Nova sorc questions

Been debating on weather to build a

Nova or Lightning sorc and

Nova seems the better option (and more fun). However as for the build I've seen a few different ways and not sure which to go. ES

Nova and just straight

Nova.

I'm not exactly sure how most people build

Nova sorc's however I plan to self use Infinity as I've read that's the best option. Other gear will be Vmagi, Griffons, Arachs,

Magefist/Trang, War Travs, Mara's/Caster ammy, Soj, and FCR ring. All I need after that are the GC's. Does this setup look good?

Also what skills do I need outside

Nova, Static,

Lightning Mastery, and

Teleport?

Edit: Also what is the best base for self use Infinity? Would it be better to trade for a Mid-high tiered one or make one since I can't reroll it (Non-Ladder

I recommend the guides from maxroll https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/nova-sorceress-guide. They have different equipment and build variants listed and say what's important to have.
Since you're often close to the enemies it's important to have more survivability. So I would also go with

Telekinesis and

Energy Shield.
For self use Infinity just use a normal spear or polearm base. Preferably one with low requirements like

Trident or

Scythe.

atari wrote: 7 months ago

I recommend the guides from maxroll https://maxroll.gg/d2/guides/nova-sorceress-guide. They have different equipment and build variants listed and say what's important to have.
Since you're often close to the enemies it's important to have more survivability. So I would also go with

Telekinesis and

Energy Shield.
For self use Infinity just use a normal spear or polearm base. Preferably one with low requirements like

Trident or

Scythe.

Yea, I love their build guides. However the ones for the

Nova sorc are a bit weird which is why I'm asking. The damage build has self use Infinity but also uses

Hydra however seeing people in runs mostly only see people with Infinity and only using

Nova but never took note if they had

Energy Shield also. So is the best option to go with the damage setup but with ES or skip ES and go

Hydra (which I find odd) or go with the standard setup with ES and run Crescent Moon instead of Infinity?

Also If I have ES do I need to put a lot of points into Energy?

For my

Nova sorceress, I do not choose the

Energy Shield route as a personal preference, as I do farm

Baal and he and succubi loves to use that mana pain aka Blood Mana skill where u cast mana u will get damage. Hence, 0 skill pts on

Energy Shield for me. So the points can be spent elsewhere on skills like

Warmth for more mana regeneration.

Using Insight for my Act 2 merc and my sorceress carrying juz a 2h Infinity

Thresher with Call To Arms as swap weapon for the extra boost to skills, mana will not be an issue for

Nova casting. Armor I wear Chains of Honor for the high resistance boost.

Can check out MrLLamaSC's guides as well:

https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/nova-sorceress-build

I did a modified version from his suggestion gears there. Trust us, once u go self use Infinity u will not go back to something else cuz the

Conviction aura rekts most lightning immunes,

Baal farming is a 2-3 mins experience per run. Although u might wanna have the crack of heavens for some unique monsters that sometimes even Infinity cannot rekt but that's rare.

Cheers and most importantly, have fun!

Oh yeah btw, u can put the extra skills pts into lightning as well, as for me, I did not max my

Warmth (only 3 to

Warmth) i chose to max lightning instead, lol, hence no need to choose whether to go

Nova or lightning now that if u put 0 skill pts to

Energy Shield.
My lightning and

Nova sorc hits 5-13k per lightning cast but i still like to use

Nova for the AoE as my main spell.

And, if u can rekt

Baal, u can rekt anywhere with juz

Nova and lightning no need

Hydra

Ronin13 wrote: 7 months ago

For my

Nova sorceress, I do not choose the

Energy Shield route as a personal preference, as I do farm

Baal and he and succubi loves to use that mana pain aka Blood Mana skill where u cast mana u will get damage. Hence, 0 skill pts on

Energy Shield for me. So the points can be spent elsewhere on skills like

Warmth for more mana regeneration.

Using Insight for my Act 2 merc and my sorceress carrying juz a 2h Infinity

Thresher with Call To Arms as swap weapon for the extra boost to skills, mana will not be an issue for

Nova casting. Armor I wear Chains of Honor for the high resistance boost.

