Help an Old Fart play this game

Sorceress
1

So, maybe I’m just not as good as I was when I was younger, but I’m really struggling to find a build that can adequately farm gear and runes to help me build out my characters. I watched a ton of guides online and read a lot of material. However, the one thing that stinks with most guides is that they show you how to play that character once it’s fully geared, which kind of defeats the purpose of a farming character. If I already have BIS gear, CTA in my offhand, Enigma for teleport, etc, then there’s not much left to farm!

I started with a summon necro, but they are so ungodly slow to kill. Positioning your pets is tough, and unless you already have lots of +skills everywhere (SOJs, Enigma, Skiller charms, etc), then my minions die pretty easily even with 20 hard points into skeletons and skeleton mastery. So I needed something different.

So, I watched more guides and found that the blizzard sorc should be a great fit for a first time farming toon. Then I discovered the dreaded “immune to cold” which is more common than any other immunity.

So I watched some more videos, read some more posts, and decided to respec into frozen orb and firewall. I was finally able to complete the game on Hell with this combo, but it was tough (especially if Lister spawns with both immune to cold and fire, in which case I use static field and pray my merc can kill him before he can regen).

Now, with this new build, I CAN tackle more areas, but it takes me forever to kill because fire wall isn’t exactly great for mobs that move around, and frozen orb doesn’t have nearly as many synergies as Blizzard.

I haven’t found a single Ber, Jah, Mal, Ist, etc. (any of the helpful runes I’d actually need). I can’t build an Infinity to break immunities, and I can’t make an Enigma for any of my other toons. I still don’t even have an oculus or Skin of the Vipermagi.

Since so many of the farming areas are immune to cold, fire, or both, is there a better build I’m just missing, or do I just need to keep killing Pindle and Mephisto until my eyes are bleeding and pray I get a few drops and runes to make my toon better.

TL,DR: Need help with building my sorc so she can adequately farm, or is this really just the wrong class to be farming for gear/runes. Any help is greatly appreciated.

2

This is why I rolled a fishymancer after my blizzmf found enough gear to run him decently.

It can get boring because of immunes, but sorc is going to excel at dropping specific bosses(Andy meph and sometimes pindle) then restarting.

Personally I would rather clear wsk and end with Baal for more density, but if you want to push sorc I would suggest blizz/fireball into lite sorc.

3

Don’t I need Infinity to make Lightning sorc work? Otherwise, all the Lightning Immunes will hinder my progress in a lot of areas, right?

4

Yes, but a properly set up merc can pick up the slack better than blizz. Just so expensive to run, I prefer a few skillers over hard to find uniques/runewords.

5

What do you deck out your merc in to help kill those lightning immunes?

6

Unless I’m reading your post wrong, you already have an Enigma?

Then ditch the Sorc and make a Hammerdin or Wind Druid. Now you get to farm a lot more than just Pindle and Andy lol

7

No, I don’t. My best rune so far is Ohm. I have never seen a Ber, Jah, or Ist even drop, and I don’t really have anything that other people seem to want. I’ve been able to trade for perfect gems, a Lem, and a couple of Fal runes. I’m doing what I can to get an Enigma, but then those Ber runes are hard to come by because they are used in Infinity too.

8

Oh sorry guess I did misread your post.

Being that you have cleared Hell and presumably have all the WPs, you can switch back to Blizz if you want. Even a moderately geared Blizz Sorc is perfectly capable of farming Andy, Meph, Pindle, Shenk. Even Countess if your merc can survive, but it is messy. And I personally think Blizz is the most effective Sorc for Hell Cows outside of Infinity Lightning

9

Hey buddy, sounds like you’re doing all right. But hey, now that you’ve done it, let’s not kid ourselves. If you really want to farm high runes your best bet is killing and pillaging in Act 5.

When you’re mfing you want stuff to die fast. Next, you also need to be able to move fast.
Finally you need to max out your resistances.

So I will handle those respectively.

You need to go full blizz. The gear is cheap, You can opt for an Occy or Esxhutas. Eschutas should be very cheap and easy to find, or even loot yourself on meph. Eschutas offers 40% fcr, +3 sorc skills. The thing about blizzard as well, is that for those 3 skills, your not only getting +3 blizzard, but you’re getting 335=45% more damage added to your blizzard from synergy. As well, that gives you some pretty sick single shot spells to cast in between your blizzard cool down. A decent merc is extremely helpful. I suggest farming cows with little to no mf, for an Eth Colossus / Thresher. Set him up with a Duriels Shell, and whatever you can muster for a helmet. Anything with high resist is very helpful, since the merc is better not dead.

