Light sorc issues

General Discussion
1

Hey all,

I started a cold sorc about 10 days ago and eventually started farming nm. Gear drops were a little slow so I decided to use my last respec and change to a light sorc in order to farm hell countess. Unsurprisingly it didn’t go well. So I thought alright im undergeared ill go back to nm. I was shocked at how difficult nm bosses were after changing over to lightning. So now I’m stuck, I can’t farm and I can’t respec again. Any suggestions? Current build has max light mastery, chain light, and 10 into lightning. Gear is mid to low level runewords, uniques and rares.

Thanks

2

You’re a bit uderleveled, farm some more nightmare baalruns till lvl70-75~ (if experience you’ll get will be good, i don’t remember exactly how it is good after lvl 60 on nm baalruns), and all +allskills/lightskills will help you dramatically. Try to make Spirit (+2 to all skills, fcr, fhr, +100~mana) runeword in 4sc crystal sword, and Lore (+1 to all skills) runeword helmet. If you got Lem you can buy Monarch for that and make second spirit (but you need 156 str to wear it. also you can try farm hell a1, look for guides how you can find it), If you got Pul you can do Enlightenment runeword in armor(+2sorc skills). Also making runeword Insight for merc (from a2 nightmare with holy freeze) even in exceptional base really helps with mana problem. Look for blue/rare amulet with + sorc/light skills, look for fcr rings. Do not forget to get 1 point in to Ststic skill, and use it on act bosses.

3

I never ever will go solo-element with a sorceress! I play chain lightning/FrostOrb, for example.

And I also never ever will do a LIGHTING sorceres, but always CHAIN lightning. I don’t realy get the recommendation for lighting. You can’t clear rooms with that, if you stay outside. (With chain-lightning, this is possible, because it will auto-target the group in the complete room.)

Aren’t most of the runwords, you recommend, ladder-only? (except of lore. You even can have that in normal difficulty, if you find a SOL-rune. Mine droped in act 4…)

4

All ladder runewords apparently work. Another HUGE deviation from “classic”…

Yes, add your voice to us asking for free respecs.

5

Buy token for respec or try new char.

6

For lighting Socr you needs Lighting and Chain Lighting on 20. Its worse but playable on Hell.

7

No, you don’t Lighting is a synergy. But also Nova and charged bolt. I rather skill Nova instead of lightning, because this is a skill for other situations and don’t need a synergy for itself. I never use lightning again, once chain lightning is uinlocked… And charged bolt might be too weak in NM and HELL difficulties. (But I don’t realy know, to be honest.) So Lightning is the least usable synergy.

But I’m not talking about synergy. I’m talking about using lightning as your main skill instead of chain lightning. And I just don’t get it, why this is better…

8

Make a new char, don’t fuck it up, farm a token of absolution or something to trade for it, or maybe get lucky with some gear drops.

Perhaps just join some Baal / Diablo runs where the party will clear the monsters until you can put more points in Lightning>

PS. Lightning sorc primary skill is lightning; NOT chain lightning.

Just level up lightning some more and it should be doable if you stick to areas that you can farm.

NM can be cleared with any spec.
Just skipp the odd lightning immune monster. (and don’t use chain lightning)

9

Hm. A “lightning” sorceress is a sorceress, which uses lightning skills as primary damage source. Where you you have the info, that that means, using the lightning SKILL? Maybe, it’s also the term for a lighning-using sorceress, however. But the first thing, that comes to mind, when I here “Lightining sorceress” is “not Ice- or fire-sorceress, but lightinig.” E. G. the TREE, not the SKILL.

And I’m still not convinced, why the lightning SKILL is better than chain lightning… Well, I’m not in hell, yet. But I think, I will get there eventually. And I still will be using CHAIN lightning skilling NOVA as main synergy. (only 20 points for synergy.) And for lightning immunes, I have my FrostOrb, synergized with Frostbolt. Lightning doesn’t do more damage in the end. even if it is so on paper. Because, lighting can jump several times between the same mob. So if the lightning skill doesn’t do at least triple damage of chain lightning, I see no reason to use the normal lightning skill… (But my main attack is frotOrb, not lightning or chain lightning. Chain is my secondary, however, and I think, I will also skill blizzard and Nova. But first maxing my main attacks and getting at least 10 Points in both masteries. Then I will see, If I’m effectiv in hell, I hope. And consider sticking to the skills, I have, or getting some spice to the build, by skilling Blizzard a bit (which doesn’t synergize the Orb, sadly) and Nova, (which DOES synergize chain lightning.)

