be Informing A Friend About The %Dmg To Mana As Soon As I Can. Just Let Me Say Thanks Wye. We Really Do Need This =).

 

Where's the stat section?! The ultimate guide has no stat section, thank you very much.

Just want to know, should i max nrg? since 1 pnt in vit gives a PATHETIC 2 hp.

 

That's it for today.. tired

Continue tomorrow

Give Him Time =)

 

These 2 guides are alot closer to an "Ultimate Enchantress guide" since they cover all aspects, also ranged enchantresses and melee/ranged.

Mongojerries: http://www.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=129944

MrEvil: http://forums.rpgforums.net//showthread.php?t=135155

 

Why Gladiator's Bane? The damage reduced by 20 for both physical and magical. Snarlin almost has the calculations right, the order of some mods is different though and ES maxes out higher:

slvl 40 ES is 95% damage absorbed.
Damage reduced by X is counted before resistances are applied (which is why normally the mod isn't too good, with high resists the difference from Damage reduced by X is then devaluated).
Say we have 25 total (Magic) Damage reduced.
Then the first 25/0.05 = 500 damage does not pass the Damage reduced by X phase of damage resolving. This also means that resistances are completely irrelevant for all damage below 500! Note also that Amplify Damage is simply a -100% to your physical resistance. My ES shield sorc has tanked monster while at -80% resist all and under Amplify Damage...as long as invidual hits are under 500 damage, there is absolutely no difference whatsoever with 50%PDR and max resists.
For PvP the 500 in the example is boosted to 3000 damage that does not reach life. However, maxed pk damage is alot higher than that, so in those situations, ES helps, but you will need max resists and %DR and life to stand a chance. In PvP, ES won't last long, which is quite a difference from PvM play, where ES only gets dented under extreme fire.

Note that this is more a discussion on ES than on Enchantress, however I do feel that ES goes well with Enchantress, seeing as Enchantresses use maxed Warmth, which gives an insane regeneration rate on the ES. A melee Enchantress should however have max block and resists and a reasonable amount of life, since Mana Burn will instantly drain any amount of mana (think 2,5k+ per hit).
For Melee Enchantress, I'd say 1 point in ES is always worth it. If you pre-buff it with a Memory staff with a +3 ES on it and wear Mara's, SoJ, Arachnid, you'll have a 67% absorb ES. Which means the following:
17% more physical damage reduction than possible without ES.
67% more magic resist than your average character has (I mean, who uses a safety shield for 10% resist magic damage?).
25% resist fire/cold/lightning equals 75% resist fire/cold/lightning without ES. Higher resists means effective resists over 75% without the use of equipment like Guardian Angel to boost the max resist caps.
Of course the cost is mana loss. But mana comes easy for a sorceress and a few +mana items isn't a big deal, SoJ is always nice for example. And you'll have maxed Warmth to start with. And there's the fact that you won't need mana when killing things, considering you're not casting anything, so the mana is basically just sitting there anyhow...so why not use it to fuel ES?

A final note on Gladiator's Bane: The defense doesn't hurt either. With my Defiance merc and 1 point in Chilling Armor, my defense comes out at 9.1k...not too shabby. Oh, and CBF isn't bad either, though not vital to a caster.

 

The cost for me would be the huge investment in skill points.

On my Sorceress who will be using a Kuko Shakaku (so: ranged), I intend to max out fire and lightning mastery (to get a hire damage from fire and lightning damage from equipment/charms), enchant (blizzard removed 'Always Hit' from explosive arrows :'(), max or high warmth, few points in static, few points in teleport (to reduce mana cost).

From my gear I want to get a decent shooting rate in frames, some more attack rating, crushing blow (worked great in 1.09 with explosive arrows, I expect it to work again) and also pierce (kuko = 50%, razortail = 33%).

I do not intend to get a lot of skills since it's really hard to obtain the above things plus a lot of extra skills. Resists will probably a problem, life won't be that bad (I can live with base dex or near base dex since a kuko shakaku only requires 49 dex -> ravenfrost + base = 45 already).

Perhaps I'll let you know later how this works out. Any suggestions maybe?

