Hydra/cold = Best MF sorc. superior to meteorb or bliz/firewall de

[curby]

This got me interested at first, but now I'm not so sure. To begin with, I've never had the problems with the council that you describe. I can usually sidestep them well enough that they're not an issue (they don't even see me, so their hydras aren't a problem either). I agree that if you only have 30 points to put into cold, put them in Frozen Orb vs Blizzard.

I appreciate the safe nature of this, but as someone said, Sin traps are probably better at playing tower defense, with the added benefit of a Shadow Master and Mind Blast to help control crowds and tank with your merc. The big disadvantage there is the lack of teleport, but if the entire point is safe gameplay (e.g. HC) then you shouldn't blindly teleport anyway.

Ultimately, it turns out that Infinity can break most Lightning Immunes, so I'm not really seeing the benefit of dual tree designs for high end/twinked situations. I can see the benefits for untwinked and safe-playing situations though (but again, a Trapsin might be good/better for that ... you can buy cheap +3 claws from Larzuk). Thanks for the writeup. What gear do you use? You only talk about the charms. =)

[CrimsonBishop]

I am a little curious as to why this thread is stickied. How many other people agree that this is the "best MF sorc"?

I would respectfully disagree with the OP, in my experience this is not a very effective build to MF with. I have been trying this build out in single player, and honestly it is the slowest killing dual element build I have tried. Hydra is one of the skills that I always wanted to like, but it just does not compare with other skills considering how many skill points you need to invest.

It seems that this build was built specifically for Meph, yet there are many other builds that would be superior for that one purpose. A single element build will always be faster for just killing bosses. I have always used the "corner or wall trick" that was described and it makes it easy to avoid the council. Even if you did need to kill the council, there are other builds that could do it faster and easier.

It is an interesting alternative to other dual element builds and uses some different tactics, but don't expect it kill very fast.

[Kyrandia]

I am a little curious as to why this thread is stickied.

Me too.

How many other people agree that this is the "best MF sorc"?

Based on the replies in this thread: very few.

It is an interesting alternative to other dual element builds and uses some different tactics, but don't expect it kill very fast.

My thoughts exactly. And since MFing is about killing stuff as fast as possible (while wearing a decent amount of MF gear), it cannot really be called a MF build.

[DudSpud]

I am a little curious as to why this thread is stickied.

It was stickied because the OP brought up an interesting build idea. The ensuing discussion honed the original build idea.

The conclusion of most who posted seems to be that the build is not superior to others, but the whole discussion certainly answered a lot of questions I, and I suspect others, have about the concept.

They stickied a discussion of using Impale in the Amazon subforum, precisely because Impale sucks so bad, everyone should know.

TehSpud

[UberB]

We only need to read the introduction of the OP to get an idea of whether or not his idea is valid.

I played Diablo a lot before there were synergies. I stopped for years, then picked it back up again. Before making my characters, I knew I would need an mf character. Who better than a sorc? After reading the guides, it seemed like the recommended model was meteorb. I made that sorc, and she was not that great. Using orb was fine for any non-cold immune, but for those I was basically screwed. I could tommy-gun fireballs and pound pots, but that is not practical. And meteor was only practical against meph.

It's obvious that he doesn't seem to know that:

1. Orb is a backup, fire is main tree. You can't possibly be screwed for cold immunes unless you messed up on your skill placement. If anything fire immunes should be more of a threat, but orb is still capable of taking them down.
2. Meteor fits in nicely when baal running/killing bosses, just throw one in every 3-4 fireballs
3. Insight exists. Not surprised that you don't know since you didn't play prior to 1.10 did ya?

You can play this sorc untwinked(with stuff you find). If you do this, you will probably do around 1k per hydra’s fire bolt and 1k bliz or 250 orb(which sounds low but is enough).

Ok I hesitate to dismiss your build as "terrible", but those numbers don't come close to any meteorb/blizzballer/CL-orb/any other dual tree build. Without even wearing any gear a Meteorb can easily have 2.5k+ fireball and the same orb damage.

I haven't tried this build. It might be viable in PvM with some good gear (honestly, what isn't?) but the skill selection is very inefficient and certainly isn't the "best MF build".

[curby]

Without even wearing any gear a Meteorb can easily have 2.5k+ fireball and the same orb damage.

Frozen Orb damage is always described as damage per bolt, and I can assure you there's no way you're getting 2.5k per bolt naked.

That said, an unsynergized SL25 Forb (+5 to skills is reasonable for untwinked play) does an average of ~350 per bolt, so the OP's numbers were low.

[sirpoopsalot]

Frozen Orb damage is always described as damage per bolt, and I can assure you there's no way you're getting 2.5k per bolt naked.

I agree that the description of 2500 FO damage is somewhat misleading, but the reality is that result is pretty easy to reach per cast:

350 bolt damage *1.5 for low-investment cold mastery (on rough average) = 525 damage per bolt. If 5 bolts hit at 525 damage, that's 2625 damage.

And those numbers are pretty low in reality - you could easily get more benefit from Cold Mastery or getting more bolts to hit (or obviously more +skills/synergies for FO) and push the effective damage up quite a bit higher.

[UberB]

Frozen Orb damage is always described as damage per bolt, and I can assure you there's no way you're getting 2.5k per bolt naked.

That said, an unsynergized SL25 Forb (+5 to skills is reasonable for untwinked play) does an average of ~350 per bolt, so the OP's numbers were low.

Sorry, I meant to say that a Meteorb could have (without gear) 2.5k Fireball damage (compared to the OP's 1k hydra untwinked) and the same FO damage as the OP (250). So basically Meteorb has a lot more damage on the fire side and still the same damage on the cold side.

[Ghoulz]

The thing I liked about hydra over meteor is that you can just spam a few hydras ahead before moving foward and luring monsters into a fully powered hydra. You have to encounter monsters first before casting meteor and that doesn't always turn out well.

[bullsquid]

my sorc is a cb/orb variant...maybe not the best but surley more fun then fireball