Need Help With Melee Sorc

[aknazer]

Hi aknazer,
Taken your advice seriously and done below, however i might still need help if you don't mind.
1) Xar Sacred Warp Blade - and the damage is quite close with the one you've posted and stormed till Destruction Act5
2) Unsocket and MO'ed the Armor before RW - Remained as On but now about 17.5k Def
3) Taken a T6 Belt and made Vith RW Belt, lessen the burn for Str by ALOT
4) Made On RW Sacred Spike Shield - About 5.2k def (Found that without a proper base STR, the 40% Str actually does nothing XD)
5) MO'ed STR to 2x Rings to lessen the Stat Points needed
6) Went and try getting a few easy charm - still working on KB3K atm
7) Have not gotten any Nih Rune to craft LOSIM jewels, resorted to Ber for LL jewels for now.

Don't forget that you don't need to get a Nih rune to get a Nih rune. If you get any spare On runes you can just cube it by itself to downgrade it a tier to Nih. Or if you got enough various other lvl100 runes you could potentially upgrade them to a Nih. This is also useful if you craft gear for a merc and want to fill it with a specific type of rune, just pick up all runes that are higher than you're after and then downgrade them to what you want (my merc has 26 Ral runes for example and there's no way I went and found that many without upgrading/downgrading).

Gear's Pic

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I feel like i could do something with the glove, however the 1 Sorc Skill and Stormblast Proc is too hard to give up.

Yea those are some nice gloves so I don't blame you for not wanting to give them up and just making due with less Dex in order to use them.

Charms that i've gotten so far (died alot)

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Did you farm these charms enough to get perfect or near-perfect ones? While I wouldn't farm Creature of Flame as that fight simply isn't good for us (we do too much AOE damage and too hard for the guardians to reliably hit us to prevent randomly being 1hko'd), all of the others that give stats I would recommend trying to get ones that are either close to max or at max. For example the difference between an Optical Detector at 10 vs 15 doesn't seem like much, but when you think about it the difference is an entire level worth of stat points in each stat (so 2 levels for your important STR/DEX stats, or 4 levels if you throw in energy/VIT even though we don't care about them too much).

Below is a Screenshot of my char fully buffed and with Moonstrike Active

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Currently feeling stuck progressing Act5 (Reached Arreat Plateau for now). I find that elite mobs in Act5 still hits me 11% of the time according to the stat screen, which at times i just simply being put down without even having the chance to pop moon symbols.

I've taken a defensive approach to retreat if encounter a large pack, throw in a few summons as offering and then go in from side to start mowing. (Same tactic i used for KB3K).

But i still die relatively easy, which makes me feeling discouraged, am i doing something wrong?

There comes a point where the Melee Sorc's armor doesn't keep growing to keep you safe like other melee classes. This is where our block stat comes into play along with LL/LOSIM/LAEK. Issue is, for Block to matter you need a lot of DEX which comes from using SUs with Perfect Amethysts and eating a lot of stat cookies. Now you should still be able to clear all of Act 5 with RWs and even Destruction Baal (with some specially crafted gear, which I'll get to at the end), so the problem might partly be in your build/playstyle. You're playing as poison/lightning build which I've never done so some of this is going to be you trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, or talking with ChuckNoRis as he's done a guide about such a build. But I'm in roughly the same gear/charms as you (I don't have the Laser Focus Crystal for the +10% to Life/Mana but otherwise the same RWs/charms) and check out my stats when buffed with Moonstrike+Fire Dance:

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I have almost 3-7k more Moonstrike damage and almost 2-4k more Wraithsword damage thanks to buffing with Fire Dance even though we have almost the same gear/stats.

And yes, I haven't allocated all of my stats. That's because I currently don't "need" them and am saving them in case I come across some STR gear (like an SSU Bone Helm or SSU Kite Shield) I don't have to respec to put points into STR to use the gear.

