Should I spend the two points to get shiver Armor?

[Ter]

I just made guardian with my level 79 sorceress last night and her build is Blizzard/Firewall

Using the Full Tal Set with a spirit shield, Magefists, and a Cold Skill charm and Annhilus I have +9 all skills and +10 fire and Cold respectively.

So far my skills are
1 in the prereqs for blizzard and Firewall
1 in Static, Telek and Teleport
20 in Firewall
1 in Fire Mastery
20 in Blizzard
20 in Ice Blast
20 in Glacial Spike
1 in Cold Mastery

I have one saved point and I'm 3/4 of the way to level 80.
My Tal Orb is 2/2/2 so I've got
13 Cold Mastery and 13 fire mastery

if I use my next point with the saved one I'll have a level 11 shiver armor that should chill for 7 seconds (1 3/4 seconds in hell right?)

Is that worth it to use while Teleporting down to Meph or later when I'm stronger to the Throne?

Or should I use my remaining points elsewhere?

I mainly play in games with 1-3 players and last night I killed Lister and his group in about 10 seconds with blizzards so I don't feel an urgent need to have more killing power right now.

so...

Cold Mastery?
Fire Mastery?
Ice Bolt?
or
Shiver Armor?

[k/t]

You can try to find an Orb with +Shiver Armor, or just go ahead and put the points in it. Guardian is HC, right? In that case, you can't go wrong with extra defence. After that you can put more points in Fire Mastery or Cold Mastery (to get it to 17).

[Ter]

Yes it was HC which is why I'm thinking having some extra safety would be nice but since I haven't used the cold armors I wasn't sure how well they would actually do.

I jammed my inventory with +life charms to get around 1400 life which is the only way I made it since when I hit the throne my mercenary popped a doll right next to me and I was down under 70 hp.

trapped stairs almost ruined my week

[Superhal]

frozen armor works on hit, shiver armor works on attack. frozen freezes, shiver chills. imho, if you have decent (105%) fcr, then either one is fine. at lower fcr though i would say shiver is better, but frozen armor has definitely been a huge help at times.

for all the cold armors though i think the contribution to actual dr is practically non-existant (and i've tried it with a defiance merc on top of that.)

the best bet, imho, would be to put all the points you get from now on into tk and make a memory staff with any cold armor on it. ES will keep you alive the best. at this relatively low level though (roughly 17-20 after +skills) you still need to watch your resists, absorbs, etc. an insight wep on your merc will also roughly triple es's effectiveness.

otherwise, i would put 6 more points into cold mastery.

[Ter]

Thanks for the opinion...

I'm currently sitting with my resists at 75,75,75,63 and my FCR is at 102 (only rolled a 32 on my spirit shield)

I don't have any decent FCR rings at the moment so I'm stuck at the 63 breakpoint until I get one.

I didn't even consider ES since my mana is so low (~500)
My mercenary is waring a Vampire Gaze Mephisto was kind enough to drop for me...the Smoke runeword armor I was using before I hit level 71 and the Reapers Toll that dropped on my way down to Baal. (He was using a bonehew that one of the Coincil in Act III dropped before that and I'm still debating which is better for him)

IS insight only better if I'm using ES or is it better in general?

btw I've got no absorb except for the 3-8 magic damage that the spirit shield gives. I'd like to get a wisp projector and Ravenfrost but no one seems willing to part with them for what I've got to offer.

Looks like I'll increase my Cold Mastery a little as I level in the 80's

[k/t]

Insight is good if you find you frequently run out of mana. If you go with ES, then Insight is probably a good idea. With only 500 mana, however, you may want to get something else other than ES. As to Bonehew vs Reaper's Toll, I'd say go with the Toll, since you're HC. The Decrepify will help keep you alive, offsetting the loss of the extra protection offered by ES.

[Superhal]

imho, dr does jack for all my chars and i've gotten it as high as 16k.

put it this way, if i were to rank the protection of certain things from 1 to 10 with 10 being near invulnerable, i would probably go like this:

10: necro revives, high ES with mdr/pdr
9: valk
8: necro ai curses
7: low ES with insight
6: resists/absorbs/block
2: defiance/hf mercs
1: dr

so, for this situation, i would say the that since ES is an option and protection is vital, go with that.