Even after the nerf, it still destroyed in Pk. Had the 30/30 crystal sword, 3/20 fire circ that had facets, 20/20 jmod and 20/20 armor. I would also use all the gear used for a self wield infinity nova, but I would be a charged bolt sorc.
I just about started laughing when you got to telekinesis, lol! I knew that one was going to be a slog, but DAMN! This is pretty funny stuff, and interesting. Skills i’ve never considered using before have me intrigued to use, or validated in my beliefs that certain skills do, in fact, suck.
You picked a very good target to showcase all this - Mephisto has 75% resistance to all 3 elements, so it's a "fair" starting point of comparison. I like the potential of the video especially for relatively starter kits, not going into specialized builds with expensive prerequisites. This video shows very clearly why cold sorceresses are so incredibly powerful early in the season. Cold Mastery is indeed the key here. With the 2.6 changes though it's no longer that effective against Sundered enemies, so from my experience it's not really worth farming areas with significant numbers of cold immunes as the damage dealt there is absolutely horrendous (even with Death's Fathom). On the other hand, lightning spells are indeed quite underwhelming due to resistance and relatively mediocre average damage. Once you get access to high end gear like Griffon's Eye, Facets and Infinity (self wielded), you begin to see the true power of lightning buildings. Nova in itself is quite a mediocre skill against high resistant monsters, but break that resistance and you just melt everything. Fire skills by themselves deal nice damage, and they sometimes do stack DoT like we've seen with firewall.... but you have to consider that there are far more fire immunes out there, fire has the worst time with AoE burst damage, DoT damage in itself is not very efficient for quick area farming, and in the endgame, lowering fire resistances is probably the hardest for a sorceress without significant sacrifices (in theory you can mimic infinity with 6xfacet crystal sword + 4xfacet monarch but then you still need infinity on the merc and you run into FCR problems because Flickering Flame does not have any FCR bonus) Let's look actually at the most common -% res achievable by different elements on **sundered enemies**, on sort of full builds. For example let's assume a base damage of 1k: Lightning (with vipermagi): Griffon (-20) + Infinity (-55) + Conviction 12 (-17) + 2xFacet (-10) = -102% => enemy res -7%. Damage dealt: 1070 Fire (eschuta + spirit with vipermagi): Flickering Flame (-15) + Conviction 12 (-17) + 2x Facet (-10) = -42% => enemy res 53%. Damage dealt: 470 Cold (death's fathom + spirit with shako/nightveil and vipermagi): Cold Mastery 40 (-43) + Conviction 12 (-17) + 3x Facet (-15) = -75% => enemy res 20%. Damage dealt: 800 Another important difference between cold and the other elements: lightning and fire get a ton of bonus damage from their respective masteries.
OOF now that's a challenge... MAYBE if you do normal difficulty only, and have a lot of time on your hands. But even then... I actually considered doing a hammerSIN, only using psychic hammer but it just looks so terrible... and telekenesis is even worse! 😅
Cool video! It would be interesting if you did this again but with infinity to see how much better lightning/fire performs when they get the minus res boost. You could totally make this a series comparing how fast every skill on every class kills mephisto.
Thanks! I don’t actually have infinity in single player yet, but I’ll consider it when I find another ber. I might, but while I could kind of justify being lazy and use the same gear for the sorc, it doesn’t really work for other classes I think. Like assassin having the martial arts tree and the trap tree which plays very differently… How can I make a melee setup and a caster setup “similar” so it feels fair? I could probably figure something out though. Thanks for the comment.
@zarfen if you use budget gear and optimal gear from Icy Veins or similar it would be more objective. This is a great video for highlighting why the Blizz Sorc is so popular and good. Don't need much gear and you are very powerful. It would be a nice video to show power differences within classes between budget and optimal gear. Lightning sorc power gain is crazy between budget and optimal. Blizz sorc not nearly as much. Would be fun to see with other classes too.
@notoriousspb good idea to use guides to gear, that way I won’t have to make the gear choice decisions myself. Definitely considering that for future videos, thanks.
@carloseduardoalcoceresteve5267 Full Tals is strong and late game viable but doesn't match runeword heavy builds. 3 piece tals with HOTO/spirit and a Shako (socketed with ist or pammy) is more efficient for magic finding. That's why I recommended Icy Veins because it's optimized for budget or optimal gear regardless of cost so it's a good objective source to make these videos. For instance a fully geared lightning sorc even without infinity on merc would clear mephisto in 2-3 seconds depending on damage luck.
Thanks! Which class do you think would be the most interesting? I see a small problem with gear setup, for example a paladin when using zeal vs using hammers.
@@tlee656 Agreed! Their super different skill trees will make it very interesting......although I will probably pity @zarfen when he has to do the fight with only Iron Maiden, Blood Golem, Skeletal Mages, or Spirit Wolves, LOL. I am also curious about how the Amazon's poison and plague javelins compare to the her other skills.
Great idea! Would be nice to see a video with different levels of gear and different players levels so you could show the impact of gear on clear speed. Lightning sorc in particular really needs to be super geared before she is really worth playing.
That is huge misconception regarding lightning sorc... There are budget setups to make lightning sorc work really really well really fast. Just different builds simply work in different scenarios... And based on the build you are using you are simply farming different things... Hammer isn't that popular because you have fastest clear speed everywhere... Hammer is popular because you can farm decently entire game and don't get bored. So essentialy build you are talking about is making a sorcerer version of hammer, yes that one is expensive as heck ^^ Comparing everything on mephisto is more or less... w/e ^^ I mean it tells you something but it doesn't show even 20% of the entire picture.
This video was super interesting. I agree with the other comments; I would love to see all the other classes. I really wanna know which Barb mastery works best for DPS, and weather or not Werewolf is better than werebear.
Glacial Spike and Firewall. I call it the 'deep fried popsicle build'. Great combo. One may even improve on it by getting a glacial spike Iron Wolf to run along. The spike holds monsters. The firewall deals massive amounts of damage.
