Nova Sorceress Guide

Nova* is your main Damage Skill. All enemies around your Characters take Lightning Damage and are put into Hit Recovery.

Static Field* deals Lightning Damage equal to 25% of the enemy’s current Life. It can only bring a monster’s Life down to 1 in Normal, 33% in Nightmare and 50% in Hell. Use it on Cold Immune mobs and bosses with high Life pools.

Hydra* is your secondary Damage Skill in the Hydra hybrid variant. It summons a 3-headed pet on the targeted location that spits out fire bolts. Hydra lasts for 10 Seconds and you can have up to 6 at a time.

* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)

Energy Shield* uses your Mana pool to reduce a percentage of incoming damage to your Life pool.

Teleport* lets you cover large distances over almost any gap or wall on the map. This is what gives the Sorceress its huge advantage early on.

Telekinesis* allows you to interact with objects from a distance to save time. It can be used on your Stash, Waypoints, Portals, and utility items (Potions, Scrolls, etc.). It applies Knockback to non-Boss mobs and keeps them stunned. Telekinesis also reduces the Mana consumed from energy shield with each Skill Point.

Frozen Armor* protects your Character with an icy armor that freezes enemies who use melee attacks on you. Ranged monsters are not affected by this at all.

Warmth* gives you some passive Mana Regeneration. This is a great investment for this build, especially paired with Energy Shield.

Lightning Mastery* boosts the Lightning Damage dealt by your Lightning Skills.

Cold Mastery* boosts the Cold Damage dealt by your Cold Skills by piercing their Cold Resistances. It is only used in the Frozen Orb hybrid variant.

Fire Mastery* boosts the Fire Damage dealt by your Fire Skills. It is only used in the Hydra hybrid variant.

* Faster Cast Rate Skills (FCR)
* Skills that do NOT utilize either FCR or IAS

While every Stat in the Desirable Stats column is useful for this build, we highlighted the Priority Stats in Teal so you can easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

Hover over any Item to see a pop-out with the full Item description.

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have a superscript that refers here.
1) Put Memory in your Horadric Cube to re-buff yourself whenever necessary.

The areas below are efficient farming locations that make use of the build’s strengths. Other farming spots might not be as effective due to immunities or bad layouts. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter or Budget Variant.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 4

Act 5

Your Mercenary serves an incredibly important role to the overall success of your build. They can be a front line tank, provide a pivotal Aura, and/or deal Physical Damage to kill enemies with Immunity to your Skill set.

Act 2 Desert Mercenary

Infinity, Holy Freeze

Use a Desert Mercenary with Holy Freeze Aura for its powerful Crowd Control. A Mercenary with Might Aura isn’t used, since we don’t rely on his damage or benefit from the Physical Damage increase.
Equip him with Infinity to reduce enemy Resistances and Defense with Conviction Aura, drastically boosting damage. This Aura is also capable of breaking some Immunities.

Mercenary Gear Options

Your Mercenary needs maximum Resistances, Life Leech, a high damage Weapon, and high Defense and/or Damage Reduction to stay alive reliably. Cannot Be Frozen is also a great stat for maintaining Mercenary DPS and leech. Ethereal gear is preferred since it doesn't lose durability.

The Mercenary is hard to keep alive until you have the minimum gear recommended in this guide. Remember you can drag Healing Potions onto the portrait, or shift + 1/2/3/4 to directly feed them a Healing Potion from your Belt. The Mercenary also gains bonus Resistances from Thawing Potions and Antidote Potions.

If your Mercenary dies in battle, you can revive them from any of the Mercenary NPCs in each Act. This does come with an increasing cost, capping at 50,000 Gold. Keep that in mind and decide if the Mercenary is currently worth the cost.

General

• Equip yourself with Memory and buff yourself with Frozen Armor and Energy Shield before you start your farming session.
  Note: If you run out of Mana completely, the Energy Shield is removed. Make sure to recast it asap! This is your lifeline!
• Teleport to your farming spot. Position yourself to cast the screen-wide Static Field 2-5 times, depending on the farming spot.
• Nova deals damage in a relatively small area around your Character. Reposition yourself with Teleport to hit as many enemies as possible. Be aggressive! Nova puts most monsters into Hit Recovery, slowing them down while they approach you!

