Kicksin Uber Baal problem - mana draining minions?

[Tkennan]

Just did my first Uber run as a kicksin. Meph and Diablo were cake, but I had a ton of trouble dealing with Baal's mana draining minions - it seemed I was always out of mana for kicks. I only had 4% mana leech, but I'm not sure that that was the problem.

Eventually, I backed him into a house and managed to minimize the number of Wraiths hitting me, allowing me to kill him. Is there any other way to deal with this? Any advice is appreciated.

[zejive]

Just did my first Uber run as a kicksin. Meph and Diablo were cake, but I had a ton of trouble dealing with Baal's mana draining minions - it seemed I was always out of mana for kicks. I only had 4% mana leech, but I'm not sure that that was the problem.

Eventually, I backed him into a house and managed to minimize the number of Wraiths hitting me, allowing me to kill him. Is there any other way to deal with this? Any advice is appreciated.

I have 12 points invested in mindblast....19 with gears. My shadow master becomes a mindblast machine. I will be in the pack of minions with baal/diablo....my master will constantly mindblast the entire pack. If she decides to come running in to join the fun, recast her away. Although occasional mana burn from minions or mana rift will happen, MB from master or yourself can still take alot of heat of you.

[TTTimo]

I sometimes have that problem with my smiter, the wraiths and baals manaburn fire can be very annoying as baal himself is a pushover.. My advice is to drink a mana pot everytime you see your mana dropping..

[Zalcitabine]

You can use a Lawbringer phase if you have enough crushing blow and open wounds from the rest of your gear. The aura will kick back all the undead minions.

Azurewrath has the sanctuary too but not the very cool 20% chance to cast decrepify on striking.

[Flayed One]

Simply use mana pots. not rejuvs, but mana pots. those mana burn wraiths will drain your mana bulb in one hit, so there is no need to use rejuvs - your bulb will be empty again very soon. If you use mana pots on the other hand, your bulb will keep refilling for a while allowing you to attack continously.

I used two rows of rejuvs, and 2 rows of mana pots on my ubering fend/jabberzon and it worked well.

[wizAdept]

A tactic I use is to casting mb on top of me/baal, as long as there is something else converted near you that should draw away the attention of the manaleeching specters, keep mbing every few seconds to to convert another monster or two as the previous convert fades.


I haven't tried a lawbringer in trist, but it should do the trick. The only concern is that decrept will override lifetap on baal, which you may not want. On the other hand decrept will reduce physical resistance and since the ubers have posistive phsycial resists, it will increase the damage of cb.

I don't have one handy to try doing ubers with, but it sounds like a good idea.
The only concern is having enough cb without the weapon slot.

Personally I use stormlash one hand and azurewrath the other on my K/T (built for soloing hell, not specifically ubers, although it can solo them) and buff BO before doing trist. When going up against baal I'll be on stormlash while kicking him for more cb%, but I'll flash azure aura every once in a while to kb everything around me, as well as using azureside for kicking specters and vampires.

Lawbringer should do the trick just as well in uber trist.
Or you can just use mb and ignore the monsters altogether, going with a high cb% high ar build, and just keep kicking baal to death.

Remember when killing ubers with a kicksin, it's not a smiter, you do not land every hit, for this reason a kicksin made specifically for killing ubers should be built with high ar.

[Silent Shaddow]

get some damage to mana mods
problem solved:wave:

i exagerate but my point stands