[SP/RWM]Full tal blizzballer guide (works on bnet too, just MUCH easier)
Full Tal Rasha BlizzBaller v. 1.00
by Helvete
Introduction
This guide is based on single player 1.12 RWM play, using items already available to us using ATMA (most likely) or some other means of transferring items.
I've had a hard time doing hell Baal and his minions efficiently. Runs would either take too much time, or they would be aborted too often due to immunes, Iron Maiden curse, or monsters with high elemental damage. This changed two weeks ago, when I had another close look at Tal Rasha's Wrappings. You can read more about it here. There are a few things about the set which makes it extremely good for dual element sorcs. We will get back to that in the gear section.
Taking into concideration the fact that Static Field will bring any non-LI monster down to 50% or less of its HP in hell, it seems obvious to me that building around fire/cold elements while using static field as a one-point wonder would be king. And with our build, we'll manage ~3.5k fireball and ~5k blizzard.
Skills
I focused my sorc on the cold tree, as Blizzard gets very strong with higher levels, and cold mastery helps it very much, even with one skill point. I opted for this skill point placement:
Fire bolt: 20 (synergy)
Fire ball: 20
Meteor: zero, saves three points in prereqs
Fire/cold mastery: zero, get it free from the orb!
Warmth, tele and static: 1 each (one point wonders)
Telekinesis and Frost Nova: 1 each (prerequesites, and only Frost Nova is completely wasted if you use TK to grab waypoint to make runs one second faster).
Blizzard: 20
GSpike: 20 (synergy, awesome skill to freeze minion waves)
Rest in blizz synergies. (By 95 you will have maxed another)
Stats
156 base strength (for using spirit), everything else in vita.
(Adjust this for torch and anni if you are bnet)
Items
As you can see above, heavy investment in blizzard, not as much in fire ball. However, we'll get a LOT of help from equipment. These are some highlights from Tal Rasha's Wrappings:
+6 sorc skills with the full set
VERY good resists
good life and mana
Decent MF
Decent FCR
Free masteries from the weapon
-15% enemy fire/lightning resist
+15% cold skill damage
Now, we add in Magefist and 35FCR Spirit Monarch. We get:
105%FCR total (breakpoint for tele and fireball, next is at 200%)
+2 all skills and +1 fire skills
Big mana and FHR
25% mana regen
A lot more resists. Enough that lightning resist is maxed.
80% Faster Hit Recovery. (We need 6% more to reach a breakpoint)
Most of our items are now covered. What's left is:
2x ring
Boots
Charms
Switch weapon/shield
Sockets
Rings
Nothing will beat dual Stone of Jordan for rings. You don't need more FCR, the only stat you have use for is strenght (for using spirit), and +2 all skills and 50%increased mana cannot be beaten, unless you have a 1.10s beta BKWB or two. (only legit +2 skill ring I know of). But that's unlikely at best.
Sockets
I went with cold facets in helm/armor/weapon. Fire facets would make for a stronger fireball, but I found I didn't need it. 4k was good enough. Ptopaz helm/armor is a strong MF option as well, not sacrificing much, especially if you don't have facets to spare.
Boots
If you take a close look at your resists (we're SP, so we don't have access to torch/anni. If we did, we'd go with War Traveler boots in a heartbeat). we lack:
-5% cold resist
-45% poison resist
-40% fire resist
There are a few choices here:
Rares
- 40psnres 35%fireres 10%FHR
This in conjunction with a 5% all res SC would MAX every resist, and shave another frame off hit recovery. (The breakpoint is at 86% FHR so a LC/GC would do just as well). Poison and fire resistances are not in as high demand as lightning and cold, so if we skip the FHR and use a charm instead, we only have two "musts" on our rare boots. Nice adds are FHR as mentioned, MF, 40/40 fire/psnres with 5 cold res (would leave 5% psn res left to cover with charms) and ofc FRW for use in town.
