Shadowgaze
13-08-2009, 04:51
Alright, here's a little bit of an explanation to this event before I get started. I decided that I would build a character to take down the three ubers, with the following rules:
- No trading of any kind
- No botting for gear - my power bill would be off the charts if I left my computer on all day long :O
- Only allowed to wear gear that was found by characters on my account
Now, I suppose it's important to say here that I've never entered uber tristram before, let alone killed the ubers. I'd killed diablo clone plenty of times and had played D2 since its release, but was starting from scratch with an empty account due to inactivity.
That said, here's the character:
Shadowgaze
Level 87 Assassin
Stats (with gear on)
Strength: 238
Dexterity: 156
Vitality: 257
Energy: 53 (base)
Resists in hell (without fade activated, without charms): 65/75/47/40
HP: 1193
Mana: 203
Block: 55%
Skills
Fade - 20
Venom - 20
Shadow Master - 20
Dragon Talon - 20
Dragon Flight - 1
Mind Blast - 1
Blade Fury - 1
Death Sentry - 1
1 in all prereqs
Regular leveling gear
Helm: Guillaume's Face socketed with Um
Amulet: Prismatic amulet of life everlasting (+20 all resist, damage reduced by 16)
Armor: Natalya's Shadow w/ 2x Sol runes
Weapon 1: Lawbringer Phase Blade
Weapon 2: Fleshripper socketed with Amn
Shield 1: Stormshield socketed with a perfect diamond
Shield 2: Unsocketed Stormshield
Ring 1: Dwarf Star
Ring 2: Rare 5% mana leech, 115 attack rating, +10 all resists, damage reduced by 2
Belt: Thundergod's Vigor
Gloves: Laying of Hands
Boots: Blessed Myrmidon Greaves of Speed
Source of Life Tap: necromancer wand with 97 charges of level 5 life tap
---
Lilith, Izual and Duriel all went down without any sort of problems (had some issues with Duriel until I realized I was fighting him with Lawbringer on, hence no source of open wounds which I quickly corrected and switched to Fleshripper).
From what I'd read, I knew that I'd need higher resists to be able to take on Mephisto so I transferred as many resistance small charms from my alts to my kicker as I could hold. After doing so, my resists were capped at 75/75/85/75 without fade.
---
The portal spawned just to the right of town and I immediately moved to the northeast corner and made my way around counterclockwise to the top center of town. From there I edged towards the houses from the north. Mephisto came charging out and I lured him to the northwest corner, swallowed my pride, and let him kill me. I then quit and rejoined the game to get my corpse (I know it sounds cheap, but hey - I'm not going to try tackling the hardest of the 3 ubers right off the bat when I haven't even fought any of them yet!).
After rebuffing and heading down the portal again, I approached town from the east side of the map, succeeding in drawing out Baal by himself. I went at him with the combo of Fleshripper and my life tap wand, and was doing great until he started summoning ghosts - at that point, I'd be making trips to town every 20 seconds to buy mana potions, and realized this wasn't going to work because I couldn't keep up a high enough mana pool to continue using dragon talon. Then I got it in my head to use my Lawbringer (for the constant undead knockback) which seemed to work for a while but I realized I couldn't finish Baal off without having open wounds active on him due to his high regeneration.
The problem was that I needed to use Lawbringer to keep the ghosts off of me, but I needed to use Fleshripper for the open wounds. Switching between the two wasn't working because it would allow the ghosts to get an opening on me, and begin the cycle of mana potion chugging.
The solution? Boneflesh. Yeah, the junky unique plate mail armor with 25% open wounds. I equipped it along with Lawbringer, restocked my potions, and took uber Baal down in one shot. There were some tricky parts to the fight since I had to rely on healing potions instead of life tap, but it went off pretty smoothly all things considered.
---
After cleaning up the stray ghosts and vampires, I headed back to town and switched my gear back to Fleshripper with the life tap wand and my Natalya's armor. I then re-entered Tristram and circled around clockwise, approaching town from the south to lure Diablo out by himself. This fight was far quicker, and involved me weapon switching to refresh life tap, while keeping cloak of shadows up to separate Diablo from the summoned pit lords. Easiest fight out of the group, by far.
---
Last up, Mephisto. I'm not going to lie, this involved multiple deaths as I learned the nuances of penning Mephisto up inside of a house to separate him from his skeletons. I died. A lot. Even with maxed resists + fade activated, his cold spells hurt like hell without a source of cold absorb and his melee attacks seemed to hurt as well even with 50% physical resistance and 32 physical damage reduction. My resists were all still well in the positives (close to maximum, mostly) but 1-2 shots in quick succession would be enough to kill me even with Mephy life tapped.
I decided I needed more resists from my armor, and only had one option.
An upgraded Twitchthroe. Which had been socketed with an Um rune. Sounds dumb, I know, but it was enough to bring my block to 75% and my resists closer to max while afflicted by conviction and allowed me to survive long enough to kill Mephisto.
