Caster end game boots (with no need for Resist or FHR)

ShadowHeart wrote: 6 months ago

Very true, but comparing 75% res vs, say, -25% res in case ES does go down, is like night and day, it's a 5x damage difference. So if your

Energy Shield goes down, having maxed resistances means you actually have a chance of survival. Having negative resistances at that point means you pretty much instantly melt because whatever drained your ES is still alive and still damaging you. Is it worth sacrificing some damage output for resistances? Well, that's up to each and every one to decide for themselves, of course.

On my runs for TZ tombs my ES occasionally runs out before I finish the tombs. I actually don't know what it runs out so fast, but for whatever reason it does. Maybe I just spend too long picking stuff up. Anyway, it runs out, and then I spark another ES without using my super fantastic ES staff (which is back in town) because I'm usually moments away from finishing the last tomb.

In that moment, when my ES goes down, if I take a hit from damned near anyone I'm almost dead. I'm not talking like a big battle or anything, but a

Skeleton or

Zombie. It's hit recovery, it's massive chunks of life, it's touch and go. I think the way you play ES sorc is to just never ever let your ES go down or your mana dry up. If you try to plan for that eventuality, you'll just end up putting yourself there more often.

If you want to get your lit res up, you can get some multi-res

Boots with lightning and poison, run 35 res vipermagi instead of

Ormus, get some res on the amulet (since you only need 10 FCR with viper you have a little more breathing room for shopping or finding), and of course you can run 11/20 SC with lightning res. That's potentially 88 lit res from small charms, possibly 11% more if you don't need a

Key when you're running with souls. What does it cost?

2 skills from

Ormus, some mana, and MPK.

I tried working it out in the calculator and it's a little tricky because there are so many variables. You can definitely approach max LR if you gear up carefully. And you do

Sacrifice some damage and mana in the process. I personally don't think it's worth it, but if you're doing a lot of

Baal runs or something it might be.

Edit:

For hardcore it might look more like that actually. Definitely vipermagi over

Ormus.

departure wrote: 6 months ago

She's OP and has no issues with anything p7 basically. But that does not stop me from optimizing. At the moment I'm farming TZs for grand charms and gems and all I ever do is reroll grand charms hoping for another life lit skiller, and save up for crafted amulets hoping for a 2/20 with poison res. (I do look for a couple of other things, 40/15 jewels for my bowazon, res/

Teleport ammys for my smiter, and res/life SCs for him as well).

The question is what is best.

What are you trying to optimize? Damage? Your mana/life pool? Kill speed? Survivability? The answer to that really just depends on your play style.

I use vipermagi with a lite facet. The +35 all res brining me into the positive resistances is a great safety blanket that allows me to play without stressing. I've got a +3

Nova/15LD

Ormus but I never use it. My amulet is a 2/17 with 17 poison res so wearing

Ormus means I need to give up 2 SOJs for 2x 10FCR rings. That is too much of a mana loss for running ES. I like to play calm and lazy.

Knappogue wrote: 6 months ago

What are you trying to optimize? Damage? Your mana/life pool? Kill speed? Survivability? The answer to that really just depends on your play style.

I use vipermagi with a lite facet. The +35 all res brining me into the positive resistances is a great safety blanket that allows me to play without stressing. I've got a +3

Nova/15LD

Ormus but I never use it. My amulet is a 2/17 with 17 poison res so wearing

Ormus means I need to give up 2 SOJs for 2x 10FCR rings. That is too much of a mana loss for running ES. I like to play calm and lazy.

Well you need a 2/20 to run

Ormus.

I've dropped two 2/20 sorc amulets thus far offline and got unlucky with the poison res (or basically anything else useful). Maybe the next one will hit for me. What am I trying to optimize? I think p7 clear speed mostly. That means that the damage and extra mana is very useful. I don't carry antidotes with me, so if I get hit with super poison I end up not being able to clear it easily, and if I don't have good PR, I have to either go back to town, sit around and wait, or go rejuvs. The problem with going rejuvs is that you can easily blow through your stash on a superpoison (even with Cure). I could carry antidotes, but then I carry fewer ID scrolls on the

Belt (I usually carry 8 ID scrolls). If I dropped to four I could carry antidotes but then I'm running out of scrolls more often and putting them in the

Belt is a pain because they don't auto-slot from

Telekinesis when you run out. So if I don't carry 8, I'm stuck with being able to use 3 before I have to re-slot manually. And three is only just enough to make room for a grand charm if I have a lot of small things.

