New to hardcore, old to diablo2

[Captaincatharsis]

Hi There, I just recently created a new account with the intention of it being for hardcore (I have one east ladder, and one east ladder mule, both filled). This seemed like a great step, instead of spending time make merc enchant sorcs and howl bowbarbs :p.
I've read through some of the hardcore 'guides' and feel I have a decent grasp of the caution involved. I started making a sorc, (frosthoar, on the acct cheshirefat) and had originally thought of doing blizzard. However, once I get to nightmare, and even into hell, immunities could be a problem, so now I'm not sure about a straight blizzard with static/tele, or if I should do an orb/nova, or a blizzard/nova. This is for my first build, so I'm trying to keep it simple and safe (hence the ice)

Any suggestions welcome.

[TheDarkSide]

Yar - welcome to heaven or maybe hell ... Its not much diffenret except you can lose everything anytime an unforgiving accident happens - Ie - lagg spike , power outage , computer network problem , etc . etc ...

But its more fun if you can handle rebuilding occassionaly ....

:yes:

[Captaincatharsis]

Thanks for the welcome. I think I'm going to do the frozen orb, nova. Having a timer and a non timer in two categories , as well as alot of aoe and stuff that makes monsters recover is appealing. hopefully i'll go along way!

[PeateyK]

FO/nova is great but i dunno as the first char, you need a decent amount of gear to make nova work well. easiest first char is FO/fireball sorc.

[MoUsE_WiZ]

What is the goal of this character?
To get an MFer up and running in HC?
Just to get guardian?
Baaling?

That's the sort of thing important for deciding on if you should have 2 offensive elements or not, since you didn't give us that information it's tough to tell you if hybrid is a good idea.

Also, any particular reason for nova as the second spell? That's a rather uncommon one and has been since the death of .09. FB is the overwhelming favourite for hybrids, with L/CL being the second. Not that I think people should be sticking to cookie cutters, but if you're new to HC it might be better to keep things simple.

[Captaincatharsis]

Thanks, that definitely is a good plan. The goals of the character are mainly Gaurdian. It'd be nice to have a MFer, but I don't feel that my first char should be aimed at that, nor do I feel a nova character could easily fill this slot (too much fcr needed).

As to the reasons for nova vs fireball, I've always greatly enjoyed the nova spell, and with it's relatively low skill cost to max, it's quite possible to almost max both FO and nova. The other reason is I've been playing since d2 came out, and have a difficult time repeating my own history.

Peatey brings up a good point though, how usfull will this be? I doubt I will be having an exemplary fcr, although i plan on doing a good bit of item searching once I get to a reasonable level.

On a sidenote, the other character I really want to make is a stormdin ranger (holy shock/freeze with a bow). unlike some builds this doesn't completely rely on incredible gear, so I thought it could be viable. Also, if anyone would wanna play through with me, just add me and say hi the next time I am on. my accounts are cheshirebat and cheshirefat(the hc one). Thanks for the replies!

[MoUsE_WiZ]

Thanks, that definitely is a good plan. The goals of the character are mainly Gaurdian. It'd be nice to have a MFer, but I don't feel that my first char should be aimed at that, nor do I feel a nova character could easily fill this slot (too much fcr needed).
Then yeah, hybrid is probably the way to go.
If you go full cold it's still quite possible to solo guardian, but it involves just porting past everything rather than playing through, and that feels kind of like cheating ~_~

As to the reasons for nova vs fireball, I've always greatly enjoyed the nova spell, and with it's relatively low skill cost to max, it's quite possible to almost max both FO and nova. The other reason is I've been playing since d2 came out, and have a difficult time repeating my own history.
-You might enjoy it less when you have to stand beside things in HC... when gear was mentioned earlier, it wasn't just a question of the gear that improves damage, you need to take hits to use nova.
-The number of skills required to max a spell's damage out is pretty irrelevant, what's more important is how well the spell preforms for the amount of skill points invested... nova doesn't really shine in this regard.
If you've done plenty of orb/fb builds and want to try something different that's a good reason to try something less standard, but nova isn't an easy spell in HC even for a long time HC player with great gear, it's definitely not something I'd recommend starting out with. Eg, one monster you'll probably want to kill with lightning frequently is FI/CI bosses... FI/CI bosses tend to be FECE. FECE bosses tend to explode and kill people (regardless of gear, but doubly so with bad gear) who are standing in nova range when they die. Not to say Orb/Nova is completely unworkable and should definitely be abandoned, just want to make sure you know exactly why nova is uncommon in HC (as opposed to SC where I suspect it's still uncommon, but more because it's just not as fast as other lightning spells).