Additionally take a look at my Fusillade damage (buffed with Fire Dance):

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Now this isn't to brag, but I wanted to show you since earlier you said you didn't use the skill. This is with 10 hard points in the skill. That's a good bit of damage that I can throw down and run away. So you should consider using the skill as it makes hit-and-run tactics a lot easier and it does proc various effects (I think it procs LOSIM given how my life fills up when I cast it, but if not it does proc LL and LAEK).

Another issue can also be your points in Blade Spirits. While leveling up simply putting points into Blade Spirits/Ice Elementals is fine, but as you work through Destruction minions in general start to become weaker and weaker unless you get gear that specifically improves them. As such you have likely hit the point where their base stats just aren't enough and you should consider moving those points elsewhere. Even with a single point in them you will still be able to cast 11-13 depending on how much +skills you have (I'm at 11 and I think you have a few more +skills than me).

Now this isn't to say that they're useless, they still work as a distraction and can cast Bladestorm after all. Just that those points would likely serve you better if put somewhere else. Also there are some ubers where you might want to respec and use summons so don't completely discount them, just realize that at this stage of the game they're more of a distraction/situational.

and uh also needed suggestion on Amulet, which of these are better?
1) Mythal - i read that Mythal helps lowering enemy RES when proc, but i don't visually see the skill itself.
2) Banish - Since we strike alot, and the Skill Description in documentation says that Banish reduce's target life, would this be viable?
3) Lava Pit - This is the one proc that i visually see.

Done testing with Des Mephisto multiple times
1) Mythal - when it procs i can visually see Mephisto's HP going down more rapidly
2) Banish - No effect seen/felt
3) Lava Pit - Proc'ed quite often, felt that effectiveness is almost the same as Mythal, but it wont work with fire immune that is.

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I would say Mythal or Doom. Mythal is going to be better on boss fights while Doom is good for when clearing out places with lots of enemies. One of the things about Mythal is that it can break elemental immunities and thus is very useful on bosses who have a heroic shield (like Destruction Baal). Also Mythal is on attack instead of "on kill" which makes it more useful than Doom when fighting bosses. Note that Mythal lowers the resistances by a set amount, so if an enemy has 106 resistance and Mythal lowers it by 5 they would still have 101 resistance and be immune (as an example so that you don't expect it to break immunities every time it procs).

Now on to Doom. This ability lowers enemy physical resist and can break physical immunity much like how Mythal can break elemtnal immunity, thus making them take additional damage from your physical sources like Wraithsword/Bladestorm/Fusillade. This in turn makes them die even faster and can lead to rolling Doom procs in high density areas. The downside is that it is "on kill" instead of "on attack" so it isn't as suited for bosses unless there's adds around.


Finally, Destruction Baal. He is potentially your first experience with a heroic shield and requires special consideration. Because of the heroic shield you want a Mythal amulet so that you can increase the chances of him dropping a resistance. Also whenever you kill his adds they put a nasty debuff on the ground that will cause you to be 1hko'd if an attack actually hits you, oh and he summons more of these adds based off of your minions (familiars don't count). This means that you want to avoid killing them around Baal and that you don't want to bring summons like your Blade Spirits.

So now we have an awkward situation. Warp Blade, Wraith Sword, and Bladestorm all cause AOE damage, but we don't want to do AOE damage. So, what's the best way to deal with this situation? First off is to only use Moonstrike against Baal. Second up is to use a Crystal Sword instead of a Warp Blade. While the Crystal Sword does less damage there's also less chance of accidentally killing the adds around you and getting 1hko'd. Finally you have to decide what RW to use. Xar is nice because it diversifies your damage, but at the same time it does AOE damage the its proc and thus can cause issues. Rha is a good option to cut down on AOE damage while still giving you a decent weapon. You can still do it with a Warp Blade but you might run into issues of being 1hko'd, so it's hard to say if the higher damage of the Warp Blade is actually better (I found the Crystal Sword better but ymmv).

