hydra sorcs?

[penco]

Pretty much zero builds utilize Hydra, and I can kind of see why.

But... I am trying to make some challenging builds, and I want a Hydra sorc. How do these things perform? How fast do the Hydras shoot? Decently, I hope.

I saw the CL/Hydra idea, but I think this is better. Here it is:

Max Hydra
10 Fire Mastery
Max Glacial Spike
~5 Cold Mastery (enough for -100% after +skills)
Max Ice Bolt
1 ES and prereqs
Leftovers in Fireball, Firebolt
(The math works best to keep the slvl of FM and FB about equal for synergizing Hydras)

Pretty basic idea. Freeze stuff, and spam Hydras to do the killing.

Problems? Other ideas would be Hydra/Nova (nova has no synergies) or Hydra/Frost Nova for the brave.

Again, the point here is to have a challenging build and to have Hydras as the main source of damage.

[Master Zap]

Hydra is fun :)

I like em and they work well for the saftey it allows. Here's some useful info on Hydra from a quick search:



A Hydra sorc is certainly Hell viable. Patience is the key with this build. Fully synergised, and with +skills from your gear and skillers, your Hydra will be doing significant damage. Each Hydra will last for 10 seconds, and with a casting delay of 2 seconds, you'll have a total of 5 Hydras present at any time. Considering that each Hydra has 3 heads, and each head will fire a firebolt per 24 frames, that amounts to approximately 30 firebolts per Hydra.




From the Master himself:

I hate it when someone sees the need to belittle a build that they don't understand by talking about how some other superl33t uber build is oh so much better. I'm not saying that you're a jerk, I'm just saying that you probably didn't think about it, but that's a very jerky thing to do.

For your information, your friend's Fireball won't own this Hydra's "small dmg". Consider: Hydra has a 2 second casting delay and fires 3 bolts per second (one per head). Hydra has a 10 second duration, which means the max possible Hydras one sorc can have summoned at one time is 5. 5 Hydras x 3 bolts per hydra per second = 15 hydra bolts per second. Factor in the fact that at the 8fpc breakpoint you can cast 5 fireballs between each Hydra, and you get the following comparisons.

Hydra = 30 bolts per 2 seconds * 3382 avg damage per bolt = 101,860 Hydra damage per 2 seconds
Fireball = 5 casts per 2 seconds * 9177 avg damage per cast = 45,885 damage per 2 seconds
Total fire damage = 147,745 damage per 2 seconds, divided by 50 frames per 2 seconds = 2955 damage per frame.

As for your friend... 26k fireball damage divided by 8 frames per fireball = 3250 damage per frame. That's 3250 damage per frame compared to 2955 damage per frame- less than a 10% difference. I'd hardly call that "ownership" (especially because your friend's 26k Fireball probably only has 26k MAX damage, which means 25k average damage, which means there's only a 5% difference in damage per second). Remember, too, that Hydra can do things that Fireball can't even *DREAM* of, such as autotarget (leaving you free to spam Static Field, Teleport, or Glacial Spike while still dealing massive amounts of fire damage). Hydra can also very easily kill enemies off-screen, and has a much larger range than Fireball. Your friend's Fireball might deal 9% more damage per second than this Hydra, but your friend can't keep enemies perpetually frozen (thanks to Glacial Spike), and if you factor in Static Field, I'd bet the Hydra Build would even kill bosses faster than your friend's Fireball Sorc. And this is without even mentioning the fact that your friend has much better gear (at least +31 to fire skills and 80 skill points, compared to this build which has, as best as I can tell, around +20 or +21 fire skills- meaning with 10 fewer +skills, the Hydra build still has almost as much potential damage output).

Just because you don't understand a build doesn't mean it's weak. To put it very simply, with 80 skill points, a Hydra/Fireball Sorc will *ALWAYS* be capable of dealing more damage per second than a pure Fireball Sorc, assuming equal gear. ALWAYS.

Hydra is, in my opinion, one of the more underappreciated Sorceress skills in the game. It's very definitely capable of killing in Hell. My favorite Sorceress build is a Hydra/Frozen Orb/Fireball hybrid.




Cold Tree:
20 in Frozen Orb
1 in Cold Mastery
5 in prereqs
(optional) 1 in Frozen Armor (I like to get this, because it makes Teleporting a bit safer)

Lightning Tree:
1 in Static
1 in Telekinesis
1 in Teleport

Fire Tree:
1 in Fire Bolt
1 in Warmth
20 in Fire Ball
1 in Enchant
20 in Hydra
20 in Fire Mastery

Total = 92 or 93 points. Finishes up at clvl 81 or 82. Additional points go into Firebolt to boost your Fireball and your Hydra.

If you want to get really technical, I didn't put 1 in Fire Bolt and 20 in Fireball... I put something more like a 7/14 split, since it gave me a stronger Fireball that way. Play around with a skill calculator to see with each point whether you're better off putting it in Fire Bolt or Fire Ball.

