Hello forum,

I am currently in the process of planning a new build on ladder which is as mentioned in $subject so let's cut right to the chase.

There are three elements to doing damage with elemental spells:

* skills (and in this I include synergies),
* enhanced damage to that element,
* lowering enemies' resistances.

Given all this, my currently planned way of dealing with each element, and the matching gear, is as such:

* Cold: Death's Fathom (weapon) since it provides bonuses to cold skill damage. As to lowering resistances, Cold Mastery is here for that.
* Fire: Phoenix (shield) since it lowers enemies' fire resistance by a whopping 28%. Fire mastery provides enhanced damage.
* lightning: Griffon's Eye (helm), but that one was pretty obvious.

What goes in the armor slot is still undecided. Ormus' Robes seems like a very good choice, of course, but I'm not sure whether this would be more efficient than Chains of Honor. Yes, I know, Enigma blah blah, but Enigma has no resistances, Chains of Honor has 65% to all, and I'm a sorc to I have teleport. Granted, Enigma can allow me to put less points in strength, but resistances will remain a problem, and a problem I want to solve.

There is of course the FCR question, but that's another topic. Let us just say that I'll be happy with 78+ and overjoyed with 105+, but the latter requires a few sacrifices which I'm not sure I want to make...

(constructive) Feedback appreciated!

What skills are you planning on using? Frozen orb, firewall or meteor, and nova?

That is still a point where I'm unsure what to do, so here's my current plan.

Cold, it will definitely be Frozen Orb. When targeted well enough, it does more damage than Blizzard, plus it has a larger AoE. I'll combine that with Glacial Spike.

Fire: I'd like to keep it "in the right branch", since synergies are stronger here AFAICS, so my current plan would be Fireball and Meteor. Or maybe Hydra, I don't know. Hydra auto aims and is a great sentinel which can shoot BVR without missing, at least while the enemies are stationary, and it brings enemies to you too (at least the melee type). Meteor looks more promising and requires a different skill set. Undecided!

Lightning: Static Field of course, although only one point in it, but as to the other attacking spell I'd like to go for Chain Lightning. I'm unsure of my survivability as of yet, I do plan to put one point into ES, and Chain Lightning reaches further -- this is also why I set my FCR break points the way they are: Chain Lightning fires once every 13 frames with 78+% of FCR and the next level is at 117 (ouch), whereas other spells have breakpoints at 63 then 105.

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I also forgot to talk about that all important "breaking immunities" thing: Infinity is of course in the plans (in fact I am close to having all runes) but while I can't use it, a wand with Lower Resist charges will do just as nicely. I do plan to use that at first. And breaking immunities is also why that -x% to element resistances is important since it applies after immunities are broken -- if they are of course! But given my planned build, I really don't care that much for a perfect Infinity. As high as I can possibly afford is all I ask for

Phoenix shield might be alright for sustain but it doesn't do a lot for your other skills. Spirit would probably be the better all rounder, especially for the fcr which you're going to need.

Griffons and deaths fathom is a no brainer. Griffons gives fcr which helps everything and 1 to skills, deaths fathom gives a huge damage bonus to cold which helps frozen orb the most because of it's awful synergy.

Doom would be pretty sick though, it gives 2 to skills, -60 enemy cold res and a holy freeze aura. I know you're going with infinity but between 1 point cold mastery (level 10 would be -60 cold res I believe, wouldn't be hard to get), doom (-60), and conviction (-85) you'd basically have a free maxed cold mastery. Holy freeze would grant some safety and then you could do might merc instead.

As far as armor, hard to go wrong with vipermagi until you find what works with the rest of the gear.

I haven't used hydra since they buffed it. It was passable before so it's probably a bit better now. At least it auto aims.

Chain lightning might not be the best choice, since you're likely to only use it on cold/fire immunes, of which there would be one or two at a time. Nova sucks but between the combination of nova and static it might be the better option, and you'd also not have to shoot for extra FCR. You would, at the very least, be able to spam it 3 times a second instead of 2.

Sorceress
FCR Frames
0% 13
9% 12
20% 11
37% 10
63% 9
105% 8
200% 7

Sorceress (Lightning / Chainlightning)
FCR Frames
0% 19
7% 18
15% 17
23% 16
35% 15
52% 14
78% 13
117% 12
194% 11


I dug through some of my old builds that I tried out years ago. This was the tri elemental sorc I did.

str enough for gear
110ish energy maybe more
rest vitality

1 pt warmth
1 pt fire mastery
1 pt light mastery
1 pt cold mastery
1 pt shiver armor
1 pt energy shield
max fireball
max blizz
max telekinesis
max nova
rest into light mastery

tal amulet
tal armor
tal belt
occulus
shako
magefists
soj
spirit monarch 35 fcr
natures peace for nihlathak, otherwise another soj
didn't write down the boots lol, probably wartravs, could have been aldurs given the lack of fire res
cta/spirit on swap

anni, torch, gheeds, skillers if you want


merc gear don't remember his aura, probably might
infinity
vamp gaze shaeled
gladiators bane shaeled

It was definitely a solo play kind of build, the damage fell off hard with more players in the game but it worked fine and was pretty quick at basically any area.

