View Full Version : (Too) Uber D
Hi everyone,
Well Uber D finally spawned on one of my solo Ladder games... maybe my memory is going, but I don't remember him having been so hard to kill.
I tried first with a Level 77 Plague Javazon, then a Level 85 Summoner Necromancer, then with the Javazon and a Level 82 Sorceress. Here are some odd things that I noticed:
(1.) Unlike regular Diablo he is basically immune to Static Field. I was right in his face (not a terribly smart thing to do with ~50% Fire Resist, but had to try it) and spammed it several times and it did virtually no damage to him.
(2.) He is also basically immune to Lower Resist. Neither the Necro's many elemental attackers, nor the Sorceress (via LR wand), could so much as scratch him, even if cursed with LR. It doesn't seem to help either Plague Javelin or Lightening Fury (the Javazon was not brave enough to use CS), either.
(3.) His fire breath fries a partly synergized Fire Golem (3467 hit points, 71% Fire Absorb) in one shot. Skeletons and Mages go in about three seconds. Oddly, Revives (particularly Revives that are natively either Fire or Lightening Immune) only get killed slowly, but they can't hit him and do virtually no damage to him (note: unluckily, there were no Urdars, Blunderbores, etc., to Revive, anywhere in the game).
(4.) He was hit repeatedly by mercenaries with various combinations of Crushing Blow and Open Wounds, but again, sustained almost no damage. I know that there is a substantial penalty for this kind of thing and that he has 50% PDR, but come on, he gets hit 5 or 6 times with a Hone Sundan and doesn't even get hurt? :banghead:
The annoying thing about this is, I have killed him many times with Paladins (Smite + CB, of course) and although you do have to have good resists, a reasonable amount of life, decent blocking and you have to keep your eye on the red bulb and your finger on the rejuve keys, I don't remember it ever having been this hard. Has Blizzard maybe upped his statistics without telling anyone?
Has anybody killed Uber D with non-Smiter characters in the Level 75-85 range with normal gear? (By "normal" I mean, "things that you can reasonably find yourself, without having to trade for them". Please don't reply by saying, "...Whats the problem u n00b, my sorc with perf torch, perf Death Fathom + 8 cold skillers + perf Ormus' + merc with Infinity gets him in 2 secs hehe...".) I was able to kill him (off-Ladder) with both a Maul Werebear and an IK Barbarian but it was somewhat more difficult than with the Paladin. He is a Level 110 monster, of course, but it's kind of frustrating to have played D2 as long as I have and not be able to do any damage to him at all.
Anyway, so much for my first Anni. :no: I guess I gotta get that Paladin of mine, currently in his early 60s in Nightmare Act 5, into Hell...
Cheers
Mr. Bill
HanShotFirst
30-01-2009, 05:55
Well, I killed Uber D in the opening week of this ladder with my bone necro (using revives). There's no doubt that it would have been all but impossible for me to kill Uber D with a bone necro without Urdars . . . the merc was more or less untwinked and had no CB. Concerning point 4, I was certainly under the impression that CB worked on Uber D (and seem to remember actually seeing it in action), I'm sure someone will quickly correct me if I'm wrong.
(Sorry to hear there were no Urdar type beasties . . . that would have worked great)
They haven't increased his difficulty as far as I can tell.
Killed him not long ago with an untwinked Javazon that I tossed a Fleshripper on (fell from Baal maybe 15 mins before he walked)
Have also successfully killed him with the Conviction Zealot from a CTA run, though he did have 1 point smite and a pair of goblin toes so that's a bit cookie cutter even if he was crazy ghetto-ed out.
I've only seen him ONCE since Blizzard released him. This is unfair. Sorry about the loss of that anni, was there no way to get someone to help you?
Sorry about the loss of that anni, was there no way to get someone to help you?
That was my thought as well MrBill...ask any of us, we will help! I can't, as i'm Europe and you are quite clearly Canada-based, but yeah, bananas are nice and not just the fruit!
Relativity
31-01-2009, 00:54
Uber D is extremely hard to kill without prevent monster heal, open wounds, or crushing blow, which you would probably rely on your merc for. Without them, he regenerates farrrrr too fast.
Uber D is extremely hard to kill without prevent monster heal, open wounds, or crushing blow, which you would probably rely on your merc for. Without them, he regenerates farrrrr too fast.
