Sorceress sucks in hell!

My Blizzard sorceress absolutely gets destroyed in hell due to the cold immunity. I have rerolled on my skills and now have an electric Orb being able to switch from lightning to cold, but this build is very squishy in Hell. What are you guys doing in Hell with the sorceress?

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I’m just dipping my toe into Hell and from what I gather it’s all about making sure your Merc is decked out just as good, if not better than you.

I went frozen orb / chain lightning and I know I need to respec at some point, though I only have my last Hell one left now so I don’t wanna botch it up haha.

I’d still be down for more respec options as I’d love to try Hydra…. But NO!!!, the leetists will say I already have access to unlimited respecs haha.

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Orb + Firewall is my favorite, blasts through hell. Then I respec into blizz for MFing.

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Good for a lot but not all. I was doing purely meph runs until the recent server issues, so I fill my games out with tunnels (rarely any cold immunes), lk chests, meph, Andy, then cows. I would add hell pindle but don’t have the wp atm.

Eventually getting my hammerdin a enigma to run baals and cs when I want to change things up, probably the others too honestly.

Max frozen orb
Max ice bolt
Cold mastery around -120/135

Max Firewall
1pt fire mastery
Rest warmth

(1 pt static, 1 telekinesis, 1 teleporr)

Merc has shaftshop, tal helm, regular thresher insight

With this setup i farm whererver i want

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Fire mastery gives a little more damage per point than warmth though.

Ponchik, nice setup, but I do not have that many skill points. I am only at Level 76

I go melee soon as im past level 85 and have poor mans gear for it. But untill then I use blizz and chain. Sorc is squishy until you have good gear you have to learn to tele a lot and positioning is very important.

20 ice bolt
20 blizz
1 cold mastery
1 frozen orb
1 frozen armor

20 chain lightning
20 lite mastery
1 static
1 tele

1 warmth

rest into lightning

Actually no
İ ve put it in the skill calculator at maxroll
And with my gear and lvl warmth came on top with 50-100dmg

İ didnt bother to min max though
Probably a few points in mastery then rest to warmth is the min max

Fire mastery gives 7% per level, warmth gives 4% per level, even putting that into calculator results in more damage to firewall. Not sure what gear you used though.

Then stick with ancient tunnels
Andy, meph, cows for the time being

Or you can put half in orb synergy and half in firewall synergy for the time being and max orb synergy as u lvl up

I crafted spirit sword, and rhyme shield till I got spirit monarch, used lore and viper magic armor till I found tals. Find gloves, boots, helm with resi, it helped so much when farming and avoiding instant death from anything lightning. And absolutely just craft any type of reasonable insight for your Merc, then when you find a better base just make another. I just kept killing mephi till good drops happened, like shaco.

I thought I had all my resets used, but I went into normal mode and still had one there. I switched to Ponchiks suggested build using orb firewall and it rocks, much better. I still have to be carefull as there are some monsters with magick resistances that are difficult to avoid and followers are useless as they constantly die in hell no matter how tough you build them :frowning: .

Daelan is right on the fire mastery. I don’t know what your MaxRoll was saying, but the way synergies work is based of hard points put into the skill. It’s going to come down to 4% fire damage to firewall and increased mana regen from a hard point in warmth, or 7% fire skill damage to firewall from mastery (per skill point).

You are the problem not the class. Level up to at least 85, max blizz and synergies, let your merc eat the immunes with cheap insight/tal mask/whatever armor you can.

You have to consider the relative gain, not the absolute gain. And note that Fire Mastery doesn’t start at 0, the first point has extra value (30% at level 1 and +7% after that). And also that +skills do not boost the synergy bonus, but they DO boost the Fire Mastery bonus. The starting value of Fire Mastery, the number of points you have in each, and how much +skills you have buffing Fire Mastery, alters the relative gain you get from the next point in each. There’s a tipping point where it switches which one you should put a point in next for the bigger damage bonus.

This means the optimal skill point distribution will vary depending on how much + skills you have.

Starting at 1 point in Warmth and 1 point in Fire Mastery, when should you put points in Warmth vs. Fire Mastery from a purely damage perspective?


+0 to skills/fire skills/Fire Mastery

Go up to 9 total (hard) points into Fire Mastery, then alternate Warmth and Fire Mastery

Points to spend Warmth Mastery
2 1 1
3 1 2
4 1 3
5 1 4
6 1 5
7 1 6
8 1 7
9 1 8
10 1 9
11 2 9
12 2 10
13 3 10
14 3 11
15 4 11
16 4 12
17 5 12
18 5 13
19 6 13
20 6 14
21 7 14
22 7 15
23 8 15
24 8 16
25 9 16
26 9 17
27 10 17
28 10 18
29 11 18
30 11 19
31 12 19
32 12 20
33 13 20
34 14 20
35 15 20
36 16 20
37 17 20
38 18 20
39 19 20
40 20 20

+5 to skills/fire skills/Fire Mastery

Go up to 4 total (hard) points in Fire Mastery, then alternate

Points to spend Warmth Mastery
2 1 1
3 1 2
4 1 3
5 1 4
6 2 4
7 2 5
8 3 5
9 3 6
10 4 6
11 4 7
12 5 7
13 5 8
14 6 8
15 6 9
16 7 9
17 7 10
18 8 10
19 8 11
20 9 11
21 9 12
22 10 12
23 10 13
24 11 13
25 11 14
26 12 14
27 12 15
28 13 15
29 13 16
30 14 16
31 14 17
32 15 17
33 15 18
34 16 18
35 16 19
36 17 19
37 17 20
38 18 20
39 19 20
40 20 20

+10 to skills/fire skills/Fire Mastery

Go up to 4 total (hard) points in Warmth, then alternate

Points to spend Warmth Mastery
2 1 1
3 2 1
4 3 1
5 4 1
6 4 2
7 5 2
8 5 3
9 6 3
10 6 4
11 7 4
12 7 5
13 8 5
14 8 6
15 9 6
16 9 7
17 10 7
18 10 8
19 11 8
20 11 9
21 12 9
22 12 10
23 13 10
24 13 11
25 14 11
26 14 12
27 15 12
28 15 13
29 16 13
30 16 14
31 17 14
32 17 15
33 18 15
34 18 16
35 19 16
36 19 17
37 20 17
38 20 18
39 20 19
40 20 20

TL;DR: Keep your soft points in Fire Mastery about 8 above your hard points in Warmth to maximize the damage.

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My FireOrb singleplayer Hardcore soreceress that fully cleared (not teleported) and is now farming all of hell is aiming towards this at 92 Kill speed isn’t great but I can clear everything comfortably on players 1-3 depending on area (with better gear I’ll be doing everything on players 3+).

20 firebolt
20 fireball
10 fire mastery (before +skills)

10 icebolt
20 frozen orb
13 cold mastery (before +skills)

1 in TK, Teleport, Static, Frozen Armor, Warmth. Prebuff Enchant and ES from +5 staff shopped at NM Ormus.

Extra points after 92 will get split up between icebolt, fire mastery, and cold mastery depending on what I feel like would benefit me most and how many +skills I have at that point. I suggest aiming for somewhere between 125-150% total cold mastery which would make it relevant and very useful against most non-immune mobs. There are some mobs with 0 cold resist and some with 75 cold resist but most are in the 25-50 range from what I saw.

Holy Freeze merc with maxed resists. Trying to get life leech for him. Regularly switches between 3 weapons - Eth CV Insight for ‘easy’ farm areas, Kelpie’s Snare for bosses (underrated best boss weapon), Reaper’s toll for ‘hard’ areas where he is prone to dying. Having infrinite mana helps to keep him alive and improves kill speed but sometimes that’s not enough against hard mobs.

If you feel like your merc is always dying and is useless then you’re doing it wrong. Having a good merc that you control well with teleport is KEY. You need to position him properly and keep him alive. His job is to tank enough that you can sit back and spam spells, but not so much that he ends up dying. Use kiting/chokepoints against swarms of melee monsters so he doesn’t get totally surrounded and use corners against swarms of ranged mobs so he doesn’t get machine gunned down. Don’t be afraid to use potions on him (shift + belt number) - most of my potions are used on my merc. Game would be WAAAY harder without a merc.

I got my Blizzard Sorc through Hell, but it was rough –

Some cold immunes I could handle with static/telekinesis & might merc. But I had to do Anya, Ancients & Baal in multiplayer.

merch helps a lot. treachery rune word on him with a a insight rune word and tals helm

Thanks for all your helpful replies. I opted for the Orb/Firewall set as was suggested by Ponchik, and Hell is actually too easy now. I even found 2 Monarchs while farming in Hell :slight_smile: . I still am trying to get the ideal chest for my follower, but I found a great one that will suffice for the time being. Thank you to everyone that provided helpful advice!

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