Skills

How to allocate skill points is a commonly asked question, but there is no correct or wrong answer. How a player wishes to allocate his skill points is his own customisation of his character. Here, I can only point out the usefulness of each skill and how applicable it is to hardcore.

There are generally 3 types of spells, Finishers, Utility and Prerequisites. Here in this guide, I will go through the spells in this categorisation instead of the normal ice/lightning/fire categories for easier comparison. I will not be specifically comparing which spell is better than another, for such questions, it is better posted in a forum and asked, although if you would like to see it here, you can email me your article. ;+P

Being in hardcore, it is recommended that you get at least one skill that chills the enemy. Also, note that certain spells are not party-friendly and these should also be considered when you allocate your skill points.

A sorceress can aim to have one finishing spell only, or build up two finisher spells. If a sorceress only intends to have one finishing spell, usually he will end up with a few extra skill points by the time he reaches level 75 which can be thrown into the masteries and other utility skills. For example, a sorceress that has 20 in Orb, 20 in Static, 20 in Warmth, 6 in ES, 6 in Cold and 4 in Lightning Mastery and 8 prerequisites still has a couple of skill points left to allocate at level 75 which probably can be thrown into Cold Mastery.

A sorceress that however intends to obtain 2 finishing spells would require more prerequisites and at least 10 skill points in the second finisher, ending up in about 15 points in each finisher and have insufficient points to max either finisher. Otherwise the player can also aim for a strong maxed finisher and a weak minor finisher. The advantage would be quite obvious if the 2 finishers are 2 different types of elemental damage but the player would also have to allocate skill points into both skill masteries.

Looking at the 3 main types of elemental attacks in general, it is noted that the Poison elemental attack has been generally left to the Necromancer (non-sequitur). Anyway, here are the main advantages and disadvantages of each of these skill trees.

Fire spells rely on huge damage that quickly burns up the enemies. A maxed Firewall and maxed Fire Mastery can do well over 800 max damage and is the spell with the most damage. However the drawback is that the casting cost of high level fire spells are usually high and causes an obscene amount of lag, especially on old video cards.

Cold spells are comparable in damage to that of fire spells after considering in the effects of cold mastery and the fact that more monsters have higher fire resistances than cold resistances (which also means cold mastery need not be so high). However the other advantages of cold spells over fire are obvious, apart from doing damage, cold spells also chill the enemy as a defensive side effect and illuminate them blue, seperating minions of necros from enemies. Cold spells are not as sprite intensive either and the only spell that might cause a bit of lag would be Frozen Orb, although thick Blizzards may cause visual problems behind it. On top of all that, chilling spells destroy 20% of all corpses, rendering Shamans useless.

Cold Spells chill/freeze durations are halfed in Nightmare and quartered in Hell difficulties. Chill and Freeze durations are also modified directly in proportion to the target's cold resistances (after Cold Mastery is accounted for). That means a monster in Hell with maxed cold resists at 75% has a cold duration reduced to 1/16 of what it is to a monster without any resists in Normal.

Lightning spells are very weak in damage compared to the other 2 skills trees. Only Nova and Thunderstorm (actually Telekinesis and Charged Bolt as well) has increasing minimum damage and this makes lightning spells very unreliable in terms of dealing constant damage. 2 of the spells, Chain Lightning and Lightning have a casting frame rate of 23 (there is 25 frames per second) and cannot be reduced by fast casting equipment due to the nature of the spell of travelling/bouncing lightning. The Lightning mastery tries to make up for this by making lightning spells cheaper to cast so you can cast more of it to average out the damage. Generally this route is not taken as it is impractical, given the high lightning resists of most monsters on top of low average damage. Already static field is the spell that can do more damage than most other spells.

Quite obviously, cold spells is the route to take, expecially to a player who has never played sorceress before. If you decide to take 2 trees, it should be preferably cold and fire. Of course, lightning-only sorceress are completely possible (and there ARE such sorceress on the ladder) but they are much harder to play and take longer to level up. Consider it like the difference between taking a bus and a cab.