Sets
Aldur's Advance comes with at least 40% fire resist. It also has 50 life, 40%FRW and 10% damage taken goes to mana. Very nice, and if you have a full Tal set, chances are you'll have tons of these.
(Credit to Sirpoopsalot for pointing me to this option)
Crafted
Crafted Safety boots have small inherent fire resist, which is nice. Caster boots have properties to help our mana. Our mana shouldn't need help, and the fire res on safety boots isn't much unless the boots can compare to good rare ones, so I'd stay away from crafts unless I had something godly.
Uniques
War Travelers have +10 str, which can be exploited if you don't care for maxed resists (remember our lightning resist is maxed anyway). Decent FRW and very good MF.
Weapon switch
The absolute best would be a Call to Arms runeword in a one-handed weapon, with a Spirit shield to boost BO. If you don't have access to this, see the switch as a MF boost for Baal kills. Gull+Rhyme is +125%MF, not to be underestimated, as our MF will "only" be around 200%.
Charms
I opted for Gheeds, and one fire and four cold skillers. Mostly because I didn't have five cold skillers. Nice adds here are life, but also FHR. Next breakpoint is at 86%, so if you do not have 10% on your boots, a skiller with FHR would net the next breakpoint.
Small charms I used to max my resists, give me some more life, and MF. Try to reach 86% total FHR, but don't let resists and life suffer. Do NOT use +str charms, as you'll regret it when you find the same charm with huge life.
Merc
I highly recommend a "pocket cleric" merc, which is an act 2 combat merc hired in normal, and given an "Insight" polearm. The mana regen is outstanding, as you'll have good mana already, and Baal can drain mana, which is annoying at best. Prayer is a synergy to Meditation, which works very well with autoauras, and thus we have *two* healing auras as well as one to regen mana. Neeto!
His armor and helm should be geared towards survival rather than damage. Gaze/Shaftstop with a resist jewel or UM in either should keep him alive fairly well, but feel free to experiment. You might find that a merc with kelpie or reapers suits your play style better, and rather go for a holy freeze or might merc. Or if you're disgustingly wealthy, you'll probably borrow your light sorcs infinity merc weapon just for the hell of it.
Early strategy
If you don't get rushed, or respec an old character, you still won't have much trouble playing on your own with a little help from muling on gear. I used a +3 fire bolt orb, and Hsaru's set early on, pumping fire bolt and one point in warmth and static for bosses later. When fireball became available, I switched to that, and at lvl 17 I started using a "Leaf" short staff which had +3 fireball already. After this, I started building for Blizzard at lvl 24 (I was in early act 4 then) and I put on a "Spirit" eth crystal sword at lvl 25. From this point on it gets stupidly easy. Lvl 27 merc gets insight. Lvl 29 we get 2x SoJ, visceratuant and Vipermagi, giving us +4 all skills and the 105% FCR breakpoint with a crafted caster belt and a FCR amu, OR a 20% FCR circlet. Leveling is FAST at /players8 pindle, and in normal, lvl 10+ blizzard kills him with no trouble, even though we didn't put any points in cold mastery.
At lvl 39, I killed ancients and baal (lvl 42 when baal died) and my skillers started working. Teleported my way through NM, only stopping to do skill quests. Stopped at NM baalruns, where I leveled to 71, which is the requirement for the Tal Rasha armor. Killed Baal, then teleport through Hell, When I reached Act 5, I stopped at Pindleskin, and leveled as long as I could stand at Pindle. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I leveled a little more, and reached lvl 90 with the 60M I got from ancients.
Baal run strategy
(Starts with players set to 3, mostly because I'm too lazy tho change often)
Very straightforward. Start by doing BC/BO at the WP (if you have CtA). Tele down, I stop to kill easy bosses such as flayers (they can drop anything) but that's a matter of preference. Clear the throne room. If you feel confident, you now change players to 8.
