This is a build that I haven't seen used before that I created this current ladder season (1.13C). It's very, very effective and relatively inexpensive to build (most expensive item is an inifinity polearm for your merc). The idea of this build is to have a sorc that can perform the following tasks:

- Kill monsters in any area of the game, in any difficulty, with relatively inexpensive gear
- Maintain enough fcr to perform 'glitched' rushes quickly
- Enchant new characters to help help them level quickly (nice if you like to make your own bumpers like I do)
- Play a fun, versatile character that's a little different than your average lightning sorc or hammer paladin.

When soloing through the hell difficulty of the game, the way the Sorc is played is to utilize maximum enchant damage with her merc, use massive firewall damage as her main skill, use frozen orb as her secondary skill versus fire immunes, and finally use static and her merc to kill that occasional rare monster spawn that is both fire and light immune. People will argue that the fire/light immune happens often enough, but that really isn't a problem when you can static them down quickly and your merc does enough physical and poison damage to kill them rather quickly. I'll get to that shortly, but first, here are the attributes/skill points for the build:

Attributes:

Strength: enough to wear your gear with torch/annihilus charm
vitality: everything else unless you decide to vary your build to utilize block gear (someone may alter the build to pvp, but I would suggest a different build entirely if that were the case)
dexterity: nothing (stated again, not unless you wish to pvp)
energy: nothing (energy shield is not being used for this build)

Skill points:

Warmth-20
Enchant-20
Fire Mastery-20
Frozen Orb-20
Cold Mastery-1
Teleport-1
Static-1
Firewall- any remaining points

I have two switches for my Sorceress, one for maximum enchant damage and one for rushing people through hell act 5. With pure fire damage gear for enchant, my enchant reaches level 55. With that level of enchant, your enchant grants approximately 5,500 fire damage to other players. That is enough damage to kill most monsters in normal in only 1 blow. As most classic players know, you simply buy a cheap bow and quiver of arrows and proceed to kill everything you can before your enchant expires. You then go get enchanted again and proceed to kill everything until your character is a high enough level/the game is cleared of monsters. The idea of having a level 55 enchant is not so much that it's needed to kill monsters in normal, it's actually so that you don't require being re-enchanted for a longer duration of time (enchant duration increases with level). At that level, I can typically last until I've nearly achieved level 20 before requiring another enchant. I do however get lazy sometimes and use my standard pvm gear to enchant characters. In which case, the level of enchant is still at lvl 43, which does over 3k damage and lasts for a fairly long duration as well. With my standard pvm gear on, My Sorceress does 537-561 frozen orb, 23-23k firewall, chants my mercenary with nearly 5k worth of fire damage (does over 7k damamge after venom kicks in from his armor), maintains over 105 fcr (more actually but that's the bp my Sorc reaches), and maintains 60 fhr (could achieve 86 easily, but I feel that 60 is enough at 8 frames for pvm).

The maximum enchant gear is as follows:

3 fire skill circlet (2 socket with 2 facets is preferred)
6 enchant orb (again 2 sockets with 2 facets preferred)
3 enchant ormus with 15% fire skill damage
3 fire skill amulet
spirit monarch (or 4 socket monarch with 4 facets but I feel that the spirit shield is more beneficial for the +skills enchant duration enchancement)
arachnid
sandstorm treks
2 stone of jordans/2 bul kathos rings
call to arms/spirit shield on switch
Magefists

picture of a level 1 character that's been enchanted with a level 55 enchant:



I simply switch my orb/amulet/helm/armor to achieve the maximum level of enchant. Pictured here is the only gear that needs to be switched to achieve the level 55 enchant (ignore the annihilus, it's only there as a spare for making bumpers):




Typical 105 fcr/60 fhr pvm gear consists of:

