Advice on ES nova spec

StoBeast wrote: 2 days ago

I’m starting to think I built the wrong character. It seems that even with all precautions, one can stomped by dolls or souls… and the build requires lvl 95 to be complete. Since I was stupid and didn’t just create a support account, I need two characters to rush, so I would intend to have another and making two 95s to rush seems annoying, especially when I am not enjoying playing this character

Am I using the wrong character for the job? If so, what should I be picking? I need speed (high FCR) and being relatively immune to Death. Having good aoe is a benefit because I have to level this character unlike my two enchantresses that just leeched

Baal runs in NM until 65-70

You didn't make the wrong character. ES

Nova sorc excels at pretty much everything except magic finding and ubers. If you want to use her as a rusher that is perfect. You'd be at most p3, unless you do mass player rushes?
Just tweak the skills a bit, swap your

Boots, and you'll be just fine.
If you plan on hosting p8 tz

Baal walks or something, then yea maybe add some lightning absorb or something, but that doesn't sound like your intention.

Using Memory to buff before your runs really only takes an extra few seconds at the stash. I'd always do that, personally. Also, having the triple heal merc helps a LOT. Act 2

Prayer merc with Cure

Helm and Insight polearm. Works wonders. For some FHR, you could always just use 1 or 2 small charms (5 and 10% are both breakpoints IIRC). I only have 10FHR on mine.

I think ES/

Nova sorc can still be decent for magic find even if slightly harder than other classes. It doesn't use Enigma, which is a lot of MF to make up, but I have historically run around 200% MF without the new jewels or sunders (but using

Ist/

Topaz in the sockets instead of lightning jewel, since it already destroys P1 and I enjoy MF.

Infinity (30%)
2x

Ist/

Topaz (48-50%)
War travelers (50%)
gheeds (40%)
various small charms that combine mana or poison res with magic find (~30%, but could be as high as 49%).

MF is pretty diminishing returns after 200%. My neg res vs. immunes is still 75+17=92, so if I ran the old jewels I could do 10% more damage to the immunes. Once I switch back to using my

Nova sorc more post WL, I'll probably have my cake and eat it too with the sunder and new jewel to get up to 60% MF from those, and probably ditch the

Ist/

Topaz while gaining an additional 25 neg res vs. my current setup.

Knappogue wrote: 2 days ago

StoBeast wrote: 2 days ago

I’m starting to think I built the wrong character. It seems that even with all precautions, one can stomped by dolls or souls… and the build requires lvl 95 to be complete. Since I was stupid and didn’t just create a support account, I need two characters to rush, so I would intend to have another and making two 95s to rush seems annoying, especially when I am not enjoying playing this character

Am I using the wrong character for the job? If so, what should I be picking? I need speed (high FCR) and being relatively immune to Death. Having good aoe is a benefit because I have to level this character unlike my two enchantresses that just leeched

Baal runs in NM until 65-70

You didn't make the wrong character. ES

Nova sorc excels at pretty much everything except magic finding and ubers. If you want to use her as a rusher that is perfect. You'd be at most p3, unless you do mass player rushes?
Just tweak the skills a bit, swap your

Boots, and you'll be just fine.
If you plan on hosting p8 tz

Baal walks or something, then yea maybe add some lightning absorb or something, but that doesn't sound like your intention.

varangium wrote: 2 days ago

I think ES/

Nova sorc can still be decent for magic find even if slightly harder than other classes.

I didn't say it can't mf. I said it doesn't excel at mf.

That's fair. Reading comprehension isn't my strength

And as an ES

Nova proponent, I want to make sure people know she can MF too.

She can do mini ubers decently with a special setup I have, but I haven't tried her on Ubers. That's on the bucket list.

varangium wrote: 2 days ago

That's fair. Reading comprehension isn't my strength

And as an ES

Nova proponent, I want to make sure people know she can MF too.

