Please note that this report was originally posted within the first month and a half after the game's release. As the mechanics of the game become better understood and the game itself is updated by patches, the strategies detailed in this report may change in their effectiveness. This writeup is intended as a "character class report" to introduce the class and give one possible way of completing Hell solo with the class. It is NOT to be confused with "class evaluations", "playing guides", or "hey I beat the game like this and now I'm on the ladder so you should do everything exactly the same way I did".

Solo Hell sorcs definitely can be done. :) Not easily, but it's doable.

Since sorceresses are all about skill allocation, my sorc's skills at 52 are:

slvl 20(+1) static field; slvl 4(+1) thunderstorm; slvl 3(+1) lightning mastery
slvl 20(+1) glacial spike; slvl 5(+1) cold mastery
slvl 1(+1) warmth, teleport, energy shield, and frozen armor
slvl 1(+1) prerequisites

I spent a while preparing for this by playing multiplayer Nightmare games ungrouped. It helped my sorceress get some much-needed levels and skill points, and helped me as a player learn to use the stat/spike combo against groups of enemies while on the run--and getting used to having absolute nothing standing between my sorceress and the angry monsters! My strategy is based on staying mobile with fastest run/teleport and stat field from as far away as possible, with the pumped up spike for maximum freeze duration and some kill power after statting.

The practice on Nightmare paid off. Acts I and II were cleared with very little fuss, all the way until my sorc hit Duriel. The stat/spike combo was clearing large groups of monster relatively quickly and efficiently. Duriel was a tough challenge, as I had expected for a solo sorceress. My sorc went in and teleported/stat fielded my first handful of attempts, and got about 2-4 stat fields off each time before she bit the dust. Then once his hp was worn down to just a fraction of what he started with, she switched to a +3 blaze staff and lightning storm to wear down his hp slowly. It took 16 lives in all to kill him, but my sorc is a tough cookie and walked away with only some scars to remember him by. :)

Act III was where I expected my little sorceress to run into some problems. However, the leveling paid off huge here: the last time I did a solo/Hell run was with a clvl 30's necro w/ 450 DR, and every blowdart hit the poor necro. Now in the high clvl 40's and with a 650 DR, however, my sorceress watched a decent portion of the darts bounch harmlessly off of her linked mail. That made surviving the jungles much easier. And survive it she did! With the help of a fast-cast lightning mercenary to fill the screen full of charged bolts and finish the enemies off, she static fielded fetishes galore from off-screen for massive damage while freezing anyone who came too close with glacial spike. She cleared the jungles (including Spider Cavern and Flayer Dungeon) without dying once! I was thrilled for her. :) Stat field + charged bolt proved to be a surprisingly effective combo outdoors. :)

The rest of Act III and Act IV fell into the same stat field/glacial spike/teleport as needed pattern established earlier. She had to do a lot of retreating to find room to fight as the monsters got tougher, especially in Act IV. The Big D was vanquished without drinking a single potion (!) even on Hell difficulty, thanks to the off-screen range of her high level stat field and her maxed fire resist. And as expected, he dropped absolutely nothing worth mentioning for her efforts. :)

A few comments on sorceresses and/or Hell:

-Sorceress do not need static field for Hell. Many of their spells have a high enough damage potential so that weakening them first with stat field is optional. However, they do need to put some points into one or two skills so that they'd have something strong to use.

-IMO, going for as many +1 skills eq as possible for a sorceress is acceptable only in groups. Your sorceress loses so much DR and resistances with a a +6 skills set of eq that the only way they can survive Hell is with other bodies in front of them. Going solo as a sorceress means that luxury is absolutely nonexistent (oh sure, you can let your hireables go in front of you... until they die in the first battle you run into)--DR and resistances are very important for a solo Hell sorceress (perhaps even more so due to her low hp). As far as I'm concerned, wearing a Tarnhelm and a Silk of the Victors with a Sigon's Guard is asking to be pricked full of fetish blowdarts and then fried to a crisp by the spellcasters in Travincal and the Durances. Even with a level 27 firewall like GFraizer has or whatever, there's no way to stop enemies from getting close to your sorceress in Hell sometimes when going solo, and the extra levels on your meteor isn't going to do you a lot of good when they're stunlocking you. You can't teleport out of being hit, either.

-Freeze duration is very short in Hell. (Is it 1/4?) If you only have a few points into a freeze skill, it won't hold a monster still for any useful length of time. Case in point: the freeze on my sorc's frozen armor proved to be completely useless in Hell, since she only had it at slvl 1(+1). She casted it only for the DR boost.

-Skill distributions: for a sorceress, her best strategy can be summed up in 3 words: specialize, specialize, specialize! All those mediocre 3(+5) spells isn't going to do you much good in Hell--it just gives you more slow ways to annoy the enemy and burn your own mana at the same time. Having said that, get a damage spell in at least 2 trees. I haven't came across any creatures that were heavily resistant to both lightning and cold, so I'm assuming that you should be safe with spells from only 2 trees.

-Sorceresses aren't "weak", IMO--they're badly misunderstood and very poorly planned and played, on the average. Static field truly shines in multiplayer (my sorceress did not join a single group which did not have someone at one point or another comment on the usefulness of her static field), and her damage spells provide a strong enough punch on Hell provided the sorceress has allocated her skill points wisely. Spreading out, especially with low-level skills, will really hurt a sorceress as far as skill points go. 3 tree solo sorcs are definitely possible, IMO, but they need some serious planning and leveling to pull off.

Umm, I'll stop here with my sorceress ranting for now, but I had a lot of fun with her. :) Feel free to ask if you have any questions, I'm sure I'll have a lot to say about it. :) She's definitely useful as part of a multiplayer group, and playing her solo/Hell is as much of a challenge as you can get out of D2 without going into variants and the such. Beating the game on Hell without groupmates requires careful planning, sound strategy, good playing skills, and enough patience to chip away at the endless hordes of monsters armed only with the spells of your choice. :) Or the alternative is to just level up to 80 and distribute all those skill points--if you can't beat Hell with that many skill points, maybe you should take up another hobby. :)

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