Frozen Orb 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 review the recommended Items and more easily identify the Most Important Stats on them.

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

Gear/Base Notes: Any Items with specialized or niche uses have superscript that refer to a Note listed 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. These areas are strong without a Sunder Charm.

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. Mercenary Types and Gear Options at each Gear Level perform equally well in different situations; choose based on Farming Spots and/or personal preference.

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 and Energy Shield prior to entering combat situations to maintain their duration.
• Frozen Orb's gameplay plan is fairly simple. Point and shoot Frozen Orb to Chill things in its path while dealing damage.
• Use Telekinesis any time you can on Waypoints, Town Portals, your stash and for utility items such as Potions and Scrolls from a distance. These uses give lots of small-time saves that add up. It can also be used to Knockback mobs and keep them stunned. This is useful to keep Immunes stunned while your Mercenary takes them down.
• 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.
• Cast Frozen Orb directly into large monster groups, so that the orb itself explodes on the pack. This causes the biggest amount of damage from the skill.
• Against single targets, be far enough away so that Frozen Orb explodes inside them at the end of its animation.
• Freeze large number of enemies and dangerous ranged monsters with Glacial Spike.
• Use Static Field to bring down the Life of your enemies quickly. This is great for all types of Bosses that are not Lightning Immune.
• Before your targets die, swap to your setup with more x% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items, especially bosses!
• Try not to be too close to your enemies, this build is generally squishy and can either get stuck in Faster Hit Recovery or just die.
• Try to avoid killing mobs over non-walkable terrain if possible, as they won't drop items.

Immunities

• Use your Mercenary in combination with Telekinesis to keep Immune monsters stunned. This gives him time to take them down.
• If you do not have Infinity equipped on your Mercenary, purchase a Lower Resist Charge Wand from Nightmare Drognan. It is great for breaking some Immunities and highly Resistant monsters. Repair this Wand with Gold or the Chipped Gem + Ort Rune Horadric Cube recipe to regain the Charges.
• 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, Battle Orders, 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. 
• Use Infinity for an overall DPS increase for you and your Mercenary. Reposition him towards the monsters that you want to fight using teleport.

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.

Item Changes

• Be sure to keep your Resistances over capped against things like Conviction.
• 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 Flail.