Some finishers have a duration, such as Blizzard, and Thunderstorm, once cast, these spells do damage passively in the background while you can cast other spells such as static field. Such an ability make them more useful as well and it is no surprise why Blizzard is one of the best sorceress soloing spells, combing both abilities and the capabilities of cold damage with a moderate casting cost.

Frozen Orb has traditionally been one of the best spells for the sorceress because it can do damage to most monsters on the screen at the same time, just like the Chain Lightning in Diablo 1. It still remains as one of the best spells as it's cold duration is also decent, losing only to Frost Nova.

Each ice shard thrown off by the Orb deals the stated damage. A less known fact of Frozen Orb is that once it passes through a monster or bone wall, it has no effect even though the animation on screen shows otherwise. If you fire a Orn through a monster standing next to you, you will probably damage it once with the first ice shard and once the orb flies through it, all subsequent ice shards released has no effect. The best way to aim with Frozen Orb is thus to aim at a vector slightly off the monster from a distance so that the Orb flies by the monster and explodes next to it. This maximises the amount of ice shards that will hit the monster for maximal damage.

Frozen Orb is the preferred spell when partying with Necromancers as it does not cause much lag on top of whatever lag the minions are already causing.

The main drawback of Frozen Orb is it's high casting cost. The tip here is to cast less Orbs and more Static Fields and the effect is usually the same. Instead of casting Orb, SF, SF, SF, SF, Orb, Orb, Orb, Orb, he player should cast Orb, SF, SF, SF, SF, Orb, SF, SF, SF, SF, Orb, Orb. This uses a lot less mana and achieves the same effect of killing the monsters.

Blizzard is well known for the best sorceress soloing spell and I will not go through how it works or how it is used here. Besides being stackable, having a high duration, chills enemies and is passively doing damage once cast, it has a moderate casting cost to boast.

The major problem with Blizzard is it is extremely hard to see through and these vizual effects more than irritates other players when they can't see what they are targetting. Blizzard is extremely useful to cast over yourself in areas with Leapers.

At first sight, Glacial Spike is an extremely valuable spell because it is able to freeze multiple monsters in its tracks for 1.2 seconds at level 1! It fact, it IS the finishing spell that carries a sorceress from level 18 onwards until she gets his finishing spell of choice.

Glacial Spike has a cheap casting cost and freezes enemies for decent damage. Many players fail to realise that freezing and chilling durations are halfed in Nightmare and quartered in Hell difficulties and this is the major problem even with a maxed out level 22 Glacial Spike. Freezing for barely a second in Hell, unless you spam cast Glacial Spike, it is impossible to execute the Spike/Static combo. Some monsters such as Oblivion Knights and Grotesques have an inherent ability to half freeze/chill times and this will cause further problems.

Reader Joens has sent in the following comments on Glacial Spike: "Glacial spike can be a wonderful spell if you decide to use it instead of eg Orb. It may not be as fast or easy, but will serve you just as well once you get to know it. I chose it for the challenge and style. Here's some advice how to use GS in hell/hell solo:

"The trick is, in my opinion, to use it not only with static but with static and frost nova. Only use it as a finisher. Here's the basics: chill monsters with a low level frost nova, cast static until monsters unchill, frost nova again, static again then finish with GS. How many times you frost nova and static of course depends on cast speed. Just don't GS until a few spikes will finish them off. Retreat when necessary.

"Note: most people know the fastest way to cast static is to hold the mouse button down. The trick with this combo is never to let it go even when changing spells. You can very quickly static/frost nova while never releasing the right mousebutton, just switch spells with your prefered hotkey while holding the mousebutton down.

"You cannot and should not try to cast static in between spikes, this will not be very efficient. I tried it and even with near full tweak (3 fastest cast items) you can only squeeze about 3 statics in between the spikes in hell and monsters will close in on you. This is not the way to go and probably the reason most people give up glacial spike before hell difficulty.

