Ok I will fully admit I am not a D2 expert by any means. I have read many threads that say that blizzard is superior to FO, but I can not see why.
I was just running through nightmare destroying everything with 20 FO, 20 Cold and the 1 point into each of the prereqs. One or two casts and a couple of seconds cleared entire screens.
Based on the threads I had read that said blizzard is superior, I respeced into blizz. I now have 20 blizz, 20 cold, and 5 into each of the prereqs, which is something like an additional 10 points over what I had invested into FO and its synergies.
My experience, it sucks hard. Not only does it take 3-5X as long to kill anything, but its just so boringly clunky with a 4 second delay. Casting and waiting 4 seconds is very boring.
So my question, why does everyone say it is better? With an additional 10 points into synergies, it should make FO look like a joke, when instead FO makes blizz look like a joke.
Frozen Orb can get +40% damage from Synergies, Blizzard +300%.
In the end blizzard outdamages FO quite a bit, though FO is a pretty good spell for 40 points and looks a lot cooler besides that.
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Ah so your saying that I havent reached a point where I have enough synergies in blizz to make it better, correct? how many more points need to go in before it starts to out perform FO?
I’ll share what I did with my cold sorc:
Hotkey Frozen Orb to mouse wheel down, but take it from the left slot, so that the game keeps up. Somehow spamming skills only from the right slot mixes them up.
Hotkey Blizzard to mouse wheel up, this time from the right slot.
Then go around hovering mouse pointer on top of mobs and rolling the mouse wheel up and down. All die very quickly when both Blizzard and Frozen Orb hit mobs whenever the skills are out of cooldown.
About skill points:
1 point to Cold Mastery, Frozen Armor, Warmth, Teleport, Static Field.
20 points to Frozen orb, Blizzard, Ice Bolt, Glacial Spike, Ice Blast (maxing in this order).
bc people think the standard is p5-p7
and yes, blizz is superior to orb
but orb+blizz is the best a cold sorce can be and after Scharms there is no point in specting in only one unless personal preference
It might be at that but so far it sucks. When does it become better? 10-15 more points in synergies is an awful lot for it to still perform worse than my FO does.
the problem is probably you playstyle
blizz is superior a killing groups
orb at taking scattered enemies one by one
stop killing trash mobs and start sniping elites and bosses
CM is much more effective for orb bc orb has only one synergy
Blizzard is semi trickier for some I find because of how it hits. Takes some enemy wiggling and positioning to hit them properly. In the end much more damage for requirements but a strong frozen orb is just much quicker to move about and clear when boosted.
Blizzard is inferior to Frozen Orb in that Blizzard doesn’t always hit its target and very rarely hits if you cast it directly onto the target.
Blizzard is only superior in damage and if you’re content with aiming to the sides of your target, which can prove to be frustrating if your target has a large hit box, 'cuz then it’ll just end up casted directly on your target anyway.
Frozen Orb is a lot easier to manage because it doesn’t have Blizzard’s large cast delay. It’s also capable of performing similarly to Blizzard if you know how to utilize it. When Frozen Orb explodes directly on its target, all of the frozen spines that fly off it end up hitting the target instead, doing massive damage.
Well that and my favorite move is to cast the orb and then jump to the other side of the monsters so they walk directly over the ball for an extended period, just tears them apart.
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FO spikes earlier and feels great in nightmare. But Blizzard becomes far superior in hell especially when you hit 60+
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I like FO better because it’s easier to aim and casts faster. They both have their advantages depending on playstyle.
FO is probably a faster full clear. Blizz is better at targeted farming of bosses/unique packs and cows. FO is a better ability in how it works no doubt. Everyone should be moving on from cold characters soon though anyway.
The simple answer these days… is ultimately both. Whenever you get a sunder charm and are in hell you’re going to want to get your combined CM + facets to by -195%. Icebolt is already a Blizzard synergy. Even if you prefer Orb there still isn’t a reason to not just Blizzard on CD after that anyway. Ultimately Blizzard will do significantly more aoe damage, and Orb with good aim will do more single target. They don’t share Cd’s though.
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Fully synergized Blizzard does more dmg, then Orb with only one synergy and only 2% per point that is even hardly worth the points.
But it is not just raw damage, it is also the playstyle that makes Blizzard a lot easier then orb.
Blizzard does a relatively constant damage in its whole area, while Orb technically can cover a larger area, it is just with some single ice bolts, and a single ice bolt from Orb does not do a lot of damage.
Also Orb does the most damage on the explosion, so you need to throw it in the perfect distance to the monster you want it to damage most. And this also means the area with real high damage from Orb is rather small.
And the need for the right distance to the target also means that usually a lot of the Orb before the explosion is wasted.
For a single target with the perfect distance the damage is not that different, but Blizzard is just way better in high density, and way more consistent.
for p1 i guess id prefer FO actually. but im pretty sure the chunky blizzard is better in p8, even if clunkier.
You are in p1, orb is great. Try orb on p8 and you will see.
Why would you have only one synergy? You can max orb, get -195% cold rest, and come within 10 points of maxing Blizzard synergies as well.
I dunno why people are still debating one or the other when they no longer share CDs and you can nearly max both.
The end game is going to look pretty much like this for Cold Sorc these days.
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/2y0106qj
Obviously the neck/ring are fairly unrealistic, and many will want to focus more heavily on MF, but it’s a matter of swapping a few things around and I think everyone knows how to do that at this point. (Swap in Arachnid’s if you don’t have the neck for it, etc…)
Again there just isn’t a reason to go Orb OR Blizzard. You go both.
After reading it again I see why this could be misinterpreted.
I meant fully synergized Blizzard is stronger then Orb, because Orb has only one synergy (that is very weak on top of that).
I mean if you had all the gear you could, but even then it is kinda weird not to max out Glacial Spike, which is a synergy for Blizzard and go Orb instead.
Your are missing out 17% Blizzard damage with this.
To max out Blizzard + Synergies + Cold Mastery + obvious one point wonders you already need to be 95, there is not much for Orb left.
Of course depending on your gear you could save some points in mastery and still max out -cold res, or you set your goal for -cold res rather around -150 instead of -195, which is already enough for most enemies.
Of course you could go Orb + Blizzard but it is a much less obvious choice then you make it be, and only really viable when your gear is completely maxed out.
Especially with the clunkiness of Orb I´d much rather do the good old Blizzard + Iceblast/Glacial-Spike and boost my defenses with the remaining points in ES.
An Orb/Blizzard like the one above can do Ubers easily, if anyone is interested.
And I don’t mean it with any kind of cheese like using Bone Prison from Marrowalks etc.
I mean just going in there and teleporting away from Meph while dropping Blizzard and FO at him constantly, dealing damage he simply can’t recover from.
And after doing some testing I tend to agree that FO is the superior choice as the skill you do between Blizzards. The damage Blizzard gets from synergies is already high enough that those few points in synergies are not that easy to notice in real life.
A side note to Jhaerik’s build:
- You can get rid of the tomes and reshuffle charms to make space for one more skiller and a small charm. Having TP scrolls on the belt and just using Cain is the way to go
- I use COH (Haven’t found the Blizz Ormus) and 2x SOJ because I get resistances from the armor and my amulet gets me to 105 fcr. I also use Arachnid Mesh.
What this (+1 that one skiller) gives me is less points needed for CM to reach -195 and therefore more to put into Glacial Spike (I believe I have something like 15 hard points at level 98 - I skipped the point in Warmth, merc with Insight tends to be enough).