I’ve started a sorc and got her to nightmare using fireball and frozen orb. I’m currently lvl 38 and was wondering when should I respec into a lightning/cold build and should I stay with frozen orb when I respec or go blizzard?
My gear is fine at the moment, I have Ancients Pledge and Spirit sword. Stealth armour, Lore helm and Magefist gloves. The rest of my jewellery and boots are just random. My amulet though has +1 to all sorc skills and 30+ to all res except fire has +40. My Merc has insight, armour with res and helm with chance for frost nova when hit.
Is there any other items I should look out for in nightmare?
Well if you are asking for what is best.
Then you can already spec into a blizzard build. You don’t really need special items for nightmare. Just focus on your resistance and health. DPS should be always good enough. Skip immune monsters.
Lightning is only good when you have really good gear and are able to break immunities. ( Late Game)
Don’t try to focus on armor. It’s kinda useless until you have enough to get decent dodge rates.
Sorceress
FCR Frames
0% 13
9% 12
20% 11
37% 10
63% 9
105% 8
200% 7
Try to hit 105 FCR. Should be easy with your current gear.
Build a Rhyme Shield for defence until you find a Monarch for Spirit in hell.
If you struggle with resistance cap consider the runeword Smoke as a new armor (50 to all resistances).
I wouldn’t waste to much time playing on nightmare. If you can farm andariel or ancient tunnels on hell, that’s where you can gear up.
Try to upgrade your merc weapon as soon as possible. He will help you kill immunes that need to be killed like questmobs ( countess )
Doing a full blizzard build is a HUGE mistake. The monster in the den of evil is cold immune. I have got on my original build of fireball and frozen orb at the moment, I do 0 dmg. Even though it says cold immune only, he seems to absorb fire dmg as well. my merc dies in 2 hits. I’m now lvl 58 and will have to respec into a lightning build of some kind because I cannot kill hardly anything.
Any suggests on point distribution on my skills for this?
UPDATE** - I have done a respec into lightning and frozen orb and am now clearing alot of act 1 hell. The only mistake I make was putting the points into chain lightning instead of normal lightning as this is now eating through my mana. However, none the less, I am now at least feeling hell viable, for now. I’ve even found Tal Rasha’s Amulet.
Well you can skip these monsters for now. Your merc will be strong enough to clear the den of evil later. Besides that you can always spec into fireball and firemastery.
Lightning will have more trouble later on in act 3 and onwards. Where cold is pretty much the best element overall. With cold mastery your dmg output is also really high early on. That enables you to farm really quickly.
Tal Amulet is a really good drop. It’s quite good combined with Tal’Armor and Belt. I’d recommend you to farm in high monsterlevel areas like Ancient Tunnels in Act2( very few cold immunes) or Pit Level 1 and 2( You might have trouble here. Alot of immunes) or The Mausoleum in Act1 ( very low monster density ) , because the armor can only drop in high level areas. (Andariel and Mephisto don’t drop the Armor)
You will also gain a lot of experience in these areas up to lvl ~70-80
I’ll look into this, thank you.
Do you know the best method for getting a 4 socket shield?
find a white monarch shield and use act5 smith quest to add sockets. It will always have 4 sockets and is the best shield for spirit. But it will require 156 Strength.
You will find those in high level areas aswell
NM is just a playground where you roflstomp everything with your starter runewords and synergized main skill, literally anything goes.