Wednesday, April 18, 2012

HC-Sorc-Hel Dilema- Please Advise

Hey,

Quick background, I have played D2 and D2X since it came out. That said, I was never an amazing player, rarely getting a full set of anything elite or godly, but did manage to build up enough to kill D2 clone when it was introduced. I have not beaten Uber Trist, it is my goal before D3.

I started playing HC only back around '03... I have lost many chars and numerous ones over 90. As I usually play the fishmancer first, it is the only class I ever get through Hell with alone. But due to my lack of getting an enigma and eventual impatience, I die to poor TP method errors or stupid mistakes.

Not wanting to start the same way as I have in the past, I wanted to make a sorc and try my best to start the game this way. Currently I am level 72 and an orb-it-aller.

Hell Dilema -

Now that I am in hell, I can't seem to kill anything. This is max FO/FB with both synergies in the teens, and some CM. My Merc is using insight, but I ended up with base level 12 and its not holding up to mana demands.

I have max block, but using The Ward for resists so it is around ~50% and my health is ~600.

I feel like I will die at the whim on the game though. Ranged attacks are doing 1/3d to 1/2 my life. I find myself unable to move through hell safely. I am trying to just go through the game while carrying ~150MF, and 65+ resists in hell, but I am now stuck.

I have tried going back to NM and doing Andy/Meph/Shenk/Pindle runs. I am not very successful at getting anything that will be an upgrade to overcome my Hell Dilema. I do not like running Meph as dolls take away half my life with one blow up and fear a lame TP death at 72 in NM. I do play online, but only play alone.

I am basically asking the experience community if this is normal, am I simply not getting lucky with drops? Why is MF so unproductive for me, am I just to slow by doing a whole game of runs as opposed to sticking to just one (i.e. pindle and making games faster?)

I find myself now making a baba with a bunch of the low level twink items I find, but already burned out by the fact I can't simply just move forward in the game without some sort of help/mega grind.

Please advise/criticize as your knowledge and experience see's fit.

Thanks!

-Cosmic Gate

Build - Lvl 72 Sorc

Fire

-1 Warmth

-6 Fbolt

-20 Fball

-1 Mastery

Light

-2 Tele (+ 1 per pre-req)

Cold

-15 IB

-1 Shiver Armor

-20 FO

-7 CM (attempt to do more dmg in Hell)

Stats

92 Str

172 Dex

159 Vit

35 Energy

600 HP

200 Mana

~150MF

Equip

Tal Rasha Helm - Socket P.Topaz

+16 all resist Neck

Rare +1 all Sorc Skills Globe, adds 30 life, 27 light resist

Magefists

Nightsmoke

Rare Boots ~30% resist cold/fire/light , 10MF

The Ward

3 socket armor - 3 P.Topaz

Rings - 1 30% fire, 1 30% cold Resist

Merc

Insight, lvl 12 med

6% Life leech Coronet

Toothrow Armor

Various Resists, +life charms.|||Hi there,

Lack of + to skills gear, low fcr and non standard skill points distribution is holding back your progress.

For your merc to help best he needs to be holy freeze, have a higher level of meditation and carry the most damaging polearm you can find. Up to now this would be an ethereal partizan. The runes for rerolling a polearm are easy to obtain running nm countess. At low strength levels an ethereal thresher would be optimal but you would have to run with zero mf in the right areas for a while to find it. The tals mask would go better on him too.

While you are doing that you can make 1 or two spirit swords for the fcr and skills. Carrying spirit swords will give you much needed fhr and help the sorceress to get the minimum 63fcr she needs to teleport safely. You will have to be very lucky to find an orb better than a spirit sword early on though having a spirit sword on main for orb and teleporting and a +6 fireball 'leaf' staff on swap is an option. Ideal replacement for the armour would be a vipermage or quehegans or 'stealth' . Ideal replacement for shield would be a spirit monarch with the necessary shift from points in dexterity to strength.

Redistributing points also using a respec I would suggest taking 14 off icebolt and placing it in firebolt as a quick fix.|||Hi,

Thank you for the input.

So my fear for Tele'ing through NM and the dolls can be alleviated by increasing my cast rate if I understand you correctly. This is the key to successful MFing?

Then just MF through NM until I get decent gear to move to hell?

I will defiantly start to find a better polearm and hope I get a higher meditation.

I was wearing the Tal Rasha due to the higher survivability with life for me (due to low life)

I kept pumping Icebolt in hopes to have more killing power in Hell, I guess this was counter intuitive.