Once you have all of that down it just comes down to waiting on his shields to drop and periodically dealing with the adds that he keeps summoning. To deal with the adds I recommend pulling Baal to either the north or south and then teleporting to the middle platform (either Pax Mystica or the Jitan charm) so that you can separate him from the adds. From there finish teleporting to the other side of the map and then work on clearing out the adds until the area is reasonably clear again and you can go back to working on Baal.

All in all it took me something like 30-40 minutes to do the fight with RW gear and some basic charms. It can be done faster depending on gear and how many charms you get, but don't be surprised if it takes awhile simply because of how rare the shield drops and that I was undergeared. A Starhawk for example would greatly speed it up. Or if I had gotten more charms prior to doing it, etc.

[Gekko64]

doom from ammy doesn't break immunities, it needs hard points to do that and it would break magic not physical

[aknazer]

doom from ammy doesn't break immunities, it needs hard points to do that and it would break magic not physical

Can you clarify how the proc from the ammy works then? I was always told that it broke resistance. I'm assuming it only adds to physical damage then?

[Gekko64]

yep, only adds phys dmg

[heamn]

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Did you farm these charms enough to get perfect or near-perfect ones? While I wouldn't farm Creature of Flame as that fight simply isn't good for us (we do too much AOE damage and too hard for the guardians to reliably hit us to prevent randomly being 1hko'd), all of the others that give stats I would recommend trying to get ones that are either close to max or at max. For example the difference between an Optical Detector at 10 vs 15 doesn't seem like much, but when you think about it the difference is an entire level worth of stat points in each stat (so 2 levels for your important STR/DEX stats, or 4 levels if you throw in energy/VIT even though we don't care about them too much).

There comes a point where the Melee Sorc's armor doesn't keep growing to keep you safe like other melee classes. This is where our block stat comes into play along with LL/LOSIM/LAEK. Issue is, for Block to matter you need a lot of DEX which comes from using SUs with Perfect Amethysts and eating a lot of stat cookies. Now you should still be able to clear all of Act 5 with RWs and even Destruction Baal (with some specially crafted gear, which I'll get to at the end), so the problem might partly be in your build/playstyle. You're playing as poison/lightning build which I've never done so some of this is going to be you trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, or talking with ChuckNoRis as he's done a guide about such a build. But I'm in roughly the same gear/charms as you (I don't have the Laser Focus Crystal for the +10% to Life/Mana but otherwise the same RWs/charms) and check out my stats when buffed with Moonstrike+Fire Dance:

I have almost 3-7k more Moonstrike damage and almost 2-4k more Wraithsword damage thanks to buffing with Fire Dance even though we have almost the same gear/stats.

And yes, I haven't allocated all of my stats. That's because I currently don't "need" them and am saving them in case I come across some STR gear (like an SSU Bone Helm or SSU Kite Shield) I don't have to respec to put points into STR to use the gear.

Additionally take a look at my Fusillade damage (buffed with Fire Dance):

Now this isn't to brag, but I wanted to show you since earlier you said you didn't use the skill. This is with 10 hard points in the skill. That's a good bit of damage that I can throw down and run away. So you should consider using the skill as it makes hit-and-run tactics a lot easier and it does proc various effects (I think it procs LOSIM given how my life fills up when I cast it, but if not it does proc LL and LAEK).

Another issue can also be your points in Blade Spirits. While leveling up simply putting points into Blade Spirits/Ice Elementals is fine, but as you work through Destruction minions in general start to become weaker and weaker unless you get gear that specifically improves them. As such you have likely hit the point where their base stats just aren't enough and you should consider moving those points elsewhere. Even with a single point in them you will still be able to cast 11-13 depending on how much +skills you have (I'm at 11 and I think you have a few more +skills than me).

Now this isn't to say that they're useless, they still work as a distraction and can cast Bladestorm after all. Just that those points would likely serve you better if put somewhere else. Also there are some ubers where you might want to respec and use summons so don't completely discount them, just realize that at this stage of the game they're more of a distraction/situational.

