In this section I review the most common types of sorceress design. These designs are defined largely by the type equipment that is used, which in turn can have a strong effect on spell choice and playing style. I also give a brief review of different variants. Be aware at all times that although I have plainly made an attempt to differentiate and separate these different designs, hybrids are always possible and can be a very strong approach to building a sorc.
Because sorcs are more dependent on their skills than the other classes, it makes a lot of sense that someone would want to boost their sorc skills as much as possible. Having higher spell levels usually means having greater destructive power. It is fairly common for player who designs a sorc this way to have items that collectively give at least +5 to all skills, with +12 being the max for Fire skills and +11 being the max for Cold and Lightning. When added to a investment of 20 points into a specific skill, your sorc could have a total spell level of 31 or 32.
When one considers the fact that it is possible to beat the game on Hell difficulty with no more than about 5 points in any offensive spell, it becomes clear that the real point of building a sorc according to the heavy +skills design should be to raise one or two skills to such high levels beyond 20 that monsters can be quickly killed through sheer brute force. When you try to imagine what level 27 FW could do to the monsters, it is not hard to feel the seductive power of +skills items.
The treasured uniques for such a player are Silks, Tarnhelm and SoJ. Staff users will be looking for staves that give +2 to all skills and an additional +3 to individual spells. However, if you plan to use Hydra or FO, then using a staff is not the best option because those two spells do not appear on staves. You would be better off going for a CP/Sigon's setup. It would give the same +skills bonus, but would be better from a defensive standpoint. In Act4, it is wise to exchange a diamond shield in place of Sigon's'. You will lose the skill bonus, but that will mean nothing compared to the added resistances. It is common for a sorc of any type to have a +1 skills amulet, but a player using this particular design would find it worthwhile to try to acquire a +2 skills amulet once they can be equipped (starting at char level 67), whereas players using a different sorc design would be happy to have an amulet that focuses more things like resistances, mana or HP, regardless of any skill bonuses on it.
Once you have seen the power of stacked casting rate bonuses, you can understand why so many players opt for this design. Stacking bonuses from several items will allow you to cast spells anywhere from about 10% to 90% faster than you could without those items. When SF is combined with that much extra speed, you can severely damage an entire screen full of monsters in just a few seconds. Wide-range SF (more than spell level 13) will extend your power well beyond the limits of your screen. If you have the mana, FO is another popular spell with this setup. Hydra is another spell that gives good range, but is not used as often with this design because FO kills much faster.
The favored unique items for this design are Magefist and Wall of the Eyeless (WoE). Sometimes Shard is used for a one-hand weapon, although a wand/scepter "of the magus" is usually better. I explore the reasons for this in the Items section. Sometimes SoJ is suggested as a substitute for a fast cast ring, which is something I will explain below.
The problem with this design is that it puts serious constraints on what items you can equip. For any given item type, there may be any number of properties that such an item can have on it, but requiring that it have a casting rate bonus on it means using up a property slot which might have done something else for you, such as add to HP, mana or resistances. And you now have fewer property slots left over, which means you have less chance of getting an item that is useful in an overall way, beyond the fact that it gives you faster casting. As a result, these sorcs often have low HP or low resistances, which is of course quite dangerous. These players are effectively making the following bet. They are betting that with their range and casting speed they can kill the monsters before the monsters kill them, given their compromised defenses. They might decide to lessen the defensive risk by removing some of their speed items in favor of items that provide better overall defenses, but then, they are also casting spells at a slower rate as a result. The upshot is that equipment choice is not as simple as one might think with this sorc design. Since casting rate bonuses do not appear on helms, belts or boots, it is a very good idea to focus on getting good resistances and HP on these items. This is not so easy to do for boots, however, since you will want them to give a run/walk speed increase, and this yet another constraint on an item slot.
Here are the results of some tests I did on the stackability of casting rate bonuses. The table of values was obtained by casting FB continuously for 30 seconds:
These numbers hold for all spells except Inferno, Lightning and CL. None of those three spells receive any help at all from casting rate bonuses. Obviously, they are useless from the point of view of this sorc design and therefore should be avoided.
