fire orb help

[pickardj]

I need a little help with my fireball/meteor-orb sorc, mainly a numbers question.

In a recent three-player hell I was noticing that my orb (22 sl w/ 10 sl cm) did more damage than my fireball (24 sl w/ ~20 sl meteor and ~15 sl fm). my char screen says orb does ~300 while fireball does 2.5k, how ever my orb tore it up while it took 10-15 fireballs to knock down a ghoul lord (arcane wizard guys). my handy hit point calculator says the ghoul lord has ~6k hitpoints and should be dropped in 3 fireballs. therefore, i'm assuming the ghoul lord's got some good fire resist. is there an available chart of resistances? if not, how do i know who has good resistances?

also, what's the deal with those exploding skeleton guys? my merc doesn't really get hurt with them, but my 72 lvl pally (6k def with merc's aura) gets crushed and will die if 5 blow up around him. sorry this is off topic.

[jcldude]

Cold Mastery can give the mobs negative resistance and hence is a "hidden" damage bonus that does not show up on the damage indication if I am not wrong. The same way you can do this with full Tal's setup and fire facets. It might also be the case that these Ghoul Lords have high fire resist as well - and I have also noticed they do take quite a few fireballs to take down. Are you using full Tal's set for -15 fr on mobs? Any fire facets? Those might help getting more damage in on those fireballs. This is the main reason why I would always recommend fire facets for a meteorb, simply because in time you will get very high -cold resist on mobs from cold mastery (only put one point here btw - gear will do the rest).

Those exploding skeleton guys are the nasty Stygian Dolls I suspect? Those that come in packs at very high speed? Well, those are a pain, and the best way to deal with those is to have max block and damage reduction gear - anything to take off physical damage. For a sorc, the good solution is a Stormshield and pump enough into dex to get full block at 75%. My sorc frequently tanks these before they do enough damage to kill me. However, most sorcs dont bother with them and just teleport away asap.

For your pala to deal with them I guess he also needs full block and some damage reduction gear. I am not sure if their explosion is pure melee damage, but if its anything else, then its fire - meaning you should max your fire resistance. I dont think it is fire damage however because I had problems in Nightmare with these dudes and had full fire resist then, but not full block or damage reduction (was using a Mosers shield).

[pickardj]

Thanks for the advice. Too late for me on only one point in CM :(

I don't have very good equipment (only recently started playing... i'm poor). What is Mobs? What is facets?

My pally has full block and fire (Nightmare) but no dmg reduction... what's a good amount for this? I've always ignored it because 10 pts of reduction seems useless when you're taking 100 pts dmg, but i guess every bit helps. i do always teleport away with my sorc.

[jcldude]

Mobs is just a short for "Monsters". :)

Facet is a unique jewel that can have 3% to 5% extra damage in an element and -3% to -5% resist on monsters. They come in all flavours, fire/cold/poison/lightning. And with a nice "boom" when you die or level up! The 5/5 die facets are the most expensive ones, but you can get lower ones quite cheaply. If you go for Tal Rasha set you will have nice -resists on mobs which can be further lowered with facets, since you practically have 4 free sockets to use them on (tal orb, tal mask, tal armor and stormshield if you go for full block). I use one cheap 3/-3 fire die facet in my orb atm, 2 ptopaz in mask/armor and one perfect emerald (to fix missing poison resist). I plan on socketing two 5/-5 fire facets in orb/shield when I can afford it, and find a rare ring with high poison resist.

[sangfagel]

Never ever take your LCS serious! Compairing Orb and Fireboll damage in this way just does not make any sense :laugh: Orb damage is listed FOR ONE BOLT - and an orb explodes in many (I belive it´s about 30) bolts. Fireboll is just one - even if it has 1y splash effect.

Next thing is that CM works different than FM.

If you hit a mob (mob = monster) which has 95% fire resistance with a FB of 1k, it will take just 50 damage. Mastery effect is calculated by LCS (Lying Character Screen).

If you hit a mob which has 95% cold resistance with a spell making only 100 cold damage and CM lvl 18, you will make effectively over 100 damage. Mastery effect is invisible on LCS.

In my recent build FA makes slightly over 600 cold damage and it works as well as my 12k FB. Once again - never care about numbers on LCS!:lipsrsealed:

[AnimeCraze]

For your paladin, I strongly suggest putting on vigor and run (as in flee from them). It worked for me well in Durance of Hate.

[sangfagel]

For your paladin, I strongly suggest putting on vigor and run (as in flee from them). It worked for me well in Durance of Hate.

I am sturdy hammerdin
I don´t fear devilkin
When I meet a nasty one
I have Vigor, I can run!
:neener:

[pickardj]

thanks for all the advice! i've still got a lot to learn :)

i remember once seeing a table of monster resistances... unfortunately I didn't bookmark it. does anyone know if this exists?

[AnimeCraze]

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/

Has just about everything, even though some minor information is incorrect.