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

[Kurumi]

I have gear on and I'm still only geting 2.5k fireball. But then, I haven't maxed out Fireball synergies yet. Don't need to though when I'm just running meph.

[WowBargle]

As an old school hardcore player, and without reading every single post, I have to comment that a Frozen Orb/Hydra sorc gives you something that I didn't see explicitly mentioned very often: control.

Being able to send a FO to chill half the screen and being able to do damage with hydra without getting into the fight adds a lot of value to a HC character. IMO using both of these skills add an invaluable amount of control that you don't typically see people talking about (ie Blizz vs FO comparison).

As an aside I will also mention that my personal feelings about Meteor, and to a lesser extent Blizzard, are that they just aren't that fun to play with; I have much more fun aiming Frozen Orb and Hydra is always a blast.

My $0.02

[hubb]

Like some have pointed out this build is decent in hardcore. IMO this is just about the weakest build for anything else. I dislike meteor(b) too, but fireball/orb is a much better alternative than this. Synergised orb can take care of most creeps, and if you can get the immunes to clump around your merc for a couple of seconds fireball will make short work of them. FB/orb might not be very effective if you're dirt-poor, but then you can always start off with a pure blizz sorc.

I can understand why it is stickied but the OPs post should come with a warning to ward off unexperienced players who don't know better. If you've done the mainstream builds go ahead, but this isn't a MF sorc...

[NoisemakerArrow]

I'm gonna try a hydra/FO sorc with full Tals once.

I have that on SP. Her orb is socketed with a +3/-5 fire facet, the Tal parts with topazes. She does really well. If I could find a SOJ and two Bers, she'd do even better.

Keep a Lower Resist wand on switch.

[Chaosmage]

Someone should figure out how to balance the synergies the best way. This would result in a decent fireball. If i remember correctly for Meteorb its 16 fireball 20mastery/meteor.
Hydra is much more complicated and would take a long time to figure out manually.

[Aska]

Hi everybody,

First i'm french, then please pardon my english.

I made this char because of the 1.13 patch. It's now well know that hydra got a powerup, and that the bolt speed if faster than before.

I used a skill calculator to test the best balance in synergies to get a proper FB and a decent hydra.
The result is that Hydra has to be maxed, Fireball too, but Fire Mastery doesnt need to, 15 points are enough, while I did same with firebolt (15). The reason is simple : for FB, the 14% synergy from firebolt make it fare more useful than the 3% of FM (even if it concerns the whole fire skills).
You certainly lose a little damage with hydra, but you get a far more powerful FB which you can spam while the cooldown of hydra is effective. Thats the way I play it, I put an hydra, then FB non stop, and another hydra as soon as possible, then firing FB. Ect.

I saw in this thread that this sorc is not that well liked, its a build for players who want to be careful with dangerous mobs like thos lightning souls, enchanted/under aura/buffed minions with annoying mod (extra strong, extra fast, fanatism...).

The weakness is in the merc, you have to get a meatwall, else you are more often running than killing...

Please, dont hesitate to correct me !

[CrushingBlow]

It was tough for me to even read farther after seeing "Superior to meteorb" because that's not a fact at all.

With limited points, Orb > Blizzard ... ALWAYS.

With Meteorb you get 3 attacks, Orb/Fireball/Meteor. You should have around a 10k dmg fireball even with limited +skills. Most people see Meteorb and they just assume as it sounds Meteor and Orb.

Fireball is a synergy of Meteor and vice versa, however, Hydra is not a synergy of Fireball. So for 40 points you are just increasing your Hydra damage, meanwhile a Meteorb build would be spending 40 points to beef up 2 very useful skills.

Hydra/Orb you will have your 2 main attacks on a timer. Meteorb gets a spammable fireball in between timered attacks.

This build is fun, but I fail to see how in any way it is superior. Hydra is also inconsistent, some monsters will just run right past it and get to you. The only way to deal with Cold immunes is either to tank them yourself or get a good merc to do it while hydra beats on them. Or else the monsters will be running around and hydra will be missing. You also can't focus on a monster, so if you have a unique pack with an aura, it's hard to kill the unique...your hydras will just be shooting at the lesser ones and there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm in no way knocking the guide though, I love the build and have had a lot of fun with it in the past...but even after playing it many times I always start the ladder season as Meteorb. Hydra looks good on paper until you start trying to kill with it.

With the amount of points you spend in the fire tree, you need your fire skills to be able to dish it out, and Hydra is just too inconsistent for my taste...it's a shame because it's one of my favorite skills in the game.

[Aska]

I once put my hands on a unique helm (dunno which one though) giving a high rate "mob fleeing" mod. I gave it to my merc, and as the mob were fleeing i just had to cast hydra in there way back, exactly at the opposite of my merc. Reaper's toll (decrepify) and the holy frost aura making them very very very (^10) slow to escape, it was very simple and fun to handle.

I think the same (way ?) as you, a meteorb is superior in terms of destruction ability and the safety for doing this. But the hydra build provides the player many new ways to play a sorc, offering interesting strategy by using abandonned mods.

[ehlertd]

made this build, not really from this guide but i thought i would look at it to see if there was anything I missed.

Obviously with both skills timed you lose speed and it may not be the best build... But it sure is fun!!! I don't have any issues running anything with it... and I two different sets based on what I am doing....

I use tals set for mfing since it keeps the damage balanced between both trees... then for leveling/group runs I pull out my main gear

15% cd nightwings with fire facet
20% eschutas with fire facet
CoH
spirit monarch
perf maras
2x soj
arachnids
magefist
war travs/treks
Cta/spirit on switch
3 fire Gcs/3 cold Gcs..
anni
torch
5x 20 lifers

obviously its more geared out then OPs char but with it my hydras hit close to 4k fire damage and i can usually get 5 up so with all 5 up in 1 volley they all put out close to 58k damage... pretty impressive for a 3 headed snake... and then while I wait for the hyras to go down to about 2 left I spam F/O which is hitting about 700s for damage... i need to double check.. throw in my merc using infinity and anything that cant be broken immune wise is raped...

using tals my damage doesnt go down too much about mid 3ks for hydra and 600s for F/O... this build again isnt the best.. but with gear it sure is fun and I think after ladder resets I will make this..

P.S. on a side note if I go into an area that is hot with gloams/black souls I just drop a hydra and tele around around... an advantage i think it has over lite sorc because it takes a second for conviction to kick in which depending on the area could be heavy damage.. idk dont really care...

and when you duel... its not kickass but it does throw people off if they decide to tele around and you plant your turrets around :P especially when they see me wearing a nightwings..

anyways glad to see im not the only one playing this..

[dantein]

Hey, I'm fresh to Fire Sorc

I wonder wouldn't a Orb-Firewall sorc would be better?

Skills distribution:
Cold: Frozen Orb + Mastery + Chilling bolt
Fire: Firewall + inferno + Mastery