Hybrid Sorc for MFing?

Hi folks. I currently have a lvl 90 blizzard sorc for mfing and she does well with mid-level gear with around 300% mf and 105% FCR breakpoint, at least against everything not cold immune. With my merc with Insight I can easily kill

Mephisto in 5 seconds or less, playing alone.

I was wondering, would it be worth to make an hybrid sorc to cover more areas? specially for farming places like

The Countess, the pit,

Chaos Sanctuary and those places with a lot of cold immunity. The merc helps in these cases but it makes runs much slower.

Before trying this out and re-spec, I'd like to hear your opinion. Of course I need to keep the same killing speed I actually have so it does not hurt my hunting sessions.

What would you suggest? I appreciate your input.
Thanks!

my end-game

Nova sorc that balance killing speed + run speed + MF (320)
Head: Griffon
Weapon: Infinity / Call-to-arm preferred made in staff with 3

Chilling Armor,

Chilling Armor is a must have for this build in my opinion, so either via staff or hard-point
Armor: Enigma or

Eth

Skullder's Ire - prefer Enigma for FRW

Belt:

Arachnid Mesh
Amulet: 2/20 (must have)
Ring: FCR 10 each ring with poison res and life/mana/MF
Glove: mage fist
Boot:

War Traveler
GC: SK + Life, more life to survive through the poison-damage map and mana-curse mobs
SC: Poison res + MF 7

Merc:
Insight + Cure + Chains of Honors

This build walk 99% of map, the dangerous maps that need extremely drifting skill are the ones spawn Soul (

Baal +

Frozen River + Great Mash)
Dont worry about big -Lightning Res |- Fire Res | - Cold Res the Mana Shield will absorb without problem.

I can't make equivalent build for cold sorc, I can boost cold damage and - cold resistance by putting in facets to armor and shield but trade-off the MF significantly.
The

Fireball +

Hydra build can achieve same outcome as

Nova.

marcelomusza wrote: 3 weeks ago

I was wondering, would it be worth to make an hybrid sorc to cover more areas?

Not really.

Cold Rupture + Doom = all monsters die in seconds (whether they have immunity or not).

blizzard sorc, you can also pick

Hydra, it is working well in some area.

In my case, I run cold sorc in

Baal. Because when you play

Nova sorc, you need to

Teleport then

Nova. cold is long range and

Hydra is auto-aim.

But I also have

Nova sorc/

Hydra as second play. I use that to farm

Key and countess. For those area you only need aim one target ,

Nova sorc is better. If they light immune, then I use

Hydra.(sunder or not, sunder work but resistance too high take too much time to kill)

Cold is good at long range, and you have to aim .

Nekeyby wrote: 3 weeks ago

marcelomusza wrote: 3 weeks ago

I was wondering, would it be worth to make an hybrid sorc to cover more areas?

Not really.

Cold Rupture + Doom = all monsters die in seconds (whether they have immunity or not).

Cold Rupture is the answer.

You don't need Doom since

Cold Mastery takes care of the res. Note that 20 hard points in cold res are no longer a waste since more skill points have an effect on sundered enemies.

I would recommend Death fathom over Doom but also cheaper weapons (Spirit CS, oculus, ...) are totally sufficient, esp. for mf'ing. I was using full tals this season as starter for my Blizzard sorc before respecing.

Do you need Doom? No.

Is it a viable build? Fuck, yes.

When using Doom, 1 point into

Cold Mastery is enough, you don't need more. My Sorc is rocking a build with a maxed

Static Field (23 yards radius!). Just spam static between two blizzard castings, this is incredibly powerful!

I would say, in a full multiplayer game, my build outperforms

Death's Fathom by far!

And an axe-wielding Sorceress with a

Holy Freeze aura is badass.

maxed blizzard, 1 to

Cold Mastery and 20 in

Telekinesis is comfy as shit. the only "problem" is when blizzard absolutely misses target with one mage standing in just the right position to avoid the whole blizzard casting lol. but

Ice Blast does the job.
my sorc has 300mf (isted

Death's Fathom, facet on nightwing, 3tal pieces) and hits 9k, with 4 empty columns in inventory for loot, maxed res.
love standing melee to uber diablo and just destroying him with with pure damage and barely needing 2 pots (blue/red).
also sending 1 or 2

Glacial Spike to kill a pack of souls in act 5 is nice.

DasNarf wrote: 3 weeks ago

Do you need Doom? No.

Is it a viable build? Fuck, yes.

When using Doom, 1 point into

Cold Mastery is enough, you don't need more. My Sorc is rocking a build with a maxed

Static Field (23 yards radius!). Just spam static between two blizzard castings, this is incredibly powerful!

