Auraceress: The New Breed of Sorceress (Theory)

[Nergal]

Introduction: Well, I've been thinking of noncookie-cutter builds that would be FUN but also have a decent amount of damage. No one wants a new build that does 1 damage per hit. So when making my Infinity Boltress I decided to throw on a few pieces of gear for teh lulz. And thus a new breed of Sorceress was born.


Pros of using Auras on Sorc:
Style points for not being cookie cutter
Constant damage source
No immunities (if Conv breaks or you use Orber)
Overall fun to use

Cons of using Auras on Sorc:
AR is somewhat low (Enchantress)
Conviction won't break all immunities (?)

First off, let me state that there are several paths you can take (I assume most of which have lower damage output). I'm going to go over 2: The Enchantress and The Orber.

Enchantress:
Since we're using Infinity, we won't be using max block. This means that we only need enough dex for our gear and nothing more.

STR: Enough for gear
DEX: Enough for gear
VIT: Nothing
ENE: Everything

Why base? You may ask. Well, let's get something straight. This Sorceress abuses elemental damage, not physical. Yes, Infinity gives a nice ED% Boost but it isn't necessary to go and grab a Battle Scythe (Fairly low reqs at 82/82) and use that. I personally use my regular old Scythe.

Gear:

Ahh, what makes this beauty work. I'll put the gear and reasons why.

Weapon: Infinity War Scythe | Low reqs, Conviction Aura, Lightning Pierce, Nice range
Shield: N/A
Helm: Dream | Res, Holy Shock Aura, FHR, Def, Vit, Mana
Armor: Dragon | Holy Fire Aura, STR boost, all stats boost, Def
Ring: Stone of Jordan | Skill, Mana
Ring: Stone of Jordan | Skill, Mana
Belt: Nosferactu's Coil | IAS, STR, Slow Target
Gloves: Rare <preferred stats> | IAS (20%), Dex, Res, FHR
Boots: Waterwalk (or rares with res) | Dex, Life, FRW
Ammy: Metalgrid | AR, Def, Res
Switch: CTA/Lidless | BO, BC
Charms: 9x Light Skillers (one with 12% FHR), Torch/Anni, 9 Fine SC of Balance and 1 Fine SC of Vita

But of course, that makes our Enchant weak. So here's pre-buff gear:
+3 Fire Skills/Enchant/Fire Mastery Orb
Lidless Wall
Arachnid Mesh
Magefist
Dual SoJ's
+3 Fire ammy
+3 Fire Circlet
Ormus' Robes (+3 Enchant)
9x Fire Skillers

I don't have all of the above, but I used Enigma and I did 17k-44k damage and I didn't use any shield/+3 Ammy

Yes, you read that right. 17k-44k damage. Impressive eh?

Skills:

Ahh, skills. This should be preeety obvious.
20 Warmth
1 Firebolt
1 Fireball
20 Enchant
20 Fire Mastery
20 Telekinesis
1 Teleport
1 Charged Bolt
1 Lightning
1 Chain Lightning
4 Energy Shield
20 Lightning Mastery

The levtover points could be used for Inferno, Blaze, Firewall, or any of the cold armors.

Quick to finish and efficient to use. AR is low at 6.7k and res is low (10) so you might need to grab some res here rather than SoJ's


Note: The 30% IAS is NECESSARY to hit a breakpoint, and it is quite useful as it changes your attacks from 1.7 attacks per second to 2.2 (14 frames to 11 frames)

Merc: Though I originally had no want for a merc (and is why I didn't mention one in the Orber section), I must mention the greatness of the Faith merc. Fanat will boost your IAS signifigantly, and will bash you through to 9 frames per attack. Of course you'd gear her as a standard merc, no extra 'percautions' here. I'd recommend Cold Arrow though, for the tri-elementalist beauty.

The Orber:

Again, Inifinty means no blocking. Also no Spirit. Lowers our skills, but oh well.

STR: Enough for gear (base)
DEX: Enough for gear (base)
VIT: Everything
ENE: Nothing

Gear:
I'm mainly swapping a few things, nothing more.

