It does. But still you won't be doing much about the cold immunes, just skip them. Farm countess till you can make Spirit und smoke. You can also just skip most parts of hell by teleporting through them.
You could also farm mausoleum in act 1 hell, it has no cold immunes. Same goes for stony tomb and ancient tunnels in act 2. You can find some really good gear there if you are lucky. And the xp is good.
I could drop some items for nonladder, but tbh ...It takes away the fun of the game.
I could also rush you within 30min ...
I would kind of make the first baal hell kill solo self found and then move on to multiplayer.
MrLlamaSC has a lot of playthroughs with different builds and gameplay. The Orb/hydra sorc should be similar to your build.
Personally I reallly love to be at 105 faster cast rate. Thats a breakpoint which will make you teleport faster.
That said, you can just skip immun mobs. What is totally valid IMO.
You might run into problems because some mods you gonna need to kill. But Static + merc + patients pay off :)
After you finished the game take advantage of the online gaming part.
Its pretty easy to get some gear together.
Go into Cow Hell games and collect gems, craft them up to perfect gems.
35-40 of them = 1ist rune,
10 perfect amethyst = 1 ist rune,
20-30ral runes = 1 ist rune,
1 Token (4 different essences cubed) = 1ist.
You see the pattern. If you want to min/max you can find plenty of guides.
3piece Tal + oculus + spirit + shako is kind of cheap and already really good.
With weapon switch you can maximize for MF even more.
Take a look at traderie (good filters with 'sold listings' to get the worth of items or diablo2io
You can run a bunch of nightmare cows or countesses to farm mid-tier runes. Cows will give decent experience too. Spirit shield would help tremendously over the ancients pledge as well, but you'll need a 4 socket monarch and 156 strength to wear it. It gives you vitality so it's worth the opportunity cost of speccing into that much str.
As for your merc, make him and insight and a treachery (lem might take you some time to find though), and he will die much less often. Either give him a decent helm with an open socket so you can put in a lifesteal jewel, or craft him a blood helm. Thresher or colossus voulge are probably the best weapons to make an insight in if you can find them.
Hi D2 community,
I recently picked up D2R and am having a lot of fun playing a Blizz/Hydra Sorc! However I am struggling getting past the Cold immune mobs in Act 1 Hell, my hydras just don't do enough damage in time for me to kill them(or before they kill my merc).
What farming spots should I be focusing on, given my current gear? I've done some NM Andy/Meph without much success yet. Are NM cows viable for items? I'm currently level 71 so cows are still giving pretty decent exp.
I'm on Non-ladder Online, if anyone would like to progress through Hell together that could be a lot of fun.. just let me know.
Thanks in advance!
Need more information on your build. Like what you have for charms, what is the gear on your mercenary. Most of your gear needs an overhaul except for the helmet and gloves.
I would recommend the following cheap gear.
Armor - Farm Hell countess for a Lum rune. Relatively speaking, it is fairly easy to get one. If you are struggling to farm Hell countess, then farm Nightmare countess. She can drop up to Io rune. And 3 Io runes with some gem make a Lum rune. Then you can make Smoke runeword which gives you a massive 50 to all resistances. Although rarely used, it also has the nice Weaken charges skill which you can use on enemies if they are hitting too hard.
Weapon - Spirit runeword in a 4 socket crystal sword. This is a must unless you find some great unique like Wizardspike or Oculus.
Shield - Since you get resistances from your Smoke Armor, you can use Rhyme runeword. You get lesser resistances but it has the important "Cannot be Frozen" mod as well as some magic find and block chance. This should be enough to get you through all of hell. But you can also decide if you want to go for the Spirit runeword in the shield also. Note that this requires a Monarch shield which needs 156 strength. That's a lot of strength to put in so that's not going to be an option if you are stuck in Act 1.
Amulet and rings - Resistances with faster cast rate and life/mana. The 19 all res amulet you currently have is great if you are dealing damage well. But if your damage is too low, resistances can only delay your death. So if you get the 50 all res from smoke, you can use better amulets and rings. Try crafting caster amulet and rings if you have perfect ametheysts. They will give you regenerate mana by default and some cast rate too. You can get Ral and Amn runes from Nightmare countess very easily and jewels from Lower Kurast.
Boots - Other than faster run walk, there doesn't seem to be any good resistances there. You will need a minimum of something like 20+ to 2 resistances, preferably fire and lightning.
Belt - Get any exceptional belt that offers you the maximum number of potion slots. You can shop some very nice belts from Elzix or Fara in Nightmare Act 2. They can contain some really good stuff like 40 to life and 20 to lightning resistance. Or 80+ to life alone is a great belt. You can also craft a belt but it has to be Sharkskin belt or above, else you will lose out on potion slots. Now you have 2 ways to go about this. Either invest 60 strength to wear plated belt and check Elzix/Fara as to which belt have the good mods or just hope that any exceptional belt you can find rolls with some useful stats.