---
Of all things, the torch turned out to be a +3 assassin skills torch, +18 all attributes, +12 all resists. I suppose it's the game's way of taking pity on me for the hard time I had against Baal at the start. Woot :propeller:
- No trading of any kind
- No botting for gear - my power bill would be off the charts if I left my computer on all day long :O
- Only allowed to wear gear that was found by characters on my account
Now, I suppose it's important to say here that I've never entered uber tristram before, let alone killed the ubers. I'd killed diablo clone plenty of times and had played D2 since its release, but was starting from scratch with an empty account due to inactivity.
That said, here's the character:
Shadowgaze
Level 87 Assassin
Stats (with gear on)
Strength: 238
Dexterity: 156
Vitality: 257
Energy: 53 (base)
Resists in hell (without fade activated, without charms): 65/75/47/40
HP: 1193
Mana: 203
Block: 55%
Skills
Fade - 20
Venom - 20
Shadow Master - 20
Dragon Talon - 20
Dragon Flight - 1
Mind Blast - 1
Blade Fury - 1
Death Sentry - 1
1 in all prereqs
Regular leveling gear
Helm: Guillaume's Face socketed with Um
Amulet: Prismatic amulet of life everlasting (+20 all resist, damage reduced by 16)
Armor: Natalya's Shadow w/ 2x Sol runes
Weapon 1: Lawbringer Phase Blade
Weapon 2: Fleshripper socketed with Amn
Shield 1: Stormshield socketed with a perfect diamond
Shield 2: Unsocketed Stormshield
Ring 1: Dwarf Star
Ring 2: Rare 5% mana leech, 115 attack rating, +10 all resists, damage reduced by 2
Belt: Thundergod's Vigor
Gloves: Laying of Hands
Boots: Blessed Myrmidon Greaves of Speed
Source of Life Tap: necromancer wand with 97 charges of level 5 life tap
---
Lilith, Izual and Duriel all went down without any sort of problems (had some issues with Duriel until I realized I was fighting him with Lawbringer on, hence no source of open wounds which I quickly corrected and switched to Fleshripper).
From what I'd read, I knew that I'd need higher resists to be able to take on Mephisto so I transferred as many resistance small charms from my alts to my kicker as I could hold. After doing so, my resists were capped at 75/75/85/75 without fade.
---
The portal spawned just to the right of town and I immediately moved to the northeast corner and made my way around counterclockwise to the top center of town. From there I edged towards the houses from the north. Mephisto came charging out and I lured him to the northwest corner, swallowed my pride, and let him kill me. I then quit and rejoined the game to get my corpse (I know it sounds cheap, but hey - I'm not going to try tackling the hardest of the 3 ubers right off the bat when I haven't even fought any of them yet!).
After rebuffing and heading down the portal again, I approached town from the east side of the map, succeeding in drawing out Baal by himself. I went at him with the combo of Fleshripper and my life tap wand, and was doing great until he started summoning ghosts - at that point, I'd be making trips to town every 20 seconds to buy mana potions, and realized this wasn't going to work because I couldn't keep up a high enough mana pool to continue using dragon talon. Then I got it in my head to use my Lawbringer (for the constant undead knockback) which seemed to work for a while but I realized I couldn't finish Baal off without having open wounds active on him due to his high regeneration.
The problem was that I needed to use Lawbringer to keep the ghosts off of me, but I needed to use Fleshripper for the open wounds. Switching between the two wasn't working because it would allow the ghosts to get an opening on me, and begin the cycle of mana potion chugging.
The solution? Boneflesh. Yeah, the junky unique plate mail armor with 25% open wounds. I equipped it along with Lawbringer, restocked my potions, and took uber Baal down in one shot. There were some tricky parts to the fight since I had to rely on healing potions instead of life tap, but it went off pretty smoothly all things considered.
---
After cleaning up the stray ghosts and vampires, I headed back to town and switched my gear back to Fleshripper with the life tap wand and my Natalya's armor. I then re-entered Tristram and circled around clockwise, approaching town from the south to lure Diablo out by himself. This fight was far quicker, and involved me weapon switching to refresh life tap, while keeping cloak of shadows up to separate Diablo from the summoned pit lords. Easiest fight out of the group, by far.
---
Last up, Mephisto. I'm not going to lie, this involved multiple deaths as I learned the nuances of penning Mephisto up inside of a house to separate him from his skeletons. I died. A lot. Even with maxed resists + fade activated, his cold spells hurt like hell without a source of cold absorb and his melee attacks seemed to hurt as well even with 50% physical resistance and 32 physical damage reduction. My resists were all still well in the positives (close to maximum, mostly) but 1-2 shots in quick succession would be enough to kill me even with Mephy life tapped.
I decided I needed more resists from my armor, and only had one option.
An upgraded Twitchthroe. Which had been socketed with an Um rune. Sounds dumb, I know, but it was enough to bring my block to 75% and my resists closer to max while afflicted by conviction and allowed me to survive long enough to kill Mephisto.
---
Of all things, the torch turned out to be a +3 assassin skills torch, +18 all attributes, +12 all resists. I suppose it's the game's way of taking pity on me for the hard time I had against Baal at the start. Woot :propeller: