DR% for sorcs?

I'm on my first HC character, orb-fireball sorc (think I'm gonna respec the fireball to meteor), and I noticed that I haven't seen much mention of damage reduction % equipment in guides and such on the forums, which I don't really understand. I'm pretty paranoid about running around a corner and getting hit by 10 arrows, or running into a big group of melee'ers (entering a dungeon, or just me being stupid) and not having time to full rejuv before I'm dead... so I got Shaftstop, and since there were one or two times when I got swarmed and my health dropped below 30% or so, I think it's saved my life. If I use Shaftstop and Stormshield, that gets my DR% to around 65%, right? So it seems worth sacrificing some of the fast-whatever mods to make it dramatically harder for physical attacks to kill me... even if I get stuck in hit or block animation or can't teleport away fast enough, with 65% DR and >950 life I would think I'd generally have enough time to mash full rejuv while I'm trying to teleport away. Are the fast-X mods really going to save my life more than 65% DR, or are they mostly just necessary for teleporting around into unseen areas with complete safety for Meph runs and such? I do have my resists maxed on Hell, so I think I'm pretty safe in that regard except for the Baal dungeon and maybe Meph's ice ball which I haven't been hit by yet.

Oh, also, does DR% reduce damage from doll explosions? That's another big thing I'm paranoid about, anything to make those things not kill me would be very nice.|||Quote:








I'm on my first HC character, orb-fireball sorc (think I'm gonna respec the fireball to meteor), and I noticed that I haven't seen much mention of damage reduction % equipment in guides and such on the forums, which I don't really understand. I'm pretty paranoid about running around a corner and getting hit by 10 arrows, or running into a big group of melee'ers (entering a dungeon, or just me being stupid) and not having time to full rejuv before I'm dead... so I got Shaftstop, and since there were one or two times when I got swarmed and my health dropped below 30% or so, I think it's saved my life. If I use Shaftstop and Stormshield, that gets my DR% to around 65%, right? So it seems worth sacrificing some of the fast-whatever mods to make it dramatically harder for physical attacks to kill me... even if I get stuck in hit or block animation or can't teleport away fast enough, with 65% DR and >950 life I would think I'd generally have enough time to mash full rejuv while I'm trying to teleport away. Are the fast-X mods really going to save my life more than 65% DR, or are they mostly just necessary for teleporting around into unseen areas with complete safety for Meph runs and such? I do have my resists maxed on Hell, so I think I'm pretty safe in that regard except for the Baal dungeon and maybe Meph's ice ball which I haven't been hit by yet.

Oh, also, does DR% reduce damage from doll explosions? That's another big thing I'm paranoid about, anything to make those things not kill me would be very nice.






DR is capped at 50, so alot of sorcs go with SS/Shako and that pretty much gets you maxed.

In my experience, using at least SS for DR is a must in HC, and I always get it on my sorc ASAP. Other people prefer just going max life with Spirit and rely on the extra power to keep danger at bay.

Using shaft is ok for now, grats on getting it this early . But imo you give up alot in skills/resists/mf etc from your armor slot later in the ladder by using shaft. CoH for instance nets you 65 res all, 2 skills, 25 mf, and still 8% DR. Obviously that a ways away but you get my point.|||You wanna max Fireball and Meteor eventually. You can fling fireballs in between meteor drops plus they both synergize the other so it's natural to max both.|||Quote:








You wanna max Fireball and Meteor eventually. You can fling fireballs in between meteor drops plus they both synergize the other so it's natural to max both.




Yeah I have Fireball/Firebolt now, sounded like a good idea from Socialism's guide, but as soon as I started using it I realized having to stand still shooting a stream of fireballs is pretty bad a lot of the time, and if there are a bunch of fire immunes and cold immunes bunched together things get really annoying... luckily still have one respec saved.|||If you've read and abused the knowledge in Socialism's guides, you shouldn't have any troubles teleporting anywhere.

+105% FCR basically renders a Sorceress invulnerable to anything outside of the inescapable pack of doom. Anything else, really, just keeps stacking the odds in your favor.

Stormshield + Shako is a pretty tough setup to beat.

I think Shaftstop is a weak choice on any non-melee character.

Oh yeah, and Orb-it-aller all the way!|||a very fine decision would be to get shako (10 dr) with bo barb (shout to get your defence with life up) and you are set to tank couple of hits.

if you dont have barb, ES should be your best friend, get it to ~ 60% and go 65/35 life/mana.|||Quote:








a very fine decision would be to get shako (10 dr) with bo barb (shout to get your defence with life up) and you are set to tank couple of hits.

if you dont have barb, ES should be your best friend, get it to ~ 60% and go 65/35 life/mana.




Any decent ES is very tight on skillpoints for an orb-it-aller. Since you really need to pump TK a little for it to work with the relatively small mana base they have. Also some points in warmth are needed to keep mana up. Basically, you'll need around 20 hard skillpoints for ES to be worth it, meaning one less synergy for your meteor or frozen orb. Single tree sorcs (thinking blizballer or something among those lines) can spare the skillpoints, dual tree sorcs will suffer too much in damage imho. It can be done with some good equipment, but you'll still need some hard points in TK.

Also, before you respec to firewall, think it over carefully. FW does massive damage, but as both FO and FW are timered spells, timing is gonna be troublesome and you also lack having a secondary fire skill to spam. This means it's near impossible to kill enemies that can't be frozen (frenzytaurs for example). On a meteorb sorc you can switch from meteorb to fireball for that kind of enemy, with firewall you'll have to blaze or inferno them to death, which seems impractical.

So for an orbitaller just get max vit, max block, max resists and 105% FCR, maybe a point in frozen armour, and you should be safe really. A low end ES (1 point + skills, or +3 from some orb, with one point in TK you allready have for teleport) will make it a little safer, but you'll suffer big in damage if you invest more in it. If you want the protection of a full ES, I'd respec to single tree...|||Shako and stormshield is a fine end-game combo. On top of that have max block, max resists, max synergized es of about 60-70%, and 1k+ life before bo and you'll need to work to die if you don't afk.

Speaking of es. Spend as many hard points in tk as possible and only 1in es if you can't pre-buff it. Your +skills will get your es to 60ish% easily so all further hard points there will increase es by like 1% woo. You also only need 1 point in warmth assuming you have insight on your merc.

I made a 20/20/20 Orb, 20tk es, and am trying to put the remaining points between CLandLM to somewhat help my merc deal with cold immunes. Works very well imo though my lightning damage completely sucks (2-530ish 7jumps CL...) and I'll probably spec out of it in favor of more es once I get better gear for my merc where he can reliably take on any cold immunes for me..|||I don't even use ES at all and my Ober's have never died. I put points in in Chilling Armor at the end of my build and that's worked great for me. Blind teleporting all over Hell and back with no problems. |||Quote:








I don't even use ES at all and my Ober's have never died. I put points in in Chilling Armor at the end of my build and that's worked great for me. Blind teleporting all over Hell and back with no problems.




Yeah, you don't need es, or dr, or resists, or even a lot of life most of the time while teleporting since pretty much nothing ever hits you. If you like to quest and clear areas then the above things help a good deal against all those endless arrows and fireballs flying your way.

But where the above things are really needed is that ONE time (and it WILL happen sooner or later even with 0.0001% chance) you get caught in an amped fire enchanted death, or that doll in full player game explodes in your face or something similar. You'll look at your zero mana es, your life at 10%, you'll scratch your chin and think "that would have been me dead right there =U".