Looking for help with Sorceress

[Goomba]

OMG I found a Harlequin Crest! That beautiful Shako! Ha, it kinda reminds me of the first Diablo. I have been playing between Andy runs, pit runs, and AT runs. Thank you all for the encouragement! This is a reward for the grinding! The weirdest thing is I didn't even get it from Andariel, it dropped from one of the monsters near her...does that mean that the monsters near Andy, Meph, etc are also level 85?

Andy hell runs so far 58 done:
Run 5 - Blade of Ali Baba
Run 53 - Que-Hagan's Wisdom (idk if this counts)
Run 55 - A second Tal Rasha's Mask
Run 58 - Harlequin Crest

 

[corale]

it dropped from one of the monsters near her...does that mean that the monsters near Andy, Meph, etc are also level 85?

Nope, Shako is not from a high treasure class. Looking a the drop calc, it seems it can drop for normal monster in most of act 1 Hell and forward. Congrats!

Silospen's Diablo 2/D2 Resurrected Drop Calculator

 

[corale]

What is this sorcery...? I did an AT run just after writing that post.

Spoiler

AHEM. Tal Rasha's Adjucation can drop from any monster from Act V Normal and forwards.

 

[Goomba]

I was just wondering, I found a white Monarch. Should I use the cube recipe and hope for 4 sockets or wait until getting the sockets quest reward in Act 5 once I get there? Does one have a higher chance of giving 4 sockets than the other?

 

[Kartongen]

I was just wondering, I found a white Monarch. Should I use the cube recipe and hope for 4 sockets or wait until getting the sockets quest reward in Act 5 once I get there? Does one have a higher chance of giving 4 sockets than the other?

Larzuk always gives max sockets. For a monarch, that's 4.

Cube rolls a six sided die, and truncates (rounds down) to the maximum possible if less than what was rolled. So for a monarch, it has a 50% chance to give 4 sockets (and 17-ish % for 1, 2 and 3 respectively).

Hope this helps your decision.

 

[corale]

I used Larzuk, no doubt in mind. 50% chance means that with a little bad luck you might need to find 3-4 Monarchs or even more before you get your Spirit.

 

[EatSleepDiablo]

Ok. One last post.

For newbies and gray beards alike. A couple of threads to digest even though some things changed in v1.13.

Re: MF, bosses/areas to run, and NF builds (at the time). For Pits, Fabian's zerker build is king (with enigma).

From Hrus. https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Guide:Magic_Find_Guide_v1.11,_by_Hrus

From NightFish, who is the reason we call a necro summoner build, a fishymancer... https://www.purediablo.com/forums/threads/sept-sept-finished-summary-by-nightfish.192/

Edit: This was actually the NF thread I was looking for re: builds for different areas: https://www.diabloii.net/forums/threads/baking-cookies-with-nightfish-mini-build-guides.796919/

From Fabian (via babyhell), https://www.purediablo.com/forums/t...k-barbarian-mf-pit-runner-guide-write-up.277/

 

[MizzouFTW]

I

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it. Also, how do I avoid dieing all the time from those damn undead fast little skeleton things? I swear I've teleported into them and died so many times in the durance of hate level 2...I'm so slow at Mephisto runs and have to revive my mercenary often.

Be been waiting for posts like these to pop up. I remember the first time I ran into these little guys I just didn't understand they were actually doing that much damage

You might want to take a look at Socialism's orb it aller guide. Also his orb/tk guide is pretty great in going over a lot of the basics you are having issues with

 

[Goomba]

Hi all, so right now I am stuck with my sorc at the beginning of Act 5. I cannot reach Shenk, all the quill rats and archers are giving me a hell of a time and I am dieing too easily. I am also getting sick of Pit and Andy runs since I have done a couple hundred with nothing to show for it and I think I am getting carpel tunnel in my thumb lol (I play on Xbox).

So I might take a break from the sorc for a little bit a work on a second character. I want to make a character to be able to solo hell. Some research I've done points towards a Paladin or Necromancer. I used to have both a Hammerdin and a Smite Paladin 20 years ago and was able to even beat the Ubers. Being able summon hoards of minions sounds fun as well. I'm not sure about the necro, but the paladin I remember having pretty expensive gear (Enigma, for example). Realistically <snip>, I'll probably never get an Enigma again (Jah and Ber being impossible to obtain). So with reasonably obtainable gear what character/build out of the paladin and necro would you use to solo hell and why?

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Triple Helix]

Hi all, so right now I am stuck with my sorc at the beginning of Act 5. I cannot reach Shenk, all the quill rats and archers are giving me a hell of a time and I am dieing too easily. I am also getting sick of Pit and Andy runs since I have done a couple hundred with nothing to show for it and I think I am getting carpel tunnel in my thumb lol (I play on Xbox).

