I wish I hadn't made my nova sorceress

Over the last few weeks i've been leveling a

Nova sorc and acquiring gear for her. I finally got to the point where I could take her for a spin over the last 3 days.

I regret making her.

She's pretty geared (outside of charms)
Griffons, self wield Infinity, crafted neck, sojs,

Arachnid Mesh,

Eth sandstorm treks. Merc has

Eth Chains of Honor and Cure and a 17

Meditation Insight.

She feels like a sports car. She is SO fast, clears fast, but also dies extremely fast.

Succubus monsters and souls are an absolute nightmare.

The reason I regret making her is because it feels kind of bad to play anything else by comparison. The tele speed and clear speed is so fast, but she isn't invincible (i really need more

Energy Shield levels via light skillers or some sort of buff stick)

I have a geared

Poison Nova necro, Mosaic kick sin, and 500MF blizzard

Frozen Orb sorc. They feel so much slower and worse to play now instead of just super fast tele and spam

Nova lol. I decided to try and farm some

Baal essences on my assassin last night, and the slower tele speed (my sin has the 102 FCR breakpoint, so it's not egregiously slow) actually stood out to me for the first time.


May be shelving her soon - not sure. I need something new to level and play. I have a Grief and a

Zod to possibly make a EBOTD, maybe a

Frenzy barb is in my future?

I may just need to try and acquire some light res charms...her -71% light res from the sunder charm really exacerbates the souls problem lol.

Also this isn't meant to be a complaint post, more of a "i'm bored and work and sharing some experiences with other people who play the same game" since nobody in my friend group has any interest in D2R

What's your

Energy Shield at? The absorb %?

The lower it is, the more of a factor your resistances become. The mana absorption happens before resistances, resistances only apply to the bit that damages your life, and the more that goes through to your life, the more important your resistances are (and the less effective

Prayer is - you didn't say but I'm assuming).

yeah I'm using a

Prayer merc. My

Energy Shield is at like 78% i think? I'm at work so i don't remember exactly. I am lvl 88 and maxxed telekenesis before I did

Energy Shield. I think it's sitting around lvl 25 atm after buffing with CTA

it ONLY comes into play with souls though, a group of them can just 1 shot me. Nothing else is really problematic at all, just souls b/c of the mana drain + lightning damage.

The

Succubus mobs put the debuff that makes me take damage based on mana spent and

Nova uses a lot of mana lol

Souls are dangerous for

Energy Shield users, same is with

Inferno from Megademons.

This is just a fact, and I am okay with it, because

Nova is so strong, it's good she has at least one weakness.

But I wonder about your Succubi problem. I just tele into the mob and kill all of them with a few pulses. They die fast, because there aren't any lightning immune variants.

Prayer merc with Insight and Cure is the way to get rid of curses and poison very fast and the triple healing really kicks!

As others have said, a high levelled

Energy Shield is important. I am using a +3

Energy Shield Memory Staff giving me a 95% ES.

does that give you +9

Energy Shield then? 3 from base and 6 from the runeword? I've been on the hunt for a base for a Memory staff but haven't found one as of yet.

the damage output is just insane though, it does kill SO fast.

Spectie wrote: 7 months ago

does that give you +9

Energy Shield then? 3 from base and 6 from the runeword? I've been on the hunt for a base for a Memory staff but haven't found one as of yet.

Exactly. If you want, you may combine this with a CTA to get both: maxed ES and high life/mana. I am okay with just the staff (650 life/1600 mana).

The only problem: A good Memory base is really hard to find!

Spectie wrote: 7 months ago

the damage output is just insane though, it does kill SO fast.

Yes.

Nova is so strong, it borders on being boring.

Is your

Telekinesis maxed?

Also, forgot to add - you really need to pay attention to your mana and when/if your

Energy Shield runs out. It will instantly expire if your mana reaches 0, and that generally means certain Death.

78%

Energy Shield absorption and -71% lightning resistance. That means that the lightning damage that goes through to your life corresponds to having 62% lightning resistance without

Energy Shield. And you have a very small life pool, right? You wouldn't send a Paladin with 400-500 life and 62% lightning resistance to face tank a group of souls, right?

For comparison
- a maxed

Energy Shield (95%) with -71% lightning resistance corresponds to having 91.5% lightning resistance without

Energy Shield. That's 4.5 times less lightning damage through.
- your current

Energy Shield with max (75%) lightning resistance corresponds to having 94.5% lightning resistance without

Energy Shield. That's 7 times less lightning damage through.
So yes, you need to work on either

Energy Shield or your lightning resistance - or both.

You could try adding some lightning absorb, like

Wisp Projector. Assuming a 20% roll your effective lightning resistance would be -2% (if your real lightning resistance is -71% with 20% lightning absorb).

The Blood Mana curse is a massive annoyance, yes. You could either completely skip areas with these mobs, or just be prepared to drink a lot of potions. You could carry a Plague sword with you to equip to end the curse faster (Plague's

Cleansing cuts curse length by 75%+, and it works even if equipped after being cursed, unlike

Fade's curse reduction). But that takes some micromanaging of course. Another option is to ensure your max life is always greater than your max mana, that means Blood Mana will not affect you at all. HC

Nova Sorcs typically do that as far as I know.

Spectie wrote: 7 months ago

does that give you +9

Energy Shield then? 3 from base and 6 from the runeword? I've been on the hunt for a base for a Memory staff but haven't found one as of yet.

the damage output is just insane though, it does kill SO fast.

I have a spare +9 ES Memory on SC NL that you can have if you want.

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 months ago

Spectie wrote: 7 months ago

does that give you +9

Energy Shield then? 3 from base and 6 from the runeword? I've been on the hunt for a base for a Memory staff but haven't found one as of yet.

the damage output is just insane though, it does kill SO fast.

