Envious of the light show: Lookig for 32pt Sorc Build

[Osco]

I've been farming motes in the Mabar event with my monk, and watching the huge light shows and things falling over en masse when a sorcerer is nearby has me wanting to make pretty colors all over like that. I've been trolling through the forums tonight, but it seems all the builds are TRs and such, or are ancient. I have 32 pt builds unlocked, but no drow/helf/horc/WF. I think pure sorc is my best bet. I gather that I should concentrate on Fire for the first 9-12 levels, then decide where I want to focus. Can someone help with a 32 pt sorc build, with no tomes or banked GS? My highest level character right now is 7, so twinking really isn't an option.

Thanks!

[Osco]

Well, I"ve started a vet human sorc, started 12/8/16/10/8/18. Sorcerer Charisma and and the level 3 stat boost in CHA to bring to 20. I've probably gone too far on offense on the spells, with Nightshield, Hypnosis, Magic Missile, Niac's and Scorching Ray. Bought Maximize by accident instead of Empower at creation, so picked Empower at 3.

Even though I'm level 4, I went to sunny Korthos for the easy xp and pick up some quest rewards. Feeling *awfully* powerful right now, of course.

[Xionswift_Darkheart]

I've built a human sorc while testing for my current H-elf/pal-dill. They're nice bases for any class. I'd spec'd mine cold and throwin even the spell niac's ray in the harbor, one shotting.
Concentration/UMD, and possibly balance are best places for skill pts.
Don't have a "build" really to post, sry.
Choose an element, choose a back-up, a bit of crowd control (web)/defubbing (hypno) and your buffs.
From what ya chose, you should be ok with both emp/max. Select certain spells to use them on, or be concious of your sp use.
Spell like abilities from savant PrE's can be emp/max'd free.

Enjoy

[Terminus-Est]

Xion's advice is solid.

I'll add that I recommend getting toughness if you haven't already picked it up.

Your play-style from level 6+ will vary wildly based on your element(s) of choice.

Fire-Spec is very much feast or famine, you will either decimate things with the unmatched power of Firewall and Fireball or you will lament your complete inability to do reasonable damage. I recommend subbing Acid w/ Fire as it is the most 'reliable' damage to balance out the most 'un-reliable'. Edit: Scorching Ray is also fantastic and hits faster then most 'Bolt' spells, annoyingly enough if your trying to duel for kills >.> Also I've heard mixed reviews about Scorch. Some hate it, some love it and consider it the premier (As in, Only) DPS spell until 3rd level spells are available. I recommend experimenting with it to see if it fits your style. (P.S: Works better for melee-wizards who arn't afraid of a little Master's Touch, I suspect.)

Air-Spec is a all front-loaded. You'll fire off your spell-likes (they are all good, seriously, even shocking grasp) and your biggest lightning spell and see if you toasted it or not. If you did, keep running at full bore to the next one. If you didn't, run around like your head was cut off till your spell-likes are off timer. Electric Loop is amazingly consistent until you start doing Shroud, or if you grind all-undead content for some reason. Electric Surge makes you god of Boss DPS till you start running into Divines who can and do cast their DoTs. My savant was Air with a Cold Sub, but the cold sub wasn't really useful as my problem opponents were generally cold immune as well. Your mileage may vary.

Cold-Spec has the most flexibility in their options and practically speaking, the best of all worlds. They have full caster-level on all the buffs that matter, DPS that falls behind Air only in specific situations and the ability to use all of the good DoTs simultaneously. (You'll never really need to do this, but hey, you can if you have to!) Second best at crowd-control means alot when your tied for first-place consistent dps! Again, Cold generally subs Air but I'm not convinced of how optimal this is.

Acid-Spec generally gets the least attention because it has the slowest DPS of the four, but it also has the greatest survivability and the best crowd-control. An acid sorcerer will likely be best suited to moving directly into Epics out of any given Savant because they are already accustomed to the combat climate that prevails there. Acid Savants tend to be Warforged to play up on the survivability angle and need a sub element a great deal less than any other savant, imho.

As far as spells go... you don't need three offensive spells at level 4, lol. You can get by with just one, generally and Master's Touch to handle the rest. You really get some freedom once you get into your Savant levels and can have your spell-likes available as a secondary combat spell. You should really be looking to pick up group buffs for your next spells, I suspect. Don't forget to get haste!

