Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

testyfish1

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Dec 26, 2007
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Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

I play offline, no mods for starters...so no infinity or even insight. I got my real start playing D2 when I was a freshman in college and we did multiple all-nighter LAN parties. Since then I've been playing SP exclusively, with almost nothing in Bnet (except the occasional LAN party with my wife).

I noticed that a lot of people have matted/patted single tree sorcs that don't use infinity, and I was wondering just how crazy I'd be if I wanted to use a hydra sorc to clear hell. I know it'd be slow, especially against fire immunes, but a HF Merc (or defiance, if I can find the right armor, maybe) would go a long way toward helping with that, and I can always telekinesis lock the more dangerous baddies, and SF them down to half health.

I was just wondering if anyone had some advice for a guy who almost never twinks and wanted to beat Hell Baal with a hydra sorc.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

A hydrasorc or any firesorc will have serious difficulty beating hell. Mostly since the last monsters before baal Minions of Destruction is always Fire immune and letting a merc take them down on his own will be very hard.

And I think hydra is in better use with some other skills like Nova or Frozen orb
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

I noticed that a lot of people have matted/patted single tree sorcs that don't use infinity, and I was wondering just how crazy I'd be if I wanted to use a hydra sorc to clear hell. I know it'd be slow, especially against fire immunes, but a HF Merc (or defiance, if I can find the right armor, maybe) would go a long way toward helping with that, and I can always telekinesis lock the more dangerous baddies, and SF them down to half health.

Sounds doable. Merc gear will be important.

To help out the merc, I recommend 1 point Glacial Spike as utility skill for some nice group freezing, and a wand with Life Tap charges on the switch.


Yeah, Lister´s pack...you need to separate them so you only fight one at a time. The minions are easy since they can be frozen. Lister is tougher, but merc + TK spamming should work. Stand right behind the merc to prevent knockback.



 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

Well, I think most people who finish the game with a single-tree sorc uses the cunning strategy of teleporting and letting monsters die of old age. If you actually want to clear areas with immunes, it’s of course possible with a strong merc, but it will probably be very tedious.

As you say the sorc got good tricks up her sleeve, using static field and telekinesis. Teleport is also very good, as it can be used to get the merc into position (or out of position if it gets too hot). In areas with ranged attackers cloak of shadows from the rune word nadir can be used. Other than that my only tip is to listen to jiansonz.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

Single tree sorcs - Totally doable.
Single tree Hydra sorc - Oof.

I'm not sure what I'd suggest, because my favorite immunity solution for single tree sorcs has always been to carry a Bonehew on the weapon swap, and blast the immunes with corpse explosion. That obviously wouldn't work as well for a fire sorc. I second the advice of "Listen to Jiansonz." Spam a 1 point glacial spike for crowd control (consider extra points in glacial spike once everything else is maxxed?). For a pack like Lister's, you'll want to freeze the mob, and then try to draw Lister away so that you can spam Telekinesis at Lister as a disruptor. Pulling the double duty of keeping the pack frozen and helping the merc with Lister could be quite a challenge.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

Any single-element build will run into problems, and with fire or lightning, even breaking the immunity with Lower Resist charges will leave the monster with at least 90% resistance. Cold sorcies have the advantage that Cold Mastery would lower a newly-broken resist to a more manageable level, but the disadvantage that very few cold immunities will be breakable in Hell with Lower Resist.

Hydra is nice because of the fire-and-forget nature. It's also nice for scouting around corners and such. However, the damage falls somewhat short of the other fire spells (though you can certainly help by spamming Fireball in between Hydra castings), and it is less effective against smaller, faster enemies. Ones that scatter are particularly annoying, because your Hydras are unlikely to concentrate fire on a single target, leading to diluted damage. I haven't tried the test patch, but word is Hydra got a boost in terms of damage, and a nerf in terms of accuracy (the shots move slower rather than faster, as intended). Time will tell how well it works in the final patch.

Like jiansonz says, it's certainly doable. You just need to consider if it matches your play style. If you enjoy being meticulously thorough, and are patient with killing troublesome enemies, then you might like it. If you find it dull and tedious dealing with monsters immune to your main attack, you might want to try something else.

A lot of it will also depend on the gear you have, particularly what's available in terms of merc gearing, as he's the one who'll be doing the heavy lifting against immunes.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

I was able to Mat a single tree Enchantress without too many problems, and she had maxed Hydras. I had a Burra on switch, but my merc did have an "Obedience" GT. For the cold only tree I'm planning on putting "Memory" into my +3 Static Field/+3 Teleport staff for my switch weapon, giving me a +8 Static Field plus my +skills. I haven't come up with a final solution for my Lightning tree sorc, but I read a idea that TK will stun even LI monsters, was it 'poops that came up with that?, and I might work around that.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

hrm...interesting thought. One of the more recent pat threads has got me thinking about a clay golem/poison dagger/CE necro. It has the advantage of having poison/physical/fire damage, nice tank in the Clay golem, and I'd probably use a rogue merc because I love them. Then of course, there's the option of a poison/lit Javazon with a maxed Valk which would have a similar advantage with LF instead of CE.

*considers*

Basically, I would love to clear through Hell Baal with an untwinked character...and I'd rather not do it with a build that I don't love.

