- Mar 17, 2020
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Sorceress Cold Skill Investment - Doin it with smarts
Cold has always been the skill tree of choice for discerning sorceresses who needed a second element of damage. Lightning and Fire really shine with 40+ points, although Fireball makes a good case for a 41 pt backup skill. The two skills that I've seen in contention most often for the "ohcraptheyarelightningimmunewhatdoIdoAHHHH!" are Frozen Orb and Blizzard.
Comparing these two skills is problematic because of a number of things:
1) The problem with both of these skills is that they fire off a large number of bolts/shards
2) Not all of those bolts/shards will hit an enemy (I call FO shots "bolts" and blizzard shots "shards")
3) The nature of Cold Mastery is that it has a different effect on mobs of different resistances, and FO generally makes a larger investment into CM than Blizz
Let talk about Frozen Orb first:
- Frozen orb sends out a total of 44 bolts
- Bolts are sent out uniformly in a 360 degree spread from the Orb
- The first second of the cast sends 1-2 bolts per frame
- There is a "burst" of 16 bolts at the end of the orb's path
- It is possible (but sometimes difficult) to hit a mob with all 16 bolts
- The final burst accounts for 16/44 of the damage, or 37% or so.
- FO has a maximum synergy of 40% if 20 hard points are invested in Ice Bolt (usually ignored)
The Down Low on Blizzard:
- Blizzard sends out 28 shards
- The shards land in three diagonal rows (pictured above)
- The specific pattern is not constant, but there are approx. 1 shard per "spot" in the array
- Some spots can be hit twice, some can possibly be missed entirely
- Each hit has a small area of effect
- The even distribution prevents any "sweetspot" mechanic like for FO
Damage Comparison - Everyone loves math, right?
It's commonly acknowledged that Blizzard is a better choice than Frozen Orb if more than 40 points are available. Since the introduction of synergies, Blizzard has 5% bonus on three different skills, while Frozen Orb has only a single 2% synergy. Blizzard sorcs in Ancient Tunnels are the gold standard of non-Barbarian Magic Finding characters in Diablo 2 in the modern patches, and this is in a large part to Blizzard's synergies, high damage, and Area of Effect.
To make the comparison more interesting, I limited the calculations to what can be achieved with the following limitations:
1) Only 35 hard points can be spent in the Cold Tree
2) Mobs with both 0% and 50% cold resist would be considered
3) We assume that a second element will be used to kill any mobs with a very high cold resist or broken immunity
4) The math above assumes that all shards and/or bolts hit an enemy
The caveats that must be considered:
1) Not all shards/bolts hit an enemy
2) We ignored the fact that FO bolts hit a single enemy, while blizzard has a small AOE
If we assume that a similar number of Blizzard and FO shots miss, and that we are not concerned with killing cold immune monsters with cold skills, Blizzard will out-damage FO on any mob with less than or equal to 50% cold resist. This is a fair assumption, but there is one thing that needs to be taken into account. That is "sweet-spotting" a FO explosion.
In Practice:
FO bolts are largely sent out in one of the 8 cardinal directions. Over the course of the first part of the spell about 3 bolts are sent in each of the 8 cardinal directions. The final burst sends out 16 bolts. If we assume a "perfect" sweetspot where all 16 bolts hit a single enemy, you can also assume that an additional 3 bolts are sent straight forward and also hit the enemy. This means that 19/44 bolts or about 40% of the total damage is the best we can hope to deal to a single enemy. If the sweetspot is missed by one tile, 8 of the final burst will likely miss and only 11 of 44 or 25% will hit the enemy.
With Blizzard's arrangement of hits, small enemies will not be hit by 25% of the shards, but large enemies (3x3 tile-sized enemies) will likely be hit by about 10 or so "slots" or 40% ish of the shards. Exceptionally large enemies like act bosses (that don't move outside the area of blizzard) will be hit by well over 60% of the shards. If Blizzard is hitting 40% or so of its shards, and FO hits 40% of the time when sweetspotted, why not be lazy and click near the enemy instead of have to perfectly sweet spot the FO cast and pray the enemy doesn't miss?
Subjective Recommendations:
Because of this analysis, I have settled in my mind that Blizzard as a timered spell with Fireball as a non-timered spell is the strongest build for a Fire/Cold hybrid.
1) It allows for flexibility, investing additional points in Fireball or Blizzard Synergies
2) There is only one timered spell, allowing for Blizzard casts followed up by Fireballs during the 2-3 seconds blizzard is doing damage
3) It's a more relaxed playstyle, allowing for more flexibility in positioning and needing less teleport repositioning (allowing the merc to do work)
So my personal goal for my next sorc is that I throw 41 points at Fireball and 35 points at Blizzard...and then based on whichever I find myself using I will then invest heavily in the spell that makes a bigger difference in clearspeed. Others are calling it a Blizzballer, but I'm going to slightly edit a recent name for the sorc and call mine a Fizzysorc.
Hope this was helpful, I wanted to make sure we posted .gifs, counted shards, etc. Let me know if there are things you think I've missed!