[Osco]

Yeah, I'm kinda "test driving" spells right now. I know how much I dislike being hit with Magic Missile as a monk, because there's no save, and wasn't sure how effective Niac's would be on undead, so grabbed MM to see. Master's Touch is on the "to-get" list to help through the Harbor. My monk recently looted a Greataxe of Combustion IV, so may actually have a use for it. :P I took Toughness at character creation, and have Maximize and Empower.

Now to learn which spells to use on casters and melee, respectively. Casters are weak vs. fortitude, and melee are weak vs will, right?

EDIT: Which hireling would you recommend for when I'm soloing?

[cru121]

Now to learn which spells to use on casters and melee, respectively. Casters are weak vs. fortitude, and melee are weak vs will, right?

EDIT: Which hireling would you recommend for when I'm soloing?

You're correct on saves. As for hirelings, I prefer those with more HP. Favored souls usually have more HP than clerics, but you lose on cleric's Divine Vitality. Your call. Look at DDOWiki for an overview of HP and clickable abilities: http://ddowiki.com/page/Hireling

[emptysands]

Yeah, I'm kinda "test driving" spells right now. I know how much I dislike being hit with Magic Missile as a monk, because there's no save

1500 or so motes in Mabar and you can get yourself a nightshield clicky - lvl2 robe/docent.

[Alex301]

I prefer acid while leveling. The biggest issue while leveling is usually conserving sp, and acid has lots of very sp efficient spells. The level 12 spell like ability, melf's acid missle, is great. One hit will kill most mobs for quite a few levels and it has no save. Acid rain is also amazing and, again, very sp efficient with no save after the first tick. Mobs have so little health until you hit amrath, and to some extent vale, that you can one shot most targets so the slightly lower dps of acid isn't really noticeable.


There's no need to worry about saves until vale: acid rain + firewall + melf's acid missle kills all Burning blood + melf's is good if you want to kill a single target quickly too. At 18 i switched to water savant and this offers the highest dps imo. I don't think any other class can match a sorcerer's dps but later on i switched to air. Very few targets are immune to elect damage and the air savants abilities just make them more survivable and easier to solo with.

[kitselli]

I've run my sorcerer as a water savant from the moment he was created, and love it!
There are banes to my icy existence though - bony undead!
All other undead (fleshy and incorporeal) take great damage from the cold! So you're a great addition to the party there. It's just the bony ones that you rely on the back-up mode for.

Kit

[Osco]

I'm still level 4 (was grinding motes on my monk) and I'm pondering switching MM out for Charm Person. Niac's is getting resisted half the time in the Harbor on normal, even while I'm holding a Minor Spell Pen III scepter. Scorching Ray does half the damage for twice the SP, so I don't use it much (just for skellies, etc.) I took both Frost and Flame Manipulation I enhancements. I'm thinking that I can hypnotize a group, then charm one or two, and save SP that way.

Also, I was looking over the spell list, and didn't notice a level 1 or 2 spell that calls for a fort save. What should I use on kobold shamen and other casters at this level? Oh, I did take my sorc to Mabar's and got him the level 4 Robe of Shadows. He's looking pretty sporty now.

[wax_on_wax_off]

I've leveled up 2 sorcerers to cap and had an absolute blast doing it.

Some ideas:
1. Dual spec acid and fire from level 1 until you get into devil content (about level 16) at which point swap to acid/cold. I tend to feel that air spec is more appropriate for a TR'd build as it is more dependent on DCs than other elements. Still, I have eledar's electric surge on my earth savant and 1 AP in electrical damage amp.

2. Choose a Savant based on the above specs (I went earth throughout but swapping between fire/water/earth is fine to test the different SLA's and abilities).

3. Get superior clickies to power your spells. These last for 3 minutes and a superior version will power your spells up by +75%. You can usually find these on the AH for 1-2k plat for low level versions and more for higher level versions. I've pretty much been able to just rely on quest rewards for my ones.

4. Specific spell strategies:
1-7: Acid Spray and/or Burning Hands is where it is at for AoE decimation. Even when you get fireball/acid blast at level 6 often the first level spells will do similar/more damage depending on gear until level 7+. For single target damage get scorching ray, if you maximise and empower this you can pretty much 1 shot any boss (with a superior inferno II clicky active). For single weak targets I usually rely on the hired help (aka your party members) or use masters touch or wands.
8+: Firewall. This is bread and butter, jump straight into all the undead heavy quests you can find and spam this spell.