Can check out MrLLamaSC's guides as well:

https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/nova-sorceress-build

I did a modified version from his suggestion gears there. Trust us, once u go self use Infinity u will not go back to something else cuz the

Conviction aura rekts most lightning immunes,

Baal farming is a 2-3 mins experience per run. Although u might wanna have the crack of heavens for some unique monsters that sometimes even Infinity cannot rekt but that's rare.

Cheers and most importantly, have fun!

Thanks, I'll build it that way then. Also would Vmagi be good to use also instead of COH? i was going to run it for the extra FCR to hit the breakpoints. I can make a COH if that's preferable.

I plan to use her for everything but most specifically Chaos, and tombs. She won't be MF so

Baal will mostly be ignored unless it's the Tzone (I find

Baal runs boring now). Outside hitting level 94 I don't care about expierence sas I'll probably never push a char to level 99 and 94 is perfect for max Tzones.

Currently leveling a hardcore ES

Nova Sorc to level 99 on single player. I am at level 96 and 6/10 bars.

Energy Shield is a godsend on hardcore. I am running exactly the same gear as what you mentioned minus the Griffon.

CoH is a pretty big upgrade over Vipermagi. Better to get FCR on other gear IMO.

Blindfire187 wrote: 7 months ago

Ronin13 wrote: 7 months ago

For my

Nova sorceress, I do not choose the

Energy Shield route as a personal preference, as I do farm

Baal and he and succubi loves to use that mana pain aka Blood Mana skill where u cast mana u will get damage. Hence, 0 skill pts on

Energy Shield for me. So the points can be spent elsewhere on skills like

Warmth for more mana regeneration.

Using Insight for my Act 2 merc and my sorceress carrying juz a 2h Infinity

Thresher with Call To Arms as swap weapon for the extra boost to skills, mana will not be an issue for

Nova casting. Armor I wear Chains of Honor for the high resistance boost.

Can check out MrLLamaSC's guides as well:

https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/nova-sorceress-build

I did a modified version from his suggestion gears there. Trust us, once u go self use Infinity u will not go back to something else cuz the

Conviction aura rekts most lightning immunes,

Baal farming is a 2-3 mins experience per run. Although u might wanna have the crack of heavens for some unique monsters that sometimes even Infinity cannot rekt but that's rare.

Cheers and most importantly, have fun!

Thanks, I'll build it that way then. Also would Vmagi be good to use also instead of COH? i was going to run it for the extra FCR to hit the breakpoints. I can make a COH if that's preferable.

I plan to use her for everything but most specifically Chaos, and tombs. She won't be MF so

Baal will mostly be ignored unless it's the Tzone (I find

Baal runs boring now). Outside hitting level 94 I don't care about expierence sas I'll probably never push a char to level 99 and 94 is perfect for max Tzones.

If u prefer FCR to cast faster (>= 105%) than yeah, probably Vipermagi is for you, I needed CoH for the resistance as Infinity is 2handed, my FCR is at around 63% the next threshold after 105% which is fine for me as i hit

Nova quite heavy after i

Conviction the mobs who are down in 1-3 novas at

Baal.

Though some online resources recommends the budget build of Crescent Moon runeword and Spirit as shield for resistance and FCR...but Infinity is really OP for spellcaster just like Grief is to Barbarian melee builds...due to the

Conviction that will break the lightning immunes.

Alas, farming the total of 3 Bers can be quite an endeavor for Infinity as well as CoH... I only managed to find one, the other 2 I gotta trade to get em.

My

Key farmer / base farmer is a 200 FCR ES

Nova Sorc.

Gear: Hoto, Spirit, Griffon, Viper,

Magefist, Arach, and 30FCR from Rings and Amu.

Skill tree:
Max:

Static Field,

Nova, Light Mastery,

Telekinesis, and remaining points on ES.

1 point:

Frozen Armor,

Thunder Storm,

Warmth and prerequisites.

It's pretty easy and fast to clear any area on P1 (96 TZ included). Not the bast boss killer, but can kill

Baal.

Succubi Blood Mana is a pain....

