Untwinked sorc builds?

[Night]

I'm a v experienced player but haven't played for 1-2 years. I've made many character, and most every cookie cutter type char. I'm looking for something fun to play. Fun to play would be viable, and not completely awful, and takes more than one hotkey to play :P. I also don't like to die every 2 seconds.. that'd fall under not viable for me :)

Is an untwinked nova sorc even remotely viable if I want to go to hell mode and such? Going to spend most of this char's time playing with a fireclaws druid and MA sin, all untwinked.

Not really interested in blizz, FO, or fireball sorcs.. any other build ideas?

Any suggestions in general?

[sirpoopsalot]

If there's only 3 of you in the game, I'd say Nova is viable but not likely to be as strong as the others you're questing with - of course, liberal use of static field could probably make you keep pace well enough. However, if you joined a full game of 8 players, I'm guessing the power of Nova simply wouldn't satisfy you. It puts you close to enemies too, so you might be a little more fragile than you'd like.

Charged Bolt maybe? Hydra's often overlooked but viable, but with a fireclaws druid in your party you probably want to avoid the fire tree... if you're not averse to the fire tree, then I think a ranged Enchantress could work too (and you'd help your friends' AR). And, actually, I recently did a pure GlacialSpike sorc. Although I had very good gear, I think GS would be a very viable build untwinked.

It's often overlooked, but spamming cold spells ~3 times per second, on top of the obvious benefits of Cold Mastery, provides deceptively strong power. I had a quick look at a calculator, and assuming you get +5 skills and make level~80 (both of which should be somewhat attainable untwinked), you'd end up with ~1200 damage and level17 mastery. That might not sound like much, but the mastery would pretty much ensure that 3 times per second you're doing 1800-2400 damage against almost every non-cold-immune monster (depending on the monster's base resistance)... that adds up to reasonable untwinked damage, I think. Especially when you consider the safety factor of being able to freeze most enemies solid (and aim your attacks more reliably than Blizz/FO). Your melee friends would love you too.

Of course, if you want even more power you could go with IceBlast too, but I found the slow-traveling bolts and lack of area of effect to be much less enjoyable than my GS sorc (even though I was ~250% more powerful with pure IceBlast).

[NagisaFurukawa]

Glacial Spike is *definitely* viable untwinked. Since you'd rather not play a one hotkey wonder, you could mix in Fire Wall or Meteor as well (though this is somewhat redundant with your friend's Fire Claws druid).

[SeCKSEgai]

Nova and untwinked really don't go together - not only is nova lacking in damage, it places you in harms way constantly to be effective, and you won't have the ideal gear to boost your survivability. Lightning/Chain-lightning may be something to consider, but she doesn't really shine till she's properly geared.