25% Chance to Cast Level 25 Frost Nova when Struck
50% Chance to Cast Level 50 Frost Nova when Striking
Level 12 Holy Freeze Aura When Equipped
+250-300% Enhanced Damage
+25% to Cold Skill Damage
-25% to Enemy Cold Resistance
(240-300)% Extra Gold from Monsters
8% Life Stolen per Hit
+20% Increased Attack Speed
+10% Increased Run/Walk Speed
4% Chance of Crushing Blow
15% Chance of Deadly Strike

Max frozen armor, shiver armor, chilling armor, cold mastery.

Use unique gloves for multishot. backed up with conviction from A2 merc or LR from medusa A5 merc. Do you think this will work?

yeh, you will want razortail to pierce too.

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Not a bad idea actually, maybe get some chant for the ar aswell.

ifind ice javs on my fire sorcs a2 merc with medusas to be really hands against unbreakable fire immunes in hell wsk. The blizz and fnova are enough to take these mods down so with maxed syns and mastery they should do relly well.

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hmm does multi cast the fnova? if not, will you be counting on getting hit all day?

Or are you going to count on max cold mastery on a lvl 12 Hfreeze? You yourself will seem to be dealing very little dmg. though the -res MIGHT make up for it in the earlier difficulties, but i cant see this worknig too well in hell.

Please prove me wrong, this build sounds like something i would do if i had the items lol.

the fnova is 50%ctc on strike, the center arrow that you shoot is the only one that counts with ctc items. pierce a few enemys close together and they will kill easily, i'll be able to tell you how decent cold mastery is with lvl 12 freeze soon as my fnova sorc is around lvl 70 atm.

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You will be casting level 50 frost novas with maxed synergies from frozen armor/shiver armor/chilling armor, in addition to max Cold mastery. That'll be like 30k-40k damage?? Couple this with -25% from bow, -20% from holy freeze, -% from conviction, -% from various other items. That'll be a ton of damage.

should be around 35k damage top end yeh. Im making an fnova sorc atm and am making the most of the MDR and PDR from frozen armour, I sunk 4 ms diamonds in disciple armour and 1 in a 3 cold skills helm with 3 amn. With full disciple and my frozen armour she is at 130 MDR/PDR and just took down nm diablo at level 79. She was taking no damage at all from his flamewaves, his light hose was hurting a little, but his meteors were the worst, usualy dropping me by 300 life each one. Making a seriously seriously strong tank atm though. She is at 19k fnova, 19k shiver armour and 19k chilling armour, I find the counters from the armour spells to be really really deadly on bosses, that is the lump of my damage atm, even with 200fcr. Im currently working on maxing the last skill (mastery) then i`ll try out the faith javs I have just to see how the damage is.

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Where does your damage come from with this build up until level 80 when Ice becomes available? 1 point in your own Fnova since the synergies are maxed anyway? PureRage mentioned some solid counter damage from the armors, but also mentioned 200fcr so what are you casting ?

And if you're not maxing your own Fnova, the 3 armors and cold mastery only take you to 80 points. What is a smart distribution of the remaining points? Enchant for AR? Attempt to go an ES route?

Also, do the novas cast where the arrow strikes or do they still cast from your character? If I recall correctly, spells such as Frost Bolt and Firebolt still cast from the character when procced from a bow, but I haven't seen nova before.

Novas come from point of striking. Yeah i was thinking about either TK or enchant. It depends on the mechanics of ES though.

IF MDR/PDR is factored in before ES damage is taken, that would be a clear choice for ES. However if MDR/PDR only applies after, i'd think the enchant route would be better. Because, with razor tail, Ice bow, multi shot gloves, you wouldn't be wearing much +% mana items, so it'll be hard to get a large mana bulb.

Also, do you think an A1 merc or A2 merc with conviction would work better with the build?

es is hit before anything else pretty much, I would max chant for the ar buff

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do u think an A1 merc or A2 merc with conviction would work better for the build?

a2 with convic since the convic and freeze -res will stack.

