LF Help Meteor/Orb

I’m hitting a wall on A3 Hell. Any advice on how I can improve. My gear is marginal.

Spirit DB
Rhyme Shield
Lore Helm
Skin of Vipermagi
Upped Goldwrap
War Travs
Nokozan Relic
Yellow gloves and rings.

Thanks.

w/o taking in account skills it’s kind of hard … I’d do at least this make sure you meet second-third brakepoint for FCR (I think 86 and 105 … could be wrong thou) you need to have reasonably good FHR (which you need to be able fire off teleport for escape). I’d certainly see if you could push for Spirit Monarch (55FHR!) I’d spent my quality times for gambling to get at least +1 sorc skill ammy with some useful modes or even do crafting for caster ammi (FCR+skill). Gloves - I’d certainly look for magefists or at least frostburn. As long as you good on FCR/FHR (and you should be with 2 spirits + some more FCR elsewhere like Viper Magi) you can look for high dual resist rings + something.
Last but not least - skill distribution. Problem with temporary lack of damage power on the fire side you should offset by damage/tanking from Merc side. Likely you are using insight on merc - make sure it have decent base and keep upgrading base with merc level grow. Next thing within same topic merc aura - for starters/weak gear I do recommend Act 2 NM Holy Freeze it will slow down even those who cold immune buying for you enough time for teleport out. To make merc more durable use Treachery armor and give him som LL via helmet (even undead crown will do)

20 Frozen Orb (24 with plus)
8 Cold Mastery (12)
20 Firebolt (24)
20 Fireball (24)
5 Meteor (9)
6 Fire Mastery (2)
1 Teleport
1TK
prereqs.

If you’re really using Meteor you should skill it. 5 points into a main skill but then skilling full synergies is not good.
Not considering +skills, with 5 Meteor and 20 in synergies your Meteor does ~900 impact damage and ~45burn damage.
If you would do something like 20 Meteor, ~15 Fire mastery and the rest in synergies that damage goes up to 2500 impact damage and 190 burn damage per second.
Side note: Synergies do not benefit from +skills, only the real points put into it.

You should also put a point into static field and use it to bring monsters down to 50%. This skill is one of the most valuable Sorc skills.

Use this tool to play around with skills:

When switching to the Calculations tab, you can see your damage and see if it goes up or down when distributing skill points in a certain way. At a certain point i.e. it’s better to put some points in synergies first than maxing more fire mastery (marginally difference, but it’s there).
You should also consider leveling up a bit more before progressing, maybe just do some Andariel runs until a certain point. You are around lvl 72 I would guess. Monsters in Act3 are 10 levels above you and probably eat your merc for breakfast. :wink:

For your gear the biggest improvement would be a spirit shield. That’s a big boost in fast cast, faster hit recovery and +2 skills. 4 socket monarchs are super cheap when you trade for it, but maybe you play single player and need to find one first.

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For what it worth …
You have to low investment into Cold Mastery - you need maintain -150 to enemy resistance to break immunity and do maximum damage with Orb (and that for now you main caliber).
Rule of the tomb (when you building skill that require synergies) - max skill first (so in your case you should be using Fireball instead of Meteor and nothing wrong with that btw). Looking you Fire skill distribution I’d go first to at least 16 Cold Mastery, and redistribute all points that you have in Fire Bolt into Meteor.
In addition to what you have - you should invest at least 1 point into Static Field that is Crushing blow for Sorc :smile: Static is your primary weapon against bosses
Side note: Here is a deal with Meteor - while potentially it does a lot more damage compare to Fireball and technically speaking Meteor is AoE hitting targets with Meteor not that trivial and you can’t channel Meteor unlike Fireball. Fireball do notably less damage, don’t hit area but … it does interrupt enemy attack. Once you get your meteor high enough with synergies anything that not fire immune will die in 1 hit … but you must hit the target. With Frozen Orb and high Cold Mastery - everything that have or not cold immunities (breakable one) will die quick (I don’t remember how many shards have orb but with little practice you should be able land into single target up 75-80% of them easy with CM -150% to enemy resist you should be able always double damage for anything that is not cold immune with 120 cold immunity (this is unbreakable) - 115, 110, 100 can be broken

Thanks for the advice. I am using fireball, because targeting meteor is a pain. I was thinking firebolt better for synergy, but it looks like meteor is. Thanks again.

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Like I said :wink: Meteor is tricky - it DOES tones of damage once you figure out how to use it. Just to give you couple examples: argo-kiting - you run out of pack and hitting with meteor area in front of yourself by time Meteor hit this area you will pass it and pack get hit by it (initially you can start practice with targeting area and not passing but waiting for the mobs to catch you). Other application of Meteor - let Merc engage that cold immune pack and hit … Merc with Meteor (easy to target btw). Last but not least - some mobs way to fast to my liking (and I normally running Holy Freeze Merc because of that) if you are careful you can be in position where you see pack but pack not yet argo on you … so create fire field with meteors and final one use to hit the pack … usually even if you not kill pack in 1 hit … pack will die while running toward you over burn that Meteor impact left