Meteorb Sorc in Classic Pros / Cons

[Amoz]

Hello All,

I'm trying to set up a forge-mule rushing character as my first D2 Classic character. I started making a Fireball-Orb Sorc before really reading into the different playstyle and strategies associated with D2 classic. I'm looking for some opinions and ideas to improve this build.

Here is my build plan:

15 Firebolt
20 Fireball
10 Meteor
20 Frozen orb
10 Teleport
1 Static field
1 Shiver armor
1 Warmth
1 Fire mastery
1 Cold mastery
10 points in prerequisites

The idea is that I would use fireball as my primary with FO and Static to deal with fire immunes. With gear the fireballs should hit for ~2k which should be sufficient for hell and Teleport would cost 12 mana / cast. I haven't decided if I'm going to put the rest of my skill points into fire master or cold mastery, some feedback on that would be appreciated too.

Ideal gear would be:

Spectral shard
Magefist
+skill / +resist ammy
2x SoJ
Tearhaunch or decent rare boots
FCR / FHR / +resist for everything else

If anyone has any better gear suggestions please add it to your response.

PS: I'm finding classic a lot more challenging than LoD which is a welcome change. Iwin hammerdins lose their lustre after a while.

[WarlockCC]

For a rush sorc, I'd just use a orb with max tele, but that's because I'm really bad at finding the way down.
But I'm sure the sorc you have planned will work just as well, probably even better, since you can kill cold immunes in Hell.
Note that even with a Orb only sorc, you can rush others to act 3 Hell, since the few cold immunes you meet up with, can be skipped/left alive. Like for example Coldworm the burrower. Just be quick with the rushee to open the box, grab the staff en head back to town.

It could simply be coincidence for me, but to me it seems there are less cold and lightning immunes then there are cold and fire immunes.

[KillaMike]

if you making a classic rusher, what i would strongly recomend for a rusher would be a single tree sorc.

like warlockCC said, there are little of ice immune ( beside act 2 viper, ONLY ice immune :crazyeyes: ) but blizz should be what you after.

reasons why: 20 blizz, 20 ice mastery, 20 ice blast, 20 teleport, dunno how many pre requested = about ~ 1.5k - 2k blizz dmg, what owns in hell, i am level 68 ( before stoped, and restarted ) and i could do classic rush for about 30 -45 mins because i took time at buying mana pots. the best gear that you after is:

Shard
Twitchroe
rare fcr ring / res ring
nice helmet with res
res shield
nice boots ( tear haunch are not best as my choice.... ) res would be nicer
frostmore for mana ( blizz has time limite, + 50% fcr from shard is good enough to tele fast in cs )
amu: RES! no need for + skills
eyeless wall as shield is quite what you should aim for :wink:

what you can see, this gear has no + skills, but you have about 60+ block, what rocks + low str bild ( like about 35-45 str ) 51 dex is a must ( -,- )and it owns cs, like if you do cs, your only problem is ice immune.

if there is going to be a person like saying: omg cant hit a non moving monster, solution: hit with ice blast ones, and blizz applyes to monster

you could go for pure dmg, but i would not recomend it, because aa rusher mostly TELEPORTS.

statics....... with this blizz, i didnt use statics, because my blizz worked faster in hell.....

i think it is a nice build, and it works like: Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet

Mike

[Amoz]

Warlock: Thanks for your comments, one more question. The build I have laid out above takes me to LV 81, after 81 should I be putting my points into FM, CM or Tele? After reading the two responses I suspect teleport would be my better choice.

Mike: I like your idea of loading up in one tree because it helps you do a lot more damage, but I don't want to have to "run away" from cold immune / resistant monsters. At least with a dual tree spec I can deal with act2 easily and still do decent damage. This build relies on +skill because there are only so many skill points to be had and they get distributed among 2 different skill trees. I may decide to make a full cold sorc for my second char but for now I'm going to stick with the cold / fire hybrid. Thanks for your input!

[Akse]

I've never been able to make a satisfiable classic sorc with dual tree spec.

Its always too weak, mostly because we don't get +15 skills from gear.. we get 0-4 or so. 1 tree is strong enough, then you just have to skip the immunes and kill the required monsters if immune with static and lightning or something.

[WarlockCC]

I've not made a succesfull(or as Akse puts it, satisfactory) dual tree sorc, so I can't really advise you on that.
My Orb sorcs do have a point in static, one in lightning mastery and the rest in nova, but I don't consider them dual tree, since I don't waste time killing off the vipers. Killing vipers with a sorc is generally a bad idea if you ask me, so I just teleport past them.

I suppose if I wanted to make a kind of dual tree sorc, I'd go for a orb combined with a rogue bow enchantress. No shield, but at least it's something different and you won't need to pot all the time.

[Krupa]

here i present my current rushing sorc. she´s actually a dual element sorc with a third element to kill those much hated Fire/Cold-immunes. i was able to solo with her from normal to hell CS (which is possible with her...but takes ages)

1 warmth (me: 2 - by mistake)
4-8 fire bolt (me: 4)
20 fireball
1 fire mastery
8 static
2 nova
1 light mastery
10 tele
1 cold armors
20 forzen orb
10-14 cold mastery (me: 12)

equip:
shard
face of horror
twitch
mages/frosts (with frosts u´ll need one or two fcr rings)
rest was rare itmes too get max res on hell, decent fhr and good block (helps a lot with vipers in hell)

i wouldn´t suggest sojs because u´ll loose all the possible adds on ur rings like life, mana, str, dex and fcr. if u want skills, the easiest way is imo the amu. this might not be the most frequently used built, but it is very effective, u won´t need to run from any monster while rushing (except once i met a L/F immune which had high light res...couldn´t kill it)

stats str/dex to use equip
~500 mana
rest life

i have amazing 275 (:D) orb dmg, 575 fireball dmg, 480 mana and 710 life on lvl 78 without +skills
FO and FB main skills ofc. tele costs ~ 15 mana (some pots needed ;))
all those F/C-immunes tanked, staticed down and finished them with nova. worked pretty well for me. i´ld put a few pointe into static so u have a bit higher range. this is absolutely needed if u want to kill in hell fast without the help of a second char.

with this setup i rushed 7 mules at once to act 3 hell, i suggest u practice before u try that tho ;) classic is really different from LoD

[fredsta54]

with maxed charged bolt, light mastery and synergy, you will be able to kill any cold immune, 20 orb and 1 cold mastery with a few +skills will still kill fast enough in hell. i like fire skills but in hell its ridiclious how many immunes there are.






Fred

[Amoz]

I re-evaluated the build and decided to roll with a frozen orb/firewall sorc.

20 Frozen orb
20 Cold mastery
20 Ice bolt
15 Teleport
10 Firewall
1 Static field
1 Warmth
1 Fire mastery
1 Shiver armor
1 Lightning
1 Lightning mastery
9 Prerequisites
@ Level 88

I tried out a FB/Met/Orb on single player and I found myself using FO a lot more than FB and Met, so I decided to try out a FO/FW. FW is great in the sense that it stacks, so even at 10 points it still does half decent dmg when you stack it on a stationary mob. With this build i can take out anything in the game, albeit dual fire/cold immunes are a P.I.T.A. because you still need to static them down to a sliver of life then waste them with weak lightning or melee *lol*

[Krupa]

i would slow down on the cm and ice bolt and skill ice bolt as last skill if i were u, because u will cs in hell for a year before u hit lvl 88