Ronin13 wrote: 7 months ago

Blindfire187 wrote: 7 months ago

Ronin13 wrote: 7 months ago

For my

Nova sorceress, I do not choose the

Energy Shield route as a personal preference, as I do farm

Baal and he and succubi loves to use that mana pain aka Blood Mana skill where u cast mana u will get damage. Hence, 0 skill pts on

Energy Shield for me. So the points can be spent elsewhere on skills like

Warmth for more mana regeneration.

Using Insight for my Act 2 merc and my sorceress carrying juz a 2h Infinity

Thresher with Call To Arms as swap weapon for the extra boost to skills, mana will not be an issue for

Nova casting. Armor I wear Chains of Honor for the high resistance boost.

Can check out MrLLamaSC's guides as well:

https://www.icy-veins.com/d2/nova-sorceress-build

I did a modified version from his suggestion gears there. Trust us, once u go self use Infinity u will not go back to something else cuz the

Conviction aura rekts most lightning immunes,

Baal farming is a 2-3 mins experience per run. Although u might wanna have the crack of heavens for some unique monsters that sometimes even Infinity cannot rekt but that's rare.

Cheers and most importantly, have fun!

Thanks, I'll build it that way then. Also would Vmagi be good to use also instead of COH? i was going to run it for the extra FCR to hit the breakpoints. I can make a COH if that's preferable.

I plan to use her for everything but most specifically Chaos, and tombs. She won't be MF so

Baal will mostly be ignored unless it's the Tzone (I find

Baal runs boring now). Outside hitting level 94 I don't care about expierence sas I'll probably never push a char to level 99 and 94 is perfect for max Tzones.

If u prefer FCR to cast faster (>= 105%) than yeah, probably Vipermagi is for you, I needed CoH for the resistance as Infinity is 2handed, my FCR is at around 63% the next threshold after 105% which is fine for me as i hit

Nova quite heavy after i

Conviction the mobs who are down in 1-3 novas at

Baal.

Though some online resources recommends the budget build of Crescent Moon runeword and Spirit as shield for resistance and FCR...but Infinity is really OP for spellcaster just like Grief is to Barbarian melee builds...due to the

Conviction that will break the lightning immunes.

Alas, farming the total of 3 Bers can be quite an endeavor for Infinity as well as CoH... I only managed to find one, the other 2 I gotta trade to get em.

I have 2

Ber already (found one last night) and currently sitting on 9

Jah through trades (had. P

Raven Frost) so I can make both. Just figured I'd run Maras and Vmagi for res, Griff,

Magefist, arachnid, Soj, and 10% FCR ring which will hit the 105% breakpoint. as for res my maras is 20:/ and Vmagi is 34 so My res should be fine with Anni and torch.

If you are going mana shield, magic / dmg reduce is much more desired than resists.

Skaijuice wrote: 7 months ago

If you are going mana shield, magic / dmg reduce is much more desired than resists.

could you please elaborate on this? Does ES have funky Interactions with elemental damage?

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

Skaijuice wrote: 7 months ago

If you are going mana shield, magic / dmg reduce is much more desired than resists.

could you please elaborate on this? Does ES have funky Interactions with elemental damage?

Get ES to 90-95%
5-10% goes past ES.
MDR / DR kicks in, negates the rest of that 5-10% depending on how much stacking you have on gear.

Sol /

Mal runes helps.

MDR - Magic dmg reduction ( Gerkes...GBane..Dworfstar..works very good in synery - 18+13+15 = perfect offset grand total of 46 ELEMENTAL dmg points.

A Desert mercenary with

Prayer+ Perfect Insight + Cure Hat = 3-in-1 instant coffee AKA Never look back after this combo.

Also..shameless self plug - LF one myself..

Edit: Pair that with more physical dmg reduced i.e amulet of life everlasting for max 25 PDR..yummy! Google "immortal sorc"

Flippy wrote: 7 months ago

could you please elaborate on this? Does ES have funky Interactions with elemental damage?

So, allow me to explain

Energy Shield mechanics a bit, because that may make the other things going on in this thread make more sense.

All of

Energy Shield's calculations apply BEFORE resistances and damage reductions. Keep that in mind here.

Chapter 1: When

Energy Shield Sucks.

Spoiler

Energy Shield's effectiveness depends on the

Telekinesis synergy and the

Energy Shield skill level.