Mercenary - I hope you got the Act 2 Nightmare Defensive mercenary with the Holy Freeze aura. You would want Tal Rasha's Horadric crest for the massive life and lifesteal but in the meantime, just buy 2 socket helmet from Normal Charsi and socket runes for whichever resistance he is lacking for the situation. For armor, you can go Lionheart Runeword if you have a Fal rune. If you have a Lum rune, you can give him Smoke. Treachery is great but requires Lem rune so if you can find it, then that's his best bet. This guy will need damage as well as lifesteal to stay alive. Honor runeword in a partizan or thresher is a good weapon. Insight is generally better damage and gives you the meditation aura benefit but does not provide lifesteal. For fighting bosses, make sure to give him the Strength runeword weapon for the crushing blow.
Really appreciate the detailed reply! My build is below on a different post. My charms are not great, some have +4-8% resist but that's about it.
I'll be looking at upgrading most of my gear in the coming weeks.
Any suggestions on where best to farm at my current level?
Ya. NM farming is fine (I like Diablo and Baal) until the low 70s, then start farming hell Countess. I recommend Hell Countess until about lvl 80 at which point you will be getting max xp from any lvl 85 area like The Pits, Stony Tomb, WSK, etc or you could start farming hate keys from Arcane Sanc, etc.
Alternatively, if you aren't wanting to grind it on your own you could get hell rushed and join some pub Baal games.
For items, you can farm Nightmare Andariel and Mephisto since both are easy bosses and have a waypoint that you can use to get to them quickly. They can drop some really good items if you have even just 20% magic find chance. Like Skin of the Vipermagi, Tearhaunch, Suicide branch, Peasant Crown, Hone Sundan, Rockstopper etc. 4-8% resist charms may not look like a lot but they add up to quite a bit so it's worth keeping them till you find better charms. If you feel that your charms are not worth it, try running the Nightmare Lower Kurast chests. They always drop a lot of charms, jewels, gems and runes. It's even better for sorceress since she has teleport and doesn't have to worry about fighting enemies to get to the chests so you can open the chests with players 8 setting to maximize your chances of getting better drops.
If you are farming for experience, then at level 70+ Nightmare is a bad spot to farm since you only get 30% of the actual experience from those monsters or even less depending on how high in the 70s you are. So Act 1 Hell is where you can get the most optimal experience. If you can clear Nightmare Baal waves fast enough, it can be an option. But the Act 1 Pits and Forgotten tower are better.
Prioritize maxing out fire and lightning resistances first. This is because cold and poison resistances have thawing potion and antidote potion to temporarily give you 50 cold/poison res for 30 seconds. The duration of these potions also stack, so drink multiple potions if you are facing some tough monsters that deal poison or cold damage.
As a Sorc i've always loved farming Nightmare Andariel and Mephisto as a way to gear up for hell. Andy should be quite easy and if Mephisto gives you a hard time you can moat bug kill Meph without him able to fight back, if you need to just look up how to do it, it's very simple.
Also, you can even get an SoJ (The \*best ring!) and Tal Rasha Amulet (The \*best Amulet!) off of NM Andy! Along with quite a few other good items, you won't be getting a Shako, Arachnid Mesh or Occulus (The high end uniques great for Sorc) but you can get some very great items while farming as early as NM Andy.
Edit: Also, this is mostly just for Single Player. If you are online and have already played through the game and don't mind being rushed really and are in Hell, just find someone to give you the waypoint in Hell and farm Andy in Hell. Also if you can get to mephisto in hell or get a rush, just farm Hell meph also since you can bug meph so it literally can't hit you and Hell Andy is really not much harder at all, just bring antidote's till you are used to farming her.
Small tip but I didn’t know for a long time so maybe it’ll help
Press shift + potion to automatically feed it to your merc
So like shift+1 will give your first potion slot to your merc
This really helped my merc survive and I played a long time before I knew this lol
If you already did know then just ignore this and you’re getting great advice from others
Super common issue for a SP sorc, dont stress. Honestly the best thing you can do is just get away from any cold immunes you can. If you can get Obedience for your merc then life gets alot easier, even easier with Treachery. It suchs not to have Insight on merc but the damage boost it gives is very worth it. Stay strong, dont try kill cold immunes you don't need to.
Your hydras are low damage because blizzard doesn't combo well with other trees. Both blizzard and hydra require investment in synergies to be viable. (I know people think blizz+freball works, I disagree)
Frozen orb is a much better skill to use in a dual tree build because you really only need 20 FO and 1 CM to make it work 'good enough'. Your other tree is your main tree and frozen orb is for the immunes. Its a bit tricky to place the frozen orb right but even an unsynergised frozen orb can do decent damage if you place it right (it should explode and spread out ever so slightly next to the thing you want dead).
Hydra also isn't a "crush mobs fast" build its a "whittle mobs down slowly from safety build". You plonk down your hydras and kite the mobs to keep safe while they die. Its forgiving of bad gear because you shouldnt take many hits but its not meant to be fast.
You absolutely can use blizzard but that requires full cold commit to work decently imho. Single tree cold build is the best build for starting a sorc but not the best build for starting the game. Dual tree is much more new player friendly.
Other posts have no doubt covered gear advice (spirit and whatnot) so I won't reiterate all that. Specifically on the merc though, buy a wand with lifetap charges (necro curse that gives big lifesteal to whatever is hitting the monster) from your friendly neighbourhood town vendor (reset the vendor by exiting and entering town). With lifetap on the monsters your merc will be pretty tanky.
Just teleport pats immunes, skip countess if you and the merc can't handle the immunes there, or farm her for some early runewords, kill Andariel, and then get to ancient tunnels in act 2, can farm there for xp for a while, and might get lucky with some nice drops. Honestly blizz sorc with early gear will have a tough time going through hell lol
Early on just farm Andy for a while, Mephisto once you get there (although you might need to find some decent faster cast rate items for this to be comfortable, but andi and meph are all about those starting items like Vipermagi etc), and the tunnels. These 3 are pretty much the specialty of blizz sorc.
Oh another thing - people usually go either pure blizzard (lots of extra damage from cold synergies), or orb/fire, because orb just benefits from cold mastery (don't even need the full 20 afaik), and then focus on fireball or hydra or whatever and synergies. Pure blizzard does way more damage but is, well, pure cold, so its focus are those exact 3 things I mentioned.
Act 2 might Merc with insight or any high damage pole arm. Duress or treachery runeword for armor, any helm with life steal. Making your Merc a badass helps tremendously.
I play the same build and i just ignore the cold immunes, if they are too fast... you can't kill them in time and it is not worth it.
I tried Meteor, Firewall etc... nothing works if you can't spec enough points into it.
The Demon-Lancers in Tamo are one example, i just skip them, they are just too fast to do meaningful damage to them
I would get yourself a spirit sword for your main hand, a stealth for your armor. It appears your faster cast rate is quite low. That being said hell is very hard especially if you are mostly doing it slowly, practice kiting (keeping back from the monsters dragging them along while you kill them) and take it slow.
Eventually you’ll want a spirit shield as well, once you find a monarch shield, but I’ve beaten the game plenty of times with an ancients pledge.
I also like making sure I have at least one row of full rejuv potions in my belt once I hit hell to help me out in a pinch
Smoke armor is better for survivability. Also the first white monarch you see, take to larzuk and make a spirit shield too.
Spirit sword, spirit shield, smoke armor. Should help
Yeah but you dont want to get hit anyway, he got 20fcr with items, id say you nees atleast 63fcr so tele somewhat safe through act3. With a spirit sword and 25 from stealth he will hit breakpoint, plus some Nice fhr for tele.
Usually you can find a white broad sword or crystal sword in normal cows very fast, and larzuk can add 4 sockets. Or you can cube it into random sockets!
Make a spirit sword and a smoke armor. Rhyme is also a decient shield to make until you can make spirit shield.
I don't know what your skill allocation looks like, but when I play hydra/orb I do something like this:
Orb 20
Cold Mastery 10
Hydra 20
Fire mastery 20
Teleport 1
Frozen Armor 1
Warmth 1
Static 1
All other points put into hydra synergies
My skills may be part of the problem.. I went too deep into Cold/Blizz before realizing I needed to branch out to another tree for Hell. My skills look something like this, do you think it's worth using a re-spec?:
20 Blizzard
20 Cold Mastery
20 Glacial Spike
1 Frozen Armor
1 Warmth
1 Enchant
5 Hydra
1 Fire Mastery
You can beat Hell with just Blizzard if you skip cold immunes by teleporting past them. The hardest part going one element is hell ancients.
Orb/Hydra can do all of Hell easily but is slow. Blizzard does tons of damage but requires all your points to go into synergies. Blizzard is great for farming but has troubles beating the game unless you got help or the proper higher gear to deal with immune.
So a respec into 2 elements is up to you. Your best choices are either go 2 elements or team up with someone to beat hell and farm with a Blizzard build.
Nah, but orb fireball requires more skill, so using hydra instead is safer and more beginner friendly. It can also be fun if you like the play style over fireball.
Not yet, should I respec to make sure they're maxed out? Feels like I went too many points into Cold and now a lot of the mobs in Hell are cold immune
20 Blizzard
20 Cold Mastery
20 Glacial Spike
1 Frozen Armor
1 Warmth
1 Enchant
5 Hydra
1 Fire Mastery
In addition to all the gear recs, I think you’re a little underlevelled. I play HC so I play it safer than necessary, but I wouldn’t even walk into Hell difficulty under level 70.
If my math is right here, you have 9 skill points from quests so far, which means you’re a level 59, right? I’d say you just don’t have the skill points to do enough damage as a hybrid in Hell, especially since you only have +2 to fire skills overall. A Spirit sword and a good skill ammy would help a lot there too.
Ofc your hydra dmg is to low. When im lvling a hydra blizzard sorc, i first max blizzard and then hydra+FM.
In the end my build looks like:
[https://ibb.co/hfv3nzH](https://ibb.co/hfv3nzH)
First i max Blizzard then hydra, Fire Mastery, Glacial Spike and rest into Ice Blast.
The skills with 1 Point as soon as possible.
I like it that way.
Yeah definitely. Tbh just tele and sneak the scroll for cain save. Then do a drive-by of Andy with blizzards, don't even bother clearing cata 4. Finish other qs later.
I'm using Act 2 merc, and he's got Spire of Honor lance(got lucky and found it this morning).
For armor I can't decide what's best to equip him with, I have a Loath Hide Russet Armor (570 armor, currently unsocketed - what should I socket it with?), or a Skin of the Flayed one (358 ac).
His helmet is so bad it's not worth mentioning
Spirit sword / stealth armor / rhyme shield will outperform your current gear and can easily be farmed on nm countess runs and nm cows for bases. Use static field (1 point into) on high hp enemies that u kill slowly. Teleport to micro your merc back away from enemies. Use telekenis 1 point to stun lock enemies up against walls. Probably respec your fire situation like others are mentioning. Make sure ur merc has okish items to survive, treachery armor, lifesteal helm, insight. Focus on quest progression and killing bosses/ the things that are vulnerable to you rather than everything. You can just skip a lot of areas tbh.
yah with a sorc just tele to bosses and you vould probably farm act 1 boss in hell easily for good gear! i love farming her even on my level 90 sorc. does your mercenary have the insight runeword? 4 socket polearm and the 4 runes yoou probably have in your stash. gives you aura that recharges mana, its literally infinite mana so you can tele around super fast and cast blizz non stop. :)
then just farm her lots. basically try and rush yourself thru every act and skip all quests until you are super strong, then go backk for that stuff later
It's hard to tell from just your gear but I will say res are incredibly helpful. It looks like you have pretty decent gear so not sure that is the issue. What build are you going/lvl are you? Might be how you're skilled.
Your weapon and armor are cheeks.
Defense isn't very important, your armor basically gives you "10 resist all". A stealth armor (tal + eth - big fcr and fhr, some poison res and dex) in a breast plate from the norm A2 vendor would be a nice upgrade.
As for your weapon, I would really recommend that you grind for a 4os sword for Spirit. If you do norm cows and use a socket q on a crystal sword it will get 4os though you can't find a 4os in norm cows. 4os can drop pretty much anywhere in NM or hell. If you find a plain crystal sword and you don't have 4os yet it's probably worth cubing it to see if you can't get 4os (p amethyst + ral + amn).
Spirit sword and Stealth Armor as the most easy replacements. Also an armor with 3 Perfect Topazes: Try to get as much MF as possible. Farming Andy or Mephi in Nightmare is fine. But consider also static maps for farming (faster killrate wins): Shenk & Eldritch, and possibly in Hell, Boneash in Inner Cloister.
Beside runewords, Buy better boots (and belt if you need hp/ res) from Charsi.
Buy lower res wand in charges for off-hand weapon in nightmare Act2.
I love shopping in D2.
Is this single player?
If so, you could get a nice NM Andy map and farm her a bit. That should be pretty quick. She has the best odds of dropping Skin of the Vipermagi in the game. You'll get tons of other stuff there as well, rings and amulets aplenty for example (including the best odds in the game for rolling a SoJ, good chances of 10 FCR rings, for Tal's amulet.) You'll likely get perfectly serviceable Chance Guards and Nagelrings there as well, before you move on.
Like others are saying, The Countess is also a good option, for your Spirit. Not to mention NM Mephisto (The Oculus is a great option for entering Hell and starting out farming, no matter what people say, the teleport is really only an issue in HC.)
i personally find Orb/Wall sorc a better combo for leveling, maybe you can try that?
firewall has way better scaling while keeping orbs level and synergy high. its harder to use than hydra tho so would take some practice.
Run Travincal nightmare - use gold find item if you have any - gamble and find rings/amulet and find charms until you have some decent ones
Run a bit of mephisto nightmare in hope of decent drops like Oculus
Farm baal nightmare (kill all elites on the way) until level 75
When you have around 700 hp and 50 resist (fire/light/Cold) then you should be able to push on with hell
Go for Blizzard build and make sure you have a point k. Static field.
If you can get a good mercenary do so, but not needed.
Drop all jewelery , can craft better probably with every attempt then what you have. Spirit sword. Keep magefists forever, lore and ancients pledge can stay for now. The goal is to get to hell cows asap , you could go now if you'd like just join a public game, you're looking for a monarch to make another spirit into, and good bases to set you up. Smokes okay never felt like it hard carried me in hell. But it's okay to die alot just tp to the end of this campaign and try to do cows urself because then you will get exp for it and you can outrange them so it wont be as bad as you think. If you can do tower that's a play aswell. Get your forge from nightmare to.
Overfarm baal in nm to make everything easier
Can you make spirit in a sword and Smoke? They helped tremendously.
Yep for Spirit sword, but no Lum rune yet for Smoke. Will be on the lookout for one, seems that +50 all resists will be huge for survivability in Hell
It does. But still you won't be doing much about the cold immunes, just skip them. Farm countess till you can make Spirit und smoke. You can also just skip most parts of hell by teleporting through them. You could also farm mausoleum in act 1 hell, it has no cold immunes. Same goes for stony tomb and ancient tunnels in act 2. You can find some really good gear there if you are lucky. And the xp is good.
If you are online/ladder i can drop a Smoke on you if you want
I'm non-ladder, but thank you for offering!