Cold has always been the skill tree of choice for discerning sorceresses who needed a second element of damage. Lightning and Fire really shine with 40+ points, although Fireball makes a good case for a 41 pt backup skill. The two skills that I've seen in contention most often for the "ohcraptheyarelightningimmunewhatdoIdoAHHHH!" are Frozen Orb and Blizzard.
Comparing these two skills is problematic because of a number of things:
1) The problem with both of these skills is that they fire off a large number of bolts/shards
2) Not all of those bolts/shards will hit an enemy (I call FO shots "bolts" and blizzard shots "shards")
3) The nature of Cold Mastery is that it has a different effect on mobs of different resistances, and FO generally makes a larger investment into CM than Blizz
Let talk about Frozen Orb first:
- Frozen orb sends out a total of 44 bolts
- Bolts are sent out uniformly in a 360 degree spread from the Orb
- The first second of the cast sends 1-2 bolts per frame
- There is a "burst" of 16 bolts at the end of the orb's path
- It is possible (but sometimes difficult) to hit a mob with all 16 bolts
- The final burst accounts for 16/44 of the damage, or 37% or so.
- FO has a maximum synergy of 40% if 20 hard points are invested in Ice Bolt (usually ignored)
The Down Low on Blizzard:
- Blizzard sends out 28 shards
- The shards land in three diagonal rows (pictured above)
- The specific pattern is not constant, but there are approx. 1 shard per "spot" in the array
- Some spots can be hit twice, some can possibly be missed entirely
- Each hit has a small area of effect
- The even distribution prevents any "sweetspot" mechanic like for FO
Damage Comparison - Everyone loves math, right?
It's commonly acknowledged that Blizzard is a better choice than Frozen Orb if more than 40 points are available. Since the introduction of synergies, Blizzard has 5% bonus on three different skills, while Frozen Orb has only a single 2% synergy. Blizzard sorcs in Ancient Tunnels are the gold standard of non-Barbarian Magic Finding characters in Diablo 2 in the modern patches, and this is in a large part to Blizzard's synergies, high damage, and Area of Effect.
To make the comparison more interesting, I limited the calculations to what can be achieved with the following limitations:
1) Only 35 hard points can be spent in the Cold Tree
2) Mobs with both 0% and 50% cold resist would be considered
3) We assume that a second element will be used to kill any mobs with a very high cold resist or broken immunity
4) The math above assumes that all shards and/or bolts hit an enemy
The caveats that must be considered:
1) Not all shards/bolts hit an enemy
2) We ignored the fact that FO bolts hit a single enemy, while blizzard has a small AOE
If we assume that a similar number of Blizzard and FO shots miss, and that we are not concerned with killing cold immune monsters with cold skills, Blizzard will out-damage FO on any mob with less than or equal to 50% cold resist. This is a fair assumption, but there is one thing that needs to be taken into account. That is "sweet-spotting" a FO explosion.
In Practice:
FO bolts are largely sent out in one of the 8 cardinal directions. Over the course of the first part of the spell about 3 bolts are sent in each of the 8 cardinal directions. The final burst sends out 16 bolts. If we assume a "perfect" sweetspot where all 16 bolts hit a single enemy, you can also assume that an additional 3 bolts are sent straight forward and also hit the enemy. This means that 19/44 bolts or about 40% of the total damage is the best we can hope to deal to a single enemy. If the sweetspot is missed by one tile, 8 of the final burst will likely miss and only 11 of 44 or 25% will hit the enemy.
With Blizzard's arrangement of hits, small enemies will not be hit by 25% of the shards, but large enemies (3x3 tile-sized enemies) will likely be hit by about 10 or so "slots" or 40% ish of the shards. Exceptionally large enemies like act bosses (that don't move outside the area of blizzard) will be hit by well over 60% of the shards. If Blizzard is hitting 40% or so of its shards, and FO hits 40% of the time when sweetspotted, why not be lazy and click near the enemy instead of have to perfectly sweet spot the FO cast and pray the enemy doesn't miss?
Subjective Recommendations:
Because of this analysis, I have settled in my mind that Blizzard as a timered spell with Fireball as a non-timered spell is the strongest build for a Fire/Cold hybrid.
1) It allows for flexibility, investing additional points in Fireball or Blizzard Synergies
2) There is only one timered spell, allowing for Blizzard casts followed up by Fireballs during the 2-3 seconds blizzard is doing damage
3) It's a more relaxed playstyle, allowing for more flexibility in positioning and needing less teleport repositioning (allowing the merc to do work)
So my personal goal for my next sorc is that I throw 41 points at Fireball and 35 points at Blizzard...and then based on whichever I find myself using I will then invest heavily in the spell that makes a bigger difference in clearspeed. Others are calling it a Blizzballer, but I'm going to slightly edit a recent name for the sorc and call mine a Fizzysorc.
Hope this was helpful, I wanted to make sure we posted .gifs, counted shards, etc. Let me know if there are things you think I've missed!
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