I used to make Firewall sorcs before firewall actually got significantly nerfed in the early days of LoD. It's still very powerful but it used to be totally broken.
I remember using firewall back in the original d2 days on cold sorc to deal with cold immune enemies. For very little investment it was perfectly fine as a backup damage skill.
Blaze was pretty good at least early on in some patch. I remember I could run next to enemies and they would take damage without stepping in, it could even kill stationary targets like lightning spires and mummy sarcophagus like that. On the normal run it would kill pretty much anything on contact. Duriel was dying in less than a second.
Hey, I really enjoyed this video format. Your videos are really fun to watch and edited very nicely, I hope you upload more of these videos as time goes on. I'll be subscribing for sure!!
@@zarfen Hörde också att du är svensk :) Hur gör du med console commands för att reskilla din gubbe? Orkar inte farma respec tokens :p Bra videos också! Hittade precis din kanal :)
@DenMjukaGeten man måste launcha spelet med -enablerespec som extra kommando. Kommer inte ihåg exakt hur man gjorde men finns en rad man kan skriva i under inställningar i bnet launcher. Tack! :) Edit: här fanns det bättre förklarat: www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/pzk773/if_you_want_to_be_able_to_respec_your_d2r/
I love how Charged Bolt - the most basic Lightning spell - had the fastest time of the entire Lightning tree in this, hehe. I recently tried a sorc that went heavy into Charged Bolt and it's honestly a lot of fun, just creating a field of sparking death.
Great vid, loved the experiment. If you teleport right on top of him via targeting, you should be able to land all those charged bolts, so give it another go or two!
blaze used to be my go to skill in multiplayer in the early days. I think when we had 256k modems? If you go pvp you'd lag out the enemy with it no problem. I collected lots of ears thanks to that skill.
You're nutty for killing Mephisto with Telekinesis. I don't have the patience you do; I would have stopped at 10% or something and just extrapolated the end time from there. I've been going through your library and been enjoying the videos quite a bit. Definitely really enjoy the challenges the most, though.
I liked this video a lot. I wish you would do it with all classes. even if you used console commands to give yourself average gear and skills. Thank you for taking your time to create this!
blaze is a one point wonder. you can freely kill duriel with stacking stamina and thawing potions then casting it to run in circles. step 1: 420 blaze it. step 2: pick up the 4 tp scrolls he'll drop. step3: go to act 3
A simple level 2 lower resist wand would roughly double your kill speed for fire/lightning spells which is well worth it if you are trying to farm bosses. Mephisto has 75 resist naturally and level 2 wand would lower that by 36 leaving him with 39 resist. Typically if you are using spells with a CD you would be casting filler spells in between. So your numbers for blizzard/meteor aren't very meaningful since you will always have a pumped up ice blast / fireball thanks to synergies you can cast in between. You can also combine firewall or hydra with frozen orb by alternating CDs to roughly double your kill speed there. p.s. don't forget to use static field a few times initially if you are actually trying for speed.
There was never a 1 hydra limit on D2?? I used to make Hydra Sorc builds they were good, especially with a infinity conviction pole merc. Hydras were just timed, so yoou could make as many as you liked but they timed out so you only got 5 to 7 or so depending on your fcr
Awesome video. I usually put only one point in shiver armor and thunderstorm, but with all the +skill items it kindof adds up. I typically run Hydra+Frozen Orb with cold+fire mastery maxed or close to, and it's pretty good. But if I was to build one sorc only for Mephisto and that alone ? I'd probably go for Firewall/Hydra and use the moat trick. To note that I like farming on /players7 so that makes it a bit more challenging.
One thing I noticed you missed, with a spell like Blizzard that has a cooldown you can be spamming another instant cast in between casts for even more damage. Probably Glacial spike or ice blast. Could probably get the Blizz time down a few more seconds with that. But great content, love it.
@@zarfen Yeah for sure I understand what you were going for. The cold skills would have dominated even harder if you had been able to use two skills at once. Blizzard is, and has always been the best Meph killer for this reason, the actual kill time would be about 5~ seconds using your test.
That Enchant run reminded me the time I first tried to make an Enchantress. It was a long time ago and it was done on very low budget, without any HRs. It felt pretty much same as here, underwhelming. I've upper my game since then and now Enchantress is my favorite character, the one that's based on Dream. I rarely farmed Meph with her, but when it happened, oneshotting the whole boss was a common occurrence. (Which signifies that the best Sorceress's skill is actually Lightning Mastery)
I remember the firewall/meteor/hydra spells being spammable (no cd) on one of the older patches. Firewall was taking down anyone in seconds. Was awesome :)
One way to do this exercise fair is adding a lower res wand, it affects just the same for all 3 elements but will balance against the massive advantage of Cold Mastery
Very interesting. I thought Fire is best for damage while Cold is worst for damage but with some crowd control. Didn't expect to see Cold win this one. I'd watch if you did other classes too.
It reveals some pretty terrible game design really. I guess back when Blizzard was making sorc they just figured fire and lightning look prettier so might as well make cold the best damage dealer and crowd controller. Since there is some cold immune enemies that means fire ends up being the fall back so lightning is just wasted dev time they could of spent on anything else.
Problem with Diablo II is, unless you are willing to cheat, that the game is just horribly long, and so very many decisions are so very final. So one tends to never try something new if it might suck in the long run. Thanks for doing that for us!
12:05 I prefer faster run/walk speed over teleport personally. With teleport you can run into issues like like casting delay and FHR lock due to the animations required to cast. With faster run walk you really only have to worry about your armor class being zero and hit stun/lock which Hustle's +6 evade tremendously helps. Blaze is also great for kiting extremely fast mobs that like to run away. Have them follow you like the yellow brick road and watch them all die out of bloodlust greed.
16:53 Holy hell, that was actually insane. True game of RNG... It's so unlikely to happen (especially of the context) i bet you can made like 3 Enigmas before another high unique gamble happen, like an Arachnid's.
