Need Help With Melee Sorc

[heamn]

Hi All,

For a short introduction, I'm new to Median XL mod and i enjoy it very much, did try a few different class and find that i love melee Sorc the most, which in most cases it means die trying, the difficulty was way harsher in my opinion.

The difficulty contrast was maybe due to i've been comparing melee sorc to a Barb, where i went with Thunderslam (Snake Stance), giving me the opening with stun/slow/poison and run in with Tantrum (LL), and i also have the inner fire TU Weap too, which kinda makes melee sorc looks so weak.

However the most important thing would be do you love the class's game play, which i asked myself and proceeded with melee sorc.
*i kinda lost it when i first see blade storm, telling myself this is the one.

I did went and read through Elelar's Melee Sorc guide, which is the only one i could find from the old forums, and the guide helped a lot, especially after learning about the importance of LL. (Big thanks to aknazer for the guide)

My melee sorc is now lvl 119 entering Destruction difficulty, currently having trouble with progression, been trying to dig around and reading post and still find myself stuck, hence the post seeking help.

Any input would be very welcomed, and big thanks ahead!

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Mainly having trouble with below criteria

1) Life Leech
Which is holding me back from changing weapon, or rather to be said stuck.

2) Attack Rating
Des Act 1 and i find that i'm only hitting 91-92% accuracy and there feels like out of source for AR

3) Mana draining out way too fast
Despite of orbing acce with mana regen, i still find that i've been eating Moon Symbols too frequently and often
finding myself getting out of combat to cube for more.

4) Skill allocation suggestion
Currently using Lighting/Poison, mainly for Hive and Nova Charge, which i feels that it's destined to be used as a melee sorc
Comparing passives cold seems to be better compared to poison, but the elementals are burned down way too fast to be felt useful.

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Below are the choices i've made for gearing and some slight explanation.

Head+Armor: LVL 100 RW which i followed from Elelar's Melee Sorc guide
YUL Rune circlet and On Rune armor, which both synthesize really well with the Miasma Proc.

Glove and Boots: Crafted ones as suggested Elelar's Melee Sorc guide
Still trying to get better craft until i bump into viable SU or such, currently they are orbed with the much needed RES

Shield: T6 Kite Shield
Still waiting for another On Rune for the shield, have a Sacred Spiked Shield sitting around.

Amulets/Rings: Rares
Orb with thunder hammer and mana regen.

The current biggest trouble would be upgrading the Weapon and Belt, as they are my main source of LL
1) T6 Warp Blade - Double Orb Effect - 60%LL
2) T6 Light Belt - 18% LL (Just realized i forgot to orb this baby lmao)

I did make a Xar Rune Word on a Sacred Warp Blade that i found but the life leech lost is like night and day, and yet to mention where i've orbed 350% ED on the T6 Warp Blade and also some attack rating

Below would be the screenshots of my gears

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Below would be the screenshots of my skills

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[seelenstein]

I would replace the belt with t6 heavy belt for sor. Also I'd recommend emp band ring as it is awesome. For the armor, u could also use t6 splint mail for more damage + proc and 10% damage reduced.
As you don't use any elemental procs (hive gives energy bonus --> more spell dmg --> good if you have spell dmg procs) I'd definitely go for cold instead of poison for the extra life and defense (smax snow queen) which will provide better Survivability.
Also make sure to always activate moon strike.
Melee sorc is usually quite tanky because:
Avoid (warp armor), high def (warp armor + snow queen), high life (snow queen + moon strike) and max block (shield + dex based) so make sure to put as much as possible points into dex and get 500 sigs afap


Good luck

[qwertyasad]

Have you seen the miniguide (15. Queen Of Pain) for melee sorc made by ChuckNoRis? I think it's a bit outdated as it doesn't have the XVI mark next to it, but it might be helpful anyway.

