I wish I hadn't made my nova sorceress

oOKIWIOo wrote: 7 months ago

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?

The Damage article at Amazon Basin details this: https://www.theamazonbasin.com/wiki/ind ... e#Defender

1. % Unit modifier (this is special thing that only affects PvP, pets and mercs - see article for details)
2. Bone Armor or
   Cyclone Armor
3. %
   Energy Shield
4. Damage Reduced or Magic Damage Reduced
5. % Resistance
   -% Enemy Resistance
6. % Absorb
7. + Absorb
8. Excess DR or MDR

Not all modifiers are applicable to all damage types (see the article for full details).
Also - one thing that the article doesn't mention is that

Cyclone Armor can be made to apply after

Energy Shield if you cast

Energy Shield after casting

Cyclone Armor: forums/cyclone-armour-on-infinity-worth ... 41383.html
(tl;dr - the one you cast last applies first, might be unintentional, not sure)

oOKIWIOo wrote: 7 months ago

So you assumed that the

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

I didn't assume
The OP actually mentioned it in the second post: post3921972.html#p3921972
And It's with the Sunder Charm, yes

I carry a whisp projector ring in my cube for when i meet souls, works pretty good for me.

Man I got my kid to bed tonight just in time for a

Tal Rasha tz.

If she is a sports car that was like taking her on the autobahn. Nothing dangerous and tons of mobs to clear.

Frenzy Barb is alot of fun and can shred Ubers or any

Terror Zone with the right gear. Pretty well rounded build too and has lots of options for gear, great for those who like to switch/customize their setup for different scenarios. I've played as all of them and my favorites would be my

Frenzy Barb and my Zealer/Smiter pally. I've soloed Uber Trist many times with my

Frenzy Barb.

I have a Lightning sorc with 105 FCR

Teleport as well and I feel ya. Kinda feels like a glass cannon. Lot of the same gear as you have, no Griffons though, i use

Shako.

Frenzy Barb with tweaks to gear and Enigma can

Teleport, but I usually run CoH, because

Teleport feels kinda overrated on a

Frenzy Barb and because no resists on Enigma means CoH or Fortitude makes him way tankier. 1 point into

Leap or

Leap Attack gives good mobility and with

Frenzy stacks it's even better.

BigD wrote: 7 months ago

Frenzy Barb is alot of fun and can shred Ubers or any

Terror Zone with the right gear. Pretty well rounded build too and has lots of options for gear, great for those who like to switch/customize their setup for different scenarios. I've played as all of them and my favorites would be my

Frenzy Barb and my Zealer/Smiter pally. I've soloed Uber Trist many times with my

Frenzy Barb.

I have a Lightning sorc with 105 FCR

Teleport as well and I feel ya. Kinda feels like a glass cannon. Lot of the same gear as you have, no Griffons though, i use

Shako.

Frenzy Barb with tweaks to gear and Enigma can

Teleport, but I usually run CoH, because

Teleport feels kinda overrated on a

Frenzy Barb and because no resists on Enigma means CoH or Fortitude makes him way tankier. 1 point into

Leap or

Leap Attack gives good mobility and with

Frenzy stacks it's even better.

Currently considering a dual-wield barb, because when i levelled up to respec into a

War Cry, well, despite not using all skillpoints and being put together haphazardly, the levelup actually worked much better...

But, i'm uncertain on where i want the focus, my levelling was done purely using

Double Swing, relying almost completely on crushing blow to be effective(about 10 pts each in

Bash and D swing), would it work well do you think to max DS, just use 1 point in

Frenzy, 20 in Berzerk(for the bonus to

Frenzy)?

The aim would be to use dual upgraded

Fleshrender(i have a pair of nearly perfect already upgraded that i used with the above levelling(and a pair of lesser ones not upgraded)),

Guillaume's Face,

Gore Rider and probably Duress, which together means 85% CB, 68% OW and 66% crit with every hit.
So, CB and OW would be the big damage dealers.

Based on what i'm getting from maxroll, the difference in damage between skill 1 and 20 in

Frenzy isn't exactly huge.
And even the difference between maxed DS and

Frenzy and having both at just 1+skillers is merely 4813/s vs 6658, making me wonder if those 38 points is better invested elsewhere.
Or if it's justified due to need for AR...

Basically, do you think this, would work:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/186s40a5

Are you willing to do warcry barb or

Frenzy ?
If you're planing to go hybrid, it means you may be a bad warcryer and a bad

Frenzy.

About the

Frenzy lvl, this will change your attack speed, so the breakpoints you may reach.