I've had a lot of fun this season (8) on Hydra/ Fireball (with meteor) build. Flickering Flame, Phoenix Shield and Infinity Merc is pretty crazy. Killing Hell Mephisto in roughly 5s, Summon all 6 Hydras, Drop Meteor and he is normally dead before Meteor even lands. However this is pretty endgame build with almost full bis; Hoto, Phoenix, FF, Tal Ammy, Chains of Honor, Arachs, 2x SoJ, Magefist, Treks, Anni, Torch, CTA/ Spirit, Fire Sunder. I think I'm only at the 63FCR breakpoint but Meteor 1 shots any (previously) Fire Immune monster, and 1 Fireball will kill any other monster.
You should remake this video using the ultimate items build for each skills that you try or make a serie of videos for each individual skills using the best gear for it.
A lot of the reason lightning does so little is do to how enemy res works in this game. Meph has relatively high lightning resist if i recall correctly. Also cold mastery only reduces down to zero. Negatives are only applied by 2 specific skills the necromancer's Lower Resist curse and Paladin's Conviction aura. If you watch how both apply it will give weakness to element affix under the enemy name when below zero resist.
Mephisto has 75 res to fire, lightning and cold in hell. Maybe you were thinking of Uber Mephisto. That’s incorrect. Maybe you are confusing that with how breaking immunities works. Cold mastery can’t break immune monsters, but it can absolutely bring a monster’s cold resist into the negative if it’s not cold immune.
@@zarfen Except that cold mastery cannot unless d2r changed how it works it shouldn't drop mobs/bosses into the weakness to cold affix unless conviction, lower resist or both are applied. I have 10+ years of d2 knowledge and remember that is exactly how resists work vs enemies including pvp.
@IveBeenWithBruma What are you basing your claim on? Your experience? I’m sorry but you are remembering incorrect information. Cold mastery can lower enemy resists to negative (capping at -100%) and they can/could in old D2/LoD as well… It works on normal monsters, champion/unique packs, bosses, and other players in pvp. I don’t know what the “weakness to cold affix” is, but if you’re hung up on something showing up on the monster’s name, remember that cold mastery only applies to cold damage of the casting sorc. CM doesn’t straight up debuff enemies like lower resist/conviction does. The unique thing that only lower resist and conviction can do is to break immune monsters, meaning lowering their resist from 100+% to 99% or lower.
@@zarfen Weakness to specific element is what happens when you go below 0% resists. I don't take offense nor was your comment rude. The reason Sorce tanks in damage in hell is do to this factor where monster resists surpass skill specific synergies. This is why Kira's circlet+ any form of elemental absorption was considered bm in pvp.
mostly its how much commitment you put in skills ... back in the days i had alot of commitment (and accounts ) with lvl 90+ chars for pvp .... and you can make allmost evry skill look really OP :)
nice. the lightning skills wouldve profitted from more fcr I think. 117% for them. enchant works like this in melee: fire mastery applies to it when casting the spell and again when striking monsters. thats what makes melee sorcs viable, since lightning mastery also applies to melee strikes on all dmg from your equip. ranged attacks however it doesnt work, even though the screen might show otherwise. thats how it is in LoD, not sure about D2R.
Its been fixed in D2R, crossbow enchant sorceress is a legitimate build on par with other sorc builds. Demon Machine fires explosive bolts which synergizes with enchant for aoe enchant damage and it has has 66% pierce.. so with a razortail belt you will be at 99%. The new flickering flame runeword also helps.
beyond the infinity discussion and all that, one takeway is that blizzard is such an efficient mephisto killer as in gameplay you're basically using blizzard and ice blast together, which are two of the fastest killers per your test.
Zealchantress is actually a bretty good build, especially against ubers. But that requires an optimized build, not just switching skill and a new sword.
If you get tired of the skill balancing in D2R... play Project Diablo 2, my man. It's pretty much what would've happened to Diablo if Blizzard cared about it. Almost all the skills are viable, some are obviously stronger than others, but all are viable. My favorite skill is a spell called Ice Barrage, which is basically a bunch of ice bolts fired in a cone. There's even a thriving community and a fully functional trade site, mapping, late game bosses, special events, all sorts of added items, etc. It's great.
@@zarfenSeason 9 will] be coming out here very soon, as the Crafters League is wrapping up. Look for the announcement. That'd be a perfect time to give it another go.
more like a question: on the necromancers "teeth" skill, and the amazons "multishot", if you aim further awai the projectiles are closer together... ... is this the same for 6:15 charged bolts?
Hey there! Great job, but I wonder why you avoided Static Field? Maybe it is because it has no direct damage, but I cannot say I havent' use it to demolish bosses either)
You’re right, it’s because it doesn’t deal damage, and I wanted to use the only one skill at a time. So if I did use static I would still be in durance 3 by now :D
@Saibrock it's actually quite a question, because on foe's healthbar it's definitely looks like health loss :D but yes, i'm aware of skill mechanics and at this point basically UI tells us that static field IS hp loss (rather than shrinkage of hp pool)
there is the obvious skills which deal the most dmg which is what most base there builds off of but almost every skill has the capability to run you through any act, also best way to utilize orb is to cast it and then tele into it so that mobs follow it
Not sure if you just did 1 run for each of the shown skills? If yes the time estimates have basicly no significance, because statistical deviation is way too large. (Especially considering random teleports from occulus or random movements or attacks from mephisto) In order to have any significance to distinguish the skills you should do AT LEAST 10 runs each and take the average, better do 20 or 50 runs each for better time estimates! But aside from that, great idea for a video! I would be happy for a reupload or more precise attempt :)
I played an Inferno sorceress way back in the day. Damage was so low that my merc was outdamaging me by a good margin but I still loved it. Shame the spell isn't great because it -feels- good to cast.
I didn't expect fire ball to be better than charged bolt... i think you could have played charged bolt better, standing right on top of him. I think there's also an optimal angle for shooting it where more bolts connect.
after all this time, they could still do more balancing with the game. I'm cautiously optimistic after the buffs to other classes. But... what if you used a lower resist wand? And a merc with the Infinity runeword for conviction aura?