She can do mini ubers decently with a special setup I have, but I haven't tried her on Ubers. That's on the bucket list.

Haahaa, that's valid.
My es

Nova sorc is also my favorite toon to play. Any build can MF, technically. Its just a trade off. What do you give up for mf. In my opinion, for the es

Nova sorc, you give up way too much i.e. kill speed and survivability.
I much prefer mfing with my hdin or pit-zerker. Way more specialized. Kill speed is much higher, MF is higher, survivability is higher. My hdin for example has 16k hammers, max res, and 400+ mf.
Id much prefer specialized toons that can do 1 or 2 things very well, than 1 or 2 toons that can do everything kinda-sorta ok.

Knappogue wrote: 2 days ago

Necrarch wrote: 2 days ago

- I have a +3 ES Memory on swap (so total +9) instead of Cta - but should not change much[....]
[....]With Memory, my 1 point in ES casts at level 26, sending 80% of damage to mana.

Level 26 ES lasts for 12.4 minutes. That's quite a lot of play time. Have you considered leaving Memory in your stash and buffing once at the beginning of your run? It works really well since you can cast it in town. Then you swap to CTA and do your run with that so you can regularly rebuff? Most runs last less than 10 minutes anyways, unless you are

Herald hunting or something similar.

To answer Knapp : because I wanted one of my chars NOT to use CtA and I had a nice Memory staff. That's all. Don't need it, don't make it (but CtA is definitely more optimal, especially with more skill points than me in ES).

To OP : as said before, try to get a Cure, and either

Silkweave or Sandstorm, and re-assess the situation just after these two things. You should find your survivabilty already quite buffed. Do keep the FCR 105 level any case, so your current amu is probably not a bad thing.
For Silks, if you have a decent Anni + Torch you should not be too far from required 65 (I have 20 points on my side, if it's just for the test you can even buy some

Eth ones to need 10 less STR (one at sale now, 3 pgems should be a decent price)

And don't forget CtA + ES +

Frozen Armor, seems a silly advice but happens more often than one can believe
And if you meet souls, cast

Cyclone Armor if your Infinity is not

Eth, can be an occasional life saver.

Necrarch wrote: 2 days ago

Knappogue wrote: 2 days ago

Necrarch wrote: 2 days ago

- I have a +3 ES Memory on swap (so total +9) instead of Cta - but should not change much[....]
[....]With Memory, my 1 point in ES casts at level 26, sending 80% of damage to mana.

Level 26 ES lasts for 12.4 minutes. That's quite a lot of play time. Have you considered leaving Memory in your stash and buffing once at the beginning of your run? It works really well since you can cast it in town. Then you swap to CTA and do your run with that so you can regularly rebuff? Most runs last less than 10 minutes anyways, unless you are

Herald hunting or something similar.

To answer Knapp : because I wanted one of my chars NOT to use CtA and I had a nice Memory staff. That's all. Don't need it, don't make it (but CtA is definitely more optimal, especially with more skill points than me in ES).

To OP : as said before, try to get a Cure, and either

Silkweave or Sandstorm, and re-assess the situation just after these two things. You should find your survivabilty already quite buffed. Do keep the FCR 105 level any case, so your current amu is probably not a bad thing.
For Silks, if you have a decent Anni + Torch you should not be too far from required 65 (I have 20 points on my side, if it's just for the test you can even buy some

Eth ones to need 10 less STR (one at sale now, 3 pgems should be a decent price)

And don't forget CtA + ES +

Frozen Armor, seems a silly advice but happens more often than one can believe
And if you meet souls, cast

Cyclone Armor if your Infinity is not

Eth, can be an occasional life saver.

Changing

Boots won't help. As long as there are only 10 pts in tele, you are at 1.35 mana per damage.
Since the mana per ene vs. hp per vita is 3:2 = 1.5, the

Energy Shield only operates at 10% damage reduction (instead of 50% which you'd get with 20 tele) at the cost of having 0 res.

