Table of Contents
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things, look there. I'll integrate it with the guide in version 1.2 maybe,
-Complete rewrite. Some stuff C&P'd over, but a lot rewritten.
-The annoying bug that caused all ' characters to be changed to question
sorceress. Maybe you've seen one in action before, dueled against one, or
Before I begin, I'd like to mention that this guide will not help you one
2. A lot of Classic rare equipment (90% of our sorceress's gear) is
There are others, but not much more has to be said that this guide won't
Field, which can shave off 25% of the enemy's HP per hit, but cannot kill.
you'll need some help in PvM in Hell mode and even some parts of Nightmare.
Figure I'd drop this in somewhere.
If you are just beginning the game and want to build a sorceress, I'd
for more, I'd suggest going for a Lightning/Fire build.
follow this guide down to the last step and don't have such a sorceress as
And lastly, thank you for taking the time to read this guide. Let's begin.
NOTE: I will only list the skills you are putting points into. If it isn't
listed, don't bother with it.
Charged Bolt 1
Lightning 1
Telekinesis 1
Teleport 1
Energy Shield 1
IceBolt Max
Frozen Armor 1
Frost Nova 1
Ice Blast Max
Glacial Spike Max
Blizzard Max
Shiver Armor 1
Mastery Max
shield mostly, Teleport for it's ability to move you quickly in duels, and
increase its power. Mastery will cut your opponent's cold resists,
away with keeping it around 40-50, that'll be excellent.
Vitality: Every point that isn't going into anything else should be put
Energy because I think that's a pretty good comfort zone. It really depends
Dex: You should be able to boost this via equipment. I don't know the
such. Don't go over 35 (Without equipment).
For the Blizzard Sorceresses (sorry, Orbers), you'll want to max your five
All the planning in the world won't get you past the one, classic element
Fortunately in Diablo II grinding isn't too hard--that is, if you have some
1. You can grab a friend's sorceress with maxed Enchant, buy a Bow, and
fine. However, I'll give some more detail into following these steps.
You'll either be flying solo or having the assistance of a chanter for this
Otherwise, you'll be alone with Fire Bolt and not much in the way of
firepower. What you'll probably want to do is gain about 5 levels in Blood
and you'll be moving backwards.
leveled, with one point each into Blizzard's prerequisites.
At this point, you'll want to join a Cow game--that is, someone running the
1. Find one that has a number attached to it. This means it's been running
2. Pay attention to the game times. If the game's been running any longer
XP. Private runs work better because you don't have to worry about some
Once you get to 30-ish, you'll want to complete Normal and head for
more than enough to carry you through easily. Just don't take too many
Once you hit 70, it's pretty straightforward from here. Just do Hell Chaos
The "Sora":
sorceress of the Chaos run you happen to be in. It's a technique called the
"Sora", and what it means is to teleport very rapidly to the center of
Obviously, you'll want to keep some things in mind.
begin. You'll get a skill boost, HP/MP boost, and Stamina boost. You can
certainly attempt to sora without, but it's very risky.
that you'll likely get this stuff from some caring people as you build up
your levels. Don't trip too hard on this stuff until you get to level
Equipment note: "Priz" is the term used by many b.net players for an item
DEFENSE DOESN'T MATTER. Because if some Barbarian Whirlwinds you, you are
NOTE: You'll want a 50% Tarnhelm, preferably.
One-Hand Damage: 2 To 19
Defense: 109-122
Cold Resist 20%
Fire Resist 20%
Cold Resist
Fire Resist
Rings:
The reason I suggest two armors on hand for duel build is because the
vast majority of Sorceresses out there are cold elemental. If you have
Energy shield plus a Hawkmail, Frozen Orb sorceresses won't be able to
even touch you while Blizzard sorceresses can't OHKO you unless you stand
Of course, once your build is near complete, you are going to want to
make yourself known on battle.net. Quick way to do that is to win
As far as the sorceress goes, you have one key skill in duels.
Teleport. Never duel without it. A sorceress without teleport is a dead
one.
