Endgame lightning Sorc build

Hey all! I’m hoping to get some advise on my lightning sorc…

Currently I am using an oculus with 3 piece

Tal set, Spirit, griffon’s, silk weave (for mana management),

Chance Guards, soj, and

Raven Frost. My merc has Infinity with Andy’s and a high defense Treachery.

I would like to build a pure damage / high clear speed sorc and wanted to get some input on gear combinations. I was thinking of using escutcha’s, griffons, Spirit, mara’s,

Arachnid Mesh, silk weave

Boots, soj,

Raven Frost,

Magefist. I’m unsure if I should go Chains of Honor or an upped vipermagi. Does the bonus damage to undead and demons apply to casters or only physical damage builds?

As a side note I have a torch, anni, and an assortment of magic find and resistance charms to compensate for whatever I need.

Thanks in advance!

currently using this setup for my daily MF runs...

engima for body would be better i guess...

Hoto / Enigma / maras / 2x sojs / arachnid /

War Traveler / chance guard / Spirit

JoOs7eR wrote: 2 years ago

currently using this setup for my daily MF runs...

engima for body would be better i guess...

Hoto / Enigma / maras / 2x sojs / arachnid /

War Traveler / chance guard / Spirit

Nice damage… are those all lightning skillers? Enigma is kind of steep for a character with

Teleport ability but I’ll consider it. I thought COH would be nice for the resistances.

Crushnasty wrote: 2 years ago

JoOs7eR wrote: 2 years ago

currently using this setup for my daily MF runs...

engima for body would be better i guess...

Hoto / Enigma / maras / 2x sojs / arachnid /

War Traveler / chance guard / Spirit

Nice damage… are those all lightning skillers? Enigma is kind of steep for a character with

Teleport ability but I’ll consider it. I thought COH would be nice for the resistances.

6 lightning skillers.

i dont pump

Teleport on my sorc tho , beside Enigma boost a huge amount of mf... coh is viable but i just choose Enigma over it

Why

Chance Guards over

Magefist?

First off: No, dmg to demons/undead does not apply to your spells. That's basically just a different form of ED for physical attacks.

Secondly, why

Raven?! For the minor amount of mana, another SoJ beats it hands down. You're probably not going for max block with a Spirit so the dex can't be it. And cannot be frozen is pretty much irrelevant for a sorc because being frozen doesn't slow down casting. Unless you for some reason walk instead of

Teleport?

An obvious way to buff up your damage is to slap a Fortitude onto your merc for those times where he does have to help.

Also, what have you socketed into your Griffon/Oculus/

Tal Armor? The reason I'm asking is because if you added facets to those, then your Griffon is actually holding you back on any non-lightresist mob. The reason for that is that reducing resistance is capped at -100. You cannot take any target mob below that. Since your Infinity adds a lvl 12

Conviction, every mob without light resist (which would typically be most of the masses) is already at -85. Add 3 facets and you're at the -100

Cap. The -res on your Griffon at that point is completely worthless on those mobs and the +dmg is not enough to make up for only having +1 skill. You're actually better off using a Harlequin or +3

Circlet at that point to buff up your damage. That's speaking purely in terms of raw dmg, not considering the cast speed loss for replacing griffon's (which could be made up elsewhere).
If your farming routes do include a lot of light immunes or mobs with light resistances though, then yeah, keep Griffon's. Depends a bit on where you usually farm.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

First off: No, dmg to demons/undead does not apply to your spells. That's basically just a different form of ED for physical attacks.

Secondly, why

Raven?! For the minor amount of mana, another SoJ beats it hands down. You're probably not going for max block with a Spirit so the dex can't be it. And cannot be frozen is pretty much irrelevant for a sorc because being frozen doesn't slow down casting. Unless you for some reason walk instead of

Teleport?

An obvious way to buff up your damage is to slap a Fortitude onto your merc for those times where he does have to help.

Also, what have you socketed into your Griffon/Oculus/

Tal Armor? The reason I'm asking is because if you added facets to those, then your Griffon is actually holding you back on any non-lightresist mob. The reason for that is that reducing resistance is capped at -100. You cannot take any target mob below that. Since your Infinity adds a lvl 12

Conviction, every mob without light resist (which would typically be most of the masses) is already at -85. Add 3 facets and you're at the -100

Cap. The -res on your Griffon at that point is completely worthless on those mobs and the +dmg is not enough to make up for only having +1 skill. You're actually better off using a Harlequin or +3

Circlet at that point to buff up your damage. That's speaking purely in terms of raw dmg, not considering the cast speed loss for replacing griffon's (which could be made up elsewhere).
If your farming routes do include a lot of light immunes or mobs with light resistances though, then yeah, keep Griffon's. Depends a bit on where you usually farm.

You make a good point on the

Raven Frost versus 2nd soj.

Fortitude on my merc was on my to do list but not highest priority at the moment. He has good survivability with

Fade procced.