BTW: how do you farm a token of absolution, if you struggle through NM with your first character? Isn’t this the respec-token?

10

“one-trick” one ele-sorc is ok, if you know what you’re doing and farm specific places. For lightning sorc – countess (low-mid runes), keys (for trade/future self use), pit (gear), lower kurast(mid-high runes), cow level(runes, bases, gear), andy, pindle, chaos river(if no light immunes rolls there) all in hell. Also its much easier to build, and all +all skills tree work better (not to mention teleport costs less and static field works a bit better). First char what i created in D2R is light-sorc, because she can find some decent gear for other chars, also she can wear alot of mf.

You do you but that a mistake imo. Lighting do massive damage, near twice more if compare it with Chain Lighting at the same lvl of skill, and also costs less mana to cast, its your only option to kill huge resistant mobs (lighting enchanted/spectral hit/magic resistant) or mobs with alot of hp like act bosses, or really tanky mobs when you struggle with damage, yes, it’s kind of not so easy to use, but it’s not that terrible, i’d say it’s your main damage source untill you get some decent gear and levels, and to build a proper L-sorc you need to upgrade L to lvl20 before ChL imo. But in the end i use both L and ChL, depends on situation and mobs I’m fighting.
P.S. my L-sorc is level 84 rn :slight_smile: And with all my gear my lightning do 4-14k dmg, pretty comfortable to farm cows/act bosses.
P.P.S. Nova is a really good damage source in the beginning of the game in normal/nighmare but in hell diff you don’t want to stay to mobs that close.

11

But this doesn’t apply to ES/nova sorceress :wink:

12

Listen son, you tell us you’re stuck, we tell you why (because you have a wrong build and use wrong skills) but then you just stick your head in the ground when we try to explain you why you fail.

Sure chain lightning can hit 3 mobs or more, but it has to jump to that 2nd mob first.
This chain jumping is very slow, and the normal lightning will just pass through UNLIMITED monsters lined up for max damage at max speed.

Lightning / Cold is not a good combination.
Frozen Orb + Fireball is, pure lightning is, pure cold is.

Lightning sorc is considered the high-end gear spec, so if you don’t have infinity / griffons etc with mass amounts of FCR its just not a very effective build.

But sure keep using your chain lightning wiping on hell countess :weary:

13

The only problem is Diablo 2 disconnected :joy: :joy: :joy: :joy: :joy: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

1 Like
14

Hm. I don’t use static field much. If I do, just get killed, because I must go into near melee-range…

    • to all sorceress-skill work better with 2 trees, imho. Since it buffs ALL skills, not only one tree.
  • I just want to get to baal in Hell, not farm specific places. This is something if I reach my ultimate goal: to kill Baal in Hell-Difficulty. (I never achieved that…)
  • I don’t like boring spam-buids. You might dish out more damage with one skill, but if you use several elements at the same time, I doubt, that you dish out less damage all in one.
  • lightning might do more damage on the paper, but hits the enemy only one time. Chain lightning jumbs several times between enemies. (9 times at skill level 20). So for 2 opponents it does at least trible the damage, it says on paper, and it doesn’t matter, where they are, because it auto-targets. You can clear whole rooms with chain lightning much faster, because of the aoe-effect (in comparison to the line-effect of lightning.)
  • btw. Mana doesn’t realy matter to me anymore. But I also spend relativ much points in energy. Mostly, because, I use Energy-shield. Most builds suggest to invest all in vitality, even as a lighting-(tree)-sorceress… I’m not in that boat, to be honest. If I find a +% to mana-item, I even benefit more from my decision… (Since it only boosts hard energy.)