Unless of course you are trying to build a low-level dueler. But if that's
the case, you probably would'nt want to be reading this guide.
Another note I'd like to add: It helps TREMENDOUSLY if you remap your
skill keys to other keys on your keyboard. For example, I have my F1-F4
keys mapped to Q, W, E, and R, so I can switch skills quickly, while
having my mana potions just a key away. The F-keys are the worst
possible skill keys for the sorceress. Try dueling with them once, and
you'll see how cumbersome it is to quickly switch between blizzard and
You can also download a hack that will put blizzard on your left-click.
But if you do that, it makes you a cheating scumbag, and if you did stuff
like that, you probably wouldn't be reading this guide. Thus, I will
but in case you don't get it, it's because the skills are too tremendously
powerful for dueling. You'd be getting one hit kills as characters' life
This will be a tough fight. You'll have to stay as far away from the
'din as possible, since his hammers may not be in range, but he can be
stepping on your heels in a matter of seconds. Hammerdins also make use
of a glitch commonly known as sync, which will cause you to lag for a
few seconds, giving him the perfect window of opportunity. Staying far
away from him is a good way to avoid falling victim to this technique.
Also, it should be known that those hammers do about 9,000 damage per
As far as offense, you'll just have to drop random blizzards and hope
he walks into one. Getting close enough to drop a blizzard right on him
might be too risky, unless he's reloading on mana.
Note: It would seem that having Diablo II in Direct3D mode will totally
nerf the synch glitch. At least for me it did. If someone could confirm
Orbers: You can just fire in their general direction and you'll likely
Another variant of the paladin, this one attacks with a lightning bolt
which homes in from the sky, making it nigh unavoidable. I myself would
just avoid all fights with FoH dins. If you must, however, equip
yourself with MAXIMUM lightning resists. FoH dins have Conviction,
which weaken your resists quite a bit. You can try and stay away from
the din, but his FoH is a surefire hit. Once he casts it, you are going
To kill it, you'll have to go kamikaze. His FoH has quite a range, so
you'll have to kill him before he kills you.
Very easy if the opponent has no Hawkmail. If he does, this is going to
Most BvS types have a Hawkmail, some points in Natural Resistance, and
are really speedy to catch up with you. Your most effective weapon
against these types is already neutralized (freezing). So it's normally
What you need to hope for is that the barbarian does something called a
"WW lock". This means that the Barbarian is stuck in a whirlwind going
towards you. This will give you speed advantage so you can blizzard him
to death. However, even if you manage to reduce his life to zero, he'll
still be spinning towards you. Be careful--he can still damage you.
UPDATE: There is a glitch I discovered that would allow the Barbarian
to "teleport", for lack of a better term, right onto your heels,
causing you some pretty good damage. If you built your sorceress well
If he doesn't lock you, just use the houses and rocks in Blood Moor to
try to slow him down a bit, dropping blizzards in the middle of these
obstructions. He'll likely take some damage one way or another.
Orbers: Try to catch the barbarian in the Orb's break point if you can.
Also, don't bother dueling a Barbarian with hawkmail. It's almost an
I group the Necromancer and Bow Amazon because they are almost exactly
alike. Both use attacks that will home in on your position, and you'll
You have to avoid their projectiles while trying to score a hit.
Unfortunately, this isn't easy at all. You have to get right next to
them, and hopefully drop a blizzard on them. Meanwhile, the
Necromancer/Amazon is probably taking this window of opportunity to
pump you full of Bone Spirits/Guided Arrows. If you are REALLY good,
you can teleport; quickly hotkey to blizzard, cast it, and quickly
And for dueling these types, FASTER HIT RECOVERY IS A MUST. Both
attacks, when they connect, will cause you to flinch for a second,
allowing a full army of arrows/spirits to bombard you, thus killing
you. The trick here is to WALK AWAY from being hit, not TELEPORTING.
