Blizzball is my preferred build to play through the game solo from norm to hell! Thanks for being top comment in this thread! Is Blizzard plus Fireball a decent option in Hell? I was actually debating between wall and ball but I wanted to run a different synergy tree since I was just using fireball with meteor. After I hit the 105fcr break point I don't think I could play a sorc any other way lol. Holy crap was it worth it. The Fireball was kinda weak, so it was a bit slow going at times (e.g. Great Mfer! I think I maxed one synergy plus a few points in Cold Mastery, then put 20-30 points towards Fireball. I mostly killed stuff with Blizzard and just used Fireball for cold immunes. Your Blizzard is weaker than it would be in a pure Blizzard setup, but it's still strong enough to kill stuff in Hell on lower player counts. If im trying to deal high damage, I want it to be dealt the entire time right? I think Ill give it a few more days to be sure but right now Im leaning towards going back. Takes some time to adjust to, bit it's growing on me for sure. The big thing here for me is that warmth is a synergy to firewall so it's incredibly usefull on 2 fronts. Sure it's a huge mana sink but stuff just melts when you have both skills rolling. With whatever the second-best casting breakpoint is, you shoot fireballs like a machine gun. So the switch to firewall. Im now doing 400+ frozen orb, which I know i can get to 600+ with better gear, and 5,000 damage per second from firewall. I changed to Blizzball from a pure Blizzard early on and it's so damn versatile, I can do most things in Hell no problem. Ive been using frozen orb/meteor for quite some time but was very slow at clearing even the first 3 acts in hell. I feel like fireball should be your main fire spell and meteor is secondary. I did consider it as an option. A very popular choice as well. With decent gear, my sorc gets a 7k fireball and I use that as my main clearing spell as well. No immune or mix of them? Blizzard hits like a truck as always, but I had a hard time to get my fireball to hit much more than 600. When you're limited in how many points you are putting towards Fire Ball, it's worth playing around a bit with a planner (e.g. So anyway, Im done ranting, I just needed to tell someone about my experience since I don't really have friends that play D2. Fireball and frozen orb with high FCR is the way, you can clear pretty much whatever you need to extremely quickly with this. Since FW shares a cool down with Orb you cant just spam your skills so I feel like my 105 FCR is a little wasted - sure I can tele fast but taking down packs of cold immunes was much easier with FB. It is! Cast a frozen orb and while it's still flying you can blast a couple fire balls in there. It also takes less synergies to get to that level of damage. Im a lvl 86 and Im using spirit sword/sheild, tals mask, viper magi armor, a caster +1sorc amulet, a caster belt, magefists, +10 fcr rings, and treads of cthon boots (best ive found so far). It's called a Blizzball sorc. Press J to jump to the feed. What a difference. I got pretty good at stunning with fireball to keep monster in the blast zone but all that skill switching because a little annoying. I can plow through magic find runs and when those pesky cold immunes come, the melt instantly when hit with firewall. Max icebolt, max frozen orb. Frozen orb was decent against crowds but the real frustration came when trying to cast meteor on cold immunes. I actually love how many options there are, it never gets boring when you can just restat and tun something new. Fireball gets a pretty big synergy bonus, so the optimal point allocation might be a bit different than you would think! But the biggest problem is that meteor only does high damage on impact, followed by only a few hundred damage per second caused by the fire. I know most of you already know all this information, but I have seen a lot of people asking which skills are best for a hybrid sorc, so Im just going to share my experience with 2 popular combos. Imho the blizzard/fireball feels underwhelming, at least the fireball part does. Max firewall, and max warmth. I enjoyed fireball but Firewall/orb 10x faster killing bosses though treats meph/diablo/baal in 2s like when you were fire balling Andy. Frustrates me to no end to read "I've been using meteor and thinking about a skill change". Previously I was doing 300 frozen orb damage and 4000 meteor damage. the cold immune Ancient took a while to kill), but it's workable. After reading thread after thread about which hybrid sorc combo was best, I decided to go with a frozen orb/firewall combo. Worth noting that Fireball damage typically isn't maxed by just putting your first 20 points into Fireball as well. Screw meteor, the main skill of the meteor build is actually fireball! Anyone still using meteor, I implore you to make the switch, you wont regret it. Fall back to frozen orb and when you hit a fire immune, and youre good to go. The problem I found with this combination was that meteor has too many synergies so I wasn't able to even max icebolt to add to my frozen orb damage. maxroll's d2planner) to optimize your skill point allocation. I actually switched from firewall to fireball and I like it a lot more. Firewall definitely melts bosses which is nice but it still just feels clunky to use. Much better than fireball IMO. I'll probably get tired of this in a few weeks so maybe I'll give max fireball a try eventually. It depends on your +skills, but for example if you have 20 points to spend and +5-+7 to skills/fire skills, your Fireball damage is maximized with 7 points in Fire Bolt, 13 points in Fire Ball, and 1 point in Fire Mastery. Splash damage is also nice for killing packs of cold immunes instead of having to hunt them down with firewall. It really is gear independent and you can handle pretty much anything in the game. I respecd last night from Fireball/Orb to Firewall/Orb and Im already thinking about switching back. Seems like Blizzard can do a ton of damage even with just a few synergies. All the rest split between cold mastery and fire mastery, both currently over +/-100%. If your sorc is high level with high end gear (running infinity with ~15+ skills) it's super viable. Props to you again saying fireball! Also I usually play with a controller so aiming FW can be a bit of a struggle. I did enjoy shooting those things like a machine gun lol. This subreddit is for people who want to discuss Diablo 2 and Diablo II Resurrected. The mana regen I have now is such a relief. Check out my other post in this thread, I am currently running blizz/FW and it's amazing. My first character in D2R I did Blizzard + Fireball to clear through Hell solo, then respec'd into pure Blizzard after I finished Hell at around level 75 and got to work farming.

Whether you need help or you're just looking to chat - come join us! Im only using mid tier items and the damage firewall does is next level compared to meteor. Thats how a play sorcs. Orb firewall is a different story though. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. 1 to teleport, 1 to static.