Pyrotechnician
Active member
- May 11, 2020
- 962
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Cold sorc straight from the start is way more than viable even untwinked and I've always just went straight cold from the start. Fire though is almost always faster if you want to "speed" through the early parts of the game. A leaf staff is super easy to assemble and will carry you for a long while until you get a spirit sword going. If you choose to go fire first then shop for a decent 2 socket staff with + to fireball and look for a tir and ral rune which should be cake to get.
If you don't go fire first just the normal things to pick up for any caster build, use as much mf gear as possible early on to make your life easier later, but its not killer to starting off since you are not really gear dependent. Add in a little bit of fcr if possible because even minimal amounts of fcr will make it seem like you are firing off skills quicker. If you really feel like shopping for something you can try to find some kind of staff or orb with decent +skills preferably including ice blast. Meph is your friend for easy gear farming in nightmare and then again in hell mode when you have a few decent pieces since his cold resistance is low and cold master can bring him all the way down to -100. He is super easy to moat trick, and then just stand across the water and spam blizzard until he dies, repeat for thousands of runs as necessary. It may be cheesy but its effective and safe. Low level runewords that are cheap to make are surprisingly useful, these include a lore helm and rhyme shield which will give you an extra skill and then some res and magic find respectively (of course don't forget the spirit sword of course, but that is probably obvious).
Being straight cold build stinks in hell mode due to the obvious reasons of not being able to kill cold immunes, but the merc should be able to handle it in most cases. Duriel will suck, but luckily you have static, so don't be afraid to spam static on him (and all other bosses for that matter) at the beginning of the fight. Things to watch out for? Cold enchanted + Lightning enchanted monsters, that invisible frost nova ring sucks if you are spamming blizzard on top of them (doing no damage to them and you possibly taking lots of damage) Also, don't cast blizzard exactly on top of the same spot twice, the shards drop in a line pattern so you want to move your cursor either left or right a little so that monsters get hit by the most shards possible.
Orb vs. Blizzard? Orb is great for hybrid builds because it has low skill point investment to be effective. If you want your sorc to be high damage dealing and are not going with a hybrid build blizzard is preferred since you can reach way higher damage numbers (although orb always was cooler in my mind).
Edit: This is going to sound simple and stupid, but if you happen to come across a gull or a ali baba before you get something like occulus, throw that on your weapon switch and switch to it right before killing act bosses (similar to how you would use your weapon switch on your barb for horking). You can boost your MF up by a 100 easy for meph farming to speed things along.
Oh, and one more thing, pick up all the rare orbs, the chances you get something useful is rare, but a good one is worth something and is stylish too.
If you don't go fire first just the normal things to pick up for any caster build, use as much mf gear as possible early on to make your life easier later, but its not killer to starting off since you are not really gear dependent. Add in a little bit of fcr if possible because even minimal amounts of fcr will make it seem like you are firing off skills quicker. If you really feel like shopping for something you can try to find some kind of staff or orb with decent +skills preferably including ice blast. Meph is your friend for easy gear farming in nightmare and then again in hell mode when you have a few decent pieces since his cold resistance is low and cold master can bring him all the way down to -100. He is super easy to moat trick, and then just stand across the water and spam blizzard until he dies, repeat for thousands of runs as necessary. It may be cheesy but its effective and safe. Low level runewords that are cheap to make are surprisingly useful, these include a lore helm and rhyme shield which will give you an extra skill and then some res and magic find respectively (of course don't forget the spirit sword of course, but that is probably obvious).
Being straight cold build stinks in hell mode due to the obvious reasons of not being able to kill cold immunes, but the merc should be able to handle it in most cases. Duriel will suck, but luckily you have static, so don't be afraid to spam static on him (and all other bosses for that matter) at the beginning of the fight. Things to watch out for? Cold enchanted + Lightning enchanted monsters, that invisible frost nova ring sucks if you are spamming blizzard on top of them (doing no damage to them and you possibly taking lots of damage) Also, don't cast blizzard exactly on top of the same spot twice, the shards drop in a line pattern so you want to move your cursor either left or right a little so that monsters get hit by the most shards possible.
Orb vs. Blizzard? Orb is great for hybrid builds because it has low skill point investment to be effective. If you want your sorc to be high damage dealing and are not going with a hybrid build blizzard is preferred since you can reach way higher damage numbers (although orb always was cooler in my mind).
Edit: This is going to sound simple and stupid, but if you happen to come across a gull or a ali baba before you get something like occulus, throw that on your weapon switch and switch to it right before killing act bosses (similar to how you would use your weapon switch on your barb for horking). You can boost your MF up by a 100 easy for meph farming to speed things along.
Oh, and one more thing, pick up all the rare orbs, the chances you get something useful is rare, but a good one is worth something and is stylish too.
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