(This is from early ladder and probably out of date, I'm lazy and won't edit it.)



The Es/Orb Guide:

First off, this is a GM oriented guide, there will be no gear swapping (aside from prebuff) and is written to be used in gm situations, that said, we move onto basic goals.

Introduction:
Im *catastrophe. aka *fear[rawr], you probably have seen me this ladder on the character Orbasm. I've moved on from elemental characters, so I've decided to share what I've learned in this guide.
Comments and critiques welcome.

Goals:

1.3k Life / 3.5k mana
105 fcr / 86 fhr
1.5k orb
at least -180-200 cold resist
~5k blizz/~4k ice blast
And most important, 95% eshield (level 40) with maxed telekinesis

Fairly simple, yeah? Lets move on.

I'll put dueling strategies at the end, so lets move onto gear, stats, and skills.

Gear:
I will put here the optimal gear, and reasons for selecting. If you disagree, explain why you believe your choice would be better suited.

Quick pointers:
Unlike fire and light element sorceresses, cold element sorcs will actually benefit from +% to cold, since it doesn't just add to mastery, it adds a lot more. Some people believe you must SUR everything on an es sorc, you won't need that much mana. I'll explain more about str vs energy when I get to rings. Lastly, resists, i'll explain this later as well.

Helm:
Nightwings, obviously +20% cold damage with -5% cold facet, doesn't have to be 5 persay, but who puts a +5/3 in a perf nw?
Other choices,
Shako, life, mana, +2 all, d/r, puny 2 attri. All in all a good caster helm, but without that +20% damage, you just wont be strong enough.
+3 20 2, Some use this for more surs, or cold facets. +2 all is more helpful then an extra +1 cold. The fcr isn't that much of a use because 105 is easy to hit.

Weapon:
Deaths Fathom, don't bother with 35%, get a 34%. Its the same damage for a fraction of the cost. As for resists, on an es sorc, resist means nothing, so don't worry about it. Get a 34/xx/xx fathom and put the runes you save towards charms, better charms really make a difference on this char.
Hoto, You lose a potential +35% damage to gain basically nothing more then oak sage charges. Even a low fathom would cost the same and help you so much more. Please don't make a hoto orber.

Shield:
Spirit, Fcr isn't that important, you should hit 105 without a perf one, the +mana and +msorb should be high. Not that hard to get a good spirit, so just do it. Everything about this shield screams godly, there is no second choice.

Belt:
Arach, +1 all, 20 fcr. Enough said.

Boots:
Treks: Shoot for +15 str +xx vita +70 poison res. Eth for style. Poison is the only thing (besides open wounds) that will really hurt you, it goes through energy shield, so high res here is nice.

Amulet:
Either crafted or rare with +2 sorc, +20+ str, and fcr for starters. Additional mods to look for are +life, +mana, +mana regen (on all crafteds). Ignore res, res doesn't matter for this build. (see below)

The above is basically common sense, from here out is where I notice my build differs from the more common ones.

First off, using 2x fcr str rings and a coh will save you at best, 60 strength. Wow? 60 more points to put into energy, at 2 points of mana returned for each energy, this adds 120 to your mana pool. By using coh you gain 65 all resists (useless) +2 skills, 40 mana (20 str).
Keep that in mind.

Armor:
Vipermagi, xx resists, 13 mdr. Socketed with 5/5 or sur, shael if you have problems reaching 86 fhr.
why vipermagi?
30 fcr frees up rings and gloves.

Gloves:
Frosties, upped for style. +40% mana, oh yeah thats nice.

Rings:
Twin sojs, matching for style. +2 all helps everything, including eshield lvl and bo level. Also, +50% mana.

+90% mana > +120 mana. Starting to see why coh orbers suck so bad?

Viper vs coh
Coh:
+2 all
20 str
65 resist all
8 dr
Viper:
+1 all
30 FCR
35 resist all
13 mdr
A socket Versatility ftw.

