Hello to all. I’m trying to understand, in order not to skip entire areas of various acts and to be able to farm some areas with immune to ice. At what point does immunity become mere resistance?
How long does it take in the Ice Mastery skill to do damage?
Thanks
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dont even try to kill cold immunes with blizz sorc ! its waste of time, skip those immune mobs and rather go for areas with little to no cold immunes
Thx Hansepeter, i know, but 80% of enemies are cold immunes.
I don’t want to skip the entire game, i’m asking something different: there is a cap for ice maestry that grant to kill enemies with ice immunities or not?
well you can and should skill ice mastery until you reach -150% and this is indeed useful for NON-immune monsters as it gives you more damage on those. but it will not break immunities, they remain immune.
you have 3 options.
- equip your merc with good items. insight, forti or treachery, andy’s or crown of thieves. depending on budget. He can take over the immune monsters
- skill a secondary element, like firebolt or meteor and fire mastery (look up hybrid build guides)
- or play a different character …
Hanspeter covered the important stuff. People generally play single-tree sorcs to target specific areas where there are little to no immunes and they can farm faster. If you want to just play the game for the sake of beating it, a dual-tree build would be much more appropriate. And I second what was said about the mercenary: a well equipped one can solve most of your problems, just help him out with Static Field until the monsters drop to 50% and Telekinesis to knock them back against some wall while he pokes them to death.
Like unnamed said, if you don’t want to skip areas of the game you need to spec in 2 elements, e.g. Orb/fireball/meteor. There will still be some unique monsters that will be fire and ice immune but if you have a decent merc he can take care of them.
Cold Mastery used to break immunities until it was fixed in a few weeks after D2R launch, so as far as cold immunes go it doesn’t matter how many points you spend in that skill. (Cold Mastery never broke immunities in the original game).
Just a question: why Blizzard Sorc only put point skills on Blizzard related skills? Even if you have 7k damage you still add damage to Blizzard? why not at that point skill-up a fire/lighting alternative?
Just play fire sorc, and you see, that 80% of enemies are fire immunities, not cold.
Also, you could try poison necro. This let you find out, that 80% of enemies are poison immune, not cold or fire.
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Blizzard needs quite a lot of points to be viable, as does Meteor/Fireball and Lightning, hence it’s not used so much for dual element setup. With Frozen Orb however, you can get by with just investing 20 points in that skill and 8-15 (depending on preference) in cold mastery, leaving lots of points to invest in another element. Hence Orb/Meteor is the most common combo build.
Would Firewall work as a 2nd element for immunes? You’d have no points for synergy but its damage seems really good. My plan was to go full Synergy Blizzard, and 20 in Firewall/1 Fire Mastery.
I play blizz sorc, and decided to spend 1 point in Warmth, 1 in Fire Mastery, and 5 in Firewall (including 1 pt to skills which enable it). I must admit that I’m positively surprised - I’m able to clean CS, do solo Baal runs without any problems, and run through game with fun in general. For fire and cold immunes - my merc does his work and shreds those elites.
You can also use any staff/orb that gives bonus to Firewall on weapon switch and get away with just 1pt in fire mastery (I assume you always put 1pt in Warmth anyway 
). Leaf is a dirty cheap runeword that would serve the purpose just great.
or get a Ormus with Firewall xD
there are some guides for orb/firewall on yt …i like it a lot more than orb/meteor. but lightning with infinity is my fav.
Blizzard just needs the synergies but its also the highest cold damage.
Orb sucks in party games. so it depends of what you want to play
Im a pure cold sorc atm.
But im thinking about going hybrid for hell.
Blizzard for example does big dmg even without every synergie maxed out.
Well, to be fair, i think Ice got the highest %-value in terms of Resistance of all Elements, so to break Ice-Immune is pretty much impossible. So if you go Blizzard you are pretty much set to farm only a few specific bosses/areas (mainly Andy, Mephisto, Ancient Tunnels, Cows) but you will do so very fast! If you want to farm more Areas (with a at least decent merc even ALL Areas) dont specc into Blizzard, take the Orb instead, like other here said already. Orb has so few synergies that you will be left with enough Points to specc into Meteor or, like some mentioned already, Firewall. You can specc out Firewall completly and have enough points to specc into Warmth and Fire Mastery. Just put a few more points into Mastery than Warmth and you have a Firewall for like 7-8k dmg with pretty average Gear that Melts enemies/bosses in seconds and still have the FULL value of Frost Orb. I dont have any problems farming anywhere… and those few Mobs, that are immune to Frost AND Fire just get killed by my Merc with Insight and Treachery (both are not that expensive to build).
Oh and btw, i dont think that Orb “sucks” in party games… i run Orb with the same fun in groups than i do in solo. You just can compare Orb and Blizzard that easily, because both have their own places to shine. If enemies are highly packed/crowded together (like in AT or Cows) Blizzard is stronger, because it`s more focussed… if there are spread out more, like in open Areas, Orb gets the advantage… and if you want to have a Character to rush your friends Chars (wich i concider “Party Games”) then Orb is even better, because on lower difficulty, it kills far more Mobs in one go.
Damage-wise there is not much of a difference between Orb and Blizzard (at least, if you know how to hit with the Orb) and it comes down purely to what you enjoy more. But i think, for Multi-Element purposes, Orb is far more superior.
aaaaaand my whole post just vanished. thanks for that Blizz…
long answer short: impossible to break frost-immune, go multi-element specc, if you dont want to be set on farming specific areas (Andy, Mephisto, AT, Cows)
want to Multi-specc: Orb > Blizzard, far less points needed for the same dmg (if you know, how to aim)
want to just farm these specific areas and dont rush friends that much or farm wide-spread enemies: Blizzard > Orb
best multi-specc spell: Firewall with points in Warmth and Fire Mastery (go for a bit more Mastery than Warmth)
always aim for at least 130%-140% in cold mastery though
and whatever you want to do, have a merc with at least Insight and Treachery (both are fairly cheap) to deal with whatever Immunes are left over
Farm the mausoleum (Blood Raven dungeon) on Hell mode instead of the pits… Everything in mausoleum is lightning immune but Pits has Cold / Fire immunes.
That will help a bit.
Farm Andy, Meph, Pindleskin as well… do cows… those are about your only options with a Blizz Sorc.
Lightning sorcs can solo farm Baal a little easier than Fire / Ice Sorcs because Lister is usually the only one that’s lightning immune but your merc can take him out with a Smoke / Vamp Gaze / Insight EZ.
Clearly Blizzard should remove all other classes from the game and add Conviction Aura to Act 5 mercs.
Firewall is viable, but more with frorb. Extremely high fire damage and good cold damage.
But you cant kill hovering cold immunes over rivers or gaps. So Meteorb with fireball is best to skill at first.
If you insist on playing a cold specialist you need to skip cold immunes or team up with others that take down those. You can also use a balanced build that include backup attacks of other elements but that will probably prevent you from maxing out your cold spec. My suggestion is to have at least a single point in other spells and then let +skill items raise thease further. Even if it take longer to take out a cold immune with weak attacks it is at least possible.