Pvp malee - Passion - sorc (zeal)

[leihotikan]

Ok, here it goes.. Trying to make fun build, regular enchantress to smack some butts in duels. I know I will loose 95 % of them, due to low life etc but, heck, lets try:

Skils are quiet obvious, enchant, fire mastery, warmth. Now:

1. would you reccomend putting points in ES? Or just from switch and max telekinesis? Or maybe frozen armor, hmm?

2. What weapon type should I choose to make Passion runeword? Phase Blade or 4 x berserker axe? Phase is damn fast but lower dmg, zerker is nice dmg but muc more slower. Btw, how can I check exact fpa for sorc? Every calculator doesnt include sorc using Zeal :)

3. What equipment, especially charms would you reccomend? Many +fire GC or more vita?

[Djinni]

I can only give you advice based on my PvM experience, but i've built 2 enchant sorceresses since 1.10.
My first was geared up with this is mind


Max Enchant, Fire Mastery, Warmth, Cold Armour
50% damage reduce
high defence
base mana, pumped vit
75% block
as much +life gear as i could find

I found that even at level 85 i didnt have a big enough mana pool to make use of energy shield & it would cause more annoyance more than often making it impossible to teleport away after taking a beating. Although maybe with max telekenesis it might have been of some value. I must admit that although I wanted to make a melee sorc, when I hit later parts of hell i found i was depending more on my demon machine to rack up the kills because I just couldn't stand toe to toe with many of the beasties

The current sorc i'm building is at the other extreme to my first, she is geared with this in mind


Max Energy Shield, Telekenesis, Enchant, Fire Mastery, Warmth
Damage Reduce not necessary
Base vit, Pump mana
75% block
lots of +mana items

I've just taken this sorc into act 1 hell, I must say that she is an awesome tank (even without my beast runeword, hehe). Awesome that is until I run into a mana burn boss, then I really feel the pain because I've neglected any resist gear in favour of +mana....I'm currently rethinking my strategy :scratch:


So in reply to your questions

1) I feel that a good energy shield build would work best for PvP from what I have seen in PvM, a sorc just cant take a beating without it. However a full maxed telekensis/energy shield would mean you would need 100 skills + pre reqs to finish this build

2) No contest, phase blade all the way!

Not only does it look hella cool when it's been enchanted :yep: ...

I think the physical damage difference between a phase & zerker passion would be 100-200 tops(i'm guesstimating), but then you factor in the speed difference which will over time make the physical damage you deal roughly the same with both weapons.
But as an enchantress, you laugh at the puny physical damage that both these weapons give you. The real pain comes from the enchant you cast & so the faster you can deliver the firey goodness the better

Which leads me nicely onto

3)
+skill items are very very nice, with all fire skills at around lvl 40 or so you can expect to be dealing upwards of 10k easily, i even think figures of about 15k is possible with legit gear.
However this may leave you quite vulnerable to getting your *** whooped when you're toe to toe with that barb who is intent on 'zerking your head off. Your life and mana pool will be much smaller than it could be with other items & your ias/fhr would be lacking somewhat

Luckily Enchant is pre-buffable, cast it & then switch into your butt kicking gear. However when you remove +skills, your fire mastery will drop & so your damage will drop with it. Here is where you will need to experiment to find a balance that suits you best


If you want to play around with a few ideas then msg me sometime & we can have a sorc vs sorc session on open bnet, I have lots of enchantress toys to bash things with
i'm *velcroxi on europe realm

[leihotikan]

Dude, you rock!!! I have never received so complete and nice answer.. Man, I still love this game because of such ppl playing around ;)

I am not sure about 2 build types and its survival in pvp mode. FA or ES+telekinessis, hmm. We must make sessin in open BN and test massive botd/beast dmg or something like that, on those 2 builds.

Btw, I dont think I will need too much prebuff enchant stuff as regular 30+ enchant gives insane dmg (my mule pala I was exping just when my mate was muling items and enchanted by his sorc was 3000+ dmg with base mule sword at lvl 1 = freaky!!!)

my acc herbi40 and I will try to whipser you to play around some ideas in open Bi-En :) I dont have too much time now, but well, we can work something out...

edit:

Do you think looking for superior phase blade makes sense or just regular 4 s pb? Higher dmg would not be too much and superior are damn rare. Those swords are quiet rare as everyone picks up only 5 s crystal/flail for cta...

