For dmg infinity self use is king.
You have to/can make up for the loss of defensive stats with some pretty expensive gear.
For resist: High trires boots, 7mf/5all res charms 7mf/11light res charms, high res caster amu
For fhr: get 5x 12fhr light skiller grand charms (since you run 95% energy shield , you don’t benefit as much from life skillers anyway)
That way you have the 60fhr breakpoint and max res with the standart 105fcr Setup (viper 10fcr amulet, mages, Griffon, arach)

With nova ormus you need an 20fcr amulet (you don’t want to get rid of sojs as an Es sorc) but it’s realy hard to max out your resists that way.

It’s expensive but the -55 light res on an infinity gives you way more dmg than some + skills.

With infi you can get up to -85 light res from gear alone
Infi -55
Griffon with facette -25
Viper/ormus facette -5

On top of that you have conviction on your self , freeing up your merc weapon so he can use insight.
That fact alone is such an advantage. Insight gives you an insane mana reg , wich is great with energy shield.

On top of that, you should use an +3 energy shield Cta staff on switch. Since you don’t use a monarch , you basicly don’t need any points in str at all with a good torch + ani and the standard setup, resulting in ~100 more points in energy, making you not loose to much mana compared to a spirit setup.


To sum it up:
-55 light res on your weapon can not be topped in dmg by any other setup.

The defensive stats can be made up elsewhere with enough budget.

Being able to use Insight on your merc is a HUGE boost to your defensive capabilities as an ES User.

around 100 less strength needed cause no monarch makes the mana loss not even that big compared to a spirit+x setup

sigh

You need to chill out there, buddy.

While Dolphy's delivery could have been better, the information he provided is mostly correct, so no need to spout off about his post count and penis size.

The reason why the build he posted is considered the "cookie cutter" build is because it's better than 99% of the builds out there and requires basic gear. What you're trying to argue about is simply wrong and if you read into Dolphy's post a little more you would have understood why. The reason his "cookie cutter" build is better than your on-screen damage calculator is simple; -45 to -55 enemy lightning resist provided by Infinity will out damage your extra 6k on-screen damage. You can find more advanced math why this is all over d2jsp.

You could test out the builds on single player to see which fits with your play style.

Infinity on merc will be generally fine on low player counts and give you flexible gear options and more survivability

Infinity on person will help you clear all content (especially high light res monsters) more efficiently

Crescent moon is a happy medium which I haven't seen mentioned.

200fcr is also very fun. You'll sacrifice some damage, but zooming around is super fun and tele speed should be factored into run times.

The fact that you are saying DPS shows you are clueless.

Self wield infinity is by far the best nova build. I

small note: infinity -lr doesn't apply on a merc for your sorc. This might be the source of the confusion here

> 27k DPS is greater than 21k DPS

let's say a monster has 50% lite res after conv applied and the monster wasn't immune to lite

if you equipe infinity with -50 lr, the lr of that monster will be 0

even if you do 21k instead of 27k, infinity will be best in slot for "dps"

gg build