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[NDIII]

A quick intro: (re...)making a general-purpose sorc who also does a lot of telemfing and will later do hell telebaaling. Playing hardcore.

1) General build is 20rb and a powerful ES (base mana though) together with maxblock. I have crappy gear at this time (+3skills) and will probably have for some time more which leaves me unable to decide which to max last between cold mastery, icebolt, energy shield, and telekinesis. Planning to max three of these and put all the rest into fourth or something similar. I'm budgeting for lvl90 so 100total skill points (including all the prereqs and the single point must haves). Any suggestions?

2) Should I be always running or walking while out in the field? Teleport is obviously a huge part of my game - and never leaves the right mouse button - both in mfing and general questing/grinding but I also do a fair amount of on-foot travel whether when picking up items, running to the next group of mods, or dancing around ranged mobs' throwies =).

I know that running makes your block work at 1/3rd and your defense is set to zero but you also have a lot more maneuverability with it and it's less tedious to play with. So I don't know whether to walk or run when I'm not teleporting >.>. What do ya'll do?

Thanks for the suggestions =)

[Kalkanor]

i would forget maxing IBolt and maybe max tele
i know most people say only 1 pt in it but youll have ES up so if you get hit you might not have the mana to tele away
but with a maxed tele it only cost 5mana and at slvl25 (or 26) its only 1mana so even after getting hit you can tele away
and with tele being so mana cheap (when at a high slvl) you can tele everywhere so the choice between run or walk is done :P

just my 2cents ^^

[NDIII]

I have lvl16 meditation on my merc so as long as he is alive and I don't get smacked by something bugged (lol...) or get manaburned then I can already tele infinitely. Maxing tele - at least until better gear and respec - instead of icebolt is an interesting thought. While it seems like a blatant waste of points I guess it works as an additional precaution against THAT one time where having just a bit more survivability will mean all the difference. Hmm :P.

Then again if I'll be maxing teleport I might as well respec into lightning to make use of light gcs and all those +light amulets and circlets =U. But my last light died and so I wanted to try something different. Decisions. Decisions.

[Kalkanor]

theres no real need to change to an all light sorc

[DayDream]

Or instead of maxing teleport, never do this, you can get blues =D
1. You want cold mastery high and TK maxed or nearly maxed. Same goes to ES which means you should keep ice bolt low or rest.
Will you be a pure orber?

2. You should be teleport ontop of the items to pick it up because block will still apply =D

You can also switch run/walk by pressing it quick :P

[NDIII]

So here are the latest important news. :P

I respecced into 20ice bolt, 20fo, 20mastery, 20telekinesis, frozen, shiver, warmth, static and all the prereqs (which there are a ton of >_>) now at lvl83. I love it... more anyway.

FO does considerably more damage which is a lot of fun though I'm not satisfied with its end result (considering it is maxed and fully synergized) as it takes 2-3 casts to kill most anything as of and past river of flame even in 1player games. I only have +5 skills and am hoping the damage gets better as I find better gear though I'm somewhat skeptical considering that cold mastery will not endlessly improve your damage with more and more +skills unlike fire or light masteries. Even unsynergized it was godly in norm and nm but in hell it's a whole other story even without considering every second mob being cold immune (including shenk, eldtritch, countess, and like all of act 5?) >_>. I guess I'll see where this ends up.

Reason why I am maxing es last or not at all (currently sitting at 3ish hardpoints and +skills for 55% absorb) is because after some math I realized it doesn't matter if my es absorbs 95%, takes 1000damage and breaks, or if it absorbs 60%, takes 1000damage and breaks =U. The example is a bit exxagerated but it gets the point across. My current 55% es works just as well as my 74% then and I don't see any difference in performance.

I have about 6-10skill points remaining till the low 90s and I'm actually thinking to forget about putting the rest into es and doing some innovation.

In particular:
- putting a point into lightning mastery. Since I have half the lightning tree filled out to get to es, I have a crappy CL with bolt and light synergies doing about 120damage that I cast 9000+ times to help my merc kill cold immunes. Putting a point into mastery will boost the damage after skills by about 100% which will allow cl to do roughly twice as much damage and require me to only cast it 4500 times to help my merc =D. lol (yes, I have a good insight so mana, unlike time and merc's survivability, is not a problem). Not sure what'd I do with the remaining points though.

or
-spending all the rest of the points in the lightning tree to get as much damage as possible out of either lightning or chain lighning though I'm not sure what distribution would be the best setup ~.~.

or
- Going into the fire tree (because as it is my skill points aren't spread out enough yet... =U) to get enchant and power it up as much as I can to help my merc be more effective against ci's). Does fire mastery help enchant?

None of the three ideas are particularly effective or glamorous but since I don't really have any "must have" spending options left I might as well try them out.