I would say, in a full multiplayer game, my build outperforms

Death's Fathom by far!

And an axe-wielding Sorceress with a

Holy Freeze aura is badass.

All true.

My main point was "cheaper weapon works as well". OP should not get the impression that Doom is necessary and dual sorc is the way to go without it. Sunder +

Cold Mastery easily clear the game even with a Spirit sword.

Ohm +

Lo +

Cham are quite expensive at start of ladder.

Doom vs.

Death's Fathom is an unrelated discussion. Both have their places. I should not have brought this up as

Death's Fathom is not in the budget category.

Since OP was referring to mf'ing, I don't think P8 is their main scenario.

I totally agree on the style aspect though! My sorc has her CTA in that base.

Thanks for all your comments!
So with

Cold Rupture it would be possible to break most immunities, so to clear rooms it will be good and my blizz sorc would be able to do that already without even starting to play with hybrid alternatives.

I'll get one of those charms for sure.

Regarding, for example,

The Countess, would it be enough to kill her? Without external items like Infinity of course, we are still talking about mid-level gear, so just want to validate the capabilities to farm and MF every single thing in the game with a build like this.

marcelomusza wrote: 3 weeks ago

Thanks for all your comments!
So with

Cold Rupture it would be possible to break most immunities, so to clear rooms it will be good and my blizz sorc would be able to do that already without even starting to play with hybrid alternatives.

I'll get one of those charms for sure.

Regarding, for example,

The Countess, would it be enough to kill her? Without external items like Infinity of course, we are still talking about mid-level gear, so just want to validate the capabilities to farm and MF every single thing in the game with a build like this.

With

Cold Rupture you break ALL immunities. My Cold Sorc has a similar setup with max

Cold Mastery. I have a nearly perfect

Nightwing's Veil and a

Death's Fathom with

Rainbow Facet: Cold Death in my chest for Cows but I am using mostly

The Oculus with an

Ist and

Harlequin Crest with a

Perfect Topaz (in sum I have 318 MF). I would say this is very budget like but for playing alone it is imho completely sufficent. I can clear all areas fast enough with no problems (For Ubers I use my Pally ).

That sounds nice. I definitely need to get my hands on that sunder charm. I recently returned to D2 since like a 20year long break and I'm loving it. And there are quite a few new mechanics I'm learning, being these sunder charms one of them.

My gear is decent for a budget,

Harlequin Crest, Oculus, Vipers, nagels, war travs, everything pretty standard and I'm doing fine, but I just want to go to the next level and I think I have the answer now

Offline, online ladder, or online nonladder?

I’m playing Blizz Orb this ladder myself.

First off, unless you’re solely boss or elite sniping, you can drop the 105 fcr down to 63. 105 fcr and 63 fcr makes no difference to blizzard (or

Frozen Orb), the action frame at both 63 fcr and 105 fcr is the same (6, I believe). 105 FCR helps for

Teleport mostly. What I do for boss farming (like TZ Andy or Meph) is I swap on FCR gear to that reduces my damage but lets me hit 105 FCR. Otherwise, your blizz or blizz orb sorc should roll with 63 FCR.

If you’re planning on tackling sundered, formerly-cold-immune enemies, you really need to strip off the Spirit

Monarch and replace it with a

Monarch with four cold damage Rainbow Facets. Preferably get ones with +5/-5 for a total of +20 cold skill damage and -20% enemy cold res. Remember, -enemy resist works at 100% effectiveness against sundered cold immunes, unlike

Cold Mastery which operates at 1/5 effectiveness. You don’t have to get 4x perfect cold facets, even non perfect ones work fine. Making the change from Spirit to 4x cold facets will increase your damage against sundered immunes by like 50%, and even against non-immunes by like 10% or more.

Doom is a good option, increasing damage against sundered immunes by like a further 25%, but it reduces your damage against non-immunes by a similar amount (compared to a Death’s fathom). Most enemies are not actually cold immune, and Doom also has zero faster cast so it will force you to use either Spirit (further reducing damage) or a rare and expensive 3 cold skills/20% fcr/ 2 os blue

Circlet/

Tiara/

Diadem. So I personally am not a fan of Doom.

Finally, I recommend dropping points out of

Glacial Spike and putting them into

Frozen Orb to become a blizz-orb sorceress. Blizzard and

Frozen Orb have been on different casting delay timers since the early days of D2R but somehow people STILL haven’t caught on. Unless you’re fighting a single enemy,

Frozen Orb does way, way more damage than

Ice Blast. (By the way,

Frozen Orb is a synergy for

Ice Blast’s damage, unlike

Glacial Spike, so blizz-orb sorcs actually do more

Ice Blast damage than pure blizz sorcs.) Of course, the downside is that your blizzard does like 15% less damage, but that’s more than made up for by the huge increase in damage you get during Blizzard’s cooldown by casting a fully synergized

Frozen Orb that can clear rooms instead of

Ice Blast which can only hit a single enemy.