So I’m still not convinced. Perhaps I will try it out, just that I have a real comparison. But only after I killed baal on hell…

If the statistics, I saw are correckt. Lightning does ca. 20 more damage on paper, thatn chain lightning does at level 20. Those were without the calculation of synergies and the mastery, however. (it said like 1-280 or something like that. But my chain-lightning does over 500 damage at SL 12 with 8 points in mastery but witout more than one point in the synergies…)

“easy to build” is relative. You choose a main attack of a tree and look, what synergies it has. Then you max that skill and synergies it. If you choose a second attack-skill you might want to max that as well, then, however, you must consider. what synergies you use. FrostOrb has only one synergy. And the mastery. And most builds even suggest, that you shouldn’t max the cold-mastery… Lightning and chain-lightning has 4 or 5 synergies without mastery, so you even can’t max all. And imho, this also isn’t necessary. So I just choos 20 points for synergy of lighting (besides maxing the mastery and the spell itself.) And I will choose Nova, because this is a skill you also can use in certain situations. And even doesn’t need a synergy on its own.

And in the cold-tree I choose Frost-Orb as main attack, not Blizzard. This is a paper-scam AGAIN. It seems, the orb does less damage. but this damage is PER BOLT. And it fires estimated a hundred bolts in all directions. The mobs don’t need to stand in a place to get hit. (in comparison to Blizzard…) And you can much more spam it, because the delay between casts is much less. Blizzard might be the bread-and-butter-build But I simply have better experience with FrostOrb, and it only has one synergy. which you easily can max.

I also have an intersting second sorceress on the run. (in Act II, normal at the moment): Fire/Lightning. I think this will get a much harder experience, however. Because I won’t rely on energy shield that much, but more on warmth… And because I lack the ice-element on my own. And because, I will try an Ice-Wolf as mercenary. (I Jiust LOVE act III Mercs, especially Ice.) And because my main weapon will be a two-handed staff a LONG time. (Leaf-rune-word. It’s just too good…), so no shield, except in emergancy-situtations. with the second weapon-gear. But I will AGAIN use the chain-lightning skill as main lighting attack…

15

Yes, but amulets +to all skill tree is much common(and can roll up to +3) that +all skills, also you can get circlets with +tree sk and so-called Skillers – Grand charms with +tree sk. So 1 ele sorc have own benefits too.

Ah, this is what i miss. ES-sorc is a different story, i run my sorc without ES. And btw ES still its in the L-tree. I focus purely on synergies…

This. ChL and L have the same synergies and also get synergy from each other. ChB, nova, L, ChL, mastery. Any 99lvl char with all quest complete on all diffs will have 110 skill points, and it’s possible to make this build “fully work” on lvl94, but it start to work lvl65-66 with one point in warmth, static field, telekinesis, teleport, ChB, maybe frozen armor, and maxed L, ChL and mastery. From this point you just add more damage to L and ChL every level, by upgrading synergies(ChB and nova).

But. All i wrote just kinda irrelevant because:

Specially if you playing solo. Then a dual ele build is a must to get trough hell. (Or, ehh, not really because you can just teleport away from L-immunes, and if you really need to kill L-immune you can leave that to merc, OR having a wand with charges of Lower Resist on a weapon swap but still.)
Common choice (20 years of testing, haha) is FO/Meteor sorc build. But if you like to do experiments – do it. And good luck with the Hell Baal!

16

No runewords are ladder only anymore.

17

Blizzball (no frozen orb) is the way to go, with merc.

Spam Blizzard and Glacial Spike, throw in a static field here and there - everything dies in seconds.
Cold Res enemys get slaughterd by fireball and merc in seconds - Chaos runs i have to focus the cold res or merc dies kinda quick… (my merc only has a good insight cv and crappy gear).
Fireball ‘only’ about 4-5k damage and some bonus but its more than enough to kill cold res enemy in seconds. (only firebolt and fireball max, 1 warmth, 1 fire mastery)

i ran nightmare until i had some gear and for trading - now hell is no problem, only chaos needs some focus on the cold res, or merc dies quick and baal with to many souls and dolls is a no no.

hell countess and her gang get some fireballs and static field, merc kills her in 1-3 hits.