Aeonios
19-07-2005, 19:28
Yes, this is a guide for building a charged boltress. The difference between this lady and other girls is that this fine female can kill Diablo in under 5 seconds, Baal in under 10, solo hell, and murder people in duels. I'd like to see YOURS do that. The secret? Let's find out!
The Build:
This is nothing really special, however it requires you to be about lvl 94 to complete, which is a great deal higher than any other build I'm aware of.
Skills:
Charged Bolt: 20 (no, really?)
Lightning: 20 (synergy)
Lightning Mastry: 20
Telekinesis: 20 (synergy for eshield)
Energy Shield: Enough to get lvl 40 when you cast it, this is lvl 19 for me.
Thunder Storm: 1
Warmth: 1 + all your extras after everything else.
This will give you max damage charged bolt and 95% absorbtion energy shield, with maxed damage reduction to eshield.
Stats:
This is highly gear dependant. You need enough str to use eth treks with all of your charms, but that's about it. You should only have base dex, and beyond that what I did is put 4 in energy and 1 in vitality every lvl. Energy shield will be your hp, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Generally my sorc is tougher than others, so I'd say it's pretty advantageous ;P. Also, with high mana regen, it'll take a lot of fast spamming for a long time to get your mana supply down.
The Gear:
The gear will make or break this sorc. The build is pretty straightforward, and although it takes a LOT of leveling to complete, it's entirely doable. The gear, on the other hand, has some componants which are hard to get, and some which are just expensive. This sorc can function with partial gear, but will be less capable.
Helm: Griffon's Eye w/ lit facet. Self-explanatory.
Armor: Skin of The Vipermagi. +1 skill, 30% fcr, some res. You can upgrade it if you want, but I chose not to. You won't have significant defense so all it will really do is make repairs more expensive. I faceted mine, you can do whatever you want, it's not really important what you stick in it.
Belt: Arachnid Mesh. 1 skill, 20% fcr, no explanation needed.
Gloves: Magefists. Non-negotiable. You can upgrade them if you want, but there's really no point to it, and it makes repairs more expensive.
Boots: Ethereal Sandstorm Treks. FHR and poison res. Hit recovery and poison are your enemies, and treks are your friends. I think you get the point. I also suggest getting poison res SCs to boost up your res the rest of the way. Other resists don't really matter.
Weapon: Infinity (ber mal ber ist). This has to be in polearms, so you'll want a volgue, scythe, or poleaxe. Mine is in a poleaxe. The infinity is what really makes this build, with -45-55 to enemy resist and -85 enemy res with conviction, add the grif and facets and you can knock off up to 175 res from your enemies, making your normally dull CB damage hurt like crazy. The biggest problem with this is that it's 3.5 HRs to make. That's the cost of having a good sorc.
Rings: 2x Stone of Jordan. +skills, +%mana. Can't beat sojs for getting the job done.
Amulet: This is the hardest slot to fill, besides the infinity. You need a +3 lightning skill amulet or +2 sorc skill amulet with at least 10% fcr in order to reach the 105% breakpoint. You can get one of these one of several ways- gambling, crafting, trading, or mfing. A +1 sorc or +2 lit amulet with the 10% fcr is also acceptable, but not nearly as good. Optimally, this amulet should also have some sort of poison length reduction, though this is not absolutely necessary and is much harder to get.
On Switch: You'll want the best CTA possible and a lidless. This build is unique in that, on switch for BO you have more +skills than normally since infinity doesn't give any, so you'll want to cast energy shield along with BO in order to cast it with the highest level possible.
Charms: You'll need 10x FHR lit GCs, 1x fhr sc, and an annihilus. What you do with the remaining space is up to you. This build can work without the FHR, but in pvp you'll need it if you hope to be successful. At 145%, you'll hit 6 frame fhr, which is a good deal faster than the 8 frame cast you get. The better the stat anni you can get, the less str you'll need for treks. Keep that in mind.
