Order of Maxing Skills?

[Albanian]

I have a lvl 46 blizzard sorc that i will be using for MF runs. I just finished maxing blizzard

In what order do I max the synergies and the cold mastery after this? i have been given conflicting information. Some tell me to max Cold mastery then the synergies, while some tell me to max cold mastery last...

What order do I max the skills in?

Thank You

[CarloC]

Maxing cold mastery isn't a good idea. Keep it at around 8 points. +skills will bring it to a good level, and having it be too high leads to huge diminishing returns with the -resist effect. -200% cold resist, for example, is basically useless.

[SlashRox]

Well, as the above guy said, I wouldn't max cold mastery. The ideal lv for it would be slvl 17 (including +skills).

Regarding to order, I'd max glacial spike first, then get CM to lv17 and then all the other synergies (order doesn't matter).

[stephan]

Well, as the above guy said, I wouldn't max cold mastery. The ideal lv for it would be slvl 17 (including +skills).
It's not the ideal level perse.

[melianor]

I kind of disagree. As a Blizzard Sorceress you will be running Mephisto ALOT in Hell and his cold resistances are great there. You should max Cold Mastery indeed so you can deal additional 100% damage on Mephisto in Hell difficuly.

After that max Iceblast or Glacial Spike, whichever you prefer as a spamming spell inbetween Blizzard.

[SlashRox]

True, didn't thought that. Well anyways I wouldn't max CM until I've maxed one of the two synergies, due that at 50-60 your not in hell yet and you could use the extra damage better than the -res from CM.

[Ilumm]

As long as this is your first char and you can't plan it like i will have 17+ skills on it there isn't any worth in actually not maxing CM.

Getting your CM more than lvl 37 requires torch/ani/occy/spirit/shako/enigma/+2 amu/2sojs.

So the only to go over that lvl 37 is if you have all that and +1 cold skillers or ice orb/helm(can't remember their name but there are two items that add -x rez) or facets.

Kind of hard for a first char.


As for maxing i would suggest 20blizz and max CM after. This way when you get at NM you will have minimised res of the monsters(please remember that as a 1st char you will have 1-3+ skills at best).Glacial Spike 3rd because it is good for the freeze effect(compared to the slow effect of blizz) and not that much for its dmg but if you use for freezing why not have max dmg?

Hope i was clear enough.

[ScottyDsntKnow]

If you're going to be pure blizzard you might as well max CM since if you can get your merc to break a cold immune you're going to need as much -resistance as you can get.

After you max blizzard, start pumping spike but drop a point into CM every 3 or 4 lvls. Then max CM afterwards.

A dual or tri elemental sorc is where you want to put no more than 8 pts into CM.

A high lvl pure blizz sorc should look like:

-Max Blizzard
-Max Spike
-Max CM
-Max Blast
-Max Bolt
-1 Warmth
-1 frost nova
-1 in armor since it looks cool and actually gives a pretty good defense bonus
-The rest in whatever. Maybe more warmth or crank one of the frozen armors but at this point you're probably destroying everything anyway.

[aquaman]

A high lvl pure blizz sorc should look like:

-Max Blizzard
-Max Spike
-Max CM
-Max Blast
-Max Bolt
-1 Warmth
-1 frost nova
-1 in armor since it looks cool and actually gives a pretty good defense bonus
-The rest in whatever. Maybe more warmth or crank one of the frozen armors but at this point you're probably destroying everything anyway.

You're missing at least 2 skill points here: 1 teleport, 1 TK. Even excluding your "whatever," that's still 105 points invested (or a level 93 sorc that has completed all +skl quests).

[Hypnosx]

My blizz sorc is lvl 80, and I basically just run meph and some ancient tunnels now so getting more levels seems totally pointless.

I maxed blizzard first, put 13 in cold mastery (just a random number), then maxed glacial spike (THIS IS BETTER THAN ICE BLAST), then ice blast, then the rest in icebolt. Thats with 1 in frozen armor, 1 in warmth, 1 in static, 1 in telekinesis and 1 in teleport. So my blizzard/glacial spike/ice blast are maxed, my cold mastery is 13, my ice bolt is like 10 or so.

My blizzard tooltip says about 3k damage. I have only like +5 to skills, since my gear isnt very great and I basically just wear max MF stuff.

I run hell meph like its my job. How long the runs take just depend on how long it takes to get to durance 3, but I'd estimate they are usually about 1.5mins long. The thing is, yeah more cold mastery would do more damage to meph, but who cares? Meph dies super fast anyways, at least in solo games. If you run meph in like 8 person games where the other people are doing other stuff then maybe you want more damage, but I dont really care. Thats why I stopped worrying about getting more levels. It just doesnt matter. Meph dies like 10 seconds max. Killing him in 6 seconds instead or whatever isnt going to improve the speed of my runs by any appreciable amount.

Plus more cold mastery does like nothing against normal mobs.

[melianor]

It can certainly be viewed as perfection, but i think saving 4 seconds (for example!) on each run, comes down to alot of time, when you see how many times such runs will be completed. 1000 runs would mean that you have saved 4000 seconds = ~66 minutes = ~ 1 hour.

The reason that i am bringing this is up is simply that MFing can get tiresome and it might be worth to some people to save some time on it ;)

In no doubt you will kill superfast already with a Blizzard build that has not maxed CM.

[Albanian]

Thank you, your posts have led to max cold mastery. :)

one more question, which cold armor should I choose? I'm thinking either shiver or frozen..?

[~Maf~]

I always choose the 2nd one, no need for the third

[melianor]

I always choose the 2nd one, no need for the third

Shiver armor, which is the second one has the ability to slow monsters the moment they decide to attack, unlike Frozen Armor, which chills monster when they hit.

Using Shiver armor gives you an edge to survival when teleporting around.

[lumpor]

This comes from my post in another thread:

If I were you I would want to perfect my blizzard and get -200% enemy cold resistance after +skills. You'll have 3 facets (one in deaths fathom, one in Ormus, and one in nightwing), giving you -15% enemy cold resistance, lowering the required amount of cold mastery to 34. You'll get +13 cold skills from charms, 3 from deaths fathom, 2 from nightwing, 2 from spirit, 3 from ammy, 2 from rings (unless you'll use a ravenfrost) and 1 from battle command on cta. That'll give you 24-25 +skills (depending on your ring), meaning 9-10 hard points in cold mastery.

Just so you know, a sorceress with 37 cold mastery does more than 2% more damage against enemies with 199% resistance than ones with 36 mastery.

I mean, what else could you do with your skill points than get -200% enemy resistance after +skills and facets? It doesn't take so many points anyway. Only 8-9 extra You don't have enough skill points for an immune-killer anyway

[sirpoopsalot]

I mean, what else could you do with your skill points than get -200% enemy resistance after +skills and facets? It doesn't take so many points anyway. Only 8-9 extra You don't have enough skill points for an immune-killer anyway

Well, there's always Firewall with a Leaf staff on weapon switch. It's not really strong with only ~5 hard points, but it's actually possible to kill things with it. *hides*

But yeah. Back to the original question, my opinion is that ~10 points in CM before the synergies isn't a bad idea if you're planning on Meph runs, then you can max the synergies before finishing off CM. As long as your CM isn't trying to push a monsters resistance below -100% (which is impossible), it'll always provide more damage to your Blizzard than the synergies.