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Sorcerer

1,867 bytes added, 12:41, 1 March 2009
Battle vs. Artillery
===Battle vs. Artillery===
The core debate about Sorcerer play style is Artillery vs. Battle.
====Battle Mages ====
Battle Mages play almost the same way as Arty mages, but they wear heavy plate armor and use one handed weapons and shields. This means their +spell equipment is generally limited to a Dreamflange, and perhaps a [[D1_Unique_Helms#Thinking_Cap|Thinking Cap]], if they choose that instead of a [[D1_Unique_Helms#Royal_Circlet|Royal Circlet]], giving them, at most, +3 to all spells. They might use a KSoH or Civerb's Cudgel instead of a Dreamflange, especially on levels with triple immune monsters.
====Arty Mages====
Artillery mages generally eschew heavy plate armor and shields, and prefer to go with [[D1_Unique_Armor#Naj.27s_Light_Plate|Naj's Light Plate]] and AA staves (Arch Angel's = +2 to spell levels). Those items give them +3 to spells, and if they go with a [[D1_Unique_Helms#Thinking_Cap|Thinking Cap]] as well, they're at the maximum +5 to skills and capable of devastating any non-fireproof enemy with their massive level 20 Fireballs. Other equipment usually focuses on very high mana, turning these characters into the prototypical "glass cannons."
Arty mages are capable of dealing enormous damage very quickly, but with their negligible Armor Class and lack of a shield, anything that gets near them will hit them. They can be stun locked very easily, and death is always possible from a couple of fast hitting enemies. They are also weak against triple immunes, since staffs do poor melee damage.
 
 
====Naked Mages====
 
A subset of the artillery mages are naked mages. In a concession to how overpowered the character is in Diablo, players looking for a greater challenge started playing mages without wearing any equipment at all. There's nothing that says such a mage must play in artillery style, but it's foolish and inefficient not to, since without any armor on, every monster that gets off a swing will land a hit. Naked mages pick up items and sell them in town, since they need gold to buy potions, and they might [[mule]] items to other characters as well, but they don't use anything they find.
 
Naked mages never equip any items; some players make an allowance for "reading glasses", items equipped solely to increase the magic to allow books to be read, but purists frown upon this practice. There is one exception; it's convenient to equip some sort of weapon simply to keep the sorcerer from picking up and equipping every item you click on. One trick to this is to put on a ring or amulet that raises your strength enough to equip a weapon you could not otherwise use. Then when you remove the jewelry the weapon will stay in your equipment slot; unusable, but preventing you from picking anything else up.
 
=====Beyond Naked Mages=====
 
The most fanatical players go for this variant. BNMs use equipment, but only equipment with negative stats. Plenty of items in Diablo and Hellfire have -stats, lowering attributes, mana, hit points, etc, and these are what BNMs use. Whether your character must equip every such item found, or just one or two, varies depending on how purist a rule set you follow. In any event, the end result of using cursed equipment is lower mana, since there are no mods in Diablo or Hellfire that change casting speed, lower spell levels, etc, so all a BNM is doing to himself is lowering his attributes, mana, and hit points.
===Higher Level Tactics===
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