meteorob more oriented towards orb or meteor/fb?

[smokeydeadhead]

hey should i go more towards orb or meteor/fb in stat points?

I am particularly fond of pits. Meph and baal is just a plus.

[Darkflight]

hey should i go more towards orb or meteor/fb in stat points?

I am particularly fond of pits. Meph and baal is just a plus.

I presume you mean SKILL points?

Well, the standard is:

20 Frozen Orb
20 Fireball
20 Meteor
20 Fire Mastery
~9 Cold Mastery (get to level 17 after +skills)
1 Static Field, Telekinesis, Teleport, Warmth

Put the rest of the points in Fire Bolt. If you prefer Fireball over Meteor,
Make it more like 10 Fire Mastery and rest in Fire Bolt.

This will make your fireskills very strong and the Frozen Orb should do decent in 1 player games.

Eilo: If he has very good gear, that will work. But with my way my Meteor still did 14000 damage at level 90, and that was with no fireskillers and MF gear. And his FO will pack alot more of a punch.

[Eilo Rytyj]

You should need no more than 26 skill points in the entire Cold tree. That's 20 in Frozen Orb itself, 1 in Cold Mastery (if you've gone the non-Tal's route), and the 5 prerequisites. Honestly, that's enough to make Frozen Orb as powerful as you need.

I would go with more Fire Ball/Meteor damage. A Meteorb is a Fire sorc with a Cold backup skill. Focus as many skill points on optimising your Fire spells damage as you can.

EDIT: Actually Darkflight, you don't need to get to slvl 17 Cold Mastery after +skills. It's just a bonus to do so, but it's not necessary. Heck, Frozen Orb can operate fine without Cold Mastery right through Nightmare difficulty. I would say 1 point and no more.

As for Fire skills, I've found it to be more efficient to put 1 in Fire Mastery to start with, and leave it there. Max out Fire Ball and Meteor, your main fire spells. Then max Fire Bolt. After Fire Bolt is maxed (at around lvl 80 or so), then remaining points can go to Fire Mastery.

My setup is aimed at obtaining the highest possible Fire Ball damage. Which is what you want to do, since Fire Ball is your main skill.

20 Fire Ball
20 Frozen Orb
1 Cold Mastery (zero points if using Tal's Set)
20 Meteor
20 Fire Bolt
1 each prereqs, 1 point wonders
rest of points into Fire Mastery

Yes, your Meteor damage will be slightly lower, maybe 1k lower, but Meteor is not your main skill. It's merely a support skill for Fire Ball to stack on the damage against groups. Your Fire Ball will be packing a good 750-1000 more damage than with the previous listed skill setup.

Use a Skill Calculator (http://diablo2.ingame.de/spiel/skills/calc/index.php?lang=en)to determine what skill setup will result in more damage.

[PhatTrumpet]

hey should i go more towards orb or meteor/fb in stat points?

I am particularly fond of pits. Meph and baal is just a plus.
To answer your question, you really don't have a choice. Orb only has one synergy, and it's a pathetic synergy at that. The 40% increased Orb damage is hardly worth the 20 skill point investment, and dual-element builds really don't have any room for such inefficient use of skill points.

Meteorb is a fire build with a cold backup. If you want the option to focus more on the cold aspect of your cold/fire build, try a Blizzballer.

[smokeydeadhead]

okay, few more questions.

1. do the cold armors stack?

2. does energy shield and stasis could as one-hit wonders/]?

[PhatTrumpet]

1. No. Either use Shiver or Frozen (whichever you prefer). Chilling is generally not useful enough to justify even the one-point investment.

2. For a dual-element build and assuming you have at least a mediocre amount of +skills gear... yes.