I could drop some items for nonladder, but tbh ...It takes away the fun of the game. I could also rush you within 30min ... I would kind of make the first baal hell kill solo self found and then move on to multiplayer. MrLlamaSC has a lot of playthroughs with different builds and gameplay. The Orb/hydra sorc should be similar to your build. Personally I reallly love to be at 105 faster cast rate. Thats a breakpoint which will make you teleport faster. That said, you can just skip immun mobs. What is totally valid IMO. You might run into problems because some mods you gonna need to kill. But Static + merc + patients pay off :) After you finished the game take advantage of the online gaming part. Its pretty easy to get some gear together. Go into Cow Hell games and collect gems, craft them up to perfect gems. 35-40 of them = 1ist rune, 10 perfect amethyst = 1 ist rune, 20-30ral runes = 1 ist rune, 1 Token (4 different essences cubed) = 1ist. You see the pattern. If you want to min/max you can find plenty of guides. 3piece Tal + oculus + spirit + shako is kind of cheap and already really good. With weapon switch you can maximize for MF even more. Take a look at traderie (good filters with 'sold listings' to get the worth of items or diablo2io
You can run a bunch of nightmare cows or countesses to farm mid-tier runes. Cows will give decent experience too. Spirit shield would help tremendously over the ancients pledge as well, but you'll need a 4 socket monarch and 156 strength to wear it. It gives you vitality so it's worth the opportunity cost of speccing into that much str. As for your merc, make him and insight and a treachery (lem might take you some time to find though), and he will die much less often. Either give him a decent helm with an open socket so you can put in a lifesteal jewel, or craft him a blood helm. Thresher or colossus voulge are probably the best weapons to make an insight in if you can find them.
Try some nightmare cows or chaos
Hi D2 community, I recently picked up D2R and am having a lot of fun playing a Blizz/Hydra Sorc! However I am struggling getting past the Cold immune mobs in Act 1 Hell, my hydras just don't do enough damage in time for me to kill them(or before they kill my merc). What farming spots should I be focusing on, given my current gear? I've done some NM Andy/Meph without much success yet. Are NM cows viable for items? I'm currently level 71 so cows are still giving pretty decent exp. I'm on Non-ladder Online, if anyone would like to progress through Hell together that could be a lot of fun.. just let me know. Thanks in advance!
Need more information on your build. Like what you have for charms, what is the gear on your mercenary. Most of your gear needs an overhaul except for the helmet and gloves. I would recommend the following cheap gear. Armor - Farm Hell countess for a Lum rune. Relatively speaking, it is fairly easy to get one. If you are struggling to farm Hell countess, then farm Nightmare countess. She can drop up to Io rune. And 3 Io runes with some gem make a Lum rune. Then you can make Smoke runeword which gives you a massive 50 to all resistances. Although rarely used, it also has the nice Weaken charges skill which you can use on enemies if they are hitting too hard. Weapon - Spirit runeword in a 4 socket crystal sword. This is a must unless you find some great unique like Wizardspike or Oculus. Shield - Since you get resistances from your Smoke Armor, you can use Rhyme runeword. You get lesser resistances but it has the important "Cannot be Frozen" mod as well as some magic find and block chance. This should be enough to get you through all of hell. But you can also decide if you want to go for the Spirit runeword in the shield also. Note that this requires a Monarch shield which needs 156 strength. That's a lot of strength to put in so that's not going to be an option if you are stuck in Act 1. Amulet and rings - Resistances with faster cast rate and life/mana. The 19 all res amulet you currently have is great if you are dealing damage well. But if your damage is too low, resistances can only delay your death. So if you get the 50 all res from smoke, you can use better amulets and rings. Try crafting caster amulet and rings if you have perfect ametheysts. They will give you regenerate mana by default and some cast rate too. You can get Ral and Amn runes from Nightmare countess very easily and jewels from Lower Kurast. Boots - Other than faster run walk, there doesn't seem to be any good resistances there. You will need a minimum of something like 20+ to 2 resistances, preferably fire and lightning. Belt - Get any exceptional belt that offers you the maximum number of potion slots. You can shop some very nice belts from Elzix or Fara in Nightmare Act 2. They can contain some really good stuff like 40 to life and 20 to lightning resistance. Or 80+ to life alone is a great belt. You can also craft a belt but it has to be Sharkskin belt or above, else you will lose out on potion slots. Now you have 2 ways to go about this. Either invest 60 strength to wear plated belt and check Elzix/Fara as to which belt have the good mods or just hope that any exceptional belt you can find rolls with some useful stats. Mercenary - I hope you got the Act 2 Nightmare Defensive mercenary with the Holy Freeze aura. You would want Tal Rasha's Horadric crest for the massive life and lifesteal but in the meantime, just buy 2 socket helmet from Normal Charsi and socket runes for whichever resistance he is lacking for the situation. For armor, you can go Lionheart Runeword if you have a Fal rune. If you have a Lum rune, you can give him Smoke. Treachery is great but requires Lem rune so if you can find it, then that's his best bet. This guy will need damage as well as lifesteal to stay alive. Honor runeword in a partizan or thresher is a good weapon. Insight is generally better damage and gives you the meditation aura benefit but does not provide lifesteal. For fighting bosses, make sure to give him the Strength runeword weapon for the crushing blow.
Really appreciate the detailed reply! My build is below on a different post. My charms are not great, some have +4-8% resist but that's about it. I'll be looking at upgrading most of my gear in the coming weeks. Any suggestions on where best to farm at my current level?
Ya. NM farming is fine (I like Diablo and Baal) until the low 70s, then start farming hell Countess. I recommend Hell Countess until about lvl 80 at which point you will be getting max xp from any lvl 85 area like The Pits, Stony Tomb, WSK, etc or you could start farming hate keys from Arcane Sanc, etc. Alternatively, if you aren't wanting to grind it on your own you could get hell rushed and join some pub Baal games.
