Hi folks,
I’m using frozen orb guide from fextralife and have chosen frozen orb as a main skill and chain lighting for cold immune enemies.
I have maxed out frozen orb and almost -100% for cold mastery. My chain lighting is lvl 9 + lighting mastery lvl 8
I have started first act hell and chain lighting seems to do zero damage to simple zombies.
Should I respec and do classic meteorb instead? What are your experiences with chain lighting vs meteor?
Thanks
Orb + fire ball work very well. Ball does great consistent damage and has regular cast frames, unlike lightning, that has its own frames, almost 2 times slower.
Yes, I think I have taken some fire skill in 200x, but don’t remember what it was that time. Also don’t have old save to check.
Do you prefer fireball over meteor? Àny suggestions here cause I have not too many respecs and there is generally no character editor available as far as I know for offline mode
Fireball is easier to target, cheaper and has a lot more range than meteor. Orb+Fireball is good enough for hell. I previously also maxed Lightning for those fire/cold immunes when my merc was still weak. After you pass hell etc. you can respec to Orb+Firewall which is still the strongest imho.
Your point distribution is not good, you will probably run in the same problem with every other build.
You put to many points in cold, only max out frozen orb and put a couple points in frostmastery. Rest goes to youre second element for now.
I’m playing the same build and i’m around level 70. Kill speed is still some what slow but i have no issues in progressing act 1 hell.
I have only +5 to skillpoints which isn’t this greate either.
I play that setup myself (FO+CL)
I have maxed my FO, and CL at level 15. (don’t bother with the FO-Synergy. I have 5 points in that as well, however, but it isn’t realy important imho.)
I don’t know exactly, how much I have in CM. I think between 5 and 8 points.
What level are you? if you are beyond level 70, play nightmare instead. My sorceress is level 71 and just act 1 hell.
LM is at level 10 (at least) for me. I LOVE CL. Some people out tthere suggest normal lightning instead, however. I myself prefer CL, even if the normal one does more damage on paper. Imho, this is only on paper, however, because, this is only the case, if a mob is hit one single time, which is almost never the case with CL. But if you prefer this for single cold immune mobs, you can skill normal lighning as well, it has synergies to each other, so it’s not wasted.
This may be one of your problems. put just 5 points in CM and the others (at least 5) in warmth. With that you need not to rely on insight. Although, this is one of the easiest 4 socket-weapons to get and one of the most useful and easiest 4-socket-runword out there. But only if you use an act 2-mercenary. Althtough you can also use this runeword on a 2-hand-staff aswell, there are much better options for a sorceress. (for example: even Spirit on a sword, like I do.)
Every lightning skill in the tree is useful, btw. Take Energy shield and Thunderstorm with just 1 points. These are live-safers (both of them.)
Secret tipp: if you have problems in act 5 with hags, cursing you with the “use-life-instead-mana”-curse, see, if you can get your life higher than your mana. They won’t curse you with that, then.
I don’t have any good gear yet and have only +3 to all skills from my crap 
So to have -100 % resistances it is lvl 17 cold mastery. What is max +X to all skills you can get from top gear?
For lower levels I recommend this:
https://i.imgur.com/aWLlXGe.jpg
Or, even better:
https://i.imgur.com/LntmuE9.jpg
You can max out masteries later. When Cold Mastery reaches around 130-155, you won’t really need more.
Thank you very much guys, this is really helpful! I think I know where I made additional mistake: I have maxed out ice-bolt and now reading old d2 archives they say it is just not worth it (+2% per level). That is whole 20 skill points I could invest into fire or lightning
Regarding fire build, why maxing firebolt is needed? Is it a synergy with fireball?
I’m on lvl 67 at the moment and use following gear:
Some other crappy stuff I have found before, but nothing special
Do you think there is something I can craft (better runeword) in early hell from countless?
Yes, Firebolt is for the Fireball synergy. The damage is crap without it. For items, get a monarch spirit shield when you can imo and farm hell Mephisto for Shako. I also use Vipermagi armor still and Arachnid belt for the cast rate and skills. You don’t really need more than 105 FCR and can adjust your items as you see fit. If you join Baal run games in the lobby, you should be able to quickly get to level 80+. HOTO is a nice runeword but you need Vex for it and Spirit will do for now.
