Google is still my hero. I also now have a level 27 sorc who has… - F*cking with Clusters

You're still in Normal, yes?

Pretty much anything more effective than naked potion-tossing will get you most of the way to Diablo in Normal, and I'm not completely ruling that out, either.

But yes, reportedly charged bolt is a viable skill.

It'll start to suck in Hell, and there's this nasty period after it's maxed and you can't get lightning mastery yet where it's underpowered, and it's pretty dependent on +skills, but if you've got the equipment and charms, it's lots of fun. I'd have stopped after 1 point in warmth, though, since you'll need something like +10-15 skills to be sort of viable after nightmare.

And yeah, I'm waiting around until 1.10 to start new characters as well. Right now I tend to only play my frenzy barb on USEast with the daggers. Unfortunately, the name "Norman Bates" was already taken. Go figure.

I'm not going to max it: I'm probably just going to save the points for mastery (distributed between lightning and fire, because I've got Fire Wall on the staff now ).

I'm not starting any BNet characters until 1.10 either (mostly because the previous crop got wiped from not logging in enough). Depending of the skill tweeks, the next character I want to try is a singing barbarian...

Hmm..I've got characters that haven't been played in about a year that didn't disappear. Odd.

I happen to use Blizzard with Charged Bolt myself, so that I can at least do some damage. Lightning enchanted bosses suck slightly less when you have Blizzard than Fire Wall. Very slightly. Sticking Blackhorn's Face and some other lightning resist gear on a merc might make firewall usable.

Singing barbs are even more painful than sparkler sorcs. My Frenzy barb has maxed war cry with a few war cry charms, and I wouldn't even think about trying to use it to kill anything past nightmare. Maybe if I optimized with dual wizardspikes and a shitload of mana, I could sort of kill things, but it's significantly faster to pound on them with a pair of daggers at mach 3. Oh, and if you're really planning to do it, do it offline. The lag makes war cry a bunch of crap.

Yes, I did play and study this game way too much at one point. I told you Michigan was boring.

My only advice is not to waste any more points in Warmth . . . 10 is more than sufficient to carry you through Hell, provided you get better equipment along the way (which you will).

Charged bolt is a viable skill, so you might as well keep pumping it. You'll want to pick up a skill on one of the other trees eventually; I personally like three tree builds, but other people are fans of two tree builds.

Not if Greg keeps filching it all ^_^. Anyone else notice a strong inverse correlation between grabbiness IRL and in games?

bellwethr and I have started playing Diablo again as well. I have a level 44 'zon -- but I really want to wait until 1.10 comes out (you have to start a new character if you want all the cool new stuff)! Kevin's sorc is a lightening/fire sorc, and it seems to work really well.

I think that's what I'm going to end up as.. well, a Charged Bolt - Firewall sorc anyways, since my staff gives me 2 points in that, and my dummy goes around with ice arrows.

Are you guys playing open or Battlenet? If everyone on the planet is starting new characters as soon as 1.10 comes out, it sounds like a good time to get big parties together.

oh man, I'm gonna have to start up D2 again in that case..