I was planning on adding lite facets to my griffon’s and escutha’s. I’m still farming runes to trade for those.

I currently farm a wide variety of areas and I want to keep my options open in terms of different immunities.

Yeah, if you're spread out, keeping a bit of extra -res isn't a bad call. After all, soon as you do hit light immunes, the difference is more than noticable.

One thing to keep in mind is that Eschuta's is not as much of a dmg boost as one may think. That's because the 20% light dmg on it don't just increase your dmg by 20%. They get added to your

Lightning Mastery dmg increase. So if you already have say a lvl 42 light mastery, you do 642% of your normal dmg. Adding a 20% Eschuta's to that would put you at 662% which is actually only about a 3% increase. The same is true for the +dmg on facets, griffon's,

Ormus and so on. The more of those you stack on top of one another, the less of a difference they each make individually.
Not saying Eschuta's is a bad choice, quite the opposite, but depending on your overall gear setup the extra ~3% dmg may sometimes not be worth what you give up for it (e.g. 40 res from hoto, mf from oculus, ...).

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Yeah, if you're spread out, keeping a bit of extra -res isn't a bad call. After all, soon as you do hit light immunes, the difference is more than noticable.

One thing to keep in mind is that Eschuta's is not as much of a dmg boost as one may think. That's because the 20% light dmg on it don't just increase your dmg by 20%. They get added to your

Lightning Mastery dmg increase. So if you already have say a lvl 42 light mastery, you do 642% of your normal dmg. Adding a 20% Eschuta's to that would put you at 662% which is actually only about a 3% increase. The same is true for the +dmg on facets, griffon's,

Ormus and so on. The more of those you stack on top of one another, the less of a difference they each make individually.
Not saying Eschuta's is a bad choice, quite the opposite, but depending on your overall gear setup the extra ~3% dmg may sometimes not be worth what you give up for it (e.g. 40 res from hoto, mf from oculus, ...).

Thanks for the input. The reason I was considering COH is because I found a 3/18 escutchas a couple weeks ago. Thus I wouldn’t have to farm the runes to make a HOTO. And COH would make up for the resistances that hoto would normally provide.

Crushnasty wrote: 2 years ago

Thanks for the input. The reason I was considering COH is because I found a 3/18 escutchas a couple weeks ago. Thus I wouldn’t have to farm the runes to make a HOTO. And COH would make up for the resistances that hoto would normally provide.

I've used both, and I would recommend HOTO 11 times out of 10 over Eschutas. The damage looks good on paper, but all of the other bonuses given by HOTO (+mana, all res, replenish life) to me beats out the Eschutas, and the Enigma definitely over COH (HOTO mostly makes up for the res, and you get the added MF, damage reduction, faster run walk, LAEK, damage to mana, etc).

My typical setup is Griffons (have not socketed yet), HOTO, Enigma, 35fcr Spirit, Arachnid, Dual Nagel with

Nature's Peace (I don't have a SoJ, otherwise I'd use two of those,

Nature's Peace just makes Nihl and WSK runs have a little better quality of life), and War Travs/

Eth Sandstorm Treks. Merc runs Infinity, Fortitude (non

Eth, have only made one and I also use Fortitude on my

Smite Pally), and Andy's Visage. Have Torch, Anni, 5 light skillers, Gheeds, Cube and leave a 2x4 area in stash for picking up stuff while MF'ing (again, just QoL for me). I could gear differently and increase my damage output, but I clear pretty damn fast already so I don't worry too much about it.

Crushnasty wrote: 2 years ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Yeah, if you're spread out, keeping a bit of extra -res isn't a bad call. After all, soon as you do hit light immunes, the difference is more than noticable.

One thing to keep in mind is that Eschuta's is not as much of a dmg boost as one may think. That's because the 20% light dmg on it don't just increase your dmg by 20%. They get added to your

Lightning Mastery dmg increase. So if you already have say a lvl 42 light mastery, you do 642% of your normal dmg. Adding a 20% Eschuta's to that would put you at 662% which is actually only about a 3% increase. The same is true for the +dmg on facets, griffon's,

Ormus and so on. The more of those you stack on top of one another, the less of a difference they each make individually.
Not saying Eschuta's is a bad choice, quite the opposite, but depending on your overall gear setup the extra ~3% dmg may sometimes not be worth what you give up for it (e.g. 40 res from hoto, mf from oculus, ...).

Thanks for the input. The reason I was considering COH is because I found a 3/18 escutchas a couple weeks ago. Thus I wouldn’t have to farm the runes to make a HOTO. And COH would make up for the resistances that hoto would normally provide.

I would also highly recommend Enigma over COH. I have both, was using Enigma and made the COH for my light sorc who is fully geared. Wanted more resistances. Turns out the +life per kill from Enigma makes a huge quality of life difference. I gave the COH to my smiter.

