Uber Tristram Question

[cour de mal]

A friend and I are planning to do our first Uber run in a few days and I was wondering what the best strategy was for us. I am using a fully geared bone necro (lvl 41 bone spear + synergies, lvl 18 curses) and he is using a pretty well decked out whirlybarb. We killed the mini-ubers with relative ease (lillith took a while but we did her without too much trouble), but the last thing we want to do is to tackle uber tristram and find we are completely unprepared for the challenge. He also has a 1pt smiter, but the smiter has crap for gear except for exile, so we're not sure that will be a better option than the barb. Other than the necro I have a fairly decent frenzy barb and a meteorb sorc, but both of them have pretty crap gear, so they are not nearly as effective even in normal hell mode (made them both when I really didn't know what I was doing.) What thoughts do you guys have as to the best combination of these characters? Should we hold off for a while and get better gear for his smiter, or go ahead with our current builds?

[BobTheWarrior]

I think it'll be a challenge for you with the whirlybarb. Is he wearing dracs or some other source of life tap? The generic formula for doing the ubers is Life Tap + Crushing Blow = win, as long as you can connect with your attacks and live until life tap proc's.

Consequently, your bone necro may not be of much help/use, other than to keep the heat off the barb until he can drop the uber. I'm not an expert by any means, but I figure with enough skill and some specific gear, just about any class can uber. I've read threads about summoners, bowazons, several types of barbs, druids, and of course pally's doing the ubers.

If your necro has revive, spawn a game with Urdars in either Durance 2 or River of Flame (or in the palace cellar, but that can be annoying) and revive as many as you can then high-tail it to uberville before they expire. They're sturdy enough to take on meph and can deliver crushing blows.

The 1-pt smiter sounds like he could do it, if you have Exile you have a source of life-tap, just fill up on juvies before you enter and chug them until LT procs. If you're doing moderate physical damage and have somewhat decent life (1k+), and any source of crushing blow (Heavan's light, gores/goblins are good sources) you should be able to smite them.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

[cour de mal]

I'm in the process of building a Zealot/smite pally, but it'll be a while. I also have a summoner, but he is only about half built (lvl65 poor gear) and I rarely use him. Is he maybe a better option?

I love playing my bone necro, but if he's useless in uber trist maybe I should shelve him for this mission unless he's useful for support casting/keeping minions off my friend while he whacks the ubers. Sad about his limited usefulness though.

[BobTheWarrior]

I have no idea how well a bone necro can fare against mephs minions, but one possibility for you to be of assistance is to be the target for the minions spawn.

The last person to join the game becomes the 'target'. When you activate one of the ubers, they will begin spawning their own type of minion on the target (skelemages for meph; pit lords for diablo; spectre's and for baal; and someone spawns ghoul-lords, but I don't know who).

So, if you think you can handle taking out the spawns, here's what you do:
Both of you go in the portal, head straight north. You stop and stand there just north of the portal, in the open space. Your buddy runs around counter-clockwise and spawns meph. Once meph is spawned, you'll have skele-mages appearing from the ground all around you, but there will be no minions spawning near your friend who is then free to engage meph solo. Same thing for diablo and baal.

One caveat is that I think the pit-lords that diablo spawns are magic immune, so that might not work.

I've used this method with my hammerdin and a friends smiter. I stand there and spin hammers while he runs around and spawns/engages/kills meph. I can't tank the pit lords, so I leave before he spawns Diablo. Meph's aura is the big issue, so helping him out by taking on the spawns is useful.

[cour de mal]

Would it be, perhaps, more effective to use my frenzy barb for crowd control and back-up muscle while my friend smites the ubers? My barb is lvl85. I made some decisions while building him that I wouldn't now, so he doesn't have as much health as I might like (1100 I think) and he has few points in warcries, pretty much everything is in Frenzy, Double-swing, mace mastery, ironskin, natural resist and pre-reqs. He's reasonably well built but not without his flaws. As far as equipment he has good weapons (Famine and Baranar's Star), but his armor/charms are all standard drops. I could maybe move my Enigma, mara, and shako over from my necro, or I could use the leviathan from my necro's merc in order to strengthen him. Could also move the resist charms from my necro to boost his resists to hell max.

Am I putting too much worry into this, or are these thoughts reasonable precautions?

[Doppel]

I think you gonna die, no offense intended.