"GS also has the major advantage of stopping monsters all together when fired continously. They will not hit/shoot at you when frozen in their track. Use this to your advantage. When facing eg mages, group them and fire GS at them making sure the GS freeze them all, then just keep firing until they're dead. The low mana cost allows you to do this. The area of effect of GS is rather large (since 1.05 I beleive) and you can easily freeze up to 10 monsters at a time when grouped properly. What's better than a slow mage? A non moving, non firing one! Huge plus when soloing. Shattering the bodies is another one.

"I use GS alone (with cold mastery) on all monsters with high resistance to lightning, especially those that suck mana. Just be sure to group them all (or single them out if they are too many to freeze them all at once). It will take time and you will use all of your mana but they will die. Use potions when necessary.

"Remember, GS is just as strong or weak as FO. Only it doesn't spread and can't hit a monster more than once. At slvl 23 my GS did max 178 dmg, quite enough for a finisher. I don't claim it to be better or faster than other spells, just point out that it is indeed viable. When partying necros, for cs, just make sure they get all the bodies they need. Go easy on the spike and they will not mind your choice of spell."

Glacial Spike does have its disadvantages though. It's area of effect is too small compared to other spells like Blizzard and Frozen Orb. Using Frost Nova on the enemies as described above will mean you have to be physically closer to the monsters than if you used other spells to chill. Even if you do not intend to use Glacial Spike as a main finisher, it is still a useful spell to hotkey to save another players life. It is highly recommended that you bind Glacial Spike to left click so that when you accidentally click on a monster while moving, you do not actually move to it and melee but instead freeze it momentorily.

Firewall is renowned as the spell that causes the most FPS lag especially at high levels. Although it does the most damage, it actually requires practice to cast it properly so that the monster walks through it's length.

There are 2 main ways to use Firewall. Collect a few monsters (chill them preferably) and cast firewall in an asterix pattern. Run around the perimeter of this asterix of fire, keeping the enemy monsters inside. While running, cast static field every 2 steps or so. This technique is called kiting, and is similar to using blizzard.

The second method is to cast stacks of Firewall in a direction parallel to the direction the monsters are coming from so that they walk through the whole length of it. Naturally, this requires practice to cast.

Blaze is a interesting version of Firewall, how it is used is simply to lure monsters and run away making them chase you. If you run fast enough, you can double back and stack the blaze and add firewalls in.

Blaze is mana efficient, and you can easily kill stuff without static when you use it. With a 5 stack doing say 1300 raw hp per second, you do not need that much static, hence tweaking is irrevelant. Because it is so mana efficient, you can seriously back off on warmth. This combination of lower points in static and warmth means you have more free points for a complementary spell designed to go after things which do not chase.

Firewall in a blaze package sees limited usage, thus the usual lag problems associated with a firewall sorceress are not there since you are only casting say one or two firewalls on that animator or shaman. The same goes for meteor.

There is currently a mini-guide for building a Blaze sorceress in Hardcore by Lok at http://www.lurkerlounge.com/2s/sorceres/blazbabe.shtml.

Casting Meteor requires some practice of the timing since it lands about 2 seconds after you cast it. It is rather effectively since it hits and impacts for a large amount of damage before starting to do fire damage.

The drawback is that Meteor kills the FPS rate and many players would have experienced it in the Ruined Temple or Durance of Hate as the groups Night Lords rain meteor on you. Meteor is more effective if there is a tank for monsters to attack so that they will not move out of the Meteor and you will not have to predict where the monster moves in 2 seconds. However the FPS drawback makes it not a very party friendly spell so be sure to ask if they mind if you cast it lot.

Hydra is currently bugged where Fire Mastery is not affecting the damage dealt even though the spell description and character screen says otherwise. Hydra is not effective unless it is cast in large groups above 10 and this drains a sorceress mana quite considerably.

Hydra does have it's speciality uses such as using it to scout ahead of you and casting it into rooms before you enter it. It is also useful against offscreen Oblivion Knights and LEBs. However, the fact that Hydra requires 4 prerequisites puts many sorceress off from learning Hydra.

When one hydra is cast, a 3-headed dragon sprouts out from the floor and each head will spit about once a second at a nearby enemy. Even though one hydra will produce 3 firebolts each doing the base hydra damage (without fir mastery), note that many of these firebolts will miss as the monster moves, unless it is moving towards the hydra.