Lighting’s cast rate is determined by weapon attack speed, so you might’ve actually done more damage wielding the Call To Arms than Oculus for Lightning and CL.
Fake news. If I had to guess, you’re conflating IAS as the determinant of trap deployment speed for the Assassin’s Lightning Sentry with the Sorceress’ Lightning/Chain Lightning
@@fartberg It looks like you're right - they changed Lightning skills to use FCR, but it used to be based on IAS in 1.09. I haven't played a sorceress since then!
Frozen orb and Hydra or Fireball. Blizzard has three synergies so you can't max it going dual tree. Orb has one synergy which allows you to max it easily then put the rest in fire. Hydra and FB just have two synergies.
Thanks! You get 1 respec per Act 1 Quest one completed. If you want more you can farm hell act bosses for essences and cube those to a token for another respec. In single player you can enable infinite respecs.
Were nova and hydra really that bad? They were my favourite builds 20+ years ago. Nova sorc was my first lvl 99 character back then and i'm pretty sure other players used them online too, I doubt I would have come up with the builds myself. It was in LoD but before the patches that made rune words useful and hammer paladin good. When people farmed cow level.
In real old school D2 I also recall nova being good. I was referencing 1.10+ (“modern” LoD? 😂) where it just doesn’t keep up since it was given no synergies when most other skills did when they were introduced. Hydra I don’t think ever was good but I can’t swear on that either if we’re talking pre-1.10 patch. Like I said in the video, summoning a single hydra that spits fire bolts was just sad.
Hydra was okay at 1.09 and earlier, nothing incredible but still usable, 1.10 added synergies and rebalanced skills and this was where Hydra builds got hit hard and dropped off the face of the Earth.
6:00 You should try this charged bolt again by telestomping meph and aiming directly downwards, all bolts will hit, and it deals more damage than lightning.
Since I was a kid I have always thought that the frozen orb and the frost nova spell icons were misplaced one for another, and Blizzard said F... it, we'll just kept them that way. Is it just me?
You have to run the game with "-enablerespec" as an additional command line command, eityher by adding that to a shortcut or in battlenet launcher under game settings in a field called "additional command line arguments"
I wanted to ask about static field but then i went on a small google search and apparently you can't lower health of hell enemies below 50 percent with that skill.
What is a good set up for a frozen sorceress before you even attempt Hell difficulty? What should a person farm or have as a must have to include levels and best substitute skill for Cold Immune?
Please do all the other classes! Thanks. Very good content.
Before the LoD expansion, Hydra was awesome. There were no cooldowns at all back then so you could literally fill the entire screen with them.
yep hydras use to be wayyyy op they also use to be used for pking people then they got nerfed horriably
same with meteor and blizzard. I really hate the casting delays.
Even after the nerf, it still destroyed in Pk. Had the 30/30 crystal sword, 3/20 fire circ that had facets, 20/20 jmod and 20/20 armor. I would also use all the gear used for a self wield infinity nova, but I would be a charged bolt sorc.
they removed it again but capped it obvoisly
And firewall used to do like 60k and it mattered.
I just about started laughing when you got to telekinesis, lol! I knew that one was going to be a slog, but DAMN! This is pretty funny stuff, and interesting. Skills i’ve never considered using before have me intrigued to use, or validated in my beliefs that certain skills do, in fact, suck.
You picked a very good target to showcase all this - Mephisto has 75% resistance to all 3 elements, so it's a "fair" starting point of comparison. I like the potential of the video especially for relatively starter kits, not going into specialized builds with expensive prerequisites.
This video shows very clearly why cold sorceresses are so incredibly powerful early in the season. Cold Mastery is indeed the key here. With the 2.6 changes though it's no longer that effective against Sundered enemies, so from my experience it's not really worth farming areas with significant numbers of cold immunes as the damage dealt there is absolutely horrendous (even with Death's Fathom).
On the other hand, lightning spells are indeed quite underwhelming due to resistance and relatively mediocre average damage. Once you get access to high end gear like Griffon's Eye, Facets and Infinity (self wielded), you begin to see the true power of lightning buildings. Nova in itself is quite a mediocre skill against high resistant monsters, but break that resistance and you just melt everything.
Fire skills by themselves deal nice damage, and they sometimes do stack DoT like we've seen with firewall.... but you have to consider that there are far more fire immunes out there, fire has the worst time with AoE burst damage, DoT damage in itself is not very efficient for quick area farming, and in the endgame, lowering fire resistances is probably the hardest for a sorceress without significant sacrifices (in theory you can mimic infinity with 6xfacet crystal sword + 4xfacet monarch but then you still need infinity on the merc and you run into FCR problems because Flickering Flame does not have any FCR bonus)
Let's look actually at the most common -% res achievable by different elements on **sundered enemies**, on sort of full builds. For example let's assume a base damage of 1k:
Lightning (with vipermagi): Griffon (-20) + Infinity (-55) + Conviction 12 (-17) + 2xFacet (-10) = -102% => enemy res -7%. Damage dealt: 1070
Fire (eschuta + spirit with vipermagi): Flickering Flame (-15) + Conviction 12 (-17) + 2x Facet (-10) = -42% => enemy res 53%. Damage dealt: 470
Cold (death's fathom + spirit with shako/nightveil and vipermagi): Cold Mastery 40 (-43) + Conviction 12 (-17) + 3x Facet (-15) = -75% => enemy res 20%. Damage dealt: 800
Another important difference between cold and the other elements: lightning and fire get a ton of bonus damage from their respective masteries.
Next video - “Can the Sorceress Beat D2R using only telekinesis?”
OOF now that's a challenge... MAYBE if you do normal difficulty only, and have a lot of time on your hands. But even then...
I actually considered doing a hammerSIN, only using psychic hammer but it just looks so terrible... and telekenesis is even worse! 😅
Cool video!
