I think I am going to go with Fire Wall and Fireball. Fire Wall does great damage, but it’s not a left click spell either, has a fairly significant casting delay, and causes more lag than almost any other spell in the sorc tree. But did I mention how awesome the damage was?
I love my Glacial Spike, but I want to employ skills from other trees due to monster resistance. A few poins in Fire Mastery should up the damage to make it more scalable, too.
I’m sorry, but I love this game. How many other computer games combine the scientific rigor of character creation and development, the tactics of real time armchair combat, and the sheer carnage of Diablo 2? It’s a work of genius.
That said, I assume you’ve all heard the buzz about World of Warcraft, right?
For Jeff Olsen: if you didn’t already catch up on this, all the rune words work in SP and Open now. As well, crafted items work, BUT the recipes have changed.
For updated recipes, check out spirea.lurkerlounge.com. I can confirm that at least the HitPower Shield recipe and the Stealth runeword work offline.
On strats: I have a previously cold lvl 48 sorc who’s concentrating in thunderstorm, frozen orb and (as of last night) hydra now, and is ripping stuff up. I still cry about all that waste in Glacial Spike (it’s lvl 15 and practically useless; there was no need to nerf it so badly) Also, I have a lvl 58 fend/furyzon. Lightning Fury rawks
Assassin (only lvl 20 so far) is fun, but I still prefer my ammy. We’ll see, though.
I am glad I only have two points invested in Glacial Spike. I was irritated enough that I had to sock the second one, but I was really getting perforated in Act III and was going through too much mana too quickly. Blizzard changed all of that.
So you fire up a Thunderstorm as a support spell? Aren’t the bolts a little slow, though?
I don’t use it for hitpower, more to wear off the little brats (hawks, flayers and imps) that run around and I don’t like keeping track of. Also is useful when you run into fire/cold immunes and don’t want to get close enough for SF. And I keep a lightning mage as backup. (my sf is low, I’ll pop some more points into it once I get hydra up) I don’t find the bolts too slow, really, frozen orb slows em all down enough to keep stuff managable.
Finally I can play her again. After I patched to 1.08, she was almost totally unplayable (was D2Classic) and I think for those 2-3 months I got her all of one level. I don’t like mindless droning in the canyon of magi, trying to get points because I keep dying in act III NM (damned council).
I posted an update on rune words a while back. I did some further checking at the site where I got my info and found that they hadn’t yet updated all info regarding v1.09. My sorc has an Iron Wolf merc, he has Stealth in a field plate. I’m currently looking for a good staff to make Leaf.
Thunderstorm isn’t worthless? News to me; maybe I should invest more points in it. I currently use Chilling Armor instead, quite useful against imps in Act V. Slows 'em down for the merc to handle.
If you gotta drone, you may get more bang for your buck doing Act 4 on Normal. The drops are usually pretty good, too. Alternatively, join a large server and shred up Duriel a few times. His drops have sucked for me, but the xp is great for relatively little effort.
Don’t have to drone anymore, thankfully, I beat ActIV NM with her before upgrading to the expansion… now I have to do it all over again don’t have access to Hell anymore.
I haven’t gone wrong with it yet. Just wonder where the guy finds the time for it.
Jeff, as for Thunderstorm, it’s useful for finishing off things cheaply more than taking them down. Ie. orb an area, most chars remaining might be killed by, say, an icebolt, but TS would take care of them without expending more mana.
and sorry I hadn’t noticed the followup on rune words, just thought I’d mention it in case it was useful (spirea’s site is the only one I’ve seen updated with the crafted items recipies so far btw, arreat summit and diabloii.net don’t have them yet.)
Actually, Chain Lightning gets an extra hit every five levels now. So, at level 5, it hits 6 targets, at 10 it hits 7, at 15 it hits 8, and at 20, 9.
General stuff:
My sorc uses Fireball, Glacial Spike and Chain Lightning as her left-click spells. For right-click, she primarily uses Frozen Orb, Hydra or Firewall. Thunderstorm is always on (note that it also strikes more frequently at higher levels, in addition to the higher damage).
