lightning/FO sorc, why does she suck?

[weatherman]

Like I said in the title, my lightn/FO sorc kinda sucks, she's lvl 83, she does about 5 - 6400 lightning damage and about 380 - 390 FO damage.

her equipment are as follows;

*Skin of the Vipermagi
*Harlequin Shako
*Lidless wall Grim shield
*Eschuta's Temper
*Ammy with +3 lightning skills
*Magefist Gloves
*Aldur's Advantance boots
*Ring with +16 str and +15 to all resists
*Ring with +10 fcr, +15 fire resist, 1 to mana after each kill and +7 MF
*Tal Rasha's belt

Skills are, with no items;
*max lightning
*max FO
*max lightning mastery
*lvl 10 charged bolt (gunna max this if it's the last thing I do!)
*1 point in all prequisites... (I didn't spell that right I think)
*I point in cold mastery
*1 Point in warmth
*1 in Nova
*1 In chain lightning
*1 in Static field

Her resists are, in hell;

37 fire resist
-23 cold, lightning and poison

FCR is about 120%

I dunno how to improve her, I know I need to get a spirit shield, and some +skills charms.

I want to be able to MF anywhere, if I can achieve that and do it quickly with very few deaths, I'll be a very happy little boy. :smug:

[leifper]

I have a similar Orb/cl sorc, which at lvl 81 does quite well. ~600 orb dmg, ~5000 cl and ~10000 lightning damage.

I use full tals, spirit shield, 1xSoJ, 10%fcr ring, aldurs boots and magefists. I altso have 1x cold skiller and a torch.

So added up, 12 to all skils(13 to cold).

Then to the point, dunno why you have so much lower damage than i do, considering the similar skills placement, especially in cold skills. How many +skills do you have in total?. Also, adding Rainbow Facets to cold/light (whicever you feel you need the most) might be a god idea, will get some decent damage from them.
And offcourse skillers always help.

And get your resists up! 5% res all small charms or 11% to cold/light/fire small charms arent that hard to find, get yourself a few of those and youll die alot less.

You have reached the 117%fcr breakpoint for lightning, so you dont need any more fcr.

Altso, if you could say how many +skills you have, and youre life/mana.

Hope that helped.

[SnickerSnack]

In what way does she suck? We can't really help you improve her if we don't know what the problems are.

From the looks of her, your biggest problem is resists. You need to have maxed lightning res and 50-max fire res. Cold doesn't hurt either. All of your resists should be positive.

Some gear changes:
1. You need to replace this ring: Ring with +10 fcr, +15 fire resist, 1 to mana after each kill and +7 MF.
2. Magefist on a cold/light sorc? Get Trang's gloves.
3. If you need more res, put an um or res jewel in your shako and/or viper.
4. As you said, a spirit shield will help a great deal. Not only will you get more +skills and resists, with a decent roll, you won't need a fcr ring.
5. Consider using a Wizard Spike.

The most worrying thing is that you don't mention a merc. You need an Act 2 prayer mercenary (normal combat) with an exceptional/elite Insight polearm, maxed resists, and life leech.

[sirpoopsalot]

- Tal's belt isn't anything special on its own; it should be paired with at least 2 more pieces from the set if you're gonna use it. If you can afford an aranchnid's mesh, it's a definite upgrade. Credendum is dirt-cheap and has resists. IK belt has some nice stats too, especially if you want to skimp on stat points in Strength for equipping Spirit. Or you could try crafting some caster belts, as some of those can turn out quite nice.

- Actually Full Tal's isn't a bad idea if you can afford it. It think it'd be an upgrade over your current piecemeal-of-stuff.

- Eschuta's is overrated. The +damage only adds to your lightning mastery, so you go from +~350% Damage from mastery without it to +~370% Damage from mastery with it... big whoop. I'd rather have the Occulus or Wizardspike any day of the week (or HotO).

- did you skip the skill quests? It looks like you don't have enough skillpoints for your level (you should have ~90 spent by now, but I'm only seeing roughly 80 in your list).

[guface]

You are missing -ve resists. I can guarantee you if you stick on a cresent moon blade instead of an eschutas, you will notice much faster kills.

Also, in the long term, griffon and infinity would take your sorc into a new dimension.

[Shaimus]

1 point in frozen orb would be better, otherwise lightning will be too weak, swap the 19 points into a light synergy and fo will still have 300 dmg and reaching 28k light will be quite doable.

[guface]

1 point in frozen orb would be better, otherwise lightning will be too weak, swap the 19 points into a light synergy and fo will still have 300 dmg and reaching 28k light will be quite doable.

no please dont do this. If you are struggling to get max resists on hell, you will find it impossible to find the items to get 1pt orb into the 300 dmg area.

[Shaimus]

Granted it may be hard to get both resists and +skills on a very low budget, but chaos/ baal are still runnable, ancients might be tough though.

[guface]

explain how chaos or baal runs are doable without max resists? Its impossible unless you inch along monster by monster. Even then the orb is still gonna be useless, doing 60 or so damage, while it wastes about 8 points or so just getting the pre reqs.