[ChuckNoRis]

it's a bit outdated

it will be updated in a few days , but even so , very few things will change

[heamn]

I would replace the belt with t6 heavy belt for sor. Also I'd recommend emp band ring as it is awesome. For the armor, u could also use t6 splint mail for more damage + proc and 10% damage reduced.
As you don't use any elemental procs (hive gives energy bonus --> more spell dmg --> good if you have spell dmg procs) I'd definitely go for cold instead of poison for the extra life and defense (smax snow queen) which will provide better Survivability.
Also make sure to always activate moon strike.
Melee sorc is usually quite tanky because:
Avoid (warp armor), high def (warp armor + snow queen), high life (snow queen + moon strike) and max block (shield + dex based) so make sure to put as much as possible points into dex and get 500 sigs afap


Good luck

Hi Seelenstein,
Thanks for the reply, currently i'm still stuck with the belt for some much needed AR and as well for the LL, not to mention that T6 Heavy belt has high STR req which doesn't looks too sexy. But SoR seems really good. xD

And yes, i made sure that the moonstrike is always active. (At first i thought i was being debuffed with the effect on my head, lmao)

Meanwhile for the cold passive, given with my current max skill lvls capped at 20, it only gives 25% HP which is the same as the poison passive at lvl 1
Gotten baneblade and the defense from cold passive isnt really needed for now.
*For more hard points, cold passive does gives more HP in the long run SMAXed

As we speak, i'm dead curious about what does the poison passive "crushing your enemies" does.

My verdict of Ice vs Poison Tree is as below

Poison

Vengeful Power (Poison Passive)
[1PT] for below
-10% Dmg Reduction
- Spell Dmg increased when struck (Scales with Hive and other elemental proc skills)
- 25% HP increased
[21pt] for below
- 47% Chance to Crush Attackers (not sure how this works, if someone would clarify on this skill though)

Hive (1 PT)
- 25% Vit to Energy
- Poison "Autoskill" in 6.6yard range, which scales with energy or elemental proc skills

Ice

Ice Queen
- Def: Flat Def seems good and will scale even larger with ice elemental's buff (Have not re-spec to check, but baneblade solved the def prob)
- HP: 5% Base, and 1% for every hard Point, 20 Hard Point = 25%

Ice Elementals
- 25% Damage Reduction
- 50% Increased Def Rate (3/2, i read that as 50% not sure if thats right)
- But they die really really really fast, not sure what should i do to make them stronger.


Will try to tweak a lil as suggested and see how it goes. xD

[heamn]

it's a bit outdated

it will be updated in a few days , but even so , very few things will change

Hi both
Thanks for the reply, never seen the miniguides, going to it right away!

Edit:
To ChuckNoRis, i'm so glad that most of my items seems ontrack, looking forward for your updates!

[aknazer]

Try making a better sword (sorry for the quality, printscreen isn't working for me ingame). This is a sacred Warped Blade that I rerolled before making into a RW. It started as a 49% ED, 108% AR, and 6 sockets Superior Warped Blade, got it to pass the Luck Trial (every time it failed I would keep rerolling until I had stats that were acceptable), Blessed Luck added 59% ED (no Attack Rating sadly), and then I cubed another 8x +15% Enhanced Damage (make sure to not go over +350% ED before your RW bonus) and +10 max damage. Notice how this sword's min damage is almost the same as your max damage before elemental damage, so a properly done SWB will likely be a very large boost to damage. I also haven't crafted any jewels for it, just rerolled some rares in order to more quickly get into Destruction.

The hardest part might be finding a Sacred Warped Blade, which took awhile for me to find. You can also use a Sacred Crystal Sword if you find one of them, but I wouldn't bother with trying to get it to pass the Luck Trial as it's just a temporary sword. The SWB can be useful even when you get a Starhawk as certain ubers might require you to use a physical damage sword (Yshari was this way for some of the bosses).

Overall I would say things seem to be on track. You just need need to keep working towards charms and stat points so that you can use/craft higher STR sacred items. Also what are your resists at? You might want to consider making a pair of honorific boots to handle your resists until you get enough charms/jewels to do so. I'm personally running around with T6 boots that have 155% resist/all from MOs (15x all, 8x of each specific type; 155% is the max before sockets and anything over that just adds +2 level without adding to the actual resist bonus) and an extra +20% resist/all and +2% max resist/all as I just hit Destruction on the realm and don't have the needed resists otherwise.

Next up would be if you can craft jewels I would look into LOSIM/LAEK jewels. Life Leech is nice, but it takes a huge hit in Destruction, something like 1/100 of the listed value, and while LOSIM/LAEK also take a hit it isn't as severe. This isn't to say LL is bad, just that you need a good bit of LL and damage for it to work in Destruction, and that's generally hard to get until you get some of the higher end gear (like the SSSU WB and SSSU Ceremonial Armor). I would diversify between these two as well. LOSIM is great when you're hitting things and can help keep you healed when attacking things that don't just explode the second you touch them, while LAEK provides more healing when blowing up groups of enemies with Wraithsword/Bladestorm/Fussilade. So by having both it helps make sure you can handle both massive groups of low-HP enemies and help survive against stronger enemies that take several hits to go down.