By using a viper you lose 1 all skills (but get +2 from sojs instead of fcr rings), 65 resist all (which doesn't even matter) and 20 str.

I'll explain the resists issue now:

Copied from arreat summit:
"The complete list of all damage modifications are calculated in this order:

Energy Shield
Bone Armor and Cyclone Armor
DR and MDR (damage reduction and magic damage reduction)
Resistances
% Absorb
Direct Absorb "

As you can see, energy shield is your first line of defense. Since you will have 95% here, treat the rest of the damage calculations as a mere 5% of the original damage.

Bone armor and cyclone armor will not be an issue.
MDR comes into play now, the 13 mdr on viper and possibly more on amulet will do a great deal more on 5% of the damage then it would normally, helping negate pure magic spells (cough bone spear/spirit cough)

Ah, resistances. The difference between having say, 30 resist instead of stacked 75% resist, a 45% difference is almost negligible when dealing with 5% of the damage that actually gets through. This helps free up gear and also serves to negate spells like lower resists and auras like conviction. Thus builds that rely on those to deal higher damage are in trouble.

Prebuff:
For prebuff, personally I just use a +9 to energy shield memory runeword. (When made in a +3 energy shield staff, the result is +6 energy shield and +3 to sorc skills)
I also use a +3 energy shield ormus robes.
In theory you can prebuff all the way up to gcs, its just a personal thing. I get sick of prebuffing more then 2 items, but maybe you like it. Up to you.

Charms:
Ideally, here is what you want:
8x Cold lifers, the higher the better.
1x Cold fhr, to hit 86 (treks 20, spirit 55 = 75, 11 more for bp)
+20 stat/xx res/x xp anni, remember the resists issue?
+20 stat/xx res Sorc torch, same thing here.
of course you can go for perf/higher res to look cooler and feel better, but if have a tight budget, put those runes elsewhere.
Scs: ideally, +20 life/+17 mana small charms. Serpent vitas, the perfect sc for this build. Unfortunately these are not only rare, but expensive. Get em as high as you can though, 10 of em.

Enough about gear, lets move on.

Stats:
Str: The usual enough to use gear, spirit (156) will be your heaviest item. Using an eth spirit you can save some points to put into energy, but replacing eth spirits can be difficult at times.
Dex: None, duh.
Vita: This is controversial, basically, as much as you need, ~0-100. I do not recommend zero vita, I would do at least 25-50, the more life from charms, the less into vita.
Energy: The rest goes here, higher mana pool = more life you can pot back, and the more damage you can take before you take a lot of health damage.

Pretty self explanatory really.
Moving on.

Skills:

Here is where things get tricky, due to the nature of the build, you will have points left over. Back in 09 these were put into tstorm by most people, but energy shield is a MUCH stronger choice.

Let me lay it out.
Initial maxed skills:
20 Orb
20 Ice Bolt
20 Telekinesis

One point wonders:
Warmth
Shiver Armor

Prerequisites:
9

So with those three maxed, one point into warmth and shiver, we are left with three skills to chose from for the rest of the points.
Blizzard
Ice Blast
Cold Mastery

With the above skills maxed/1 pointed and 1 point into each of the three listed above, we have spent 73 skills points.
Level 95 = 94 skills from leveling + 12 from quests = 106 skills to spend.
106 - 73 = 33 left over

Next, we much achieve a level 40 energy shield with prebuff gear on.
How much you wish to prebuff determines how strong your secondary attack spells will be.
What we have now is this
+2 nightwings, +2 sojs, +1 arach, +2 ammy, +3 torch, +1 anni, +1 battle command: +12
Prebuffing with memory and es ormus will give us another 9 + 3 = 12
12 + 12 = 24, 40 - 24 = 16.
We need 16 more points to reach level 40. To get those you can either add to the base level of energy shield, or prebuff more, like gcs, +3 ammy, +3 helm, etc.
Say you add all 16, 33 - 16 = 17 left over.

