What The $%#* Happened?

[Hammerskjold]

I found playing a sorceress solo quite fun in hell difficulty when I make what I call a "power" sorceress build. Max out Firewall, Blizzard, and Thunder Storm. Token points in all the skills to get to them, 6 or so in warmth, 1 in cold mastery, then split the rest between lightning mastery, fire mastery and glacial spike.

Right now I know some folks would be saying "thats ridiculous!", but keep in mind that I am 87th level and I only run from fights when my minion buys a farm or when I am dealing with too many black soul monsters and their ilk (I still haven't gotten my resistance maxed yet). I play in hell by myself or with my wife's pally, oftentimes when other people are in the game. Now all my sorc is trying to do is reach lvl 99.

The key points to this build are that you are quick with your hotkeys and take note of what creatures are resistant/immune to what. Granted you won't be able to kill creatures as fast perhaps as a solo tree or dual tree build, but I think it makes up for itself in that I can handle any monster in the game and find the element its weak to. Your increasing mana pool helps with mana consumption issues, as does any MPK (mana per kill) items. + to skills or + to skill tree items will make even the "token" points put into say nova or chain lighting actually feasible to use on hostiles that are resistant to your primary kill spells, fire wall and blizzard. Glacial spike helps both with damage for blizzard and with freezing targets not immune to cold so your minion isn't so easily overwhelmed. You should always be shooting glacial spike or chain lighting off if you are waiting for the firewall/blizzard spell casting delay to pass. Some would argue that cold mastery is better than glacial spike, but I believe faultily so for a couple of reasons: 1) Glacial spikes freeze time increases with each point in it and it synergizes 5% damage to blizzard (one of this build's primary skills) -- meaning it does the same effective damage increase as cold mastery against monsters not immune to cold; 2) cold mastery eventually gets your enemies to -100% and that's all it does -- +1 items and the like can get a token point investment to do that work for you while you increase your actual damage output with the 5% damage synergy. 3) if you are playing with a conviction aura from equipment or a pally, you max out the % damage they will take but without increasing what you dish out - that's wasted skill points.

Now obviously some fights are harder than others -- especially when you have say and extra fast, immune to fire and cold boss you're fighting. In this case, I am thankful I have +6 to all my lighting skills and can just spam nova at them whilst my minion stabs and my thunder storm bolts him.

It's a strange build, and your first 18 levels are usually slow and hard, but once you get going, you can crush everything.

Thread necromancy aside, hello and welcome. (Unless you're just re-registering or something and in fact an old school lurker. In that case, hello again.)

But better on topic necromancy than spam or tumbleweeds I guess.

It sounds like you're describing a tri-elemental sorceress. While I've played and like them too, personally I find T-Storm too be too slow and random for my taste.

I did have a mid level sorc that had maxed Firewall, a throwback to an old school style of sorcies, but after a while I just could not tolerate the pace of it. It had it's charms for me, but in the end it did not fit my personal style.

But if it suits your playstyle, and at clvl 87 I'm gonna guess that it does. That's all that matters in the end really.

ps. If you're playing on SP\LAN, consider the Realms Runeword enabled mod. Some of the affordably realistic runewords like Insight and Spirit are game changers. Especially for casters. Unless you are deliberately playing straight up vanilla mode SP\LAN or something. Then in that case ignore the p.s.