As for moving faster, 105% FCR is a must to survive in hell as a sorc. You can move and dodge faster than enemies attack, tele-blizz-tele-tele-…-blizz… there’s fcr jewelry @10% (most commonly). Trang or Magefist gloves give another 20%. Assuming you’re wearing 1 10FCR piece of jelwery, a perfect 35% spirit shield gets it over the goal line. But if you can’t swing that, you can find any old Ormus Robe fairly easy. In all honesty Ornus is probably the best route, since it grants 20%FCR, and at a bare minimum 10% extra cold damage, 15% is perfect and with a 55 cold facet socketed, you can get up to 20% cold damage.Anyways tp quickly but deliberately.

Finally resistances. Get it any way you can. If you can’t, you can do that old Mephisto moat trick, and pretty much free kill as long as you don’t wake up anything else. You could probably fire wall him like no ones business as it is. Trang gloves as mentioned, is always a great option as it provides a good hunk of cold resist. Sand treks are also a great boot to start out on, a pair generally runs for a Len or so. They give great defense, poison resist, as well as strength and vitality.

As well, starting out, you can really find some decent stuff in nightmare. I mfd in nightmare (countess/Andy/Meph) until I just kept getting stuff. Then gradually work in hell, usuallly kelb first, then Andy, summoner/duriel, ancient tunnels, the pit, the crypt, the mausoleum. The object is to just mow through stuff a bunch. Act 5 has Pindle, I always kill that little Deagon Unique in hopes of a death fathom as well. You just have to pick your battles, sometimes I’ll go into Worldstone keep, and levels 2 and 3 will have had no cold immunes. Other times everything is cold immune, you just have to pick your battles. If one place was bad try another, in every act. Also tends to be prettt good experience overall, especially if you’re going fast.

I don’t want to leave out belts like snow lash which give a lot of skills to cold/blizzard/etc…

Tal rassha belt is in expensive, provides modest mf, and etc…

Keep on truckin

Wand eventually I have a Jah.

10

Thanks for the tips. I can’t find an occulus or Skin of the Viper Magi, but I’m using dual Spirit runewords (Sword and Monarch shield), plus I found a Shako and a Magefist. My amulet is +1 sorc skills, 10% FCR, and All Resists. I’m using Stealth for my chest piece. I think my FCR is at 130%, so I’m past the breakpoint of 105% with some room to spare. For resistances, I’m using a bunch of charms in my inventory because I can’t find any All Resist charms (haven’t found a single one, sadly.)

Firewall and Frozen orb give me more flexibility, but there are still a lot of mobs that are cold AND fire immune, and that’s when I have to rely on the merc, like the Countess. I have also noticed that there is an elite pack, then the minions will be immune to cold, while the boss will be immune to fire, or vice versa. With Orb/Wall, I can at least take down the pack, but it requires swapping skills and landing firewall a few times. If I go straight blizzard I won’t be able to kill those packs :confused:

For my merc, I have Tal Rasha’s helm for the resists and life leech, the Shaftstop armor for the damage reduction and missile defense, and a rare or unique polearm with lifeleech on it (can’t remember which one he’s using). I’m using the cold aura for better crowd control.

I’d really like to be able to do Baal runs, but Lister is always cold/fire immune, and even with static field, my merc can’t kill him faster than he can regen.

Maybe I’ll do more Mephisto runs and see what I can get. I usually also do a Pindle run in every game, but I’ve never seem him drop a single unique, so maybe I just have bad luck. I agree that blizzard would be far better for cow runs since you can hit big packs and for more damage. I just want to think about the respec before I jump into it and make a mistake.

Is Blizzard with chain lightning a possibility? I rarely see cold and lightning immune on the same mob.

11

You need to watch Dbrunski guide on a Blizz Sorc.

12

I have seen a bunch of Dbrunski’s videos, and honestly, most of them suck. No offense to him, but every single one of his guides shows off a character at lvl 90+ with BIS gear across the board, and every non-sorc guide shows a character wearing Engima. Even his sorc has Call To Arms and Spirit in the offhand. It’s just really hard to follow a guide on “how to gear up” when the guide literally shows a character with all the best gear already. That defeats the purpose. In a few of his videos, he even admits the gear he is showing is non-legit.

That being said, I will follow your advice and look up one of his videos specifically on the Blizz sorc to see what I’m missing in playstyle.