These 17 points will be divided among blizzard, ice blast, and cold mastery.
Facets will be adding -15 cold resist, so to hit -180 we only need -165 from cold mastery, skill level 30. Adding 3 more points to cold mastery will achieve this bare minimum.
If you are dueling gm, you shouldn't need to max cold mastery, or even add that much to it. If you lose because you didn't have another - 40 resist, remaking with more cold mastery will NOT help.

This leaves us with 14 points to divide between blizzard and ice blast, let me explain the benefits to each.

Blizzard: AoE (area of effect) spell that will remain in effect for a few seconds, also can become invisible if you teleport away far enough. Strategically placed, can work nicely against an opponent pursuing you (especially low health). The higher damage blizz contains will help cut through sorb/stack and cyclone armor, helping against some opponents. Remember this is also a timered spell and shares the same timer as orb.
The best thing I like about blizz is the namelock potential. Namelocked blizzards work wonders against defensive and fast opponents. Personally, its about all i use against other blizzers and defensive bone necros. Even a low blizz, (personally mine is about 5.5) is enough to take out other blizz sorcs in 1 or 2 hits, meanwhile you can tank 5+ no problem. Abuse minions to get namelocks Prepare for the AA criers.

Ice Blast: One of the most underappreciated spells at your disposal. This spell is not timered, so you can spam it while you wait for blizz/orb to "recharge". It also moves slow, making it have more airtime in one place, letting you spam multiples and tele into them The fact that you can spam it at 105 fcr (8 frames) can put a lot of opponents into hit recovery animation (or dodge lock), making a namelocked teleport followed by a harsh IB spamming to the face deadly.

These skills also synergize eachother, so adding to either will power both. Ice blast benefits +8% cold damage per level from blizzard, while blizzard receives +5% cold damage per level from ice blast. My suggestion is to place more points into blizzard than ice blast, but I find myself using ice blast more and more.

If you are more offensive, ice blast will be your new favorite spell, defensive players will utilize blizzard more. Keep that in mind as you choose where to put those last points.

All right that takes care of the basics.
Now for dueling strategies.

--------------------------------------------
Dueling Strats

In my opinion, this is the most important section, because even with the same gear, stats, and skill setup, it is the player that makes the difference.

General Strategy
Due to the nature of orb, you will have to be nearby to get a GOOD hit, which is why energy shield is so useful. The goal is to get the orb to “explode” on them, this will be referred to as either a full or direct hit. Orb’s short range requires you to be both 100% offensive while still 100% defensive at the same time. Always chasing and attacking but always teleporting to dodge as well. Also, make use of secondary attacks, personally I use blizzard and ice blast just as much as orb, just because you are an orber doesn’t mean you have to use orb exclusively. The trick to getting a full hit is preemptive targeting, this isn’t something you can just do, it’s a skill you develop from dueling. Basically, aiming towards where they will be, rather then where they are. If you predict a teleport well enough, you can hit them with a full orb, which is enough to 1 hit a lot of pkers, if not deal critical damage that can be finished off with stray orbs or a blizz/ice blast blitz. Using ice blast/blizzard effectively can be the key in winning or losing a duel, if your opponent is moving too much when you get on screen to land an orb and too fast/smart to predict, a namelocked blizzard can take them by surprise and land some good damage. A namelocked teleport followed by some heavy ice blast spam in the face can put them in hit recovery and finish them off. Always chase, but never let your guard down. Corner them if you can and if you get down in life, you can spam blizz and run The best situation is where they are following you, as this makes it very easy to predict where they will be. Most importantly, always walk after orbing, you are no longer able to tele RIGHT after you orb, but don’t stand still, walk a bit diagonally and then tele away. Alright, I’ll move into specific builds now.