[Djinni]

My pleasure, i have an addiction to enchantesses so i love to ramble on & on about them.
My friends on bnet have heard it all now at least a dozen times & it bores them when i start to reel some of this stuff off. At least i can do it & be useful here :)

I think for duels you will want some pretty good prebuff gear, remember the 1/6 pvp penalty, then throw some resists and possibly some absorb in on top of that too.... a guy with 75% resist will be taking only 125 damage from a 3000 enchanted punch

The runes for passion are quite cheap, so it wouldn't hurt too much to use a regular 4 sock phase in the meantime while you're waiting for that superior to show up. A LEM isnt worth all that much on non-ladder where I am, although I understand it's a bit more useful in armour upgrade recipes on ladder

Are you on europe realm? Im not sure if I'd see you online if you're on one of the others...I'm not too sure if the bnet buddy list will notice people logged in to other realms or not

I will be on europe realm at 22:00 UK time tomorrow, so if you cant see me at all, then make an account on europe & say hi :)

[thc-shadow]

frickin awesome, had thought bout this too

i think this would work,

passion phase
shako
coh
frosties!
ss + shael
highlords
soj + raven
tgods
silkweaves/gores

max dr, decent resist, +6 skills, nice %deadly strike, HUGE mana pool (life for us)... all that plus teleport makes us a SOB to kill!

props djin

[thc-shadow]

erm, cant edit again :/

if the zeal breakpoints are the same for sorcs and paladins, then the final beak at 8/4/4/4/4 is achievable!

you need a -30 base weapon speed + 75%ias...
highlords + passion phase + 2x ias jewels (ss and shako) = 75 :)

yay! also, can someone pm me with info on an offline editor, i really want to goof around with this!

[toader]

I wouldnt max the cold armor.

Your better off maxxing Enchant, Warmth, Fire Mastery, Telekenisis, then Energy Sheild.

Im currently working on the same build sorc, except one that uses Widowmaker for PvP. Ive got a good balance of FCR and IAS, but Im struggling with whether to go all out mana or all life, or balance them some. Since im gonna have such a killer ES with tons and tons of mana regen....im thinking I might try beefing Mana.

[brianc84]

The Zeal breakpoints are not the same. The fastest one handed swing Zeal speed for a Sorceress is 10/7 and with a Phase Blade, than can be reached with a total of 65 IAS.

[Aron Figaro]

A +3 Enchant Memory would be nice on switch.

[leihotikan]

Well guys, first thx to Djinn for testing with me (on tcp/ip) new ideas and runewords :thumbsup:

We tested 99 lvl sorc, skills:

maxed ES
maxed telekinesis
maxed warmth
maxed enchant
maxed fire mastery (its reachable at 95 lvl)
so 1 lvl FA as add-on, not important~

str to wear Storm
maxed block, about 220 dex
vita = zero
rest in energy

She was wearing: (all items were perfect stats etc, consider some lower survival possibility with worse gear)

Passion phase blade/ Hand of Justice/Beast/
Gladiators Bane (for mdr)
Shako
Highlords
Sandstorm Trek (no Gores in U2Lib)
Arachnid
2x sojs or 1 x soj +Raven
Storm or Sanctuary (no Gerkes in u2Lib)
Draculs Grasp (no Magefists to test)
10 x GC fire skill with 40 life
1 perf anni
some res charms

She was prebuffed with 40 lvl ES (actually 42 lvl but 40 is max as I heard), then switching for Cta, 10 fire GC, etc to reach about 40+ lvl of fire skills.

Results will be written below, but plz consider worse stats due to lower life on fire charms in real closed BN, etc.

Sorc had about 9000 to 12 k dmg with passion or up to 16 000 with Hand of Justice. She CAN have more dmg, yet I think too much to lose (tanking defence, ES lvl, mana etc) with more dmg gear. Having about 6500 AR with 2 sojs (after CTA BO) or about 10 000 AR with 2 raven she had some problems hitting good defense characters (life full block pally etc). She had ~1100 life with Bo and about 1850 mana, dont remember correctly.

We tested her survival possibilities against:

1. maxed and fully synergised zealot with Gris set. SHe tanked him like hell and he really couldnt hit her, maybe after 10th try? Even then dmg was sooo low that life bulb didnt moved at all, only some mana; but mana regen is so fast, she was healthy as a baby in 3 seconds (1-2 teleports around)

2. maxed fury+How wolf with Botd cryptic axe? (not sure, djinn must confirm it) Insane dmg, one of thehighest possible around, with damn high deadly strike etc (did we try 3 LO weapon djinn? hmm). She survived about 2-5 hits until mana went down to zero, then 1-2 hits = dead. Count also that full block helps a lot, I cant stress it much, a LOT.

3. fire sorc with 14 k dmg meteor, our testing monkey survived meteor like a rain drop, it didnt even scratch her in 5 %. Well, it was normal game, not hell and res was like 30 (in hell - 100, ouch) but anyway - she tanked it very very nice. Worse with fireball, even in normal one fireball took about 1/3 of mana and some life.

