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Oct 19 2020 07:26pm
Indy's Tri Elemental PvM Sorc


I have been playing classic D2 off and on for around 20 years. This build is by far my favorite. I have been asked by a few players to create a guide (my only guide to date), and I hope that you find it helpful. Please feel free to post comments, questions, or suggestions for improvement below.

This classic sorc build is able to clear every part of the game.

By lvl 80, this build clears 4 person hell CS / trav easily and is capable of clearing 8 person CS / trav with some difficulty. The build continues to improve with leveling, of course.

Gear can vary and does not need to be exorbitantly expensive. This build is dependent on +skill gear, as it requires many different skills to deal with different monster resist combinations.

With my char's endgame gear, she achieves 95 fire resist / 80 light resist / 7x cold resist (90 with potion stack) / 7x poison resist (90 with potion stack); > 1200 life; > 500 mana; 60 block chance; 20 fhr break point (can be higher); 37 fcr break point with wand vs 70 fcr breakpoint with shard.



Skills

Cold Skills

1 Frozen Armor (optional).

20 Ice Blast (left click skill. I use "~" as the hot key for stand still, so that if I hold ~ down while I left click, I essentially gain an additional more accessible hotkey. Glacial spike can be used instead for the radius, however, ice blast deals more damage vs one monster and costs less mana.

20 Blizzard. Main attack skill for unparalleled AoE damage.

17*** Cold Mastery. My gear uses +5 to all skills. Points should be added into cold mastery until level 17 is acheived with skill gear on, because this is the PvM cold mastery max benefit. So, my char only has lvl 12 base cold mastery.

(Plus prereqs)

Fire Skills

1 Warmth

20 Hydra. This is an amazing PvM fire skill for cold / light immunes. These being sentry guns, they are much more targeting on an enemy vs. firewall.

1 Fire Mastery. My char has +6 fire skills. Maxing hydra provides much more damage than adding skills into fire mastery. My endgame hydra damage is 392 - 448.

(Plus prereqs)

Lightning Skills

1 Static

1 Telekinesis

1 Teleport

1 Light Mastery

10+ Nova. You will find the balance that works best for you depending on how many points you are able to put into this. I shoot for around 400 damage.

(Plus prereqs)



Gear


Helm:Tarn (for the plus skill). I use P Ruby tarn. A5 classic items can be tough to come by though and unsocketed works well.

Ammy: +2 / lots of resists with stack / lots of stats. I use +2 / 7 str / 37 life / 20 priz / 39 light stack.

Weapon:20 fcr / mana / resist wand (rep is bonus). Tri ele wand would also work. I use 20 fcr / 18 energy / 46 mana / 40 cold res / 34 pois res wand. If you want to go up to 63% breakpoint then go with shard. I used to run a 105% breakpoint PvM sorc and with time have found that a tanky 37% breakpoint tri ele sorc actually clears faster.

Gloves:Magefists (+ fire skills / 20 fcr / mana regen are awesome)

Rings: SOJs x 2 (+2 skills and mana are very helpful)

Belt: FHR / Resists / Stats belt. I use 24 fhr / 15 str / 59 life / 11 mana / 24 light res / 17 fire res belt.

Armor: Darkglow. I use P Skull Darkglow (unsocketed works well). Increased max res decreases damage and allows you to use far fewer health pots / juvs. Alternatively, any good sorc armor or twitch would work.

Boots:Hotspurs. With Darkglow provides 95% fire resist, allowing you to stand in diablo's fire. If resists are an issue, any high resist boots will work. I used to use trires boots, but the +15 fire resist and 15 life are nice mods.

Shield: Block / Resists shield. I use A5 prismatic bone shield of deflecting that has 60 block rate / 30 faster block rate / and *58 resist all. This shield is very tough to come by, but any 17/30/20/resist shield or even a high resist ward + twitch would be a solid choice.

Plus skill gear is essential to this build. My char has +5 to all skills and +6 to fire skills from gear.



Gameplay Strategy


This char can solo CS easily with 4 players in the game and solo CS with difficulty in a full game.

If this char is being used for a C Rush or for a long period of play, I strongly recommend prebuffing with antidote potion and thawing potion. These potions will increase your max cold / poison resists by an additional 10 (bringing you to 90 cold and poison resist) and the time stacks. So, if you consume 10 of each at the beginning of your hell C Rush, you will have 5 minutes of 90 cold and poison resist and be essentially immune, assuming you are using darkglow.

The fighting strategy is to use blizz and left click ice blast to clear all mobs that are susceptible to cold damage. Then hydras should be set up as quickly as possible in succession to keep 5-6 sets of 3 hydra heads focused on monsters susceptible to fire damage. In between hydras, spam static until hydra cools down and repeat.

