i usually have an orber/firewall sorc each ladder beginning.. is blizz a better choice here?? than orb..

I think orb would work better. Blizz will obviously do more damage, but the point of the cold skill is to freeze them so that your firewall can kill them. Orb hits way more monsters than blizz does. Hence, orb freezes more monsters which makes it easier to kill more monsters with fewer fire walls.

Orb will still have enough damage to kill pesky fire immunes.

Other than that, not a bad guide. Just switch from blizz to orb and you should be set.

In open spaces orb is in effect good, but definately not great in confined spaces, especially doing the pits.

e.g. Orb spike will hit first monster approaching (pity if he is immune cold & good if not) but 80% of the attack has been also
absorbed by the walls, now with blizzard it rains down on them (it is at 100% effective as the area mass is automatically set
within the closed space), making it better to hit monsters within that large group of immunes and non immunes.

Basically at the end of the day, it is up to you to choose skill

I vouch for blizz because it has more dmg, and 80% of hell is fire immune so you'll need a bit of dmg.

Bumping for more replies

Q. Why is it that most orbers hardly ever use glacial spike???

Bump

Isn't needed because max orb and high mastery rapes pretty much anything not cold immune in a solo game.

I personally choose orb/fb for a starter, orb/meteor for bosses. But this guide works i'm sure.


But for players with higher gear options, orb/fb outperformes blizz/fw by far imo.

Nice point, but blizz dmg with mastery is more, and glicial spike is awesome in stopping the monsters in their tracks, with orbers they rely on running around and there orb killing straight away? Anyway you have good points.

I only asked about orbers not using because in baal runs they (alot that I have seen) do not use against the minions, which is really sad, seen a number of chars get mauled by minions because they use mana burn and get annihilated, NOW if the orber used Glacial Spike and froze the bulk of the monsters, then people would not get raped. LOL

This post was edited by izParagonzi on Oct 15 2006 07:22pm

The ones that don't use use spike/blast when they need to are probably newbs.