Superpoison is not a problem at higher PR levels. And at the moment, with 8x 11% PR SCs, I'm doing fine. But I am aware of the fact that there is still a larger trade to consider.

About resistances:

I use Vipermagi as well. However, with the resists from torch + anni (in my case 35 combined) and 34 from my Viper, I just about reach zero resistances on hell difficulty. And that is BEFORE the minus 70 from Sunder. Thanks to a good pair of sandstrom treks and 1 small charm, my poison res is maxed out. Fire and cold are around zero and lightning is at minus 53.

I dont see how I could seriously improve my fire/cold/light res on this build without sacrificing kill speed. Thus I live with it, since it isnt needed as long as ES is on.


About precasting ES:

I don't get that. At spelllevel 38, 95% of the incoming damage will be absorbed by ES. From what I've read, this is maximum. With all the +skills and +lightning skills on gear I reach L38 with my regular CTA-

Flail and

Lidless Wall on switch (after

Battle Command). I dont need a staff with additional ES-levels for that. Therefore I dont rely on a specific precast-item and can recast ES at any time during my runs. And it lasts 1080 secs. I've never had it wear off in the middle of a fight.

The only situation in the game where I can get in trouble is 10+ souls firing their lightning at me while I am lazy and slow to react. That can deal enough damage to drain my 2870 mana. But that rarely happens. If I jump into them in time they switch to their melee attack and are easy.

departure wrote: 6 months ago

Well you need a 2/20 to run

Ormus.

Even then, 2/20 +

Ormus gives barely any higher damage than 3/10 + viper (around ~2%), yet it has 1 less skill for BO, 2 less skills for ES, 0 mdr, potentionally less res. Maybe a godly 2/20 can compensate in stats, but otherwise I'd skip

Ormus.

uuee wrote: 6 months ago

departure wrote: 6 months ago

Well you need a 2/20 to run

Ormus.

Even then, 2/20 +

Ormus gives barely any higher damage than 3/10 + viper (around ~2%), yet it has 1 less skill for BO, 2 less skills for ES, 0 mdr, potentionally less res. Maybe a godly 2/20 can compensate in stats, but otherwise I'd skip

Ormus.

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. I did the calculation and came to the same conclusion.

uuee wrote: 6 months ago

Even then, 2/20 +

Ormus gives barely any higher damage than 3/10 + viper (around ~2%), yet it has 1 less skill for BO, 2 less skills for ES, 0 mdr, potentionally less res. Maybe a godly 2/20 can compensate in stats, but otherwise I'd skip

Ormus.

FacelessVoid wrote: 6 months ago

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. I did the calculation and came to the same conclusion.

I'll take a 2% bump in damage in exchange for 1 less BO, 2 less ES, 0mdr, and the reduced res. Part of the reason for that is understanding precasting ES and what it offers.

Precasting ES is about saving ES skills, which ultimately go into t-storm. That has marginal usefulness. Online my CTA is made in an ES staff as a kind of in-between balance. But offline I buff for longer runs with the 9ES staff. The character is spec'd specifically for this. For shorter runs, you wouldn't do that (takes too long) and you need a character spec'd specifically for that.

So the precast ES is barely useful (tstorm is not great). And so 2 less skills on ES when comparing viper with 3/10 against

Ormus with 2/20 is also of marginal usefulness. I'd rather have the

Nova damage.

BO hurts a little bit. The res essentially doesn't hurt at all (because small charms or treks). But maybe there is some way to argue that a 3/10 with viper gives you enough res that you can go big on mana or something.