One final thing in regards to health/mana. Both Gehenna and Emp Band will help out with this. I'm still hunting for an Emp Band myself for that +40% but Gehenna is a RW and adds +25% which is a very nice boost.


EDIT: Clarified Life Leech a bit.

[aknazer]

And another thing. I'm personally not a huge fan of Inner Fire (recommended from ChuckNoRis' guide). It's a timered skill which means that it will be locked when using Fusillade, Fire Dance, or any other timered skill. As such I found that I regularly couldn't use it when I most needed it. So if you find yourself regularly using other timered abilities I would recommend a crafted belt with CtC Disintegrate.

[ChuckNoRis]

It's a timered skill

yes , it's a timered skill that you should use whenever the heal pots are not enough and you need to escape a certain death . i'm sure you'd want to heal instead of using another timered skill in that moment. it's not a skill that you must use every 5 seconds when you got a belt full of heal pots . use it only if the situation requires so . my build does not use fusilade , and don't tell me Firedance has a big timer

► Show Spoiler

it also seams i need to repeat this every few days : guides are not ment to be followed brainless . if the player believes that "x" item would suit his style/needs better than the "y" suggested , he must use it. the miniguides are geared with what suited my needs . i do not expect everybody to have the same needs because the needs are different from every player , different playstyles , different experience , different knowledge of the game mechanics .

guides are there to give you some ideas , not to be followed 100% by the letter .

[Fumbles]

Hello Heamn

Nice post(its very thorough)

If you feeling like trying it,

Erawan

Erawan
Body Armors
'LemKoCham'
Runeword Level: 83
15% Combat Speeds
5% Chance of Crushing Blow
+(144 to 171)% Enhanced Defense
(27 to 30)% to Strength
(27 to 30)% to Vitality
Physical Resist (13 to 15)%
(15 to 20)% Bonus to Defense

runeword should work nicely in the armor you have already. Keep rolling til you get 15% damage reduction. You can also craft jewels with up to 50% attack rating and then find a better belt. Improving your defense and damage reduce % should help lessen the amount of leech you need. Erawan also has 25% vit/str bonus, life is always good and the str bonus will allow you to use a higher base defense belt. The 10% cb and tcd are also nice to have. I just noticed you didn't orb your armor, maybe you made it when you hit level 100. When you make runewords, add any enhanced damage/defence orbs BEFORE you add the rune and the ed from the runeword will break the 350% cap. If you add them after, anything over 350% will add to the level requirement but won't improve the dmg/def. To recap on the order of all things runewords:

Roll sacred item to white and upgrade to superior with oil of enhancement
Reroll with oil of renewal to get a nice enhanced dmg/def roll w/either no sockets or 6 sockets
use luck/blessed luck and aim for both dr% and defense(on armor) - repeat the previous step if you don't get the roll you want
If the item had no sockets you can use the socket punch recipe to fully socket the item
For adding defense for a level 100 runeword you can add 10 orbs(assuming your level 120) 10x2+100=120
finish by adding jewels and rune. If bad roll, unsocket and socket again.

About belts, another nice runeword is

Truce

Truce
Belts
'Jah'
Runeword Level: 80
5% Combat Speeds
Stun Attack
Slows Attacker by 5%
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
Physical Resist 10%

which has 10% damage reduce and can have very nice defense which will benefit from warp armor tcd bonus. Use the highest str req belt you can and upgrade it when you get more str. You can add a -10% requirement jewel to the belt like you did in your body armor to lessen the burn. Rolling both the belt and body armor to get at least the 1% dr from luck oil is worth doing too. If you reroll your armor/luck oil for 40% ed and use 10 ed orbs, you can get nearly 18k defense with a good def% roll from rw. The cap for dr is 50% so if you use ice elemetals they can bridge the gap (as long at least 1 is alive)

If you have 90% chance to hit in early destruction you are doing fine. The improved defense and dr should help quite a bit. Remember that leech is based on physical damage so getting a better weapon will also improve survivability. The weapon aknazer suggested should work nicely and you can roll more jewels for ar/leech/res/stat% etc.

Hope this helps..if not just play barb instead