Chris_Kush wrote:Thanks for the details, you just made up my mind on the melee sorc for the next character; I reckon i'll try out Stealthmaster's suggestion of Unholy paladin for the 3rd character. How is the gameplay, skill switching and mid/end game ubers with your character? Is it quite mechanically involved?
Melee sorc is fun, but i'll have to warn you that she's very signet dependent and quite gear dependent at later stage, to the point that i must say unholy paladin will be much easier compared.
There isnt much skill switching needed though, it depends on your play style, keep moonstrike at LMB and make sure the buff is always on, mostly using wraithsword on RMB, sometimes switching to bladestorm for magic damage conversion, fussilade is a very occasional skill and the skill timer isn't sexy at all, put in 10 skill point for a 10.8 CD or just 1 if you don't use it that much, it works like a ground sentry that shoots blades to nearby enemy, quite good when you need to retreat and kite or as a damage boost during boss fight.
in early game it's good that you'd put 1 point into mana sweep, as bladestorm and wraithsword will burn your mana bulb in every 3-5 sec of continuous attack, mana sweep will handle that for you, later when we get our uber skill at lvl 90, baneblade will disable any range/casting skill, you will need to start crafting Life+mana on striking in melee jewels using Nih Rune on jewel crafting
My playstyle is a little on the defensive side as i prefer tossing sword spirit on top on the monster before engaging, for example faunztinvile, where the mobs are quite scattered, it's not wise that having your back wide open when you're dealing with one corner of mobs, so toss a few sword spirit on top of the mobs to keep them occupied, or if there's a bunch of elites throwing range skill to you, toss your summons behind them, so that it clears a path for you to engage, summoning infront of them will still cause the missiles coming towards you if the missiles/spell happens to pierce.
sword spirits inherits the passive from our elemental trees, having lightning's passive and poison passive makes them a good reason for skill point investment, lightning gives them avoid which also makes them way tankier, and poison gives them crushing blow to enemy when attacked and suits sword spirit very well as they are constantly being punched, in end game i only invest enough points to make them reaching 20k hp, they just won't die.
another suggestion is to get a ilvl 99 rare staff and reroll till you get +12 to sorc skill for on switch, essential for pre-buff, it will give your summons extra hp, i always switch to the staff for re-summoning and as well that your buffs skill like baneblade will benefit on defence% for the +skill
Due to the mod's mechanic, no matter how tanky you are in end game, any mobs can still instagib if you're not paying attention, hopefully you might be able to explore the potential of fire/poison tree, it is potentially the highest spell% and Dmg% increase combo, however may not be possible until you get 50% DR and max block (around 3.6k dex needed) 50% DR in the other hand is quite easy to achieve once you get TA charm+trophy (5%) and the sur+xis sorc armor runeword (40%-45%)