Lightning Sorc and Crescent Moon + other small questions

[Caestus]

This runeword worth using over an occy for the plus skills and cast rate?

Im not using the best gear for a lightning sorcy yet, but I think im doing pretty well. I have a shako, Tal's ammy, belt, and armor, about to have a spirit Monarch (lidless for now, 1 soj, 1 10% faster cast ring with energy and 6 resist all, magefist/chance guards, and a random pair of crappy boots.

While I am going for mf right now, I want to start building torwards kill speed and maybe pvp.

she is almost fully synergized minus the charged bolt. I maxed out telekenisis instead and have 10 in warmth ( starting to wonder if that was a bad idea).

Also is max block a bad idea when going ES already?

One more thing, I maxed Nova, lightning, Mastery, telekinesis, 10 in warmth, the rest going into chain lightning. Did I make a mistake by maxing nova (used to have a orb/nova back in the day)? Is charged bolt something i'll miss? Is warmth something I should have avoided? I put some in warmth because of the high mana cost of spamming lightning.

Thanks a lot for all the input!

[bovine]

I see increased attack rate, not fast cast on it.

So for a sorc, that stat is useless.

So is it better than a occy? Unlikely.

I don't use ES, I perfer life sorcs. So I can't answer that.

I only use charged for the fun of a carpet of lit, it's only for the synergy.

Most ppl consider 1 in warmth, with your plus to skills to be enough.

[zarirazz]

if you manage to get the intended fcr on other gear, crescent moon is a pretty good weapon for a lightning sorc. i'd choose it over oculus (unless you're mfing of course)

the -35 enemy lightning resists is gg =)

[Duality]

Well, the -35 light res is *most* useful if you have infinity to break immunes. Since convic only works at 1/5 of it's stated value vs immune monsters, you generally end up with monsters that still have 90+ light resistance. That's where the -35 res comes in handy, since it dramatically increases your damage.

If you are using spirit, max block is a bad idea, since it takes a HUGE amount of dex to hit 75% block. (I think it's around 300~ at level 90~, but I'm to lazy to go look it up at the moment, so don't quote me on that :grin) If you have maxed TK, I really wouldn't go with block. I have a fireball/orb sorc that uses spirit, and I have 42% block (or whatever spirits base block rate is, it's been a while since I used her) on her, and it was a waste. A vita build would have been better.

Generally speaking, Hoto/Spirit (or occy/spirit) is better than the -35 res from crescent, although, if you have infinity on your merc but no Griffs..... Meh, for MF'ing, I 'd stick with Occy.

1 in warmth is almost always enough, you really don't need more than that. (unless you have a serious aversion to using pots)
Since L/CL both have nova as a synergy, it's good to max it, it's not much use outside of norm/NM though, even with a lot of +skills, it doesn't do more than 2k damage. :grin:
CB is good primarily since it boosts CL/L, it's fun to see a carpet of lightning but it's not that useful in it's own right. It was the last thing I maxed on my light sorc. (and she still doesn't have it maxed at L93, almost though)

You look like you need more FCR though. 30 from Occy + 10 from ring + 20 from fists + 20 from Lidless is 80, which puts your at the 63% FCR rate for teleporting and at the 78 needed for a 13 frame CL/L. 117 would be ideal but you would have to sacrifice some gear to get it, if you are just mfing, 80 if fine, but for pvp you need at least 117. If you swap to chancies, you are at 60, which is below the 63% teleporting FCR and well below the 78% CL/L FCR rate. (i.e. I wouldn't use the chancies and I wouldn't use Crescent unless you have other FCR to make up for it)

[Hello Jim]

If you are using spirit, max block is a bad idea, since it takes a HUGE amount of dex to hit 75% block. (I think it's around 300~, but I'm to lazy to go look it up at the moment, so don't quote me on that :grin)

301 at lvl 80
319 at lvl 85
337 at lvl 90

you'll be looking at 348




1 in warmth is almost always enough, you really don't need more than that. (unless you have a serious aversion to using pots)

atcually I would say 1 pt in warmth is ALWAYS enough unless you are an Enchat sorc.

[Duality]

Glad someone's feeling less lazy than I am today, yeah, so basically max block with a spirit = never worth it. (I still don't know why I did it on my 200 FCR Fireball/orb sorc, it seemed like a good idea at the time since I generally make block sorcs using Whits but boy was it stupid....)

I'd agree with the warmth thing, I never put more than 1 point into it, but I have run into people who hate using pots enough to put more points into warmth. For a light sorc, I'd say never do it since you need as many points as possible, but....