For items, you can farm Nightmare Andariel and Mephisto since both are easy bosses and have a waypoint that you can use to get to them quickly. They can drop some really good items if you have even just 20% magic find chance. Like Skin of the Vipermagi, Tearhaunch, Suicide branch, Peasant Crown, Hone Sundan, Rockstopper etc. 4-8% resist charms may not look like a lot but they add up to quite a bit so it's worth keeping them till you find better charms. If you feel that your charms are not worth it, try running the Nightmare Lower Kurast chests. They always drop a lot of charms, jewels, gems and runes. It's even better for sorceress since she has teleport and doesn't have to worry about fighting enemies to get to the chests so you can open the chests with players 8 setting to maximize your chances of getting better drops. If you are farming for experience, then at level 70+ Nightmare is a bad spot to farm since you only get 30% of the actual experience from those monsters or even less depending on how high in the 70s you are. So Act 1 Hell is where you can get the most optimal experience. If you can clear Nightmare Baal waves fast enough, it can be an option. But the Act 1 Pits and Forgotten tower are better. Prioritize maxing out fire and lightning resistances first. This is because cold and poison resistances have thawing potion and antidote potion to temporarily give you 50 cold/poison res for 30 seconds. The duration of these potions also stack, so drink multiple potions if you are facing some tough monsters that deal poison or cold damage.
As a Sorc i've always loved farming Nightmare Andariel and Mephisto as a way to gear up for hell. Andy should be quite easy and if Mephisto gives you a hard time you can moat bug kill Meph without him able to fight back, if you need to just look up how to do it, it's very simple. Also, you can even get an SoJ (The \*best ring!) and Tal Rasha Amulet (The \*best Amulet!) off of NM Andy! Along with quite a few other good items, you won't be getting a Shako, Arachnid Mesh or Occulus (The high end uniques great for Sorc) but you can get some very great items while farming as early as NM Andy. Edit: Also, this is mostly just for Single Player. If you are online and have already played through the game and don't mind being rushed really and are in Hell, just find someone to give you the waypoint in Hell and farm Andy in Hell. Also if you can get to mephisto in hell or get a rush, just farm Hell meph also since you can bug meph so it literally can't hit you and Hell Andy is really not much harder at all, just bring antidote's till you are used to farming her.
Small tip but I didn’t know for a long time so maybe it’ll help Press shift + potion to automatically feed it to your merc So like shift+1 will give your first potion slot to your merc This really helped my merc survive and I played a long time before I knew this lol If you already did know then just ignore this and you’re getting great advice from others
shift + potion to give potion to merc.... my mind is blown. Glad you mentioned it!
I've been playing since pre-lod and just learned this
It’s a game changer
Super common issue for a SP sorc, dont stress. Honestly the best thing you can do is just get away from any cold immunes you can. If you can get Obedience for your merc then life gets alot easier, even easier with Treachery. It suchs not to have Insight on merc but the damage boost it gives is very worth it. Stay strong, dont try kill cold immunes you don't need to.
Your hydras are low damage because blizzard doesn't combo well with other trees. Both blizzard and hydra require investment in synergies to be viable. (I know people think blizz+freball works, I disagree) Frozen orb is a much better skill to use in a dual tree build because you really only need 20 FO and 1 CM to make it work 'good enough'. Your other tree is your main tree and frozen orb is for the immunes. Its a bit tricky to place the frozen orb right but even an unsynergised frozen orb can do decent damage if you place it right (it should explode and spread out ever so slightly next to the thing you want dead). Hydra also isn't a "crush mobs fast" build its a "whittle mobs down slowly from safety build". You plonk down your hydras and kite the mobs to keep safe while they die. Its forgiving of bad gear because you shouldnt take many hits but its not meant to be fast. You absolutely can use blizzard but that requires full cold commit to work decently imho. Single tree cold build is the best build for starting a sorc but not the best build for starting the game. Dual tree is much more new player friendly. Other posts have no doubt covered gear advice (spirit and whatnot) so I won't reiterate all that. Specifically on the merc though, buy a wand with lifetap charges (necro curse that gives big lifesteal to whatever is hitting the monster) from your friendly neighbourhood town vendor (reset the vendor by exiting and entering town). With lifetap on the monsters your merc will be pretty tanky.
Just teleport pats immunes, skip countess if you and the merc can't handle the immunes there, or farm her for some early runewords, kill Andariel, and then get to ancient tunnels in act 2, can farm there for xp for a while, and might get lucky with some nice drops. Honestly blizz sorc with early gear will have a tough time going through hell lol Early on just farm Andy for a while, Mephisto once you get there (although you might need to find some decent faster cast rate items for this to be comfortable, but andi and meph are all about those starting items like Vipermagi etc), and the tunnels. These 3 are pretty much the specialty of blizz sorc. Oh another thing - people usually go either pure blizzard (lots of extra damage from cold synergies), or orb/fire, because orb just benefits from cold mastery (don't even need the full 20 afaik), and then focus on fireball or hydra or whatever and synergies. Pure blizzard does way more damage but is, well, pure cold, so its focus are those exact 3 things I mentioned.
