Dear diary, this season I'm trying fire sorc from scratch, have played fire many times but only on nonladder with gear (esfb and cookie cutter bis builds)
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1. Ladder reset - 3.0 out of 10
Sorc is always going to be top tier for reset day, every group needs a tele sorc. Barbs are maybe more in demand, but you can still get by without a barb. You're kind of screwed with no sorc. Everyone expected warlock to be OP and they kind of are, but they don't replace static and teleport.
That said, my group was very fun but kind of a disaster. We literally killed ancients 7 times due to various fuck ups. I went with an all-in tele build in hopes of being a hero (almost all points into energy, max static, max tele), but it turned out pretty bad without a barb and with no items getting funneled to sorc. Took 7 hours, one of the slowest resets but at least we finished.
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2. Basic gearing - 10.0 out of 10
Here is where sorc always shines the brightest, early ladder gearing, thanks to teleport. After clearing baal I respec'ed into my final build for the season, I plan to never respec again on this char
156 str, all leftover points into vit
Max fireball, firebolt, meteor, fm. 1pt static, FA, warmth, hydra. All remaining pts into teleport
The idea is to have enough str for spirit and ignore optimizing for gear, I just lose some health but who cares. Primary buttons are fireball, static, and meteor. Max teleport is because I dont plan to use insight
The first day after reset I focused on farming spirit sword/shield, lore helm, stealth armor, and random magics/rares for other slots. Mostly norm and nightmare countess plus some nightmare cows
Once I had 2x spirit, I started selling norm and nightmare rushes for forum gold. This was surprisingly effective and very quickly gave me funds for mid level gear. My first target was get a usable merc, so I made insight/cure/treachery. Then got cheap gear like vipermagi and some random fire gcs.
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3. Gearing up for the level grind - 7.0 out of 10
Now my goal was to get strong enough to solo farm P8. My plan this season was use 4pc tals + FF. After a few more rushes I had enough for a cheap FF and tal set build. This made me strong enough to start selling full game grushes, which is my main source of gearing income
Flickering flame helm
Tal armor with fire facet
Tal orb with fire facet
Tal belt
Tal amulet
Spirit Monarch 35% (need 35 unfortunately)
Random magic rings with mana
Magefist
Aldurs boots
Random fire gcs, random scs
Cta/spirit
Act2 prayer merc:
Eth reapers toll with amn rune
Treachery
Cure
This build gives you max resists with 2k life/1k mana, as well as -40 fire res and 18k fireball damage. Merc is strong enough to fight anywhere except ubers
I give this phase a mixed review because fireball truly kind of sucks. Even with -40 fire res you slow down a lot in act4 and 5 hell. Stuff dies in P8 anywhere but not 1 shot, and fireballs move very slowly and have bad AOE. You kind of have to use meteor or hydra in order to clear stuff like P8 chaos fast, which is okay but not as efficient as just spamming blizzard or nova/lightning
Theres no doubt in my mind blizz would be better, but thats only if you play with mouse/keyboard. I use a controller and fireball is way more suited for that. Lightning/nova still clearly superior but more expensive
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4. Grind to 99 - 5.0 out of 10
Tbd since this isn't done, but im basically done gearing. So far hosting baal runs is easy with teleport but solo TZ clearing is slower than equivalent gear on stronger builds. I expect to get to 94 fast and then take forever to get to 99 if ever
Not running energy shield leaves you pretty squishy, always possible to die in baal runs so you need to be awake
Ladder reset
So I wanted to start with a group on Friday but I was invited to s family gathering with my wife, had to do grocery shopping etc. Long story short, I could play 4h on Sunday afternoon. My choice was a blizzard sorc because I was way behind. I beat normal in those 4 hours and arrived in act 2 nm. Andy dropped me a tal amu in NM. I thought about selling but where am I going to get a +2 amu to sorc in HC until level 89 from crafting? Next day I kept grinding a bit Mephisto in nightmare until I go tal belt. I went on to beat Diablo at tender level of 45. He is very hard now unless you are overleveled/overgeared. I beat him and went to act 5. Instead of rushing, I killed everything in sight till ancients which made my sorc level 53!. Beating ancients way super easy, almost died in WSK1 because of those amplify damage witches bitches. Arrived at Baal, I kept grinding him until level 67 to put on my tal amu. I went then to hell act1 into mausoleum to get some bases. I got lucky with a white monarch, double spirit! I went to kill andy, much easier than NM baal. The funny part was she dropped tal mask. I socketed that mask and had 100mf without sacrificing anything, not talking about all of the life/mana/resists you get from the pieces. I was still looking for an eth insight base, went to ancients tunnels. I found Ohm, highlords, stormshield and lots of other goodies until level 83. Then I oped a game called "act 2 go". That game was instantly filled with 7 noobs, one of them died. I left the game, teleported to maggot 3, didn't kill a single enemy stole the staff, did the same with vipers.
So easy, felt like cheating. The same story in act 3. The only real fight was with the council. You can lure them out and kill one by one. Act 4 was suprisingly easy. I teleported with my crappy hear, did seal pops and isolated de seis in a corner between myself and the merc. Dia in hell was a cakewalk. I rushed through act 5 and thought, maybe I could do any quest as well if there are no souls. There vipers, witches bitches but no souls, lured Frozenstein & gang away, freed anya and that's it. I could farm pindle. + Nihilathak now. I went to ancients and activated them until only the weak one was cold immune. They were also easy. WSK was easy as well. The only cold immunes I encountered were the witches in the throne room but they have little life, merc + static made a short process. All waves were super easy except for the second annoying one. Baal was a sponge but he dropped skin of vipermagi.
I thought Blizzard sorc can't do TZ but then stoney tombs, ancients tunnels, tristram etc. You can pop elite packs, move on and ignore cold immunes. So easy!
She is level 87 now. This weekend I have time, I will make a kicksin to farm torches.