blizz/blast cold sorc guide

[Skarlath]

This is how I make my cold sorces, if you have any pointers, or just feel like trashing me, go ahead, I'm game. There are probably holes in this strategy, but, I find it works really well. The cold sorc does fairly major damage at later levels in combination with freezing the monsters.

Stats:

Strength - enough for your gear, usually for me this is between 100 - 150
Dexterity - none
Vitality - The rest, everything you can
Energy - Depending on your gear, between none and 100

Skills:

There are two main options for the skills, a bliz sorc, and a blast sorc. Many people would disagree with a blast sorc, as its a fairly low level spell, but, it gets insane damage from synergies, and it is easily spamable. Blizzard is definately more powerful, but slower.

I will list my build orders for both bliz and blast sorc.

--------Blast sorc----------------Both--------------------------Bliz sorc

level-------------------------------skill

1--------------------------------Warmth (1)
2-------------------------------Frost Bolt (1)
3-------------------------------Frost Bolt (2)
Den-------------------------------Save (1)
4---------------------------------Save (2)
5---------------------------------Save (3)
6-----------Ice Blast (1) Frost Nova (1) Static Field (1) Telekinesis (1)
7-------------------------------Ice Blast (2)
8-------------------------------Ice blast (3)
9-------------------------------Ice Blast (4)
10------------------------------Ice Blast (5)
11------------------------------Ice Blast (6)
12------------------------------Ice Blast (7)
Radament-------------------------Save (1)
13------------------------------Ice blast (8)
14------------------------------Ice Blast (9)
15------------------------------Ice Blast (10)
16------------------------------Ice Blast (11)
17------------------------------Ice Blast (12)
18------------------------Glacial Spike (1) Teleport (1)
19------------------------------Ice Blast (13)
Izual------------------------Ice Blast (14) Save (1)
20--------------------------Ice Blast (15) Save (1)
21--------------------------Ice Blast (16) Save (1)
22--------------------------Ice Blast (17) Save (1)
23--------------------------Ice Blast (18) Save (1)
24--------------------------Ice Blast (19) Blizzard (1)
25-----Ice Blast (20)----------------------------------------Blizzard (2)
26-----Blizzard (2)------------------------------------------Blizzard (3)
27-----Blizzard (3)------------------------------------------Blizzard (4)
28-----Blizzard (4)------------------------------------------Blizzard (5)
29-----Blizzard (5)------------------------------------------Blizzard (6)
30-----------------------------Cold Mastery (1)
31-----Cold Mastery (2)-------------------------------------Blizzard (7)
.............
.............
43-----Cold Mastery (14)------------------------------------Blizzard (20)
44-----Cold Mastery (15)------------------------------------Ice Blast (20)
45-----Cold Mastery (16)----------------------------------Cold Mastery (2)
46-----Cold Mastery (17)----------------------------------Cold Mastery (3)
47-----Cold Mastery (18)----------------------------------Cold Mastery (4)
48-----Cold Mastery (19)----------------------------------Cold Mastery (5)
49-----Cold Mastery (20)----------------------------------Cold Mastery (6)
50-----Blizzard (6)----------------------------------------Cold Mastery (7)
.............
.............
63-----Blizzard (19)--------------------------------------Cold Mastery (20)
64-----Blizzard (20)--------------------------------------Glacial Spike (1)
65-----Frost Bolt (3)-------------------------------------Glacial Spike (2)
..............
..............
82-----Frost Bolt (20)------------------------------------Glacial Spike (19)
83-----Frozen Orb (1)------------------------------------Glacial Spike (20)
84-----Frozen Orb (2)--------------------------------------Frost Bolt (3)
..............
..............
99-----Frozen Orb (17)-------------------------------------Frost Bolt (18)

I left out All skill giving quests for nightmare and hell because diff people do them at much diff times, the first three are at least in one general area. For blast build, put them into Glacial Spike, for Bliz. Build, it doesn't really matter, use them to speed up the process where possible.

For the Blast build, I put Orb before spike because all the spike does is add bonus freeze length, I value the damage more, blast does plenty of freeze length on its own, if you value the freeze length more, then by all means, do spike before orb.

Equipment:

I've never really taken the time to do a lot of magic finding, so all the gear is subject to being very poor. And I hope there are other people out there who don't spend all of their time mfing and muling, so the only gear recomendations are that of abilities.

The only items that are fairly necesary to this build are 2 sojs, as they add to mana in a big way. Other items should have mana or life boosting affects, mana regeneration affects. Skill boosting affects. For the blast build you want as much fcr as possible, or, if you are going to be doing tele runs, you also want at least 63% fcr, but more is better. If you are not planning on using teleport too often, and you are using the bliz build, then you don't need fcr as blizzard has a cool down timer.

Mercenary:

your mercenary should be either the guard from act II or the barb from act V. Either are good for tanking. If you get a guard, it should be defensive. The nightmare one gets holy freeze, which is helpful, but you can freeze the enemies on your own, so the defiance one is probably better, for the defense bonus. The merces equipment doesn't matter as much, since it won't affect your skills, but %life is good, and bonus defense is also good.

This build, although its laid out very straight, is really fairly flexable, this is just the way I did it, feel free to play with it.

If you have any questions/comments/critisizms/flames, go ahead.
-skarlath

[Skarlath]

apperantly no one cares

[prion]

Is there any particular reason for making an ice blast sorc? I'm just wondering if an Orb sorc wouldn't be better.

[Skarlath]

I did Ice Blast because It is incredibly easy to spam, with a high cast rate, you can pull them off extremely quickly. And it does a lot of damage. It was my preference. It works well too, as long as you arn't surrounded by a mob of extremely fast monsters. But that is where the five points in blizzard come in, or teleport, which ever. The spell also never takes a huge amount of mana; so large quantities of energy arnn't required.

[Avantor]

My only problem with using ice blast as main spell, would be lack of ae dmg. To me that is what my sorc is all about, killing as many mobs as fast as possible 8)

Just my 2 cents 8)

Cheers!
Avantor