for this build you might consider only one row of full rejuvs, a row of super health pots and a row of antidote pots to counteract slow poison or remove faster/longer poisons. 4 full rejuvs are usually enough for emergencies and antidotes and super health make poison so much less of a headache.

I honestly loved this build for my first sorc on D2R. I have been rocking it for a while on my non ladder softcore and loving it. It does certainly sacrifice kill speed but as someone who has been slowly coming back into playing im not as worried about kill speed vs not dying every 30 seconds

Honestly I'm glad to see someone actually use an orb sorc with energy shield. it's always been my go to build, with the extra points left over it easily allows you to dual element and not hurt your cold ability. Though I've always ran the standard spirit, I can definitly see this being a good build.

This setup is extremely realistic. I didn't know about the shield tho! So ty Phil!

Finally some1 gives a shoutout to this shield <3 ive used it alot for HC extreme tankiness D2 legacy.

btw poison length reduced by % is a really nice quality of life stat for ES sorcs since poison bypasses ES and is one of the most annoying types of damage for this build

U can also find a something circlet of mechanics that gives 3 sockets and damage reduced, then rune it out for more dmg reduce

Very interesting video.

We used to do this way back in the day 22 years ago for pvp. However it was with a shaftstop body, string of ears belt, occy, stormshield, shako or vamp gaze, all socketed with um for resists and bulkath and stone of jordan.

I use this on build on hardcore with prayer instead. Delirium and gloom for merc, no life steal but its good.

For this build, I'd suggest using Silkweave boots for the 10% mana and 5 mana per kill. I do this for my nova sorc and it works great.

I go warmth with Blaze, i like what you did with flat rate, will try. Blaze you got to run a lot and close to enemies. You good have a few antidote potions stacked to offset the poison.

This amulet is actually sick.

If you're using Lidless on the switch, for a skill board, you could also get away with Sigon's, since it also has a All Skills mod.

Consider some options here. A Prayer A2 Merc will regen your HP to offset the need to potion. It's a fixed amount, but at high levels that small amount will pretty much fill up your need to pot. Another thing about ES is that you are sacrificing 40 points, so synergy does get lost. I would only consider Orb or other niche builds, but Blizzard is a terrible choice for ES.

Gerke's Sanctuary is actually an amazing shield especially for HC.

Great video break down...very informative..

When I used to play d2, this was always one of my ladder starters

Definitely read that as "invisible" and I was waiting to see when that came into play until you said invincible 😂

This was my first ladder build almost accidentally, dropped Occy, Shako, Vipermagi, and Gerke's all in the same weekend. Went straight for the new Nova synergy, and I absolutely love this character. The Sol runes are totally awesome, I socketed one in a Gladiator's Bane body armor to get even more insane Damage Reduction. It's a really sick body armor for the immortality factor, however, I think getting at least 75% FCR is almost necessary for the grind factor. Isting a Suicide Branch or using a HoTo can help balance the FCR/MF tradeoff like you mentioned. :)