Hell Andariel runs

[redragon]

Greeting all and thanks for looking in.

I have played D2 and LOD on and off since it got released, but never as intensely as I have lately, never really thought about MF, re running bosses etc, just played through from Act 1 Normal til Act 1 Hell where I promptly died quite quickly, being only ever around level 50 at max :/

Since finding these forums when I started another run through six weeks or so ago though a whole new world opened for me and I now have a level 78 Hammerdin, 76 Orballer, 82 Fishymancer and a level 8 Amazon, not sure where she is going yet. (Took me ages and many searches to find out what many of the word combos and abreviations meant )

Anyway, I mainly use the Orballer to MF on NM, Andy, The council and Mephy, not having any problems there.

My Hammerdin has fallen to the wayside atm I'm afraid, I just can't find the gear I need for him :/

My fishymancer is my favourite character by far atm, I have gotten further with him on Hell difficulty than ever before and am slowly, very slowly using him to aquire runes from the countess and mainly running the pit levels for MF.

I have Gotten to Hell Act 2, killed Radamant with him, but atm the desert is a highly dangerous place, so as I said above, I'm mainly running the pit and the Countess.

I would like to run Andariel for MF as well, but I need some advice, and here we come to the point of my post, Killing Andy faster and keeping my merc breathing longer.

It take's however long to get to Andy, 2-3 minutes from load up to her door with 11-18 minions raised, 9-10 skellys, merc, fire golem, 3 mages, and however many of whatever I find thats useful to raise. My basic stategy is to use Decrepify on her, and raises as often as needed, feeding my merc healing and full rejuvs if I have them.

I try to hold my guys back and take care of her minions before waking her, this sometimes works, sometimes not.

On the times it does work, it still takes about a minute for her to go down, more if some of her guys are still around and beating on me, and sometimes necessatates a trip to town halfway through to raise my merc, he dies quite often, with a side trip to the Blood Moor if my Skellys are decimated as well.

So any suggestions? Here are some of my stats:

Level 82
Raise and mastery - 25
Corpse Explosion - 24
Amp - 11
Decrip - 5
Revive - 6
Summon Resist - 6
7 spare points available.

Gear -
Weapon - Blade of Ali Baba or Suicide branch
Shield - Lidless wall or Rhyme
Boots, Belt and Gloves - All MF orientated - Goldwrap belt.
Helm - 3 PTopaz helm
Armour - Skin of the Vipermagi
Rings - One basic with 10% FCR and one Nagel
Amulet - +1 Necro skills, small resists


Merc - Act 2 Might

Weapon - Arioc's needle - I also have Blackleech blade and Athena's wrath.
Armour - Toothrow
Helm - Crown of theives

Resists for the merc are FR 75 and the rest 45

He's doing 860 - 1600 dmg with Arioc's, has a life of 1600 and a defence of 2400.

I have a 4 open socketed Cryptic axe (base dmg 33 - 150)

My rune count is - A single Mal and a single Um, at least 1 each of Io, Lum, Ko and Fal, 0 Lems.

I play SP, thinking about MP via Tcp / Ip, and have registered a Trader Profile here Recently.

So any suggestions on how to kill Andy faster and keep my merc alive?

Thanks again for looking in and any help will be gratefully appreceated.

[BoozBear]

Use clay golem instead of fire, the only thing fire is useful for is to take monsters off u with hes aura. Clay golem is THE golem to fight bosses with, clay golem slow + decrip = crippled boss. I just finished my first guardian char, a fishymancer just like u. cleared baal at lvl 80 with random rares with resists etc.

[Hairless]

Well, i'm not really qualified to give pro-tips, but i would personally use a different character for boss running.

Or you could try trading to get some Graverobbers GC's. I have one FT, and Lind has another.

Andy has -50 Fire Resistance so your sorc might be a good choice, or the amazon skill Charged Strike is quite effective against bosses. Too bad there is one Lightning Immune monster type in the Catacombs. There are ways to get around them though, either poke them with Jab or switch to a bow. You could also trade for some hot 'zon gear pretty easily.

[korci]

My tips for necro:

Running the pits can be more productive with a non-tele char than running bosses since it can (and eventually will) drop better than Hell Andy and is certainly faster to reach.

Use a clay golem for killing bosses since it slows them down and then you might be able to switch to amp to deal damage faster or an iron golem made of something with crushing blow but you might loose your iron golem if you don't have teleport.

When summoning your minions use as much +skill items as you can then switch to mf gear. Skellies will deal more damage and have more life/resist that way.

For boss runs try to find some source of teleport so you can gather your forces (amulets, Naj's puzzler, wands). Teleport on the boss than step back and cast curses (decrep without clay golem and if your minions are weak, amp otherwise).

My 2 cents on running bosses:

For a low budget boss running nothing beats the sorceress. Blizz sorc for Hell Meph and Ancient Tunnels and also for rune hunting in Lower Kurast but if you want more versatility use a meteorb because she's effective everywhere (I also use a meteorb for running Hell Meph and Pindle) . I consider the meteorb the best starting char but there are lots of builds I haven't tested yet...