Change tele to 20 and you are good. All the other changes, while valid, are not solving the issue.

I think he is already at 20 tk, though the first post is not super clear on that. If not, well, that's priority 0

Necrarch wrote: 1 day ago

I think he is already at 20 tk, though the first post is not super clear on that. If not, well, that's priority 0

I'm reading OP as all skills listed are maxed except for ES which is at 10.

@StoBeast

I can offer some input since I'm working on an Orb/ES sorc presently and am level 85.

Skills Point Distribution:

1-point wonders:

Warmth,

Teleport,

Static Field &

Frozen Armor. (4)
Progression through cold/light skill trees: (7)

Ice Bolt for orb synergy: (10)

Frozen Orb: (20)

Cold Mastery: (20)

Telekinesis: (20)

Energy Shield: (15)

Gear:

The Oculus / Spirit

Monarch (699hp / 1671 mana / 219 mf)

Gull / Rhyme (615hp / 1479 mana / 289 mf)
+7 ES Memory

Elder Staff (kept in stash to buff)

Harlequin Crest (

Perfect Topaz)

Que-Hegan's Wisdom

Arachnid Mesh

Frostburn

Sandstorm Trek (poison resist)

Raven Frost

Wisp Projector
+2 Sorceress +23 life Amulet

Charms:

Renewed Cold Rupture

Gheed's Fortune

Annihilus
Slew of +life/mana/MF charms

A2 Might Merc
900-4900 damage

Andariel's Visage w/

Ral

The Gladiator's Bane
Ethereal Insight

Colossus Voulge (16 / 232ED / 92-820 damage)

___________________________________________________________________

Using +7 Staff I've got 29 ES = 84% absorb & 816 sec duration. I'd say start picking up plain staves that are eligible for 4 sockets max and either use

Larzuk or start cubing. This will get you +6 at least, w/ no ES on the staff, and combined with your gear would be +17 to ES.

Just reset since I had

Telekinesis at 13 which definitely wasn't enough. Sacrificed some damage synergy to stay alive and it was def worth it.

Previously P1 Survival was decent, but

Nihlathak's CE, in particular, was a problem; even w/o TZ. I could take one shot, but was panic mashing purple pots and still dying frequently. Just tested with

Telekinesis maxed, Lvl 87 TZ Halls, and I can

Teleport in there and get blasted a couple/few times before drinking some of that purple.

I'm still playing around with equipping Bane on myself since it has flat damage/magic reduction + the 50% poison length reduction, but with Chalan wearing it he def seems to die less. Poison can still be problematic, even at 58% poison res, but nothing some antidote potions can't take care of since mana typically stays topped off w/ lvl 16

Meditation.

I'm considering trading for a 2nd Bane and switch to

Dwarf Star for additional flat magic reduction & fire absorb...or maybe this rare FCR ring

Ormus gave me with

Sigil Lethargy charges on it...hmmm

R0b0yt0 wrote: 1 day ago

@StoBeast ….

Wow, that al seems very complicated. While I was reading replies, I made a lvl 85 hammersdin that is immediately doing better. I don’t have a sunder yet, so wave 2

Baal is crap… but the character is much easier to keep alive and I haven’t done skill or stat quests. And I have 132 stats remaining

I think I may just table the ES sorc for now. It’s too damn fragile and I just want something that can rush characters fast, and destroy

Baal runs to rush from 1-85

StoBeast wrote: 1 day ago

I think I may just table the ES sorc for now. It’s too damn fragile and I just want something that can rush characters fast, and destroy

Baal runs to rush from 1-85

You just said that wave 2 is annoying and slow with the Paladin...and

Nova Sorc is much faster than Hammerdin. Of course for the

Baal waves you must start with Static 3 or 4 times, then switch to

Nova until everything is dead. Super smooth.

StoBeast wrote: 1 day ago

R0b0yt0 wrote: 1 day ago

@StoBeast ….