It would be interesting if you did this again but with infinity to see how much better lightning/fire performs when they get the minus res boost.
You could totally make this a series comparing how fast every skill on every class kills mephisto.
Thanks!
I don’t actually have infinity in single player yet, but I’ll consider it when I find another ber.
I might, but while I could kind of justify being lazy and use the same gear for the sorc, it doesn’t really work for other classes I think. Like assassin having the martial arts tree and the trap tree which plays very differently… How can I make a melee setup and a caster setup “similar” so it feels fair? I could probably figure something out though. Thanks for the comment.
@zarfen if you use budget gear and optimal gear from Icy Veins or similar it would be more objective. This is a great video for highlighting why the Blizz Sorc is so popular and good. Don't need much gear and you are very powerful. It would be a nice video to show power differences within classes between budget and optimal gear. Lightning sorc power gain is crazy between budget and optimal. Blizz sorc not nearly as much. Would be fun to see with other classes too.
@notoriousspb good idea to use guides to gear, that way I won’t have to make the gear choice decisions myself. Definitely considering that for future videos, thanks.
@@notoriousspb like a complete tal rashas set?
@carloseduardoalcoceresteve5267 Full Tals is strong and late game viable but doesn't match runeword heavy builds. 3 piece tals with HOTO/spirit and a Shako (socketed with ist or pammy) is more efficient for magic finding. That's why I recommended Icy Veins because it's optimized for budget or optimal gear regardless of cost so it's a good objective source to make these videos. For instance a fully geared lightning sorc even without infinity on merc would clear mephisto in 2-3 seconds depending on damage luck.
Mephisto: not this shit again...
great video, neat idea for a series with every class
Thanks! Which class do you think would be the most interesting?
I see a small problem with gear setup, for example a paladin when using zeal vs using hammers.
assasin please @@zarfen
@@zarfen Necro is gonna be a juicy one!! Same with Druid!
@@tlee656 Agreed! Their super different skill trees will make it very interesting......although I will probably pity @zarfen when he has to do the fight with only Iron Maiden, Blood Golem, Skeletal Mages, or Spirit Wolves, LOL. I am also curious about how the Amazon's poison and plague javelins compare to the her other skills.
Great idea! Would be nice to see a video with different levels of gear and different players levels so you could show the impact of gear on clear speed. Lightning sorc in particular really needs to be super geared before she is really worth playing.
That is huge misconception regarding lightning sorc...
There are budget setups to make lightning sorc work really really well really fast.
Just different builds simply work in different scenarios...
And based on the build you are using you are simply farming different things...
Hammer isn't that popular because you have fastest clear speed everywhere... Hammer is popular because you can farm decently entire game and don't get bored.
So essentialy build you are talking about is making a sorcerer version of hammer, yes that one is expensive as heck ^^
Comparing everything on mephisto is more or less... w/e
^^ I mean it tells you something but it doesn't show even 20% of the entire picture.
This video was super interesting. I agree with the other comments; I would love to see all the other classes. I really wanna know which Barb mastery works best for DPS, and weather or not Werewolf is better than werebear.
Thank you, videos like this shows D2 is a wonderful game. All these years and still is amazing for the community.
Glacial Spike and Firewall. I call it the 'deep fried popsicle build'. Great combo. One may even improve on it by getting a glacial spike Iron Wolf to run along. The spike holds monsters. The firewall deals massive amounts of damage.
I used to make Firewall sorcs before firewall actually got significantly nerfed in the early days of LoD. It's still very powerful but it used to be totally broken.
I remember using firewall back in the original d2 days on cold sorc to deal with cold immune enemies. For very little investment it was perfectly fine as a backup damage skill.
Blaze was pretty good at least early on in some patch. I remember I could run next to enemies and they would take damage without stepping in, it could even kill stationary targets like lightning spires and mummy sarcophagus like that. On the normal run it would kill pretty much anything on contact. Duriel was dying in less than a second.
Firewall is super powerful in Diablo 1. Can fill entire rooms with it and it burns for so long
@@djberryhardkore easiest way to kill the butcher open door cast firewall (from a staff) and close it.
Great idea Zarfen, i love the video. Way to keep it fresh
Thanks, glad you liked it!
Hey, I really enjoyed this video format. Your videos are really fun to watch and edited very nicely, I hope you upload more of these videos as time goes on. I'll be subscribing for sure!!
Thank you for the kind comment!
Insåg nyss från din röst att du är svensk. Visste inte att svennar spelade Diablo, man lär sig något nytt varje dag eller?
@ibbecannon några är vi allt! Får kommentarer från svenskar lite då och då.
@@zarfen Hörde också att du är svensk :)
Hur gör du med console commands för att reskilla din gubbe? Orkar inte farma respec tokens :p
Bra videos också! Hittade precis din kanal :)
@DenMjukaGeten man måste launcha spelet med -enablerespec som extra kommando. Kommer inte ihåg exakt hur man gjorde men finns en rad man kan skriva i under inställningar i bnet launcher.
Tack! :)
Edit: här fanns det bättre förklarat: www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/comments/pzk773/if_you_want_to_be_able_to_respec_your_d2r/
115% castrate ?!!! wow that is impressive... and efficient.... someone will be losing his family jewels tonight !!!
Someone and 15% of someone else too
@@kopimamo"Just the tip"
People who want bottom surgery: nice
The clip of Sorc clapping the devil with an orb is hilarious to watch 😂
I love how Charged Bolt - the most basic Lightning spell - had the fastest time of the entire Lightning tree in this, hehe.
I recently tried a sorc that went heavy into Charged Bolt and it's honestly a lot of fun, just creating a field of sparking death.
It’s a great spell for sure. Puts the other level 1 skills to shame
man, you makes all this crazy things I would love to do if I only have a time. Thx, you spare ma a lot of it.
This is good, quirky fun. I don't think I've seen a "gallery" style run for D2 skills before. You are the grail drop of D2 content, good sir.
Haha thanks!
