Basic Sorc

Hi guys!

Because of the ladder reset on Monday 28 th of March 2011 im going to writte a small guide for a fire mf sorc.

You have to be aware that you start with basically nothing after the reset.

There will be hardly anyone who got wps or could rush you through normal. Therefore just play through the game till act 5. You will be around lvl 25 or so.

In act 5 finish first 3 quests.

Spend your skills on firebolt, fireball, and meteor for max damage.

Spend 1 skill point on warmth, frost amor and teleport!!!

Use an act 2 defiance merc. He will be your best friend ;-) Equipp him with max amor and life. Check the vendors in act 5 for amor and weapons.

Which items should i use?

Basically i use the runewords Lore, Leaf and Stealth and some random items.

These runewords are cheap and most of the time easily available.

Leaf needs TirRal. Buy a staff in act 1 with some skill on it. You get the ral rune in act 5, q 2.

Stealth requires TalEth. Same here, buy an 2 sox amor and insert both runes. You recieve tal in act 5, q 2.

For Lore you need a sol rune, which could be a problem, but maybe your lucky and you ll get one in act 4, q 2 or it dropps randomly.

You can use an amor with socked +Mana Gems aswell for mana issues.

Witch this gear, you can easily farm eldritch, shenk and pindle.

regards Georg|||In normal mode, a sorc will do fine with whatever she happens to find. As soon as I reach the Countess in nightmare, I made a couple of visits until I have the runes for Stealth, Rhyme and a Spirit sword, plus Insight for an act 2 merc. Leaf isn't as good as Spirit and some sorc orb, Spectral Shard or Suicide branch. FCR isn't needed for blizzard, of course, but for teleport. Instead of Lore, I prefer some rare halm with resists or Peasant Crown, except you have a bit bad luck at finding it. Then I head for nightmare Meph, doing the moat trick, until I have the gear for hell mode. In hell mode, I do a lot of Meph+Andy runs. Sooner or later, she will have enough firepower and the merc is strong enough deal with the monstersy for the Ancient Tunnels, Eldritch and Pindleskin.

Regarding skills, I make a pure cold sorc until hell mode. Maxed blizzard makes nightmare mode a rather harmless undertaking. In hell, I respec her into a meteorb sorc and try to get Tal's set, a 35% Spirit monarch, WT, Magefists, two Nagelrings (just one plus an FCR ring, as long as the Spirit monarch doesn't have 35%... so I will reach the 105% fcr breakpoint) a torch and a couple of fire skillers. I won't start a new character until she is 90% complete.

Merc: Act 2 normal offensive, later act 2 nightmare defensive. Equipped with Sigon's helm+armor (the combo adds 10% LL and ar per level) and the mandatory Insight weapon.|||may i add that fore basic mf runz for fire soso there is the mausoleum with only lightning immues and 85 area lvl (hell)

and if u evolve to cold soso u can add the ancient tunnels that has no cold immues

i must say that until the bliz the fireball soso is the easiest to play

p.s if found that a pure cold with 1 point to CL and about +10 skills form equipment and 1 to light mastery (i got it from tal orb) u can do baal runz alone cuz the CL do 500 dmg and only the skelies r immue to cold there and it kills them|||I guess I could agree Krisch, that Leaf isn't as good as Spirit. One thing to consider tho, is that from at least lvl1 til lvl24, the cold spells are pretty weak. Another is that Spirit cannot be equipped until lvl25, and many many people might not have found a suitable 4 socket Broad/Crystal/Long Sword by then.

I think Leaf is popular in part because Fire is popular to start with, being so much stonger. Firebolt has the unique gift of being both capped on mana-cost as you level it as well as also granting a nice synergy bonus to Fireball. Meaning you can be sitting at lvl19 with a maxed Firebolt of only 2.5 mana per cast, a 1pt Fireball that will be much less of a mana hog by relying on synergism for dmg instead of putting hard points in and greatly increasing the mana cost per Fireball.

So you now have 2 spell options that are fairly low mana cost, a nice easy-to-make runeword that one can choose to spend some time shopping and customize/tailor for extra skills like +3 Warmth/Static/Cold Armor/Fireball, and the option to pump Energy for now and basically make your Fireball spammable. Or.... you could go Cold Tree and spam Frost Nova a couple times and be no mana?

Keep in mind that a lot of the rest of what you said makes tons of sense, especially farming Countess early and often and completing your early runewords. But how much easier is that Countess farming gonna be with Leaf and the correct Fire spec, since you CAN own Leaf pre-farming Countess but with Spirit you cannot?

I think I would rather spend a few mins shopping a decent 2os staff and going the Leaf route, even tho from experience I know that in reality Leaf falls by the wayside quickly (one could say almost always by lvl30+), and will end up rotting in your stash forever :)



Edit: I realized I was mixing in the general concept of "farming Countess" without being specific. I was trying to say you could farm normal Countess and easily make Leaf, although trying to do the same in Norm to get the Spirit runes isn't as likely to happen (lotta cubing up). Since you had mentioned farming Countess in NM, that was what I meant by easily having Leaf but unlikely to have Spirit before you actually start the NM Countess rune-farming process.|||That was what im talking about!! Knarlfist you got it :-)|||This discussion, plus the 6 months it has been since I last started up a fully untwinked Sorc, made me want to relieve some boredom by going thru the starter motions on a brand new Sorc as a tester run. I even put 'test' in her name!!

Just to give anyone reading a general idea (or to convince any doubters), I will roughly outline where the Sorc ended up after a gaming session that got me to lvl19 and is completely indicative of an untwinked climb on Ladder tomorrow:

Lvl19

Approx 80,000 gold even after shopping for 2 staves (one for Leaf, one for +3 Shiver)

Act2 Quest 4

Approx 3 Jewels, about 10 runes (I think I had about 3 before doing a couple Countess runs). Found the Ral to make Leaf on only 2nd Countess run, Tir was found on 1st.

Runewords made: Stealthx2, Leaf

170 Life

200 Mana

10/33/14/64 resists

Found 1 set item (Cleg's Shield) and 1 unique (Snakecord belt)

skills after Leaf:

25 Firebolt (93-116 dmg for 2.5 mana cost, 19 hard points)

7 Warmth

4 Fireball (90-128 dmg,1 hard point)

Approx 10 stat points spent into Vit, the rest into Energy.

More than enough mana and mana regen to spam Fireball almost non-stop, only occasionally changing to Firebolt if super low on mana, or for picking off single mobs where no splash dmg is needed.

Tips: Save ALL rubies, and one 2os helm you find (or shop), and most likely 2x 2os Quilted armors you find (or shop). The rubies you find go in your socketed armor/helm, so your Life will be closer to your Mana. Also feel free to shop a +Life belt/gloves/boots if you notice them at a vendor.

All other gems can be saved to make a beefy 3os Polearm for your merc when you hit Act2. The 2nd 2os Quilted armor you saved in stash is to make yourself a Stealth... it's up to you if you've found enough runes to make one for your Merc, but I don't find it necessary.



As you can see, this isn't a bad route at all, especially considering that the build could easily fold into a Frozen Orb/17CM + Maxed Fireball/Firebolt/FM without even having to respecc at all. Meaning you'd have that extra respecc laying around for much later when you've acquired a Torch and endgame gear, and want to make exacting cuts to Str and Ene to pump up your Vit stat.