Synergy worth it for orb?

[yiuman]

Is it worth pumping the synergy for orb? At 2% per point it seems a little bit underpowered... what do you think?

[chessman4991]

I don't think it's really worth it unless you don't have any better place to put your points. If you make an orb sorc, I would make sure that you have CM and any secondary skills maxed first, then put the rest of your points in the synergy.

[wise_man]

While I agree with chessman4991, I would like to point out that the +2% added to damage is added to each and every shard, resulting in more bonus than seems at first.

[Stiertje]

The extra 40% damage you get when fully synergising Frozen Orb is quite good. That it is applied to every shard is not an issue, your Frozen Orb will just get 40% stronger.

Well, that's not entirely true either. The 40% applies to the Base damage of the Frozen Orb. Extra +skills are therefore not included in the damage gain, so the gain in total is less then 40%. But then again, the Orb was a quite powerfull spell to begin with so a +/- 30% gain to an already powerfull spell is quite good.

But remember, synergising Frozen Orb is ONLY usefull when you have maxxed Cold Mastery first, or at least have it at lvl 17+. The bonus the Orb gets from CM is MUCH better then from synergy.

[Lunatic]

The extra 40% damage you get when fully synergising Frozen Orb is quite good. That it is applied to every shard is not an issue, your Frozen Orb will just get 40% stronger.

Well, that's not entirely true either. The 40% applies to the Base damage of the Frozen Orb. Extra +skills are therefore not included in the damage gain, so the gain in total is less then 40%. But then again, the Orb was a quite powerfull spell to begin with so a +/- 30% gain to an already powerfull spell is quite good.

But remember, synergising Frozen Orb is ONLY usefull when you have maxxed Cold Mastery first, or at least have it at lvl 17+. The bonus the Orb gets from CM is MUCH better then from synergy.
The +skills do work on the "base" dmg of orb. The +skills don't do squat for the synergie itself. So it does increase with 40% dmg.

Here's an example. I will only calculate with max dmg.

lvl 20 orb + lvl 0 synergie
lvl 20 orb + lvl 20 synergie
lvl 30 orb + lvl 0 synergie
lvl 30 orb + lvl 20 synergie

lvl 20 orb + lvl 0 synergie
276 dmg.

lvl 20 orb + lvl 20 synergie
276 * 1.4 = 386.4. Which for some weird reason gets rounded up to 387 dmg. This is an increase of 40%.

lvl 30 orb + lvl 0 synergie
426 dmg.

lvl 30 orb + lvl 20 synergie
426 * 1.4 = 596.4. Which also is rounded up. Another increase of 40%.

I used that chippydip's calculator which has been correct like always. I can't post a link to it because you get redirected to an itemselling site (where the calculator is). Just use google and look for chippydip. First hit is the right one.

[melianor]

If you are building a pure Orb sorc i'd certainly recommend maxing its synergy, since with maxed Cold Mastery you will do almost always double damage and then +40% are suddenly +80% and that makes the big difference!

Also then you will only have 64 pts spent in the cold tree, leaving you some more pts for another tree to go for Energy Shield route for example.

Lunatics calculation display this very nicely.
An Alternative to chippy dips calc is also
http://stud4.tuwien.ac.at/~e9325732/skillcalc.html