Well, for the record, the Necro's Act 1 merc does have a bit of OW (via an upped Boneflesh body armor), but the problem there is (a) it's only 25% OW anyway, (b) OW is nerfed for ranged attacks, (c) OW is nerfed again if on a mercenary, and (d) last but not least, this particular merc only has about 47% fire and lightening resist and she gets roasted in no more than 2 or 3 seconds if anywhere within a Line of Sight of Uber D. As I mentioned, the Javazon's merc does have CB via Hone Sundan, but here too, he doesn't last long enough to get even one or two pokes in... and that's with 75% across-the-board resists (Duriel's Shell and a decent hat), by the way.
I appreciate the offers of help, but the problem is that I play all of my Realm games with a private password that I am unwilling to reveal to anyone who I don't know personally, and even if I were to reveal the password (I'd obviously have to change it then), while I suppose I sort of trust all the people on this board (I'd like to play with you guys, using a character that I can afford to lose, rather than one of my only three Hell-level characters on this Ladder season, for a while before risking one of my irreplaceable characters), the problem that I have had in the past is that I can't prevent you from "inviting a friend, don't worry, dood, he's OK".
It's never happened to me, but I have heard a number of stories of people being TPPKed like that -- apparently some griefer clans use this trick extensively, they get a "friendly" player to gain your trust, they "invite" a "trustworthy" friend, then the "friend" TPPKs you, and the "friendly" player then "apologizes" to you while he's laughing himself to death on the chat channel in the other desktop window.
A small gold charm ain't worth it, I'm afraid. But thanks to everyone who offered.
Cheers
Mr. Bill
Well, for the record, the Necro's Act 1 merc does have a bit of OW (via an upped Boneflesh body armor), but the problem there is (a) it's only 25% OW anyway, (b) OW is nerfed for ranged attacks, (c) OW is nerfed again if on a mercenary, and (d) last but not least, this particular merc only has about 47% fire and lightening resist and she gets roasted in no more than 2 or 3 seconds if anywhere within a Line of Sight of Uber D. As I mentioned, the Javazon's merc does have CB via Hone Sundan, but here too, he doesn't last long enough to get even one or two pokes in... and that's with 75% across-the-board resists (Duriel's Shell and a decent hat), by the way.
Cheers
Mr. Bill
OW isn't nerfed against mercenaries or ranged attacks at all. Clvl is all that makes a difference in the damage it does. Even then, it wouldn't matter, you're after the anti-regen effect.
If you merc can't apply it, though, you're up the creek.
The Javazon via CS would have been an excellent choice for taking him down.
Not sure what the deal with static was. Last time I tanked and static'd Diablo Clone down to ~50-55% and then managed to orb him down to around 20%.
I had two people join with their orb sorcs and we took him out easy peasy.
I appreciate the offers of help, but the problem is that I play all of my Realm games with a private password that I am unwilling to reveal to anyone who I don't know personally, and even if I were to reveal the password (I'd obviously have to change it then), while I suppose I sort of trust all the people on this board (I'd like to play with you guys, using a character that I can afford to lose, rather than one of my only three Hell-level characters on this Ladder season, for a while before risking one of my irreplaceable characters), the problem that I have had in the past is that I can't prevent you from "inviting a friend, don't worry, dood, he's OK".
It's never happened to me, but I have heard a number of stories of people being TPPKed like that -- apparently some griefer clans use this trick extensively, they get a "friendly" player to gain your trust, they "invite" a "trustworthy" friend, then the "friend" TPPKs you, and the "friendly" player then "apologizes" to you while he's laughing himself to death on the chat channel in the other desktop window.
A small gold charm ain't worth it, I'm afraid. But thanks to everyone who offered.
Cheers
Mr. Bill
Riiiiight, I'm gonna have to stick my schnoz in this thread and go ahead and ask you to take the paranoia down a notch. Mmmmkay?
On a more serious note: Have you even played with any members who frequent this board? This board is actually quite an enclave of safe players. Your implications are dubious and brash. Don't whine about the wine until you've tasted it.
A note for the future Bill, any character with a fast melee attack can be geared in a couple minutes to do DClone.