Teleporting takes a fraction of a second to do, and in that small
window of time, another arrow or spirit can connect, causing you to
One thing to note, however--The Amazon's Guided Arrow travels somewhat
faster than the Necromancer's Bone Spirit.
at them. Hopefully you'll hit.
NOTE: See the Hackers section of the dueling chapter for some important
info on dueling Javelin Amazons. If, after checking that part out, you
First thing's first. Put a LOT of distance between you and the Zon.
Because once that Javelin connects with your sorceress, I can guarantee
an instant death, since like Bow Amazons, those javelins cause a
massive flinch when they hit. And since Javelin Amazons have immense
attack speed, your chances of survival are close to nothing--unless, of
Now most duelists aren't stupid. They know you are a blizzard
sorceress, and they aren't going to run directly at you. Therefore, you
are going to have to predict where they are going to be, and drop a
Another strategy, if you are the kamikaze type, is run right up to her,
blizzard her before she can jab you, then as she recovers, pump her
full of ice blasts, and hope she dies. This assumes she has crappy hit
This one has nothing to it, really. SvS mostly consists of teleporting
around like mad trying to avoid getting hit. This warning deserves to
Make sure you activate Energy Shield, and have a full belt of mana
Mainly the thing to do is to teleport madly around the map and drop
blizzards everywhere at random. Hope the sorceress manages to teleport
right into one. This is pretty much your only hope against other
blizzard sorceresses. Another thing to keep in mind with blizzard
sorceresses is that you should ALWAYS stay away from any blizzards;
even you think they are your own. The opposing sorceress may have
Fire sorceresses are a different story. Keep away from their fireballs,
as those are highly lethal. Teleport right past, drop a blizzard, run.
they even come CLOSE to you, you'll be severely injured, if not killed. So
be
Frozen Orb sorceresses are easy. If your sorceress is buff enough, you
can take a load of frozen orbs before you actually come close to dying.
Just run right into it, blizzard the hell out of her, and be done with
it. Make sure you don't get caught in the Orb's break point, and you
Lastly, Lightning. This should be really easy for sorceresses with
100% lightning damage; so all damage goes to mana. Isn't that nice?
You may come across some characters that are doing things not humanly
possible. Such things include Sorceresses dropping blizzards at an
alarming rate, some who have blizzards that drop automatically each
time the sorceress teleports, and sometimes, when you are about to kill
These can sometimes be attributed to hacks, or in the case of the
One hack I described earlier is probably responsible for the fast
casting of spells. Someone puts Blizzard on their left click and
Teleport on their right. There isn't an easy to tell who's abusing this
dirty trick; you'll have to be observant.
The next one is the chicken module, which has someone both open a
portal and return to town when hostility is expressed, life gets too
low, or some other condition. Instead of returning to town, the user
can also choose to exit the game. This is clearly a way of the person
covering their behind from a dueling loss. I would avoid dueling in
Another one that I have seen in action is known as TMC/FC. FC stands
for "far cast". I have no idea what TMC stands for.
What these hacks do is grant the user max cast speed and max hit
recovery, in the case of TMC. In the case of FC (Which is used by
almost all javelin amazons in hell), the user gets a far-ranged attack,
even with close-range weapons. All the person needs is for your little
What I'd do is refuse to duel with any javelin amazons. Most, if not
Another trick I've seen takes advantage of Energy Shield. I've noticed
that in town, sometimes, my energy shield will make that arcing effect
that indicates you are taking damage. In effect, my mana would begin
dropping at an alarming rate and not recover. My life, however,
remained untouched. I don't see this one in widespread use yet, but if
Yet another one that i've seen, and even been accused of using is the
aimer. This allows you to blizzard people two screens away, not even in
your field of vision. There's a legitimate technique that looks like
aimer, so you'll have to be observant.