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Is anyone testing this?

I am REALLY interested in this spec, I have always been a fan of wacky specs that work

Can anyone shed some more light on what equipment is needed for this build to work and at what level it actually starts working?

Best Regards,

Tetona

it will work, I use an ice javelin on my fire sorcs a2 merc for safety in ancients way. The blizzards that go off when he is hit will kill ranged stuff and the f novas do a gret job of dispatching fire immunes. It takes a little time but thats to be expected since he has no synergies. I have an fnova sorc at level 49 f nova, thats dealing around 20k damage with just 5 hard points in mastery (all 3 armour skills maxed though). The armour skills are pretty good too and the damage being done in counter form from me is enough to kill bosses too.

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MDR/PDR applies after. Here is the order:

1. XvX
2. Energy Shield
3. Bone Armor and Cyclone Armor
4. DR and MDR
5. Resistances
6. % Absorb
7. Direct Absorb

XvX = Attack vs Defender damage bonuses. For example, act bosses get a large bonus against golems (300% I think) and this applies before other calculations.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

so.. basically ES doesn't synergize with %DR, absorb, MDR, PDR or anything. lol. so this build will probably be..

max frozen armor
max shiver armor
max chilling armor
max cold mastery
max enchant
1 pt FM
1 pt telekinesis
1 pt teleport
1 pt warmth

maybe get 1 in hydra to keep wyrms/tobial/amon etc. off you

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I wouldn't put it that way. Having high MDR/PDR (and other dmg reduction) works great with ES, because having that extra bit of damage removed by ES empowers your other dmg reduction since it is less for them to remove.

So synergize isn't really the best description of it. It just means that you need a really LARGE mana pool; preferably one that you don't really need.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

Sorry to ask the obvious questions... I just guess its just not that obvious to me

How does the information above change the build Patrick_PLD posted?

Does that mean you should incorporate lightning shield in this build?

I am a bit confused

Regards,

Tetona

totally up to him to incorporate energy shield (safety), chant (attack rating) or any other skill that he thinks works. I haven't ever played this build so I don't really know anything through. I also don't know how he plays, so I don't know what areas he needs a boost in and what he doesn't.

I just provide information - I don't offer suggestions on how people use that information, that is a decision they are better off making on their own after experiencing the build themselves. I tend to be a promoter of the "make your own decisions" mindset rather than "do as you are told" mindset.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

OK,

so you would get the "Gravepalm" gloves which grants +1 multishot... that puts you at 2 arrows... how would you increase the number of arrows you would shoot?

Would "+1 to skill" increase the skill level of Multishot too?

Is there any other way to increase this so that you are shooting 10-15 arrows per pull?

Regards,

Tetona

I've tested this in single player a few times. It works, but don't expect anything beyond a mediocre novelty build. The problem is bows are slow as shit for sorcs. A 50% proc rate may seem high, but at a max speed of 9 FPA(2.7 attacks per second) on a bow for sorcs, that's a measly average of 1.35 attacks per second. The 105% FCR break point(8 FPC) is well over twice the speed the bow would be procing at. On top of that nova skills are best used by teleporting in the middle of mobs.

I'd love to see more items with high level proc mods like this, but that's pretty unlikely. They could really open up a lot more novelty builds.

theres also the problem of multishot not procing with every arrow, just the center arrow. Multishot will not help much, getting pierce (chance for arrows to hit more than 1 target). The crappy speed of bows is another factor too. Its a shame armours/gloves/helms dont give zeal or you could use ice javs and zeal to proc those novas ALOT faster. A2 mercs proc them at a fantastic rate IMO. Maybe an item with an OSkill jab would be handy for some of these novelty builds since javs can be eth if used for melee. That would help alot I think. (make it on an armour, helm or shield though)

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I'm sure you could tweak the fpa for sorcs using bows to make hybrid builds more viable... or perhaps a runeword that gives a amazon morph.. things like that..

like since very few people play dagger necros, you could encourage the hybrid build by tweaking the fpa table for necros with daggers..