I would say Mythal or Doom. Mythal is going to be better on boss fights while Doom is good for when clearing out places with lots of enemies. One of the things about Mythal is that it can break elemental immunities and thus is very useful on bosses who have a heroic shield (like Destruction Baal). Also Mythal is on attack instead of "on kill" which makes it more useful than Doom when fighting bosses. Note that Mythal lowers the resistances by a set amount, so if an enemy has 106 resistance and Mythal lowers it by 5 they would still have 101 resistance and be immune (as an example so that you don't expect it to break immunities every time it procs).

Finally, Destruction Baal. He is potentially your first experience with a heroic shield and requires special consideration. Because of the heroic shield you want a Mythal amulet so that you can increase the chances of him dropping a resistance. Also whenever you kill his adds they put a nasty debuff on the ground that will cause you to be 1hko'd if an attack actually hits you, oh and he summons more of these adds based off of your minions (familiars don't count). This means that you want to avoid killing them around Baal and that you don't want to bring summons like your Blade Spirits.

So now we have an awkward situation. Warp Blade, Wraith Sword, and Bladestorm all cause AOE damage, but we don't want to do AOE damage. So, what's the best way to deal with this situation? First off is to only use Moonstrike against Baal. Second up is to use a Crystal Sword instead of a Warp Blade. While the Crystal Sword does less damage there's also less chance of accidentally killing the adds around you and getting 1hko'd. Finally you have to decide what RW to use. Xar is nice because it diversifies your damage, but at the same time it does AOE damage the its proc and thus can cause issues. Rha is a good option to cut down on AOE damage while still giving you a decent weapon. You can still do it with a Warp Blade but you might run into issues of being 1hko'd, so it's hard to say if the higher damage of the Warp Blade is actually better (I found the Crystal Sword better but ymmv).

Once you have all of that down it just comes down to waiting on his shields to drop and periodically dealing with the adds that he keeps summoning. To deal with the adds I recommend pulling Baal to either the north or south and then teleporting to the middle platform (either Pax Mystica or the Jitan charm) so that you can separate him from the adds. From there finish teleporting to the other side of the map and then work on clearing out the adds until the area is reasonably clear again and you can go back to working on Baal.

All in all it took me something like 30-40 minutes to do the fight with RW gear and some basic charms. It can be done faster depending on gear and how many charms you get, but don't be surprised if it takes awhile simply because of how rare the shield drops and that I was undergeared. A Starhawk for example would greatly speed it up. Or if I had gotten more charms prior to doing it, etc.

Hi aknazer,

Thanks again taking time to reply, i've taken your advice to re-spec on fussilade (10 Hard Points) for a 10.1 sec skill timer, helps alot in some sticky situation, and i think it applies LL rather than LOSIM, as i don't have much LOSIM on my stats.

Meanwhile worked my self till Baal, but die horribly, hence i might need to prepare a single target weapon as suggested, might take a little while.
Currently farming nilhathak and still working on KB3K's charm, working on getting perfect stat farmable charms too.


Thanks for taking time to explain with the fire dance buff, however with the play style developed so far, i'm still sticking with poison+lighting tree.

The reason might sounds odd but it's true for me, firstly it's about the Skill Blade Storm, which is the main reason i've got hooked up to play melee sorc, which Blade Spirit auto cast quite often, and thus making blade spirit a must to stay around for me to enjoy eye candy

In order to make Blade Spirits to stay around i choose the poison passive for benefit of 10%DR and applying crushing blow to attacker

Currently if SMAXED, my blade spirit could reach 36Khp and 9k dmg without any specific gears to boost minion stats, which is ridiculously tanky on it's own.

Seeing that it inherits Sorc's elemental passives, i can imagine how much tankier it would be combining Cold/Poison Tree and if there's space to spare for minion stats, which i might eventually try if the star aligns and get my hands on a

Elemental Band

Elemental Band
Ring
Required Level: 100
Item Level: 120
+10% to Spell Damage
+1 to Path of Flames
+1 to Nova Charge
+1 to Lightning Arena
+1 to Hive

to replace nova charge.

