Question About Bliz's effectiveness VS FO in dual element build

[Cozmo]

Hi guys,

I know that FO's damage on paper is extremely misleading from personal experience. How would Blizzard work as a replacement for FO if one only spent the same amount of points in it? So how would 20 pts into Bliz + 5-10 in CM compare to 20 into FO + 5-10 into CM? Would non-cold immunes die faster with Bliz or is FO always the way to go because of the way that damage is dealt? I'm talking general PVM here, nothing specific like Meph or Pits.

Thanks!

[Scudstorm]

FO would be better.

[stephan]

With ~20 points FO is better

With ~40-50 points they are about equal.

With 60 or more points Blizzard is better.

[Cozmo]

Wow, it takes that many points to make a comparable Blizzard? Glad I went with FO then. Thanks for the info.

[Eilo Rytyj]

Yep, 26 points is all you need for a viable Frozen Orb on any Sorceress. 20 in the actual skill, 1 in Cold Mastery, and the prerequisites.

Also consider the way the skill works, Blizzard covers a very small area which enemies can (and usually will) run away from to get to you, then there's the longer cooldown of the skill. Frozen Orb can be aimed so that the central orb will "explode" on top of a poor sod causing 16 bolts worth of damage in one hit, as well as those that hit during the orb's "flight". Not to mention it's satisfying to take down enemies in pursuit by perfectly timing and aiming an Orb to explode directly in their path.

[Cozmo]

Yeah, I've used FO on tons of characters, so I was thining about going with Bliz for a change of pace. FO also starts to lose steam midway through Hell (takes a 3/4 casts to kill some normal enemies in Plains of Despair 1player), so I was hoping Bliz would kill a bit faster. Sounds like the answer is a resounding "no". ;)

Thanks for advice, guys.

[Zaneus]

Blizz does kill a lot faster, but you have to dump all your skills into blizz and its synergies. Frozen orb works well if you're doing a dual tree build. I can't remember the thread, but it was worked out that at 4000-5000 damage per shard, and two blizzards casted over eachother will cause 25k damage per second. Haven't bothered checking the numbers, but in game it seems about right.

Playing a blizz sorc plays much differently to a frozen orb sorceress. FO is more 'point and shoot' where as placing a blizzard takes a little time to get used to. My pure blizz sorc was doing 6000-6300ish damage with full tals and had no trouble soloing any part of hell herself. My merc supplied the killing for cold immunes. Using a non eth insight and a fort to help carry his damage up to a nice level.

Keeping glacial spike on your left click works wonders. Generally if a monster pack is walking towards you, cast blizzard between them and you, wait for the pack to be totally under the blizzard and cast glacial spike to freeze them all. Then recast blizzard over the top of the old blizzard and they're dead in no time.

downside is sometimes blizzard fails to hit monsters. Especially in tight areas where monsters are against a wall. Glacial spike will do around 1500 damage and iceblast will do close to 4000, so if monsters manage to evade blizzard then a few casts of your choice of a secondary spell will make short work of them.

But, i've been rambling. In a dual element build, which is what you're concerned with, blizzard just won't compare.