Do you think it makes sense to farm something on nightmare? I have just started hell
Not really unless you enjoy it a lot. Andariel has a slightly higher chance to drop Stone of Jordan on Nightmare, for example, but its still not bloody likely and you can spend years without getting it in theory. So I’d recommend proceeding to hell and farming Hell mobs and bosses.
(Only if you reach a point where it is very hard to continue on Hell and you believe you can get some better loot from NM Meph or something.)
You can try frozen orb + firewall
Firewall deals about 30k damage with full tal rasha set, without skillers but with sorc torch for me. I use blizzard (about 10k dps) and firewall (28k dps) and use firewall to burst down cold immunes 
its like
1 static field
1 telekinesis
1 teleport
max firewall
1 optional in frozen armor
max blizzard or alternatively max frozen orb
17 cold mastery (with +sk)
max ice blast
max warmth
rest in glacial spike
i guess if you don’t play blizzard you can omit the 20 points in ice blast and glacial spike and put them to other synergies instead. However, it is nice to cast ice blast in between blizzard / firewall, because it’s additional damage you can deal and ice blast also has high single target damage due to it’s fast cast speed
HeroEditor works well
I have only started hell, so probably it will take a while till I get full tal rasha set. I will save one respec for this build or probably start new character to try it out though
I think you don’t even need a full tal rasha set to have enough damage.
If you use items like occulus / eschutas, vipermagi / skullders, some rare +2 skills or a blue +3 skills amulet, rings with resists / life / fcr, some rare boots with resist / life / mf / fcr, spirit monarch and some circlet with +2 sorc / resists / life / fcr, … you can already get decent dmg
The tal set is good for a resist boost and the mf you get through armor and 3 piece set bonus, but you don’t need it to run a build like mine
Ich nutze in Hölle auch weiterhin Frostsphäre + Blitz und komme sehr gut damit zurecht, gefühlt sind mehr Gegner frost- und feuerimmun anstatt frost- und blitzimmun.
Die Blitzzauber müssen erst mal höher geskillt werden, damit sich der Schaden bemerkbar macht, aber es lohnt sich einfach nur voll und ganz. Allein der Kettenblitz haut auf hoher Stufe übelst rein und springt nur so hin und her zwischen den Gegnern.
Selbst auf /players 4-6 schmelzen die Gegner nur so dahin, wenn man mit Kettenblitz ran geht. 
Erst ab /players 7 dauerts auch bei mir noch etwas, aber gut, die Ausrüstung muss halt noch besser werden und das ein oder andere Runenwort für mich und den Söldner muss noch gefarmt werden, da ich mit den Runen ( spiele fast ausschließlich offline ) noch kein großes Glück hatte, zumindest was die betrifft, die man dringend braucht, manche kennen das ja wahrscheinlich auch. 
Vielen Dank für die Tipps. Ich bin mir trotzdem nicht ganz sicher, wieso auf Deutsch antworten, wenn Topicstarter auf Englisch schreibt?
Die Antwort hierauf ist ganz einfach: Ich lehne es grundsätzlich ab, dass Blizzard dieses Forum hier ausschließlich auf englisch betreibt und kein deutsches Forum zur Verfügung stellt ( sowie Foren zu den anderen EU-Sprachen )
Daher antworte ich grundsätzlich - und hier ist es mir vollkommen egal, ob man mich versteht oder nicht - immer auf deutsch.
Der Willkommens-Post deutete ja nicht grundlos daraufhin, dass jedem quasi frei steht, in welcher Sprache man hier schreibt.
Muss man meine Meinung/meine Gedanken zu diesem Thema verstehen oder gut finden? Absolut nicht.
Interessiert mich im Gegenzug, was andere von meiner Meinung/meinen Gedanken zu diesem Thema halten? Absolut nicht.
Es ist einfach eine Frage der Höflichkeit, nichts mehr.