Javazon with 1 point jab can toss on any source of Crushing Blow and as long as she has max res/juvs it's a fairly straightforward fight. You will have to mule on a bit of AR gear (Angelic jewelry was enough for me) Same goes for any paladin as they'll have one point smite, melee assassins, shifter druids and barbs. Probably the only character I wouldn't suggest trying to kill him with early on is a Sorceress (though the necro is dependent on CB minions which you stated you didn't have access to)
If you are going to play strictly solo and won't have the ability to mule the options get smaller, though in most situations you'll have time to get on your wife's computer with a second copy and work something out. You can also take precautions by leaving a Crushflange in a characters stash alongside a wand with Life Tap charges. Heck you could even toss on Chant prebuff from Demon Limb if you don't feel safe switching much gear to cover your AR needs.
Hope that helps a bit for the next time you find yourself in this situation.
Cheers
-Tai
P.S. Don't listen to Cars. We will ALL tppk you if you give us half a chance
A note for the future Bill, any character with a fast melee attack can be geared in a couple minutes to do DClone.<snip>
Thanks for the advice... there are however a few other constraints that I didn't mention:
(1.) This all happened at about 11:45 p.m. on a week-night in which I had to get up early the next day for w-o-r-k. As much as I'd love to do nothing but play Diablo all day ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H do all that housework that my wife wants me to catch up on, at my decrepit age, sleep is a commodity that I really can't compromise on.
(2.) Certainly I could have posted a "OMG pls come help me" message on this board, but the problem then is that I would have had to post the game name and password too, I think you can easily see why that route wouldn't be advisable. The two computers involved here are physically on different levels of my house (networked by Wi-Fi), so I couldn't pop one of them into the Chat Channel and monitor it for messages being typed by other xbananax type folk.
(3.) Am I paranoid? You're damn right I am. That's why I haven't lost a character to TPPK, hacks or cheats, in over four years now.
In this context you have to understand that xbananax etc. is basically a reputation-based co-operative gaming group -- and that's great as far as it goes, I have nothing bad to say about it -- but it lacks mechanisms like they have at Amazon Basin, which is an elaborate (and very complex and maintenance-intensive!) system of password-protected games, with a separate way of preventing uninvited, non-approved players from joining AB games without permission. (As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a lot of other things about the AB guild that are oppressively unwarranted, but this particular aspect of it works very well.)
The reputation-based vetting system that you guys have here probably works fine within its limits, and I may well join one of your games one of these days, but as I said I would prefer doing that with an "expendable" character.
Remember, like Benjamin the donkey said in Animal Farm (when asked by the other animals, "why don't you ever complain about the abuse we're getting around here"): "Donkeys live a long time. You've never seen a dead donkey."
Just consider me a paranoid old as^H^H donkey.
(4.) Regarding the specific option of melee'ing with the Javazon, there were a number of other constraints on her.
First of all, her resists weren't all 75 (about 16 against Poison and only about 50 against Fire) -- she got "hosed" a couple of times and lost about 40% of her ~945 hit points per shot; I don't consider that a safe risk to take considering that the character also has only about 45-50% blocking (via a Rhyme shield) and no way of Teleporting out of an Uber Diablo Bone Prison.
Her belt is an standard Nightsmoke, meaning that she would probably run out of purple happy pills before the battle would be over. Other than for a 14.5K Plague Javelin she has no way of shutting off Uber D's regeneration (remember he has 90% Poison resist). Since the merc always goes down in the first second and the Valkyrie (Level 25 with prebuff) only lasts about 4 to 5 seconds longer, this character would have been fighting totally alone, and I don't feel like losing my one and only ethereal Titan's (self-found! :jig:) which she is currently using. In Softcore I probably would have tried it; in Hardcore it's just too much of a risk, methinks. :nervous:
I do have a few OW / CB weapons muled, but these are all on Normal difficulty mules and the logistics of setting up Normal difficulty games and then moving mules in and out of them to get the right stuff on this character wouldn't have been worth the effort, considering the possibility that Battle.Net, in its infinite wisdom, would probably have temp banned me halfway through the process.
[Technical Note: One other thing that affects me is that all these games are under Ubuntu Linux using the WINE Windows compatibility layer emulator. Being a nice paranoid person, all my computers also have the Linux iptables firewall enabled, via the Firestarter front-end to iptables.
While this setup does work fine with Diablo over Battle.Net -- if you open the necessary TCP/UDP ports within Firestarter -- it also imposes some strange side-effects.
The one that's relevant here is, if you (a) log in to your Battle.Net account, (b) select a character, (c) set up a Realm game and play for a while, then (d) exit that game and select another character, Battle.Net consistently hangs your character and you always get errors like "Cannot Join Game". But if you then (e) log out of that account, (f) log back in again and then (g) repeat steps (b) and (c), it works fine.
