Quote (Greentea101 @ Mar 16 2011 01:49am)
I am not going to be an ass and tell you that your guide is bad but I do think it could use some work. Two ladder seasons ago I had one of these and she was very good. One suggestion I have is to use a three to nova Ormus with 15% to lit skill damage, then ditch the circ for a griff. Um both of them to get your res up. You should also get rid of those boots for a pair of treks. Using treks is not silly because the PSN res is important. Alot more important then FHR. I would also find a way to change out the ammy for a maras and still hit the 105 FCR even if I had to use FCR rings. Res is very important. If you don't have them every sorc will stomp you. Maybe I will fire up my editor and put one together today, reading your guide made me want to resurrect my BM lit killer.
Curious to see how this went for you and what you came up with. Let me know. I will counter some of your arguments though. Poison resist is important, but even with perfect eth treks, you'll gain 70% poison resist(which would make my build have +58 poison resist), but you stand to lose 31 stat points to get to the 81 strength required, along with the up to 60 mana that crafted boots can give you. After without BO, that's 142 BOable mana!
I have a pair of 49 mana boots, so I'm losing 131 mana by going with treks. Still huge. Also, the only chars that it really affects are Poison Nova Necros, and Venom using sins(hybrid or melee). Venom sins are tough anyway, and they'll probably murder you no matter what if they're built well. Poison Nova necros are going to be using Lower Resist, along with Death's Web or faceted gear, meaning you're gonna need to stack like crazy to counter that Poison Nova. There's just not enough equipment room for this.
The only alternate route I could see taking is have a standby set of 20/11 poison resist SCs, but even still, you're hard pressed to stack enough to counter Poison Nova or Venom. 10x 20/11's = 110 Poison resist, which would put me right at 100 total resist in hell. Lower resist takes away about 60, which leaves plenty of room for a 10k Poison Nova to rape that 1k life down to 1.
Also, with your other gear selections: Ormus + Griffs = +4 to Nova, +1 to all skills, 45 fcr total. +% to lightning damage adds linearly onto your Lightning Mastery, so isn't really that effective. That leaves us with the -% enemy Light Resistance, which I'll discuss below. Um'ing your equipment is way less effective than using a 15@ jewel with another mod - I'm not sure if jewels can have 15@ with energy or mana, but those two would be ideal. After them, 20 life is an option. The reason I don't go for resist at all though is that it's simply too hard to gain resistance from this build. There are only a few places you can get resistance, and with our weapon and shield slots taken, here's what we're left with:
Ammy- I have 20@ on my 15 fcr ammy - which I find is better than Maras, hands down. These ammys also have the potential for mass mana, life, another resist(up to 30% more on a single resist iirc) and poison length reduced by%. There is no other option really.
Circlet - The ideal circlet would be a 2/20/2 circlet with mass mana, life, resistance. This circlet will run you many thousands of FG though, and is probably better used on a different sorc anyway.
Armor - Doesn't get any better than Vipermagi, with 35@ and 30 fcr to hit the breakpoint. You can argue Ormus, but then you lose an SoJ for an FCR ring. Your net loss is mana, +1 all skills, 35@, and 13 MDR. Your net gain is +2 Nova, which doesn't make much of a difference.
Boots - Could get sexy tri res mana boots. That's about the only option I see though, and I've never seen mana boots with tri res.
Gloves - We have to use either Magefists or Trang's for the 20 fcr. Trang's I suppose could give you more resist, but the mana regen from Mages IMO is better for an ES sorc.
Rings - Well, you could get some decent resist from rings, but you're sacrificing incredible amounts of mana and +1 all skills. Again, this isn't worth it IMO.
Quote (Headworks @ Mar 16 2011 03:44am)
Nice base to build a nova sorc.
Missing :
1/ A more effective pvp variation :
Switch 3/20/20 for Griffon
Mages for Eth frosties (50str req)
Soj for Fcr ring life mana res repl
2/ More resistances are needed
7fhr/15@ > Shaels as sockets
3/ Boots can be optimised
I use either blood crafted boots or caster crafted boots with resi
4/ Imho 142fhr not needed, 86 is enough... making your life a bit higher. 1045 is way too low !
But thats a matter of preference.
HF
Thanks for the suggestions! While not bad, I'll provide my counters to them.
1. Griffs adds up to 20% light damage, with -25% enemy Light Resistance. As I've said before, anyone stacking enough resistance to counter Infinity's effect probably has a lot more where that came from. Nova and Thunderstorm are low enough damage already. Eth Frosties have that low of a str req? I thought ethereal items took away 10% of requirements, meaning Frosties would require 54 str. Worth looking into, but your net effect for this equipment setup is that you lose: +3 to all Lightning Skills(important), +1 Warmth(not that important), and 5 fcr(means you need a 20 fcr ammy to hit the breakpoint). You gain 15% mana from the frostburns instead of the SoJ, +1 all skills(helps BO), the -25/20 light dmg, and maybe some mana, life and resistance from the ring. With the loss of +3 Lightning skills, you lose out on ~400-500 damage on Nova(which is already low dmg), about the same on Thunderstorm, and roughly 2-3k Lightning damage.
2. Resistance isn't necessary. It's helpful, but not necessary. 95% ES acts like 95% resistance already, and the remaining 5% of damage then goes to your life. As long as you keep ES and mana up, resistance isn't necessary. You might be able to get close to max resistance in hell(just add 45 to my -12, then get some tri res boots. Should be close to max resistance in hell), but even if you do, with so little life, you're not gonna last long anyway. Mana is life.
3. Casters are your best option with base stats of 10-20 mana, 2-5% max mana, and 5-10% regen mana. Other mods we're looking for are +40 mana(on top of base), 10 FHR, then Poison Length Reduced, Replenish Life, Resistance, in no particular order. I have plain old 10 fhr/49 Mana boots.
4. I knew the FHR breakpoint I went for would cause some people issues. FHR is a personal preference, IMO. When I was first making this char, I almost abandoned it until a friend loaned me enough Light/FHR charms to hit the next breakpoint. I tried it, and loved it. I can't go back now, FHR isn't just helpful when you get a mass chunk of life taken away, it's also helpful recovering from knockback or hits when you have Mindblast swirlies above your head.
Keep the comments and suggestions coming, I'm liking feedback and justifying my choices.