I have a spare +9 ES Memory on SC NL that you can have if you want.

oh that would be fantastic. I'd happily give it back if I end up shelving this character. but that may fix some of my issues with it. Im working in office today (us time) but will be available all day tomorrow and friday.

My

Telekinesis is maxxed out. I don't ever stop to try and kill souls, however I run into them while trying to

Teleport to

Baal waves or sometimes they're in the throne room of course.

I also found some the other day doing an outer plains/

City of the Damned TZ, teleported into

City of the Damned and just insta die lol. They are just spooky.

I guess the problem with

Succubus is their blood mana curse -just have some life (lifer skillers if you can afford) so you can tank it (i'm feeling ok with 949 life, very rarely need to slow down spamming for my hp to regen).

I like the sports car reference lol. Yeah I prefer tanky builds where I can be lazy. Sounds like you have plenty of resources for building a new character, I recommend the

Tornado

Hurricane Druid. Only complication is the required 163 FCR.

As I recently levelled my own

Nova, I feel the same as you do.
Lightning speed, but very fragile especially to those two issues. Does not prevent me from playing something else... but she is definitely SUPER fun to play a nervous playstyle. If I am half asleep though, better play someone more forgiving.

As for Succubi - I use a 1/3 life 2/3 mana ratio (so at level 86 I am around 750 life / 1500 mana) which allow me not to die too fast for that issue or for high poison (I have Cure / Insight /

Prayer merc, vastly helps too).

As for Souls, I tele back, put my Sunder Charm in cube when I meet them, and go slightly less quick. A bit annoying, but now I die wayyyy less (as I am at 75 light res instead of... 5 with my sunder). Still can need a few pots, but I don't spend time getting back my cute body

With only 1 hard point in ES I have a 85+%

Energy Shield thanks to Memory (had found a +3 ES 4os

Gnarled Staff even before building that sorc, kept in "just in case", was the right call !) - I don't even annoy myself with CtA ^^

Also with a very annoying pack of souls with Unique you can use a

Charge of

Cyclone Armor of your Infinity.

Spectie wrote: 7 months ago

My

Telekinesis is maxxed out. I don't ever stop to try and kill souls, however I run into them while trying to

Teleport to

Baal waves or sometimes they're in the throne room of course.

I also found some the other day doing an outer plains/

City of the Damned TZ, teleported into

City of the Damned and just insta die lol. They are just spooky.

There are several tactics fighting souls:

-Against single ones or tight standing packs, play aggressively, teleport to a free spot, step aside to evade the first lightning wave, teleport into melee range immediately and spam

Nova to stun/kill them.

-Bring your merc into melee range and step back. They won't do much harm to him while keeping you safe from their lightning attacks.

-When encountering huge packs, do the corner trick. Once activated, they are moving in random like patterns. Chances are good they follow you one by one to get killed by your

Nova.

-Get a feeling for their attack frequency. If you activate the pack at once, the lightning attack is very easy to avoid, just walk in a z-like pattern. The most dangerous situation is when you fight many of them scattered around shooting at different times. You should take some cover or retreat to a safer spot then. I always use the pillars in Throne room to hide behind.

ghostpos wrote: 7 months ago

I like the sports car reference lol. Yeah I prefer tanky builds where I can be lazy. Sounds like you have plenty of resources for building a new character, I recommend the

Tornado

Hurricane Druid. Only complication is the required 163 FCR.

My 4 year old named her "electrobird", in hindsight i feel like i should have named her bugatti or something

ShadowHeart wrote: 7 months ago

78%

Energy Shield absorption and -71% lightning resistance. That means that the lightning damage that goes through to your life corresponds to having 62% lightning resistance without

Energy Shield. And you have a very small life pool, right? You wouldn't send a Paladin with 400-500 life and 62% lightning resistance to face tank a group of souls, right?

For comparison
- a maxed

Energy Shield (95%) with -71% lightning resistance corresponds to having 91.5% lightning resistance without

Energy Shield. That's 4.5 times less lightning damage through.
- your current

Energy Shield with max (75%) lightning resistance corresponds to having 94.5% lightning resistance without

Energy Shield. That's 7 times less lightning damage through.
So yes, you need to work on either

Energy Shield or your lightning resistance - or both.

Is there a ressource where the maths behind this is listed or maybe even some sort of calculator?

oOKIWIOo wrote: 7 months ago

Is there a ressource where the maths behind this is listed or maybe even some sort of calculator?

Uh, no I just worked out the math on-the-fly.

If you have 78% ES and -71% res, then first 78% of the damage is absorbed by mana and 22% of the damage passes through to your life. This 22%, assuming it's lightning damage, is then amplified due to the negative resistance, 22% * 1.71 = 37.62%. So 37.62% of the original damage hits your life, which means it corresponds to having 62.38% resistances without

Energy Shield. Speaking strictly about the damage that hits your life and ignoring that a lot of the damage is absorbed by your mana (that part would have hit your life too if you didn't have

Energy Shield, of course reduced by resistances as usual...).

But uh... this can be turned into a formula of course.

100 - ((100 - X) * (1 - (Y / 100)))

where
X is the

Energy Shield absorb % (for example: 78)
Y is the resistance % (for example: -71)

The result is how much effective resistance your

Energy Shield % + actual resistance % corresponds to.

This is of course also a simplified look at just elemental resistance and

Energy Shield, it ignores elemental absorb (both % and flat/integer) and MDR.

Thx! Other types of damage reduction work only on the part that really hits your life, right? Or are they applied before the absorb of

Energy Shield?

So you assumed that the

Nova Sorc has effectively the -71 lr res (and without Sunder Charm 0 lr res) in hell, right?