5. If your spells are getting resisted it is because the DC isn't high enough. This is separate to spell penetration (which isn't affected by most damage spells). To remedy this choose a more appropriate spell for the enemy that you are fighting (saves are either reflex, fort or will and different mobs will have higher or lower in each type) or get a higher DC (spell focus item, spell focus feat, higher charisma).

6. For beginning builds refer to this thread: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=232660. I still use this resource as a benchmark for my builds.

7. Toughness is very important and also as much other HP related gear/boosts as you can find: lesser/normal/improved/greater false life, +x con item (use a bears wand/spell/clicky until you get a +4 or better item), toughness item (level 10+: minos or tharaak hound bracers), racial toughness enhancements (2 levels is fine but 3 is an option too), guild augment crystals of health, guild ship constitution shrine, rage spell (level 10+) etc.

[darthhento]

As a lowbie sorc you want this spells:

lvl 1: burning hands, shield, niac's, jump
lvl 2: blur, electric loop, web, resist energy
lvl 3: fireball, frost lance, displacement, lightning bolt/chain missles
lvl 4: stoneskin, ice storm, wall of fire

I usually go air savant to get shocking grasp at lvl 6 so you can poke monsters for ~100-150 damage (free emp/max).

You prolly didn't run $#%#" korthos cause there you learn how to get 5-6 mobs in a group and burn them down with burnin hands. This tactic works nicely when you're low on sp.

The general idea is to get your defences up, cast web, get the monsters into the web, keep them with el loop in the web (loop stuns), and poke them with shock 2sp 100 damage. When you get frost lance you'll want to drop niac's for magic missle or hypno depending on your prefs.

When you get lvl 4 spells you'll want to kick ice storm into the web+loop cc combo cause ice storm also slows mobs . An you'll prolly spam wall of fire and jump around it like rabbit on crack.

Displacement is for those hairy situations when there's lots of mobs around to that 50% miss chance really kicks in.
Later when you get your sp pool up you'll just nuke everything and forget about cc.


I saw you made investments into str which is useless. For a sorc build you max cha and con, put 2 stats into int so you can max UMD and dump the rest. HP really plays a significant role cause you're squishy.

[Osco]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I bought a dragon's blood this morning to mess around with different spells. I did run Korthos, all on elite, but was with a barbarian so I just spammed Niac's and one-shotted 90% of everything before it got close. I thought that 21 Charisma would have been enough for the Harbor quests.

[goodspeed]

Just remember niacs isn't evocation based. It'll work to start but after that it gets saved more often then not. Hell even with water savant pre and heighten it still saves a bit. Ur best bet is fire leveling up. Mainly for the fact that while they did pimp slap firewall, unlike ice storm you can control the dmg by kiting stuff through it again and again.

And scorching ray is just a great single target long ranged spell. Especially when you run into trolls and ogres around lv 7.

Also get at least 2 superior inferno clickies. Toss em on the hotbar and that will give you 18 minutes of 75% extra dmg to fire between each shrine. Major fire lore as well for them big numbers. Used to be good to switch to air at around 13 in GH but lately everything has these ridiculous reflex saves.

[Osco]

I still feel like a dog trying to learn calculus with this. I have a question: seeing as how you run into so many fire mobs, how would Water Savant with Air do? I just made 6th level, but haven't trained it yet, and am thinking of wiping all my enhancements and starting over with the spells as well. I picked up Acid Spray, which works well, but in a group, Nelf's seems like wasted SP as someone attacks the mob and finishes it before the DoT is done. The only thing about ice is bony undead and the rare(r) ice creatures. Would electricity work there, or perhaps force? Is Force just a crappy school? Seems like Magic Missile, with no save, would be great until it caps out.

Anyway, I just paid the 250pp to redo my enhancements, to get Water Savant, so will probably go with Frost Lance as my level 3 spell. I have the TP to totally redo the spells if I want to, but since my last caster made was in 2009 and made it to a mighty level 4, I have zero idea what I'm doing.

[voodoogroves]

Nah, you're doing fine - some of it is just feel. Part of it is trying to understand how you play - how is your ray targeting, your area bursts, your cones, etc. How comfortable are you with touch spells / getting close ...

The fact is, all of them work. Sure, one or the other may be "more optimal" but the fact is, they all work and along the way you'll find folks that are resistant to each.