My new cold sorc. Comment Please

[SlickKilla]

Im quite poor lol so i made a meteor sorc as my first char for the mf. after doing a couple of meph nm runs i realized she wasnt that good for mf. i tried doing nm diablo and got destroyed by the immune to fires. so now im making a cold sorc. i was thinking about doing an orb or blizzard with ts or at least some lightnig or fire skills. Any tips? should i max orb or blizzard? what else should i max on top of them. keep in mind ill prolly just do nm mf runs because hell will be too hard with the little equipment i have

[Skyrider]

If u are just gonna be doing Meph nm, (or hell eventually later on) I would suggest Going pure blizzard full synergized, if u are Only gonna be doing meph: Max: Blizz, coldmastery, then glacial spike, then ice blast, for synergies,
But keep in mind, with the little equipment u have, she will probably only be usefull for meph. At least have 63% fcr-->70%
for teleing to meph. Just use Moat trick and u should safely be able to kill him from a distance avoiding long range attacks. If there are to many council members around or blood lords, that are causing u problems just save and exit, restart next game.

I just started on ladder recently, and made pure blizz as first char for meph. Having bear minimum items, i hade trouble at first because each run took so long. But within a few days i had a collection of items i had been finding! :) Now i have ful tal's set and am doing pretty good!

On the other hand, if u are gonna be using this sorc for other than meph purposes, u may find it pretty difficult, agaisnt all CI's. After u get a good collection of items from meph, u might be able to dress up ur old metorb sorc, and Start doing some pit runs.

Best of luck
Skyrider

[Zero Diablo]

I couldn't agree more with making a blizzard sorc for your first MFer. The moat trick just does wonders at the start, because of low resistances and life. I'd recommend it for sure, nm meph should be a breeze for you to take out. 65+ FCR is a must, other than that you should be all set.

PS. I know some people discourage the use of energy shield, but I'd definatley say throw at least one point into it, maybe more depending on +skills. Your looking to get at least 50% absorb.

Good luck,

~Zero

[Ofca]

Why is FCR so important?

[SlickKilla]

quick questions what exactly is fcr?
and im planning on doing nm diablo as well. my friends cold sorc did it for like two weeks. he ended up with an oculus, skullders, and full tals set. lol

[skygoneblue]

FCR = Faster Cast Rate.
Blizzard has a huge delay on it compared to other spells. FCR reduces that dramatically and allows you to teleport a lot faster.

[SlickKilla]

ok so i was thinking about doing this....
MAx Blizz
Max Cold
Max Orb
10 to the better synergy

Then distribute the rest of the points to either another synergy or teleport, ts, static, and light mastery

[towelrod]

FCR = Faster Cast Rate.
Blizzard has a huge delay on it compared to other spells. FCR reduces that dramatically and allows you to teleport a lot faster.

FCR doesn't have any effect on timered skills, like blizzard or meteor.

[skygoneblue]

Well, you learn something new everyday!

[prion]

fcr makes the cast animation take less frames, helps if you are going to tele alot.

[rachil0]

FCR is mainly for teleport. It does make casting timered spells faster - but only the number of frames required for the casting animation. The timer remains the same.

(1.8 seconds? :scratch: )

[prion]

ok so i was thinking about doing this....
MAx Blizz
Max Cold
Max Orb
10 to the better synergy

Then distribute the rest of the points to either another synergy or teleport, ts, static, and light mastery
That's not the best way since you are maxing 2 main spells which don't synergize each other. You want something like this:

max bliz
max ice blast
10+ mastery
rest in glacial spike
1 every utility skill

tstorm will not help you much at all without any other investment in ligtning skills. I recommend against it.

If you are looking for a cold/lightning hybrid, CL/orb is your best bet.

Now, my guess is you can actually get away with only 50 points to beef up Blizzard, but it will not be very good for runs simply because you will take much longer to kill, and get bored.

[Jaimes]

Hrm, it sounds like from what I hear that you are actually fighting monsters on Dur 2/3? (you mentioned something about fire immunes?). You shouldn't be fighting any monsters... What I do is, teleport around Dur 2 using the "left-shoulder" trick, find Dur 3, teleport to Mephisto on the *right* side of the moat, and then teleport back and lure him back along with me on the *lef* side. This leaves (normally) just you and Meph alone to work out the finer points of your relationship. Sometimes, there will be Bremm Sparkfist 'n friends in the middle of the moat, and you should make it a priority to take them out unless you have some fire absorb/resist. Or, you can ignore them and kill Meph straightaway. Sometimes, you may have to fight the blood lords or the other superunique to the left of you... But IMO if you get to that point you'll probably die due to your exposure, so you might as well just save & exit and start over.

[[FLS]prozerran]

I don't understand why a lot of you advertise maxing GS as the first synergy for a Meph MF'er. Everyone should go for iceblast first and then icebolt, with GS at last simply because iceblast has the highest damage among all spammable skill, and GS does not add to its damage as synergy.

GS is only good for crowd control, which you don't need if you are only planning to use her to kill meph.

The order of skills should go like
max blizzard, get CM to slvl 17
max iceblast
when you are starting to kill meph, max CM, else max icebolt
max GS last

This will give you equal blizzard damage, but with a spammable iceblast to help killing meph faster.

[SlickKilla]

but i really like the orb build. it hits a lot more people a lot faster. with blizzard it only covers a small area and the enemies can easily walk out of that and come running towards me. with orb i can keep hitting and hitting and kill an entire group of enemies with like 2 orbs.

[prion]

on the way to meph you don't want to kill a lot of other enemies since durance 2 is huge that will just slow you way down. but if that's what you want then consider a pure orb build.

[SlickKilla]

im plannin on doing diablo runs too.

[SlickKilla]

ok how bout
15 orb
max blizz
max the ice blast
10 into mastery
rest into utilities

[savvyguy]

ok how bout
15 orb
max blizz
max the ice blast
10 into mastery
rest into utilities

You're just not getting it.....

ORB or BLIZZ not both, or do whatever you want and have a crap build.

[Lira Lindriel]

I prefer going with orb - because even after maxing Icebolt and CM, that leaves me with enough points for a (weaker) secondary attack.

Good options for that secondary attack are either Firewall or Fireball.
Firewall has the highest dam with just one point in mastery (and doesn't have synergies anyway) - but is just as delayed as FO, so can't be spammed.
In other words, I favor Fireball. One point into FM and everything that can be spared into Fbolt as synergy. (With a couple of +skills, one point into Fbolt will raise your Fball by ~130 dam every time.)
It's of course a weak secondary attack - but a weak spamming skill can still augment your dam greatly.

[[FLS]prozerran]

ok how bout
15 orb
max blizz
max the ice blast
10 into mastery
rest into utilities

wtf is the point of having two timered skills on the SAME tree for a secondary attack? The only point of having a secondary attack is either the main skill is timered while the 2nd is not, or from a entirely different tree to deal with immunes.

[SlickKilla]

ok ok calm down christ. ill just go fo with a fire skill. and cold synergies