The Merc:
Mercs are not often used successfully in pvp. In pvm, it's a pain to go without one. With this char I'm attempting to make a merc that can help me as much as possible, which involves not dying. Basically, you want to stick the best insight you can get on a prayer merc from normal (norm mercs are a good deal stronger than hell mercs, and tend to take less naps when you need them), then find a way to keep him from dying. That way for me is an upgraded guardian angel with an um stuck in it. Although leveling a merc from norm is a pain, my merc levels way faster than I do and is constantly the same level as me. Once he reaches level 93, I'm going to stick an um'd vamp gaze on him, giving him 90 resist all, 20% pdr, 6% leech, and a good deal of damage with his eth CV insight. The 90 res all is important and can allow your merc to tank fireballs and lightning probably better than you can. With prayer and meditation, he'll heal you quite quickly to full health and recharge your mana fully even faster. With energy shield, this makes you very effective at tanking many kinds of attacks, and makes you very tough in pvm. Mine can heal me from 1hp and 0 mana in about 20 seconds, the mana charging about 2x as fast as the hp. another advantage to this is that if you keep him alive, you can take a direct hit, teleport away at full speed (should only cost 5 mana even with 1 pt in tele since all the +skills) and be healing/charging the same as if you were standing still. This allows you some room for error from which you can recover fully many times in a single battle. Your enemy, however, will get worn down by your attacks with each encounter. It also allows you to heal very quickly in pvm without having to use potions. You can fight without a merc, but it's nice to have one, and I wouldn't pvm without mine.
Playing the Sorc:
This sorc is very interesting in that with one skill, you can do a whole lot of different things. Generally the closer you get to your enemy, the more damage you will do (up to 17,000 with 700 dmg x 24 bolts), but that also puts you in greater danger. Unlike the nova/tstorm variation of the infinity sorc, you can put charged bolt on left click, so it's much easier to play.
PvM:
Basically, you can kill anything but lightning enchanted enemies that are normally lightning immune, as their immunity is too high to break with conviction. With your merc, you will be incredibly tough, and your damage will be easily high enough to mow down even the toughest monsters. Vs caster monsters, you'll want to teleport directly on top of them to get maximum damage from your spread, and vs melee you'll want to back off a little so you can hit recovery lock them in place. You'll want to murder any oblivion knights and similar enemies who can insta-kill your merc. Black souls are a problem as they do both high damage and mana leech damage, but you can still kill them if there aren't too many. Exploding stygian dolls won't kill you as quickly as other chars, but you'd be well off to retreat against them, spamming charged bolt back at them to keep them from blowing up in your face. My merc hasn't died to doll explosions yet, so I figure he's a lot tougher than are chars vs them. There is one thing and one thing only that will kill you horribly in pvm. Unfortunately even weak monsters can spawn with it, and your hp is so low that even fallens can kill you. This would be mana burn. If you don't have godly fhr and the 105% cast break, your survival rate against mana burn will be about 33%, if you catch it in time. If you get hit by stronger monsters like doom knights with mana burn, your survival rate will be about 0. Generally if you play more conservatively rather than teleporting directly on your enemies for max damage, you can decrease your risks of getting trapped in fhr lock in the middle of a pack of mana burners. This also means a loss in killing speed, and can be prohibitive in some areas such as the river of flame, where you don't have much choice but to either spam from really far away or teleport directly on your enemies. I suggest always the former in that particular area, as it happens a lot. Once you've died to mana burn, you have very little chance of recovering your body, unless it's in an open area with monsters your merc can kill and distract, or unless you have a friend who isn't so susceptible, and are better off leaving the game with less exp than dying more and leaving the game with no exp. Other boss attributes won't matter, since your eshield has 25% resistance to everything and charges quickly. I have yet to die to a fire, lit, or cold enchanted enemy.
Vs Act Bosses: This sorc can kill act bosses faster than just about anything else. Since you have an enormous amount of -enemy res, static field is more effective than normal, and big bosses can end up soaking up all 24 bolts with each cast. Also, they don't have many special attacks that you need to worry about, so you can teleport right on them and tank away. Each battle goes pretty much the same. Teleport, static x4, teleport (so you're more directly on top of them, most bosses will move except for duriel, who smacks you back) then spam charged bolt until they die. This generally takes almost no time, and killing speed for bosses is amazing. I can take down diablo in under 8 seconds (I need to time it more precisely sometime), baal in under 10, duriel in about 3 casts of CB, and I haven't gotten to test with andariel since my poison res is horrible right now. My merc is actually unaffected by poison and other things because of his godly resists, making him a better tank in most situations in pvm than I am.