I got really tired of being one-hit-killed with previous sorceresses, so this one’s been working out at the gym; she has a vitality of around 130 and is just shy of 600 life (she also has around the same amount of mana - a deliberate strategy, since the “life drain” curse that the Succubi from Act V and Baal use only gets cast on you if you have more mana than life). She has survived numerous situations which would have killed lesser sorcs outright
She recently (last night) found a +2 to Sorc skills orb that also gave +1 to Meteor. She did not previously have Meteor; after putting but one point into it, she now has it at skill level 8 (+1 from Tarnhelm, +1 from Magefist, +3 total from orb, +1 from Sigon’s Guard, +1 from rare amulet). Not a bad investment
She’s also wandering around with two negative resistances (cold and lightning), but it hasn’t proven to be a major problem. She does have a triple-diamond shield as a back up shield should it become important, though.
My sorc, as screwed as she is in the spell department, has got some GREAT stuff. Her Mageplate with 3 Perfect Skulls, and a crapload of mana, means that she never, EVER runs out of mana. Her orb gives +2 to all skills, a bunch of resistances, AND about +90 to mana. Her shield gives about +24 to all resistances, without any Diamonds in it. Her circlet kicks ass, her amulet kicks ass… I just screwed up the skill distribution. So I’m probably just going to use her as a high-level mule for my next sorc.
I’m wondering… I see some sorcs running around with a maxed-out Nova. Is that worth it? I always hate having to get in close to hurt an enemy.
Nah, maxed out Nova isn’t that great. I think the way to go with Sorc is Frozen Orb and Hydra, with Thunderstorm backup. (Arrrrg! I’m wishing I hadn’t wasted about 10 points in Glacial Spike…) Letting Nova do it’s work is fine until you get to those little fetishes in Act III. They come in fast and hit hard. I HATE them.
My lv. 59 Sorc is running around looking for Hel, Lum and Fal runes to stick in a 3-socketed Ornate Plate to make the Lionheart. Of course, she needs about 60 more strength to wear it too… Right now she’s just heading into Act III in Hell mode. Her staff is the Razorswitch, the unique Jo Staff (which I think is just about the best unique staff period). I have a lev. 36 paladin who’s a Thorns/Zeal paladin who has some nice stuff. I’m gonna start my barbarian over though, cause his skill dist. rots. Too bad my connection sucks too badly to actually play on one of the Realms without getting lag-deathed every ten seconds. All my characters are stored on my computer, so if anyone ever wants to get an IP game going, I’m up for it.
Also, I could use some advice on developing my lv. 3 Druid, Chimaera. Thanks!
Invest heavily in Werebear and Maul, and put some in Hunger for life & mana stealing. Attack speed slows in bear form so he should carry a fast attack weapon in order to counteract this. My druid currently has a hawk helm with +2 to Werebear, giving him 4 in all; he had no problem until he faced Diablo. I also invested some in Werewolf and Feral Rage for when swiftness is needed.
Wolves can be used as support but mine usually end up as decoys. Vines are useful, especially Carrion and Solar Creeper. Coding has been changed so the marks they leave behind will disappear eventually. Can’t wait for Level 30 so I can summon the Spirit of Thorns and Grizzlies.
My main offensive spell is Volcano for now and Tornado on occasion. Will probably switch to Hurricane and Armageddon when available.
You do not understand the mental strife I’ve gone through…
I have been looking for parts of Natalya’s set for a while for my assassin. I have the armor, and I had JUST traded for the helm. Well, the helm was on my paladin. I went into a game to transfer my parts. I dropped them in act 2, when the rest of the players were in act 5. I dropped Natalya’s helm, the Immortal King’s helm, a couple charms and jewels, and a 3 amulets that do +2 to Necro, Sorc, and Druid skills.
Then, I lose connection to battle.net. The realm had gone down. ALL my good items I had dropped, lost forever! GAAAAH!!!
I feel your pain. While I’ve never lost stuff in that quantity before, I’ve lost a lot of things one thing at a time. It’s a chance we all take when we’re transferring items between characters. hopefully, my problems with that will end soon. A second comp and a second game disc and ::fingers crossed:: I’ll never lose an item in transfer again.
Monster, you don’t say what realm you’re on. I’m on USEast, if I happen to come across any of Natalya’s stuff I’ll hold on to it for you if you’re on east also.
Four of my characters (mace-barb, swoard-barb, axe-barb, and druid) have been promoted to Slayer. Wonder why Blizzard made Baal eaiser to beat than Lister and his minions. And why Lister but no Rimmer?