*realizes that he's totally derailed his own thread*

What about a poison dagger necro? Between Clay Golem, Dim Vision, and CE...I'd have a weaker poison dagger, but CE would clear crowds just fine...has anyone done that before?
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

TheNix said:
I haven't come up with a final solution for my Lightning tree sorc, but I read a idea that TK will stun even LI monsters, was it 'poops that came up with that?, and I might work around that.
The knockback effect from TK certainly can affect LI monsters, but you need to remember two things. First, the Ancients and Griswold are immune to knockback. This won't matter for Griswold, who can be safely skipped, but for the Ancients, you'll need a plan if one consistently spawns LI. Kill the other two, and hope your merc can tank the third, I guess. The second thing with TK is that the knockback is not automatic. I believe the chance is 100% against small targets, 50% against medium, and 25% against large. That means that you'll need plenty of FCR gear to keep things from swarming your merc.

Of course, you can always Teleport past things, but be careful you don't end up in a worse situation.
testyfish said:
What about a poison dagger necro? Between Clay Golem, Dim Vision, and CE...I'd have a weaker poison dagger, but CE would clear crowds just fine...has anyone done that before?
CE always clears crowds just fine. It's getting the bodies in the first place.

With Dim Vision, they won't cluster around your golem (or merc, if you decide on a melee one) for better CE chains. Still, your idea is certainly viable, but I can't comment as to how quick it'll kill, since I've never made a poison necro.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

What about a poison dagger necro? Between Clay Golem, Dim Vision, and CE...I'd have a weaker poison dagger, but CE would clear crowds just fine...has anyone done that before?
I have used Poison Dagger through normal difficulty, and Act 1 NM. And now I hate that skill with a passion. It is boring and ugly. I thought I needed the AR to defeat Diablo on normal difficulty, but now that I've looked harder, I've come to realise that a Level 10 Inner Sight from the rogue mercenary is more than enough to bring Diablo's DR down to nothing. I guess I just need to get in close to keep Diablo from killing the rogue. In Hell difficulty Inner Sight might not be enough (-1000 DR at level 25?), but by then I would probably have different options.

You ought to be able to do well without Poison Dagger, as long as you have either Inner Sight or Blessed Aim. Apparently unbreakable physical immunes are very rare, and even if you encounter one, you could let the golem tank it while you apply Open Wounds with a bow or a long stick. For hordes I believe that there are no double-immunes, so either you curse them with Amplify Damage or Lower Resistance, and then let Corpse Explosion kill them with physical or fire damage. Fire damage to get corpses could be applied by a rogue mercenary, or even a maxed Fire Golem.

Then again, maybe I should just give in and go with skeletons? I certainly don't mind having an army do most of the tedious killing, but then I grow complacent, start running around with MF-gear, and get killed by ranged attacks. And doesn't a mercenary and Corpse Explosion already supply enough physical damage? It's just so annoying trying to manage an army without having teleportation. And Corpse Explosion would have to be maxed. And with all those skeletons, shouldn't I use a Might mercenary instead? Well, there goes my chance to hit anything.

(And obviously I should spend more time playing the game than thinking about it.)


 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

I don't follow why you'd choose poison dagger. The damage is higher on the LCS, but the per second damage is close enough to Poison Nova's that PN is simply the better option - it's ranged, it sprays. edit: poison nova's damage is higher. I got confused with poison explosion.

I've guardianed a Poison/Summoning necro. Probably my favourite character to date (but admittedly there was a lot of constant skill swapping... as in, poison nova, decrypt, amp, lower resist, corpse explosion all on right click)

Check out the thread if you're interested. The poison nova damage, with some item tweaking since the initial post, is topping out at 5900 over 2 seconds... to multiple targets. While a wall of skeletons hold everything still.

Did I mention I love this character?
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

This thread is hijacked, and I don't think there's any saving it, so here goes.

I believe that Poison Dagger can be especially powerful when used in conjunction with Venom. Normally, Venom will do x poison damage over 0.4 seconds (10 frames), and if you have gear-based poison damage, this will work at its normal rate, but get truncated at 10 frames. In other words, it generally makes gear-based poison damage useless. However, with Poison Dagger, the Venom duration gets extended to PD's duration.

Take a level 15 Venom, as cast by the armor runeword Treachery. This does 305-325 (average 315) damage over 10 frames. This is an average of 31.5 damage per frame. Poison Dagger, at slvl 20, does poison damage over 9.6 seconds. Thus, if the Venom lasts this long, it will do 7560 damage. I'm not sure if the actual damage from Poison Dagger also occurs concurrently, but I'd assume it does; add in another 5045 average damage over that 9.6 seconds, for a total of 12605 poison damage. While this might seem nice, it's not spectacular- but wait, we've not yet factored in Lower Resist and gear. This gear can offer +skills, +% poison damage, and -% enemy poison resist. I have been told that this resistance-piercing gear (ie, poison Rainbow Facets, not Lower Resist) also lowers the poison length reduction of the target, or to put it another way, increases poison duration (even more damage).

Perhaps someone who's actually made such a character can comment as to whether or not I'm correct with my numbers.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

I didn't try it myself but it is true that venom and poison dagger is a very interesting combination. I remember reading about one shot baal kills, but it takes too long to be of any use.

This link gives you all you need to know about poison and the excel sheet there is a very nice tool to experiment with different poison builds. Colerless Green also had a nicely written toon, Syringe, utilizing venom+PD combo.
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

NacRuno said:
This link gives you all you need to know about poison
Thanks for the link. It was a good read, and I didn't know it also worked with the amazon javelin skills. It's just crazy how much damage one could do that way. It almost makes me want to make a couple of new characters. :)
 
Re: Single Tree Sorc w/o infinity?

IIRC the damage-per-second from Poison Dagger + Venom will be roughly equal to a synergized Poison Nova. But the difference is that Poison Nova hits many targets at once, while Poison Dagger is a single-target attack.

So, although a PDagger necro is certainly a viable build, a straight-up Poisonmancer will be more powerful.

Fortunately, they share the same synergies, so you could try both at once easily enough.
 
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