Guide Lightning Sorceress Guide (Nova/Lightning Combo)

This guide is geared towards players who want to perform PVM with Old School Nova. Moreover, it is also meant to teach people not to use HOTO and Chains as these are bad for a lightning sorc.

Of course, this build works just as well with lightning or chain lightning but in 1p games you will clear fastest with Nova.

Pros of the Nova/Lightning Sorc

• They are wonderful in 1 player games, Nova has a large visible radius and will place monsters in hit stun provided their lightning immunity is removed via infinity.
• Sorc Teleport ftw.
• Combined with infinity, you should be able to kill all monsters in the game. The only combination that can cause you grief is Lightning and Physical Immune.
• Baals Deep Chaos Runs. This build is not for people who like to shoot from far away. You are going to have to port into mobs! But at the same time, you don't want to port into a mob that has fant aura while you have amp damage cast on you. Thankfully, this is where you can use lightning to shoot from far away. Get use to reading the output on the Maphack!
• Your damage is dynamic in the sense that you have a solid AoE (Nova) and an insane Linear damage dealer (Lightning). You can adapt to anything in the map pool. Chain Lightning sucks. Don't use it.
• Lightning damage becomes insane if you put tones of skillers on your char. Nova and Lightning are both synergies for each other.
• The build I offer is cheap and will out dps more expensive builds. You wont need a Chains of Honor, HOTO, or some expensive high FCR Amu or Rings. If you can't afford a Griffon, wear a Shako with a light facet.
• This build is great for doing extremely fast pit runs.

Cons of the Nova/Lightning Sorc

• Nova will fall short in damage as more players join the game and you will have to rely purely on Lightning for damage. In an 8 player game Lightning still wrecks monsters.
• Clean Light skillers are expensive. Need around 8+ skillers to get some good damage.
• The sorc is a fragile character, thus this character takes some getting use to before you can enjoy it.
• Nova is an expensive skill to cast and so you will need a descent mana pool to run the build.
• You won't be using ES/Telek for survival. All of your mana is needed for Nova.

Breakpoints you need to hit for your Nova/Lightning Sorc
FHR: 20%, 30%, 42%, 60%, or 86%. +1 Light charms with FHR are wonderful but are expensive. With the gear you will be using, you will need 1 smc to reach the 60% breakpoint.
FCR: You will hit 130% FCR which puts you above the 117% requirement.
FBR: Not much you can do here at all.

IAS Breakpoints you can hit for your Hire
You don't really have to worry about Hire Breakpoints. You will be doing nearly all of the damage. Your hire is just a meat shield. However, if you would like to know them here they are:
Thresher: 0, 10, 20, 30, 35, 55, 65, 105
GPA: 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 65, 75, 105
CV or CA: 0, 10, 15, 25, 35, 50, 60, 70, 90, 105

Chars you can use to buff (cheese with) your Nova/Lightning Sorceress

Warcry Barb: Having this character is a wonderful addition provided your cries can last you about 10+ minutes. A maxed out warcry barb has cries that last around 15 mins.

Gear
Helm -- Griffons Eye with the highest -% to enemy lightning resistances socket with a light facet. Do not worry about the lightning skill damage modifier, all this does is stack with your lightning mastery. Lightning mastery buffs your damage by 500+%, so having an additional 15% will not be noticeable.
Amulet -- Maras 30 Res
Weapon -- Crescent Moon Runeword in a Sword or Axe. I prefer double axe base since most people like their CTA in a crystal sword. Runeword is Shael, Um, Tir.
Armor -- Perfect Upped Viper Magi sock with Light Facet
Shield -- Spirit with high mana and magic absorb. You don't need to roll a perfect 35% on this char. Prioritize mana and magic absorb!
Gloves -- Trangs for cold res
Ring L -- SOJ
Belt -- descent def Arach
Ring R -- SOJ
Booties -- Aldurs Boots

Weapon Swap -- Call to Arms + Spirit Shield.

Ok, lets educate:
So, now you're thinking to yourself, OMG this guy is insane. Every sorc uses HOTO and Chains of Honor combo, I see it all the time. Well, the reason you see it all the time is because people think sheet dps is what matters most. Well, it doesn't!

First, lets discuss damage. When you bust a light immune, you only get -17 res effect from infinity. So in the best case scenario where a monster has 100 light res which grants immunity, infinity will bust the light immunity and reduce their immunity to 83. If you are wearing a nice griffon, this puts their immunity down 25% to 58%

If you are using HOTO+Chains versus Crescent moon and Viper, you are gaining an additional +4 to light skills. So, at very high levels, perhaps you will gain around 10k-13k extra lightning damage and perhaps 500-700 or so on Nova.

Testing on my chars:
With HOTO and COH my light and nova damage are 55k and 4024.
With Crescent Moon and Viper my light and nova damage are 42K and 3210.

With Crescent Moon and Viper, you gain an additional -40% to light resistance and 5% extra light damage which is negligible since light damage stacks with Light mastery.

Note: Resistances are defined as numerical values that can resist a percent of damage from the four elemetnal attacks. For example, if a character's Lightning resistance is 15%, all incoming lightning damage the player receives is reduced by 15%. Thankfully its simple! Moreover, resistances are capped at -100 on the low end. Thus, you deal double damage if you decrease a monsters resistance to -100%.

So now the question is: Is the additional damage increase with + to skills larger than the damage increase by reducing a monster's resistance down another 40% and loosing sheet dps. Lets see using our 58% immune monster.