Obviously you don't have to go for energy shield, which would free up an extra 20ish skillpoints that you could waffle between fireball and blizz synergy.

I would usually spam blizz on anything non cold immune and then switch between nova and fireball spam depending on immunity. Worked reasonably quick.

Ok yeah I remember now.

If youre going with a tri elemental, you only want one spell to have a timer because the cooldown applies to all skills with a cooldown. While hydra, meteor, and firewall are good enough, if youre fighting unbreakable light immunes you lost the opportunity to do damage during orbs cooldown.

Since youre going with frozen orb, then you would probably want to go with fireball for the fire tree and nova or charged bolt for lightning, unless you want to shoot for 117 fcr at which point chain lightning is probably fine.

Then you just teleport to trash mobs, shoot frozen orb and spam the untimed skill (whatever theyre not immune to) with high fcr to make up for lowish damage.

Yeah, we had a disagreement with a friend of mine online about cooldowns of Blizzard and Frozen Orb respectively... I thought Frozen Orb's and Blizzard's cooldowns were the same but it turns out I was mistaken, Blizzard has, in fact, an even longer cooldown (source: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/castingdelays.shtml):

* Blizzard's casting delay is 1.8 seconds,
* Frozen Orb's is 1 second.

So, Frozen Orb it definitely is.

Furthermore, and UNLIKE Diablo 2 classic, this cooldown applies to ALL spells, not just spells with cooldowns (I recall very well my tri elemental sorc in d2 classic spamming FO then Fireball just by switching spells on the keyboard). And FCR plays a role here, according to what I've read: the amount of time until which you are allowed to cast a new spell, whatever that spell, is equal to that spell's cooldown plus your normal casting rate. For instance, in the case of Frozen Orb, provided your FCR is 105 (one spell every 8 frames), if you cast Frozen Orb, you will have to wait 25+8 = 33 frames before you cast a new one.

As such, Hydra (with its 1.8 seconds delay between casts) seems far less attractive than Meteor now (delay 1.2 seconds).

I would still try out fireball, you can cast almost five of them in the time it takes to throw one meteor if youre going for 105 or 117 fcr. The meteor would take 38 frames compared to the fireballs 8.

I could see an argument made for blizz over orb, I do all of hell with a piddly 2k blizz every ladder with shit for gear, its way easier to kite with. Hard to go wrong with orb for a hybrid build though.

Well, Fireball and Meteor are mutual synergies as well; I didn't say I wouldn't go Fireball This is one spell I intend to have in my arsenal. Hydra gives back to Fireball but the reverse is not true... *sigh*

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Now, talking about Doom vs Death's Fathom, on the whole I think I still prefer Death's Fathom, and that's a simple reason of cost (HelOhmUmLoCham... Ouch). Furthermore, Death's Fathom has FCR and +3 to skills vs +2, and it brings in some very useful resistances. Also, I do have Death's Fathom and not Doom so that's a factor... The day I can make it, or obtain it, I'll give it a try and see, that's for sure.

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Another option which was brought up to me by this very same friend of mine with whom we argued about casting delays is having at least Tal Rasha's weapon with 3 other elements of the set in which case you get:

* 15% less resistance to enemies' fire and lightning resistance, and
* 15% bonus damage to cold skills.

That is pretty nice. Along with all the other set bonuses... Eh, I'll have to read up on that, but is Tal Rasha's the answer after all? And to think I "sold" the 2/2/2 weapon that I found... *sigh*

So, provided I find 4 elements of the set which fit my build, I would then be able to go with Spirit as a shield instead of Phoenix... More reading, more studying...

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Re: Nova vs {Chain ,}Lightning, and Energy Shield: mana burn is a concern, and I don't want to invest in telekinesis... Frankly this will have to be seen in the wild. If I go the Nova route directly then no ES. If I go the Chain Lightning route then 1 point in it is possible. At a first glance I'd prefer the Chain Lightning route, but I'll try the Nova route first and see how this goes.

with limited skill points you want skills with less synergies, they're designed to do more dmg and not require as many hard pts to synergies.

i'd suggest firewall, nova, orb. built around tals with as much +skills gear as u can muster.

This is precisely because skill points are limited that I am looiking for ways around it, the main being lowering the foes' resistances

I do value + to skills, don't get me wrong; but the combo of breaking immunities + -x% to monster resistances is worth many, many skill points -- which is why I want to go that route.

When it comes to cold damage, the sorc's cold mastery works wonders here AS LONG AS the foes are not cold immune; if you can break their immunities, say using LR or Conviction, then the skill applies to its fullest. As to enhancing cold damage however, only Death's Fathom does that on its own -- and Tal's weapon if you have 4 elements of the set, albeit to a lesser extent.

Anyway, at that point in time, I am still fine tuning the build.