First wave
Cast two blizzards before the first wave spawns, then a Glacial Spike just before they spawn, so that it hits them the moment they spawn. This to avoid the flayers to run away in all directions as soon as the first one dies.
Second wave
Change left click back to fireball. Start casting blizzards where you estimate Achmel will spawn. As soon as they do spawn, spam fireballs and blizzards towards the greater mummies. Ignore the Death Mages as much as possible, tele around if necessary, but kill the mummies first. Then finish off the rest with fireball. If your merc got poisoned bad, you might want to pop back to town to heal him,
Third wave
If you haven't already, change players to 8. Change left click to GSpike. Start spamming blizzards, and as just as Baal summons the council members, spam GSpike right in the middle of them. This keeps them in a tight group, more vulnerable to blizzard, and it keeps them from spawning too many hydras, which can be a pain to your (already poisoned?) merc.
Fourth wave
Spam blizzard, as they spawn, Gspike them, and do three-four statics, then another gspike and more blizzards. They die even faster than the last guys,
Final wave
Lister is the only boss baal summons who can spawn Cold AND Fire immune. If this happens, you can either kill off the rest, then use Telekinesis and your merc to stun/kill him, or just park him. I usually park him, If he isn't FI/CI, then just kill him. Unless you're surprised by the pack being extra fast, you shouldn't have trouble using gspike and blizzard to freeze/kill them pretty fast. If lister is CI/extra fast, he can be a pain too, but just feed your merc potions, and concentrate on killing the others. Static works wonders here when you get the hang of Gspike to freeze.
Baal
Change players back to 3. The expirience from a baal kill is bugged to not increase past this players setting, so what's the use. He'll drop six items 99% of the time too. Change left click back to fireball, tele in, static him to half life, and start spamming fireball and blizzard. It's not really a problem unless your merc died and you didn't revive him. If you have Gull/rhyme on swithc, switch before baal dies. If not, you could always switch anyway, since CtA has 30% mf.
Rinse and repeat.
(I made lvl 92 in one week, and still had time for 9h work, 8h sleep each day...)
Full Tal Rasha BlizzBaller v. 1.00
by Helvete
Introduction
This guide is based on single player 1.12 RWM play, using items already available to us using ATMA (most likely) or some other means of transferring items.
I've had a hard time doing hell Baal and his minions efficiently. Runs would either take too much time, or they would be aborted too often due to immunes, Iron Maiden curse, or monsters with high elemental damage. This changed two weeks ago, when I had another close look at Tal Rasha's Wrappings. You can read more about it here. There are a few things about the set which makes it extremely good for dual element sorcs. We will get back to that in the gear section.
Taking into concideration the fact that Static Field will bring any non-LI monster down to 50% or less of its HP in hell, it seems obvious to me that building around fire/cold elements while using static field as a one-point wonder would be king. And with our build, we'll manage ~3.5k fireball and ~5k blizzard.
Skills
I focused my sorc on the cold tree, as Blizzard gets very strong with higher levels, and cold mastery helps it very much, even with one skill point. I opted for this skill point placement:
Fire bolt: 20 (synergy)
Fire ball: 20
Meteor: zero, saves three points in prereqs
Fire/cold mastery: zero, get it free from the orb!
Warmth, tele and static: 1 each (one point wonders)
Telekinesis and Frost Nova: 1 each (prerequesites, and only Frost Nova is completely wasted if you use TK to grab waypoint to make runs one second faster).
Blizzard: 20
GSpike: 20 (synergy, awesome skill to freeze minion waves)
Rest in blizz synergies. (By 95 you will have maxed another)
Stats
156 base strength (for using spirit), everything else in vita.