Ultimately what it all boils down to (BO and res) is how big the mana pool is. I think what I'm hearing is an argument that you can

Sacrifice 2% of damage and go vipermagi for an expanded mana pool. I'd want to know how big that mana pool is though, because 2% is real.

departure wrote: 6 months ago

Ultimately what it all boils down to (BO and res) is how big the mana pool is. I think what I'm hearing is an argument that you can

Sacrifice 2% of damage and go vipermagi for an expanded mana pool. I'd want to know how big that mana pool is though, because 2% is real.

Let's see without precast (takes more time than that 2% and the higher lvl TS can save you:P) and CTA+lidless (so only 94% ES for

Ormus builds in this comparison) wearing etreks:

basic amu:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/wqan305y

godly amu:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/joao9008

viper:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/m2an105v

uuee wrote: 6 months ago

Let's see without precast (takes more time than that 2% and the higher lvl TS can save you:P) and CTA+lidless (so only 94% ES for

Ormus builds in this comparison) wearing etreks:

basic amu:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/wqan305y

godly amu:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/joao9008

viper:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/m2an105v

The precast thing is not a viper/

Ormus thing. I'd do that either way.

I was crunching the numbers simultaneously and got the same results but for an ever so slightly different character (silks):

Ormus with base 2/20 and Silks
PR 51

Nova 30,059 DPS
Mana 2710

Viper with 3/10 and Silks
PR 53

Nova 29,652
Mana 2806

I filled the SCs with 17/20s wherever PR wasn't needed so that I could get the same PR in both cases. The amulets are bare bones (10 mana for crafted amulet) in both cases. So with viper you can manage 3.5% more mana in exchange for 1.4% less damage. I'd go damage on that. The amulet has to roll with 51 mana instead of 10 in order to even out the mana loss from res and 1BO.

If I swap for treks (backfilling 17/20 SCs), I end up with something that looks better for those stats:

Ormus with base 2/20 with Treks
PR 56

Nova 30,059
Mana 2824

And viper would again get slightly higher mana. The downside of treks being that it's a gain of 4.2% mana but at the loss of 5mpk. And I have trouble figuring out how to assess that.

Let's say you have full mana when you hop into a mob of 10 monsters. You static once, and hit for 4 novas. Let's call that 2 seconds (I think it's a little less). At the end of that 2 seconds, if you had the extra mana regen, you get what 40 more mana from the extra regen. If you have the MPK, you get 50 more mana. I dunno, I guess that makes the treks worth it for the vitality.

I had a realization (I'm not that smart I guess), that Treks have another unsung benefit that I didn't appreciate - FHR.

You might be thinking, why do you need FHR for a

Nova sorc? She doesn't get put in hit recovery because she absorbs all of the damage in mana. But if you drop her into a pack of urdars or similar, she still gets put in hit recovery and it's annoying. The other thing that's annoying about that specific issue is that they have crushing blow, so they actually do damage to you while you're in hit recovery.

So 20%FHR from treks has some real utility in dealing with urdars and similar creatures. And given how much I farm the tombs I think that's enough of a reason for me to go with treks.

Unfortunately I have not yet found

Eth treks (

Eth is important for reduced strength requirement), so I'm now once again MF farming to find an

Eth pair.

departure wrote: 6 months ago

uuee wrote: 6 months ago

Even then, 2/20 +

Ormus gives barely any higher damage than 3/10 + viper (around ~2%), yet it has 1 less skill for BO, 2 less skills for ES, 0 mdr, potentionally less res. Maybe a godly 2/20 can compensate in stats, but otherwise I'd skip

Ormus.

FacelessVoid wrote: 6 months ago

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. I did the calculation and came to the same conclusion.

I'll take a 2% bump in damage in exchange for 1 less BO, 2 less ES, 0mdr, and the reduced res. Part of the reason for that is understanding precasting ES and what it offers.

Precasting ES is about saving ES skills, which ultimately go into t-storm. That has marginal usefulness. Online my CTA is made in an ES staff as a kind of in-between balance. But offline I buff for longer runs with the 9ES staff. The character is spec'd specifically for this. For shorter runs, you wouldn't do that (takes too long) and you need a character spec'd specifically for that.

