Before the start of this ladder, youtubers paraded around the preponderance of the cold sorceress. Being the curious cat that I am, I decided to start off the ladder with a frozen orb/blizz sorc.
At level 92, FO/Blizz was not as great as my CL sorc. It was slow and sluggish albeit powerful. Maybe I miscontrued the Yotube videos but I thought cold sorc would be the new OP build that everyone was hoping for; that it would dethrone the lite sorc. Well it doesn’t. Cold is equally powerful as light but more sluggish. I still strongly favor light. Blizzard’s delayed cast makes the spell very unenjoyable.
In a futile attempt to salvage my cold sorc from becoming a mule, I tried out the frost nova. Here are the pros and cons of the frost nova.
Pros
- P1 very quick (similar to nova)
- having leftover points allows you to assign it to warmth. Having 10+ points on warmth makes the frost nova almost invincible when farming p1
Cons
- cannot do p8
- has hard time killing bosses
- has hard time in WSK due to curses unless you carry a plague runeword
- damage is low. TBF, I didn’t use a death fathom, a nightwing, or an frost nova ormus. My damage was at ~1080 dam. maxed. With -100 res, it would be at 2160. This is still pretty cringey. Maybe with NW, DF and Ormus, it will bump it up to 1600 range. This still puts it at 3200dam. Still weaker than lite nova. In sum, it is hard to justify this build.
Conclusion:
Cold sorc is NOT OP and Frost nova just sux. FO/Blizz is okay for budget players. The only two good aspects about the FO/Blizz sorc is that
- you do not have to spend 6bers+ to display the same power as the lite sorc.
- due to the low 105fcr requirement, you can go heavy on MF and not take a hit to your kill speed
If you want to try out cold sorc, I am very hesitant to recommend this build. If you never played a lite sorc, you will be impressed with cold sorc but if you have made a lite sorc before, cold will be a big let down.
Let me know what you guys think.
5 Likes
good observations mate!
I started this ladder with a cold sorc (like everyone), wanting to see the true power of cold with a sunder charm.
Long story short, with mid gear like occy, vmagi, spirit, cold sunder, it felt pretty underwhelming, and I don’t think using bis gear will make it all that powerful. So I left her in ladder at lvl 80 and never touched the build again.
Will try again when sunders hit nonladder with bis gear like dfathom, nightwing, ormus and facets…
My light sorc has no competition from cold for now
4 Likes
it is a matter of perception and tasting something a bit different.
Yes - it is clunkier and not as straight forward as CL/L - the playstyle is more kiting, anticipation and patience, compared to the killemall in a second Light approach.
I feel Blizz/FO is more safe - generally i fear only dolls.
2 Likes
yeah i’d just stick to blizzard honestly so good
just waiting for cold sunders to arrive non ladder 
1 Like
Cold Sorceress being OP has always been a misconception. As you had said, it does not come close to the devastation of the Lite Sorceress. The advantage however is using Cold Mastery which eliminates immunity without Infinity, and THAT is the trade off. Frost Nova is not a good build even with cold mastery as the power output just isn’t there. I am devastating P8 using a Frozen Orb/Blizzard build that just destroys everything, but I also have gear that would give any D2R player a wet dream. I am only 3 CD short of a perfect Deaths Fathom (still searching for a perfect one 
). I was tempted to respeccing into a Frost Nova, but after all of the reviews I thought that was not going to happen. Once I hit 99, I may give the Fire Meteor build a try as that looks pretty good.
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Blizzard sorc is the absolute most boring build for me, and I think that’s saying something because my favorite character is the Summon Necro lol—so I am used to patient builds
Frozen Orb is by far the most appealing look-wise skill on D2. Also a favorite of mine
Ozy, you were looking to make orb obsession right? Did that ever happens and can you tell us stats for orb?
I don’t know about you guys, but I am ready for FROSTADIN—the cold dreamer of nightmares!
3 Likes
I was looking for a 3 frost nova staff/ 6 frost nova orb but after tinkering around with frost nova, I don’t think I will be looking for it anymore.
I am just gonna use my FO/Blizz sorc to farm. I can comfortably hit ~400MF with her but I actually only farm using 200MF since it makes such a small diff. and I care more about kill speed.
2 Likes