Ring: Stone of Jordan | +skill, Mana
Ring: Stone of Jordan | +skill, Mana
Gloves: Magefist | +Fire, Mana regen, FCR
Belt: Arachnid Mesh | +skill, FCR, mana%
Ammy: Crafted Ammy <Preferred stats> | 30% FCR (10% + Magus), +2 Sorc, res, str, dex, life

Skills:
Warmth: 1
Fire Mastery: 20
Telekinesis: 1
Teleport: 1
Lightning Mastery: 20
Ice Bolt: 20
Ice Blast: 1
Glacial Spike: 1
Frost Nova: 1
Blizzard: 1
Frozen Orb: 20
Cold Mastery: 1+

Leftover points could be thrown in cold armors

Cold Mastery isn't highly needed due to Conviction. However, if we pretend that the Conviction got the monster's res down to 95%, a high level Cold Mastery would be fantastic. Really it all comes down to preference.

I suppose that is about it for this guide of sorts, but it is more of a theory. I need to do a lot more testing. Though I don't post here much anymore, I just had the idea and thought I'd share. More of a lurker, what can I say?

Anyways, any feedback would be greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns post below and I'll try to help.

Thanks (so far) to Pyrotechnician and Clervis for their advice for gear.

[Pyrotechnician]

I like the idea of weilding the infinity yourself, it makes it so you don't have to rely on having a merc around, but the trade offs for self weilding the infinity may not be worth it. The real downfall is that infinity has no IAS built into it and your not making use of zeal or bear form like most of the normal melee sorc builds so your attack is going to be amazingly slow. As is the point with most aura based builds, the idea is to hit fast, and hit fast continously. This simply won't happen in this case, and I have a feeling this is going to make you incredibly squishy because you most likely will be easily swarmed and put into hit recovery in a lot of situations.

Couple suggestions if you do want to go with a build like this:
-Don't make the infinity in a scythe, even though they have low requirements they have terrible range. Since you will need the faster base I highly recommend making it in a war scythe, sure it might cost you a few stat points in vit, but the extra range will do you a lot of good.
- Get some FHR somewhere in your build, with no shield your going to be hit, and be hit a lot. I think dream is the only thing you mentioned that has FHR in your gear, make sure you get to a decent breakpoint. (Easiest way without sacrificing gear choices is obviously FHR skill charms
- Consider using a partial energy shield, sorcs return on investment in vitality is terrible, where as mana return is great, with max warmth it will be hard to run out of mana and will keep you out of hit recovery more often. Dump spare skill points into telekensis instead of the armors and use a memory prebuff, should be decent enough to get you by.
- Most of your damage will come from the dream synergy, if I had to choose I would definately pick lightning skillers over fire skillers. The fire skillers are best really only for prebuff, lightning skillers will get you a lot higher return on damage through dream and the -elr on infinity.

[Clervis]

So, I guess the benefit of actually equipping Infinity is that one you don't have to worry about your merc kicking the bucket, and two, you can take advantage of the -45-55% elr. Of course this comes at a steep cost, all the great +skills, fcr alternatives. If you want to further make her a melee character, there are even bigger sacrifices, no shield for a character that just naturally sucks defensively (horrendous breakpoints). Of course she makes up for this with pretty looking damage numbers, but if you try her in hell, I'm sure you'll find that she gets chewed up way too fast to properly deliver it. I really think, as Pyro said your best bet is to invest a lot into energy shield. She still won't be able to handle too much before she needs to stop and take a breather, while warmth recharges, but this way lack of resists won't mean suicide. Also, you don't need as much AR because conviction gives -83% enemy defense, so grab some SoJs. You'll also find that Dragons damage isn't that much compared to the benefit of Enchant, so go ahead and swap that out for a high defense option (maybe an eth gladiator's bane). You know on second thought a high PDR/MDR build with a relatively low energy shield might work for you. You'd take lots of hits but you'd negate so much of the damage that you wouldn't be put in hit recovery (probably your biggest weakness, honestly). Maybe you should try out a Sol'd Gbane, Sorc's ammy of life everlasting, two dwarf stars, and say like a slvl 8 ES. You'd cancel.so much damage (52 phys, 50 mag) and blue tank the rest that the huge damage in flow would be very muted and not enough to warrant more FHR. With a giant thresher (much better range than the thresher) a faith merc, ias gloves, and nosferatus, you could hit a 9 frame attack which isn't too bad. With this gear, she'd still put out some ridiculous damage I'm sure but she'd be able to take more than one monster or ranged opponents without crapping her pants.