These 2 spells are not as effective as the finishers discussed above because of the 23 frame rate casting speed (you do not want to be cast locked on the spot). Where you can cast one Chain Lightning per second, you can also cast perhaps 2 to 3 Static Fields per second and probably end up doing more damage.

Chain Lightning only bounces back and forth monsters when they are near one another and damage dealt to each successive monster is halfed, while Lightning deals the same damage to everything in a straight line from you. If you are unlucky and get a low damage roll for your initial first hit with your Chain Lightning, the rest of the subsequent hits will do potentially less damage, making it an extremely unreliable finisher.

Nova is not used except by the occasional lightning sorceress. Its radius is not very big and actually requires the sorceress to go near the monster to do damage. To use nova effectively, a high level static field is needed to reduce the enemy hp to a resonable level killable by Nova when the monster moves next to you.

This is a all-or-nothing skill and in most players' opinions, it's a useless skill. It misses nearly all fast moving monsters and hits slower moving ones 2/3s of the time. It does pathetic damage at level 1 and fires once every 4 seconds or so but does an average of 150 damage every second at level 20. At level 25, Thunderstorm can potentially do 200 average damage every 0.6 seconds, assuming every shot hits.

However the large lightning resistances of the enemy and the unpredictablility of which monster would be hit next (if it hits at all) makes 20 skill points an utter waste. By right, it would be useful if it hits the monster with the least hp, but sometimes it targets that trapped soul. Although it could potentially give a off a warning sound when an enemy is approaching, casting a high level static field once or twice also achieves the same effect.

VV has tested Thunderstorm and found some potential bugs with Thunderstorm, mainly those regarding the rumours that Thunderstorm will not hit monsters that are standing next to a wall. His findings can be found at a post at http://network54.com/Hide/Forum/message?forumid=31101&messageid=971632947.

Reader Lars-Erik Grahn has sent in the following comments on Thunderstorm: "TS is NOT useless. You must wiew it as a passive skill, like shiver armor, NOT as a finisher. Use GS left click, FO right click, and TS on at all times as a passive skill. The damage TS deals is high, both min and max, and it strikes faster and faster as you put more skill points into it. I have it at lvl 18 with one of my characters, Yarana, and it strikes once in two seconds, compared with something like once in six seconds at lvl 1. I donÝt know how fast it will hit at really high lvls, but my guess is that it will strike more then once each second at lvl 25 (which is my goal), if the speed increases at the same rate as before. The randomness of TS is not really a problem as it is just a passive skill, a bonus. Against booses it is also very good, as you will hit the poor bastards for huge amounts of damage when they are the only target."

Even so, many players would prefer spending the 21 skill points (including 1 prerequisite) elsewhere such as on Warmth, Static, Masteries, etc.

Utility spells are spells that usually serve one purpose only and usually they are specific in nature. Some of them are very useful, and most only require one skill point in it, any more will be wasted.

Static field is the uber spell of the sorceress, much like how Whirlwind is the uber skill of the barbarian. Even though it is possible to build sorceress without static field, such a sorceress would be highly ineffective in terms of contributing to a party and the extra length of time and mana needed to kill a monster would increase the risk of leveling up.

Prior to 1.04 patch, A level 14 static field was sufficient to cover the whole screen including the corners due to a programming error. A level 9 or so static field was able to touch the 4 main cardinal points of the screen. In v1.04, a level 16 static field is required to just cover the north and south sides of the screen and a level 18 static field to include the corners.

A reader has sent in information that a level 10 static field (v1.05b)is now sufficient to cover the entire screen, including the corners. Another reader has also sent in the range of a level 18 static field and its radius is an ellipse, about 1.5 screens in radius in the east/west direction, about 1.00 screens in radius in the north/south direction. The diagonal is about 1.25 screen in radius. The range of static field isn't really elliptical though, it's a pure circle. It looks elliptical on screen due to the top down angle view of about 60 degrees from the normal parallel to the plane. Comparing the radius of static field of v1.05 against v1.04, the radius is double in v1.05 than in v1.04 for any level of static field.

