PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

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DamienDCLXVI

New member
PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

Hey,
I am putting some work in on a Fireball/Meteor PvM Sorc. I intend her for Andy, Countess, Meph, some A5 Supers and Baal. I have a full Tal's set at my disposal as well as a few fire facets. I though I would run my proposed build by the forums as a 'sanity check' to see if what I am planning is looking like a legitimate plan.
Equipment
Helm: Tals (Fire facet)
Armor: Tals (Unsure about socket)
Weap: Tals (2 fire mastery, Fire Facet)
Shield: Visceratuant (Eld or Perf Diamond)
Belt: Tal's
Gloves: Magefists
Boots: Silkweaves (Mostly for the mana)
Rings: rare 10 FCR with whatever other mods I can find
Ammy: Tals

Skills
20 Firebolt
20 Fireball
20 Meteor
20 Fire Mastery

It seems that I might have a few holes in my plan and I am looking to the community to help patch them.
1. Should I swap out the shield for a Lidless or a Spirit perhaps to help FCR?
2. Would it be better to work out some way to use Energy Shield?
-If so what would you recommend for skill distribution
3. My sockets seem to be a place of some flexibility, I have the 2 fire facets and kind of want to use them but I am open to other suggestions.
4. Max block, vita, or energy shield?

I look forward to hearing some of the different schools of thought.
 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

first off, your FCR is messed up.

FCR is not continuous it works at breakpoints. Any Extra FCR you get that doesn't help you hit a breakpoint is useless.

the breakpoints for fire sorcs is 37 (10 frame), 63 (9 frame), 105 (8 frame) and 200 (7 frame).

On an MF sorc you should be shooting for either 63 or 105, but you currently have 90. So keep in mind that the extra FCR from your FCR rings isn't doing anything for you until you get 15 more fcr from somewhere.


and for your 4 questions:

1) that would be a definate option, don't use lidless though, spirit is a lot better and very much worth the extra str. although if you take this route you can't go maxblock as spirit has crap for block.
2) On a fireball sorc, definately, you've got lots of extra skill points. With your setup i would recommend putting zero points in energy shield and pre-buffing it with a +ES orb or staff (ES has very long duration so this works fine). You'll want to dump lots of points into telekinesis (probably 20, or alternatively just put all leftover points there if you don't want to sacrifice any damage). Telekinesis increases the efficiency of your energy shield. (with 20 point telekinesis, you lose .75 mana per damage absorbed, compared to 2.0 lost with 0 point telekinesis. You don't need any points in ES itself, with just prebuff it should be 55-70% depending on how many skills you have, which is plenty for your purposes.

there's no reason not to go ES on a fireball sorc as you have extra talent points for telekinesis after you finnish maxing the fire skills.

3. i usually use ptopazes, but facets work too if you like killing speed over MF.

4. Maxblock will give you very high survivability but you can't (effectively) use a spirit shield with maxblock, so it may not be worth giving up the FCR on an MF sorc. If you find yourself often dying to archers or annoying melee packs its probably better to go maxblock.

Keep in mind, maxblock is a HUGE survivability increase, no question, the only question is if its worth giving up the FCR you lose from not using spirit shield.

another option, if you want to try to hit 8 frame with maxblock, you'd have to dump full tals and drop down to 3 piece. You could use wizardspike (50 fcr), shako + 3 piece tals. With that setup + magefist + 2fcr rings, you can hit the 105 fcr breakpoint even with maxblock. Or you could just keep ful tals and miss the 105 fcr breakpoint.

But if you arn't having survivability problems, full tals with a spirit monarch is a perfectly fine choice and is the simplest way to hit 105 fcr, although you can't use maxblock on this setup.

(if you end up deciding on maxblock, visceratuant is a great shield for this, socket it with either a pdiamond or one of your fire facets. make sure to up your visceratuant so it has more block %.).

as for stat allocation, you'll want enough str to use your gear, enough dext for maxblock if you go maxblock--base dext if you don't-- rest into vita (put a little into energy too if you decide to go partial-Energy shield route described above in point 2, but you don't need a lot of points in energy even with ES).

Also, you describe maxblock and ES as "or" but I assure you they aren't mutually exclusive, maxblock and ES go together like peanutbutter and jelly.

Good luck.
 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

How do you plan on doing fire immunes in the throne room? You won't be breaking their immunity, and its very unlikely for your merc to be able to handle the last pack by himself.

Like Millard said, the biggest deciding factor between maxblock or not is FCR. I have to hit 105 minimum for me personally, and also have a 200fcr sorc. For me the fcr justifies the lack of blocking, but I adjust my playstyle accordingly.

I don't like ES because of the mana curse, can't remember the name. That, and for ES to be truly powerful, you need to synergize in tk. Since I need all my points for synergies as is, that doesn't work for me.