So the precast ES is barely useful (tstorm is not great). And so 2 less skills on ES when comparing viper with 3/10 against

Ormus with 2/20 is also of marginal usefulness. I'd rather have the

Nova damage.

BO hurts a little bit. The res essentially doesn't hurt at all (because small charms or treks). But maybe there is some way to argue that a 3/10 with viper gives you enough res that you can go big on mana or something.

Ultimately what it all boils down to (BO and res) is how big the mana pool is. I think what I'm hearing is an argument that you can

Sacrifice 2% of damage and go vipermagi for an expanded mana pool. I'd want to know how big that mana pool is though, because 2% is real.

At this point, since you are relying on ES so much and care about bigger mana pool and such, one might consider something like

Silkweave to be an ultimate-end game caster boots then.
Not only you are getting that 10% mana boost BUT more importantly you are getting 5 MOK which effectively deals with poison as well. And 30 FRW does help significantly if you are all about speed like you said (even Sosa doesn't tele all the time)...

TheDoo wrote: 3 months ago

At this point, since you are relying on ES so much and care about bigger mana pool and such, one might consider something like

Silkweave to be an ultimate-end game caster boots then.
Not only you are getting that 10% mana boost BUT more importantly you are getting 5 MOK which effectively deals with poison as well. And 30 FRW does help significantly if you are all about speed like you said (even Sosa doesn't tele all the time)...

I've abused a good portion of this thread waffling between

Silkweave and sandstorm treks. See, for example, this breakdown right here:

departure wrote: 6 months ago

I'm still waffling on sandstorm vs silks for ES

Nova over a year later.

Mostly I run silks, because I have PR small charms. But lately I've been considering 17/20 mana/life small charms as an alternative to PR/life small charms. It turns out that if you go to mana/life small charms over PR small charms you can raise your life, mana, and PR by going to treks over silks. The only thing you drop is MPK. But is it worth it?

Example stats for the same character:

Treks with perfect mana/life SCs:
Life: 1255
Mana: 2697
PR: 62%

Silks with perfect PR/life SCs:
Life: 1225
Mana: 2577
PR: 58%
5 MPK

Give up 30 life and 120 mana for 5mpk? The difference in mana regeneration is 10 mana per second. So if you're killing more than 2 per second it's better to go silks.

I guess in a perfect world you go silks and swap out your small charms depending on the area. That's probably more trouble than it's worth. Another avenue is just to carry antidotes or to drink a few at the start of every run.

Edit:

God-Tier Crafted

Boots with mix of SCs:
LIfe: 1225
Mana: 2776
PR: 65%

The difference in mana regen is 20 mana per second. So it's 4 kills per second to break even between silks and the literal best crafted

Boots.

Ultimately, the reason I'm headed back to sandstorms is that FHR is a benefit I hadn't considered. Sandstorms have the PR that you need for ES (MPK does not handle poison damage since it bypasses ES), and it has some vitality. When Sandstorms take care of PR, you can move your small charms from life/poison to life/mana. That ultimately increases your mana pool, and as I've shown above, that can result in more life and mana and PR. The downside is a loss of MPK, but the balance on that is FHR from sandstorms.

I have been a bit fast on the thread, granted, but my own

Nova sorc does not fear Poison thanks to merc 's Cure (+

Prayer+

Meditation) and a few charms.

So I use

Silkweave indeed (while

Eth Treks are my go to for my necro).

Is there something I missed for the Poison danger for

Nova sorc ?

departure wrote: 3 months ago

TheDoo wrote: 3 months ago

At this point, since you are relying on ES so much and care about bigger mana pool and such, one might consider something like

Silkweave to be an ultimate-end game caster boots then.
Not only you are getting that 10% mana boost BUT more importantly you are getting 5 MOK which effectively deals with poison as well. And 30 FRW does help significantly if you are all about speed like you said (even Sosa doesn't tele all the time)...

I've abused a good portion of this thread waffling between

Silkweave and sandstorm treks. See, for example, this breakdown right here:

departure wrote: 6 months ago

I'm still waffling on sandstorm vs silks for ES

Nova over a year later.

