Starting Up Again - MF Frozen Orber

[PFS]

Hi,

After a bit of a break I'm starting up again with no equipment at all and now need to mf/itemfind to get a few chars started.

I know Blizz is the standard MF one, but I prefer FO for ease of play, quicker leveling, mopre kills of the little monsters therefore more items (although not as regulary as good). Previously my best finds were often from random monsters rather than boss-drops, so somethign that kills everythign on screen is obviously an appeal to me.

So... The build is essentially 68points (i think 20 in IB, FO, CM (maybe less in CM) and 1 in tele and static plus pre-reqs.

So... What do I invest the rest into?

Second element (Meteor?) for flexibe damage or ES+Telekensis for mega surviveability?

Assume not amazing equipment as I am starting from scratch and not using the "mommys credit card" runeword.

Mana build with good ES and insight = awesomeness? (PvM obviously)

Say - spirit sword, peasant crown, skin of the vipermagi, sigons shield or similar +1skills shield, no skill GCs, maybe a 10/10torch in a bit, insight merc.

Obviously as i get better stuff I will improve the equips.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Since you are determined to use orb as your main attack you might go with hydra for a backup. I would recommend firewall but that goes better with blizzard.

[Baranor]

That's a fairly lousy idea, to be perfectly honest. Firewall is a good complentary for Frozen Orb, a lot of people used that in ye olden days. Hydra on the other hand, is a sucky spell, and I've heard rumors that its bugged. Besides, to get a nice, damaging Hydra you need to hit Hydrae, FM and Fire Bolt with the maximum number of points, whereas for Firewall you only need Firewall and FM, because Firewall was the only spell that didn't get any synergies (due to major effectiveness).

If you want flexibility, go Firewall/FO. It's oldskool, and its all good.

[Noite Escura]

1.Energy Shield. 20 Telekinesis rest in ES. Not all that great for PvM IMO
2.Secondary backup spell. Firewall is the best option with 30 skill points.
3.Ice Blast, Glacial Spike. While they don't synergize Orb, they get synergized by it AND by Ice Bolt. Gives you a non-timered spell to be used meanwhile.
4.Spend some in Teleport, if you have trash gear and mana is a problem, it may help you save some while teleporting like crazy.
I would personally chose option 2.

[hellspare]

Fireball, Chain lightning, lightning even. I dislike firewall because you can't really keep them still, unless you want to rely on your merc to do it. The ones that can be slowed by cold aren't cold immune, and you'd use fo against them.

[XRazorX]

Yeah I agree.. Firewall is Really hard to use on a monster thats moving, basically impossible. Trust me I made your exact same build you're talking about here.

[sirwhere]

Yeah I agree.. Firewall is Really hard to use on a monster thats moving, basically impossible. Trust me I made your exact same build you're talking about here.

You must use merc for tanking. Or get a stone armor and tank the monster yourself :)

[hellspare]

Your merc can tank most monsters, but what about monsters that curse your merc with amplify, iron maiden? I think for a second spell you need something you can aim and not rely only on your merc to kill with. You can't be left in a situation where if your merc died you can't use your secondary attack.
If you choose to get ES though, you can tank if you have enough mana.

[MageChick]

I'd have to recommend the standard meterorb build or fireball/orb myself. Your orb will suffer a bit, but honastly once you move to hell difficulty, having only 1 tree will be a sever limitation unless you are going to exclusivly run meph. Meterorb's are cheap to build, and easy to play. If you can work your way up to a tal set then you have a good cheap mix of skills + mf.

I should say that even without any equipment they are easy to play and even start MFing. When the US East server crashed over the July 4th weekend I moved over to US West and started playing there. Starting from nothing at all, in one day - I was running NM pretty easy with junk armor, spirit sword, sig shield, etc.

If anyone is on US West and wants my junk equipement, let me know - I've moved back to US East:tongue: