As a sorceress, I just don’t know what to do with these things. Super fast, Immune to ice, tight spaces, kill em when theyre next to you and get one shotted by the bone explosion. And theyre everywhere in act 3… I spent 3 loggins going after my corps for 30 minutes and gave up lol.
Im firewall/Frozen Orb spec, level 74. 130 stength, 40 dex, 130 energy, around 300 vitality. Maxed all resist. I’ve used up all my respecs.
Im sure theres something im missing, I just don’t know what it could be. Hells been super easy up to this point. I just dont get why 1 basic enemy has to be this inflated vs a caster. My favorite is the minion version with xtra fast, mana burn, with cold damage. I die to that bs a dozen times and immediately log out lol.
Hammerdin goes splat in 2-3 hits also, not super geared but all resists past 60/5500+ armor, almost 1400hp. Rather broken mobs when harder to hit also since hammers bad in tight places and the aiming is awkward.
Physical damage reduction modifiers work wonders here. Items like Shaftstop and Rockstopper. Put those on and suddenly I don’t instantly explode when those things die. I keep them in my stash just for fighting them.
Stygian dolls suck. I hate any mob that can kill me simply because I killed them first. Your best bet is a well equipped merc, a well leveled up secondary damage type or playing with a friend.
OP I assume you are referring to cruising Durance of Hate?
If so , I have never encountered them as cold immune and usually while teleporting around looking for level 3 I will send out an orb to scout ahead of me and it usually picks them off and stops them from gang banging me, at least long enough for my derpy merc to step in or for me to position myself for some orb spam. You really just need to be paying attention and have teleport handy and just use it to reposition the moment you see their raep train coming.
I just respecced to Blizzard this morning, no idea how horrible this will be in there. Blizzard being slow with different rules and function. Orb was awesome as a feeler.
With teleport and a merc, dolls are very easy to control and kill.
Due to the noise, don’t spam teleport, unless you have a high faster cast rate and you’re just wanting to skip the area (Durance 2). Otherwise run and use teleport sparingly, no more than 1/4 screen away. You can also turn down the skills sound slider to reduce/mute the sound of teleport and your other skills.
Listen for the unique ‘bone rattle’ run of the Dolls. Teleport close to the front line, walk backwards, the dolls will attack your merc. Spam damage until they’re dead.
Your merc is immune to their splash damage.
Never stand in or next to your skills damage area or next to your Merc in areas with dolls.
The best opportunity for them to sneak up on you is while you’re battling other monsters and making enough noise where you can’t hear their ‘bone rattle’ run. To avoid this, always fall back to the beaten path. Falling back to the unbeaten path will aggro new monsters, possibly a pack of dolls.
If you’re cursed in an area with dolls, TP to town and remove the curse. It’s not worth the risk, especially in hardcore.
Nah this was in one of the spider caves. All of them were cold immune 2 logins in a row. I had to kill them with firewall. its so bad because they run through it so fast. They also 1 shot my mana bar too. The thing Ive messed up really bad is I never leveled my companion. I gotta log over to lower difficulty and level him up.
You don’t need to do that. Take your equipment off the merc. Go back to the merc vendor and hire another one closer to your level. They will always offer one close to your level regardess of difficulty.
%Physical resist.
Flat physical resist both help against those.
Otherwise just try crowd controlling them before killing them if they’re not cold immune. Glacial Spike works wonders to keep them in place while your Fire Wall kills them.
Too bad you used up all your respecs. You should have sought feedback before using your last one. But you can still get through it. I’ve progressed many solo self found, or start of ladder season cold sorcs to Hell Baal on hardcore over the years. Here’s how I got through Act 3 Hell on hardcore without dying most recently in D2R:
Because cold mastery can now break some of lower resist % cold immunes, I decided to try out max telekinesis and some mana shield for extra survivability instead of going with another element. I like it more for hardcore thus far.
Resists:
Sounds like you’re good in this department. But you may find you need to change around your gear to get more life or damage reduction, and sacrifice some resists to do so. It can be worth it. But maxing fire and light is most important, and are priority. Getting cold as high as possible is worth it too for the most part. You can sacrifice a bit of poison though if you can trade it for more life.
Stats:
Strength: get up to 156 (enough for spirit monarch)
Dex: nothing
Energy: nothing
Vita: All points not used on strength
Some people might want to put more in dex to get max block, and that can be a valid strategy for survival, but sorc HP would fall too short. You need enough HP to absorb a couple shots from dolls without falling over. Some people on SC will put more into energy with an Energy Shield build like this, but I find with double spirit and other +mana, +mana% gear and an Insight merc, the mana pool is big enough for absorbing a large spike of damage from dolls, and still having enough life leftover to give me enough time to react appropriately.
