Nova sorc questions

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

Now I'm kinda eager to try it out. xd

The results (TA-DA): https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/1l01soxw

At level 80; with 105 bp (even in both cases) you can essentially cast 3 times / second which leads to your total mana cost being:
Self-Infinity: 132 (in this "plain case") with ~125 Mana regen/s (apart from needed str, every stat into energy), 1500 total mana
Budget Obsession: 144 (in this "plain case") with ~50 Mana regen/s (apart from needed str, 100 to energy and everything else vitality), 960 total mana

That means, practically, in first place you would never run out of mana and in second you can cast for about 10s before you run out of it. Interesting (I still think that can work)!

There is one problem here:
Your full energy self-Infinity setup uses

Energy Shield. 1500 mana can take a couple hits, sure but if you're also casting to fight back and in doing so are causing negative mana regen, you will run out of mana reliably simply because you can't regen after getting hit without stopping your own damage. And at 329 life..going oom is pretty bad juju.

Not saying it can't work, merely pointing it out because that does mean that in order to make it work, you need to really pay attention to your positioning rather than just blindly tele-zerging into packs to blow them up.

I just put all in mana for Infinity case because you guys were discussing it as a possibility (and to max mana regen for comparison purposes), I personally wouldn't put everything in mana, ever hehe

Don't forget it's 300-ish life without CtA, with min. rolls on anni and torch and without any charm. That can go significantly more up.

TheDoo wrote: 7 months ago

I just put all in mana for Infinity case because you guys were discussing it as a possibility (and to max mana regen for comparison purposes), I personally wouldn't put everything in mana, ever hehe

Don't forget it's 300-ish life without CtA, with min. rolls on anni and torch and without any charm. That can go significantly more up.

Well, let us know how it goes and feels once you've tried it

Winterkill wrote: 7 months ago

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.

This is a great help thanks, I know it's been a bit but I had another question. I did change my gear setup a bit and went with Silkweaves for the extra mana boost and instead of Trangs (which I have currently) I'll use

Magefist once I find another pair. My question is, with me running Vmagi and it haveing 13 magic damage reduced would it be better to put a

Mal or

Sol in it rather than a 5/5 Facet or

Um? Or would it be better to run COH? Also should I upgrade the Vmagi or any of the gear? Lastly I read that you only put 16 points into

Telekinesis, I assume that's all you need for maximum synergy effeciency

Luckily I was able to get a Cure for my Merc so he is now able to run Cure, Insight, Fort which will be a huge help.

Blindfire187 wrote: 6 months ago

This is a great help thanks, I know it's been a bit but I had another question. I did change my gear setup a bit and went with Silkweaves for the extra mana boost and instead of Trangs (which I have currently) I'll use

Magefist once I find another pair. My question is, with me running Vmagi and it haveing 13 magic damage reduced would it be better to put a

Mal or

Sol in it rather than a 5/5 Facet or

Um? Or would it be better to run COH? Also should I upgrade the Vmagi or any of the gear? Lastly I read that you only put 16 points into

Telekinesis, I assume that's all you need for maximum synergy effeciency

Luckily I was able to get a Cure for my Merc so he is now able to run Cure, Insight, Fort which will be a huge help.

I prefer

Mal over

Sol if you're going to socket for damage reduction. The reason for that is that If MDR exceeds an incoming attack's Magic Damage, any unused MDR applies to any Physical Damage the attack carries. So, if you have 20 MDR and an attack would deal 10 fire damage and 10 physical, the MDR will negate BOTH attacks. Whereas, DR only applies to physical. You need both on a true immortal sorc, obviously, but I would recommend socketing for MDR with

Mal.

In terms of 'should you socket for MDR/DR', that's a question for the rest of your character. If you're going full immortal sorc, you'll need all the MDR/DR you can get. If not, facets are cool.

Topaz are cool.

Um is debatable, since the value of resistances is lower for an ES sorc than other builds. Also, you can't get MDR/DR or Facets on charms, where you CAN get resistances, so there's some additional opportunity cost to that socketing decision.

I don't know that I would do CoH in any circumstance on this sorc. The 8% DR is pretty weak on an ES sorc, as are the resistances. +skills are nice, but Vipermagi is already only 1 skill short, with FCR (a harder resource to get with immortal gear on), and already decent res. Plus, you can socket Viper, and getting a good viper and socketing it will be cheaper than the

Ber rune for CoH. If you're not going full immortal with

The Gladiator's Bane, Viper is pretty solid. I mean, you could even prebuff with Treachery if you really wanted resistances cheap.

I wouldn't worry about upgrading pieces. If you're going to end up with high str anyway due to other decisions, then why not I suppose, but Immortal Sorcs do not rely on high defense to survive. Still, it doesn't hurt if the STR requirements and cost mean nothing to you.

Going from 16 to 20

Telekinesis gets your mana per damage from 1/1 to .75/1. It's an improvement, absolutely. I mostly stuck with 16 to make my math easier on my essay I wrote XD. But some people will tell you to go to 20

Telekinesis, and I'd say go for it unless it's shorting you skill points in other areas.

