Blizzard Sorceress Guide

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) Tal Rasha's Lidless Eye is recommended exclusively in combination with other Tal Rasha pieces.

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.

Anything that has a ✔ in the "Starter" column can be farmed with the Starter 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, Might

Use a Desert Mercenary with Might Aura to deal with enemies that are immune to your main damage source. Equip him with Infinity to reduce enemy Resistances and Defense with Conviction Aura, drastically boosting damage.

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

• Cast Frozen Armor prior to entering combat situations to maintain its duration.
• Use Teleport to reposition yourself and your Mercenary. Your Mercenary stands a better chance of staying alive and taking on Cold Immunes when using Teleport. He can act as a first line of defense after you Teleport, catching incoming damage you would have taken otherwise.
• Use Telekinesis to activate Waypoints, use Town Portals, open your stash and pick up utility items (Potions, Scrolls, ect.) from a distance. These small-time savers add up. It also afflicts Knockback to enemies and keeps them stunned. Use it to keep Cold Immune enemies stunned while your Mercenary takes them down.
• Cast Blizzard between yourself and melee enemies to force them to walk through the Area of Effect, dealing more damage and slowing them down.
• Cast Blizzard directly on top of ranged monsters and kite them through it for more damage.
• Against dangerous groups of mobs, use Glacial Spike to Freeze mobs and deal Area of Effect (AOE) Damage.
• Use Ice Blast to deal damage to single target bosses or mobs.
• Use Static Field to bring down monster Life quickly. This is great for Bosses that are not Lightning Immune.
• Before your target dies, switch to your setup with more x% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items. This is especially beneficial for bosses!
• Don't stand too close to your enemies as this build is squishy and can either get stuck in Faster Hit Recovery or die.
• Avoid killing mobs over non-walkable terrain if possible, as they won't drop items.

Immunities

• Keep enemies stunned with Telekinesis while your Mercenary deals damage.
• If you do not have Infinity equipped on your Mercenary, purchase a Lower Resist Charge Wand from Nightmare Drognan. This is great against some Immunes and highly Resistant monsters. Recharge it at a repair merchant or the Chipped Gem + Ort Rune Horadric Cube recipe.
• Cold Rupture breaks ALL Cold Immune monsters and brings them to 95% resistance. Pair this with Cold Mastery.

Late-Game

• At the beginning of each run, buff yourself by swapping to Call to Arms and cast Battle Command 2 times, followed by Battle Orders. Then swap back to your main setup and cast Frozen Armor. Make sure these buffs stay active all the time, as they are essential to your survivability. 

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 speeds up your casting animation for spells. Aim for the 63 or 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 increases survivability. Aim for at least the 60% FHR Breakpoint.

For all Hardcore gameplay, your primary focus is increasing your Resistances, Damage Reduction, Chance to Block and Maximum Life. 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. See the "Hardcore" Variant for an example.

Stat Point Changes

• We put enough into Strength to wear gear, as well as enough Stat Points into Dexterity to maintain 50% Chance to Block with Stormshield. Everything else just goes into Vitality.

Skill Point Changes

• Add points into Energy Shield for additional survivability or use a Staff with Energy Shield Staff Mods like Memory Battle Staff or Obsession Archon Staff.

Item Changes

• Be sure to keep your Resistances over capped with up to 135% additional Resistance against things like Conviction and Lower Resist.
• Crown of Ages
• Stormshield
• Sandstorm Trek
• Verdungo's Hearty Cord
• The Oculus is generally dangerous because of it's x% Chance to cast Level 1 Teleport when struck. Some options here are either Death's Fathom or Heart of the Oak

• Teleport instantly moves you to a selected square on the visible screen in which you can stand. The game will try 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 past them when cast. Your Mercenary and Minions are teleported with you, while traps are 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. This allows your cursor to reach further for a longer distance Teleport. Hold down 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.

• The speed of this Skill is based on Cast Rate.
• Creates a damaging blizzard in a circle centered on cursor location when the Skill is cast.
  • The circle's Radius: 4.66 yards
• Size 2 shards begin to fall every 4 frames (0.16 seconds) for the entire duration of the blizzard.
  • A Size 2 target will be hit by 3 shards on average per blizzard.
• Next Hit Delay: 1.8 seconds
• Duration: 4 seconds
• Cold Length (Frames): 100
• Mana Cost Scaling: 22 + sLVL

Scaling

Synergies

• Synergies add +% Cold Damage = 5 * (icebolt.blvl + iceblast.blvl + glacialspike.blvl)

• The speed of this Skill is based on Cast Rate.
• Launches a bolt that deals Cold Damage and Freeze Length on collision with a hostile target.
• Freeze Length (Frames): 70 + (5 * sLVL)
• Mana Cost Scaling: 5.5 + 0.5 * sLVL

Scaling

Synergies

• Synergies add +% Cold Damage = 8 * (icebolt.blvl + blizzard.blvl + frozenorb.blvl)
• Synergies add +% Freeze Length = 10 * glacialspike.blvl

• The speed of this Skill is based on Cast Rate.
• Launches a bolt that deals Cold Damage and Freeze Length on collision, then explodes, dealing Cold Damage and Freeze Length to hostile targets in a 2.66 yard Radius.
• Freeze Length (Frames): 47 + 3 * sLVL
• Mana Cost Scaling: 9.5 + 0.5 * sLVL

Scaling

Synergies

• Synergies add +% Cold Damage = 5 * (icebolt.blvl + iceblast.blvl + frozenorb.blvl)
• Synergies add +% Freeze Length = 3 * blizzard.blvl