Mostly I run silks, because I have PR small charms. But lately I've been considering 17/20 mana/life small charms as an alternative to PR/life small charms. It turns out that if you go to mana/life small charms over PR small charms you can raise your life, mana, and PR by going to treks over silks. The only thing you drop is MPK. But is it worth it?

Example stats for the same character:

Treks with perfect mana/life SCs:
Life: 1255
Mana: 2697
PR: 62%

Silks with perfect PR/life SCs:
Life: 1225
Mana: 2577
PR: 58%
5 MPK

Give up 30 life and 120 mana for 5mpk? The difference in mana regeneration is 10 mana per second. So if you're killing more than 2 per second it's better to go silks.

I guess in a perfect world you go silks and swap out your small charms depending on the area. That's probably more trouble than it's worth. Another avenue is just to carry antidotes or to drink a few at the start of every run.

Edit:

God-Tier Crafted

Boots with mix of SCs:
LIfe: 1225
Mana: 2776
PR: 65%

The difference in mana regen is 20 mana per second. So it's 4 kills per second to break even between silks and the literal best crafted

Boots.

Ultimately, the reason I'm headed back to sandstorms is that FHR is a benefit I hadn't considered. Sandstorms have the PR that you need for ES (MPK does not handle poison damage since it bypasses ES), and it has some vitality. When Sandstorms take care of PR, you can move your small charms from life/poison to life/mana. That ultimately increases your mana pool, and as I've shown above, that can result in more life and mana and PR. The downside is a loss of MPK, but the balance on that is FHR from sandstorms.

Sorry I just read the last couple of posts, I'm sick af didn't even see you were not OP nor that this thread has 4 pages (until later)... xd

if you dont need fhr

Marrowwalk will beat sandstorm tek(FHR and poison res is not need)

Bone prisoner can play something in uber

And it is also depends on which enemy you are target at....

Damage for fcr 125, usually choose fcr, because most of case monster die in 2 hit, faster cast makes you able to move on next target.

For non light immunity monster( viper = osmur = osmur without

Nova 1p)

For immunity, I guess result still same.


--------------in the case of enough damage---
if your damage is enough and resist enough and wont get killed.

The other idea is to increase run speed. Dont let your sorc walk like turtle.

Change your charm to resist/frw and boot to highest frw. It it real to increase your game experience , not something looks more damage but result in same 1 hit kill.(overflow damage)

Necrarch wrote: 3 months ago

Is there something I missed for the Poison danger for

Nova sorc ?

Wow this thread is old. I didn't reread it all but I think (if I'm remembering right) OP was using a

Nova ES build, thus the poison res issue.

Agreed, but with Cure Poison is quickly taken care of (assuming you don't have a dramatically low res, but you don't really need 75

Cap)

Necrarch wrote: 3 months ago

Agreed, but with Cure Poison is quickly taken care of (assuming you don't have a dramatically low res, but you don't really need 75

Cap)

It's true that you don't need to

Cap it, but super poison can still get you and crops up in a lot of the usual places to farm - tombs, throne, halls. Super poison is irritating and sidelines you quickly. Even with a decent poison res, like say 50, you can be sidelined by super poison despite Cure and

Prayer.

This thread is very much about optimization. Can you make do with little poison res? Yes. I've been running silks for a long time with PR charms to make up the difference and it's totally fine. But I'm still trying to figure out which is absolutely the best choice, not necessarily what works - lots of things work.

Urdars are annoying, and one of the only thing that kills me. That's because I have very little FHR on my

Nova sorc. And that's making me take a look at those treks again. The mana lost from silks can be made up by shifting charms. In fact, treks result in the highest mana, life, and PR overall. The only downside is lost MPK. But FHR is an upside for sure.

It's worth noting since some are new, that I run

Ormus robes to max out

Nova damage. That leaves me with reduced PR due to the lack of vipermagi.

Ah, indeed, missed that, as I am with a rather classic

Um-ed Vipermagi thanks to Shadowheart

Understand better your dilemma now !

Skin of the Vipermagi