Great vid, loved the experiment. If you teleport right on top of him via targeting, you should be able to land all those charged bolts, so give it another go or two!
I was just going to comment this, charged bolt will kill faster than anything in the sorc skill set. That was always my go to.
the angle of attack also matters, i think
blaze used to be my go to skill in multiplayer in the early days. I think when we had 256k modems? If you go pvp you'd lag out the enemy with it no problem. I collected lots of ears thanks to that skill.
You're nutty for killing Mephisto with Telekinesis. I don't have the patience you do; I would have stopped at 10% or something and just extrapolated the end time from there.
I've been going through your library and been enjoying the videos quite a bit. Definitely really enjoy the challenges the most, though.
Thanks! Glad you enjoy the videos
Amazing video! Ice Blast + Blizzard is so strong when used in combination 😀
I liked this video a lot. I wish you would do it with all classes. even if you used console commands to give yourself average gear and skills.
Thank you for taking your time to create this!
Great video!
Would love a video demonstrating 500 TZ andy drops below lvl 92 and 500 TZ drops at 92+ if possible!
yes! 500 Andy runs with Telekinesis please
@xijinpig7978 😭 please no
blaze is a one point wonder. you can freely kill duriel with stacking stamina and thawing potions then casting it to run in circles.
step 1: 420 blaze it.
step 2: pick up the 4 tp scrolls he'll drop.
step3: go to act 3
A simple level 2 lower resist wand would roughly double your kill speed for fire/lightning spells which is well worth it if you are trying to farm bosses. Mephisto has 75 resist naturally and level 2 wand would lower that by 36 leaving him with 39 resist.
Typically if you are using spells with a CD you would be casting filler spells in between. So your numbers for blizzard/meteor aren't very meaningful since you will always have a pumped up ice blast / fireball thanks to synergies you can cast in between. You can also combine firewall or hydra with frozen orb by alternating CDs to roughly double your kill speed there.
p.s. don't forget to use static field a few times initially if you are actually trying for speed.
Guess it's the cold sorc for me! Great vid! Yes, do more with other classes.
12:28, nice one.
It took a LOT of attempts to make it somewhat readable
Fascinating - I appreciate the hard work and info!
hard work?? lol. he ran each test ONE time. useless.
There was never a 1 hydra limit on D2??
I used to make Hydra Sorc builds they were good, especially with a infinity conviction pole merc. Hydras were just timed, so yoou could make as many as you liked but they timed out so you only got 5 to 7 or so depending on your fcr
Awesome video. I usually put only one point in shiver armor and thunderstorm, but with all the +skill items it kindof adds up.
I typically run Hydra+Frozen Orb with cold+fire mastery maxed or close to, and it's pretty good.
But if I was to build one sorc only for Mephisto and that alone ? I'd probably go for Firewall/Hydra and use the moat trick.
To note that I like farming on /players7 so that makes it a bit more challenging.
this is awesome man! you gained a new sub :D
Glad you liked it!
One thing I noticed you missed, with a spell like Blizzard that has a cooldown you can be spamming another instant cast in between casts for even more damage. Probably Glacial spike or ice blast. Could probably get the Blizz time down a few more seconds with that.
But great content, love it.
I wanted to use only 1 skill at a time, but it might have been a good idea to time a normal blizzard/ice blast sorc as well for reference.
Thanks!
@@zarfen Yeah for sure I understand what you were going for.
The cold skills would have dominated even harder if you had been able to use two skills at once. Blizzard is, and has always been the best Meph killer for this reason, the actual kill time would be about 5~ seconds using your test.
I like the idea 👏
You may try increasing the timer size a bit. It is almost invisible on mobile
Thanks! That’s good feedback 👍
Great video as usual
Tele-fekking-kinesis, dude you're crazy :) I love it :)
You used to be able to use TK to steal drops in 8 players games :)
That Enchant run reminded me the time I first tried to make an Enchantress. It was a long time ago and it was done on very low budget, without any HRs. It felt pretty much same as here, underwhelming.
I've upper my game since then and now Enchantress is my favorite character, the one that's based on Dream. I rarely farmed Meph with her, but when it happened, oneshotting the whole boss was a common occurrence. (Which signifies that the best Sorceress's skill is actually Lightning Mastery)
So, basically, it's more about specific mastery of each elemental skill. That's why cold is better, since it lowers the resistance of enemies.
I remember the firewall/meteor/hydra spells being spammable (no cd) on one of the older patches. Firewall was taking down anyone in seconds. Was awesome :)
Nice! I’ve done the same years ago but without the armours. Btw I doubt anyone who’s watching D2 video understands the D3 references 😄
One way to do this exercise fair is adding a lower res wand, it affects just the same for all 3 elements but will balance against the massive advantage of Cold Mastery
Great comparison, for increased validly of results you could do at least 5 repeats per skill
Solid content! 💪 Keep up the great work brother
Very interesting. I thought Fire is best for damage while Cold is worst for damage but with some crowd control. Didn't expect to see Cold win this one.
I'd watch if you did other classes too.
It reveals some pretty terrible game design really. I guess back when Blizzard was making sorc they just figured fire and lightning look prettier so might as well make cold the best damage dealer and crowd controller. Since there is some cold immune enemies that means fire ends up being the fall back so lightning is just wasted dev time they could of spent on anything else.
We NEED a video like this for the Necromancer!
Problem with Diablo II is, unless you are willing to cheat, that the game is just horribly long, and so very many decisions are so very final. So one tends to never try something new if it might suck in the long run. Thanks for doing that for us!
12:05 I prefer faster run/walk speed over teleport personally. With teleport you can run into issues like like casting delay and FHR lock due to the animations required to cast. With faster run walk you really only have to worry about your armor class being zero and hit stun/lock which Hustle's +6 evade tremendously helps. Blaze is also great for kiting extremely fast mobs that like to run away. Have them follow you like the yellow brick road and watch them all die out of bloodlust greed.