[BaronScarpia]

In your shoes, I would focus on +skills and some sorc action at hell andy (some cool stuff like Harlequin's Crest)/nm andy (the other cool stuff, namely SoJ and Skin of the Vipermagi). Are you using runeword mode? If so, and if you have 156 str with the sorc:

Spoiler

- Use your necromancer to do lots of pit runs and find a unsocketed, blank, monarch (or a 4os, if you're lucky). Using the larzuk quest reward will give the monarch 4os. Tal-Thul-Ort-Amn on it. Also, find a 4-sock-1-handed-sword with low strength req (they use fall around) and use Tal-Thul-Ort-Amn on it. Merc using a Ral-Tir-Tal-Sol Polearm (not Spear, it only works on polearms) also helps the teleporting part.
Dual Spirit - end game gear for semi-untwinked casters.
Note: any pally shield can have 4 socks, so if you wanna try andy runs with hammerdin. just bring a pally shield to larzuk or try your lucky with the socketing cube recipes (I like to use pally shields with less than 156 str req and 25+ res all)

Anyway, using the sorc for mf bosses is better because you reach the target faster, doing more runs in less time. Hammerdin is ok, too, but it requires a really decent andy map to do it fast. If you really want to play with necromancer, the pits are better - or you can try other high lvl areas to avoid boredom. After Maggot Lair/Arcane Sanctuary (tip - merc + corpse explosion in those places - skeletons will just get in the way), a fishymancer can beat the game easily using clay golem + decrep on mean stuff (like bosses/ancients).

[pharphis]

I second the clay golem suggestion for slowing bosses. With a few + skills he will easily slow enemies by 50+, or even 60, at which point decrep is only necessary to make things prettier. I think he slows if he is hit or if he hits, so his effect is even better than it at first seems. You also get to save a few points from getting fire golem then, too.
I agree with running pits or something equivalent. Lots of exp this way, too.

[thefranklin]

1. Get a teleport amulet. Or remember than you can tp to town and then jump right back in to bring your minions to you. Don't worry about kililng on the way to Andy.
2. As suggested, load up on + skills on your switch for raising skeletons. Don't worry about revives, and don't worry about mages.
3. As suggested, use clay golem. Keep casting clay golem on the backside of Andy, so her attacks are in the opposite direction of your merc. Fire golem does nothing but attract monsters to you, which you don't want when clearing out Andy's room.

[Malicious]

I think Hell Andy running would be more efficient with your sorceress. She is definitely high enough level, and fireball demolishes Andy. I'd suggest using the 4os CA to make an Insight, and then u should have no problem using the sorc to MF. I find necro way too slow for boss running. He's more suited for area specific running, like pits... unless u have Enigma or can afford to repair something that has teleport charges. In any case, a sorc using fireball would kill Andy way faster than a necro could anyway unless the necro is absolutely decked.

[redragon]

First up, thanks for all the replies, they mostly made sense and I'm gonna try a couple of them out. Here are some updates using the advice I was given

I gave Hell Andy a go with my Necro using Clay golem and it did seem to make a difference, 5 out of 5 runs my merc didn't die, which is unusual, so that's a bonus Thanks for pointing that one out.

I actually found a tele amulet in my stash of amulets, only 22 charges, but it gets me to both Andy and the Countess faster than just slogging it on foot, though I do still have to jog a bit, I'm not complaining, that was one thing I missed from my usual Sorc, porting around.

I was lucky!! I found a 4 Socketed Monarch Shield base defence 138 in the pits on a run through this morning YES!.... NO! I don't have the strength for it ARRRRGGGHHHH! LOL

I'm going to make an insight using the Cryptic Axe I found, have been holding off on making it until I got a decent base damage weapon, and the CA was a recent find.

I've reorganised my Characters a little in the way I plan on using them.

My new thoughts are:

My Orballer Sorc : I have found a decent game with nice easy maps of both Andy and Meph on Nightmare, so I plan on using her to run these two with her and not much else. She can stand up to either fairly easily and a run at either takes about a minute, and I have never found a SoJ, so I want someone to run NM Andy at will and easily, and Meph for a change every now and then.

My Hammerdin : NM Baal runs only, no real reason, I believe running the Pits would probably be better in terms of MF'ing (?), but I like using the HD every now and then, the amount of punishment he can take is cool and he moves fairly fast even without tele, and again, I have a nice easy map with him straight to Baal.

Fishymancer : Pit runs, as suggested (And the countess). I'm gonna leave the bosses to others, apart from quests for this guy for now at least. I've never had a character get this far into the game before and while I've probably only done about 70 or 80 Hell Pits runs, it's different from what I'm used to and I'm enjoying doing them and finding stuff I've never seen before.

Amazon : A new character, now level 12, have been looking at some builds for her, and am thinking the whole Lightning Javalon thing looks the easiest to use.

A new Sorc : A new (old) character. Made her a month or two ago after my Orballer had trouble in Hell and then abandoned her for the HD, am now moving her through the quests, currently level 23, and am making her a Fire specialist, maybe a Meteorb as suggested and planning on using her just for the Hell Boss MF runs when I get there.

So thanks for the imput people's, it was appreceated and gave me new insights and ideas for using my characters.

[pharphis]

Javzon is amazing for cows and is also pretty decent with countess, because you can run past the archers and pummel everything else easily. You may also want to try the hammerdin at countess, and it would give him experience, too. If you don't already have titan's revenge for a javazon you're bound to find one from the bosses in NM or hell. Maybe even from the pits. Good luck!