how good is the dmg of hydras vs blizzard with relatively bad gear? hence no flickering flame and phoenix for hydra.
just standard caster items like viper, ocu, spirit, +3 sk amu

blizzard by a long distance, due to Cold Mastery.

i saw hydra doing ridiculous dmg in videos. is that only cause they had torch, anni, full inv of skillers, eschutas, rainbow facettes, infinity merc, flickering flame and phoenix?

hydra is 100% viable, it got my ladder sorc to lvl 85 and good gear before i switched to es fireball/meteor. It is a little more slow probably, but way more safe cause hydra's are snipers lol. I have a fire sorc discussion thread here you can check out to see my end-game setup and stat sheet. Would link it but i dont know how lol

well since im playing hc safety is important, but how good is it without -res gear compared to blizzard?

with a sunder and 30-32 lvl hydra solo it will be as good as blizz imo as you can direct damage alot more effectively and be able to attack at farther distances. If you play in groups i wouldnt recommend if u plan on solo farming chaos/baal, but everything else is good.

i tried out nova, blizzard and hydra without -res gear on mephisto and blizzard had the highest dmg.

im concerned about all the fire immunes in chaos sanc and baal throne even with a sunder charm. dmg might be quite low with hydra there

blizzard is best like someone else said because of cold mastery, it makes it really strong vs none immunes in hell unlike hydra.

i guess only the endgame versions of nova and hydra can compete to blizzard then?!

I think so, dbrunski did a video for the end game builds tho and they basically all really similar clear speed but blizz was way better budget, nova won overall with good gear on clear speed tho