 

For a ranged Enchantress, I'll agree on the skill points cost. Since you'll be at ranged, you'll be taking alot less fire, thus ES isn't as vital, and even a non-synergized ES is good enough. For melee Enchantress, the deal is somewhat different though...I wouldn't go melee sorc without 20 TK to support ES.

 

Let me answer some posts first..

About prebuff enchant gear, it's mainly to give the example what gives best cast time enchant damage
1) It takes less than 30 secs to swap all, and it lasts for 20+ mins
2) when do runs, skip a couple items and it takes less than 15 secs to swap gears
3) It is necessary pvp
if you ever used high level enchant, you should know - 1 skill makes almost 1k damage difference in melee

Glad Bane and ES
It's a very good pvm armor for those who already have max resis, PDR, and dont like taking health pots
20 dam reduction is less effective pvp


now here's the char developing section
I'll use a different approach from my original plan
I'll talk about ranged enchantress , then focus on melee enchantress

RANGED ENCHANTRESS

Brief Introduction:
Pure ranged enchantress doesn't do melee attack at all. What makes them viable character? Because comparing to zons they have teleport, static field, cold armors, energy shield .. etc.
Comparing to other sorcs, ranged enchantress can fire explosive arrows / guided arrows that carries huge fire damage.
We almost always refer to ranged enchantress as bow enchantress, but not thrower enchantress. Because no throwing weapon gives the skill bonus such as explosive arrow or guided arrow.
IT IS POSSIBLE to make a thrower enchantress who can throw and melee, but this build will not be covered in this guide.

Comparing to melee enchantress, bow enchantress usually have the following advantages:
1: Less dex, str required -- hence leads to more base life
2: Less need for defense rating, energy shield -- hence gives the freedom to invest in other offensive skills
3: The enchant fire damage for ranged attack stays constant no matter what equipment she uses -- leads to the freedom of equipment.

There are some disadvantages of course
1: Less fire damage output
2: Less defense (no shield) - can't tank as well
3: Can't fight opponent face to face, which is one reason why some people want to make enchantress in the first place

SKILL distribution:
I can't tell you exactly what to do cuz people have different play style. But after reading the following, you should be able to decide what you like to do that suits your taste.

Max Enchant
Max Fire mastery
Max Warmth
these 3 skills are always maxed
the 48 skill pts left determines what kind of ranged enchantress you will become

variant 1: offensive spell type
this type of ranged enchantress invests skill points into other offensive skills such as frozen orb, hydra, thunder storm, ... and the corresponding Mastery.

variant 2: Multi Mastery type (some people's theory.. I dont think it's right but I decided to post it anyway)
this type of variant invest points into lightening mastery, and cold mastery, thinking these 2 skills will boost their lightening / cold damage. There are few problems however:
1) The weapon that a bow enchantress uses is usually demon machine, widowmaker, or kuku.. and they dont provide lighening damage nor cold damage. Therefore, you'll need charms to provide the elemental damage. However, an enchantress usually has 10 fire skill charms in the inventory, so there's not much room for other charms.
2) Cold mastery will boost your damage by lowering opponent's resis.. but lightening mastery doesn't multiply lightening damage when sorc performs ranged attack, so I dont see the point of it. (If anyone has a test result saying lightening mastery boosts ranged damage, let me know, thanks)

Note: If lighening Mastery does boosts the damage from charms when using ranged attack, then obviously there's another variant. That is,
Lightening Widowmaker sorc - A sorc who maxes lightening mastery, put 40 small lightening damage charms in inventory and fire guided arrow. the damage will be incredible.,, (let's not discuss it here though)

variant 3: The safety type
this type of enchantress invest points on skills such as energy shield, cold armor. These skills make the sorc harder to kill. For pvm purpose, some put points in frost nova , frozen orb, more points into static field to help,


STATS points distribution and GEARS:

Strength: The only purpose str serves for ranged enchantress is to wear stuff. Keep it as low as possible. Some twinker put no points into strength.

Dex: Dex helps sorc to use bow, to increase defense, and attack rating, and physical damage. (Note that the defense rating and physical damage increases are minor.) 1 Dex gives 5 base AR, with enchant it will grant you 25+ AR. Of course, if you use widowmaker you dont need AR. Else, in order to make the arrow itself to hit, you need some AR.
You choose how much dex to invest to. Some decide to invest as low into dex as possible because they use Angelic set to boost Base AR so that they dont need the AR provided by dex.