[Nergal]

Clerv: No offense, but dropping Dragon's makes her a Dream Sorc with Infinity being wielded. Not really thinking that will be 'new' or as good as a Dream Sorc, as you drop a shield for Infinity. With the skill points left over, I could make a ES hybrid. I'd just throw the extra points (that aren't in Telek) into ES. I can also pre-buff with any of the armors, I just have to grab a +3 <armor of choice> ammy with Cold/Sorc skills. True it wouldn't be godly by any chance, and certainly not as good as a Gbane with the same armor, but I want to keep dragon for now.

Dream has 30% FHR, meaning I need 56% more. If my rare gloves have 10, there's 40%. We'll assume I use Waterwalk too. Charms are probably going to be my best bet, say, 1 Skiller and 9 SCs. Unless I get rare boots with FHR or something. I do like the idea of a PDR Sorc like this though, I may play with that later.

Pyro: After discussing FHR above, I'll go into Synergies. I completely forgot about that, and I should have probably swapped but oh well :P I'll go import my Lightskillers now and see the damage difference. I ended up with a Slvl 11 ES, and all the rest of my points were used (Warmth, Telekinesis, Enchant, etc.) But after swapping to pre-buff gear (and using +2 All or sorc rather than +3 fire for ammy/armor) I had a Slvl 25 ES which is a lot better. (80% sorb) I'll go ahead and add that now. (after it went to Slvl 34 when I buffed with Memory) Do I want to split into Vita/Ene? Or just go pure Ene and spam pots? I'll pump Ene and see what comes of it. I used a Scythe because I had an Infinity Scythe from my Infinity Boltress, I can go look for a War Scythe though, shouldn't take too long.

[Pyrotechnician]

If you really want to go out, yes, you could do a full prebuff setup including all of your +fire skill gear then cast enchant, switch all that out with +electric gear and memory staff cast ES, then go to your normal main gear of infinity etc, keeping the electric skillers in your inventory for the boost to the holy shock damage. The only thing I don't like about this is that it takes an absurd amount of time, and unless your running multiple targets or doing multiple quests it isn't worth it.

The ES thing, its really a matter of preference, manaburn monsters will stop you right in your tracks if you go full energy, but other then that you will be able to tank without a doubt (disregarding poison since that goes right through ES). My partial energy sheild build is split between vit and energy to the point where if I do come across a mana burn monster I can afford to take a hit or two before bitting it, there is nothing more frustrating then dropping in a couple hits to me. Maybe if you do go full energy, get a decent amount of +life on your main charms so that you can take the couple hits. Its been debated many times, its something your going to have to find the balance in.

Also, if you do nothing else get at least the one point in the first frozen armor unless you feel like getting a wand with the second one, the armors really are a one point wonder when you consider limited skill points with a melee sorc.

[Mrjones]

Im thinking about doing this but heres how I would do it.
dream helm
hand of justice
2 skill fcr ammy or maras
Dragon armor
dream shield
archnid belt
magefist
rare boots or just whatever I can find thats good
2 fcr mana/hp resist rare rings

Have conviction on a holy freeze merc just to have all 4 auras

20 lightning mastery
20 fire mastery
20 FO
10+ ice bolt
10+cold mastery

[Clervis]

Clerv: No offense, but dropping Dragon's makes her a Dream Sorc with Infinity being wielded.

Ok. Look at the numbers. Of your 17K-44K damage, Holy Fire will supply you with 671-788. That's not even a 2.4% increase in damage, for an otherwise crappy armor (which should be the one place a melee sorc should bulk up). I'm just saying, aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics really just cheapens a build.