If you want max CB, double Death may also be great and doing way more damage that

Fleshrender.

Nova Sorceress is kind of glass canon when you compare her with other S tier builds, but you have many things to upgrade. First, get those skillers, eve if they're plain ones. You need 95% absorb to be safe (safer). Anf I'd suggest to find a

War Staff with

Energy Shield to roll Call To Arms in it. If it is +3 to

Energy Shield would be perfect. And preferably you can use sockets to decrease damage or mgic damage reduction as well. If your merc has Cure head piece, all good.

Here's my build: https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/o382e01l#8

Tornado_OLO wrote: 7 months ago

Are you willing to do warcry barb or

Frenzy ?
If you're planing to go hybrid, it means you may be a bad warcryer and a bad

Frenzy.

About the

Frenzy lvl, this will change your attack speed, so the breakpoints you may reach.

I already have a warcry barb and he was dramatically less capable than i was expecting. That is exactly why i'm looking at this.

And no, what i was looking at was doing a

Frenzy-ier that relies more on CB/OW than skillpoints in

Frenzy or

Double Swing to do damage, mostly to allow me to get a higher

Find Item percentage.

The question remains whether relying on +skills to reach 9 in

Frenzy is enough by itself.

If you want max CB, double Death may also be great and doing way more damage that

Fleshrender.

Don't forget, they also have OW and the fact that i already HAVE 2 of those upgraded. To get dual Death i would basically have to spend most of my "cash reserves", which i'm not doing for just a single build.

Nova sorc becomes incredibly tanky once u get to level 40 ES. I usually pump ES to 40 (after +skills) before maxing

Lightning Mastery, and combined with a 13mdr vipermagi, this makes souls hit you for 0 lightning. You still need to make sure you build up a sizeable mana pool but it can get really tanky. Especially if you go for a nice orb + max block instead of self-wield Infinity.

FULCRUM75 wrote: 7 months ago

Don't forget, they also have OW and the fact that i already HAVE 2 of those upgraded. To get dual Death i would basically have to spend most of my "cash reserves", which i'm not doing for just a single build.

If you plan to kill only using CB and OW, that may be long.
CB and OW are usefull against bosses.

I really recommend you to get a real weapon.
Many runeword are cheap and doing decent damage : Oath, Lawbringer, Honor
Some unique are fine too :

Lightsabre ,

Azurewrath,

Fleshripper,

Stormlash, etc

FULCRUM75 wrote: 7 months ago

BigD wrote: 7 months ago

Frenzy Barb is alot of fun and can shred Ubers or any

Terror Zone with the right gear. Pretty well rounded build too and has lots of options for gear, great for those who like to switch/customize their setup for different scenarios. I've played as all of them and my favorites would be my

Frenzy Barb and my Zealer/Smiter pally. I've soloed Uber Trist many times with my

Frenzy Barb.

I have a Lightning sorc with 105 FCR

Teleport as well and I feel ya. Kinda feels like a glass cannon. Lot of the same gear as you have, no Griffons though, i use

Shako.

Frenzy Barb with tweaks to gear and Enigma can

Teleport, but I usually run CoH, because

Teleport feels kinda overrated on a

Frenzy Barb and because no resists on Enigma means CoH or Fortitude makes him way tankier. 1 point into

Leap or

Leap Attack gives good mobility and with

Frenzy stacks it's even better.

Currently considering a dual-wield barb, because when i levelled up to respec into a

War Cry, well, despite not using all skillpoints and being put together haphazardly, the levelup actually worked much better...

But, i'm uncertain on where i want the focus, my levelling was done purely using

Double Swing, relying almost completely on crushing blow to be effective(about 10 pts each in

Bash and D swing), would it work well do you think to max DS, just use 1 point in

Frenzy, 20 in Berzerk(for the bonus to

Frenzy)?

The aim would be to use dual upgraded

Fleshrender(i have a pair of nearly perfect already upgraded that i used with the above levelling(and a pair of lesser ones not upgraded)),

Guillaume's Face,

Gore Rider and probably Duress, which together means 85% CB, 68% OW and 66% crit with every hit.
So, CB and OW would be the big damage dealers.

Based on what i'm getting from maxroll, the difference in damage between skill 1 and 20 in

Frenzy isn't exactly huge.
And even the difference between maxed DS and

Frenzy and having both at just 1+skillers is merely 4813/s vs 6658, making me wonder if those 38 points is better invested elsewhere.
Or if it's justified due to need for AR...