Wow, that al seems very complicated. While I was reading replies, I made a lvl 85 hammersdin that is immediately doing better. I don’t have a sunder yet, so wave 2

Baal is crap… but the character is much easier to keep alive and I haven’t done skill or stat quests. And I have 132 stats remaining

I think I may just table the ES sorc for now. It’s too damn fragile and I just want something that can rush characters fast, and destroy

Baal runs to rush from 1-85

Assuming you've got Enigma for mobility, then the Hammerdin is easy to make durable for this purpose.

mikelessar wrote: 1 day ago

StoBeast wrote: 1 day ago

I think I may just table the ES sorc for now. It’s too damn fragile and I just want something that can rush characters fast, and destroy

Baal runs to rush from 1-85

You just said that wave 2 is annoying and slow with the Paladin...and

Nova Sorc is much faster than Hammerdin. Of course for the

Baal waves you must start with Static 3 or 4 times, then switch to

Nova until everything is dead. Super smooth.

The

Key is I have yet to die. I need a sunder and that should fix it. My sorc can’t even rush without dying. I really don’t know how you all play this character so safe as to not lose ES and die. I’m so used to teleporting into packs, killing main dude and moving on. My ES sorc just can’t. And I don’t have it in me to put another 10 levels on to see if it can.

I can transfer a

Black Cleft from LOD if I really want to… but right now I can do everything but wave two. Still not as good as warlock, but way better than sorc

Edit: oh I can stand there and watch my merc kill wave two… so at least I’m not dying.

Record some gameplay footage where your sorc is struggling and put it up on youtube, post the link here. Include all gear, skill tree, inventory and character sheet as well as merc. That should give ppl a good idea what you're doing wrong or can improve upon.

- With the premise that Worldstone and

Baal are way more challenging than all the other areas in the game -

I think I was there, no huge Wealth, looked for resilient builds, following guides, sorc keeps dying... Problem is that guides are done with lvl 99 and godly gear in mind so you don't get what is mandatory, what is important, what is not, considering your goal: a 360 flexible fast resilient build.

In my experience, what you need (mandatory):

- 20 hard points level

Telekinesis
- 95% ES Absorb (that is, level 40)
- Around 2.8-3k Mana after Call To Arms
- 105% FCR (63 works as well but you loose a lot, considering you need to

Sacrifice damage overall in other parts of the build)
- 50ish Poison res (the more the better)

You can get there at 85, I checked with D2planner.

Skills-wise, this means you need +20 to lightning skills. At level 85 you have 100 points. So IMHO the best is to max all relevant skills but

Lightning Mastery. And a good rolled Call To Arms is mandatory as well in any case.

In this situation, if you self wield Infinity, you are forced to have 7-8 skillers, big mana on amulets, rings and

Boots, otherwise you can't get there (or

Sacrifice the 105 FCR by using Jordans and

Frostburn)
Second option: use Spirit. Eschuta+CoH+Spirit allow to use SoJs,

Frostburn to solve mana and keep 105 FCR, and not need many skillers (4 are enough to get to 40 ES with CtH), and save 20 str points (also HOTO+Vipermagi+Spirit is viable, but less damage overall). Then

Silkweave and charms to increase either poison res, mana, life.

Personally, I tried with self wield but couldn't afford proper +mana on jewelry so ended up with too few mana and only 38 level ES and

Telekinesis. The second option overall need much less investment (you still need Infinity on Emilio, with Cure

Helm. He will die at times, but better him than you right?)

So with this solved, some advice (maybe you know them very well, you never know):
- you can't just telestomp on Act 3 dolls. On the other hand, you keep at distance and spam

Nova so they'll explode at distance while running at you.
- Souls are manageable to telestomp, but sometimes they are stacked and if you have the wrong curse you can be in danger. But 3-4 souls won't kill you.
- Blood Mana curse is annoying especially because without godly skillers your life is low. The merc's auras help a lot here to reduce its duration. I have a line of red potions to manage this. Annoying, not lethal.
- Anything else, is no big deal.
- Sidenote: when CtA effect finishes, you should immediately notice your mana goes down too fast (you should be at around 2k without buffs). It's very important to keep it checked and respam all the buffs.