The toughest chars are generally fire / cold immune with high life regen. These monsters are the reason to put extra skills into nova. Static them down to low life and spam nova right next to them until they die. Nova needs to be high enough damage to counteract the monster life regeneration, and your char needs to be tanky enough to withstand the nearby monster(s).

Breakpoints

I find that the 20% fhr breakpoint works well for PvM. Of course, the higher the better.

I find that the 37% fcr breakpoint works best for PvM. 67% also works, but at the cost of decreased life.

Hotkeys

The most difficult part of this build is being able to use all of your classic hotkeys, which limits you to 8 hotkeys. Some players find this easier than others.

This is my hotkey setup:

Left-click: Ice Blast
F1: Telekinesis
F2: Teleport
F3: Blizzard
F4: Static
F5: Nova
E: Hydra
W: Frozen Armor
D: Town Portal



Feel free to post below or PM me regarding this classic sorc build. I have had a ton of fun with this build and am totally open to comments, questions, or suggestions for improvements.

Thanks for reading.

This post was edited by indy123 on Oct 19 2020 07:36pm
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Oct 19 2020 07:39pm
Interesting build. :thumbsup:
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Oct 19 2020 08:20pm
Currently using this strategy with a few minor alterations. Great build man!

:)
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Oct 19 2020 09:47pm
with out changing your build im just going to instead say this;

even if i were to use your build; i would still be casting my level 1 gpsike more then any other skill; this skill is god and even has almost 8 second freeze time in aoe group with Your build
i think Gspikes brings to the table more tankyness then Battle orders, Any Gear you can Wear twitch dark glow 15,000 defense or any armor skill to the point where u can jump ontop of any mob in game just gspiking and be Safe but to not keep dragging on
this is my suggestion... well off the bat i use different hotkeys but all that would have to be done here is manually put on frozen armor and free up a hotkey for Gspike and just add gspike into ur casting rotation this way every big mob that is getting hit by blizzard
or iceblast has already been frozen stuck for 8 seconds under the aoe and any mob that could attack and corner you is perma froze with aoe radius of gspike so this way when you see 2346346346 cows you dont run and kite... you teliport in the middle of them and be godlike
or when u hit a seal i dont kite and micro and teliport all over attacking; i teliport into the mob and freeze everything instantally with a level 1 gspike ur hotkeys will work just fine but i figured since we are on topic id mention mine but really run what ever you like
( my hotkeys will be as if im using ur build )

f1 Blizzard
f2 Teliport
f3 GSpike
f4 Iceblast

f5 Telkinsis
f6 Nova
f7 Hydra
f8 Town Portal
Frozen armor manually clicked from hovering mouse over skill tree,

p.s. faster hit recovery sucks no need for this i could jump into 2352363246346 cows with ur build and not get stunned what so ever not sure why anyone uses this mod isnt good for anything and comes cheap

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Oct 20 2020 02:57am
Missing teleport in my opinion (low fcr, and expensive teleport).
How do you do in normal games where you can't buy Super mana potions ?
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Oct 20 2020 04:35am
So you forgot to add you’re sorc has bo barb buff 😂
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Oct 20 2020 05:41am
Quote (feanur @ Oct 20 2020 04:57am)
Missing teleport in my opinion (low fcr, and expensive teleport).
How do you do in normal games where you can't buy Super mana potions ?



<3
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Oct 20 2020 07:26am
Quote (Jvun7 @ Oct 20 2020 05:47am)
15,000 defense


maxed out frozen armor? sounds like a quality build u rocking
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Oct 20 2020 04:10pm
Quote (feanur @ Oct 20 2020 04:57am)
Missing teleport in my opinion (low fcr, and expensive teleport).
How do you do in normal games where you can't buy Super mana potions ?


Quote (ghostshadow @ Oct 20 2020 06:35am)
So you forgot to add you’re sorc has bo barb buff 😂


Hey guys, thanks for responding. Ghostshadow, you are right in that BO definitely makes every char better. I don't use BO for this build because I don't use a loader. If using a loader you might as well clear hell trav with a loaded baba and forget about this build.

Feanur - The mana cost of teleport with the skill gear at lvl 6 comes down to 19, which is helpful.

With a mana pool of > 500 and +146% mana regen (102% from warmth, 25% from mage fists, 19% p skull'd darkglow) and 19 mana per tele at 40fcr, this build is not a huge mana suck.

I also put extra pots in my stash and telekinesis dropped monster mana/health pots, so i haven't run into this problem.

The maps in norm difficulty are small enough that you don't need to tele much as well.

Jvun7 - I agree that G spike is a good choice. I have tried what you are saying before and it definitely works. I prefer blizz + the increased single monster damage and lower mana cost of iceblast.

Thanks for the comments fellas.

This post was edited by indy123 on Oct 20 2020 04:16pm
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