On a sidenote, the other character I really want to make is a stormdin ranger (holy shock/freeze with a bow).
When I first started playing HC it was so that I'd have a place to play with random untwinked variant builds, you know, just incase it wasn't weak enough in the first place ~_~

Bowadins are definitely a viable way to get through. Not a quick way or a "good" way, but a fun way if you don't mind the kiting and the single target attack.

[Captaincatharsis]

Yeah, I guess that makes sense about nova. It's a shame =/. As greatly balanced as the sorc trees are, i feel like the synergies can make it pretty difficult to figure goofy builds out. Besides FO/FB, are there any respectable builds with fo? I'm worried about using Lightning or CL, because they rely heavily on fcr as well, and need synergies. I guess trying to do a noncookiecutter build that is EASY would be pretty difficult to find.


I've always really enjoyed bow chars, but it's quite difficult to make super effective ones (one of the last characters I made on nonHC was a Bowbarb who had a perfect Faith, and hell was STILL very difficult). I'm making a SPHC storm right now, because my internet connection is being crappy and won't let me get on b.net

[MoUsE_WiZ]

because they rely heavily on fcr as well, and need synergies.
FCR is a heavy requirement for all but the strangest of sorcies. Even with a cast delay as your only source of damage teleport being able to teleport away from things before they put you into hit recovery is pretty essential for survival.

If you're playing b.net, getting reasonable gear is a joke at this point in the season (early on it's still pretty easy, just not what I'd call a joke). Collect a few perfect gems and you can get a wizard spike easily which basically solves any and all gear issues a sorc may have.

If you're playing on SP it depends... with runeword mod (head to the SP forum for info) you can still do NM countess a few times until you can get yourself a Spirit. Spirit won't completely solve your issues, but combine with a circlet or some bling or stealth and it's good enough to not be a huge issue. Without runeword mod it can be annoying. Before spirit existed I'd usually end up shopping/finding an FCR wand to cover me before finding shard or suicide branch or better.

Besides FO/FB, are there any respectable builds with fo?
Hybriding with orb basically means doing 20 orb/1 CM, main spell/synergy spell/mastery, and of course 1 each in static/warmth/port/armour. Generally ES is skipped. The remainder of points get dumped into CM. Alternatively if you want a stronger orb you can split between the synergy/mastery/cm to get CM to around 17 after skills. That just depends on if you want to use orb or the secondary spell as your main source of damage.

In the case of L/CL, I actually wouldn't put a point into CL at all because I don't like CL very much.
Maxing CB instead of CL also allows for an easier trip in the low levels.

So 20 CB, 20 L, 20 LM, 20 Orb, 1 CM, 1 point wonders, gets you done around 80.
Or you can do 15 CB 20 L 15 LM 20 Orb 11 CM 1 point wonders and rely more on orbs damage.

Both ways work fine.
If you prefer CL to CB (or to Lightning) then just substitute it as appropriate... it's a pretty standard formula and isn't too tricky at all.

Similar:
20 blizz/20 blast/20 cm as a main skill then 20 TK rest into port is a "pure" cold build that fits that formula but hybrids for safety instead of damage
or with FB/Meteor instead of L/CL it's the same thing, max FB, max FM, then pick meteor or bolt.
Chant also works perfectly with this formula, and is also a viable secondary skill for Orb, though it requires a bit more thought for stats/gear, it's still fairly straight forward.

Firewall allegedly works with Orb (here you'd get to max CM due to no synergy) but I've never tried it... had my fill of firewall in the days of bloody foothills ~_~