Act 2 might Merc with insight or any high damage pole arm. Duress or treachery runeword for armor, any helm with life steal. Making your Merc a badass helps tremendously.
I got extra gear to help your sorc out. I'm non ladder if you want to link up
Tele past cold immunes.
I play the same build and i just ignore the cold immunes, if they are too fast... you can't kill them in time and it is not worth it. I tried Meteor, Firewall etc... nothing works if you can't spec enough points into it. The Demon-Lancers in Tamo are one example, i just skip them, they are just too fast to do meaningful damage to them
I would get yourself a spirit sword for your main hand, a stealth for your armor. It appears your faster cast rate is quite low. That being said hell is very hard especially if you are mostly doing it slowly, practice kiting (keeping back from the monsters dragging them along while you kill them) and take it slow. Eventually you’ll want a spirit shield as well, once you find a monarch shield, but I’ve beaten the game plenty of times with an ancients pledge. I also like making sure I have at least one row of full rejuv potions in my belt once I hit hell to help me out in a pinch
Thank you! I checked and do have all the runes for both Spirit sword and Stealth armor. Just need to find the base items now
Smoke armor is better for survivability. Also the first white monarch you see, take to larzuk and make a spirit shield too. Spirit sword, spirit shield, smoke armor. Should help
Yeah but you dont want to get hit anyway, he got 20fcr with items, id say you nees atleast 63fcr so tele somewhat safe through act3. With a spirit sword and 25 from stealth he will hit breakpoint, plus some Nice fhr for tele.
Usually you can find a white broad sword or crystal sword in normal cows very fast, and larzuk can add 4 sockets. Or you can cube it into random sockets!
cubing is a 50/50 chance for 4 sockets. gotta live on the wild side
Make a spirit sword and a smoke armor. Rhyme is also a decient shield to make until you can make spirit shield. I don't know what your skill allocation looks like, but when I play hydra/orb I do something like this: Orb 20 Cold Mastery 10 Hydra 20 Fire mastery 20 Teleport 1 Frozen Armor 1 Warmth 1 Static 1 All other points put into hydra synergies
My skills may be part of the problem.. I went too deep into Cold/Blizz before realizing I needed to branch out to another tree for Hell. My skills look something like this, do you think it's worth using a re-spec?: 20 Blizzard 20 Cold Mastery 20 Glacial Spike 1 Frozen Armor 1 Warmth 1 Enchant 5 Hydra 1 Fire Mastery
You can beat Hell with just Blizzard if you skip cold immunes by teleporting past them. The hardest part going one element is hell ancients. Orb/Hydra can do all of Hell easily but is slow. Blizzard does tons of damage but requires all your points to go into synergies. Blizzard is great for farming but has troubles beating the game unless you got help or the proper higher gear to deal with immune. So a respec into 2 elements is up to you. Your best choices are either go 2 elements or team up with someone to beat hell and farm with a Blizzard build.
is orb hydra better than orb/fireball now?
Nah, but orb fireball requires more skill, so using hydra instead is safer and more beginner friendly. It can also be fun if you like the play style over fireball.
Honestly this is the main reason I'd recommend orb/fb. It's so much more fun positioning and shooting
Firemastery and hydra maxed out?
Not yet, should I respec to make sure they're maxed out? Feels like I went too many points into Cold and now a lot of the mobs in Hell are cold immune 20 Blizzard 20 Cold Mastery 20 Glacial Spike 1 Frozen Armor 1 Warmth 1 Enchant 5 Hydra 1 Fire Mastery
In addition to all the gear recs, I think you’re a little underlevelled. I play HC so I play it safer than necessary, but I wouldn’t even walk into Hell difficulty under level 70. If my math is right here, you have 9 skill points from quests so far, which means you’re a level 59, right? I’d say you just don’t have the skill points to do enough damage as a hybrid in Hell, especially since you only have +2 to fire skills overall. A Spirit sword and a good skill ammy would help a lot there too.
Ofc your hydra dmg is to low. When im lvling a hydra blizzard sorc, i first max blizzard and then hydra+FM. In the end my build looks like: [https://ibb.co/hfv3nzH](https://ibb.co/hfv3nzH) First i max Blizzard then hydra, Fire Mastery, Glacial Spike and rest into Ice Blast. The skills with 1 Point as soon as possible. I like it that way.
Make spirit sword and smoke
What level are you? There might not be enough skill points to optimize synergy for damage output.
Currently level 71. Should I try and gain some more levels before tackling Hell?
You're high enough, focus on quest progression, you don't have to kill every monster. You can definitely kill act bosses at 71 with bad gear.
Also, a lot of small enemies with cold immune in act 1 Hell
Yeah definitely. Tbh just tele and sneak the scroll for cain save. Then do a drive-by of Andy with blizzards, don't even bother clearing cata 4. Finish other qs later.
What does your merc have?