Shako (socketed with um rune)
Mara's Kaleidoscope
Skin of the vipermagi (socketed with um)
Spirit shield
Magefists
2 stone of jordans/2 bul kathos
eschutta's temper (socketed with fire facet)
Sandstorm Treks
arachnid
call to arms/spirit on switch

Here is a picture of her stats/damage (only using 4 fire gcs, torch and annhilus) for reference:



The mercenary's gear consists of:

Vampire Gaze (socketed with um rune)
Treachery Armor (shael + thul + lem)
Infinity polearm (ber + mal + ber + ist)(prefer eth threshers due to the lower requirements and exceptional speed)

and a picture of her mercenary's damage (venom has not activated from the treachery armor in the picture and actually exceeds 7k damage when active):

[img]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u58/JF1283MK3/Diablo%202%20items/enchantedmerc.png[/img]

The idea of the mercenary's gear is to make him strike quickly, tank a great deal of damage (achieves 20% physical damage reduction from Vampire Gaze and 15% damage reduction from the level 15 fade once it becomes active), and provide cover if you get into a very congested area where you must rely on him a little bit more for safety (also correlates with his being able to tank alot of damage). He also achieves alot of resistance to the elements fom fade and the um in his gaze (res are almost maxed without fade and are well over maxed when they do become active). I could have placed a ber rune in his gaze, rather than the um, but he dies very seldom and I prefer to have his resistances being closer to being maxed before fade activates, simply because he has to be hit a few times before it does (chance to cast fade on when struck). The Conviction aura boots his enchanted damage significantly, which is also why I've chosen a Treachery armor over a Fortitude. The idea is that a Fortitude's purpose is to boost physical damage by 200%, whereas a treachery armor is used for speed. Treachery grants 45% ias, which is very effective when used in conjunction with a fast base polearm, such as the eth thresher that my merc is using in the picture. With the 45% ias from the Treachery armor, the merc leeches enough life with his Vampire Gaze that he seldom needs to be healed. Higher damage could of course be achieved by using an eth Colossus Voulge and Fortitude armor, but his killing speed would in fact suffer because the fire damage is his primary base of damage. I have tested both setups and although I would suggest an eth cv and fortitude for a Hammer Paladin's merc, it is in fact not as efficient as the setup I have recommended to be used with this Sorceress' build.

A higher damage of frozen orb/firewall/enchant can be reached, but I opt to use the um rune in my armor/helm to maintain maximum res and only 4 fire gcs because I like to have room to pick items up when I'm rushing people (I leave a 4x4 slot open). I can rush from normal, act 1, to hell, act 5 within approximately 35-45 minutes depending on how well the leechers are cooperating with me (talking to the npcs as needed and not 'afking' during the rush). The damage that frozen orb does is more than enough when coupled with coverage of the conviction aura from the Mercenary's Infinity. Many people will argue that this build is not the most effective or least expensive build due to the cost of the infinity polearm, but it is a very versatile, unusual build that will not only be alot of fun to play, but also surprise alot of folks when they see it in action. I've received many complements on the build and hope that future players get as much enjoyment from it as I have. Please do not pm me with questions regarding the build, but rather post them in the thread for the sake of others who might have similiar questions. Do not hesitate to ask though as I'm sure that someone may not understand why I've chosen a particular piece of equipment over another. For those that don't have the patience to read through my 'tutorial', the 'tl;dr' version is what's underneath the colored/underlined text. Cheers and good luck with your own Sorceresses.

Joshua

Thanks for that guide.

Actually, many (most?) classic sorc built for rush use exactly this setup : orb+firewall+static
Though orb is the main damages in classic, and firewall (not maxed) is used vs cold immunes.

About your merc, you argue for speed (usefull with fire damages from enchant), but I'd think you need him vs fire immunes, else your firewall must be just enough.
So I would probably go for physical damages (infinity + forty/treach + andy/guillaumes??)

About your sorc, maybe I would also consider NW over Shako (unless you really need those 10%dr, depends on your playing style, espacially with firewall).

