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"She has mastered the elemental magicks - fire, lightning, ice..." Wish to eschew melee combat for dazzling and quite powerful spells? The Sorceress and her wide array of elemental spells fulfills the role of chief magic user. Perhaps the most difficult class to use, particularly in the early game without access to high amounts of mana and powerful spells, the Sorceress takes patience and lots and lots of mana. A Sorceress without mana is like a Barbarian without a hand-to-hand weapon. Sorceress Attributes Mana, mana, and more mana. To support the high cost of spell casting, the Sorceress needs a large supply of mana - the more the better. You can't necessarily neglect the other attributes, though. Strength is important if you wish to outfit the better armors; the Sorceress starts at lowly 10, meaning you have quite a ways to go before you can protect yourself with the more durable plate mails. Dexterity's importance isn't great unless you plan to wield attack weapons. Some players prefer to use ranged weaponry with the Sorceress, since you're typically away from the battle casting spells anyhow; combining the spell assault with long-range attacks could prove effective. But, you can't ignore the energy attribute. Put as many attribute points as you can afford into mana - which might not be much early on. Vitality is troublesome early in the game; with a starting score of 10, the Sorceress is quite weak and must employ hit-and-run attacks to survive against Act I beasts that the Barbarian chops through like crumbling wood. The Sorceress' warmth skill can help alleviate energy attribute point concerns - warmth, a passive skill, increases the rate at which mana regenerates. If you've boosted the warmth skill somewhat, you can divert future attribute points into another statistic. Then again, more mana certainly can't hurt. Fire vs. Cold vs. Lightning The Sorceress' skills are split into three elemental spells: fire, cold, and lightning. Though it's possible to experiment with each path, it's likely to your advantage to choose a particular path - or, perhaps better, two paths - and place emphasis on that particular element. You'll face all sorts of beasts during the game, some that carry fire resistance, others that feature cold resistance, and others that have lightning resistance. At some point in the game, a particular elemental spell won't be as effective as it was a moment ago; if the unique beast you're clashing with carries 75 percent resistance to cold, don't expect your glacial spike to be as effective. The cold spells work well because they cause cold damage and slow down the target. Though the damage might not be as great as that from a different element, you can slow down the target and follow up the blast with lightning or fire attacks. Cold works especially well in multiplayer games where the freezing effect can slow down groups of monsters for you and your party to chew through with weapons, spells, and minions. So, which should you choose? Eventually you can have them all, naturally, but to start out, you should choose cold (for its freezing effect) and a secondary element, either fire or lightning, and boost up the particular element's best attack spells by adding on additional skill points. The choice is up to you, obviously, which makes Diablo II such a deep and diverse game.
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