FW/GS or IB sorc.. why not?

[Stratovarious]

Well...with the new patch, I was thinking of builds for the sorc, and I started a Frozen Orb / Fire Wall hybrid. I don't like it. The two spells seem to work too inefficiently with one another.
So I am thinking of a respec to Firewall and either GS or IB. Probably leaning toward GS for CC as my FW can do damg. for me.
The frozen bound enemies just seem like they would work better in conjunction with FW.

Why haven't I see many builds like this? It seems pretty solid to me..
Any critiques on the plan? or reasons it wouldn't work as well as I am thinking?

[Norrit]

Freeze duration would suck in hell, and you can't freeze cold immune monsters in place so your firewall isnt as effective.

that's not to say "it won't work", i'm only showing why your idea isn't all the rage you're thinking.

Assuming a level 30 glacial spike for example, if you also max blizzard (synergy that adds freezing length) you'll have a 8.6 second freeze duration which would be cut to 1/4 in hell if i'm not mistaken (leaving monsters frozen for a little over 2 seconds)

Assuming a level 30 ice blast with maxed glacial spike (+10% freeze lenght per level) you get an impressive 26.4 seconds freeze duration (again cut to 1/4 in hell) which freezes monsters for about 6.6 (!!!) seconds in hell mode

so Ice Blast would be the skill of choice for you to freeze them in place, then kill with your firewall. except Ice Blast is single-target only, being much inferior to glacial spike when it comes to freezing a whole crowd in place so you can own them with your firewalls.

hope that helps!

[kardinaal]

Everybody forgets Cold mastery... Cold mastery drops cold resistance, the less cold resistance the longer the freeze time, so with a high lvl CM your freeze time is longer. You can also reset the freeze timer by shooting Glacial Spike again in the firewall casting delay.

Also, cold immune monsters are immune to all cold spells, so why factor them in while choosing which cold spell to use? It's not like a FO build can deal with cold immunes better, no?

At the moment I've got a meteor spiker sorc (GS to freeze and meteor to kill). First sorc where meteor is actually effective (compared to meteorb where I find myself using fireball in stead of meteor). Ofcourse I still have FB as a valuable backup attack vs cold immunes, but my main source of damage is the meteor. Halfway through nightmare and having a blast with it.

[Norrit]

I said "cold immunes" but what I meant was "cannot be frozen monsters" (like frenzytaurs). my bad. as for cold mastery, I wasn't even aware of cold mastery, how much does it increase the cold lenght exactly?

even if it does increase the lenght as you said, you'll be stretching your points too thin as you need to put 20 to firewall, 20 mastery, 20 warmth (as synergy) and then 1 point glacial spike/ice blast, freeze lenght synergy (you'll want 20 points there most likely to ensure enough duration in hell) and then cold mastery.

[minamo]

you know, you can work with 15/15 divides to instead of 20

this build is possible, still meteorb is a better choice.

[kardinaal]

I said "cold immunes" but what I meant was "cannot be frozen monsters" (like frenzytaurs). my bad. as for cold mastery, I wasn't even aware of cold mastery, how much does it increase the cold lenght exactly?

even if it does increase the lenght as you said, you'll be stretching your points too thin as you need to put 20 to firewall, 20 mastery, 20 warmth (as synergy) and then 1 point glacial spike/ice blast, freeze lenght synergy (you'll want 20 points there most likely to ensure enough duration in hell) and then cold mastery.

Well, cold mastery doesn't increase freeze lenght directly. The actual freeze length is dependant on the cold resistance of a monster. The freeze length displayed is for a monster with 0% cold resistance. This becomes -100% (the minimum for monsters) above lvl 17 CM, and freeze lenght will be longer. I'll see if I can find the exact formula, I asked a question about it about a week ago.

[Stratovarious]

This build is real tough, I tried it in hell, and to rush normal. Theres no real AOE on the glacial spike in hell mode because every other monster is cold immune, fire immune, or both. Having Firewall as main against cold immunes is a terribly complicated procedure to execute.

Not a fan of this build.

[kardinaal]

I found the post where Onderduiker explained the relation between cold res and freeze length:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...8&postcount=10

So basically, 50% cold res means half freeze duration, -100% cold res means double freeze duration.


Also, I can imagine a FW sorc heaving problems with this vs. cold immunes. But that's cause a FW sorc has no backup attack. Meteor and GS are better together, because you can allways go back to spamming fireball for cold immunes. With firewall your backups are blaze and inferno, which are equally useless against anything. No matter what cold skill you use, monsters that can not be frozen mean problems for a fw sorc.