(Adjust this for torch and anni if you are bnet)
Items
As you can see above, heavy investment in blizzard, not as much in fire ball. However, we'll get a LOT of help from equipment. These are some highlights from Tal Rasha's Wrappings:
+6 sorc skills with the full set
VERY good resists
good life and mana
Decent MF
Decent FCR
Free masteries from the weapon
-15% enemy fire/lightning resist
+15% cold skill damage
Now, we add in Magefist and 35FCR Spirit Monarch. We get:
105%FCR total (breakpoint for tele and fireball, next is at 200%)
+2 all skills and +1 fire skills
Big mana and FHR
25% mana regen
A lot more resists. Enough that lightning resist is maxed.
80% Faster Hit Recovery. (We need 6% more to reach a breakpoint)
Most of our items are now covered. What's left is:
2x ring
Boots
Charms
Switch weapon/shield
Sockets
Rings
Nothing will beat dual Stone of Jordan for rings. You don't need more FCR, the only stat you have use for is strenght (for using spirit), and +2 all skills and 50%increased mana cannot be beaten, unless you have a 1.10s beta BKWB or two. (only legit +2 skill ring I know of). But that's unlikely at best.
Sockets
I went with cold facets in helm/armor/weapon. Fire facets would make for a stronger fireball, but I found I didn't need it. 4k was good enough. Ptopaz helm/armor is a strong MF option as well, not sacrificing much, especially if you don't have facets to spare.
Boots
If you take a close look at your resists (we're SP, so we don't have access to torch/anni. If we did, we'd go with War Traveler boots in a heartbeat). we lack:
-5% cold resist
-45% poison resist
-40% fire resist
There are a few choices here:
Rares
- 40psnres 35%fireres 10%FHR
This in conjunction with a 5% all res SC would MAX every resist, and shave another frame off hit recovery. (The breakpoint is at 86% FHR so a LC/GC would do just as well). Poison and fire resistances are not in as high demand as lightning and cold, so if we skip the FHR and use a charm instead, we only have two "musts" on our rare boots. Nice adds are FHR as mentioned, MF, 40/40 fire/psnres with 5 cold res (would leave 5% psn res left to cover with charms) and ofc FRW for use in town.
Sets
Aldur's Advance comes with at least 40% fire resist. It also has 50 life, 40%FRW and 10% damage taken goes to mana. Very nice, and if you have a full Tal set, chances are you'll have tons of these.
(Credit to Sirpoopsalot for pointing me to this option)
Crafted
Crafted Safety boots have small inherent fire resist, which is nice. Caster boots have properties to help our mana. Our mana shouldn't need help, and the fire res on safety boots isn't much unless the boots can compare to good rare ones, so I'd stay away from crafts unless I had something godly.
Uniques
War Travelers have +10 str, which can be exploited if you don't care for maxed resists (remember our lightning resist is maxed anyway). Decent FRW and very good MF.
Weapon switch
The absolute best would be a Call to Arms runeword in a one-handed weapon, with a Spirit shield to boost BO. If you don't have access to this, see the switch as a MF boost for Baal kills. Gull+Rhyme is +125%MF, not to be underestimated, as our MF will "only" be around 200%.
Charms
I opted for Gheeds, and one fire and four cold skillers. Mostly because I didn't have five cold skillers. Nice adds here are life, but also FHR. Next breakpoint is at 86%, so if you do not have 10% on your boots, a skiller with FHR would net the next breakpoint.
Small charms I used to max my resists, give me some more life, and MF. Try to reach 86% total FHR, but don't let resists and life suffer. Do NOT use +str charms, as you'll regret it when you find the same charm with huge life.
Merc
I highly recommend a "pocket cleric" merc, which is an act 2 combat merc hired in normal, and given an "Insight" polearm. The mana regen is outstanding, as you'll have good mana already, and Baal can drain mana, which is annoying at best. Prayer is a synergy to Meditation, which works very well with autoauras, and thus we have *two* healing auras as well as one to regen mana. Neeto!
His armor and helm should be geared towards survival rather than damage. Gaze/Shaftstop with a resist jewel or UM in either should keep him alive fairly well, but feel free to experiment. You might find that a merc with kelpie or reapers suits your play style better, and rather go for a holy freeze or might merc. Or if you're disgustingly wealthy, you'll probably borrow your light sorcs infinity merc weapon just for the hell of it.