At the end of the day, as cool as the immortal sorceress is, this game still comes down to farming efficiency, and there's a tradeoff for the privilege of standing in the fire. Facet or not, extra

Telekinesis or not,

Gerke's Sanctuary or Spirit, all of these are part of where on the balance between immortality and damage you want to land.

Winterkill wrote: 6 months ago

So, if you have 20 MDR and an attack would deal 10 fire damage and 10 physical, the MDR will negate BOTH attacks. Whereas, DR only applies to physical.

Actually, DR and MDR both work that way.

DR reduces physical, excess is then applied to summed non-physical.
MDR reduces non-physical, excess is then applied to physical.

Funny thing is, both are actually better for "the thing they're not made for" because the primary (physical for DR, non-physical for MDR) is reduced before resistances whereas the excess for each is applied to the sum remaining after resistances.

Though all of that only works if an attack really does have both, a physical and non-physical component. If an attack is phys only, MDR won't go "0 non-phys so everything is excess and reduces phys now", it just won't do anything for that attack.
Because of that alone, you do want to keep a balance between both.

MDR does have one thing that DR doesn't have though...it multiplies. That is if you take a hit that hits for say light and fire dmg in the same hit and you have 20 MDR, that's 20 MDR applied to light and then the same 20 MDR applied fully against the fire part as well, it doesn't get reduced to 10 against each. In such a case, each separate element also causes excess to multiply. So if that's say 10 fire and 10 light dmg vs. 20 MDR, you get 20 MDR against the 10 fire, leaving 10 excess against physical and again 20 MDR against the 10 light, leaving another 10 excess, giving you a total excess of 20 to be applied against a possible physical component. Basically, the more elemental dmg types you take in one hit, the more MDR gets amplified and flat out multiplies in effectiveness. For DR, that concept doesn't hold true because..well, physical is physical. Nothing to initially multiply for.

See also
https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/index71ac.html
https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/index49ca.html

just 1 or 2 instances of MDR / DR would not help much.

You gotta commit to stacking it.
Hence my example of

Helm + armor + rings + shield combo.

Schnorki wrote: 6 months ago

Actually, DR and MDR both work that way.

DR reduces physical, excess is then applied to summed non-physical.
MDR reduces non-physical, excess is then applied to physical.

Ahh, interesting! Thanks for correcting!

Schnorki wrote: 6 months ago

Winterkill wrote: 6 months ago

So, if you have 20 MDR and an attack would deal 10 fire damage and 10 physical, the MDR will negate BOTH attacks. Whereas, DR only applies to physical.

Actually, DR and MDR both work that way.

DR reduces physical, excess is then applied to summed non-physical.
MDR reduces non-physical, excess is then applied to physical.

Funny thing is, both are actually better for "the thing they're not made for" because the primary (physical for DR, non-physical for MDR) is reduced before resistances whereas the excess for each is applied to the sum remaining after resistances.

Though all of that only works if an attack really does have both, a physical and non-physical component. If an attack is phys only, MDR won't go "0 non-phys so everything is excess and reduces phys now", it just won't do anything for that attack.
Because of that alone, you do want to keep a balance between both.

MDR does have one thing that DR doesn't have though...it multiplies. That is if you take a hit that hits for say light and fire dmg in the same hit and you have 20 MDR, that's 20 MDR applied to light and then the same 20 MDR applied fully against the fire part as well, it doesn't get reduced to 10 against each. In such a case, each separate element also causes excess to multiply. So if that's say 10 fire and 10 light dmg vs. 20 MDR, you get 20 MDR against the 10 fire, leaving 10 excess against physical and again 20 MDR against the 10 light, leaving another 10 excess, giving you a total excess of 20 to be applied against a possible physical component. Basically, the more elemental dmg types you take in one hit, the more MDR gets amplified and flat out multiplies in effectiveness. For DR, that concept doesn't hold true because..well, physical is physical. Nothing to initially multiply for.

See also
https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/index71ac.html
https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/index49ca.html

In this case it seems putting a

Mal in the Vmagi would be better than a

Sol, especially since my Res will be not great, especially lightning res. This is probably how I'll run it. I'll also have to respec, I'll max

Energy Shield then Telekenesis after making sure It gets to 16 at minimum while throwing a point in

Warmth and hopefully 1 point into

Frozen Armor if there are points left...I only plan to get her to at minimum 90-94 and probably not higher...I hate leveling after 90.

Should the Vmagi be upgraded or left as it's base serpentskin?

Great sources of MDR includes (for the sorc since u are respecing to Light) :

Hwanin's Splendor
Radiance (cheap starter RW)

The ez choice would be BIS Griffons with a socketed of your choice. (E.G Facet or ..)

Gladiator's bane. (CBF / 20MDR / 20DR all in one package) , Also

Iron Pelt is a nice starter with Radiance.
Vipermagic 15MDR

Dwarfstar 15MDR + Fire absorb (!)

Do not underestimate circlets / amulets of Life Everlasting (25 max) / Negation (6 max)

I would max

Telekinesis first.