I've Rerolled.

[GenocideAlive]

After playing a Druid character all the way through the game, I wince at the prospect of playing through it again. During the last two quests, I was utterly disenchanted with the game altogether, completing them out of sheer curiosity (I've never played expansion). After having finally gotten a point in the shitfest that is Frenzy or Rage or whatever the hell it is, I've decided that Transform Druids are for suckers. I move faster than anything in the game, but beyond that, I am a total bitch to anything with cold enchantments.

It took me well over an hour to beat the last quest, and 60-70 minutes of that was spent in the last wave of Baal's minions and Baal himself. I am an utter fucktard when it comes to fighting, I have to be meleeing something in order to kill it. That means I have to be standing next to it, and hitting it in order to just stay alive. Otherwise, I can't lifesteal and I sure as hell can't heal fast enough to stop me from dying. Once I finally get a maul that does enough damage, it happens to be "normal" attack speed and I miss every fucking swing. Whiff whiff whiff hit repeat. Not to mention that I've literally been using the exact same skill for the entire game. BOR-RING.

I switched to sorceress. Hehehehe, god that's fun. I'm thinking of going flame. Thoughts? Should I go cold?

[PrestonBurke]

When building any Sorceress, there are some universal skills that they have to have:
Static Field: this is a very useful skill due to its ability to weaken bosses very quickly. It cuts down there health by 1/3 every time, so you could easily Static them down to 1/2 or 1/4 of there health, then finish up with some spells.
Telekinesis: Necessary for Teleport. The ability to grab items with this spell really isn't that great because you can't increase the grab range.
Teleport: Every Sorceress needs at least one point into this skill, and it's very useful either as a travel tool or combat skill. It's good for bosses because you can cast a spell at Boss, then teleport out of harms way when he attacks you with a spell.
Extra Defense skill: The Sorceress is very fragile, and these skills can provide extra defense for her. You don’t have to put a point in every single one of these skills, but instead choose one instead.
Frozen Armor: Early choice of cold defense, when you cast this armor and get hit, the attacker will freeze allowing you to get a good distance away and kill the attacker.
Shiver Armor: A better version of Frozen Armor because it has a short ranged attack and will your attackers will be frozen whenever they hit you or when they are attacked by the “Shivers” that this armor shoots.
Chilling Armor: This Armor Freezes ranged attackers but still provides a defense bonus against melee attackers.
Energy Shield: When you have one point in this skill, the shield will reduce your opponent’s damage by 20 percent and take that damage out of your Mana instead of health. When you place more points in this skill, the damage reduction becomes higher and the shield lasts longer.

Stat placement:
It may be tempting to place your early points in Strength, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The Sorceress is very fragile early on, and she needs a lot more Vitality then Strength to survive. Focus on her Vitality and Energy stats first, and then place some points into Strength. A Sorceress doesn’t need the conventional equipment that Melee characters need, so don’t sweat on Strength that much. This is how I arrange my Stat’s:
Strength: 100. In my opinion 100 should be the minimum Strength level for any character. In reality, the Sorceress doesn’t need this high of a Strength level and can do just fine with 70 – 80 Strength.
Dexterity: Don’t place a point into this stat unless you are planning to have a shield for defense or if you are building a Melee Sorceress. I keep dexterity at the base level of 25.
Vitality: This Stat should always be your highest stat on any characters; you need lots of life points for the Sorceress.
Energy: This is dependent on your playing strategy; if you are a conservative caster you only need 130 energy points. If you are a multicaster like me, you will need at least 150 energy points.

If you feel like building a Fire Sorceress, I suggest following straight down the Skill tree and maxing out Fire Bolt, Fire Ball, Meteor and Fire Mastery. This leaves you with 30 spare skill points to use on whatever you desire. I suggest these skills because they all receive synergy bonuses from each other which will increase the fire damage done. You will encounter Fire immunity monsters in late Nightmare and Hell, so investing your skill points into a secondary elemental spell would be useful. I’m thinking something like:
20 Fire Bolt
20 Fire Ball
20 Meteor
20 Fire Mastery
1 Static, Telekinesis, and Teleport
20 Frozen Orb and any spare in Cold Mastery

In my opinion, Lightning Sorceress is the strongest Sorceress’s out there. There primary spell, Lightning, can easily be accessed at level 12 (earlier then the other Elemental spells) and receives the second most synergy bonuses. There secondary attack, Chain Lightning, can easily waste a group of enemies before they even touch you. Unfortunately, if you want to build a Lightning Sorceress, it will have to be pure light if you want to obtain the most damage. This leaves you vulnerable to Lightning immune monsters. The build looks like this:
20 Charged Bolt
20 Nova
20 Lightning
20 Chain Lightning
20 Lightning Mastery
1 Static
1 Telekinesis
1 Teleport
7 Energy Shield