The upshot of this is, it makes muling more complicated, because you have to log out and in again each time you pick another character to join a Realm game with. In the interests of security I'm willing to put up with this, but it just adds another layer of complexity to muling things so that my Javazon can have a shot at Uber D.]
Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions. For the time being I'm going to concentrate on getting my "all defensive auras", "maxed out Redemption" Paladin into Hell, that way when nasty Uber D pokes his ugly nose into one of my games I can Smite that nice little gold charm off him the old-fashioned way. :evil:
Cheers
Mr. Bill
Relativity
01-02-2009, 00:26
(3.) Am I paranoid? You're damn right I am. That's why I haven't lost a character to TPPK, hacks or cheats, in over four years now.
In this context you have to understand that xbananax etc. is basically a reputation-based co-operative gaming group -- and that's great as far as it goes, I have nothing bad to say about it -- but it lacks mechanisms like they have at Amazon Basin, which is an elaborate (and very complex and maintenance-intensive!) system of password-protected games, with a separate way of preventing uninvited, non-approved players from joining AB games without permission. (As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a lot of other things about the AB guild that are oppressively unwarranted, but this particular aspect of it works very well.)
The reputation-based vetting system that you guys have here probably works fine within its limits, and I may well join one of your games one of these days, but as I said I would prefer doing that with an "expendable" character.
Remember, like Benjamin the donkey said in Animal Farm (when asked by the other animals, "why don't you ever complain about the abuse we're getting around here"): "Donkeys live a long time. You've never seen a dead donkey."
Just consider me a paranoid old as^H^H donkey.
Meh, to each their own. But tell me, if you think banana is a reputation-based vetting system, what the hell do you think the Amazon Basin is?
I've played in banana games with banana people for a long time, and nobody has ever tried to tppk in any of the games I've been in. And just because you're in the Amazon Basin you somehow think you're safe from "the evil," but in reality, you're not. As long as the loophole remains open, you're not safe. You'll never be safe, Mr Bill. Never!
It really is a shame that you miss out on knowing a lot of cool people from banana just because you have this unjustified fear of being tppk'ed. Thanatophobia much?
Thanks for the advice... there are however a few other constraints that I didn't mention:
(1.) This all happened at about 11:45 p.m. on a week-night in which I had to get up early the next day for w-o-r-k. As much as I'd love to do nothing but play Diablo all day ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H do all that housework that my wife wants me to catch up on, at my decrepit age, sleep is a commodity that I really can't compromise on.
(2.) Certainly I could have posted a "OMG pls come help me" message on this board, but the problem then is that I would have had to post the game name and password too, I think you can easily see why that route wouldn't be advisable. The two computers involved here are physically on different levels of my house (networked by Wi-Fi), so I couldn't pop one of them into the Chat Channel and monitor it for messages being typed by other xbananax type folk.
Er. Umm. Is it impossible to ask for help and see who responds and then respond to them via Private Message?
In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how any logical person would go about it. Nobody here would post their game name out in the open with DC in it, either.
(3.) Am I paranoid? You're damn right I am. That's why I haven't lost a character to TPPK, hacks or cheats, in over four years now.
In this context you have to understand that xbananax etc. is basically a reputation-based co-operative gaming group -- and that's great as far as it goes, I have nothing bad to say about it -- but it lacks mechanisms like they have at Amazon Basin, which is an elaborate (and very complex and maintenance-intensive!) system of password-protected games, with a separate way of preventing uninvited, non-approved players from joining AB games without permission. (As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a lot of other things about the AB guild that are oppressively unwarranted, but this particular aspect of it works very well.)
I've never been TPPK'd. Or had someone TPPK me. I've been in the Banana basically since I started Hardcore. There's like 2 accounts of TPPK that I remember from long ago in the Banana channel. Both times it was in a baal run where people were playing with unknowns. Nobody died, either.
The reputation-based vetting system that you guys have here probably works fine within its limits, and I may well join one of your games one of these days, but as I said I would prefer doing that with an "expendable" character.
What's the point of playing hardcore multiplayer if you're not playing expendable characters? Isn't that what it's all about? Playing characters against the odds... I dunno. Having irreplaceable characters just seems really...softcore to me.
And you won't play with us with a character you like or not, it has to be an 'expendable' character. Great. Thanks for showing us how much you'd like to share your D2 playing with us. I think most will pass.