Speaking of which just did re-spec and found that i actually gotten way better def rate by using poison/cold (around 429k) vs poison/lighting (around 320k) 10+25 DR for both Poison Passive and Ice Elemental buffs, adding from Vith Belt 11% and 1% each from Head+armor, reaching 48% DR

But ice elementals are painful which needs to be recast every so often.

For CoF, i kinda messed up by killing all the adds, haven't had a chance to get the buff thingy, so then what i did was summon BladeSpirit to get the boss's attention and poke from behind, retreat a little to re-summon if needed, overall it's really smooth.


[quote="Gekko64"]doom from ammy doesn't break immunities, it needs hard points to do that and it would break magic not physicalc
Also thank you Gekko for clarifying on the amulet selection.

[aknazer]

If you go for a respec to make your minions more tanky then I would suggest Cold/Lightning. Warp Armor adds %TCD and %Avoid Damage while Snow Queen adds flat armor and %max health. This in turn would make them even more tanky than currently in addition to the damage reduction aura from the Ice Elementals. It also helps if you die since WA+SQ play off of each other and thus give you a decent armor rating even when naked.

The main thing going on here is that Baneblade adds a good amount of TCD to your character. As such you need flat armor to benefit from TCD's bonus. This is why Snow Queen adds more total armor than Warp Armor. But to get max possible armor (which is also applied to your summons since its coming from passives) is to have both. Also realize that WA is avoidance while the bonus from poison is DR. DR helps smooth out incoming damage while avoidance can be a bit spikey since you either avoid all of the damage or get hit and take all of the damage. But if taken over a large period of time you can say that 1% avoidance=1% DR and with WA giving more avoidance than poison gives DR you gain more overall from WA (again the tradeoff being that the damage you do take is more spikey and thus you're more susceptible to burst damage killing you before you can eat a moon cookie; but this is less of a concern when talking about your summons having these bonuses).

In regards to CoF you can use Dark Summoning to summon more of the adds that give you the buff. Also here's a few other ways that you could potentially approach this fight. Either go in completely naked (or mostly naked), with no summons/familiars, and use a Crystal Sword+Moonstrike so that you don't accidentally AoE down the add that your tanking (might require constant potion chugging though), or take off your shield, let him hit you for the debuff, charge the CoF and drop a Fusillade, run away, and repeat. The Fusillade option takes forever and isn't really good for farming him, but can work if you're either lazy and don't want a Crystal Sword or are just doing him 1-2 times (which makes getting a Crystal Sword take longer overall if you don't already have one). The naked tanking option can still be somewhat hard if you have Snow Queen and/or Warped Armor as you can still potentially end up with a high enough base defense that he can't reliably hit you and the buff drops off (which has happened to me when I did this method in SP).

For Baal another option is the Bloodmage with honorific gear. While I won't say it's super reliable as it relies on your merc staying alive until Baal's fire resistance drops, but if you make honorific gear for a Bloodmage you can reach roughly +400% fire damage and -190+% fire resistance. This in turn can let the Bloodmage solo him...again if the merc survives until Baal's fire resistance drops. Or so another on the server told me, I haven't bothered to try it yet but I have this setup already for my Bloodmage and he can solo things like Infernal Device, Destruction Diablo, etc. I need to take him to tcow and see how he does there.

[heamn]

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If you go for a respec to make your minions more tanky then I would suggest Cold/Lightning. Warp Armor adds %TCD and %Avoid Damage while Snow Queen adds flat armor and %max health. This in turn would make them even more tanky than currently in addition to the damage reduction aura from the Ice Elementals. It also helps if you die since WA+SQ play off of each other and thus give you a decent armor rating even when naked.