PvP:
Although this sorc only has one skill, the skill itself works in such a way that you can do a large number of different things with it and be very effective. It's like a bag of tricks that lets you play with your enemy until you're happy that they're frustrated to death. It's a lot like playing an orb sorc, only there's no cast delay and the closer you get to your enemy the more death you can deal to them. There are two basic ways to play this sorc, both of which can be very effective but all dependent on your skill. You can either play offensively and defensively, which is your choice, but if your enemy has summons, you have to play defensively until those summons are dead, at which time you can do whatever you want.
Offensive
In playing offensively, basically you're teleporting directly on your enemy and spamming charged bolt until they die. What you do up to that point is basically to try to get them stuck on something. Tstorm, with your +skills and -res, is a good way to induce hit recovery in your enemy. Once they stop from that, you have a small window of time when they won't be able to fight back in which you can murder them. This works well vs sorcs, but vs druids with their shield or chars with good hit recov or uninterruptible attacks, it's not so feasible. Generally all you need is a mistake and they're dead, or sometimes just luck. Nova sorcs kill people in about 3 casts, at 3800 dmg, and you do a whopping 17000 in comparison, so keep in mind that you may very well be able to mow them down before they can put up a fight. If they have highly stacked resists, then you may not, and in the case of WW BvC barbs, they may be able to fhr lock you if you try that. It's all up to preference, but in playing offensively you take bigger risks but can sometimes kill more in turn.
Defensive
When playing defensively, you shoot your enemy from a distance. In doing so, fewer bolts hit, so you do less damage. This is a very unique attribute of the CB sorc. Other sorcs do the same damage no matter where they hit you from. The cool thing about it is that it's like orb. It will quickly spread out and cover about half a screen, and is very spammable, taking no mana if you have your merc, and very very little without him. Unlike orb, it forms a wall, and there's no cast delay, so you can do things with this that orbers could never dream of. Namely, pincering. You can cast charged bolt at your enemy, teleport to the other side of them, and cast it at them again. This sends two waves charging at them from opposite directions, making it very difficult for them to avoid taking a hit from both ways. You can pincer them from 3 or even 4 different directions at once, depending on how fast you are, keeping them from hitting you and gauranteeing that you hit them. Depending on their resists, you may kill them very quickly, or not at all. Vs druids, many of them will recast their shield vs a sorc such as this, and always get summons, so you'll first need to kill off their summons by playing defensively, then tele on top of them to finish them off. The best possible cyclone armor can absorb 3k, and you'll do about 2.8k after pvp penalty since resists don't count for cyclone armor (including your -s). What this means is it will take 3 casts (2 to remove shield, 1 to remove druid) vs really high cyclone armor and 2 casts vs anything significantly lower. You should always assume 3. Vs windies, maxed FHR and the 105% break are absolutely necessary if you expect to get a clear victory. The same applies for zons and trappers, both of which use knockback to force hit recovery.
Ending Notes
My armor breaks a lot, which is annoying, but it costs less than 20k to fully repair my gear. This is a big change from other expensive chars which can cost stupid numbers like 6 mil to repair. You may want to zod your viper just so you don't have to see the stupid yellow armor sign anymore. There is also a standard variation to this build, which uses nova and tstorm instead of CB and its lightning synergy. It does about as well as this one, and has some advantages and disadvantages either way. I chose to do this because I thought of it first, and I haven't seen anyone else do it. I also did it because you can put CB on left click, making it easier to play (probably the easiest char hotkey wise to play), and because charged bolt is just cool. I get a lot of compliments for my sorc, as its the only charged bolt sorc people have seen in 1.10 which can kill people in duels (or the only one they've seen, period), and the only one which can play pvm solo successfully, with good monster killing speed and insane boss killing speed, I might add. One last thing for those of you aspiring to be bad manner. With maxed telekinesis, +skills, and massive -res, you can in fact nkill people with telekinesis with this sorc =P. You can name lock it, spam it infinitely, it knocks them back and puts them in fhr, keeping them from reaching their bodies. It also does a decent amount of damage to naked people, and can kill fallens. It's extremely amusing, however lacking in practical use.
