Diablo 2R: Frost Nova Sorc Build Guide

Welcome to the first build guide on Snoozey.io. This has quickly become my favorite Sorc build. I've played the Sorc on and off again for almost 15 years now. It's always been my favorite class, and I'm excited to show you this new build. This build is for solo play or small groups. It would be slow to carry a full 8 player group of leeches.

You can find the video guide on youtube on my channel, or embedded above.

This is not a ladder start build. It does require items to get going, and most important levels. It isn't cheap, but it was insanely fun. The gear is used by Orb and Blizzard sorcs too so most of this can be taken from them or moved to them in case you don't like the build. However, since you share gear with those current meta builds it does make it expensive.

Let's start off with the skill tree first. Your trees should look like this. You max Frost Nova, Blizzard, Orb, Telekinesis, and then energy shield in that order. Make sure you put 1 point into Static, Warmth, and Frozen Armor. Warmth will give you additional mana regeneration, Static for those tanky bosses, and Frozen armor for some additional defense and freezing. You won't be able to max Energyshield, so it's important to keep putting as much as you can into it when you level.

Let's talk a little bit about how Energy Shield works. If you're familiar skip ahead if not you really want to read this first! Energy Shield on a basic level will use your mana instead of your life when taking damage. You can get this as high as 95%. This build currently is around 85% so if for example a Fallen hits you for 100 physical damage. 85 damage will go from your mana, and 15 will go from your health. However, it gets a lot more complicated once you start taking elemental damage. Let's say a Soul hits you with lightning for 100 damage. You have 75% resistance to lightning. You will take 85 damage to mana, and then around 4 damage to health. The reasoning is that your Energy Shield ignores resistance from Fire, Cold, and Lightning. You will take the full damage. With telekinesis maxed you only use 75% of the mana per damage. So if you take 100 damage to mana and you have telekinesis maxed you would lose 75 mana. It's also important to note Poison damage will always go through Energy Shield.

For the stats, it's really simple. 156 STR to wear your gear. Then a little vitality if you can't afford life killers. You'll want at least 500 before BO.  The rest will go into Energy.

The gear is really just a standard cold Sorc setup.  You're looking for + Skills, Cold damage, and - cold res to enemies.  Life and Mana are also really big on this build as well. The normal things like Cast Rate and Faster hit recovery to your breakpoints are also important. This build does hit 105% Cast rate break point. You'll use a Call to Arms on your swap with a Spirit shield.

Inventory is pretty straightforward as well. You'll want your Torch, Anni, and cold Sunder charms always. The grand charms could then be all Cold Life Skillers, or you could throw in a Gheeds for more Magic find. Fill the rest of the slots with small charms of Life, Res, Magic find, faster hit recovery, or even mana charms. You'll have room for your TP book, and cube as well. You loot directly into your cube as your inventory is full. You can cut charms out if you don't like this.

For this build, you will want to use an Act 2 Merc with prayer. It's probably not the most meta option, so if you want meta you could go for Might. Might will give your merc more damage. I prefer prayer because it allows me to ignore my health and mana when mixed with Insight. Everything auto-regens faster than it goes now. You can use juves for emergencies. The last upgrade for your merc would be to replace Treachery with a Fortitude, but it's really not needed. He generally lives just fine.

Skill usage is a little more complicated than most builds. We use Blizzard, Frozen Orb, and Frost Nova. Frozen orb is your single target nuke. It can shotgun and hit bosses multiple times. Frost Nova is your spam skill for aoe. Blizzard on top of yourself when spamming Frost Nova for the most dps. Always keep Frozen Armor and Energyshield on you at all time. Battle Command and Battle Orders help massively so those should never drop either.

Let me know in the comments or the youtube comments any questions you guys have on the build. It's really fun, but a tiny bit expensive to play currently.