The last type of Sorceress is the Ice Sorceress. In my opinion, they are the best due to there ability to freeze or slow down your opponents with icy spells. They are very frequent on B.Net but can be one of the toughest builds. There are two popular variants of the Ice Sorceress, and these are the:
Blizzard Sorceress:
20 Ice Bolt
20 Ice Blast
20 Glacial Spike
20 Blizzard
20 Cold Mastery
9 Spare

Frozen Orb Sorceress:
20 Ice Bolt
20 Frozen Orb
20 Cold Mastery

I personally like the Frozen Orb Sorceress due to them having the leisure to spend spare skill points in other skills, and there spell is much more flexible then Blizzard because Blizzard is a stationary spell and Frozen Orb travels out. My favorite build is a Cold/Lightning Sorceress:
20 Ice Bolt
20 Frozen Orb
20 Cold Mastery
20 Lightning Storm
10 Energy Shield
1 Shiver Armor
1 Static, Telekinesis, and Teleport
Rest in Lightning Mastery

Other Notes:
You may be use to buying a lot of health potions for your characters, but the Sorceress doesn’t need as much health as you may think. Your belt should have the first row as health potions, the second and third row as Mana and the fourth row as “Rejuv” potions.

[Neo]

Sorceresses are very very weak in the beginning, and even at the end without proper equip.

A raven frost would've stopped any problems with cold enchantment monsters you were having.

-Neo

[Aqo]

My personal preference is the lightning sorc. I disagree with TheAzn's statement that you "must" max it.

Maxing it gives you a lightning that does 21-5963 damage, which is 25-10059 damage with a basic set of items.
However, if you ignore nova and only put 10 points into normal lightning, you will get a chain lightning that deals 9-3430 damage with the same basic set of items. Third as much - and chain lightning does a great job of hitting stuff.
Plus is also looks cooler.
The 30 points you gain can easily go into Warmth and Shiver Armor.

To be more realistic, assuming you only intend to finish normal difficulty (although I'd suggest to do NM and Hell as they're much more interesting...), a level 33 build will have 35 points, those will go into:
Charged Bolt 9
Static Field 1
Chain Lightning 15
Teleport 1
Lightning Mastery 4
Warmth 3

You will end normal with 2-541 damage per chain lightning. Compared to the 2-789 damage normal lightning you could get, this is a very good trade, imo.

For a frost armour, get a staff that has it and use it as your offweapon.

If you're interested in flame, you could do the standard fireball machinegun... or you could max inferno, which gets you a very fun to use and watch spell, which deals 745-808 damage per second by the end of normal with a 12.6 yard range.
This spell is harder to use, but imo it only makes it better. More challenge = less repetitiveness.

[Thedutchjelle]

Hmm.. i used to have a Flame sorceress. While the damage it inflicted was enormous, on Hell difficulty everything is fire immune :(

I made a new lightning sorc that is now on lvl 14 ^_^ it rocks

[Dayoh]

Lightning sorcs are alright although lowest hit of 2 really sux but the average makes up for it, im more into cold sorcs myself never tried a fire one, an enchantress is alotta fun :)

[Thedutchjelle]

Cold sorcs are so... i dunno. There are to many of 'm. And the fact that even on Hell they can pierce through Cold Immunity is l4m3 imo.


But now, my sorc is lvl 26 and it's lvl 11 Arc-lightning (or w/e that skill is called..) kills huge groups of enemies with a single shot :)

[GenocideAlive]

I gots a fire sorc. I call her Charizard. She's L19 and we have a lot of fun together fireballing monster groups for instant death. I have a wand that's +3 fireball and +3 fire bolt, so I do quite a bit of nasty damage. As for magic immunes, there's a ton of cold-fire-light etc. creatures in hell, and you have to mitigate your problems. I like cold a lot, but fire does the most damage and if you want to play competitively you have to find a way around spell immunity anyway.

[Neo]

mm, to be fair, there are more fire immunes then any other. Lightning immunes can almost always be broken with infinity (haha I know right?)

Just have fun. Few character can get through hell solo anyways. If you go pure fire, just grab a mercenary with might and load him up with uber damage, let him kill off the fire immunes.

-Neo

[Kamikaze_Chicken]

The annoying thing about Fire Sorcs is that there are 2 (possibly more) Fire Immunes on Normal... one in the Cold Plains in Act 1, and then in the first wave of Baal's minions in Act 5...

