Was hoping someone could help me with this. Have a nice MF sorc who uses Blizzard, like they all do. It’s Ok, but never was a fan of Blizzard (the spell. Jury’s still out on the company ). Gets a bit boring to me, and at times deadly since it’s hard to take out nearby attackers.
I’ve been screwing around with Glacial Spike, which is also maxed out as a synergy for Blizzard. Seems to do quite a bit of damage, especially when I need it most.
Does anyone know of a decent, end-game worthy build that focuses on Glacial Spike? Or is it really not the thing to waste time with for an MF’er?
Glacial spike is great for freezing multiple enemies. Freeze the front line then Blizzard.
I use Glacial spike to easily dispatch Gloams/Souls. Teleport right on the pack and immediately cast glacial spike then Blizzard, group is frozen and then dead.
Works great for easily clearing most of Baals throneroom waves. A lot of times if I get the timing right, a glacial spike will land right in the middle of the council pack. All but Bartuc the Bloody is frozen, and only one hydra cast.
yah it’s fine, it’s just a horizontal blizzard. Nobody uses it because Blizzard is easier, and Spike doesnt pierce so you cant hit targets in the back of a crowd.
I like going full MF without sacrificing too much damage, I use unique shako, tal rasha’s amulet, tal chest, tal belt, occulus, spirit shield, chancies, war travs, dual fcr rings with res/mf
Appreciate the info. I’m trying to play D2R differently than D2. First time I ever used a Blizz MF’er. Kinda boring. Was looking for some alternatives to a more active playstyle.
Blizzard is almost as passive as Skellymancer to me. It’s OK for a while, but eventually I want to get more hands on.
Its a pretty boring build that is limited imo unless you got really good gear. It’s purpose is simply to farm bosses safely and quickly but without good gear, I felt heavily restricted to only doing Andy and Mephisto and Pindleskin because of Cold immunities. It’s not horrible, but I did did find it very boring.
I find hybrid builds with the sorc to be more fun and gives you more access to end game content. The downside of it is that you deal much less dmg.
Glacial Spike is interesting for CC, but damage is bad.
I think Frozen Orb is the only other viable damage cold spell, which is also a spell you can combine with other elemental spells like Lightning/Chain Lightning, Fireball, Firewall or Meteor.
You are the spec that uses it, drop blizzard on a group, then swap skill to glacial spike or ice blast to kill the rest faster, or focus down the tougher mobs that dont drop to one blizzard.
Agreed. I think Glacial spike could be used in the future for it’s slow/freeze components in tangent with other abilities like inferno or firewall, but unless the playerbase is open to change and willing to let the meta change every season and allow blizzard to experiment, I think we will always be stuck with the same builds that exist now.
A cold sorc that focused on the synergies of these spells over blizz or frozen orb would still play the same, by hell you would have point in blizz or frozen orb, because its gonna be good for clearing weaker packs, while using the nuke for tougher mobs and bosses.
Same idea behind meteorb / blizzball, but without the dual elements to deal with immunities.
While I would normally say hell yeah, I have seen what blizzard does to games when they improve/experiment and I fear that they will ruin the game.
Can’t say if it’s lack of skilled/imaginative dev’s or simply lack of time they have to spend on tweaking or even a combination of both, but it seems to be mostly spiraling and diversity killing they do for the last decade.
I am not opposed to buffing the weak skills or nerfing the strong, but would prefer them first fixing the bugs many skills have before tweaking skills (I mean I could see them buffing Inferno to become good and then fixing the bug a month later mid ladder making it OP).
And when they start tweaking, take it slow, yes some skills you can easily double the damage and they are still meh at best, but some are stronger than people often realize and can become to strong easier than people think.
). Gets a bit boring to me, and at times deadly since it’s hard to take out nearby attackers.