Nekeyby wrote: 3 weeks ago

marcelomusza wrote: 3 weeks ago

I was wondering, would it be worth to make an hybrid sorc to cover more areas?

Not really.

Cold Rupture + Doom = all monsters die in seconds (whether they have immunity or not).

I second this point with my exact setup for a

Tal Rasha's based cold sorc with +298% MF. Sometimes I replace a 38%

Gheed GC in favour of a cold skill GC. Still, I prefer playing a lightning traps sin (up to just under 500% MF, but I prefer keeping it to 300%) or a thrower barb (around 300% MF) for magic find runs.

marcelomusza wrote: 3 weeks ago

I was wondering, would it be worth to make an hybrid sorc to cover more areas?
Of course I need to keep the same killing speed I actually have so it does not hurt my hunting sessions.

I think it should be self-explanatory that with a dual build you will of course not achieve the same speed as you have now. Furthermore, I think that with mediocre equipment you can't achieve more than you're currently achieving. An upgrade will be expensive. The best single target damage is done by

Fireball. You can almost one-hit

Andariel. But this costs Phoenix and Flickering Flame. Additionally it will solve all resource problems, you do not need Insight anymore. Instead you can upgrade your Emilio with

The Reaper's Toll or Obedience. But you will loose some area damage. But that doesn't stop me from also making cows.

marcelomusza wrote: 3 weeks ago

That sounds nice. I definitely need to get my hands on that sunder charm. I recently returned to D2 since like a 20year long break and I'm loving it. And there are quite a few new mechanics I'm learning, being these sunder charms one of them.

My gear is decent for a budget,

Harlequin Crest, Oculus, Vipers, nagels, war travs, everything pretty standard and I'm doing fine, but I just want to go to the next level and I think I have the answer now

Yes, you won't have an issue farming countess with this setup. Ideally you have 20 hard pts in

Cold Mastery.

Thanks all for the answers, super helpful!

For a better mf, you can use something like :

Shako +

Tal amy +

Tal armor +

Tal

Belt + occy + wt +

Magefist + Spirit

Monarch + geed GC + dual

Nagelring.
You will reach the 105 FCR, have 450+ MF and nice res with some charms ( including torch and

Annihilus).

That's my

Frozen Orb MF setup.

Don't forget

Enchant for your merc to give him AR and increase his survavibility.

Hi

Tornado thanks for your comment! Yes I'm currently looking for that gear, pretty much exactly what you mentioned. Just missing yet

Tal's armor and amulet and I'll be all set.

Well and the torch but's that's another story

Just don’t forget that magic find has very diminishing returns for uniques. Like, going from 250 mf to 380 mf only increases the number of uniques you get by 11%. Going from 250% to 380% mf isn’t going to affect your boss kill speed much, provided the rest of your gear is good and you aren’t forced to use suboptimal, slow boss kill techniques that you don’t need at lower MF. However your clear speed is going to lowered by A LOT, A LOT more than 11%, so if you’re not solely boss or elite sniping, you’re better off running lower MF.

Ultimately, I think it’s best to have situational gear sets, a max MF set and a max damage set that still has good MF. My blizz-orb sorc runs a 250 MF, 70% fcr gear set for normal density clearing/farming, but swaps to a 380 MF gear set with 105+ fcr for boss farming (Isted Occulus instead of Death’s Fathom, Spirit

Monarch instead of 4x cold facet

Monarch, faceted

Shako instead of Nightwings).

Also, don’t sleep on Fortutious Rings of Fortune. If they roll exactly 40% MF they command a hefty price, but you may be able to get a 37 mf or 38 mf one for pretty cheap.

Edit: yea, 36 to 38 MF rings are going from between an

Um or

Mal to as much as a

Vex or

Ohm. For some reason, a lot of people put on 30 MF Nagelrings and then spend like a

Jah rune on 50% war travs instead of spending far less and getting MORE MF by getting well rolled but non-perfect war travs and a 37 MF Fortuitous Ring of Fortune. Go figure that out…

tatarjj wrote: 3 weeks ago

37 MF Fortuitous Ring of Fortune

Nagelring provides a nice Magic Damage Reduced By 3, so 6 with dual.

Add the 8 magic damage absorb from Spirit and again Magic Damage Reduced By 15 with

Tal Rasha's Guardianship and it's almost no damage with close to 75 fire res against concil

Hydra.