But the more important : you reach 145%fcr if I'm right, where 105% is needed. Why ooh why Viper ? because cheap ? Go for CoH / enigma / Ormus !

regards

This post was edited by feanur on Dec 31 2010 05:15pm

Well there are two ideas behind the speed, which are both killing speed and the ability to effectively leech life with only the life leech granted from the Vampire Gaze (I've found that with less ias, the merc simply doesn't leech fast enough to make it beneficial). It could be argued that an Andariel's helm could be used instead, but then you'd actually lose the dr%, which actually keeps him alive through pretty much anything thrown at him.

In regards to the NW vs shako, The shako provides mf, a big boost in life and mana (very useful because you never have to use a mana pot unless hit with a creature that uses mana drain, the build is based on vitality and the shako gives the boost in vitality (which I also find to be more useful), and the Shako provides a boost to not only both your fire and cold skills, but also your static level (more range), your bo/bc level (more life/duration), and teleport level (less mana used). The 50 mf doesn't hurt either since you won't be using mf from other gear with this build.

Regarding the Vipermagi versus the other gear, I originally made the sorc a little bit earlier in the ladder season and it was easier/cheaper to acquire the vmagi. A coh is a nice substitute if you are looking for more mf (being that I'm actually over the 105 fcr bp), I just find that the fcr bp and res from vmagi is sufficient. The next bp is in fact 200 fcr, which would make rushing faster, but the cost to build the sorc would increase substantially. If someone preferred, they could use a 2 sorc/20 fcr circlet, 20 fcr amulet, and 20 fcr rings instead of the shako, maras, and bks/sojs. I just like the cost vs use factor of my sorc's build, especially when I prefer to place my more valuable items on my actual purpose built pvp characters. I actually use plain 5 all res scs to achieve max res, but people could use ists in their gear, rather than ums/facets and they could use 7 mf scs rather than 5 all res scs.

The build is versatile enough to use more than one setup, but this one is effective and fairly inexepensive to build.

if you use infinity why not just make a light sorc?

That's an argument that's not invalid, but the point is that people grow tired of using the same characters continuously (part of my reasoning for experimenting with this build in the first place) and it's actually the fastest way of making a level 40 bumper (another very useful task that a light sorc cannot assist with). I won't deny that a light sorc is a faster character to rush with, but the hybrid Orb/Firewall is more challenging to use (requires a greater learning curve) and is a multi-faceted character that can be used for multiple tasks (I've even used mine to kill dclone on numerous occasions).

Thanks for answer.

As far as I know, NW also provides +2all skills... And life/mana on shako is not bo-able, so the boost is nice but not extra-nice. I wont argue for the 50%mf of course





You may be surprised, but hybrids can be just as efficient as light-sorc. And sometimes more.

This post was edited by feanur on Dec 31 2010 06:19pm

Well another point of effectiveness with the light sorc vs hybrid fire/cold, is that there are some exeptional unique monsters whose immunities can't be broken with the conviction aura. This is where the hybrid sorc has the advantage, having fire/cold/and lightning (static) skills and a merc that does enough physical / poison damage to kill them quickly as well. The merc does about 2.5k damage before being enchanted with his gear alone (defensive, act 2 nightmare merc for holy freeze), which is more than enough with the amount of ias he has to kill those particular minions quickly enough after being hit with static (I use that tactic to kill the dual cold/fire immunes in trav quickly). For example, when I am rushing several people at once and the difficulty increases, I will tele into the area where the council is in travincal, static them all quickly first to get their life down, then proceed to use orb, then firewall to kill as many as I can, then use orb to kill whichever ones remain that are still fire immune with conviction on them. Occasionally one or two remain who are still cold/fire immune, but the static has gotten them down to one third of their life already and the merc owns them in 2-3 shots. The other reason why I use 105% fcr over 200, is that the extra fcr only helps with your teleport and static skills, being that frozen orb and firewall have delays.

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