Frost Nova Sorceress

Jamie

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Dec 27, 2012
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I've been noticing a trend that I had never noticed when I played online or really from any SP threads I remember. The Frost Nova Sorceress. A great CTC skill of course and good early on, but I had no idea it could be a viable character. It started from people finding really good rare circlets and people talking about how they would be good for a 200%FCR Frost Nova Sorceress. Then I started seeing people posting their Frost Nova Sorceresses. By the way they talk, it sounds like they are mainly, or specifically, meant for running the Ancient Tunnels. I've always used Blizzard there and Blizzard clearly eats up the AT easily, but Frost Nova sounds fun. I'm not sure if it is as viable without a Torch and Anni, but I couldn't really find much about this build other on a very specific Reddit channel. I was wondering if any of the vets on here have any experience with attempting this. I've played almost 20 years and never had thought of building one.
 
1) Are you sure these people are not talking about Nova?
2) Are you sure this specific reddit channel is not specific to a diablo2 mod where Frost Nova is made viable?

In any case, check the Spf mat/pat compilation stickied at the top. You might find a few Nova / Frost Nova sorceress writeups there.
 
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The problem with Frost Nova...

Frozen Orb is a synergy😅
 
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I have seen a couple of people run frost nova in AT. Had to dig through the old forum from the ancient days to find evidence. But fortunately I made bookmarks ;).

Seems like she can work, and indeed I have some vague plans to eventually include a set with on in my 1kmw thread. That being said, seems like she can't stack that much mf while maintaining acceptable killspeed on p1, and just isn't very safe (if they're in range of your nova, you're in range of their invisible CE/LE novas). So doesn't seem great, but perhaps much more viable than one might think.
 
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sirpoopsalot said:
When it comes to efficient MFing for high-end items in single player, nothing beats a pure-Blizzard sorceress in Ancient Tunnel (AT) runs.

This aged like Corpsefire. I wonder if we'll be able to say the same about pit zerkers in another decade :)
 
And I actually wonder wether there will be people in one century claiming to know what´s the best MFing char!

KInda sentimental today!

But yeah, I feel like Diablo II growing again..... and a new perfectionism arised...so most likely knwoledge about D2 will change further in future!
 
It is a server that is basically just D2 and admins to keep botting and hacking of the game out of question. It's essentially a friendlier, smaller group of B.Net. I think they allow MH, have the drop rate to 0, or whatever allows for every monster kill to drop at least one item and some esthetic changes, such as showing the possible rolls on mods in a (min#-max#) type of fashion. But a lot of people have been talking about 200%FCR Frost Nova Sorceresses, specially built for AT. Some of the consideration probably comes down to running 1 player games on the server. I am not certain if you can alter player settings on the server, it has been a long time since I have been on there. It was actually a great community for people who want the B.Net, constant conversation through discord and server wide chat, with no currency like FG or bots/dupes ruining the economy and is very helpful and giving, like this community is. They started doing ladder resets as well and you can check a webpage and look at every character on the ladder and see exactly what gear and stats every character is employing, which I found to be a really cool feature. At the time I played, there was no changes to the skill system and none have been implemented AFAIK. But I am not 100% positive.

My guess is that doing solo AT runs with a Frost Nova/ES Sorc and having MH to show you where all the unique packs are sitting, you can jump in and Frost Nova them quickly with 200%FCR and a massive mana pool and fly through on players 1 quickly. Considering Blizzard makes short work of AT on P8 on single player, there probably isn't much of a usage for it here, outside of having fun playing unique builds. I just wondered if anyone in this forum had ever heard of it or tried something like that out. The best I really found was someone who beat the game using Frost Nova and Nova as a backup to help with CI's and it was very difficult, back in very early 1.10. They didn't use the best build or setup, but I'll have to check out the characters posted a few posts up.

@Albatross I am much more efficient with the Blizzard AT, than the Pitzerker lol. I have built so many Sorceresses over the last ~18 or 19 years, most being Blizzard since 1.09, that I can P8 them anywhere that isn't pure CI(pits...) and really have never had the efficient Barbarian figured out.
 
With 200 FCR, there had to be more non-FAM items involved, otherwise the sorc's damage and magic find would be too low. Getting up to 200 FCR requires most gear slots and +cold damage gear does not offer high FCR or MF. There would have to be 7-8 cold skillers in the inventory which leaves very little room for MF charms.

Maybe if you take into account the "0 nodrop", but at that point it's a different game and making comparisons doesn't really make sense.
 
@Jamie yeah they completely rehauled frost nova in that mod and its one of the most powerful builds there. Not very relevant to discuss that here. In FAM D2 SP, she can work but is very underpowered.
 
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Frost nova focused Sorc is on my list of builds to rebuild with current complement of gear. But I don’t see her as long-term MF or RF build for reasons stated. Should be loads of fun to play (dual nova FTW), but I don’t see competing with other options for extended MF/RF runs or XP leveling.
 
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@Jamie yeah they completely rehauled frost nova in that mod and its one of the most powerful builds there. Not very relevant to discuss that here. In FAM D2 SP, she can work but is very underpowered.

I didn't realize that they ever overhauled skills or any of the gameplay. I guess I haven't followed what is going on for a little while now. Last I knew their goal was to provide the Bnet experience, without the dupes, bots, hacks and a friendly community. I wonder what compelled them to start tweaking things like this. I guess I've been out of the loop for awhile and I just happened to hear a lot of talk about the Frost Nova AT Sorceresses on there and thought I was missing something.

Disappointed that they went away from the basics of D2, when they were known as an alternative to bmet. I mean changing the games to things like PoD can make a brilliant video game system, into something that feels like a new game. And I find that cool for people wanting the great mathematical D2 system, with new content. I just never saw anything about Slash messing with the core of the game. I only saw visual changes, drop rate set to 0 to help out solo MFers and allowing a few programs, like MH, that also help MFers and the ability to come close to SP maps.

When did Slash start tinkering with all of the basics, like skills? If that is true, it certainly explains why 200FCR Frost Nova Sorcies get brought up whenever a user posts a good 20FCR Sorc Hat. It threw me for a loop, but I thought well who knows, maybe if you van jump on packs in AT and mad spam it, it hax it's usability and would sound fun.

Blizzard AT on P7 or P8 is still the Ki..Queen. Lol.

PS. I don't always go back and fix all the grammatical and spelling mistakes that I make on my first, quickly accomplished posts. I'm not illiterate. The tiny phone buttons and the crap library function on my phone, give way to tons of poor writing when they don't get flagged and I am rushing through ASAP. I probably added errors to my edit here, rofl. I hate having mistakes and have a fine grasp on English, so anyone who is smart should figure out how the silly errors happened lol. It's just embarrassing on the phone and not worth the effort so many times.
 
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I thought you were talking about path of diablo, not slash. Idk much about either, just have seen some people streaming the former. And on PoD they did change the skills. Frost nova is very strong there, so that's why I thought it's what you were talking about.
 
Slash rubs me the wrong way, what with maphack and no 0drop. I've also seen them post some stuff that would be....exceedingly....improbable, like two Tyrael's from a single Baal run. This leads me to believe that they mess with stuff without telling folks, though I admit I'm just speculating
 
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