On a random OT, I ran into a barb who was looking for a "high block" phoenix. He left before I could point out that there isn't such a thing :tongue:

And just to clarify the infinity/-res thing. (don't know if it needs clarifying but...)
If a monster has 90 light res once it's immunity is broken and you do an average of 15k damage, you will do roughly 1.5k damage per shot. If you have gear that reduces their light res by 20% (to 70%), then you will be doing 4.5k damage per shot, or 3x times more damage from a simple -20 enemy light res. Hence the use of -res gear if you are using conviction to break immunes. And the less use of -res gear if you *aren't*, since most monsters that aren't LI have much lower light res, thus, the % increase from the -35 light res is substantially lower than it would be if you are up against broken immunes and generally doesn't make up for the +skills/FCR/Res's on an orb.

[Caestus]

Thanks to all for the detailed info. I have 4 sorc since im so addicted to the class and I think you guys have helped me decide how to fix a couple of em. Once again, appreciate the input!

[stephan]

Generally speaking, Hoto/Spirit (or occy/spirit) is better than the -35 res from crescent, although, if you have infinity on your merc but no Griffs..... Meh, for MF'ing, I 'd stick with Occy.
I don't think this is necessarily true.

Assume a Lightning build with 2 maxed synergies and LM, +9 skills without the weapon, so +12 with it. The damage will look like this:


mon res| +9 skills +12 skills +9/-35 lr
-------|----------------------------------
0 | 5269 6843 7113
25 | 3952 5132 5796
50 | 2635 3422 4479
75 | 1317 1711 3161
95 | 263 342 2108

So as long as you can maintain a decent cast rate, a CM can be very valuable.

[Duality]

That's more true if you aren't mfing, but to stack mf gear and maintain a decent cast rate without the 30-40% from your weapon is much harder.

To get a 105 FCR (or 117 for CL/L) without a FCR Orb, you would need:
35 spirit
20 fists
20 arach
30 Viper
For 105

You still can use 2x nagels, shako and a mf ammy for 160~ MF (not counting boots since both setups can use them)
Or you can use a FCR ring/20 FCR ammy (more likely 2x FCR rings and a 10% ammy) and skullders/shako......

I think if you are mfing, getting the extra 30-40% FCR from your weapon far outweighs the benefits of the -35 light res. I also think that most monsters have <50 light res if they aren't immune, (just took a quick look at Arreat, too tired to do a more serious look through though) thus, the huge damage increases (% wise) for 75/95 don't apply unless you are using infinity.

[stephan]

One of the more popular MF targets (mephisto) has 75% LR.

[Duality]

mmm.... Never knew that, don't see meph much with my light sorc unless I'm rushing.

Well......... For a sorc around level 85~

Gear setup 1:
Crescent (-35 ELR)
Spirit (+2/35% FCR)
Fists (20% FCR)
Viper (+1/30 FCR/35 res)
Arach (+1/20 FCR)
2x 30 Nagels (60 MF)
War Travs (50 MF)
Shako (+2/74 MF)
35 MF Ammy

+6 Skills/105 FCR/219 MF


Gear setup 2:
Hoto (+3/40 FCR/40 Res)
Spirit (+2/35 FCR)
Chancies (40 MF)
Skullders (+1/130 MF)
Arach (+1/20 FCR)
1x SoJ (+1)
1x FCR Ring (10 FCR)
War Travs (50 MF)
Shako (+2/74 MF)
Sorc Ammy (+2 skills)

+12 skills/105 FCR/294 MF


With maxed synergies (except for CB, at level 10) and the first setup:
L: 4 - 9540 (4772 average)
CL: 4 - 5008 (2506 average)

Against Meph (with 40% LR including crescent) that means:
L: 2863
CL: 1503

He has:
94,320 HP's in hell or roughly 33 shots of lightning

With maxed synergies (except for CB, at level 10) and the second setup:
L: 5 - 16286 (8146 average)
CL: 5 - 7219 (3612 average)

Against Meph (with 75% LR) that means:
L: 2041
CL: 903

He has:
94,320 HP's in hell or roughly 46 shots of lightning


Hmm.... Given that, you get 80 MF and take 40% longer. Not a good trade-off. Even though your displayed damage is double under the second setup, the difference between 25% damage with no Crescent and 60% damage with the crescent......

Of course, everything goes out the window if you are using Infinity/Griffs but that wasn't the original question.

So yeah, vs Meph, gogo crescent.

I'm sure I made at least one mistake in there somewhere, but w/e