Basically, do you think this, would work:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/186s40a5

I'd ditch the

War Cry and max out both

Frenzy and

Double Swing. Needs the synergy boosts to AR and damage to reach full potential. I find horking to be mostly counter productive to a

Frenzy Barb as well and just slows you down. Focus on kill speed and the drops will come.


As far as war cries skill trees go, just 1 point

Battle Command, max out

Battle Orders, and as many points into

Taunt as you can after maxing out

Frenzy,

Double Swing,

Battle Orders and whichever weapon mastery you're using (personally I prefer phase blades). 1 point wonder into

Increased Speed and Natural Resist too, and if you're having difficulty with mobs and physical immunes you can get

Grim Ward but I personally don't, I'd rather save those points for

Taunt (synergizes with

Frenzy and comes in handy when trying to divide and conquer mobs with projectile attacks too).

If you're planning on Ubers you'd need a lot of changes to that setup you posted.

FULCRUM75 wrote: 7 months ago

BigD wrote: 7 months ago

Frenzy Barb is alot of fun and can shred Ubers or any

Terror Zone with the right gear. Pretty well rounded build too and has lots of options for gear, great for those who like to switch/customize their setup for different scenarios. I've played as all of them and my favorites would be my

Frenzy Barb and my Zealer/Smiter pally. I've soloed Uber Trist many times with my

Frenzy Barb.

I have a Lightning sorc with 105 FCR

Teleport as well and I feel ya. Kinda feels like a glass cannon. Lot of the same gear as you have, no Griffons though, i use

Shako.

Frenzy Barb with tweaks to gear and Enigma can

Teleport, but I usually run CoH, because

Teleport feels kinda overrated on a

Frenzy Barb and because no resists on Enigma means CoH or Fortitude makes him way tankier. 1 point into

Leap or

Leap Attack gives good mobility and with

Frenzy stacks it's even better.

Currently considering a dual-wield barb, because when i levelled up to respec into a

War Cry, well, despite not using all skillpoints and being put together haphazardly, the levelup actually worked much better...

But, i'm uncertain on where i want the focus, my levelling was done purely using

Double Swing, relying almost completely on crushing blow to be effective(about 10 pts each in

Bash and D swing), would it work well do you think to max DS, just use 1 point in

Frenzy, 20 in Berzerk(for the bonus to

Frenzy)?

The aim would be to use dual upgraded

Fleshrender(i have a pair of nearly perfect already upgraded that i used with the above levelling(and a pair of lesser ones not upgraded)),

Guillaume's Face,

Gore Rider and probably Duress, which together means 85% CB, 68% OW and 66% crit with every hit.
So, CB and OW would be the big damage dealers.

Based on what i'm getting from maxroll, the difference in damage between skill 1 and 20 in

Frenzy isn't exactly huge.
And even the difference between maxed DS and

Frenzy and having both at just 1+skillers is merely 4813/s vs 6658, making me wonder if those 38 points is better invested elsewhere.
Or if it's justified due to need for AR...

Basically, do you think this, would work:
https://maxroll.gg/d2/d2planner/186s40a5

I'd just put 1 point into

Berserk too. Comes in handy for certain physical immunes and elites, no need for any more than 1 point though in my experience.

I'd probably ditch the skillers for +AR and +damage charms or +res&life charms too. +skills charms don't make as big as difference on

Frenzy barb as they do on other classes.

Might post my current setup later here.

Adding to the

Energy Shield discussion:

You can think of ES as multiplying your effective life total. For example, if you have 50% absorption from ES, you have effectively doubled your life total. If ES absorbs 75%, then only 25% gets through, so you've quadrupled your health. That would be incredible, but on an ES sorc you're typically skimping on vitality and resists, so it can feel weak in many situations.

However, things really take off when you get closer to maxing ES. With 90% absorb, your effective life is x10. And at the upper limit of 95%, only 5% of damage gets through, so effective life is x20. Putting that in perspective, a 1,000 health sorc with maxed ES has an effective health of 20,000. And we can apply the same logic to our

Prayer healing: 75 health every two seconds becomes an effective 1,500.

The weakness is that your mana still has to bear most of the brunt, and the above Principle is working against us for elemental damage. A sorc with 75% lightning resist takes only 25% to her health, while

Telekinesis only gets up to 25% damage reduction. So you take triple the damage to your mana from elemental sources - your mana pool is essentially 1/3 it's size against souls. On the other hand, we can stack mana pretty high, so it's possible to tank an unexpected soul attack, as long as you react fast.

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.

This made such a huge difference last night. Along with tweaking some of my gear based on your recommendations of course.

Felt 10x more durable and was much more fun to play. Thank you!