Remember, like Benjamin the donkey said in Animal Farm (when asked by the other animals, "why don't you ever complain about the abuse we're getting around here"): "Donkeys live a long time. You've never seen a dead donkey."
Just consider me a paranoid old as^H^H donkey.
You don't see baby seagulls, either. Well, you'd see both if you really wanted. And neither case really applies to the argument.
(4.) Regarding the specific option of melee'ing with the Javazon, there were a number of other constraints on her.
First of all, her resists weren't all 75 (about 16 against Poison and only about 50 against Fire) -- she got "hosed" a couple of times and lost about 40% of her ~945 hit points per shot; I don't consider that a safe risk to take considering that the character also has only about 45-50% blocking (via a Rhyme shield) and no way of Teleporting out of an Uber Diablo Bone Prison.
Her belt is an standard Nightsmoke, meaning that she would probably run out of purple happy pills before the battle would be over. Other than for a 14.5K Plague Javelin she has no way of shutting off Uber D's regeneration (remember he has 90% Poison resist). Since the merc always goes down in the first second and the Valkyrie (Level 25 with prebuff) only lasts about 4 to 5 seconds longer, this character would have been fighting totally alone, and I don't feel like losing my one and only ethereal Titan's (self-found! :jig:) which she is currently using. In Softcore I probably would have tried it; in Hardcore it's just too much of a risk, methinks. :nervous:
I do have a few OW / CB weapons muled, but these are all on Normal difficulty mules and the logistics of setting up Normal difficulty games and then moving mules in and out of them to get the right stuff on this character wouldn't have been worth the effort, considering the possibility that Battle.Net, in its infinite wisdom, would probably have temp banned me halfway through the process.
[Technical Note: One other thing that affects me is that all these games are under Ubuntu Linux using the WINE Windows compatibility layer emulator. Being a nice paranoid person, all my computers also have the Linux iptables firewall enabled, via the Firestarter front-end to iptables.
While this setup does work fine with Diablo over Battle.Net -- if you open the necessary TCP/UDP ports within Firestarter -- it also imposes some strange side-effects.
The one that's relevant here is, if you (a) log in to your Battle.Net account, (b) select a character, (c) set up a Realm game and play for a while, then (d) exit that game and select another character, Battle.Net consistently hangs your character and you always get errors like "Cannot Join Game". But if you then (e) log out of that account, (f) log back in again and then (g) repeat steps (b) and (c), it works fine.
The upshot of this is, it makes muling more complicated, because you have to log out and in again each time you pick another character to join a Realm game with. In the interests of security I'm willing to put up with this, but it just adds another layer of complexity to muling things so that my Javazon can have a shot at Uber D.]
Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions. For the time being I'm going to concentrate on getting my "all defensive auras", "maxed out Redemption" Paladin into Hell, that way when nasty Uber D pokes his ugly nose into one of my games I can Smite that nice little gold charm off him the old-fashioned way. :evil:
Cheers
Mr. Bill
Well, you're sure dug up enough evidence to stop yourself from using your Javazon, ever.
When you've gone out of your way to protect yourself from everything, what will protect you from yourself?
~M
I did him around level 84 with a summoner outfitted with MF gear. Spawned him in the Den so his nasty light hose would have to go around corners to hit me. Merc with Obedience + Gumby+Decrep took him down. Had to run back to town a couple times to get merc back. Also made a few runs to raise back skeles in frigid highlands and stoney field. Basically I would tele stack onto him (No nigma, simply a tele-stick bought from vendor) then cast gumby behind him. Decrep plus him focusing on Gumby allowed the merc to take him down. Having skeles up simply gave the merc more killing time. Merc outfitted with Cryptic Axe Obedience, tal's mask with 15% IAS jewel, and Gris's armor with one 15% IAS jewel.
Like I said had to go back to town a couple times to get merc back but kept feeding him healing pots, recasting gumby, and recasting decrep and he went down in less than 5 mins.
My gear was ali-baba's, Homun, Shako, duriel's, telling of beads, gold wrap (actually purchased a simple plated belt with +5 to life), two nagles, Nat's boots, and chancies. Built this summoner badly and didn't have revive so no uradars or anything, merc with CB is key, and strategy is almost more key.
My reward was a low anni with 8% extra exp.
First time I killed him was in SC with around 83 bowzon with hellrack, spawned him in the same place, valk did most of the work while I tried not to die, took forever, was last patch and an untwinked character, it sucked but was worth it.
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