Gear:
Obviously do your best with resists and utilize charms to mitigate weak areas. Getting Max fire and light resists are priority #1.
Spirit Sword and Spirit Monarch are gamebreakingly good. For progression, you should be using this setup if you can. The huge mana and vita boost are highly underrated, and the magic absorb helps your tankiness a lot too. The ridiculous FHR also prevents you from getting locked up in hit recovery from things like dolls. They also make it so that you don’t really need FCR on any other items to have a passable FCR breakpoint.
Stack life and damage reduction % wherever you can. Your life, DR%, Fire Resist and FHR are the keys to surviving dolls. Life charms are great to stack. And if you can get cheap DR items like Rockstopper (10%), String of Ears (10-15%), these are very helpful. They don’t look like sorc items, but they are great for progression. Rockstopper is one of the most underrated items in the game. This DR %, plus any “Damage reduced by x-integer” mods you happen to have on items, and then mana shield absorption should allow you to take a few hits.
+Skill items are great, but all of the above points are more important. And Dolls will fall over easily when struck head on by a level 20 Frozen Orb head on.
Merc: Get a holy freeze merc. His aura will slow things down instantly when they get close to you, if you don’t react fast enough with orb. And you likely won’t with dolls all the time. Of course get insight on a polearm (at least exceptional quality for enough damage to kill monsters), and any gear with life leech, damage reduction, and resists is what you want until you get gg gear like eth fort/treachery, reaper’s toll, etc. He will have enough staying power to tank for you and not die, while you sit in the back and throw orbs. My merc is using duriel’s shell and a 19% vamp gaze, but you can manage with less.
General strategy:
Don’t blindly teleport, and generally you want to walk when progressing.
Whenever you attract attention and you’re in danger, teleport behind you to a safe area, and let your merc lead while you throw orbs.
If going through a dark passage where you can’t see what’s ahead, always lead with orb. You can clear out entire rooms of dolls safely just by sitting behind the doorway and throwing a few orbs.
Make sure to have full rejuves on your belt and always have a finger on the button, in case you get rushed by an extra fast pack, dolls, or if anything hits you with mana burn. If you are getting chain mana burned in melee, spam full rejuve + teleport and you’ll live. You’re technically impossible to kill as long as you have enough health and mitigation to survive a hit, and good FHR, full rejuves and teleport at your disposal.
Skip cold immunes that you can’t break if possible, or let your merc kill them.
Doing all this you shouldn’t even be taking much damage, and when you do, even Hell dolls shouldn’t be able to kill you before you can react, with all this mitigation. The most dangerous are extra strong/might/fanat, mana burn dolls. If you come across this and live, it’s often better to quit the game and remake it than risk fighting it (on hardcore at least). But you still have what it takes to defeat them if you play smart.
One final note: If you feel like you’re not powerful enough (need more levels or gear) then just farm. You can make it to level 85 by grinding NM Baal, or easy areas in Hell Act1/2. Hell Andariel is also a relatively safe and very profitable boss to farm. I often start farming her at around 75-80, and am ready to progress by level 83-85. You will often find multiple vmagis, shako, occulus (although I still prefer spirit for HC), and many other good items that will make progression much easier beyond that point. NM Andariel is also a really safe/easy boss to farm vmagi.
Yeah, I have heard that this was recently changed. I haven’t played my sorc in a couple days but I will need to test this.
Regardless I don’t think it was too impactful since many CI’s in Hell have 150% CR. You either skip them or let your merc kill them, same as always. My sorc is mainly for safely MFing specific bosses and areas areas like AT, etc. This build was extremely good for hardcore safety and progression though. And still is.
I’ve left CM maxed on my Blizzard sorc. Everything non-CI is getting curbstomped. And that’s just with +6 skills from gear.
Once I get geared up enough, I plan to switch to fireball/meteor/frozen orb so I can run keys more efficiently. I won’t be maxing CM then. I usually shoot for +17 CM with +skills factored in.
Because I forgot about this rumor. I will have to confirm it tonight. But I will likely still keep it this way because it destroys bosses and other monsters with 50-75% resists and still brings then down to close to -100%.
And again that’s how I progressed. Basically using orb, defensive teleport, and playing smart. And for most CI’s, they are wasted points, so it just goes to show what you can do, even without an optimized skill distribution.
And that’s just with +6 skills from gear.