Damage wise:
If you manage to obtain the mandatory elements with self wield option, you have not enormous damage against non immunes but good damage against immunes (this should be the main reason why you are choosing self wield)
If you go Eschuta+Spirit, you give away light res penetration so immunes will be slower to die. Anyway, good enough in p2/p3.

Hope this helps.

PS: I'm now lvl 96, and went for Obsession (bought one +3

Nova for 3

Jah) + Jeweler's Armor of the Whale (I found one) mainly because I never really looked for high quality jewelry and just sticked with SoJs and Mara (and for style points ) moreover with Obsession you just swap 3-piece

Tal-Rasha and some +7MF charms and it becomes a viable 350%MF build (it clears everything but I keep away from act 5). I play p3 usually.

Let me add: I totally agree with this:

Blubbalutsch wrote: 3 days ago

louner wrote: 3 days ago

Resistantces do not matter at all if you are using

Energy Shield.

Also check this out forums/budget-non-squishy-nova-sorc-t1770329.html

Lightning Res <50 + Pack of Souls simultanously shooting at you = Death
Bad Poison resist at Terror

Radament or second

Baal Wave = Big annoyance and dangerous
Bad resist and Lower Res cursed @

Chaos Sanctuary = Have fun drinking pots

Could add more examples, Scarabs just come to my mind

long story short= go 75% all res, even on ES sorc, its QoL

Cracume wrote: 21 hours ago

- With the premise that Worldstone and

Baal are way more challenging than all the other areas in the game -

- 40/41 level

Telekinesis

I didn't think soft points in

Telekinesis counted towards mana consumed per damage for

Energy Shield. It caps at 20 hard points & 75% doesn't it?

At level 16

Energy Shield absorbs 71% and gains 1% per level, soft/hard, until it caps at level 40 and 95%.

Yes, sorry. ES maxes at 40, not 41 and you need hard points for

Telekinesis. Corrected

The

Key is I have yet to die. I need a sunder and that should fix it. My sorc can’t even rush without dying. I really don’t know how you all play this character so safe as to not lose ES and die. I’m so used to teleporting into packs, killing main dude and moving on. My ES sorc just can’t. And I don’t have it in me to put another 10 levels on to see if it can.

I can transfer a

Black Cleft from LOD if I really want to… but right now I can do everything but wave two. Still not as good as warlock, but way better than sorc

Edit: oh I can stand there and watch my merc kill wave two… so at least I’m not dying.

****************************************************************************************************************************************

I am a bit confused - where do you play your

Nova Sorc? LoD or Rotw?

You really should consider leveling to at least 94 - I am sure you wont regret those few hours invested, since many builds requires to be "complete" before they really excel in the game.

Here is what you should consider (at level 85):

1 pts. into

Frozen Armor and

Warmth
20 pts. into

Nova,

Telekinesis,

Energy Shield, Mastery
9 pts. into

Static Field

This should result in you being able to do just about any task in the game with ease - at P3

However, as with all other builds, the gear is just as important.

For the strongest budget build, you could do the

Crescent Moon

For the Selfwielding Infinity build, you will need an amulet +2 10 FCR - alternatively you

Sacrifice 1 SOJ for Apprentice ring - until you can get the amulet.

Regardless of which build you aim for - the 105 FCR threshold should not be ignored - especially if you want a specialized rusher.

Your merc setup (according to me), should be

Prayer merc with CoH - Cure - Insight

If you want a more detailed guide, let me know.

If you need help with gear, let me know (hence my initial question).

Bonus:

get those Lightning skillers with FHR - get that up to at least 60 - preferably 86