So I might take a break from the sorc for a little bit a work on a second character. I want to make a character to be able to solo hell. Some research I've done points towards a Paladin or Necromancer. I used to have both a Hammerdin and a Smite Paladin 20 years ago and was able to even beat the Ubers. Being able summon hoards of minions sounds fun as well. I'm not sure about the necro, but the paladin I remember having pretty expensive gear (Enigma, for example). Realistically <snip>, I'll probably never get an Enigma again (Jah and Ber being impossible to obtain). So with reasonably obtainable gear what character/build out of the paladin and necro would you use to solo hell and why?

Thanks for the advice.

Sounds like a good plan.

I'm not very familiar personally with a paladin, but I can tell you from recent experience that a summoner necro (Fishymancer) can solo hell with good gear, MF gear, budget gear, or theoretically even no gear at all. He may be slower than you're used to with a sorceress, but he'll get you there. It might also get a bit boring, but slow and steady wins the race.

 

[Maltatai]

Frankly, just check the untwinked patriarchs and guardians threads and pick whatever seems most fun. I expect all my (untwinked) characters to be able to fully clear hell on their own, except perhaps evil urns and cows.

But with regards to what you have described and what seems to have bothered you the most I would recommend something like the following:

Spoiler

Paladin:
Conversion, about 9.
Holy freeze, 20 (everything is easier when slowed down).
Charge, 20
Zeal or Vengeance, 20
Holy shield, 5 at least
A prayer mercenary to heal you and keep fire enchanted ones away from you. Charge is fun and strong and with a close attack you need not fear being caught, and you can vary your tactics and not be easily bored. Holy freeze gives you a second damage type and conversion and holy shield will make everything more convenient. Vengeance handles dual immunes. Your town guard will benefit tremendously from conversion and slowing to aid him. Use a Nadir helm to cloak when needed, keep a wand of weaken or life tap for bosses and tough uniques, get a source of open wounds or prevent monster heal, and there should be little that can stop you.

Necromancer:
Golem mastery, 20
All golems, 1 (perhaps some more points to clay golem if you favour it)
Bone spear or spirit, 20 (bone spear can be aided by the cheap White rune word, and is usually more economical)
Bone prison, 20
Decrepify, 1
Rogue mercenary to deal a third damage type and weaken enemies with weapon effects as well as aid golems with inner sight. She will hang back and not accidentally be caught in prisons. A recastable golem, bone prisons and curses will keep the heat off her and you. Very little can resist magic damage and the party will have access to three damage types by themselves without even counting equipment. Put a point in poison dagger and stab the enemy with a malice kris if they regenerate too much. Decrepify enemies or send them running with terror. A synergized bone armour will allow a few mistakes here and there, like wading into a barrage of quills for example. There are points to spare, which might be used to build up the synergies with bone wall for more defense or build them up with the missing one of bone spear/spirit for more diverse attack options. Or put everything into clay golem and laugh at its ridiculous hit points and slowing.

All in all very little dependancy on items, diverse damage and some effective crowd control options.

 

[Kartongen]

The standard low budget Necromancer would be a so called Fishymancer. I would highly recommend you play one - they are a blast on players 1.
If you just equip what items you naturally find you should do really well with one.

(I just completed one with a silly only gold find itemization. For him Hell (especially act 4-5) was really tedious. But if you equip some proper +skills items, even just random magics/rares you find naturally, you should be able to progress without too much problems.)

 

[Swamigoon]

I also encourage a necromancer experiment. I started a new project last year with my untwinked "fishymancer" skeleton summoner. Even though he was untwinked, I was fortunate to be able to use and stack all four "monster slowing" methods:

• a Decrepify curse (I only put one point in that skill and its prerequisites),
• a Clay Golem (after maxing Corpse Explosion and the various skeleton summoning skills, I put all of my leftover points here),
• cold (from cold damage charms, and sometimes from cold necromages),
• a "Slows Target" item (The General's Tan Do Li Ga was one of the items he found in early normal difficulty, but there are other such items you might find).

With all of those, hell difficulty super-unique monsters and act bosses were slowed down a lot, making it very easy for the skeleton army to stay alive and do their work. Another big help was to put a "Crushing Blow" item on the mercenary (in my case, it was a Strength rune word on a stygian pike elite spear).

 

[Kartongen]

• a Clay Golem (after maxing Corpse Explosion and the various skeleton summoning skills, I put all of my leftover points here),
• [...]
• a "Slows Target" item (The General's Tan Do Li Ga was one of the items he found in early normal difficulty, but there are other such items you might find).

It should be noted that Clay golem has the same type of "slows target" that weapons such as the General's Tan Do Li Ga provides, so stacking them gives no benifit.

