Help for a noob

[TheDarkFire]

Hey guys, I'm new to these boards and came because I figured people here would be the go-to guys for help in building an effective sorc. I just started playing d2 lod on lan with 3 other friends. One is a necro, one is a pally, and one is an amazon (not sure what builds they are using, none of us are too experienced). I want to have a build that works well in the group and see me through hell difficulty. The necro didn't want me to go cold, because freezing enemies would not allow him to raise them? (Question mark, because I'm unsure of these things). Anyway, I was thinking a fire/light build of some kind would be good. What do you guys think?

We just started and I'm level 14. Some advice about where to put skills and stat points early on would also be much appreciated. Thanks in advance for any help!

[JayhawkFan]

i always liked fire sorcs the most. a nice fire sorc wep is the leaf runeword sock'd in a stave (i think its tir+ral). for pure fire max bolt, ball, meteor and mastery with 1 pt in warmth, telekenisis, teleport and static field (for bosses and fire immunes). with a party you can stand in back and spam fireballs with the occasional meteor.

[sirpoopsalot]

The necro didn't want me to go cold, because freezing enemies would not allow him to raise them? (Question mark, because I'm unsure of these things).

fyi, the reason is that if a monster is frozen when it dies, the corpse "shatters", which would prohibit using any "corpse skills" on it (in the case of your necro-friend, he wouldn't be able to use Raise Skeleton, Corpse Explosion, or Revive - which are all useful skills... there are also more corpse skills, but those generally aren't as useful as the three I mentioned).


and I'd agree with Jayhawk fan. If you focus exclusively on some of the fire skills, you'll possibly have the most powerful attack among your group when you get to hell. A fireball/meteor sorc is a very solid choice.

And if you're all somewhat inexperienced, try to have your friends focus on other non-fire elements (for example, the amazon has some fantastic "lightning" skills, and if you go with fire, the two of you will be able to tackle ~99% of the monsters in the game quite well).

[sangfagel]

This trio can be entirely unstopable in regular game. Ubers is another question.

I agree with previous posters: In this particular case pure fire sorc can be the best one. Max F Boll (main attack), F Bolt, Meteor, FM. 1 point Warmth and Tele. 1-10 points in SF.

If ama goes LF/Strafe/Valky and necro goes skellys/LR, it makes simplest game in the world.

Try to wait with state points as long as possible. You should use them according to your FINAL gear. Try to use str charms. Generally: 0 points in Energy, as little in Str as ever possible.

Your first skills will be weak and mana consuming. Put 1 point in warmth, 1 in SF, and the rest into Fire Bolt and than Fire Boll. Max it and than go for Meteor and Mastery. Try to get Insight for your merc as early as possible (lvl 25) to get rid of mana shortages. That´s it.

[ihuang]

also look for an orb with +skills to a cold armor (I prefer shiver armor) so you don't have to waste points in the cold armor -- it helps if you're blind teleporting a map or if you get hit by fast moving monsters

also, try to get 63% faster cast rate so you can fairly safely blind teleport. You don't necessarily have to have 63% fcr for your main gear, but if you can at least switch into fast cast gear, you can blind tele maps. Some nice cheap fcr items are Magefist gloves (20%), gloves from Trang Oul's set (20%), wizardspike (50%, but also has a 75 dexterity requirement), the runeword Splendor (Eth-Lum, shields, 10%), and the runeword Stealth (Tal-Eth but i'm not sure, body armor, 25%)

[TheDarkFire]

Thanks for the great answers everyone! I think I'll take the advice and go pure fire.

[Dirkw]

Go pure fire and invest in Enchant for the necro's skeletons ;) Will be nice I promise.