Early strategy
If you don't get rushed, or respec an old character, you still won't have much trouble playing on your own with a little help from muling on gear. I used a +3 fire bolt orb, and Hsaru's set early on, pumping fire bolt and one point in warmth and static for bosses later. When fireball became available, I switched to that, and at lvl 17 I started using a "Leaf" short staff which had +3 fireball already. After this, I started building for Blizzard at lvl 24 (I was in early act 4 then) and I put on a "Spirit" eth crystal sword at lvl 25. From this point on it gets stupidly easy. Lvl 27 merc gets insight. Lvl 29 we get 2x SoJ, visceratuant and Vipermagi, giving us +4 all skills and the 105% FCR breakpoint with a crafted caster belt and a FCR amu, OR a 20% FCR circlet. Leveling is FAST at /players8 pindle, and in normal, lvl 10+ blizzard kills him with no trouble, even though we didn't put any points in cold mastery.
At lvl 39, I killed ancients and baal (lvl 42 when baal died) and my skillers started working. Teleported my way through NM, only stopping to do skill quests. Stopped at NM baalruns, where I leveled to 71, which is the requirement for the Tal Rasha armor. Killed Baal, then teleport through Hell, When I reached Act 5, I stopped at Pindleskin, and leveled as long as I could stand at Pindle. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I leveled a little more, and reached lvl 90 with the 60M I got from ancients.
Baal run strategy
(Starts with players set to 3, mostly because I'm too lazy tho change often)
Very straightforward. Start by doing BC/BO at the WP (if you have CtA). Tele down, I stop to kill easy bosses such as flayers (they can drop anything) but that's a matter of preference. Clear the throne room. If you feel confident, you now change players to 8.
First wave
Cast two blizzards before the first wave spawns, then a Glacial Spike just before they spawn, so that it hits them the moment they spawn. This to avoid the flayers to run away in all directions as soon as the first one dies.
Second wave
Change left click back to fireball. Start casting blizzards where you estimate Achmel will spawn. As soon as they do spawn, spam fireballs and blizzards towards the greater mummies. Ignore the Death Mages as much as possible, tele around if necessary, but kill the mummies first. Then finish off the rest with fireball. If your merc got poisoned bad, you might want to pop back to town to heal him,
Third wave
If you haven't already, change players to 8. Change left click to GSpike. Start spamming blizzards, and as just as Baal summons the council members, spam GSpike right in the middle of them. This keeps them in a tight group, more vulnerable to blizzard, and it keeps them from spawning too many hydras, which can be a pain to your (already poisoned?) merc.
Fourth wave
Spam blizzard, as they spawn, Gspike them, and do three-four statics, then another gspike and more blizzards. They die even faster than the last guys,
Final wave
Lister is the only boss baal summons who can spawn Cold AND Fire immune. If this happens, you can either kill off the rest, then use Telekinesis and your merc to stun/kill him, or just park him. I usually park him, If he isn't FI/CI, then just kill him. Unless you're surprised by the pack being extra fast, you shouldn't have trouble using gspike and blizzard to freeze/kill them pretty fast. If lister is CI/extra fast, he can be a pain too, but just feed your merc potions, and concentrate on killing the others. Static works wonders here when you get the hang of Gspike to freeze.
Baal
Change players back to 3. The expirience from a baal kill is bugged to not increase past this players setting, so what's the use. He'll drop six items 99% of the time too. Change left click back to fireball, tele in, static him to half life, and start spamming fireball and blizzard. It's not really a problem unless your merc died and you didn't revive him. If you have Gull/rhyme on swithc, switch before baal dies. If not, you could always switch anyway, since CtA has 30% mf.
Rinse and repeat.
(I made lvl 92 in one week, and still had time for 9h work, 8h sleep each day...)
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