[Sorc] At what point is it worth to switch to Lightning?

General Discussion
1

Hi there,
So, here I am, thinking about respecing from cold to lightning… but from what I’ve heard, switching to Lightning is an expensive deal.

I have a frozen orb / meteor (but mainly orb) build and I’ve been doing pretty fine, but
I don’t have a torch, I don’t have a Griffon, and I don’t think I’ll ever get to Infinity unless I’ll sacrifice my family to Diablo. I don’t like playing Meteor or Blizzard sorcs, so FOrb was a nice compromise for me, but I’d love to switch to Lightning. The question is - is it even worth without all the expensive gear?
Also, does Crescent damage resistance reduction work on immune to lightning creatures?

Any advise from experienced sorcs much appreciated.

2

you can use a lower res wand in 2nd slot
first slot occu + spirit shild give lots of + all skills aswell

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3

What are you trying to do with her? Personally I stick to Orb/Meteor to farm Andy, Meph, and Pindle. For Cows and Chaos I’ve got my Bowazon who cranks out 4.5k strafe and 5k Magic Arrow once the merc’s aura kicks in.

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4

without infinity you will encounter a lot of light immune that a lower resist wand will not be able to break, so you will have a poor dps fragile char that will be mostly stuck to countess, half of pits, arcane sanctuary, half of pindle, half of shenk and eldrich and half of nilathak. Thats it, and forget about killing act bosses as even andatiel will be slow and painful

4 Likes
5

I am playing light sorc, clearing everything even without infinity, all u need is just Eth Insight CV which boosts a lot of damage to merc, ofc with infinity u will just sweep faster, but I am not finding troubles doing baal runs and chaos runs as well.

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6

This has to be on softcore, right? Cause strafe would suck balls on hc…

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7

Even if I did play HC my Valk and Merc keep everything away from me. Strafe just knockback locks shit and things die in a hurry.

8

Actually no. The Obedience runeword is way better then any Insight.

9

I agree, that’s true, but I prefer that mana regen, lets me zap infinitely.

11

infinity is broken and doesnt help much, level 30 conviction doesnt break immunities so dont expect a level 13 convition to do better

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12

We’re as passionate about Diablo as the next mortal, but you know… please don’t…

Other than that, best of luck with whatever build you land on in the end, Isnith!

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13

I’m ok with Andariel with my lightning sorc lvl 85, but chaos run too hard, half of them are immune to lightning and burning mana, and one lieutenant is immune to lightning (and in the one time I fighted it, it was regenerating health a lot).

14

A good hybrid able to wipe most zones is orb / chain lightning.

Respec starting at level 60ish
Warmth: 1
Orb: 20
Cold Mastery: 1
Static field: 1
Chain Lightning: 20
Lightning mastery: 20

Then dump into lightning, and finally charged bold for synergy.

I personally like 1 point in shiver armor, it freezes enemy BEFORE they hit and raises defense significantly.
Don’t touch to mana shield.

Attribute-wise, put the hard prerequisite in strength for monarch and the rest in vitality.
Equip your defense A2 merc with a nice insight, tal helm

Very easy build can go everywhere.

15

If you wont get an infinity, just stay with a pure blizz or an orb/fb build, sorcs are restricted to few farming areas for each element before you can afford an infinity and then go 100% for a ligh build, wich is one of the top 3 builds in the game

16

best hybrid cold/light is orb/nova

17

don’t you think there are more important issues that need attention at the moment than some cringeworthy idiot trying to make awkward jokes?

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18

Without infinity the best solo sorc build is:

Teleport 1

Firewall 20
Warmth 20
Fire mastery 1

Blizzard 20
Ice blast 20
Cold mastery 3-7 (get around -100 cold res)
Ice bolt all other points

Merc doesn’t matter because of 20 in warmth. Insight ist still very solid.

This build will kill everything pretty easy.

With decent gear (shako, vipermage, arach, oculus, spirit, …105% fast cast is required!) and even without skillcharms or torch:

10k dps per firewall
2k damage per ice blast
3k damage per blizzard spike

Always spam ice blast between firewall/blizzard. The DPS is insane and firewall is a bit slow, but no other fire spell is as strong as firewall with ~40 points. Ice blast is pretty strong vs single target and the freezing effect is very good.
Just use firewall in case of immunities or cold resistance. All bosses are way faster to kill with firewall.

Static is not needed for solo farming. Maybe in group play.

I LOVE this build.

And with infinity this build is getting even stronger.

About lightning sorc:
All monoElemental Sorcs have the same problem: you need infinity to break some/most immunities.
If you dont have griffon crescent moon rune word is cheap and reduces enemy lightning resistance by another 35%. A solid pick to handle high resistances (after immunity has been removed by infinity).

Summary:
MonoEleSorc is pretty expensive.
DualEleSorc is solid and strong.

19

Although, I’m just at act 4 NM, but why don’t you do both? I play a FO/CL-Sorceress (level 60 atm), for example. And at least in Act 4 NM just 5 points in Frostbolt (Synergy, while leveling to FO, so you don’t realy need that, if you’re high level enough. You can put those points in FO itself.) amd 11 in FO works pretty fine. I have 15 in CL and 10 in LM, so far. But I think atm to skill more a spell, which I also like, as Synergy for CL, instead of CL itslf. (Nova, in that case.) Although most players recommend the normal lightning over CL, I find the latter much better.

FO has this great advantage, that it only has one synergy, which even isn’t very much, compared to synergies of other spells, So if you realy want to max this, (which isn’t needed imho. at least until yet) you only need 40 points…

This leaves at least as much for the lightning-tree. And at least in Act 4 NM, this is very much enough, imho. BTW: I’m completely self-found. Using Ryme (ShaelEth)-shield with a spirit-sword as main outfit (and a Lore (OrtSol)-circlet and TalEth-Armor.)

Since this is an online-character, I’m refering to, it’s of course a “players 1”-game… If you play SP wiith players 8, it might be a bit less effectiv.

As I said, I’m not in Hell-difficulty, yet, But It seems, you don’t need to min-max… At least not in a solo-game.

Oh, and I’m using an Act 3-Ice-Merc, meanwhile (after using and act II-prayer-Merc) And this functions, too. (But don’t use the fire. Act 3 Fire is useless imho. Even lightning is better, But ice is the best.) But as soon, as I find a 4-socket Polearm, I will switch to act II holy-freeze, Although Prayer is realy comfortable imho. But with Insight, this isn’t necessary.)

20

I’ve been running blizzard, it gets me most places, I use ormus robe which give firewall, With plus to skills equipment it give a good secondary skill, merc with good insight, tal helm and duriel armor takes care of the rest

21

tbh, I don’t know why would you switch to Light instead of Blizz/FireOrb unless you have Infinity.

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