[PrestonBurke]

The annoying thing about Fire Sorcs is that there are 2 (possibly more) Fire Immunes on Normal... one in the Cold Plains in Act 1, and then in the first wave of Baal's minions in Act 5...
Without a buddy, you would get p00ned by the fire immune Fallens in the Den and the Dark Ones in Catacomb 4. The Trav council would be another problem and Hell, would literally be Hell for a Fire Sorc.

[Thedutchjelle]

Without a buddy, you would get p00ned by the fire immune Fallens in the Den and the Dark Ones in Catacomb 4. The Trav council would be another problem and Hell, would literally be Hell for a Fire Sorc.

He is right :(
Kinda unfair, why is 90% fire immune? :(

[Dayoh]

yer it sux, and i hate it how "wind" is classed as cold, booo i want another element!

[Neo]

yer it sux, and i hate it how "wind" is classed as cold, booo i want another element!

Wind is actually classified as Physical (Tornado's for example). However, Hurricane (I think) deals Cold and Wind damage.

-Neo

[GenocideAlive]

Without a buddy, you would get p00ned by the fire immune Fallens in the Den and the Dark Ones in Catacomb 4. The Trav council would be another problem and Hell, would literally be Hell for a Fire Sorc.
Actually, I beat Nightmare with less difficulty than I did Normal. (+MF ^^)

Hell, on the other Hand, is fucking retarded, IMO.

It's like Blizzard wants to force you to play a Paladin.

[Kamikaze_Chicken]

Or play with a Bonenecro, hardly anything has magic immunity (if anything at all)

[Schwitzer]

Yeah, my first character was a Bonemancer, and my gawd that was a lot of fun (even if I did mess up his build a bit 'cause I was totally fresh to it all).

When I played with a group of mates one of them suggested I go for a Novatress. I guffawed at his suggestion, but gave it a shot anyway. It turned out to be amazingly good at the time, but I believe patches since I last played have nerfed this down to being next to useless.

Fire sorceresses are a lot of fun. I personally had a lot more fun with my Fire Sorceress than I did with any other build - at least until my Cold one got Frozen Orb, in which case I just laughed hysterically.

As already mentioned, Static Field and Teleport are musts.

[GenocideAlive]

Yeah, I just noticed that you can't bring your offline chars to b.net. >:#

So now I've re-re-started, with cold sorc. Funny part is, I use a Bardiche to kill stuff and just use L1 Nova + Shiver to slow everybody down so I can chop them up. Probably going to need a new strategy for the next act, but I really don't want to beef up Ice Bolt and Ice Ball, because they kind of suck. Blizzard and Glacial Spike look good, but the problem is that they synergize with shitball and shitbolt.

I may break down and beef them, but for now I really don't have to make any choices, I'll just leave the 5 skill points unspent. My build thus far:

1 Bolt
1 Ball
1 Nova
1 Chill
1 Shiv
1 TK
1 Static
1 Warmth

45 STR
25 Dex
30-something vit
30 Energy

I split my points between STR and VIT, and I put 5 in Energy at the start to give me some room for nuking. In the future, I'm going to need another vile weap. What's really annoying is that in my single player Fire Sorc, I have a Rune Kris, that has +attkrating for each level, vileness, and autorepair. So I don't have to beef Dex and I can get a quick hit on them and jump back. Now I need to spend the rest of my life looking for another one.

IMO, Sorcs should gain immunities with their masteries at Ls 15-20.

[Neo]

You'd be surprised how powerful sorceress actually get though.

I do agree hell on your first trip is just fucking insane.

Normally only Hammerdins, and perhaps a couple specific builds like a boner would work on their own in hell.

However when ladder resets and stuff it's most fun to play with a team.

-Neo

[GenocideAlive]

You'd be surprised how powerful sorceress actually get though.

I do agree hell on your first trip is just fucking insane.

Normally only Hammerdins, and perhaps a couple specific builds like a boner would work on their own in hell.

However when ladder resets and stuff it's most fun to play with a team.

-Neo
Wait a fing minute. The ladder resets? When was the last time this happened?

I'm not about to pour 100+ hours into a character only to watch it get deleted for a prolonged no-life contest. >:S

[Aqo]

When ladder resets, characters don't die, they just become non-ladder.

[GenocideAlive]

When ladder resets, characters don't die, they just become non-ladder.
What's the difference you're positing, here?

[Neo]

Ladder Characters have access to ladder only items, recipes, etc...

Non-Ladder Characters are pre-.10 characters, and old season 1/2/3 (have there been 4 ladders?) characters.

You can still play them and stuff.

-Neo