Raised a lightning sorc myself. Griffon, CoH, arach, soj's, mara, some skillers, and Infinity

Scythe (wields herself). Pretty much nice setup - charged

Bolts alone do the job while maxed

Telekinesis provides hard

Energy Shield to stay safe. Just requires some reaction to navigate - but feels comfortable to play Perhaps later I'll start roastin with lightnings/chain ones, but so far (84 lvl) it isn't necessary.

I appreciate all the feedback from everyone. I guess it’s time to farm another Enigma

Crushnasty wrote: 2 years ago

I appreciate all the feedback from everyone. I guess it’s time to farm another Enigma

I'll die proclaiming that Enigma on a Sorc is just silly. For so, so many reasons and better alternatives...

Just go build one on the PTR and try the different options. Nothing lost that way and you can confirm what works best for you.

True - Enigma ain't for sorc, imo. For sorc it's either Viper, or

Tal armor, or CoH, maybe Skullder. But to each his own.

Enigma does seem silly. I just got used to almost never using potions. Then with the coh switch I was drinking them often. Guess it just comes down to being nearly invincible either way, but gulping a few more potions down.

Side note: going from

Mage Plate Enigma to AP coh lowered my vitality by around 35, leading to decreased health with coh. Could have made it in a

Dusk Shroud but we’ll leave that conversation to other forum posts.

I genuinely can't remember the last time I chugged a potion on my sorc. On live that is..chugged a few while randomly experimenting with weird builds on the PTR.

I mean...what for? You really shouldn't lose any significant amount of life to begin with.

Though if you do go for a spec that ends up getting slapped around quite a bit (which I did as part of my PTR testing...

Nova goes BRRRR!), I was genuinely surprised by how convenient a

Prayer merc turned out to be. I.e. if you go for a full energy ES build (which really doesn't need more than 1 pt anyways, thanks to all the +skill tacked on), you're easily set on mana regen to keep going on all fronts and your life pool (which you don't need much of) is so low that

Prayer actually still makes a solid difference. Had my PTR build sitting at around 500 life and 2500 mana which basically made her immortal and completely potion-free. Not that the idea of a

Prayer merc isn't still just a tad weird..but it does work quite well.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

I genuinely can't remember the last time I chugged a potion on my sorc. On live that is..chugged a few while randomly experimenting with weird builds on the PTR.

I mean...what for? You really shouldn't lose any significant amount of life to begin with.

Though if you do go for a spec that ends up getting slapped around quite a bit (which I did as part of my PTR testing...

Nova goes BRRRR!), I was genuinely surprised by how convenient a

Prayer merc turned out to be. I.e. if you go for a full energy ES build (which really doesn't need more than 1 pt anyways, thanks to all the +skill tacked on), you're easily set on mana regen to keep going on all fronts and your life pool (which you don't need much of) is so low that

Prayer actually still makes a solid difference. Had my PTR build sitting at around 500 life and 2500 mana which basically made her immortal and completely potion-free. Not that the idea of a

Prayer merc isn't still just a tad weird..but it does work quite well.

I’ve never messed with the

Energy Shield build but it seems legit.

Never tried ES, do you stack Integer Damage Reduction?
How do you deal with Mana Burn?

You can but you typically really don't need to. Without any absolute reduction, you're tanky af. With it, you shift from tanky af to flat out invincible. Fun..but definitely not necessary and not worth giving anything else up for.

Mana burn is the one thing that is actually dangerous but if you're specced for full energy, your regen is generally fast enough to get you out of that. I.e. random mana burn boss danger tends to go along the lines of
- Merrily

Teleport along feeling invincible
- Randomly

Teleport into pack and land right next to boss
- Get smacked down to 0 mana instantly
-

Teleport out of there and clean from 2 steps away from said mana burning bugger

Thanks to fairly high regen, you tend to still get more than enough back to tank whatever else is there. Even more so if your build allows you to throw spare points into

Telekinesis to reduce the mana per dmg.

Though for me, the latter really only decides between vit and energy. That is if I can't have

Telekinesis capped, I'll throw my stats into energy and make due with a tiny life pool. If I do have

Telekinesis capped (and am not running a super mana cost heavy build), I just stick with full vita and still outregen everything.

I started making ES part of my standard sorc builds 20 years ago and haven't looked back since. Every so often, I get the urge to experiment again and end up with a few new builds without ES and every single time, it just makes me want to cry.

Mind you, I get the appeal of a glass cannon (hence my zon being full dex) but that whole concept really only makes sense if your squishyness in turn allows you to get way more damage. But considering that ES can be gotten with a tiny amount of skill points that nearly every build can easily afford to spend and that you really don't need more than 1 hard point in it, it isn't a question of "tanky vs. glass cannon" but "tanky vs. exact same dmg but actual fear of Death for no real reason". I just enjoy the ability to freely

Teleport straight into the middle of every pack I see and blow things up from the inside out.