Advice / tips for a 1st sorceress?

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I'm trying out the Sorceress for the 2nd time. I tried her years ago but never played her much. My least favorite class unfortunately. So I've decided to give her a go. Anyone have any advice or tips for playing my 1st good try?
I have the Cathan's set thanks to dmc, so I have some good starting equipment.

 

Agreed, if you can spare the gear required a lightning sorceress is by far the most efficient killer of the builds since so many of it's skills synergise.
Otherwise if you go cold or fire you're probably going to want both of them at least in some capacity because you will be running into monsters that are immune to cold and fire in hell difficulty.
A meteorber is not bad, Frozen orb is usually seen as the cold skill with the least point investment necessary to make it decently powerful, leaving you with plenty of points to put in the meteor skill.
frozen orb + fireball can also be used as a combo instead.
I used to run a full tal rasha set sorc with orb+fireball that worked pretty allright.

 

Is there a melee build for a Sorc? I'm usually a up front and personal guy but I love spells too.

 

It is possible to make an Enchantress (a melee sorc using the enchant skill), but iirc it has prettu specific gear requirements and you will need a lot of high runes.

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Yeah, it *can* be done by making an enchantress.

you'll want to pump 20 in warmth (synergy and mana regen) and enchant for a ton of damage.
and 20 in telekinesis (synergy) and energy shield for survivability (makes % damage go to your mana pool instead, so you'll want to put points in energy.)
any leftover points you can spend in getting one of the ice shields.

Equipment wise, you will want to use the "Passion" runeword in a phase blade - it will give you access to the paladin's zeal skill, so you're not just stuck with regular melee attacks.
It's the cheaper option here, but works wonderfully well.
a phase blade with the "Destruction" runeword is also an option, but requires a ton of high runes to make (including a Jah and a Ber, and if you have those you'll probably want to use them to make an enigma instead.)

since the damage% that goes to mana from energy shield caps at 75% (+skills don't help here) you want to reduce the portion that is left, which you can do in the following way :
- use a monarch shield socketed with 4 ith runes (15% damage to mana x 4 for 60%)
-use a circlet with 3 ith runes (again 15% damage to mana x 3 = 45%)
- finally, find or trade for a Verdungo's Hearty Cord - it gives a good boost to vitality and life regen, but most importantly another Damage Reduced By 10-15%
This should make it so you take only a small% of the damage you take to your actual health, while most of it goes to your mana. (which will regen like crazy with warmth - but be sure to carry mana pots as well.)

The one biggest weakness here are enemies with the mana draining modifier - if you don't have mana to soak the damage, it will all go to your health instead.

A variation that works great here : getting the dream runeword in a shield + helm (quite expensive thouhgh at Io + Jah + Pul) for 2 x lvl 15 holy shock aura (they stack if you have it in both your helm and shield), then pumping 20 points in lightning mastery to boost it's damage and carrying an inventory full of +1 to lightning skill grand charms.
if you go this route you can wait with levelling up enchant all the way untill you've got 20 in lightning mastery.

other items :
Guillaume's Face is a good helmet to have for it's crushing blow chance%, if you are super-rich you can consider getting a 2nd dream runeword in a demonhead helm.
Dracul's grasp gloves for the chance of open wounds and life tap
Gore rider boots, for even more %chance of open wounds and crushing blow
Raven frost ring - you NEED the cannot be frozen mod especially as a melee sorc. if you are frozen you are not zealing, so you arn't leaching and replenishing your mana pool. getting frozen can be deadly if in the middle of a monster pack.
Amulet - either cresent moon for it's 15% mana leeched on hit, or Highlord's Wrath for it's +1 to all skills, +20% attack speed and it's % deadly strike chance. While highlord's wrath sounds like the better option, i prefer crecent moon, as it makes it really easy to keep my mana pool topped up even when taking a lot of damage.
and of course, if you can get them - an annihilus and sorceress torch.
The Fortitude runeword (El + Sol + Dol + Lo) in a body armor is pretty great - ton of resists, and +300% damage (yes, even if you make it in armor.) and again, it has the damage taken goes to mana modifier (12%)

 

All-in-all though it isn't really a viable solution if you're just starting out. Which I'm getting the impression that you are.

I'd like to second the Meteorb. Start with the fire tree and make yourself a Leaf staff (runeword, ral+tir iirc).

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Well, unless you are going with the build that uses dream (sigle or dual) it doesnt cost too much - passion is quite a cheap runeword, dol being the highest runes in it (#14) - and you can probably find that one pretty fast by running countess in nm/hell. the rest will drop even from normal countess runs.
Same with the Ith runes, even normal countess will drop them.

as far as the rest of the gear goes, they're all either set/unique items with not too terrible drop rates - mephisto running for a while should get you there, the draculs grasp and raven frost ring are probably the hardest ones to get a hold of there.

Not somethign to do as your very first character, sure - but he could allways level as a fireball/orb sorceress, and save one of the free respecs for when he does have all the gear completed.

 

Will I or my helper take damage if I target the area I am in? Then I might not have to worry about them running around when I cast it?

Targeting with meteor that is. Sorry forgot the spell mention.

 

There is no friendly fire in Diablo 2, so no ☺.

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Is there a way to increase a belts size? I would love to "upgrade" the Death's Guard Sash.
Also what will the "socketing quest" allow you to socket? Can you do magic or set items? Or does the item have to be vanilla?

Thanks olimikrig

 

Unfortunately there is no way to increase the amount of slots on a given belt.

And yes you can have lazurk socket any item (as long ad it is socketable; i.e. no belts and such) , although anything short of a standard item (be it ethereal or not) will only recieve a single socket as far as I recall (magic might get 2).

People usually use this quest to add sockets to their end-game uniques

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