Amazons:
Ah zons, ice blast’s best friend.
Bowa: Two kinds really, the kind that stay in one spot, and the kind that move a lot. Also, knockback and non-knockback. The ones that camp will get annoying, try to drop a blizz/orb on them and tele by without getting hit. Abuse the terrain ie bushes/houses/corners to force them to move. When they move they are at their weakest, circle teleport in, land on them and spam ice blasts to put them into dodgelock. Bye
Fc: Ew. The number of hits you can take depends on the java, but you should not be a 1 hit kill. So use the same strategy to get them on the move and then surprise them. Bum rush and teleport right on top of them, wont change anything about their attack aside from that your ice blasts will hit sooner. Nk them for using farcast.
“Legit” Java: Not much to worry about here. You outrange them, light fury won’t do much at all to you. Circle around them orbing inside/blizzing/ice blasting until they die.
Plague: A joke really, just don’t get careless, you will get hurt a lot from poison, use the same strategy as javas, just be more wary of their projectiles. If they plague and hide in it, blizz them.

All in all zon’s shouldn’t be that much of a problem really.

Assassins:
Oh assassins, how I loath fade
WW/Ghost: These guys hurt. A lot. Poison and open wounds both cut through your shield, having some vita and high lifers will help here, but the simple solution is don’t get hit. Don’t stay still on their screens long enough to get teleww’d/dragon flightww’d. Stay moving and drop blizz/orb in your path. Watch for traps, especially if they are cloaking, traps won’t/shouldn’t hurt, but the stun can be deadly. Ideally, trick them into ww’ing and leave some blizz/orb/ib in their direction. Not much to say other then keep moving.
Trappers come in two varieties, the H/S (hoto spirit) kind, and the C/C (claw claw) kind.
Trap, H/S: The hoto(or wiz)/spirit trapper, no claw block, and slower lay speed, but will have some nice mindblast speed. Pared with a good namelocker behind the char, you can be in trouble. Eshield should tank a few rounds of traps before you start getting hurt too bad, so tele away to regen mana if needed. Circular tele in, drop a blizz/orb on em, walk diagonally to dodge the traps and tele away. If you get stuck, tele out when they go to re-lay traps. Blizzing to force movement is a good idea because it opens them up for an orb or ice blast fiesta. (<-copyright) It’s a good habit to tele off minimap to break nl if you have even a suspicion of it, this also gives you a chance to re-attack from the other side of the screen, helping your chances of dodging another namelock.
Trap, C/C: Basically the opposite of the above, stronger traps, weaker fcr (unless they are using wizzies + valk, then you are in trouble) so take advantage of the slower fcr. Basically the same strategy, but take more care to dodge the traps, as they will hurt a bit more. Also, claw block comes into effect here, this will frustrate you, but don’t get careless. Watch out for the very fast trap lay speed, and keep in mind a lot of trappers have a chaos on them so watch for ww. A skilled trapper with bugged items will make this a very hard duel.
Kicker: Joke duel, its like a wwsin that doesn’t hurt. Same strategies, less caution. No big deal.

Necros:
I love these guys. Sorbin magic is fun
Bone: Oh how pnb has met it’s match. Watch these guys freak out as they watch your life stay very high while bone spells are eaten by your yellow friend . The majority of their damage is mdr’d and taken to mana, resulting in a very low life loss, and a small mana loss. It’s a hard duel to lose, you have to get hit a LOT at once to start taking damage, just don’t get careless with your tanking. If they get too defensive, use the clay golem/sage for namelock blizz / ice blast tele.If they bm and revive (ew cold immunes) just say “fake afk 180 sec brb”.
Poison: Lower res is a waste, the poison will hurt you the same regardless, a LOT. Fortunately for you, poison nova is laughably easy to dodge. Just stay away from the nova, its easy to see coming and you will be fine.

