Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress) ifr

[bcoe]

Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

[highlight]Matriarch Aix_Sponsa[/highlight]

You probably think I’m obsessed with full Tal’s dual-element sorcs. You’re right…

This one is named after the wood duck. Probably my favorite duck in North America, and a common sight on medium sized ponds/lakes from spring through early fall in my area. No particular reason that I chose it, just thought the name sounded cool. Pictures available at: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Wood_Duck/id

This is a dual-nova gal, with a focus on Frost Nova.

[highlight]STATS:[/highlight]
Name: Aix_Sponsa
Level: 79 (matted at 78)
Strength: 156 (156)
Dexterity: 25 (45)
Vitality: 269 (291)
Energy: 35 (45)

Life: 1918 (after BO)
Mana: 1382 (after BO)


[highlight]Skills[/highlight] (after + skills and BO):
Fire tree:
Warmth: 1 (13)

Lightning Tree:
Nova: 20 (31)
Lite Mastery: 11 (24)
Telekinesis: 1 (12)
Teleport: 1 (12)
Static Field 1 (12)

Cold Tree:
Frost Nova: 20 (39)
Blizzard: 11 (30)
Frozen Orb: 20 (30)
Cold Mastery: 1 (22)
1 point in pre-reqs

[highlight]Damage:[/highlight]
Nova: 984-1320
Frost Nova: 852-964
Frozen Orb (left-click): 718-750

[highlight]Thoughts on Skills:[/highlight]

Skillwise, I max’d FN and FO first, played her through normal mostly with FN and through NM pretty much splitting time between FO and FN. A 1.07 triumphant ring (+24 Mana after each skill, lvl req 2) is officially God’s Gift to leveling. I then max’d Nova, and then started splitting skills between LM and Blizzard.

On to equipment….

[highlight]Equipment:[/highlight]
Head: Tal Rasha’s Horadric Crest (cold facet 5/5 die)
Amulet: Tal Rasha’s Adjudication
Armor: Tal Rasha’s Guardianship (cold facet 5/4 level up)
Weapon: Tal Rasha’s Lidless Eye (2/2/2, cold facet 5/5 die)
Belt: Tal Rasha’s Fine-Spun Cloth
Shield: Spirit Monarch (+104 mana, 35 FCR)
Gloves: Magefists
Rings: 2x SOJ
Feet: Cruel Greaves (rare)

Spoiler

Cruel Greaves
Wyrmhide Boots
Defense: 61
Durability: 10 of 12
Kick Damage: 65 to 100
Required Strength: 50
Required Level: 45
Item Version: 1.10+ Expansion
Item Level: 86
Fingerprint: 0x4605adc5
Fire Resist +36%
Poison Resist +35%
24% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items
14% Chance to cast Level 5 Charged Bolt when struck
+0 to Defense (Based on Character Level)

Weapon Switch: CtA/Spirit


Charms:
8 cold skillers
Various small charms with total of +15 FHR, a bit of resists, and a lot of mana (key for this build).

Resists: 74/73/75/68

Merc: Prayer with Insight/Fortitude/Vamp Gaze (IAS jewel)

[highlight]Finds: [/highlight]
Hellforge: Shael/Um
For whatever reason, this gal finds more gold rings than any other I’ve built. So far: 2 Manalds, one Ravenfrost, 2 dwarfstars, one nagel. Weird. Also found a Hellslayer.

[highlight]Thoughts:[/highlight]

I really like this girl. Definitely not as powerful as some dual-elements, but lots of fun. She just destroyed nightmare – a 40 point Frost Nova (with tons of + skills) just decimates crowds. I only used FO for bosses and in those situations where getting too close was dangerous. Definitely a mana-hog, I kept the triumphant ring for quite a while, even after level 29 (when usually 2 SoJ’s go on and never come off).

Digression: A few weeks ago, I was marveling about the “mana after each kill” rings in Purplelocust’s 200FCR singer pat thread. I had never “timetravelled” and thought it would take forever. Well, I installed 1.07 on my work desktop and struggled like heck to get a FO/SF (never even got up to FO, to be honest) sorc up to Act 3 normal. I haven’t done untwinked in FOREVER, and I can’t believe how much I struggled. I’m so used to playing super-aggressive, it was a real eye-opener. Well, eventually I found enough crafting supplies and went to town. I finally got a triumphant ring (+ 24 mana after each kill). Total time investment was an hour or two a day for a week. Nothing in the grand scheme of things. It didn’t have any other mods, but no matter. I brought it forward to 1.12 and its unbelievable. Equiping it at level 2 completely changes leveling a sorc. I can’t believe I didn’t do it before, and many thanks to Purplelocust for finally getting me to do it. Eventually I’ll go back to 1.07 and work on getting a 2nd and maybe one with sweet other mods…

Back to Aix. Spamming novas (either one) is so pretty, and susceptible mobs just melt. FN really benefits from lots of + skills and + % cold damage. At this level of skill-point and gear investment, it kills mobs at a speed on par with her FO. Can’t compare as a boss-killer, though. Frankly, its kind of a luxury build – her cold effectiveness would be comparable with just the 20-point FO, but where would be the fun? A 40-point FO (fully synergized) would be more powerful than a 50-point FN.