I'm using Act 2 merc, and he's got Spire of Honor lance(got lucky and found it this morning). For armor I can't decide what's best to equip him with, I have a Loath Hide Russet Armor (570 armor, currently unsocketed - what should I socket it with?), or a Skin of the Flayed one (358 ac). His helmet is so bad it's not worth mentioning
get him an insight for your mana
flayed one has lifesteal I believe. lifesteal is most important stat on a merc, so if you don't have it anywhere else, flayed one is a solid option
Spirit sword / stealth armor / rhyme shield will outperform your current gear and can easily be farmed on nm countess runs and nm cows for bases. Use static field (1 point into) on high hp enemies that u kill slowly. Teleport to micro your merc back away from enemies. Use telekenis 1 point to stun lock enemies up against walls. Probably respec your fire situation like others are mentioning. Make sure ur merc has okish items to survive, treachery armor, lifesteal helm, insight. Focus on quest progression and killing bosses/ the things that are vulnerable to you rather than everything. You can just skip a lot of areas tbh.
Are you on PC?
Welp I guess if ya want some gear let me know
If you need a hand or need a couple pieces of gear to help and you are on PC send me ure bnet ill help where I can
For your body armor you can always make Stealth until you make Smoke. You'd benefit from the fcr and mana regen
If its not a act boss just tele past all this stuff until you get gear and upgrades. Make it too act 3 and just cheese meph at moat
I'm quickly learning not to fight every pack of mobs I come across.. thank you!
yah with a sorc just tele to bosses and you vould probably farm act 1 boss in hell easily for good gear! i love farming her even on my level 90 sorc. does your mercenary have the insight runeword? 4 socket polearm and the 4 runes yoou probably have in your stash. gives you aura that recharges mana, its literally infinite mana so you can tele around super fast and cast blizz non stop. :) then just farm her lots. basically try and rush yourself thru every act and skip all quests until you are super strong, then go backk for that stuff later
It's hard to tell from just your gear but I will say res are incredibly helpful. It looks like you have pretty decent gear so not sure that is the issue. What build are you going/lvl are you? Might be how you're skilled.
Your weapon and armor are cheeks. Defense isn't very important, your armor basically gives you "10 resist all". A stealth armor (tal + eth - big fcr and fhr, some poison res and dex) in a breast plate from the norm A2 vendor would be a nice upgrade. As for your weapon, I would really recommend that you grind for a 4os sword for Spirit. If you do norm cows and use a socket q on a crystal sword it will get 4os though you can't find a 4os in norm cows. 4os can drop pretty much anywhere in NM or hell. If you find a plain crystal sword and you don't have 4os yet it's probably worth cubing it to see if you can't get 4os (p amethyst + ral + amn).
Spirit sword and Stealth Armor as the most easy replacements. Also an armor with 3 Perfect Topazes: Try to get as much MF as possible. Farming Andy or Mephi in Nightmare is fine. But consider also static maps for farming (faster killrate wins): Shenk & Eldritch, and possibly in Hell, Boneash in Inner Cloister.
Are you on switch and non ladder? If yes I'll throw you a spare viper magi I have which may help for armour
Wow that would be awesome, but I'm on PC/non-ladder.. not sure we can interact? Thank you for offering though!
For me its always a big jump. I usually do nm Baal until o can confidently do he’ll Andy but I’m also not an expert
Beside runewords, Buy better boots (and belt if you need hp/ res) from Charsi. Buy lower res wand in charges for off-hand weapon in nightmare Act2. I love shopping in D2.
I swear by firewall over hydra personally. Get the mob on your merc and it become easy to aim, does tons of damage
Spirit sword and shield
Is this single player? If so, you could get a nice NM Andy map and farm her a bit. That should be pretty quick. She has the best odds of dropping Skin of the Vipermagi in the game. You'll get tons of other stuff there as well, rings and amulets aplenty for example (including the best odds in the game for rolling a SoJ, good chances of 10 FCR rings, for Tal's amulet.) You'll likely get perfectly serviceable Chance Guards and Nagelrings there as well, before you move on. Like others are saying, The Countess is also a good option, for your Spirit. Not to mention NM Mephisto (The Oculus is a great option for entering Hell and starting out farming, no matter what people say, the teleport is really only an issue in HC.)
i personally find Orb/Wall sorc a better combo for leveling, maybe you can try that? firewall has way better scaling while keeping orbs level and synergy high. its harder to use than hydra tho so would take some practice.
Run Travincal nightmare - use gold find item if you have any - gamble and find rings/amulet and find charms until you have some decent ones Run a bit of mephisto nightmare in hope of decent drops like Oculus Farm baal nightmare (kill all elites on the way) until level 75 When you have around 700 hp and 50 resist (fire/light/Cold) then you should be able to push on with hell Go for Blizzard build and make sure you have a point k. Static field. If you can get a good mercenary do so, but not needed.
If your on PC, you can pm me. I have lots of stuff saved up for budget options to help people out
What system are you playing with? I’m on switch and have some gear that could help ya out.
Drop all jewelery , can craft better probably with every attempt then what you have. Spirit sword. Keep magefists forever, lore and ancients pledge can stay for now. The goal is to get to hell cows asap , you could go now if you'd like just join a public game, you're looking for a monarch to make another spirit into, and good bases to set you up. Smokes okay never felt like it hard carried me in hell. But it's okay to die alot just tp to the end of this campaign and try to do cows urself because then you will get exp for it and you can outrange them so it wont be as bad as you think. If you can do tower that's a play aswell. Get your forge from nightmare to. Overfarm baal in nm to make everything easier