The Meteorb Sorceress is a Sorceress build that focuses on the Meteor and Frozen Orb spells. Its name is a portmanteau on "Meteor" and "Orb."
The Meteorb Sorceress has the advantage of relying on two skill trees: Fire Spells and Cold Spells. Unlike some other Sorceress builds that focus on only one element, making them vulnerable in Hell mode due to increased monster immunities, the Meteorb Sorceress can often survive without help of teammates.
However, the Meteorb Sorceress often takes technique to utilize correctly. Meteor has a delay before hitting, and Frozen Orb can miss enemies completely if not aimed properly. Neither are very effective "panic buttons," and may not be useful in the hands of an inexperienced player. Still, with enough practice, the Meteorb sorceress can be one of the most powerful caster builds. To shore up their weakness of relying on time-delayed skills, Meteorb sorceresses can rely on Fireball as a backup. Since Fireball and Meteor have near-identical synergies, they can become very powerful on Meteorb sorceresses.
Meteorb builds have precious few superfluous skill points to spend: maximizing Meteor's power requires investing in Fire Bolt, Fireball, Meteor, and Fire Mastery--a total of eighty points, not counting other prerequisites. Frozen Orb and its prerequisites require an additional twenty five points. While some sorceress builds have the luxury of investing many points into utility skills such as Warmth or Energy Shield, every point spent this way on a Meteorb sorceress reduces her damage potential.
Meteorb Sorceresses are slightly harder to equip than others. Since they specialize in two separate skill trees, finding equipment that gives + to all skills is probably most prudent; however, depending on personal tastes, one could favor either Frozen Orb or Meteor over the other.
Stat Point Allocation[]
- Strength: enough to equip all equipment. A Spirit Monarch, the best shield for this build, requires 156 strength and is a good baseline.
- Dexterity: base if not using a shield or disregarding blocking; enough to achieve ~60-75% block rate if relying on blocking.
- Vitality: every remaining point.
- Energy: base. Other sorceresses may rely on high level Energy Shields and therefore rely on high energy, but meteorb sorceresses do not have the luxury of spare skill points.
Skill Point Allocation[]
Main skills:
- Frozen Orb (20)
- Meteor (20)
Utility Skills:
- Warmth (1)
- Static Field (1)
- Teleport (1)
- Fire Mastery (1-20)
- Cold Mastery (1-17)
Prerequisites:
- Inferno (1)
- Blaze (1)
- Firewall (1)
- Telekinesis (1)
- Ice Bolt (1)
- Ice Blast (1)
- Frost Nova (1)
- Blizzard (1)
- Fire Bolt (1-20)
- Fire Ball (20)
Skills[]
Frozen Orb and Meteor are the staple damage dealers for this build. Meteor requires putting points into three other fire skills to maximize its damage potential, making it very skill point-hungry. This leaves precious little for Frozen Orb, which is why only one point is put into its only synergy, Ice Bolt. Ice Bolt only minimally increases the damage of Frozen Orb regardless.
Fire Ball is a very powerful skill in its own right, and can out-damage Meteor at higher levels. It benefits more from Firebolt than Fire Mastery, so if using Fire Ball instead of Meteor, allocating points in Firebolt is a better option than Fire Mastery. However at least one point in all the mentioned skills is useful to take advantage of items that give +skills.
Cold Mastery reaches -100% enemy cold resistance at level 17, which is plenty for most non-immunes even in Hell. With enough +skill items, a minimal amount of points can be put into this skill to make it effective. A mercenary or party member providing the Conviction aura can further reduce the need to put points in this skill.
Mana depletion is a constant problem in the early game, but in the late game it quickly stops being an issue because Frozen Orb and Meteor both consume mana slowly. In the early game, a point into Warmth may be useful, but it isn't essential in the late game.
Equipment[]
Any equipment that grants +skills, FCR, resistance, stats, life/mana, damage reduction %, cold skill damage and reduction to enemy fire resistance are useful.
The best equipment for a Meteorb Sorceress is Tal Rasha's Wrappings, thanks to the rare and powerful increase to cold damage mod and the reduction to enemy fire resistance.
As with many other sorceress builds, Cannot be Frozen and FR/W is not particularly useful as late-game sorceresses mainly rely on Teleport to move and being frozen does not slow casting speed.
Wealthy sorceresses benefit greatly from having a Call to Arms on switch, to bolster their meager maximum health.
Hireling[]
A tanky mercenary is excellent for distracting monsters long enough for meteors to fall on them. Act II mercenaries can be equipped with a variety of weapons that grant them potent auras, such as Infinity's Conviction aura.
Viable Areas[]
There are very few areas in Diablo II heavily populated by monsters that are both fire and cold immune. Meteorb sorceresses can therefore run practically any area on Hell difficulty, though her frailty may make areas such as the Worldstone Keep dangerous.