sorc q/a time

[shaftstop]

I've taken a look at a few guides for my g/f she was returning or giving the thought of playing d2 again alittle with me now and then when we have the free time (note)
As our pockets aren't deep, I did pick up a few things with my barbarian, and
she decided to try making a cold sorc (blizzard) from our experiences with a pure anything the biggest concern is always the cold immunities, I wanted to find out (yes, I've looked at a few builds on forums but wasn't 100% confident how they'd work out --- budget caster remember) So, I wanted to find out without cutting her damage down to significantly, what would be a good secondary skill would be...

what gear we do have to work with would look something like this.
Frostburns or magefists
Peasent Crown then possibly, shako or Night Wing once we have abit more funds
The Spirit Shroud or Viper Magi then from there maybe Ormus Shroud
Lidless Wall or Splendor
Wizard SPike and hopefully later a Occy or Fathon (highly doubtful lol)
Eye of Elitch or crafted FCR/Skills ammy really depends on luck for these and rings
Manald and/or a crafted Rings
Boots are n/a atm

The gear is early could change dramatically, but I'd say this would be best bet for now.
So Any help would be great my exp is more melee classes myself lol.. so Im at a loss :p

[melianor]

When heading for BLizzard i would recommend sticking to it and build a pure cold Sorceress with all synergies and Cold Mastery maxed. If you 2 play together, disposing of CI monsters will not be an issue, and everywhere else this build will shine and let Hell freeze over.

If she would rather want 2 different elemental attacks, Meteorb would be a good idea since its also not very item dependant to play. FO opposed to Blizzard, requires no synergy and just about slvl 17 Cold Mastery to be effective when combined with another tree.

You can try a build like Fireball/Blizzard for example, but then i would recommend a higher amount of +skills on items and charms for this bild to be effective. But well, this depends more on items then, which you cannot not really consider yet.

[shaftstop]

Some good points.
I think in our best interested a metoer b would be a good idea, im not sure if going pure blizzard sorc would be a good idea just because they're maybe times where she may want to solo or we wont have the chance to get together in games. So having some kinda secondary attack would be handy even if its only minor damage, the idea of this secondary attack would be for when shes soloing as in a private game, as a possed to a public game on ladder where shes just waiting for people to join.
I had though perhaps something like
maxing blizzard/CM or a large portion of points...
then some in a syngeries...
20blizzard
10 cold mastery
5 Glacial Spike
5 Ice bolt
5 Ice Blast

Then using other points into warmth (1) Teleport (1) and static (1)
And then following up with Fireball with Metoer and Fire Mastery
Fireball possibly being another 20 and 10/10

I wonder how this would fair in a 8player Hell (although rarely is any game 8 player unless its a baal run for exp)
Im thinking with enough +Skillers (shako, magefist, Viper magi, a +skills ammy snowclash) or even tal set.

[melianor]

I'd suggest you take a look at this build:
http://rpgforums.net/showthread.php?t=214093
Thats a Fireball/Blizzard buid and should do fairly nice.

Splitting up 5 pts each into Blizzard synergies will do you no good since apart from Blizzard you will want to use Glacial Spike for additional crowd control.

if you follow the guide above you will need a bit +skills though. No massive amount, just a few to boost your Masteries, since those remain at 1, since you invest all else into Blizzard, Glacial Spike, Fireball and Meteor (for synergies and also goo additional spell to attack inbetween)

Have a look at that guide. I think that would suit your ideas very nicely. Also its been tested by various players and looks to be working just fine.

[shaftstop]

Nod, this is a great build, but we found a happy meduim for her build that will probably work out very well we are building apure cold sorc bascially but rather then have 20 ice bolt she choose to use those 10 points for her secondary skill which will be 10/10 firebolt/fireball (saving points from getting FM)
She'll stil keep her very strong cold attacks and have her some what decient secondary attack (no matter how you look at it nearly all sorc builds are +skill dependant more at end game with more ppl to deal with higher stat monsters)
Once shes at a high enough level with all the skills placed she'll be able to put those remaining points into Ice bolt to put her blizzard even further or work on balancing fire alittle more (with +skills even at lv 10 firebolt she'll get 16% more damage and 14% more damage to her fireball although I'd like to get FM in there too at some point but thats just me) even with +5 skills thats 15 FB/Ball If you consider Leaf/hexfire as a switch to help fire dmg.

anyway thanks for the suggestions (she didn't like doing Metoerb again we did that once with orb and another with charged bolt ;p that was fun build)
She's still used to 09 builds so requires a crutch/secondary skill still. Soon we'll get her off that =p I'd like to see a pure cold sorc from her or pure lightning

[melianor]

Even with leaving out Icebotl you will never have enough skill points to have a secondray skill thats even worth consider, except maybe Firewall.

Here the calculation with your idea of skill point distribution:

10 Firebolt 71.5-97.5
10 Fireball 316.7-369.5
0 Fire Mastery

In Hell that admage will mostly simply be absorbed by fire resistances and even there are no reistances, that damage is not even worth speaking off ;)

With 1pt FM you will get a Fireball that does 600 damage. In Hell that is still no damage to speak of, neither in Nightmare.

To get any damage worth using, you will need at least 1k Fireball and you will never use Firebolt, right? ;)

Even 1k is low. So more like 3k can start beiing useful.

If you want to invest jst abotu 21 points into the Firetree your only option really is Firewall or Meteor. Fireball just does not do enough damage.

I just wanted to point out the damage you will doing and hope that helps in your descision and to warn that in Hell you will be very disappointed with that Fireball as secondary skill. That way you can just skip the fire tree and indeed put points into Iceboltinstead and keep the Cold Sorc a pure cold sorc. Cold immunites are really NOT that big an issue with a merc.

With the Fireball you want to use you will just cast it and see it go poofon monsters.

[GenXCub]

Not to be discounted, but I had great success on Hardcore with my Blizzard/Hydra build with max Blizzard, Glacial Spike, Hydra, Fire Mastery.

Blizzard increases the duration of GS, so I used GS on my left click and froze monsters so that the hydras could just blow them away.

It's not as quick as meteorb, but it was great for Hardcore since it's a bit of a safer build.

[shaftstop]

Nod,we've worked out the build did some testing 10/10 we got only 2.1k fireball and 900ish bolt or so.
with level 1 Fire wall,(level 9 with gear) she got about 1250damage persecond roughly so we flipped for firewall since damage will makeup forthe resistances that some monsters may have vs immunities.

Now we're just having a toss up on stats/gear atm hehe mostly deciding the value the of good blocking vs... power of spells and not giving monsters the oppritunity TO require blocking :)