The Build:
This is nothing really special, however it requires you to be about lvl 94 to complete, which is a great deal higher than any other build I'm aware of.
Skills:
Charged Bolt: 20 (no, really?)
Lightning: 20 (synergy)
Lightning Mastry: 20
Telekinesis: 20 (synergy for eshield)
Energy Shield: Enough to get lvl 40 when you cast it, this is lvl 19 for me.
Thunder Storm: 1
Warmth: 1 + all your extras after everything else.
This will give you max damage charged bolt and 95% absorbtion energy shield, with maxed damage reduction to eshield.
Stats:
This is highly gear dependant. You need enough str to use eth treks with all of your charms, but that's about it. You should only have base dex, and beyond that what I did is put 4 in energy and 1 in vitality every lvl. Energy shield will be your hp, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Generally my sorc is tougher than others, so I'd say it's pretty advantageous ;P. Also, with high mana regen, it'll take a lot of fast spamming for a long time to get your mana supply down.
The Gear:
The gear will make or break this sorc. The build is pretty straightforward, and although it takes a LOT of leveling to complete, it's entirely doable. The gear, on the other hand, has some componants which are hard to get, and some which are just expensive. This sorc can function with partial gear, but will be less capable.
Helm: Griffon's Eye w/ lit facet. Self-explanatory.
Armor: Skin of The Vipermagi. +1 skill, 30% fcr, some res. You can upgrade it if you want, but I chose not to. You won't have significant defense so all it will really do is make repairs more expensive. I faceted mine, you can do whatever you want, it's not really important what you stick in it.
Belt: Arachnid Mesh. 1 skill, 20% fcr, no explanation needed.
Gloves: Magefists. Non-negotiable. You can upgrade them if you want, but there's really no point to it, and it makes repairs more expensive.
Boots: Ethereal Sandstorm Treks. FHR and poison res. Hit recovery and poison are your enemies, and treks are your friends. I think you get the point. I also suggest getting poison res SCs to boost up your res the rest of the way. Other resists don't really matter.
Weapon: Infinity (ber mal ber ist). This has to be in polearms, so you'll want a volgue, scythe, or poleaxe. Mine is in a poleaxe. The infinity is what really makes this build, with -45-55 to enemy resist and -85 enemy res with conviction, add the grif and facets and you can knock off up to 175 res from your enemies, making your normally dull CB damage hurt like crazy. The biggest problem with this is that it's 3.5 HRs to make. That's the cost of having a good sorc.
Rings: 2x Stone of Jordan. +skills, +%mana. Can't beat sojs for getting the job done.
Amulet: This is the hardest slot to fill, besides the infinity. You need a +3 lightning skill amulet or +2 sorc skill amulet with at least 10% fcr in order to reach the 105% breakpoint. You can get one of these one of several ways- gambling, crafting, trading, or mfing. A +1 sorc or +2 lit amulet with the 10% fcr is also acceptable, but not nearly as good. Optimally, this amulet should also have some sort of poison length reduction, though this is not absolutely necessary and is much harder to get.
On Switch: You'll want the best CTA possible and a lidless. This build is unique in that, on switch for BO you have more +skills than normally since infinity doesn't give any, so you'll want to cast energy shield along with BO in order to cast it with the highest level possible.
Charms: You'll need 10x FHR lit GCs, 1x fhr sc, and an annihilus. What you do with the remaining space is up to you. This build can work without the FHR, but in pvp you'll need it if you hope to be successful. At 145%, you'll hit 6 frame fhr, which is a good deal faster than the 8 frame cast you get. The better the stat anni you can get, the less str you'll need for treks. Keep that in mind.