Hybrid-Builds

Hybrid builds generally allow for a wider range of areas that you can farm in.

• Use Frozen Orb or spawn your 6 Hydras to fight enemies that are Immune to your Nova. Also use them in addition to Static Field in places you don't plan to Teleport to. This increases your over-all damage output and can net you some additional loot!
• The Hydra-variant destroys Act Bosses. Make sure to utilize this Skill to farm them!

Immunities

• Playing around with a Wand of Lower Resistance or an Act 5 Mercenary with plague allows you to deal with some Immune to Lightning monsters. Avoiding areas with Immune to Lightning monsters entirely until you have access to Infinity is the better call. The Nova Sorceress doesn't deal well with monsters that still have high Resistances after their immunity has been broken.
• When you are playing one of the Hybrid-version, you and your Mercenary are able to deal with any Immune monster you encounter!
• With the addition of Crack of the Heavens, all Immunities are broken and our combined -xx% Enemy Lightning Resistance gear brings monster's Resistances low enough to deal damage!

Late-Game

• Start runs by buffing yourself with Battle Command 2 times and afterwards with Battle Orders from Call to Arms.
• Switch to Memory from your Horadric Cube and buff yourself with Frozen Armor and Energy Shield as well.
• Keep your Mercenary close to apply his Conviction Aura to your enemies.

Breakpoints in Diablo 2 are the minimum values required to reduce the frames of an action. Below are the important breakpoints considered for this build. For more information on the mechanics involved, check out our in-depth Resource: Breakpoints.

Faster Cast Rate (FCR)

Faster Cast Rate (FCR) speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for at least the 105% FCR Breakpoint. Note: FCR only controls the animation speed of the Character, and not any internal Cooldowns spells have.

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)

Faster Hit Recovery (FHR) increases survivability. Aim for at least the 60% FHR Breakpoint.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary focus is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, and Chance to Block. This can mean sacrificing overall power level for a more secure playstyle.

This build can become Hardcore viable with key changes to the Skills, Stat Point allocation, and items. Review the changes below before building this character, as they may differ significantly from the normal build.

Stat Point Changes

• Allocate enough Dexterity to reach 75% Chance to Block with Stormshield (Eld Rune).

Item Changes

• Use Gerke's Sanctuary Pavise (Eld Rune) or Stormshield (Eld Rune) instead of Spirit Monarch.
• Replace Trang-Oul's Claws with Frostburn for a higher Mana pool, and therefore "Life" from Energy Shield.
• Drop the Ormus' Robes for a Skin of the Vipermagi.
• Use Rare Boots with high Resistances to over-cap your Resistances. This allows you to deal with hostile Conviction and / or Lower Resist.

• Teleport instantly moves you to a selected square on the visible screen in which you can stand. The game tries to to place you within a small radius around your cursor even if it would be impeded normally.
• Teleport is not obstructed by walls or other impediments but can fail if your cursor is not completely passed those impediments when cast. Your Mercenary and Minions teleport with you, Traps do not.
• Certain Minions in large quantities can become “stuck” in position after teleporting. Move away from that position to give them the chance to spread out.
• You can “extend” the visible screen by opening UI-windows like the Inventory or the Character screen. Continuously cast Teleport and drag your mouse to the edge of your screen.
• The Mana cost of Teleport decreases with additional Skill Levels down to 1 Mana per cast.
• You can use “ESC” to open the menu in single player to pause the game after a Teleport to determine if you are safe.
• Teleport casting speed is affected by the Faster Cast Rate Breakpoint that you achieve with your gear.

• Static Field range scales with each Skill Point.
• In the Nightmare and Hell difficulty you can't reduce a monsters' life past certain thresholds. For Nightmare this threshold is at 33%, in Hell it is at 50%. You can get a little bit past this threshold if your enemy is at negative Lightning Resistances.
• In Normal difficulty you can bring a monster down to "1 Life". Static Field can't deal the final blow on a monster.
• Static Field works on any monster you encounter that is not Lightning immune, including all Act bosses.
• Static Field reduces the current life of a monster by 25%. The Lightning Resistances of a monster will reduce the effectiveness.
• Damage calculation: Monster Life = Current Life - ((Current Life * 0.75) * ((100-Lightning Resistance) / 100))