Telekinesis synergy determines how much mana is lost per damage point absorbed.

Energy Shield level determines how much of incoming damage goes to mana and how much goes to life. For example,

Energy Shield level 7 "absorbs 50%" meaning 50% of damage goes to mana, 50% to life. At face value, this looks amazing even at very low skill investment!

However, depending on the balance of your stats and

Telekinesis, it might not be that great in practice. With only the base

Telekinesis synergy of 1 required to get ES, each point of damage absorbed by the

Energy Shield costs 2 mana. So, let's look at an example:

You have 75 fire res, 50% absorb with

Energy Shield, and base

Telekinesis. You take an attack that deals 100 fire damage. That 100 damage will split into 50 to mana, 50 to life. Resistances DO NOT count for

Energy Shield, so all 50 of that damage will go through to mana. At base

Telekinesis, you'll pay 2 mana per point of damage. 50 * 2 = 100 mana. The 50 fire damage that went through to life WILL BE reduced by resistances. 50 * .25 = 12.5 damage. This means the total cost of eating this attack is 12.5 life and 100 mana.
However, with 75 fire res, just eating the whole attack without

Energy Shield would have been 100 * .25 = 25 damage. By using

Energy Shield in this situation, you paid 100 mana to save 12.5 life.

In my opinion, any situation where that extra bit of life would matter, the ability to

Teleport out of whatever is happening also matters, and going out of mana because you're paying a premium for each point of health saved is a bad trade. This also puts you into a weird place with your build. Do you put points into energy to deal with the premium cost, or vitality and go out of mana? Do you focus on gear that boosts mana like SOJ and

Frostburn or ignore it and do FCR,

Magefist, Trang-Ouls or whatever you'd otherwise do?

Chapter 2: When

Energy Shield Rocks

Spoiler

The above situation is why people recommend putting a LOT into

Energy Shield. With 16 hard points into

Telekinesis, you pay 1 mana per damage absorbed. With

Energy Shield level at 40+,

Energy Shield absorbs 95% of damage. Let's rerun the numbers above with these new figures. You take an attack that deals 100 fire damage. That 100 damage will split into 95 to mana, 5 to life. All 95 of that will go through to mana. Paying 1 mana per damage, you lose 95 mana. The 5 fire damage that went through to life WILL BE reduced by resistances. 5 * .25 = 1.25. This means that the total cost of eating this attack is 1.25 life and 95 mana.

Notice that this is cheaper than the first situation in all ways. You saved 5 mana and 11.25 life by investing heavily into

Energy Shield and

Telekinesis. This also explains Skaijuice's comment that with

Energy Shield, many people forego resistances and focus on damage reduction instead. Notice that if, instead of having 75 fire resistance in the above scenario, you instead had 5 magic damage reduction, you'd have taken 0 damage to life!

And, unlike the first situation, this one scales really well. Imagine an incoming attack that would deal 1000 fire damage. 950 will go to mana. 50 will go to life, which will be easily mitigated by MDR and resistances.

This is where the idea of the immortal sorceress comes from, a sorceress build that invests a ton into

Telekinesis and

Energy Shield, max mana, and DR/MDR to become nearly immune to Death. It's a super fun build! I have one offline and it's a ball of fun!

However, also notice that getting

Energy Shield to 40 and

Telekinesis to 16 is pretty expensive in terms of skill points, even with high +skills on gear, and it's harder to get +skills on gear that also gives good DR/MDR without paying a FORTUNE. This results in either a super expensive build that deals less damage than other equivalent price Sorceress builds or a cheaper build that is tanky but really struggles to farm effectively. And IMO, if I want to be a slow-farming tank, I'll play a smiter.

Chapter 3: The Middle Ground

Spoiler

So, what you should actually do depends a bit. Going full Immortal Sorceress is a potent extreme. Going meh into

Energy Shield isn't worth it. However, a middle approach can be the best of both worlds. Relying on +skills to get

Energy Shield up for a

Nova Sorceress is fairly easy, as you are already going to be getting +skills and +lightning skills on your gear anyway, and you can make a Memory on swap to get extra +

Energy Shield on cast for free. The question then is just where you want to lean. If you want to lean more into

Energy Shield, put extra skill points into

Telekinesis, put more stat points into Energy, and look for +mana and +mana% on pieces like

Stone of Jordan. If you don't want to bother, then build full damage like you would normally and just know you'll need some extra mana potions for tight situations.