As far as the internal game calculations are concerned, "faster cast" is the same as "fastest cast". Notice that, generally speaking, the more you stack your bonuses, the greater the return you get per item added. These numbers can be used to create another table which gauges the effectiveness of different levels of stacking. Letting a "fast" item count as 1 point and a "faster/fastest" item count for 2 points, we can do "item math" to get the following:
It is crucial to see the "holes" in the point spread. They are located at 4, 7 and 9. For example, having 4 points of speed bonus has the same speed effect as having 3 points. This clearly means that if you can get away with having only 3 points instead of 4, then you should do so if it would allow you to equip a different item that does something that is actually useful. To take a more specific example, if you have 7 of 8 desired speed points and have to choose between adding a decent fast cast ring and adding WoE, then almost always you should wear the ring in favor of WoE. A diamond shield or Sigon's' simply has too much utility to be ignored, whereas the only powerful effect that WoE has in its favor at higher levels of play is the speed bonus. To take another example, suppose you have just gotten Magefist and already have two fast cast rings and Shard. If one of the fast cast rings has no other useful properties on it, you can exchange it for something different and still rise to the next level of speed bonuses by equipping Magefist.
Depending on your spell choice, you may end up draining your mana orb in only a few seconds. When using FO, this design requires either that you have a huge mana pool (e.g. over 1000) or instead that you exercise constraint in your spell casting. But casting spells less frequently defeats most of the purpose of bonus stacking. So what you really need to do is either use SF as your main attack, switching to FO when the monsters are badly hurt, or instead get a massive mana pool. To get that much mana, players will often turn to Frosties or SoJ for help, although the latter fits better into the strategy of exploiting holes in the point chart. In addition, getting a very high level of Warmth is a standard procedure with this sorc design.
Or perhaps I should say "Jill-of-All-Trades". This is a sorc who has a little bit of everything. The archetype would be something like a sorc having a couple of items that improve spell casting speed, a couple of +skills items, and several favored spells raised to levels between 5 and 10. This is the easiest type of sorc to build, is very flexible in spell choice, and can handle pretty much any situation quite effectively. The reason that these sorcs can be so effective is that they do not try to max any spells, thus saving skill points. These skill points can be distributed across various spells from all 3 trees, which is useful because no matter what the resistances are of a monster you are facing, you will likely have a good spell that can be used against it. Because no spell tends to be higher than level 10 or so, it is usually not possible to kill monsters as quickly as other types of sorcs, and this is the weakness of the jack-of-all-trades. On the other hand, a lack of intense specialization means that you can have a large repertoire of fairly decent spells to choose from at a given moment, and usually in combinations of several at a time. A good example of this is having TS active while laying down some hydras ahead of you and then walking into the arena of combat with 2-3 more spells at the ready. This sounds very "busy", but then, being a jack-of-all-trades is like that. It is more than just effective; it is an art.
The fact that you cannot kill all the monsters with a few mouse clicks means that you will have to learn how to evade their attacks and use your spells efficiently against them. Therefore, I can recommend this design to anyone who wants to improve their general abilities at playing this char class.
This is a bit of a misnomer. To be an effective "tank", you need to be able to withstand a lot of punishment. A sorc cannot do this for very long without having to escape. Rather, the idea here is relative to what is possible for the sorc class. The tools that will keep you alive longer with this style are: high HP, a melee-oriented cold armor, a high blocking percentage, a good level of ES (and the mana needed to sustain it), good hit recovery, and maybe high-DR armor.
HP, mana and ES have to be understood as an interrelated group of ideas. Mana is what keeps your ES up and running, ES saves HP, your HP is (literally) what keeps you alive, staying alive means you can...regen the mana you need to keep your ES up and running. You can add to HP through Vitality, but that means diverting stat points from Energy, which means less mana to sustain your ES. You can add to max mana through Energy, but that means diverting stat points from Vitality, which means you might die more easily. You can get a lower level ES, which will save mana, but you will not save as much HP. It is up to you what aspect of this system to focus on strengthening, although, when in doubt, adding to Vitality is the most direct way to increase the longevity of your char. Add to ES as you have the mana to sustain it; as your max mana goes up, get a higher level of ES.
Also crucial to the tank sorceress is blocking. You need a very high block rate, because if you are hit by a strong monster, you are very likely to be stunned, which can get you killed because the monsters will not stop attacking. The best armor here is Twitchtroe. Combined with a triple-diamond tower shield, you will have a 67% blocking rate, which is not far from the max possible (75%). When you do not need a diamond shield, a shield with high blocking, such as Sigon's' or any tower or gothic shield with a blocking bonus, you can easily reach the 75% blocking cap.
I will not have much to say about variants here, except for some cursory remarks. To understand a variant well, you really need to do a "full" guide for the variant. Since I have not played most variants to any great degree, I have no intention of trying to make any deep comments about them.
This section was last modified: November 5, 2000.
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