HOTO and CoH
55K(1-0.58)=23100 damage dealt
4024(1-0.58)=1690 damage dealt

Crescent Moon and Viper (new resistance is 18% due to -40% from CM and Viper w/ Sock Facet)
42K(1-0.18)=34440 damage dealt
3210(1-0.18)=2632 damage dealt

Thus, with Crescent Moon and Viper, we see a substantial increase in damage! This scales quite well in most scenarios. You only loose out if your -resistances go beyond the -100% mark for the monster. In this case, chances are you will 1 shot the monster anyways

So, the other added benefit to Hoto+CoH are the resists. Well, using the above Viper and Crescent Moon set up, you will be perfectly fine in Hell. You will need 2 SCs to gain an additional 8 or so resists to cap at 75% and one SC to make the 60% fhr recovery frame. Moreover, you will have an additional 11 magic absorb and 13 magic damage reduction! Thus, you will have better magic defense using Viper and Crescent.

Hire -- Act 2 NM Defiance Merc or Holy Freeze Merc
Helm -- Eth bugged Andy's Helm
Amulet -- Highlords Wrath or Rising Sun (depending on your weap BP's)
Weapon -- Infinity. Just use whatever you can get your hands on. Your merc won't be killing too many enemies for it to matter.
Armor -- Any Plate with Treachery (Shael/Thul/Lem) or Eth Bugged Fortitude
Gloves -- Dracul's Grasp or Laying of Hands
Ring -- Carrion Wind
Belt -- Nosferatu's Coil
Booties -- Goblin Toe or Gore Riders. Goblin is better in this scenerio due to higher Crushing Blow

** The armor and glove choice can be debated. You basically want to select the combo that is going to kill Light immune monsters the fastest. Eth Bugged Fortitude and Laying is probably the best combo for damage but Trechery and Dracul's is the best combo for merc survival.

Stat Points -- Max Damage
Strength -- Enough for your gear.
Dexterity -- Zero
Vitality -- Everything else!
Energy -- Zero

Skill Trees -- Max Damage
Cold Spells
1-Frozen Armor

Lightning Spells
20 - Charged Bolt
1 - Static Field
1 - Telekinesis
20 - Nova
20 - Lightning
20 - Chain Lightning
1 - Teleport
20 - Lightning Mastery

Fire Spells
1 - Warmth

--- Double Post Merged, Aug 21, 2016, Original Post Date: Jul 30, 2016 ---

Updated to reflect new build. I hope to see more users dropping HOTO and Chains of Honor for less expensive and more useful items

 

Great guide , keep up the good work

 

Wow nice and very usefull Guide thankyou!!!

 

Why Trang and not upped magefist?
Mana will be a problem since there is no insight merc around

 

Trangs are needed for cold res. If you were to take the damage decrease and use HOTO+COH for higher res, you can use upped mages.

I use to run this build a lot and you really won't run into too many instances of mana problems. At the rate you will be killing monsters vs your mana loss, you will have to chug a purple drank once in a while.

Insight Merc on a Light sorc is extremely bad.

 

im resuming a dead thread, but i got a question. Is this build still viable? any advice for a better build?

 

Find me ingame , acc freakyjake, so i can show u "my"n ova/es/telek build.

 

Not a bad guide, thanks for the contribution! Just wanted to mention a few things regarding your conviction usage, it might help you or others make alternate decisions.

Conviction from Infinity grants -85% res to enemy, however only 1/5 if the monster is immune to a certain res. So using Infinity still, that would work out to -17% for immune monsters.
Example: Fighting monster with 0 to 99 Light Res = -85 to 14 Light Res after Conviction
Fighting the same monster with 100 to 120 Light Res = 83 to 103 Light Res after Conviction.
So as you can see, any monster with 117+ res will NEVER be immunity broken with a level 12 conviction aura.
Also, your -light res only takes effect once a monsters immunity is broken. The -light res on polearm does nothing.

Due to this, and with available -light res options already like griffons and rbf's...you are largely "wasting" damage on most monsters by using Crescent, as monsters can only go to -100 res anyways.
Example: 0-5 Light res Monster with conviction + griffon = max -100 res....the -40 from weapon is now useless. -25 and -35 light res is easy to obtain on char with sockets...more if you're aiming for it. Paired with the -85% from conviction - It means any monster with 20 or less light res is already at -100.

The crescent moon option is almost exclusively beneficial for light immune(and breakable) monsters for these reasons. The damage output due to these restrictions cause it to be inferior to +skills in most cases. Factor in the host of other stats that are lost for the sake of pursing -light res, and it becomes a bigger downside than benefit.

I strongly feel that this type of char is much better suited using an infinity herself, you get a higher -res total(-55 instead of -40)...you get a personal conviction aura so no reliance on merc or delay on activation, and you can still swap buff to cover gaps caused by 2h weapon. Merc can also now use insight or other weapon to give more flexibility.

Obviously, this is just my opinion, as I dont waste time trying to kill light immunes in the first place

 

I'm kind of embarrassed for not knowing about Crescent Moon, I feel like I can no longer call myself MLG 4D20 PLAYER.
But hey, game is 18 years old and it surprised me now. I'm impressed.
BTW, Build is super cool.

PS.
Let me say just a few last words about the Crescent Moon before I alt-tab to game and continue the savagery.


not complaining.

 

I feel like if you're going to use crescent you may as well socket a 6os 1h with facets

 

best to do 200fcr build if u want do nova fast and kill fast