Said technique is called the name lock. Try mousing over someone who's
hostile to you. You notice how their life bar shows? Well, if you hold
down the right mouse button (command-click for your Mac users out there),
you'll lock them, or your blizzards, as long as you hold down the
button, will continually cast over the person you locked until they
move far away. its hard to explain it, but it exists, and it is a
legitimate technique that is sometimes pegged as cheating. Don't
get me wrong, there ARE actually aimer programs which require no effort
The last and dirtiest trick I know of is the Baal Hack. This hack
allows those who have Expansion installed (But choose to play Classic
characters) to go to Act 5. This cannot be used directly against you,
Sometimes you may find yourself in a partied duel. These can get hairy
pretty quick as there are usually two or even three sets of enemies
against each other. Sometimes, two people may declare one person on
your side to be dangerous, and focus all their efforts on one person.
Sometimes, more than you'd like, that unlucky soul is you.
As far as putting together a good duel party, you will always want a
barbarian on your side with Battle Orders. This will boost your
I can't predict what characters are in your roster, or the opponent's,
-If things get too crazy for you to handle (Two people ganging up on
you), try to lure them toward a teammate for them to take down. Or if
you don't have any teammates alive, then try using the structures in
Blood Moor to your advantage. An example is to use a house to take down
a paladin in a Necro-Paladin vs. Sorc-Barbarian setup. The house will
shield you from the hordes of bone spirits while you work on the
paladin. Only when the Necro decides to move around a bit will he have
-An opportune time to grab a kill is when your opponent gets confused.
Say your opponent just dodged your teammate's whirlwind. There will be
some confusion on the opponent's part--a perfect time to pump a
-If you have a Necromancer on your team, have him use his bone walls to
choke up your opponents. Have him prison the other team and make them
People may use the acronym "PK" to refer to dueling. I use it, however, for
the act of killing someone who doesn't want to duel.
Sometimes this happens in Hell Chaos runs. Sometimes it'll happen in
Normal. It doesn't matter. You need to be prepared.
permanent. I'll offer some general advice in dealing with PK:
-If partied, stay together. Remember, "United they come, divided they
fall." If you stay apart, that enhances the chances of the PK being able to
They'll likely lag majorly, giving you a chance to deal some massive
However, most of the time, you aren't in a Blood Moor-type area, but rather
case scenario, and you'll be fine.
Assuming you have your Magic find gear, we can go magic finding. This
is the act of repeatedly killing bosses for Rare/unique items. The
Many only go for Andariel and Mephisto. In Nightmare and Normal, you
In my experience, however, I notice that in Hell difficulties, Andariel
gives significantly better finds than Mephisto does. Maybe its just
me, but that's what i've seen.
Before we begin seriously MF-ing, there are some critical points that
1. Teleportation. When you Teleport, be careful of packs of enemies.
Whenever you teleport into an enemy, walk away a bit, THEN Teleport.
Otherwise they will continually hit you, causing you to flinch, and
2. Because of reason 1, I'd invest a point into shiver armor. This will
causes enemies to flinch from hitting you instead of you flinching from
3. If you go to a populated game, I'd recommend staying unpartied and
not using town portals. Why? Some people hate MF-ers and will hunt them
4. In Populated games, difficulties are significantly higher because
the more people in a game, the higher the monster difficulty. Be
5. Have lots of patience and self-control. The first few times, you
will likely botch the run and die. It happens. Sooner or later, it
becomes natural, and you'll be magic finding like a pro.
6. It should go without saying, but be courteous. don't kill Andariel
when someone else needs the quest as well. Only kill bosses if everyone
8. There's a myth going around that says if you get Baron/Baroness
status, you will get lesser drops. Don't know if this is true, but it
wouldn't hurt to exercise caution.
Let's begin with the individual strategies for the bosses. (These can
also be applied somewhat to quest games, however, this guide assumes
In Normal and Nightmare, Andariel isn't much of a threat. She can be
slowed with cold, giving you even more of an advantage. Her poison
shouldn't hurt too badly, just be sure to stay out of her melee range.
Beware, however. The two poison attacks she has can stack, so you'll
(In hell, Andariel cannot be frozen, and her poison hurts immensely.
I'd recommend, as crappy as the item may be, holding on to a Venom Ward
Before you run up and get Andariel to begin giving chase, however, I'd
take care of all the riffraff in the area; The Dark Ones, Zombies, and
Misshappen's (The latter can really ruin your day).
