Ladder fire sorc question

My main on ladder is a bliz sorc, which obviously works great for p1 and p2 farming with sunder. My goal is to make Flickering Flame and respec to fire sorc (

Meteor,

Fireball) eventually. For those of you playing fire sorc with sunder, how much -fire res gear do you need to farm everywhere as easily as a bliz sorc (or nearly so) on p1 and 2?

Looking at max roll dps comparisons, it looks like flickering, 1 facet, and a mid eschutas should get me close (in addition to basic hell gear like Spirit, skullders, 2 skill ammy) but I’m curious what people’s experience has been. I’d like to avoid having to get Infinity or Phoenix or a bunch of facets if possible.

while I have never used it with a sunder, it is also worth noting that the tals orb gives - fire resist as well with 3 pieces. That + Flickering Flame made every non-fire immune pretty easy to take care of, though cows were a little slow. This was a

Hydra/

Frozen Orb sorc, so

Fireball/

Meteor would probably clear cows faster

I have seen a fire sorc blasting through p8 secret cow level but they had Infinity on. I think you're still going to need a good amount of -fire res in your gear which is something Infinity does on top of breaking immunes. Faceted

Ormus' Robes with the proper skill and faceted eschutas are probably needed. Or some kind of partial Tal Rasha's Wrappings set like mentioned above.

P.S. Your name is OP. Made me chuckle.

Well, ES doesn't prevent full fire offensively.

Comparing fire and blizz clear speed is a bit iffy as they work quite differently. Blizz obviously ramps up extremely fast but then hits a hard limit due to the cast delay.

Fire on the other hand ramps up quite slow (in terms of gear) but basically has no hard limit, depending on how you play it. Fire without a sunder is just..well, dumb. Fire immunes are all over the place in this game. Similarly, fire with a sunder and no other -res is also still fairly painful as immunes are still just stupid to deal with. If you get a solid amount of +skill though, it starts shining at around -10 to -15 additional res. So that's either a flickering,

Tal's bonus, 2-3 solid facets or similar.

Do note that fire scales extremely well with +skill, to the point where dropping +skill for more -res (even if it is a solid amount) may very well start lowering your avg damage output significantly. That won't affect you until you get top-end gear but when you run around with an Infinity on your merc, solid +skill and say -40ish or higher -res on your gear, sacrificing skill for -res very quickly becomes too big of a trade-off, even against previous immunes. That's why I personally for example don't (and will never) use Phoenix on my fire sorc (did the math and the actual play-testing to back up that statement).

Other than the Infinity, obviously, fire also has the advantage of being comparatively cheap to gear up to full BiS.

Regardless of your gear however, the clear speed still very much depends on your playstyle. If you shred stuff with fireballs, you can clear maps extremely fast (given the right gear of course). If you instead focus more on the

Meteor you noted, you may have more fun but you will run into the same clear speed problem blizzard has because you're again looking at limited aoe, combined with a cast delay (and in this case even a dmg delay on top of that). And generally speaking (you already noted you won't use them), hydras for example aren't exactly meant for aoe clearing. They still clear entire screens quite fast when you place them correctly but since you have a 6-cast ramp-up time, it does slow you down. At the same time, they are just insanely strong against bosses. Firewall and whatnot do still have their valid uses as well, albeit nowhere near the olden pre-fix days.

All that having been said..I went with full fire from day 1 this season, as my only ladder char and am not regretting that decision in the least. As noted above, the ramp-up was a bit slower until you get 10-15 -res but it still works well enough. And after that, combined with a sunder, it becomes smooth sailing across the board. General farming,

Key farming, dclone hunting, ubers..she does it all and she does it (VERY) well.

Blizzard +

Frozen Orb has better clear speed than any fire build unless you're only killing the elites and champions, in which case it's probably gonna be tied in P1/P2/P3.

I played a

Fireball/

Meteor/

Frozen Orb in previous ladders before I got my Infinity and respecced lightning/

Chain Lightning.

Fireball suffers from a very limited AoE plus you have to directly hit your target, while

Meteor has a terribly long delay.

Lightning has the best clear speed at least in low player counts and in areas with few lightning immunes. Lightning immune monsters you still kill- with Sunder charms or with Infinity- but they don't die as fast to your

Chain Lightning. Something I never tried was directly wielding Infinity to take advantage of its -45 to -55 enemy lightning res, which would greatly increase the damage against broken immunes, but that has its own set of disadvantages.

Overall, I think you ought to try the best, in my opinion, cold build,

Frozen Orb + Blizzard. For unkown reasons, it is underplayed. When I got high enough level to swap from Blizzard to Blizzard +

Frozen Orb this ladder, the difference was incredible. More total dps output than just blizzard alone, plus great area coverage. You only have to

Sacrifice about 15% of your Blizzard damage to get a fully synergized, maxed-out

Frozen Orb. Maybe it just hasn't sunk into people's heads that the D2R dev team removed the shared casting delays between Blizzard and

Frozen Orb?