The Merc:
Mercs are not often used successfully in pvp. In pvm, it's a pain to go without one. With this char I'm attempting to make a merc that can help me as much as possible, which involves not dying. Basically, you want to stick the best insight you can get on a prayer merc from normal (norm mercs are a good deal stronger than hell mercs, and tend to take less naps when you need them), then find a way to keep him from dying. That way for me is an upgraded guardian angel with an um stuck in it. Although leveling a merc from norm is a pain, my merc levels way faster than I do and is constantly the same level as me. Once he reaches level 93, I'm going to stick an um'd vamp gaze on him, giving him 90 resist all, 20% pdr, 6% leech, and a good deal of damage with his eth CV insight. The 90 res all is important and can allow your merc to tank fireballs and lightning probably better than you can. With prayer and meditation, he'll heal you quite quickly to full health and recharge your mana fully even faster. With energy shield, this makes you very effective at tanking many kinds of attacks, and makes you very tough in pvm. Mine can heal me from 1hp and 0 mana in about 20 seconds, the mana charging about 2x as fast as the hp. another advantage to this is that if you keep him alive, you can take a direct hit, teleport away at full speed (should only cost 5 mana even with 1 pt in tele since all the +skills) and be healing/charging the same as if you were standing still. This allows you some room for error from which you can recover fully many times in a single battle. Your enemy, however, will get worn down by your attacks with each encounter. It also allows you to heal very quickly in pvm without having to use potions. You can fight without a merc, but it's nice to have one, and I wouldn't pvm without mine.
Playing the Sorc:
This sorc is very interesting in that with one skill, you can do a whole lot of different things. Generally the closer you get to your enemy, the more damage you will do (up to 17,000 with 700 dmg x 24 bolts), but that also puts you in greater danger. Unlike the nova/tstorm variation of the infinity sorc, you can put charged bolt on left click, so it's much easier to play.
PvM:
Basically, you can kill anything but lightning enchanted enemies that are normally lightning immune, as their immunity is too high to break with conviction. With your merc, you will be incredibly tough, and your damage will be easily high enough to mow down even the toughest monsters. Vs caster monsters, you'll want to teleport directly on top of them to get maximum damage from your spread, and vs melee you'll want to back off a little so you can hit recovery lock them in place. You'll want to murder any oblivion knights and similar enemies who can insta-kill your merc. Black souls are a problem as they do both high damage and mana leech damage, but you can still kill them if there aren't too many. Exploding stygian dolls won't kill you as quickly as other chars, but you'd be well off to retreat against them, spamming charged bolt back at them to keep them from blowing up in your face. My merc hasn't died to doll explosions yet, so I figure he's a lot tougher than are chars vs them. There is one thing and one thing only that will kill you horribly in pvm. Unfortunately even weak monsters can spawn with it, and your hp is so low that even fallens can kill you. This would be mana burn. If you don't have godly fhr and the 105% cast break, your survival rate against mana burn will be about 33%, if you catch it in time. If you get hit by stronger monsters like doom knights with mana burn, your survival rate will be about 0. Generally if you play more conservatively rather than teleporting directly on your enemies for max damage, you can decrease your risks of getting trapped in fhr lock in the middle of a pack of mana burners. This also means a loss in killing speed, and can be prohibitive in some areas such as the river of flame, where you don't have much choice but to either spam from really far away or teleport directly on your enemies. I suggest always the former in that particular area, as it happens a lot. Once you've died to mana burn, you have very little chance of recovering your body, unless it's in an open area with monsters your merc can kill and distract, or unless you have a friend who isn't so susceptible, and are better off leaving the game with less exp than dying more and leaving the game with no exp. Other boss attributes won't matter, since your eshield has 25% resistance to everything and charges quickly. I have yet to die to a fire, lit, or cold enchanted enemy.
Vs Act Bosses: This sorc can kill act bosses faster than just about anything else. Since you have an enormous amount of -enemy res, static field is more effective than normal, and big bosses can end up soaking up all 24 bolts with each cast. Also, they don't have many special attacks that you need to worry about, so you can teleport right on them and tank away. Each battle goes pretty much the same. Teleport, static x4, teleport (so you're more directly on top of them, most bosses will move except for duriel, who smacks you back) then spam charged bolt until they die. This generally takes almost no time, and killing speed for bosses is amazing. I can take down diablo in under 8 seconds (I need to time it more precisely sometime), baal in under 10, duriel in about 3 casts of CB, and I haven't gotten to test with andariel since my poison res is horrible right now. My merc is actually unaffected by poison and other things because of his godly resists, making him a better tank in most situations in pvm than I am.
