Fire and lightning sorc

[magicrectangle]

My blizzard/nova sorc uses:

full tal's (ptopaz in hat and armor, ist in weapon)
spirit monarch
magefist
2x SoJ
rare boots with frw, fhr, fire and poison resist
2x light skillers, a gheeds, torch, anni, the rest 7% MF scs and some lifers
cta/spirit switch

infinity/fortitude/andy merc (ias/fr jewel in the andy)

I have a hard time imagining a better MF setup than that. Tal's is the perfect balance between offense, defense, and MF. It is a little funny having my merc's gear be 10 times the value of my sorc's gear, but tal's really is that good.


I've been considering (but haven't yet tried) the following pure damage setup:

Nightwing (light facet)
Nova Ormus w/ 15% cold damage (light facet)
Death's Fathom (light facet)
Spirit Monarch
Arach
Magefist
tri-res boots with fhr
2x SoJ
Mara's
Light skillers

I'd be stuck at 60 FHR instead of 86, unless I was willing to add a bunch of FHR charms. Not sure how I feel about that, but the damage would be excellent. The reasoning is pretty simple. %increased cold damage is much better than %increased lightning damage, because light mastery is %increased light damage, but cold mastery is -resist. As such we stack the %increased cold damage gear. However, we use light facets for the opposite reason, -%lightning resist is much better than -%cold resist because light mastery doesn't reduce resists.

The light skillers make more sense than cold skillers for two reasons, one is that blizzard is already ridiculously buff, while nova needs all the skills it can get. The other is again the mastery issue, more points in cold mastery are wasted if you have infinity, but more points in lightning mastery always helps. Nova ormus again because blizzard is ridiculously buff out of the box.

The reason I haven't tried the above yet is that I doubt it stacks up against an equivalently geared pure-light sorc. Blizzard/Nova is amazing in MF gear because you only need 105 FCR, and you don't need a lot of -%light resist. In pure damage gear nothing can really compare to pure light =/

[Krupa]

How is orb/cl more fun than blova? Any build that uses nova is insanely aggressive, and therefor great fun.

As you say, blova is more powerful than orb/cl, but blova also pretty much requires CtA, whereas orb/cl can be done with any old trash gear. I like orb/cl as a low-gear dual spec more than meteorb just because of the sheer volume of fire immunes.

basically because blizzard is a very boring and OP skill imo, specially if u meet a LI and blizzard refuses to hit him. orb has and requires more mobility therefore i like it better than blova.

if you are playing SC, a spirit set up is nice and paired with full tals probably the best u can get when it comes to favoring no element. in hc iŽd use storm shield and max block with thundergods

[zaphodbrx]

I know all about full Tal's, but it would look silly having 2 Tal sorcs, not to mention I don't have extras of some of the parts.
With this intended setup I have +12 all skills without lightning skillers, is that good enough for nova?
I don't have infinity.

[magicrectangle]

specially if u meet a LI and blizzard refuses to hit him

Killing singles is what ice blast is for.

With this intended setup I have +12 all skills without lightning skillers, is that good enough for nova?
I don't have infinity.

On p1, sure.

[zaphodbrx]

Right, I need lots of help with my blizznova sorc. I made a post earlier but it got lost due to forum mishaps.

The main problem I am having is the blizzard -> teleport -> nova -> teleport -> blizzard etc. combos. The videos make it a lot easier than it actually is, I constantly keep hitting the wrong keys, especially if I take my fingers off to pop a full rejuv. Nova is actually a total gamechanger. It is nothing like any of the other sorc skills, to make full use of it I must be standing in the middle of monsters and that's not usually the best place for a sorceress. Nova also takes an alarmingly long amount of time to kill single monsters like champion oblivion knights. In places like ancient tunnels I forget about nova altogether and just use blizzard/iceblast.

The other problem is call to arms. It lasts for a really short while and I am not used to spamming it at all. And I don't think its helping much. 1300 hp without BO, 2000 hp with BO. Maxed allresists.

I'll just list my items
Full Tals ( 4/5 cold facet in lidless eye )
Spirit monarch ( perfect 35fcr )
Call to arms ( +3 BO )
Spirit monarch
Magefist
Stone of jordan ( only one I have )
Nature's peace ( I run WSK/Baal sometimes and the horadrim annoy me )
rare boot with resists frw mf

Merc ( defiance )
eth stone 2900 def
Insight ethereal colossus voulge
Vampire gaze

I also have 4x4 space empty enough space to fit in 2 lightning skillers and still leave enough to pick up items
I think Nova still needs a lot of help. I'm thinking, 4/5 light facets in helm and armor? Or I just keep topazes there..

The other sorc I had I respeced to CL/FO and that was a disaster. CL is a poor skill, bounces around ineffectively.
I have read in some places that lightning skills really need infinity to make them shine, and I can't help thinking that is true.

[magicrectangle]

On p1 you shouldn't need infinity to make nova useable, but lets address the hotkey issues. Here's how my blova sorc is set up:

Home row:
A: Blizzard
S: Teleport
D: Nova
F: Static

Top row:
W: Weapon Switch
E: Telekinesis

Bottom row:
Z: Frozen Armor
X: Battle Command
C: Battle Orders

The above setup makes blizzard->teleport->nova feel very natural, but no matter what setup you use, it is going to take some getting used to.

