Maybe it’s the countless YT videos saying that expensive uniques make the best end-game Sorc builds. Maybe it’s the consumer mentality of “it’s expensive so it must be good”. Or maybe it’s the cookie cutter mindset. Full Tal seems to looked down as inferior, at least for hybrid builds. One person even went as far as saying any guide that uses full Tal is not worth reading. I don’t have time to go into details of all the benefits a full Tal set offers. I can only show you my stats and ask that you match them with anything other than full Tal that doesn’t cost 5x as much.
Life: 2960
Mana: 960
Orb damage: 1k
Cold pen: 130%
Fireball damage: 9.8k
Fire pen: 15%
MF: 276%
92% FHR
105% FCR
Max all res
Here’s a video of me doing a sub 4 min Baal run, killing every single minion on the way. One shot most things. This is why I don’t use Firewall: when you can 1 shot most things, it is pointless to sit around and rotate cooldowns. You want to have a spammer (FB) and a CD skill (FO). That’s it. I would wager, on average, my build clear just as fast as a pure Lightning build, even on P8. My entire gear set + charm probably cost less than a Griffon.
Hybrid builds are fun, cheap, and just as deadly as Lightning. Experiment and find one you enjoy & build upon it.
I know how you feel, but tals in my experience only offers one thing above other gear sets - survivability.
It’s just slower once you have infinity to use Tals. There isn’t even a debate.
There’s really no need for debates. I’m just asking for better stats than mine using a different set of gear. It’s just numbers. You get higher numbers, including MF, you get kill faster & get more gear. Simple as that.
Actually, I did run full Tal’s for MF before w/ MeteorOrb and a bit after the respec to Lightning. However, now pure Light for damage and speed. Recently, as it’s pretty much end-game for me now, I only run with custom setup and ~200MF.
Shako (ptopaz), Mara, Upped Vipermagi (ptopaz), HOTO, Spirit, Frostburn, Arachnid, Sandstorm. Rings I do change depending on the area I’m (2 x Wisp for Baal, 2 x Dwarf Star for Trav, mix of Dwarf/Wisp/Raven/Nagel/Custom.
5 Skillers - Total damage of 32k Lightning and 12 for Chain…
To be honest, I’m happier with that setup.
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Frozen orb is a subpar skill to blizzard this edition and farming player1 with 62% no drop means hardly effective area mf. You go full blizzard and at least 3 player games for better drops or just stick to andy, meph etc.
At p7 with least no drop chance, you notice tal’s isn’t enough and souls chew throw your life like it’s nothing without thundergods.
Other issue with tals is you’re forced to use no block spirit. All that life matters little when you’re ganged up by a group of melee. You either have 105fcr to tele away before they hit you or you block like a champ and tele away. It might be you don’t care anyways.
My sorc is lvl 96 by now…
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That’s really not a Tal thing, it’s a FO thing.
Full Tal’s Blizz sorceress with Cold skillers can do just fine on P8 against anything that is not immune. Sure, the damage is not as high as with Death’s Fathom and Nightwing’s but it’s also not that much lower that it will be visible.
I have farmed with a full Tal’s Blizz sorc on P8 Ancient Tunnels and Cows and she does really well. It’s only the immunes that are a problem because you can’t break those and then you’re stuck with your merc having to go through P8 health pool. Or you skip.
Full Tal’s has about 35% lower damage than Perfect Death’s Fathom + Perf Nightwing’s with CoH, Arachnids etc. That is assuming both setups are pure damage and decked with cold facets wherever possible.
But doing that Tal’s gives you more than double the MF and better FHR. If you want to bridge the MF gap, for instance, now you’re looking at IST on the weapon and helmet and now you’re looking at something like 25% more DPS. Now let’s say you are not the luckiest SOB and you don’t have perfect Fathom and Nightwings. That brings the gap down to 20% or even slightly less. May still seem like a lot but with Blizzard it’s really not because stuff on P8 breaks quickly anyway. The killing speed is really not that much different. On P7 the difference is even lower.
So yeah. Tal is less dmg but at the highest level it hardly matters. The problem is FO which is simply not P7/8 viable.
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Blockquote My entire gear set + charm probably cost less than a Griffon.
Blockquote
Running a merc with Infinity makes any sorc viable, I could do the same run in normal gear in the same amount of time.
Not really, Infinity makes next to zero difference for Blizz sorceress (she is viable without it though, even if the areas have to be cherry picked).
In full tals, as opposed to Shako+Occy, I actually deal more damage (but not a meaningful amount) and have maxed resistance (as opposed to mid-30s). With Tal’s, I have ~450 MF, as opposed to ~600.
I prefer Tals for MFing, but it’s clearly not optimal for other uses.
Discussion was on FB not Blizzard. Point was that Infinity on a merc makes any sorc build viable, like the video above where he’s claiming it’s a budget build with Tals, but running an Infinity on the merc…the moment he dawned his merc with an Infinity it’s considered an “expensive” build.
I have reevaluated my position on this.
As a solo self found player, I don’t have any charms or a sorc torch. But I have been lucky with facets since I farm Trav.
I now run two full sets of Tal Rasha. I run one full set with 3 fire facets and one full set with 3 lightning facets.
Once you have this plus x2 10% fcr rings to hit 117 fcr, full Tals is pretty nice for farming safely.
Biggest issue with tal’s is you’re forced to use spirit = no block otherwise you teleport at a snail’s pace. Not a problem when you farm andy and mephisto only, becomes one when you venture into chaos sanctuary and throne of destruction. Kill speed is more important than the amount of mf. I can make an almost unkillable mf sorc with 400mf and 117fcr who mows everything, not possible with full tal’s.
My full Tals sorc is 117 fcr and 400 MF. Not only that, I have infinity and 3 light facets in place. It’s very strong.
Tal set sucks compare to BIS/end-game gear
Tal set doesn’t suck compare to mid-tier exceptional gear.
Tal set sucks according to kiddy noobs that likes to call folks noobs because they’ve bought better gear from d2jsp
Tal set doesn’t suck when applied correctly.
Its all relative. Sometimes though, some items do outright suck like milbregas set, but Tal’s set is not it.
When does it make sense to get out of Full Tals? After Grif eye?
If you are just mfing around then full tal is completly viable. No need to change anything. As a true sorc player who aims to become lvl 99 you aren’t allowed to die and to speed up things, dish out as much damage as possible.
Griffon + infinity + anni+torch+117fcr while maintaining max block and 50% damage reduction are required. I can stay in the middle of chaos sanctuary during a lag spike and not die at all. Why is it important? Because you can play aggressively which results in faster clear speed. With all of the listed damage of tals or mediocore setups you spend lots of time dodging when you can’t focus down on dps.
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Thanks, this sounds pretty good.
But if lvl99 is the goal, why not be even safer and run full Tals. Baal runs don’t need clear speed with a group.
You can’t achieve 50% damage reduction and 117 fcr at the same time with tals without spirit.