We must test it more, anyway its awesome builds against any malee character, great tanking abilities yet I fear there will be problems with leveling her to good 90+lvls (what we need for all skills)

good job djinn, we wil test new thought other day, I hope :)

[thc-shadow]

awesome guys, that passion damage is INSANE

yeah, i was thinking widowmaker, but only for boners/blizz...they're cheezy, so i figure its only fair :p

one more thing... try testing realisticly... not a lot of ppl can afford 10gcs+life. try her with coh/frostburns/no cta...maybe silkweaves. even better an faceted enchant ormus, with facets in the shako/ss as well. im curious to see the damage increase

[thc-shadow]

k, my enchantress (pvp-zoe) is at 74 and i must say, im impressed.
even with only 16 base eshield, near maxed tk, 20 warmth/enchant she tanks very well

but...my first duel was vs a psn necro...ouch. very tough opponent, as i didnt have a widowmaker :( i went like 2/5. this leads me to:

andys visage. ty ty. i put 'tal' in it for a crazy 100 psn resist! +20%ias, +2 skills, nice def.. just nice all around, perfect companion to gbane
also, with highlords, we hit 65%ias (with passion), aka zeal breakpoint. (thx to brianc84 for pointing this out)

again, i cant stress how nasty psn is. venom,rabies,and psn necros will kill you instantly. no points in vita assures this. stack your resist with whatever you can, mostly charms.

[leihotikan]

To be precise: fire facets doesnt help almost at all, coz dmg % on them doesnt multiply with whole dmg. Socketing stuff with fire facets is not good idea and there are better options. It simple SOL rune. Socket Shako with 1 SOL, G bane with Sol and you will see difference. The best option would be Crown of Ages with 2 Sols yet I am too poor to get my hands on it now :(
Still wondering what is better a) socket Storm with Sol for next 7 dr or b) scket storm with perf diamond/UM. Testing now at lvl 80, maxed warmth and enchant, 10 lvl fire mastery (base 10 lvl i mean), almost maxed ES +~ 15 lvl base telekinessis. She tanks like hell.. I am using now Sol-ed Shako, Storm with perf diamond, Vipermage (clean, waiting for 85 lvl to put on G Bane), Sandstorm 69 psn res, 2 sojs, Verdungos 15 % dr 37 vita, Passion and Rising Sun amu and 5 GC +1 fire (1 with 34 life and 2nd with 19 life, 3 plain) My dmg is about 6500-7000 now, looking for more charms. I prebuff her only with Oculus+lidless+Magefist (using Frostburns while leveling her) I use also cta (only 1 lvl BO) and she has almost ~1500 mana and ~1000 life. My stats are str for storm - 120+ (I use annihilus 19/17/8), dex for block, now about 170-180, vita zero and rest in energy.

What I find is: its better to lvl her with Demon Machine, unique chu-ko-nu. Passion in Baal runs suxx, sorry but its too low dmg to kill anything in 8 ppl game. Demon Machine fires exploding arrows and pierces. This sorc is not uber pvm killer so we need to leech a little, what the heck :)

[thc-shadow]

agreed, i am gonna sol the andys/ss/gbane as soon as i can, but that psn sucks. my original plan was for max% mana (via 2soj/frosties/silkweaves) we'll see how it works out. ill prollay switch in treks when i get some

[Herald of Doom]

Leihotikan, Sopper made a enchantress for PvP a while back. I had the chance to wack her with my pvm Ik barb (conc, 5k max dmg) and i couldnt get her life bulb to go down. Maybe PM him and ask how he did it ? ;)

HoD

[leihotikan]

elo HoD :) I know Sopper had nice fire sorc and I suppose he did it the way I do it. Anyway he has about 10 GC+fire with 3x+ life, hehe. About skills - there is no other way to build tanking enchantress like maxed ES+telekinessis+full block. Frozen armor is pointless, maybe 1 point there but you need to reach lvl 96 to have all maxed AND frozen armor at 1 lvl (what is impossible for me, I have life and dont play too much..) No block = dead in 1-2 hit in pvp. I think I am doing ok with her, just need patience to lvl her up.

Oh, and only problem that I see now will be low AR. 7000 AR is not too much and using 2 ravens to get 10 k AR (what is also not too much when trying to hit paladin or huge defense barb) is waste of mana.

[thc-shadow]

i had a slight problem with ar as well, pick up some sc's with +dex on them, a little more dex goes a long way with enchant. the ar bonus is quite nice coupled with passion. +ar/+dex sc's would rock too.

[thc-shadow]

i had a slight problem with ar as well, pick up some sc's with +dex on them. a little more dex goes a long way with enchant. the ar bonus is quite nice coupled with passion. +ar/+dex sc's would rock too.