But I will second @Swamigoon's point - a fishymancer can really slow down his opponents. Even a level 1 clay golem, if boosted by some +skills, can provide really good slow (lvl 10 gives 51% for instance). That, combined with decrepify, is usually enough to get bosses to hardly move. If you manage to get some cold necromages in on the action, you can get Baal to only dance around and accept his punishment.
10/10 suggestion.

(I think holy freeze gives a fourth type of slowing (i.e. that it is not normal cold slowing), but I don't have time to verify right now. Either way, a might aura merc is definately best for a Fishymancer anyway.)

 

[Goomba]

Hi all, so I went back to my sorceress and eventually found the rest of Tal Rasha's set. Although I am ecstatic over the improvement, I am still dieing somewhat easily and am stuck at the ancients act 5. What could I do to make my sorceress less squishy? I have the following gear available now:

Head: Tal's mask (previously Shako)
R Hand: Tal's lidless eye (previously Oculus)
L Hand: Monarch with spirit (although I got unlucky with 25% FCR vs 35% so I'm still keeping an eye out for more 4 soc monarchs)
Body: Tal's guardianship (previously skin of vipermagi)
Belt: Tal's fin spun cloth (previously goldwrap)
Boots: Natalya's boots (for cold and lit resist and 40% faster run)
Rings: both Nagel rings (I have not found a SOJ or Bul Kathos yet)
Amulet: Tal's adjudication

Resists are now 75% for all but poison which is 45% (I have a few charms and Tal's set bonus really helps)
FCR is 95% (just need 10% more for the 105% hopefully if I can roll a better spirit once I find another 4 soc monarch)...
MF is 283% - Is this good? How much more would I want to get? I read that 300% is kind of the magic number where the diminishing returns starts happening as you get higher MF.
Stats are 156 into str and the rest into vit and level is 88

Merc is act 2 holy freeze - should I switch to the one with might?
Weapon: Insight made in a cryptic axe with 117-492 dmg
Armor: Shaftstop 612 def
Head: Crown of Thieves (12% life stolen and fire resist)

I am still using the frozen orb/fireball build but is there a different build such as lightning I should respec into? What gear would I need for that? I remember 20 years ago I had a light sorc that was amazing but don't remember her gear etc. I don't think I'd want to do a blizzard only though.

What should my priority be for gear at this point? Should I be mostly doing runs for runes now? Does my merc need improvement too? I know my sorceress is coming along well and I appreciate the help and advice.

 

[Cattleya]

There's nothing magic about 300% MF. It's just a nice round number around the point where diminishing returns on MF starts to hit harder. (And also where you'll often be making bigger gear sacrifices to get more.)

Until you are able to get a 35% spirit shield, I'd swap one of the Naglerings for a 10% FCR magic/rare ring. (If you've got a fair number of the runes for spirit + some Hel runes, you may also want to try just rerolling the spirit using the shield you have. Although getting a perfect 35% roll might be tough.) Getting to that 105 breakpoint is more important that the MF, especially if you are dying a lot. That's really the biggest area where I see room for gear improvement.

I don't think you'd see much difference swapping specs. (And lighting really only shines if you can get an Infinity on the merc.) For the ancients it's going to be about rerolling them until they spawn with something manageable and using teleport to try and separate them. They are tough for a sorceress.

The only benefit you'll get from a might merc is he'll kill FI/CI monsters a little bit faster. I'm not sure that's worth giving up the slow from holy freeze. However, I'm probably not the right person to answer question, as I use Act 1 mercs with my sorceresses because I'm a weirdo.

 

[snickersnack]

Realistically <snip>, I'll probably never get an Enigma again (Jah and Ber being impossible to obtain).

Have you done any LK running? If you can tolerate those runs (ideally around 30 seconds each), then maybe include 100 to 200 runs each week and see how that goes. The runs are pretty dull (I watch youtube on a second screen), but I farmed up runes for Infinity in less than a week of playing in the evenings for a couple hours (I did get super lucky there). When I turned my attention to farming for runeword bases, I also got a Sur rune in the Pit on day 1.

Also, if you just run high level areas a lot, you'll find high runes eventually. Way, way back, I found a Sur rune in the WSK with my fishymancer, and several months ago, I found Sur and Jah in CS runs (two back-to-back runs, so super lucky).

You might also want to consider that Travincal is another great area to run for runes, but it takes some specialized items to do efficiently.

 

[Triple Helix]

Have you done any LK running? If you can tolerate those runs (ideally around 30 seconds each), then maybe include 100 to 200 runs each week and see how that goes.

Unfortunately, since he's on Xbox, LK chest runs aren't viable in single player since there is no "/players x" option and it's always on /players 1. My biggest console complaint!

Edit: Disregard this Post!

 

[maxicek]

It is coming in the patch.

 

[Goomba]

So I think I really need to try to build an infinity. The question is what is the best base for it?