1 Like
13

Technically no. No matter how you spec you will always find certain mob that will have immunity against your damage source as wizard.

What you really should do is to target one or two area that you want to farm, and do a build dedicated to that area.

If you have decided one mephy and baal, then go with firewall and maybe FO, or bliz that help clear the way.

If you want to farm the moo moo coe. Then maybe full blizz?

If you want to farm countress. Maybe you want to go for lightning cos she is cold+fire immune while her minions are cold immune

Generally speaking tho…the easiest build to use as level up would be meteor+fireball+frozen orb, and if you encounter fire+cold immune mobs, you either skip it, or use static field cutting mob hp by half, and rely on yout merc to finish it off.

14

Don’t get too hung up on getting specific items, I’ll tell you that much. I have a level 90, 89 and 86 and my highest rune drop has been gul and mal. My Occulus I had to trade my mal for it and I’m still rocking Lore as my helm.

Despite that, I’m running orb/fire wall on my hardcore sorc and she’s a powerhouse.

15

I tried a few builds and settled on Firewall Blizzard. Act 2 Freeze merc with Kelpie.

For mobs that are Cold + Fire immune : static when possible, always clear minions first so the merc can chew on the few mobs you can’t take out fast.

16

Easiest char to play that can farm well is prolly a Whirl Barb with IK set - Armor (use upped Skullders). Remember to put 2 Shaels in his weapon.

I have had fun writing up a couple of cheap guides, Immo using Bowazon, and Frenzy guide with Doombringers. But both of the have fast gameplay, cause that’s what I find fun.

Bowason uses basic kuko attack on left mouse (bow makes it explosive), and immolation arrow on right, shoot when it’s of cooldown. Shoot basic attacks in between. Some monsters like flayers use multi arrow.

My Frenzy Barb guide: Unique using Frenzy Barb guide

17

Old player here too who just came back. I also started with a summon necro cause I was thinking minions can do the work, I can have on some MF and would be okay. It wasn’t really and not having the + skills to really have the minions pump made it unfun.

So I went Sorc and well it’s why I wanted to play again anyways cause I want to eventually make an ES sorc that is melee/bow. However I need gear and a lot of it and had none.

Which means I needed a dual sorc to farm gear and went Blizz/Hydra and picked up Enchant early for Merc so he has a lil more umph. I went down the cold tree first 20 into Ice blast and it’s one of my favorite spells because it does great dmg and freezes targets that are either on you or your merc so he can kill. Also while you right click Blizz you can spam Ice blast to put out great damage. Then 20 into Blizz and a few into cold mastery.

I do have ES obviously you don’t have too I just love messing with ES builds but definitely put 1 point into static field for clear speed and bosses. Next was fire spells and I went deep into Warmth because of ES and it also increases Enchant damage. Then a few into Fire mastery and now pumping Hydra. You can probably just put a few points into warmth so that way you can raise fire mastery or another fire spell.

The thing I like about Blizz/Hydra is well I just beat hell with it. Honestly nothing I really can’t handle in the basic game. Blizz is a distance spell and you got ice blast to freeze, you see cold immunes and you lay down some hydra for them and ice blast the non cold immunes. Then static fields everything for you merc to finish.

So when doing my hell pindle runs I can also go to frigid and kill Eld and Shenk even though they are cold immunes. Since I got hydra and can static so it’s still fast kills. You can place Hydra far off screen and stand back and let them kill.

I messed up some points for my first go around but really like the Blizz/Hydra combo with Ice blast. It got me to being able to do MF runs find gear. I can clear Chaos and Diablo too.

18

oh well … I hate to say that but … you best bet would be “budget hammerdin”
You start as pala with Holy Fire Aura (just look web for D2Res - paladin quick start) … it will carry you literally naked over normal, at NM (at around level 31-34) switch for Holy Shock (same approach - holy shock + synergy) it will carry you over NM with zero problem. Now you going to spend quality time terrorizing Countess on NM to get enough runes for Spirits (one for crystal sword and collection of runes for Shield one that you will be upgrading constantly as you will be finding better base)… and lol last piece you need it Lore (Ort-Sol helm)… THAT IT you are done… Okey spend a bit gold for gambling get yourself nice 10FCR ring(s) so you break 75 FCR mark and gamble yourself 1 paladin skill ammulet … now turn yourself via re-spec in hammerdin. For armor for Hell you can use Smoke (Eth-Lum) it will cover your resist needs. With this set up you will be able easy terrorize Diablo and CS until you gear up better