How is she as a Baal-runner? Just fine at /p1. Doesn't scale up well at all. The incompletely synergized Nova is fine against CIs, and the combination of FO/FN is great against either crowds (FN) or individuals (FO). She really needs insight, though (level 39 FN costs 47 mana, at 105 FCR…), so I don’t think a kelpie-merc is in the cards without carrying it in the cube (not my style…).

Anyways – she was a lot of fun. I think I’ll run with her for a little while to see how she is with a few more levels under her fine-spun cloth….

 

[Cius]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

Nice build! Haven't ever seen that skills distribution! And you just encouraged me to get to the point where I time travel myself.

 

[bcoe]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

I'd totally recommend the time-travelling. Basically what I did was try to make a sorc that could safely run all the clickables in (normal) Lower-Kurast, and kept running that to get sapphires, and then used the cold ring recipe: ring + (any) sapphire + thawing potion. The hardest part was finding sapphires, but really didn't take long.

 

[Trim]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

Congratulations! Nice Mat and nice ring! :thumbup:

I know this game has been out for a long time and that hardly any character build will be original at this point. But it seems like I'm following directly in others' footsteps almost all the time lately; sirpoops posts a Throwbarb Pat thread three days before I did and now this. What I mean to say is that just two days ago I started working on a dual nova sorc. So obviously I like your skill choices very much! You've been a great help in determining how I should proceed with the character, so thank you for your wonderful timing!

 

[maxicek]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

Congratulations, nice Mat you have there.

Thats low damage at a 8 frames per cas, but I guess the area of effect makes up for it.

 

[bcoe]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

@maxicek:
I know, the LCS looks pretty pitiful, especially with all the + skills and + % cold damage I have on her. In truth though, its pretty much double damage against everybody, because of CM and the facets. It is much less sensitive to monster's resistances than Nova is. Pretty much any non-immune feels the full brunt of it. On players-1 it takes down the first 4 waves (except the mages in wave 2 of course) with no problem. It doesn't get Lister et al into hit recovery, so I back off and use orb for them...

Its a very fun skill to use, but really only works with very solid gear, I think.

 

[purplelocust]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

Nicely done! I must agree that the huge +mana per kill rings are fantastic items. And the level requirements in general from the 1.07 cold resist and prismatic recipes are often comically low. Be careful- you may end up wanting nicer and nicer 1.07 items! That's what happened to me- I had planned just to go back to 1.07 to get a few basics and sort out some rack runs, and it's now been a year with more 1.07 playtime than 1.12 playtime... First you get a +22 mana per kill ring, and then you get a better one with FCR, and then a few hundred later you get useful rare one, and so on...

 

[lionheartthebrave]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

Nice mat there bcoe

One of my current projects is a Dual Nova sorc, and I have to say I find Nova pwns everything, and FNova is a really slow, but I think I focused on the Nova side too much (I find myself using Forb constantly)

 

[Vang]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

Very nice mat, I've always wanted to use Frost Nova, and a dual nova is even more original, grats on the fun mat!

recipe: ring + (any) sapphire + thawing potion, just so I'm clear, that is the recipe +24mana after kill ring correct?

 

[Fabian]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

Let me just add another vote for how great twinking items the 1.07 MPK rings are. Having one MPK ring is basically like having an Insight aura; you never ever run out of mana. I'd definitely recommend trading for one if you frequently twink caster type builds.

 

[purplelocust]

Re: Matriarch Aix_Sponsa (full-Tal's, dual Nova sorceress)

@Vang: yes, that is the correct recipe. See the 1.07 addendum to the 1.07 guide at http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=575208 for a longer list:

1 magical ring + 1 any sapphire + 1 thawing potion = 1 ring with 6-36% cold res

The nice thing is that you can shop thawing potions. For the fire resist one, you need exploding potions which you have to collect from monsters or shrines.

When trying for the cold resist bugged triumphant ring, there is something like a 1/10 chance of getting a rare with an extra cold resist, and 1/100 of a set ring with extra cold resist, and 1/1000 of a unique ring with the extra cold resist- the rest will be magic. Occasionally, you may get a magic Triumphant with a normal amount of mana per kill and the cold resist instead of the just big mana and no cold resist that one is hoping for. I've done lots of them and there are two basic strategies: 1) use the highest level character you have so that there is a chance that if you roll a set/unique ring, it turns out useful 2) use a level 8 character to optimize the chance of getting huge mana per kill and FCR. Once you get a decent twinking ring, if you persist you may want to switch to a higher level character for the chance of cold resist SoJ, Manald, etc.

It varies on the bugged mana per kill from about 7 per kill to about 37 per kill, by the way. I think it comes from the 6-36 roll for cold resist added to a +1 or +2 perhaps from the Triumphant prefix.

I've done a bunch with the fire, lightning and prismatic recipes and I've never seen a bugged mana per kill except for coming from the cold recipe.