Build comparison

Hey,

I'm currently trying to find a new fun build to play in S3 so I created a few characters with a hero editor and tried them out, but most of them seem to fall behind the Blizzard Sorceress, especially when you don't have Infinity with

Conviction Aura, even if they have way better gear than my current Sorceress. I wanted to try it like that because an Infinity is still quite expensive (2

Ber) and realisticly speaking I may not be able to get my hands on one.

Now I was wondering if it's only personal experience or is it actually the case that many builds quite heavily rely on Infinity to be really effective?

Blizz sorc is very efficient. No point in that.

I think another good call is Trapsin, that can deal with almost everything except Ubers with budget build. You'll have to improve a bit if you want to do Ubers.

Blizz sorcs have been the traditional starter for a reason. Even before sunders existed.

They are one of the cheapest classes to get to strong performance hands down and do tend to outperform most other builds at low to mid gear levels. Come higher gear levels however, they then start falling behind (significantly, even with sunders) simply because their kill speed largely has a hard

Cap, due to the blizz cast delay.

There's other builds that can also kill stuff quite efficiently in lower to mid gear but those would at least need some sort of

Teleport to really keep up.
Hammerdins, FoHdins, Javazons and to a lesser extent Trapsins.

The latter have the advantage that you can actually keep scaling them and typically are able to get to a point where they do ultimately outperform a blizz sorc by a good margin, at the cost of annoying

Teleport charges early on. Though to some degree, your target farming areas are more limited:
- FoHdins fail at places without undead/demons so no cows
- Javazons have horrid FCR and really shine on mass targets so while they can run keys, they're certainly never the fastest at it
- Trapsins still need to go out of their way to deal with light immunes even with a sunder. They really do need an Infinity on top to remove that annoyance (because -res on gear doesn't help your traps, only sunders, Infinity and lower res do).

And then of course there is the option of a horker. If you enjoy running in groups but want loot out of it, that one's actually not bad as others handle the killing while you create more loot which - more often than not - you get to pick up because with you horking, you're already right on top of it while others are off somewhere fighting.

If you do go the blizz sorc route, I for one would suggest not gearing specifically for blizz. Cold gear is unnecessarily expensive at season start because damn near everyone is running a blizz sorc. Other elements are not. And you really do not need full gear to hit the blizz kill

Cap. So an easy workaround is to focus on shared gear as you start out (arach, sojs, ...), not bother with things like cold charms necessarily and once you've built up a bit of Wealth with that approach, get the remaining gear not for blizz but to transition into a true endgame sorc build that doesn't hit that same kill speed

Cap.

Though as always, the real best answer depends entirely on where and how you want to play and what your plans really are for S3.
- Do you play solo or preferrably in groups?
- Do you want to just farm stuff and trade for the few bits you can't get yourself?
- Do you want one class to handle absolutely everything, including ubers?
- Do you want to also be able to pvp with it?
- Does it have to be a self-sufficient allrounder or is the point merely to farm stuff for another, different build/char?
- What builds do you actually enjoy?
- ...

There's tons of factors that ultimately largely make your decision for you.

Personally, I'm obviously holding off until we get some indication of possible S3 changes. But short of that, I'm currently between a sorc, a pally and a bowzon as my (only, as always) S3 char. Possibly a sin.

Thank you all for your replies.

So basically it is like I thought already. The cold sorc has that built-in advantage just because of

Cold Mastery, right? I personally play mostly Solo and trade for the few bits that I don't find myself. I really loved the addition of Sunder Charms as they enabled my Blizz Sorc to farm every part of the game (except Ubers). I also have a paladin that I wanted to gear for Ubers but never came that far as I personally don't like the Hammerdin (during leveling) that much. (Just not my kind of skill somehow )

Then I guess I will be doing a Blizz Sorc for MF at Season start and then try to shift into some other builds depending on the stuff that I find during my journey.

I actually liked the Druid a lot but it may be one of these "it's always better in your Memory" things. Never really tried Assassin or Necromancer. Maybe I'll try a singer barb or javazon next time. WW seems to be a fun build but as far as I have read it's quite heavily dependant on gear.

It may not be the best take on getting rich in the game but I really like that "I achieved that" feeling. So I completely ignore party games and people gifting stuff.

Bytenex wrote: 2 years ago

Thank you all for your replies.

So basically it is like I thought already. The cold sorc has that built-in advantage just because of

Cold Mastery, right?

It's a combination of their access to

Teleport + the high damage output from afar, even with mediocre gear (you can moat trick

Mephisto early on, etc.).

Aye.

Teleport + high starting dmg is what makes it as good as it is as a starter.

Cold Mastery doesn't necessarily give them more damage (as compared to say light mastery) but it equalizes the damage since you can deal the same amount to literally any non-immune, making your farming more consistent. An early light sorc for example will not just be annoyed by immunes but will also see dmg reduced by mere resistances. Once you get a sunder, that difference becomes more obvious as cold instantly gets the full benefit out of it whereas others still need to first gear up for -res to truly capitalize on it.

On non-immune/res mobs however, early on blizz simply starts out with comparatively a buttload of damage. That's why it is so easy to get a blizz sorc to the point of basically 1-shotting every normal mob no questions asked while others still need to gear to get to that point (and to then pull ahead as many others can hit more mobs in less time than blizz). That's more of a base blizz damage thing though than it is specifically

Cold Mastery. After all, very few people would argue that a

Frozen Orb sorc or the like offers a similarly exceptional starter experience.