It is recommended that a sorceress gets at least a level 16 static field so as to be able to hit nearly everything he can see on the screen. Getting it higher is also viable since the area covered actually increases quadratically. Besides being able to static a LE or MSLE from offscreen is a boon; it allows you to detect the prescence of such a monster from a distance before you are actually in the danger zone of the LE.

Static field is a spell with increasing returns, since the area covered increases quadratically with the same incremental increase in radius per level.

Energy Shield is extremely important for a sorceress as it extends the lifespan by absorbing some of the damage into mana in the 1 to 2 ratio. How high Energy Shield should be is discussed in greater detail in the HP/Mana section along with the EHP concept.

Energy Shield also allows the sorceress to be more flexible. Suppose a sorceress has a certain amount of hp and a comparatively larger amount of mana. She could choose whether to use only part of her mana to attack while reserving the rest as hitpoints, or choose to use all her mana for the attack, using no mana to act as hp. The sorceress can assess and choose depending on the situation.

It is quite a well known fact that softcore sorceress have less hp and more mana than their hardcore counterparts. This makes Energy Shield even more important in dividing this mana up into "attacking mana" and "hp mana". There will be times you wished you had just that little bit more hp. If you had no Energy Shield, and you created a sorceress with a large amount of hp and a fair amount of mana, you would be limiting yourself in terms of offensive power, whereas another sorceress with a fair amount of hp and a large mana pool could choose to use the mana either to attack or defend herself.

For those of you who intend to use a staff that has +3 to ES or something similar to save skill points at the early point of a sorc's life, it has been discovered that Energy Shield (and Holy Shield) uses the skill's current level (not your caster level). That means that every time you are hit, the game checks the current level of the Energy Shield and uses that value. (In other words, this suggestion in Dog of Justice's HC Sorceress Guide doesn't work.) However, the cold armors do not do this, your caster level determines the spell's defense boost, where it remains until it is recast or runs out.

This spell is used to pick up items, open doors, kick barrels and jugs, open chests, etc. It can also be used to stun an enemy and push them back, similar to the knockback effect of a weapon. This second ability of telekinesis is often overlooked, and some players actually use it on teleporting monsters to prevent them from teleporting. Quite obviously, one point is enough in this skill.

This is one of the best spells of the sorceress. Get it as soon as you reach level 18. It is an escape spell as well as a mode of transportation, much like the leap attack skill of the barbarian. However, this spell is not user friendly when it is laggy, so if you are trying to escape from monsters in lag, it is usually better to simply run away.

There is only one location in Diablo 2 where you cannot teleport to a place out of your direct line of sight: Tal Rasha's Chamber. Again, only put one point in this skill. With enough warmth and mana at the higher levels, you actually gain mana while casting it, not forgetting lightning mastery.

Frost Nova will be one of your best friends until you obtain Blizzard or Frozen Orb. At a very cheap casting cost, it chills everything in a radius around you for quite a long time, keeping you safe. Get into the habit of always chilling your enemies before doing anything, especially since sorceress have low HP and slower down the enemies by half is a very good idea.

How much warmth to get is a highly debatable topic, some sorceress get by with only 7 points in Hell difficulty Act 4, while others recommend maxing it out. This is usually a preference, difference is play styles among people. Some people do not mind waiting around for mana to regenerate while they kick baskets, jugs and open chests and pick up items, while others want to move on as fast as possible.

How much warmth is needed also largely depends on whether you solo or party. A sorceress tends to use more mana when soloing, so a higher warmth is needed. If you intend to party only, then a lower warmth is needed.

Given a choice to put a skill point into either say Frozen Orb or Warmth, ask yourself whether you are constantly running out of mana. If so, put the point in Warmth, putting it in Frozen Orb will only increase its casting cost further.

For some reason, tons of mana potions drop in Act 3 and 4, but not in Act 1 and 2. These mana potions can and should be used whenever your mana drops to 30% or so. Some players do not like to use mana potions and do not keep any in their inventory, while others hoarde them. It is interesting to note that when you have 1000 mana, a 200 mana Super mana potion is not probably going to heal much mana though, unless critical mana healing (double mana healing) occurs. This chance is Ene/4 up to 200 Ene and follows a diminishing curve beyond 200 Ene.

