Gone a year, back and missing old orb sorc

[MikeFord]

I have been "gone" a year, but before that played nothing but hardcore, so the sorc I am missing is really close to 2.5 years ago. USwest SCL is where I am trying to get started again. Three days now and I have a dozen chars going, 8x mules, summoner necro, enchantress, and cold sorc FairyCold now 31 and dotted with a single point in my old skills.

Before I get too carried away recreating, I am concerned my old build may not work anymore, or just be weak and flawed. Old sorc was max orb, fire wall, thunderstorm, with a whitstans guard and max block, e shield, mixed tals with occy, and a holy freeze merc with an etheral honor spire (lots of damage, and life leech, and hard as nails).

Lots has happened since I made that sorc, and together with my summoner necro its pretty much got to earn its own way on items. Do I need to rethink, and learn all the new stuff, or will this old build still MF in hell etc?

Blizzard vs Orb has me worried, I don't really mind killing a "bit" slower if its still effective, and easier in a general sense.

[Speedwrath]

Well... Blizzard with enough synergies up should be able to kill Mephisto and Andy, and well... if you can do that, then I guess you can MF OK. :p

[A C E]

If you like playing with 2 different elements make a meteororb. If you wanna be a pure cold sorc make a bliz. If you want to duel make a es/orb.

[MikeFord]

I want to ORB, not Blizzard, and I don't "like" Meteor. Orb/Firewall is what I had in mind, with some Thunderstorm tossed in. Is this a hopeless build, or just not the uber damage, but still works just a bit slower?

Blizzard I understand is the UBER damage build, but 20 pts in Blizz, mastery, and a couple synergies and I am all out of 20s. I want a more flexible char that can MF and at least do some light rushing. No PvP is planned, going SCL so that I can get some fun out of playing like an hour or so at a time.

[ConF]

Tri-elementalists are not as powerful as they were in 1.09 (were they powerful? nah, not really... so now it's even less). You can easily get away with dual-trees for PvM (some say for PvP too, but I lack the experience there), but I doubt Thunderstorm will be anything but a pretty animation for you. Firewall, although not extremely powerful, could work.

For PvM-ing, Tal's complete set is just incredible for dual-elementalists. I think only a few fire/light-sorcs could do better with eschuta's, otherwise there is no competition (insert link to the full tal vs partial tal + harle/ocu/df/rare orb of doom-thread). Of course, getting to Tal's Armor + Amulet could be difficult when you just started out again. Fortunately, even a naked sorc with a decent orb could get through nightmare easily. After that, things will be much slower, but not undoable. Nice equipment would be needed for act 4 + 5 Hell though.

[MikeFord]

Thanks, tri elemental always was too weak, I am aiming more at just a point maybe in thunderstorm as a cheap damage adder to help out my merc on cold/fire immunes.

[StewieGriff_XLT]

Thanks, tri elemental always was too weak, I am aiming more at just a point maybe in thunderstorm as a cheap damage adder to help out my merc on cold/fire immunes.

... static anyone?

don't waste points on TS, 1 point (even after + skills) won't get you anywhere

you have plenty of skills to put points in first, MAYBE if you have maxed everything you want you can start pumping TS

ehh whatever you like i guess, just my .02

CJ :mask:

[MikeFord]

I like static, but isn't it nerfed in hell? Still usefull, just not as deadly IIRC. I don't have a good feel yet for what my total plus to skills will be, and more points in static mean that I can stay farther away from trouble.

TS may not be a usefull HELL skill, but doing rushes in normal it seemed worth a pt. One of the first duties I expect to put this sorc to work at is helping the first stage of Hellforge rushes.

[PhatTrumpet]

How is a couple-hundred-damage TStorm going to help when you're completely clearing the screen with only a couple Orbs and taking out bosses with only a few well-placed Orbs? TStorm has become relatively obsolete.

Something you may not have found out yet is that monsters now have greatly increased resistances and hitpoints in late nightmare and hell. Dumping a bunch of points in Cold Mastery is a must unless you have tons of +skills.

Orb/Firewall isn't the best, but it could work, although two timered spells is a no-no in my book. I'm a huge fan of Orb/Fireball because 1) you have two elements that are easy to use and deal very respectable damage, and 2) you have something to spam in between Orbs besides Static.