I still need to build my own

Nova/Lightning Sorc or some version of it, but from my own experience you don't need ES at all. I do play non-ladder and 90% of time I play on players 1 online, and I only tried doing Ubers once alone and failed but that was before I was even close to Infinity, top cold gear and Sunder Charms (did Ubers successfully many times with friends, couldn't really get much/appropriate info about my builds).

So far I built a Blizzard Orb Sorc, a Fire Ball Sorc (ladder), Cold-Fire hybrid and I'm working on completing the Fire Bow Enchantress and Cold Bowess off meta hybrid builds.
I did try on one of those builds going in with a couple of points into ES -- and was pretty disappointed and never used it again.

IMHO, if you are doing solo play (would add, even with party up to 3 players since I tried that) and not going for the solo Ubers then you don't actually need ES at all. You will be just fine farming anywhere and doing anything else (yes, even the Dclone). On that note, I would say rather go and invest a couple of points into cold shield skills (whichever you like the most) -- that helps a lot as it opens up an opportunity to

Dodge

Teleport out of the harms way if you ever find yourself in a tough spot (or RNG/d-sync decides to screw with you).

P.S. I would probably say that ES is a must for HC tho.

Winterkill wrote: 7 months ago

So, allow me to explain

Energy Shield mechanics a bit

This was very interesting. For some reason I never bothered to check Amazonbasin about mana shield and didn't know the details about damage reduction.

Sadly the basin says "damage taken goes to mana" is calculated on the final damage value done to life, so here goes my idea of a mana auto-refill build (my build ideas are usually not viable anyway).

I do know how ES works but Magic Damage Reduced is such a bad described Affixe that i pressed for more Information. Most people are content that reading X = Good and Y = Bad but never care why this the case so explaining such "minor" details maybe helps for other people that read this thread

Pretty lengthy explanation for basically an easy Choice:

First ask yourself if you have 40 Skill Points to spare, if yes just use ES, if no don't (dumbed down, if you magically get ES to 40 without spending 20 Points you don't need it, 20 Points into Telek are mandatory though)

Either you invest fully into ES (with

Telekinesis) or you leave it out all together. Doing a Half assed attempt is bound to get you killed somewhere at some time.

In terms of Stats ES is much more efficient/effective than going into the Route with Vita and (hopefully) Max Block.

For the sake of explaining, let's simply call Mana effective Life when using ES. The upsides of spending thos Skill Points into ES, is that your ELife Pool is massive. You don't need Dex for Block and every point of Energy increases your ELife by the same amount a Point in Vita would increase your Life. Combine that with Stuff like BO, SoJs or even

Frostburn (and Insight and passive Mana Regen by

Warmth and Items) it can easily outshine the Healthpool (and regen) of any other Class. No one in their right mind would even question if BO is a good Skill investment on a Barb.

Additionally: Absolute Damage Reduction and Damage Absorbtion also getting a much higher effectiveness as Skaijuice pointed out.

The last (and certainly not neglible) Point are Recovery Animations of any Kind. Having a High ES will basically Null the time you'd get into Hit Recovery. Additionally since you basically don't block, you very rarely will see a Block animations

Mana Burn is a Problem yes. Certain Enemy combinations or curses sure aren't great either but every Char/Build has it's Achilles Heel soooo....

*shrugs*


PS: I've seen that pop up so much recently:

Do people nowadays really build Smiters? Like with 20 Points into

Smite and Stuff? This was a running gag in the Forum i was active back in the Days but i would have never imagined people are dense enough to invest 20 Points into

Smite

i forgot to mention that having a good poison length reduction is mandatory or

Make sure you have a merc with Cure .

my L

Nova/Sorc? Griff w/

Ort, dual soj's, arch

Belt, war travs, mara ammy, hoto, coh runeword in

Dusk Shroud, Phoenix shield, trangs, coth sunder, gheeds, x3 lght skillers, torch, anni, (cta +Spirit on swap) & sml mf charms. kills everything in my path.. but still always take care