Vital / Energy: If you dont use energy shield, put all points into vital. If you use high skill energy shield with max telekinesis, put most (all) points into energy. But no matter what you do, I'd say aim for at least 900 life.

With Battle Order from CTA, it's possible to get 3k+ life, OR 3k+ mana


Equipment:

Try to get full resistance and full physical damage reduction. Also, try to use items that have lower strength requirement. Mods you should look for are, IAS (needed to fire at good speed), + stats, + resis, FHR, PDR. You need some faster cast for teleport, static field.. or other spells.
Life/ Mana leech are minor.

Weapon: The most popular choices are Demon Machine, Widowmaker, Kuku. And demon machine > Kuku.

Helm: Crown of Ages, Shako, Kira's Guardian( especially great when you use angelic set for AR), nice rare circlets with resis, 2 sockets, run walk, cast speed, stats, etc

Armor: Chains of Honor, Enigma (yes sorcs can use it too..), Gladiator's bane( good for pvm energy shield build), good old shaftstop, Guardian angel if you want more than 75% elemental resis...

Ammulet: Angelic Set for AR, Cat eye, Metalgrid, Highlord( if you need IAS and lighening resis), Good rare ammy

Boots: Sandstorm Trek, Waterwalk, nice rares,

Glovse: nice crafted gloves, bloodfist, frostburn (for energy shield build)

Rings: raven frost, soj (for energy shield build), Angelic rings, nice rares..

Belt: Verdungo's cord, Nosferatu's coil, aranchnid mesh, Gloom's trap (energy shield), razortail (perice),

pvm and pvp gears are slightly different based on the opponent. find your own combo..


That's about it for ranged enchantress, mercenary will be discussed after Melee enchantress is discussed.

 

Aren't you forgetting the great damage that crushing blow deals with explosive arrows and pierce? I think those properties should be more sought after then maxing resists or full phys dmg reduce (and I'm playing HC ).

I personally like Kuko Shakaku better, despite it being slower. The fire damage is nice, you cannot disagree.
Perhaps I have to cheat on my beloved kuko and go with a stupid crossbow... saves me from creating an expensive ias/resist armor. Going for a crossbow instead of kuko costs me a lot of stylepoints though...

As for equipment I'd like to say that guillelaume's face + gore riders might make your sorceress more powerful then you'd ever want (that is IF crush still works with explosive arrows, like in 1.09).
[edit] Are you sure fire skill charms are thát great? I thought some good fire dmg (esp. with lightning) would deliver far more damage. But then again: I haven't maxed enchant yet.[/edit]

Great guide

 

fireskillers add like 500 for bows and 800 melee I think...

what is the best PvP bow anyway? demon machine has peirce, which is useless in pvp. I'm currently wearing WF(shael)and II have 30 ias in gear(ias glad+ias shako)

 

sad to report, a tester ( before the great forum wipe) went out and modded himself up a bow that had 100% cb and deadly strike and psn and explosive arrows, and none of it transfered over >_<

 

Crushing blow doesn't work with bow enchantress well in my opinion
curshing blow works like following:
-with missile weapons, default: 1/8th
-with missile weapons, vs. Players: 1/20th
-with missile weapons, vs Hirelings: 1/20th
-with missile weapons, vs Champions, Uniques, Bosses: 1/16th

It's not that effective. Also since bow / xbow on sorc is not a fast attack, curshing blow is not that great especially it doesn't get carried by explosion.

Since curshing blow doesn't work so well as I explained.. it's a nono.
The damage calculation is given. Use a skill planner then you can tell the difference.
I think the maximum average damage a small charm gives is 50 lightening damage. If you can somehow get 40 small charms like that, you'd have 2000 lighening damage. But it's very very rare to find 1 .. not to mention 40.
High level enchant, on the other hand, gives 4k+ fire damage easily. AND you can swap the fire skiller out after you cast enchant if you have time and patience. Hopefully this explains the importance of fire skill charms