I recommend getting Warmth to at least 15, and max warmth if possible, as doing so allows you to play off the top of your mana orb. Should any disconnect occur, you would still have a large mana pool to absorb damage instead of having little mana, reducing the effectiveness of Energy Shield. Also, a maxed warmth and 900 mana just balances the mana drain caused by a Strangler's homing missile.

It is advisable to get at least one of the three cold armours, if not more for the side benefits of having extra light radius and some defense. Frozen Armour freezes the enemy when they attempt to melee you, Shiver Armour chills (and does negligible damage) to the enemy that attempts to melee you, while Chilling Armour does nothing to melee attackers, and shoots back a pretty ice bolt (which will probably miss) at a ranged attacker that hits you.

Theoretically, a good sorceress will never be hit by melee attacks, hence Chilling Armour should be used, but in actual reality, this is impossible to achieve with lag on Battle.net. Shiver Armour provides the most defense bonus of all the three armours, but this is probably not important.

In Nightmare difficulty, freeze and chill length are reduced by half, while in Hell difficulty it is reduced to 1/4. This makes Frozen Armour unviable in Nightmare and Hell Difficulty, what use is freezing the enemy for 1/4 seconds in Hell? Still, Frozen Armor is relatively useful in Normal difficulty.

Shiver Armour damages the enemy when they attempt to melee you, this is probably important with respect to leapers that leap away from you when they get damaged. The chill length is one second (at any skill level) in hell, long enough for a sorceress to teleport out of a stun lock.

I recommend using Frozen Armor in Normal and Nightmare difficulties and Shiver Armour in Nightmare and Hell difficulties. Again, one point in both of these skills are enough.

Fire mastery increases the damage of all your fire spells, except Hydra. Fire Mastery does not affect Hydra in anyway even though the stated damage in the description and character screen says so otherwise. (When you get slain by a player's Hydra, it says "is slain by Hydra" and not "is slain by Player".)

Cold Mastery reduces the cold resistances of enemies to your cold damage spells by the stated amount. Suppose the enemy has 30% cold resistance and your cold mastery is at 50%. When you do cold damage to this monster, for the purposes of your damage, the cold resistance of the enemy is reduced to 15% and not to -20% as you might have imagined. This means that Cold Mastery does not do anything to monsters without cold resistances and it is not as useful as you think.

Lightning Mastery reduces the casting cost of all your lightning spells, but the only lightning spell with casting cost of any real concern is static field, since everyone would be chain casting it. Your mana should be increasing while you chain cast static field.

All 3 masteries have very high diminishing returns after level 9 hence it is not recommended to go beyond level 9. Suppose you do 2% more fire damage to a monster, this is probably reduced to 0.5% with enemy maxed fire resists. Suppose you reduce 2% more cold resistance of a monster, if the monster has 75% cold, you would reduce it's resistances by a mere 1.5%. If you do 600 damage with a frozen orb, assuming 4 shards of 150 damage hits, that's about 9.5 damage more only. The skill point would have been better spent in static field or warmth, unless you have nothing else to invest it in.

I recommend getting Lightning Mastery to level 4 (after items) so that the casting cost of static field is reduced to 5 mana. I do not recommend getting either of the other masteries past level 9.

Prerequisite spells are just that: prerequisites for other spells. More often than not, you will not ever want to place more than 1 skill point in it because these skills at high levels still do not do enough damage to substantiate the skill points used.

These remaining spells are Ice Bolt, Ice Blast, Charged Bolt, Firebolt, Inferno, Fireball and Enchant. These spells being prerequisites are only useful somewhat to a point not past Act 2 of Normal difficulty, and are highly ineffective in Nightmare and Hell difficulties with increasing resistances and hp of monsters.

I will not go into how these spells can be used effectively for the first 15 levels or so with the appropriate staves that add levels to the same skills. If anybody would like to do this for me, you can email me.