The main thing going on here is that Baneblade adds a good amount of TCD to your character. As such you need flat armor to benefit from TCD's bonus. This is why Snow Queen adds more total armor than Warp Armor. But to get max possible armor (which is also applied to your summons since its coming from passives) is to have both. Also realize that WA is avoidance while the bonus from poison is DR. DR helps smooth out incoming damage while avoidance can be a bit spikey since you either avoid all of the damage or get hit and take all of the damage. But if taken over a large period of time you can say that 1% avoidance=1% DR and with WA giving more avoidance than poison gives DR you gain more overall from WA (again the tradeoff being that the damage you do take is more spikey and thus you're more susceptible to burst damage killing you before you can eat a moon cookie; but this is less of a concern when talking about your summons having these bonuses).

In regards to CoF you can use Dark Summoning to summon more of the adds that give you the buff. Also here's a few other ways that you could potentially approach this fight. Either go in completely naked (or mostly naked), with no summons/familiars, and use a Crystal Sword+Moonstrike so that you don't accidentally AoE down the add that your tanking (might require constant potion chugging though), or take off your shield, let him hit you for the debuff, charge the CoF and drop a Fusillade, run away, and repeat. The Fusillade option takes forever and isn't really good for farming him, but can work if you're either lazy and don't want a Crystal Sword or are just doing him 1-2 times (which makes getting a Crystal Sword take longer overall if you don't already have one). The naked tanking option can still be somewhat hard if you have Snow Queen and/or Warped Armor as you can still potentially end up with a high enough base defense that he can't reliably hit you and the buff drops off (which has happened to me when I did this method in SP).

For Baal another option is the Bloodmage with honorific gear. While I won't say it's super reliable as it relies on your merc staying alive until Baal's fire resistance drops, but if you make honorific gear for a Bloodmage you can reach roughly +400% fire damage and -190+% fire resistance. This in turn can let the Bloodmage solo him...again if the merc survives until Baal's fire resistance drops. Or so another on the server told me, I haven't bothered to try it yet but I have this setup already for my Bloodmage and he can solo things like Infernal Device, Destruction Diablo, etc. I need to take him to tcow and see how he does there.

Until i can find a reliable way to keep the ice elementals up and tankier, i would stay away from ice/poison combo for now, and indeed like what you've suggested the lightning passive's avoidance gives Blade Spirit an overall better survival, on me i can't really tell if the avoidance is any good, that ice/poison combo is making me so much tankier with the current gears. xD

For CoF i'm getting off with 3ML, 5LL and 22Stat, i'll call it a day, don't really feel like wanna farm any further, currently gotten King Koth and the Hammer from KB3K, still running Nilhathak, just that i find weird Des Nilhatak only drops 1 Unique and 2 signets.

For Baal, i don't really feel like wanna cheese it through, it kinda defeats the purpose of playing a melee sorceress, still working on getting a sacred crystal sword, don't really feel like i have to rush it for now.

But that being said, a merc that is able to solo infernal machine sounds really tempting though, i kinda die to it depending on what kind of elite being spawned if the detonator is around, it's pretty much a restart, or if incautious the snake queen mob will caught you off guard after death.

Slowly progressing trying to get new charms and stuffs.

[aknazer]

Well the point of Des Nil is to farm stat cookies. Given that you can eat 500 of them it's nice to have a spot to farm them.

In regards to avoidance, it gets more helpful the more you have, especially when stacked with DR. Avoidance can save you from 1hko mechanics which is really nice and when stacked with some DR to smooth out the damage you do take it is very noticeable. 10% might not be a big deal, but hit 25% and that can be very noticeable. Push it up to 30% or more and you'll see a huge difference compared to before.

[seelenstein]

I feel like i could do something with the glove, however the 1 Sorc Skill and Stormblast Proc is too hard to give up.

What you definitely could/should do about your gloves is try the lucky upgrade and MO till 350% ed.
With all the TCD% you've this makes a big difference even if it's leather gloves.

[heamn]

I feel like i could do something with the glove, however the 1 Sorc Skill and Stormblast Proc is too hard to give up.

What you definitely could/should do about your gloves is try the lucky upgrade and MO till 350% ed.
With all the TCD% you've this makes a big difference even if it's leather gloves.

Hi seelenstein,

Nice catch, guess i'll MO ED and lucky upgrade, totally missed that.