16:53 Holy hell, that was actually insane. True game of RNG... It's so unlikely to happen (especially of the context) i bet you can made like 3 Enigmas before another high unique gamble happen, like an Arachnid's.
I've had a lot of fun this season (8) on Hydra/ Fireball (with meteor) build. Flickering Flame, Phoenix Shield and Infinity Merc is pretty crazy. Killing Hell Mephisto in roughly 5s, Summon all 6 Hydras, Drop Meteor and he is normally dead before Meteor even lands.
However this is pretty endgame build with almost full bis; Hoto, Phoenix, FF, Tal Ammy, Chains of Honor, Arachs, 2x SoJ, Magefist, Treks, Anni, Torch, CTA/ Spirit, Fire Sunder. I think I'm only at the 63FCR breakpoint but Meteor 1 shots any (previously) Fire Immune monster, and 1 Fireball will kill any other monster.
that "sub" message was smooth as all hell
You should remake this video using the ultimate items build for each skills that you try or make a serie of videos for each individual skills using the best gear for it.
Subbed! Great channel :]
Thanks! Glad you like it :)
14:49 "I noted hydra down for 16.7 seconds"
>proceeds to use 16.2 seconds
Good one, remember the resistance from bosses are Important too
Very good content. Keep up!
A lot of the reason lightning does so little is do to how enemy res works in this game. Meph has relatively high lightning resist if i recall correctly. Also cold mastery only reduces down to zero. Negatives are only applied by 2 specific skills the necromancer's Lower Resist curse and Paladin's Conviction aura. If you watch how both apply it will give weakness to element affix under the enemy name when below zero resist.
Mephisto has 75 res to fire, lightning and cold in hell. Maybe you were thinking of Uber Mephisto.
That’s incorrect. Maybe you are confusing that with how breaking immunities works. Cold mastery can’t break immune monsters, but it can absolutely bring a monster’s cold resist into the negative if it’s not cold immune.
@@zarfen Except that cold mastery cannot unless d2r changed how it works it shouldn't drop mobs/bosses into the weakness to cold affix unless conviction, lower resist or both are applied. I have 10+ years of d2 knowledge and remember that is exactly how resists work vs enemies including pvp.
@IveBeenWithBruma What are you basing your claim on? Your experience? I’m sorry but you are remembering incorrect information.
Cold mastery can lower enemy resists to negative (capping at -100%) and they can/could in old D2/LoD as well… It works on normal monsters, champion/unique packs, bosses, and other players in pvp.
I don’t know what the “weakness to cold affix” is, but if you’re hung up on something showing up on the monster’s name, remember that cold mastery only applies to cold damage of the casting sorc. CM doesn’t straight up debuff enemies like lower resist/conviction does.
The unique thing that only lower resist and conviction can do is to break immune monsters, meaning lowering their resist from 100+% to 99% or lower.
@IveBeenWithBruma reading it back, my last reply sounds a little rude. That was not my intention! :)
@@zarfen Weakness to specific element is what happens when you go below 0% resists. I don't take offense nor was your comment rude. The reason Sorce tanks in damage in hell is do to this factor where monster resists surpass skill specific synergies. This is why Kira's circlet+ any form of elemental absorption was considered bm in pvp.
Very cool and useful video!
mostly its how much commitment you put in skills ... back in the days i had alot of commitment (and accounts ) with lvl 90+ chars for pvp .... and you can make allmost evry skill look really OP :)
you can get firebolt if i remember right (its 10 years left so correct me if im wrong ) to about 29k dmg .... wich kills anything quite fast :)
enchant can get you with a decent build up to 45k dmg
telekinesis can get in theory to arround 1k ... but just dont do that ^^
nice.
the lightning skills wouldve profitted from more fcr I think.
117% for them.
enchant works like this in melee: fire mastery applies to it when casting the spell and again when striking monsters.
thats what makes melee sorcs viable, since lightning mastery also applies to melee strikes on all dmg from your equip.
ranged attacks however it doesnt work, even though the screen might show otherwise.
thats how it is in LoD, not sure about D2R.
I did have 121% FCR to make sure I hit the 117% breakpoint.
Thanks for explaining about fire mastery.
Its been fixed in D2R, crossbow enchant sorceress is a legitimate build on par with other sorc builds. Demon Machine fires explosive bolts which synergizes with enchant for aoe enchant damage and it has has 66% pierce.. so with a razortail belt you will be at 99%. The new flickering flame runeword also helps.
"i coud focus on dodging..." as he gets hit by all projectiles 😂
Nice Work, i wanted to make a hydra or blaze sorc for a time, maybe i'll after this video.
beyond the infinity discussion and all that, one takeway is that blizzard is such an efficient mephisto killer as in gameplay you're basically using blizzard and ice blast together, which are two of the fastest killers per your test.
Very useful information, thank you.
Zealchantress is actually a bretty good build, especially against ubers. But that requires an optimized build, not just switching skill and a new sword.
If you get tired of the skill balancing in D2R... play Project Diablo 2, my man. It's pretty much what would've happened to Diablo if Blizzard cared about it. Almost all the skills are viable, some are obviously stronger than others, but all are viable. My favorite skill is a spell called Ice Barrage, which is basically a bunch of ice bolts fired in a cone. There's even a thriving community and a fully functional trade site, mapping, late game bosses, special events, all sorts of added items, etc. It's great.
I did try it a few years ago and had a great time!
@@zarfenSeason 9 will] be coming out here very soon, as the Crafters League is wrapping up. Look for the announcement. That'd be a perfect time to give it another go.
This shows why we build our old days bots with blizz/blast. So nothing changed to D2R
I’d be interested to see a full min maxed version for each skill with and without a merc
Using the same gear makes as good a comparison as judging every animal on their ability to fly.
the entire thing is completely useless. completely. people are so damn dumb.
more like a question: on the necromancers "teeth" skill, and the amazons "multishot", if you aim further awai the projectiles are closer together...
... is this the same for 6:15 charged bolts?