Druids:
The longest duels ever ~_~
Melee: Joke. Play with them, they will never be able to catch you. Duel with frost nova exclusively for fun. No challenge here folks, move along.
Fire: Only half a step above melee druids and poison necros. More eZ dodge and negligible AoE dmg with arma. Stay offensive and circle around them orbing/blizzing and launching ib whenever you can. As long as you stay on them, this duel will end shortly.
Windy/Elemental: Possibly one of the hardest, definitly the longest duels you will find. Cyclone armor requires a full hit from orb to break, which fortunately isn’t that difficult to land due to the nature of their attack patterns. Unfortunately, if you are dueling one of those that recasts everything (especially cyclone) after each hit, you could be in for a long duel. All in all the sorb/stack, druid skill, and defensiveness decides how hard/long this duel will be. First off, orb away the minions, they are annoying and weak. Odds are the druid will try to recast them, chase and get in some damage, when he realizes they are a waste, he will go offensive. Eshield will tank a few hits from tornado (hurricane does absolutely nothing, gg) which means spare nados wont hurt you and if you can get away from a successful tele hit, you might get out onscathed. A priority for this duel is to keep your mana pool full. Pack 16 blues always . If you get them on the run, do not relent, but don’t get careless and fall into a trap. If you can get them towards a corner, V targetting works nicely with an ice blast + orb combination. All in all a great char to spar duel against since it takes consecutive hits from both of you to do some real damage.

Paladins:
Smiters have become VERY popular this patch, and all the noobs are making them. Joy ~_~
Aura: Well the main source of their damage, conviction, is negated by energy shield, so don’t expect to take damage from these guys unless you are carless enough to get charged. Auradins for the most part have horrible res, mediocre life, and freak out when they realize they have to actually hit you to hurt you. Since they will be chasing you, this makes hitting them a ton easier, drop blizz/orb behind u and spam ice blast at where they are coming from. Stay on the move and its over before you know it. Some of these guys pack foh, but its just more weak dmg for you to laugh at.
Hdins come in two varieties, the teleport kind, and the charge kind.
Hdin, Tele: Teledins should be easy for you. Predictable and tankable, just stay moving and orb where you were. Keep your mana pool full and you won’t have any problems. Walk + ice blast them for fun. Remember that you CAN tank them, one hammer = ~ 12k / 6 pvp penalty = ~2k. 95% eshield means you will end up taking 50-100 health damage and 1-1.5k mana damage. 2 hammers shouldn’t do much to you at all. Fluke hammers won’t do anything to you if you keep your mana up.
Hdin, Charge: Well this is a lot more difficult. Horray for desynch and invisible hammers. Lucky for you fluke/invis hammers wont do much, so a well choreographed attack is necessary to take you out, and gl finding these skilled players. Just keep the spray up, even if they aren’t visibly on your map, and stay moving. Always moving. Try to stay away from areas they have been, as these are more likely to have invisible hammers. If you are going to try and cut them off for an attack, cut and attack from the side, desynch may have you attacking from the bottom right corner of ur screen while you see them at the top left, but in reality they are spamming hammers right where you tele. Learn to predict and read desynch and spam towards it. Just keep the mana pool up and you’ll be fine. If they pull out the grief, make sure you don’t get charged. (see smite)
Smite: Welcome to the most overmade noob char of 1.10-1.11. Every pub game has a few of these sorbers. Expect them to charge at you during other duels, and nk you if you happen to have money. Basically the same strategy comes into effect as auradins, stay moving and spam behind you. If they bm, you have the wrong char for this duel, just change chars, don’t bother remaking to weaken all of your secondary spells just to deal with a few sorbin nubs.
Foh: Another great example of eshield > conviction. Watch as they realize foh isnt that great without conviction, and as they try to figure out how you are “sorbing” that much, blitz them and spam ice blasts right in the face. If they go defensive and desynch charge all over the place, cut them off, there are no invis hammers to worry about now.
V/T: Weaker version of smite, except this time they pack a more worthless foh. Same strategy as smiter. They won’t foh after they see it doesn’t hurt you.