PvP:
Although this sorc only has one skill, the skill itself works in such a way that you can do a large number of different things with it and be very effective. It's like a bag of tricks that lets you play with your enemy until you're happy that they're frustrated to death. It's a lot like playing an orb sorc, only there's no cast delay and the closer you get to your enemy the more death you can deal to them. There are two basic ways to play this sorc, both of which can be very effective but all dependent on your skill. You can either play offensively and defensively, which is your choice, but if your enemy has summons, you have to play defensively until those summons are dead, at which time you can do whatever you want.
Offensive
In playing offensively, basically you're teleporting directly on your enemy and spamming charged bolt until they die. What you do up to that point is basically to try to get them stuck on something. Tstorm, with your +skills and -res, is a good way to induce hit recovery in your enemy. Once they stop from that, you have a small window of time when they won't be able to fight back in which you can murder them. This works well vs sorcs, but vs druids with their shield or chars with good hit recov or uninterruptible attacks, it's not so feasible. Generally all you need is a mistake and they're dead, or sometimes just luck. Nova sorcs kill people in about 3 casts, at 3800 dmg, and you do a whopping 17000 in comparison, so keep in mind that you may very well be able to mow them down before they can put up a fight. If they have highly stacked resists, then you may not, and in the case of WW BvC barbs, they may be able to fhr lock you if you try that. It's all up to preference, but in playing offensively you take bigger risks but can sometimes kill more in turn.
Defensive
When playing defensively, you shoot your enemy from a distance. In doing so, fewer bolts hit, so you do less damage. This is a very unique attribute of the CB sorc. Other sorcs do the same damage no matter where they hit you from. The cool thing about it is that it's like orb. It will quickly spread out and cover about half a screen, and is very spammable, taking no mana if you have your merc, and very very little without him. Unlike orb, it forms a wall, and there's no cast delay, so you can do things with this that orbers could never dream of. Namely, pincering. You can cast charged bolt at your enemy, teleport to the other side of them, and cast it at them again. This sends two waves charging at them from opposite directions, making it very difficult for them to avoid taking a hit from both ways. You can pincer them from 3 or even 4 different directions at once, depending on how fast you are, keeping them from hitting you and gauranteeing that you hit them. Depending on their resists, you may kill them very quickly, or not at all. Vs druids, many of them will recast their shield vs a sorc such as this, and always get summons, so you'll first need to kill off their summons by playing defensively, then tele on top of them to finish them off. The best possible cyclone armor can absorb 3k, and you'll do about 2.8k after pvp penalty since resists don't count for cyclone armor (including your -s). What this means is it will take 3 casts (2 to remove shield, 1 to remove druid) vs really high cyclone armor and 2 casts vs anything significantly lower. You should always assume 3. Vs windies, maxed FHR and the 105% break are absolutely necessary if you expect to get a clear victory. The same applies for zons and trappers, both of which use knockback to force hit recovery.
Ending Notes
My armor breaks a lot, which is annoying, but it costs less than 20k to fully repair my gear. This is a big change from other expensive chars which can cost stupid numbers like 6 mil to repair. You may want to zod your viper just so you don't have to see the stupid yellow armor sign anymore. There is also a standard variation to this build, which uses nova and tstorm instead of CB and its lightning synergy. It does about as well as this one, and has some advantages and disadvantages either way. I chose to do this because I thought of it first, and I haven't seen anyone else do it. I also did it because you can put CB on left click, making it easier to play (probably the easiest char hotkey wise to play), and because charged bolt is just cool. I get a lot of compliments for my sorc, as its the only charged bolt sorc people have seen in 1.10 which can kill people in duels (or the only one they've seen, period), and the only one which can play pvm solo successfully, with good monster killing speed and insane boss killing speed, I might add. One last thing for those of you aspiring to be bad manner. With maxed telekinesis, +skills, and massive -res, you can in fact nkill people with telekinesis with this sorc =P. You can name lock it, spam it infinitely, it knocks them back and puts them in fhr, keeping them from reaching their bodies. It also does a decent amount of damage to naked people, and can kill fallens. It's extremely amusing, however lacking in practical use.