The nice thing about fb, no additional breakpoints. You'll just be limited to where you can hunt since you won't be breaking any serious fire immunes. Meph, Andy, no problem. That's basically what my Meteor/FB sorc was doing. Beyond that... maybe pindle, a little shenk and eldritch.
 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

SeCKSEgai said:
I don't like ES because of the mana curse, can't remember the name. That, and for ES to be truly powerful, you need to synergize in tk. Since I need all my points for synergies as is, that doesn't work for me.
Click to expand...

the mana curse isn't a problem as long as you make sure that you have more max health than max mana. As long as your hp max is higher you won't get hit by the curse.

Also on a fireball build you have a ton of extra talent points left over for telekinesis. If you level to 95 you'll even have enough points to max everything you'd want: max fireball/meteor/bolt/mastery/telekinesis, and still get 1 pt static field, 1 pt warmth and max telekinesis.

I agree with your view that doing baal runs is not a good idea on a fire sorc. Even with infinity you can't break the minion of destruction's fire immunities.


 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

From personal experience I've never ever seen the point of having Max Block pr ES on a MF Sorc unless you play HC.

Max Block takes away Spirit, while ES takes away skill points that could have gone to a second element that helps speed up runs like Countess (Immune to Fire) or Baal (Fallen & Lister's Pack) Even if your Merc can kill Countess quickly, it's still far, far more efficient if you can deal damage to her yourself. Those few extra seconds you save start piling up after a few runs.

So what you're trading off to prevent a few (and I mean a few) deaths is lowering the efficiency of all your runs.

If you're playing HC then go Max Block, add in ES if you want. But if this is SC, after getting past the learning curve (if there even is one) I doubt you'll be dropping dead enough times to justify slowing down all of your MF runs.
 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

Honestly if you don't play HC maxblock is simply a waste of stat points and will limit your overall effectiveness because of shield choices. Even ES in my opinion is not worth using in SC, since it requires investment in a synergy which would be put to better use dumping into your main skills. You definitely want to use Spirit and hit at least the 63 bp but preferably 105, so block will be difficult to achieve without greater sacrifice. To me playing sorcs in SC is all about 100% offense, and the sorc's greatest defense is killing everything before it gets a chance to get you... tele real quick when all else fails...
 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

Millard said:
the mana curse isn't a problem as long as you make sure that you have more max health than max mana. As long as your hp max is higher you won't get hit by the curse.

Also on a fireball build you have a ton of extra talent points left over for telekinesis. If you level to 95 you'll even have enough points to max everything you'd want: max fireball/meteor/bolt/mastery/telekinesis, and still get 1 pt static field, 1 pt warmth and max telekinesis.

I agree with your view that doing baal runs is not a good idea on a fire sorc. Even with infinity you can't break the minion of destruction's fire immunities.
Click to expand...

I know the mana curse isn't a problem if health is over mana, but think about it, doesn't that defeat the point of ES ;)


 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

MFDeath said:
Honestly if you don't play HC maxblock is simply a waste of stat points and will limit your overall effectiveness because of shield choices. Even ES in my opinion is not worth using in SC, since it requires investment in a synergy which would be put to better use dumping into your main skills. You definitely want to use Spirit and hit at least the 63 bp but preferably 105, so block will be difficult to achieve without greater sacrifice. To me playing sorcs in SC is all about 100% offense, and the sorc's greatest defense is killing everything before it gets a chance to get you... tele real quick when all else fails...
Click to expand...

So true. Unless you pvp, then max-block is useful in sc. But even then I rather have my fcr ;)


 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

There's still no point getting Max Block on a PvM Sorc in SC. Specifically a MF'er/runner.

Just make another Sorc (or use the same one, but it's a waste of respec tokens honestly) for PvP. Thanks to rushing, there's really no point trying to squeeze both PvP and PvM into one character if the two roles both lower the efficiency of the other.

Simply put, putting Max Block or ES on a Sorc lowers her efficiency as a item/rune farmer.
 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

SeCKSEgai said:
I know the mana curse isn't a problem if health is over mana, but think about it, doesn't that defeat the point of ES ;)
Click to expand...

No, it really. Balanced life/mana on an 0/1 point es max TK sorc is generally the best type of ES setup and i've tried most everything. This is especially true for PvM where you have to worry about mana burn mobs.


 
Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

Kurogane said:
There's still no point getting Max Block on a PvM Sorc in SC. Specifically a MF'er/runner.
Click to expand...

This mentality is pretty typical-- But you'd be amazed how much faster you kill mobs when you don't have to worry so much about dying. if you're not overgeared that is, i'll concede if you're running around with 2000 hp and an infinity/fort merc you don't need ES/Maxblock.


 
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Re: PvM Fire Sorc Tweaks and Tips?

Well In SP I can run a 200mf sorc on p8 within a few minutes, time mainly depending on if lord seis and other uniques are immune after infinity.

But in PvM, there are only so many things that even a full tal's sorc or less should really have to worry about if they go fcr/vita. Exploding dolls, mass packs of ranged anything. Boss killers can use max block and go toe to toe with boss while they blast it, but ES is usually a bad thing, as a mana burn after a teleport into a pack will leave you fully exposed, and since your max block, your fhr is probably low....

But again, I think max block sorcs are primarily a pvp or hardcore thing.
 
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