Sorceresses:
Ah, SvS, this stuff.
Blizzer: These are awesome. Eshield will make blizz take MANY hits to kill you, whereas these guys will die in 1 or 2 hits from your wannabe blizz. Namelocked blizz or namelocked ice blast teles will make short work of these guys.
Orber, non es: Laugh, taunt, challenge them to shot for shot. NO challenge here, at all. They won’t be able to damage you, you will kill them in 1 or 2 shots. I love these guys.
Orber, es: Oh look, its you, these are always fun duels. Personally, I utilize ice blast teleports a ton here, makes short work of all those es orb posers. I 5-0’d every other orber I dueled this season, and ice blast is a big help in these
Fireballer: Yuck, even mediocre fireballers get lucky with invis crap. The more offensive they are, the easier they are to kill, the more defensive the more likely you are to fluke and hit some invis fireball or something in the process. You should be able to tank 2 or 3 at least though. Try to orb and run for the most part though. Es fireballers will make your life hell if they pack 90+ es. A pretty challenging duel all in all, largely due to the buggy nature of fireball, and the range of orb vs the range of fireball.
Light: Well the thunderstorm shouldn’t bother you, at all. Depending on the build, this could be easy, or medium. A non es light sorc will pack a punch, but lightning is fairly easy to dodge, stay moving and remember how short of a range lightning has. Also, don’t gauge how much you can tank off of a few shots, 1-50k is quite a range to deal with. Es light sorcs will be a lot harder, and require a full hit to damage. Not impossible though so just keep dodging and attacking.
Nova: The higher the es, the harder this duel gets. Infinity is a waste on you, and if they realize this it gets to be an even harder duel, but nova is short ranged so duel them sort of like you would a druid/tele hdin. Unfortunately there are the ones that just tele around defensively letting a very high thunderstorm do the work for them. Preemptive orb/ice blast is about all you can do for that, aside from run off the screen and then blitz them when they come at you. Odds are you can tank em as you ice blast em to death.
Hydra: Laugh at them for making such a retarded build, and then kill them with orbs as you walk past the lame hydras. No challenge here really unless you are naked trying to get body and theres 5x of them on your corpse / at gates. Half the time you can tank em with naked eshield though.

Barbarians:
Fatties
BvB: Usually these guys will cry if anything that isnt a barb hostiles them. Without teleport they should never hit you, and even with teleport they have such pathetic fcr and damage you should never, ever lose to a bvb.
BvC: Totally different story. High damage, leap, they also happen to share the same fcr table as you, inherent natural resists ability. A nicely paired duel. Tele fast enough and don’t get stuck in leap and you should be fine. Trick them into wwing just like the sins and attack them at that moment. You should tank at least one ww from the majority of these guys. Be sure to let them know how much they suck and cant kill a sorc in one ww if you do. (jk ) If they fade + get ravens, don’t even bother with them anymore. A lot of bvc cant take losing to a caster and do whatever it takes to sorb that 1.5k. ~_~
Singer: A pretty weak guy pvp that relies on fhr stun to damage. Unfortunately his weak damage is eaten by eshield. He will run out of mana before he kills you, even if he manages to catch you in stunlock. (singers ALWAYS run out of mana) Duel him like you would a teledin or a druid. No big threats here, just a ton of life.

That pretty much covers most of the duelers you will run into. If I have left anything out please remind me! Any suggestions will be considered, so post away.

Thanks and Shoutouts:
Derrick *Majik. For selling me that sexy fathom
Doan *Azn[RawR]: For inspiring me to remake my es orber on ladder.
Dan aka Jonas: For helping to fund my duelers
Jack *Bloodx: For some fun svs. #1 blizz and #1 orb. Gg
Adam *Alche[mist]: For helping me get good vs fire sorcs. R.I.P. FireXMist
Tw Pk’ers for the hours of practice, and for letting me dupe your ears eZ nP.

Well that’s it for now, suggestions and comments appreciated.
~David *Catastrophe.

You know psapphires add more then Surs, right?

imo, surs are overrated.

ups

no no no, fail

Very nice guide.

gg guide man, really helped me out.

This post was edited by whitebladethediviner on Mar 29 2007 03:49pm

Good number crunching. Needs a sticky for sure.

YupYup.

If i hadn't just finished gettn my Pally rushed, Id start this =)

I gotta get my $ bak up b4 I can get all that shit, though =)