Thank you, FCR first priority. Any personal thoughts on a complete ES/Tele Survivability and sacrifice killing power?

All other opinions are still welcome.

-CosmicGate|||edit double post sorry|||The 3 p topaz armor is a big no no with that kit, the extra mf is not worth it for you currently.

As Tarantella says you need a spirit sword, it will add huge amounts of mana with high fhr fcr and 2 skills. Vipermagi is a very good choice of armor but if you cant get it then either Lionheart or Smoke are the next best choices.

Also look these up,

Lionheart - awesome cheap armor for you or merc +str +dex +res +life

Smoke - mass res

Obedience - good damage, many elite polearms get 5 socks at larzuk (eth ca for example will have around 1k dam)

Spirit - best weapon until you get an occy

Caster Amulets (cheap and easy to make, sometimes godly)

Caster Rings (good standard rings)

Rhyme - res block cbf and mf

Ideally i think it will help if you can free up points to pump in vita, 600 life is ltoo low for hell.

Without lots of +skill items you need to make a choice between cold and fire, personally i prefer cold to fire and use a standard fo build

20 ice bolt

20 frozen orb

20 cold mastery

(4 prereqs)

1 static

1 telekin

1 teleport

(67 spent)

1 warmth

1 fire mastery

20 fire ball (only after Orb/C mast/ Ice bolt are done)

(89 spent, lvl 78 with all quests done)

All the rest i would pump in to fire bolt (this adds more dam than fire mastery after the first level).

Next is the merc, i would use either holy freeze (to slow enemies) or might (to kill immunes.

Nightmare Defensive act 2 is holy freeze

Nightmare Offensive act 2 is might

As for items insight is fine if its in an elite item, i presume the helm has no other stats? surviving longer is more important than leech at first, i use the merc to tank enemies and kill them before they kill merc. For the armor and helm get as much res/life/damage reduction as possible.


Quote:




So my fear for Tele'ing through NM and the dolls can be alleviated by increasing my cast rate if I understand you correctly. This is the key to successful MFing?




Yes a minimum of 63 is needed and plenty of fhr is also needed so you can recover and tele away if struck.

Check here to find the breakpoints http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=485631


Quote:




I am basically asking the experience community if this is normal, am I simply not getting lucky with drops? Why is MF so unproductive for me, am I just to slow by doing a whole game of runs as opposed to sticking to just one (i.e. pindle and making games faster?)




You dont want to be making games too fast, if you make more than 20 an hour you will get a restriction. In nightmare i would recommend this as a run for you,

Pindle -> Eldritch -> Shenk -> Meph -> Countess

If you can do this in less than 3 mins you will need to add another boss|||Hey Johnomally,

Great information, much appreciated.

I can see what you are saying, Wearing smoke will free up my resist rings, allowing me to wearing proper casting rings and making me more effective as a character.

I do currently have a NM Holy Freeze Merc, but I need a better polearm for Insight, and he is indeed a tad weak and dies easily.

I have been searching for a socket-able sword for Spirit. I keep forgetting Shenk's quest will add max slots to normal items, I have been only searching for already sockets ones.

I will research more on how to make great ammy's and rings.

Does this standard FO build take you through hell? Is it about being completely merc dependent for cold immune and therefor essential to have the elite weapon on them?



I suppose I am too set on trying to have a high MF to get items, and not enough on just making a solid character and letting the MF come more naturally. Sorta a softcore MF approach in a HC, and then the eventual death due to it.

I just feel I have horrible luck with drops in this game and really need the MF crutch to get anywhere. Too focused on the prize and not the path.



I am still debating whether to go full cold or not until I am able to get my merc in shape for taking out immunes.

May I ask why the 20 to FB if you invest so much into cold? That is a very low FB and would take massive spam to kill anything? This just to have so you are not idle?

-Cosmic Gate|||the cold build will take you totally through hell altho you struggle in certain places (ancs for one, you will need help, unless your merc is amazing). The viper temple is difficult but i usually tele past everything, grab the amu and get out of there.


Quote:




May I ask why the 20 to FB if you invest so much into cold? That is a very low FB and would take massive spam to kill anything? This just to have so you are not idle?




After orb/bolt/mast have been maxed and tele/static obtained a pure fo build is finished (67 points, obtained at level 60 including norm/nm skill qs) so whats left over is spare.

I dont find i have enough defence to make cold armor worth it and i have never liked es, if you like these skills then do, it's just personal preference. So i use the low dam fb to help the merc after i have used static on the pack.