You're right that killing oblivion knight singles with nova can be a little annoying, but since you've got an insight merc you don't have to worry about the 50 mana/pop for novas, so you can just spam it. The merc also kills them decently quickly if they aren't extra fast / stoneskin.

I, too, use light skillers on my blova sorc. Blizzard is plenty strong without any help, but nova needs all the boosts it can get. I just swapped my merc's infinity for insight and gave a chaos run a try. It was slower but my level 37 nova (plus -15% res from tal's, no facets - topaz topaz ist) was still strong enough to put stuff into hit recovery, making teleporting into packs to spam nova safe. I had almost forgotten how nice it feels to not worry about mana potions, although not nice enough that I won't go back to killing faster with infinity.

edit: you got 2 fhr smalls? or something else bumping you over the 86 breakpoint? Full tal's + spirit leaves you at 80.

[zaphodbrx]

Not sure how you have l37 nova? I have it at 29 ( 6 Tals, 2 spirit, 1 Soj ). How many lightning skillers did you get?
Also, frozen armor? Does it help? I didn't think about fhr really. I find 60 plenty enough.

[magicrectangle]

I keep forgetting you're single player. I have level 37 nova from 6 tals, 2 spirit, 2 soj, 3 torch, 1 anni, 2 skillers, 1 battle command

As for frozen armor, average chance for a doom knight to hit me is 73% without frozen armor, and 59% with frozen armor. (Doom knights are the most common thing I teleport into a big group of to nova, thanks to oblivion knights being mixed with them) It isn't amazing, but for 1 hard point, it is well worth keeping it up. Your focus should be on offense, but for a nova sorc any tankability that you can pick up without sacrificing much offensive power is worth it. Frozen armor and the 86 FHR breakpoint can be gotten at very little cost, so they should be.

Doom knights are 20% resistant to light (5% thanks to tal's), and have 5253-8755 hitpoints on p1. To absolutely guarantee that nova puts them in hit recovery, it must do 8755/12 = 729 damage, 768 raw. With level 29 nova and level 31 lightning mastery you should already be at 1076 - 1458, so you should put doom knights into hit recovery with every nova.

Venom lords are beefier, but have no lightning resist (-15% thanks to tal's). They've got 9555-15167 hitpoints on p1. To absolutely guarantee that nova puts them in hit recovery, it must do 15167/12 = 1264 damage, 1099 raw. So, you're one skill away from guaranteed hit recovery on venom lords too (or maybe already there, since you didn't seem to be counting battle command).

Now obviously champions and uniques throw those numbers higher, so you may need to be somewhat more careful with them. I personally leap before I look, and just spam the rejuv button if it turns out I couldn't tank what I teleported into. I'm not going to claim I've never died doing that, but I'm half way to level 95 just from my solo farming, so I'm obviously not dying very often.

With my level of nova, and infinity, the only thing I really have a problem teleporting into is unique packs of frenzytaurs in worldstone - man those hurt. Oh, and trying to teleport onto and then nova stygian dolls is a bad idea too Nova is amazing against dolls though if you just stand still and let them come to you - nova radius is much bigger than their explosion radius, so they hit recovery lock and die at a safe distance.

I recommend adding as many lightning skillers as you can get your hands on (they're cheap if you don't care about secondary mods - at least on ladder they are), as well as another SoJ. I run nihlathak without nature's peace with this build. I drop myself straight on top of nihlathak's head, nova away the minions, drop a blizzard on his head, and teleport away. The blizzard kills him (if the nova hasn't already), and I usually only take one corpse explosion (he just doesn't have time to cast more before I teleport off). If there's a bunch of vipers around him I just blizzard him (and the vipers) to death from a safe distance.

Socketing 3 lightning facets to help make up for the fact you can't get a torch and anni might not be such a bad idea, it sucks to lose the MF, but it will make you both safer and faster, which makes up for it.

[zaphodbrx]

I've been playing this build for a while, and I have to say, I don't really like it.
I'm playing very aggressively, nova teleport, blizzard, etc, but its really getting me in danger more often than helping. As far as I can see nova can't just be an 'immune killer' , the playstyle must change to the aggressive nova style. Nova doesn't hurt lightning immunes anyway, and its of limited use against ranged enemies, and when the two are combined together ( LI archers in the pits ), it can really suck a lot, especially since I have no max block anymore that I previously had with upped visceretaunt.

Another thing to mention is the CI/LIs . While FI/CIs are just as common, atleast I can static them down to half, now here the merc is needing to do all the heavy lifting, and it takes a while because of no CB. I am considering getting a duress armor for this.

It is an improvement over blizzballer in chaos because of the sheer number of fire immunes, but otherwise I see no particular benefit to the blizznova. It is actually worse in wsk and pits, nova doesn't really shred CIs in the way fireball/meteor would, and the big problem is I can't map nova to the left button unlike fireball.

[sorcerben]

fire sorc rules