Interesting question, I’ve never thought about that before. Im not certain but I’m 95% sure it doesn’t change its spread depending on where you click.
Yes charged bolt works that way on D2 LoD, I havent tested on D2R but they should have recreated the same mechanics.
Yes it uses the same mechanics as multishot and teeth
Hey there! Great job, but I wonder why you avoided Static Field? Maybe it is because it has no direct damage, but I cannot say I havent' use it to demolish bosses either)
You’re right, it’s because it doesn’t deal damage, and I wanted to use the only one skill at a time. So if I did use static I would still be in durance 3 by now :D
Not sure it's even *possible* to kill anything with Static Field. I'm not sure if it rounds up or down on the life loss.
@Saibrock in hell there is a hard limit and you can’t static enemies below 50%
@Saibrock it's actually quite a question, because on foe's healthbar it's definitely looks like health loss :D but yes, i'm aware of skill mechanics and at this point basically UI tells us that static field IS hp loss (rather than shrinkage of hp pool)
Love your content! New subscriber here
Thanks!
there is the obvious skills which deal the most dmg which is what most base there builds off of but almost every skill has the capability to run you through any act, also best way to utilize orb is to cast it and then tele into it so that mobs follow it
Not sure if you just did 1 run for each of the shown skills?
If yes the time estimates have basicly no significance, because statistical deviation is way too large. (Especially considering random teleports from occulus or random movements or attacks from mephisto)
In order to have any significance to distinguish the skills you should do AT LEAST 10 runs each and take the average, better do 20 or 50 runs each for better time estimates!
But aside from that, great idea for a video! I would be happy for a reupload or more precise attempt :)
Maybe YOU should do 50x of each skill and let US know. 👍
Thank you very much for your guiding.
Would like to see comparison with meteor, mixed with fireball during casting delay which is what I would do for bosses if not going cold.
I played an Inferno sorceress way back in the day. Damage was so low that my merc was outdamaging me by a good margin but I still loved it.
Shame the spell isn't great because it -feels- good to cast.
I didn't expect fire ball to be better than charged bolt... i think you could have played charged bolt better, standing right on top of him. I think there's also an optimal angle for shooting it where more bolts connect.
Another comment said the same so I think you’re right. I’m not an experienced lighting sorc player
after all this time, they could still do more balancing with the game. I'm cautiously optimistic after the buffs to other classes. But... what if you used a lower resist wand? And a merc with the Infinity runeword for conviction aura?
The best demonstration video.
Another great video! Thanks
Lighting’s cast rate is determined by weapon attack speed, so you might’ve actually done more damage wielding the Call To Arms than Oculus for Lightning and CL.
Fake news. If I had to guess, you’re conflating IAS as the determinant of trap deployment speed for the Assassin’s Lightning Sentry with the Sorceress’ Lightning/Chain Lightning
@@fartberg It looks like you're right - they changed Lightning skills to use FCR, but it used to be based on IAS in 1.09. I haven't played a sorceress since then!
What would be a good dual element build, that doesn't need high-end gear?
Frozen orb and Hydra or Fireball. Blizzard has three synergies so you can't max it going dual tree. Orb has one synergy which allows you to max it easily then put the rest in fire. Hydra and FB just have two synergies.
I agree with @michaelbyrne8238
If you want to play lightning then frozen orb + nova can also work but it’s very mana hungry.
love your vids , after i finish on hell will i be able to reset my skills at any time ?
Thanks!
You get 1 respec per Act 1 Quest one completed. If you want more you can farm hell act bosses for essences and cube those to a token for another respec.
In single player you can enable infinite respecs.
@@zarfen thanks so much
Were nova and hydra really that bad? They were my favourite builds 20+ years ago. Nova sorc was my first lvl 99 character back then and i'm pretty sure other players used them online too, I doubt I would have come up with the builds myself. It was in LoD but before the patches that made rune words useful and hammer paladin good. When people farmed cow level.
In real old school D2 I also recall nova being good. I was referencing 1.10+ (“modern” LoD? 😂) where it just doesn’t keep up since it was given no synergies when most other skills did when they were introduced. Hydra I don’t think ever was good but I can’t swear on that either if we’re talking pre-1.10 patch. Like I said in the video, summoning a single hydra that spits fire bolts was just sad.
Hydra was okay at 1.09 and earlier, nothing incredible but still usable, 1.10 added synergies and rebalanced skills and this was where Hydra builds got hit hard and dropped off the face of the Earth.
6:00 You should try this charged bolt again by telestomping meph and aiming directly downwards, all bolts will hit, and it deals more damage than lightning.
I'd be interested in seeing this again but with BIS items per mastery.
same
Since I was a kid I have always thought that the frozen orb and the frost nova spell icons were misplaced one for another, and Blizzard said F... it, we'll just kept them that way.
Is it just me?
There's another great use for Telekinesis. You can stun lock cold immune enemies while your merc takes them out.
Brings me back to 2004 doing mepf runs for occy
One thing to note is that Infinity changes these numbers. Lightning becomes a lot more competitive with it.
how did you respec with command? what command did you use?
You have to run the game with "-enablerespec" as an additional command line command, eityher by adding that to a shortcut or in battlenet launcher under game settings in a field called "additional command line arguments"
3:50 I believe you meant "deceptively high" as in it looks low but is actually high hence description deceiving you.
6:40 My Dude, just hold the cast button. Lightning can be cast continuesly (or did they change this with D2R?)
my only character in D3 which made it to highest dificulties was electric hydra sorc and it was super fun :)
I really like the hydra in D3!
I wanted to ask about static field but then i went on a small google search and apparently you can't lower health of hell enemies below 50 percent with that skill.
11:40 - Ew is that skill ugly, Blizzard come on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What is a good set up for a frozen sorceress before you even attempt Hell difficulty? What should a person farm or have as a must have to include levels and best substitute skill for Cold Immune?
Also for a solo run would be great.
200ed perfect duriel shell on first kill. I like
I didn’t even notice the ed… Nice!