Meteor is a good fall back too (dam per sec with merc holding monsters still) but it takes more skill points to reach so i stick with fb.

I would go for Lionheart over Smoke as the stats are awesome and smoke only has the res going for it,

+20% Enhanced Damage

Requirements -15%

+25 To Strength

+10 To Energy

+20 To Vitality

+15 To Dexterity

+50 To Life

All Resistances +30

Smoke has 50 res so it beats lionheart there but,

25 strength + 15 dex = 40 points you could put in vita (80 life)

30 res it still awesome

+50 life and 20 vita (90 life total)

So you could gain 170 life by using it and if made in a breast or mage plate it will have very low requirements and the bonus of being able to pass it to the merc when you are finished with it|||Ok, Great.

So this is the best set-up for survivability and to get through Hell, and "MF".

Due to my obsession with always wanting to increase my MF%.

What is the next step beyond this point?

I assume Lionheart and all these non MF pieces will take me so far.... Is the idea to use this until you have a full Tal Rasha set, or some sort of crazy MF set-up?

Is this a type of character people just use to make a true MF char (but now with respec's its just a matter of time)?

I just feel like there is some fundamental aspect to the game I seem to miss, or perhaps it is just a lack of patience. hehe.

Thanks for all your help, I will defiantly try to see how it works for me, for everything I was doing on my own was a fail. hehe.

-CG|||Quote:




So this is the best set-up for survivability and to get through Hell, and "MF".




I wouldnt say it is the best, its the one i find easiest, the best is always the character you find easiest to play.

With mf, keep playing until you find items that can replace what u are using atm.

This is what i think of as standard mf gear,

Occy

Shako

Skulders

Wts

Rhyme

And i would normally use gear to cover res and fcr in the other slots, if it was sc i would use only max mf items but in hc surviving is more important

Try to aim for 350 or more mf without losing kill speed (on final kit), more kills more drops which i find better than massive mf and very slow runs.|||Don't use occy in hardcore. Just don't. It has awesome stats, yes, but it comes with a small set back: sooner or later it will teleport you somewhere where you don't need to be and you will die before you figure out where you ended up. That's not a bad trade off in sc but in hc that is rather problematic, no?

- Stick with a spirit sword which is absolutely awesome unless you luck out and find a better orb (unlikely) or can afford the Heart Of The Oak runeword later on.

- Get a blocking shield if you want to teleport and use a shield at all. Rhyme, spirit, lidless etc are all great caster shields when you walk the game but they are far from optimal teleporting shields because they give you crappy block and they block too slow. The result is that you'll waste an enormous amount of dexterity getting max block which is far better than more life and less block, and when you do block the crappy blocking speed will likely leave you stuck in block-stun-lock which is definitely not good (same idea as hit-stun-lock). For strictly teleporting purposes you want either whinstan's guard, upped mosers, upped visceratuant, or finally stormshield. The first is the easiest to get and is the best blocking shield in the game. Socket it and stick a pdiamond into it and you'll be all set with it until you find one of the other three.

- Stop trying to skimp out on your gear in favor of mf. Unless you have gg gear like shako and chains of honor, you can't have a lot of in-gear mf while having a relatively safe character. It's either one or the other.

- What you want is an mf setup on your weapon switch. The shield options are a very easy to get Milaberga's Orb or the considerably better Rhyme runeword. The weapon is a bit rarer but the gull dagger or the alibaba blade should take care of all your mf needs. Fight bosses with your normal weapon and switch to mf setup once they are about to die. Safe and easy 100+ mf right there.

- Furthermore, try to get griswold's armor for your merc. It is a good average armor with 3open sockets that are just begging for three ptopaz. Having that and about 20% on insight gives your merc 100mf of his own. Let him get the last hit on the boss while you are waiting with your mf setup out and that's 200mf without sacrificing your survivability in any way.

- Finally, to safely teleport you want at least 63fcr, 30fhr, and 27fbr. If you don't have a powerful meditation on your merc and at least 600 mana (without putting points into energy which are much better spent on your life) then invest skill points into teleport to decrease its mana cost to 10or lower otherwise getting mana burned or drained will likely get you killed. You can always respec later when you get better gear. Don't forget to hold down "alt" while teleporting. It disables your cursor from identifying clickable objects so you won't stall when your mouse ends up over a shrine, door, item, chest etc.

I think that's all I wanted to say. Sorry if I spoke too much or did a poor job writing it up - which I probably did - but it's really late and I'm really tired >_>

:P

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