As far as when to put the points... put 10 points in Orb and 1 in Cold Mastery AS SOON AS YOU CAN. A 10-point Orb will be more than enough to carry you through Nightmare. After that, I stop developing Orb and return to developing Hydra, since an underdeveloped Orb can kill in hell, but an underdeveloped Hydra has troubles. After I have 50-55 points in Hydra and synergies, I return to pumping the Orb.

Playstyle... Orb, Hydra, Teleport, Static Field, Frozen Armor all hotkeyed to right click. Fireball and Glacial Spike hotkeyed to left click. Orb and Hydra are both timered, so you'll be spamming FB, GS, Static, and Tele between casts.


AB)
I'm running hell Mephy with my current single player, hardcore hydra / orb / fb sorcie, as well as Eldritch. I drop hydras on Mephy's head until his life orb slivers, then pull out a gull and rhyme shield kept on switch just before he falls. IIRC, Mephy drops in less than a minute after the first hydra takes its first shot at him. I've never timed my Mephy runs and so I might be off by a significant margin, but I don't believe I am.

If I want to, I can distance-kill Bremm without ever seeing him or getting a hydra set down by my sorcie's feet. (In single player, he always spawns in right about the same spot for a given character in a given difficulty level, as long as difficulty levels are not changed, it seems). But, its usually too time consuming for the items realized because Bremm and his cronies move around a fair amount, meaning that hydras set down far away from Bremm miss their target quite frequently. Instead, I usually just use the hydras to make avoiding Bremm easier. I can set up a few hydras to lure him away from the central area, if that's where he and his cronies are. Then, I can hop over and set up to kill Mephy in the usual spot where that takes place.

When dealing with the occasional distractions from lords, while killing Mephy, its usually good enough to drop a few hydras between my sorcie and them to take care of that problem, while not even bothering to move from where hydras are launched at Mephy. I actually kind of like it, usually, when lords keep my merc busy so he doesn't go asking Mephy for spare change.

Meteor and blizzard drop hell Mephy faster than hydras and there is no room for doubt about that. But, dropping Mephy tends to be a relatively minor part of the time it takes to run Mephy, especially online. Overall, I'd characterize using hydras for running hell Mephy as somewhat slower, but also perhaps safer because dealing with Bremm and lords seems to be easier, at least in my experiences so far.

Edit: I just did a little math on Mephy. He has 75% fire resistance in hell difficulty according to the Arreat Summit, and 94320 hit points, which works out to an effective hit point total of 377,820 hit points against hydras. At an average of 1400 hit points per shot, and assuming an average of 4 hydras up at any given point in time, Mephy falls in about 45 seconds. However, when your sorcie doesn't need to move and you just keep the right mouse button held down to keep generating hydras, the average number of hydras up and running actually approaches 5 hydras. Even allowing for a few misses here and there, which doesn't in my experience happen often if you drop the hydras on Mephy's head, he should keel over in under a minute.

[penco]

Thanks for the detailed response. My only complaint with SSoG's build is that FO and Hydra both use timers, so you lose a lot of valuable time.

[Master Zap]

Thanks for the detailed response. My only complaint with SSoG's build is that FO and Hydra both use timers, so you lose a lot of valuable time.

The timer thing is kind of a non issue in play IMO , and here's why.

Glacier spike and static will be your spam between spells in addition to recasting and keeping up your pack of hydras. Plus you'll have a potent fireball to go along with them hydras

When I did mine, orb was the best "other skill" off 20-25 skill points.

[Kalkanor]

iv made a hydra soso the other day lvl 40 now nd iam maxing hydra nd all synergys iam wearing a snowblind belt (think dats right) so i hav some cold spells to slow guys down but iv noticed my hydras dont realy need guys to b slowed down i dont even hav to use fb to help them kill^^
this build is so fun^^ way more fun than a fballer

[penco]

I plan on playing my hydra/glacial spike build with my brother as an oddball rabies/hurricane druid hybrid, so hopefully the sorc won't be vastly out-killing the druid... maybe I ought to skip on the hydra synergy and max telekenesis for energy shield.

I bet you don't often hear people think, "Hmm, how can I make this build weaker."

[SnickerSnack]

Idea: max blizzard instead of Ice Bolt for increased glacial spike freeze length. GS synergizes Blizz.

[penco]

That's a good idea. At the same time, can't freeze length be increased with items/charms with +cold damage? That might be easier. I certainly wouldn't want to actually use blizzard, since I already have a mf blizzard sorc from long ago, and it is far too overpowered for the kind of game I want at the moment.

[SnickerSnack]

No, charms won't increase freeze length from cold spells. I believe it only works with physical attacks that deal cold damage.

[C-Beat]

Isnt it better to max firebolt, fireball and hydra and leave fire mastery at base 1? With +skills that should deal more dmg.

[Nimbostratus]

Isnt it better to max firebolt, fireball and hydra and leave fire mastery at base 1? With +skills that should deal more dmg.

From the "Synergies and Masteries Explained" thread:
Hydra: displayed slvl Fire Mastery should be 15 or 16 more than the total number of points invested in synergies.