When Andariel is chasing you, the best thing to do is run away while
spamming blizzards in her direction. You can also teleport around her
so she stays in one place trying to draw a bead on you, thus taking
In Normal, Andariel doesn't drop very good items. In Nightmare and
Hell, it depends. Some days she drops a lot of rare/unique items, and
some days she doesn't drop anything but gold.
NOTE: There's a new type of MF out there on battle.net that I should
cover called the "virgin Andariel killer". In a nutshell, this build is
rushed to Act 1 Hell, joins games that already have Andariel done, and
kills her. The effect is that Andariel's quest is never done. People
believe that if you don't do Andariel's quest and kill her, she drops 5
rare items on a constant basis. I haven't tested this, but that's what
I'm hearing.
Most people skip Duriel. On good days, though, Duriel drops some decent
stuff. I've gotten a Spectral Shard and Frostburns off of him once.
Best way to tackle him is to keep a distance. His cold aura will drain
your mana quick if you are using energy shield. If you aren't using a
Hawkmail, you'll also have to deal with the effects of cold, so running
(*- I should mention that while you are getting pummeled by the cold
aura, Teleport is totally broken. don't try it if you are too close.)
Handle Duriel like you handled Andariel. Just don't get too close, as
that aura is painful. By the way, Duriel has no ranged attacks. So keep
your distance, and it'll be hard for him to hit you.
First off, you'll want to go around to the left or right of the area.
Take out all the council members in the area. If you decide to take the
Once that's done, here's what you do. You know that bloody river that
separates you from the red portal in this room? You get Mephisto to
give chase, and then you teleport to the other side of the bloody
However, he still has ranged attacks. Move away until you can barely
see him in the corner of your screen. At this point, he should just
squirm in position, and cannot attack you or get you at all. From here
on, it's an easy, safe kill.
Before you get to fight Diablo, you have to deal with his three little
buddies: The Grand Vizier of Chaos, Lord De Seis, and Infector of
Souls. It goes without saying, but that's because I'm saying it: Don't
Lord De Seis should be your main worry. There's a chance in every game
that he will be immune to cold, thus screwing you up. Unless you have a
friend that can take care of him, you'll have to make a new game.
Once the Three are taken care of, Diablo pops out. Best way to pump
some pre-emptive blizzards/orbs into him is to teleport back to the center
over the center and you'll get a few hits in before he's able to move
Diablo has three ranged attacks: a lightning inferno (hurts a lot, even
in Nightmare), a fire wall (weak) and lastly, sends a ton of flames
creeping towards you (also weak). Get too close and he'll backhand you,
The rule of the thumb here is to just keep moving. You don't need to
attacks. When you see a break in his pattern, stop and drop a blizzard/orb
on him. The only reason you should get within melee range is to use
Okay, here's the deal.
I don't mind if you use this guide on your website one iota. But I do
ask that you at least email me and tell me where it is that it's going
to be posted. That's all I ask.
I do ask also that you do not take sections of this guide out and mash
them together with other guides. If you want a section, just take the
And if you use this guide on your site, it is YOUR responsibility, not
my own, to keep tabs on the updates. I will post my latest revision to
GameFAQs, so that will be where you can get the latest and greatest. If
I get complaints that a site is using an outdated version of my guide,
And lastly, I believe in credit where credit's due, meaning do not say
you wrote this guide when you didn't. I am the original writer--please
If you wish to contact me about updates, corrections or anything,
Things I'd like to see are new dueling techniques I haven't discovered,
And I ask that you email me with somewhat good grammar. I don't want
messages that look like "hey u liek teh game lolz". I appreciate a
Also. Yes-I have GTalk. Don't message me unless you have something you need
to say. I appreciate "Your guide rules!" messages every so often. But I
don't really have time for small talk...sorry.
And I'd like to part with a nice thank you to you, the reader, for
reading this guide, Death_Angel01, tiger_lotus, and a few others on
