My first d clone + uber prep

Hi guys,

I think I’m prepared to face d clone + Ubers this weekend after almost 2 weeks of preparation (w help, boost from friends nevertheless from diablo2.io community). Again, my thanks to friends out there

Gear:
Guillaume’s face
Grief +

Stormshield
Alt hand: CTA + Spirit
Enigma

Raven Frost + Dwarfstar
Dracula’s grasp

String of Ears
Goblin’s toe

Mercs:

Fade+Duress (activate

Fade first, same for me)
Reaper’s Toll (decripify)

Tal Rasha's Horadric Crest (10% life leech)

Strategy:
1. Activating

Fade (both merc and my char)
2. Use

Zeal/

Fanaticism (1 point only) to activate PMH + Lifetap
3. Switch to

Smite (leverage CB)
Go back to 2. after every 8 sec or so as Dracula’s lifetap is only 8 sec duration
4. Once target health is low enough such that CB is not effective anymore, just stick to

Zeal/

Fanaticism (Grief slice like butter on hell

Baal & Diablo. Been practicing my hand coordination skills on them but they just go down so fast

D Clone/Ubers I know is altogether another matter. I’ve met e D clone 2 weeks ago, totally defenseless against it. That’s what prompt me to overcome this challenge. (Was new to game, at least D2R then, was puzzled why Diablo appeared out of the blue. Imagine my surprise when I got

Smite down )

For d clone, I can go back to town. For Ubers my understanding is that we can’t town portal back?

Lvl 90 hammerdin/foh. Max BH,

Vigor, FoH.
12 points

Blessed Aim
3 points

Holy Shield
1 point:

Conviction,

Zeal,

Smite,

Concentration,

Redemption
+ 12 skill points from gears + charms
+1 offensive aura charm

Any advice from veterans out there

* I’ve

Annihilus +

Hellfire Torch. So kinda cheating lol, having them before earning them.

* still got 2 more chance restat @

Akara

No need to use

Zeal at all. PHM doesn't work on UT bosses (only dclone) but it doesnt matter, since Open Wounds does. DR on

Stormshield is nice, but not really needed. You are better off with a shield that gives higher resists. Merc's decrep will override your tap, however he will most likely die in tristam anyway:P

ohptsh wrote: 3 weeks ago

2. UseZeal/

Fanaticism (1 point only) to activate PMH + Lifetap

Smite can proc both PMH and

Life Tap, so no need for

Zeal for that. And like uuee said, PMH doesn't work vs ubers (does work vs dclone). Also,

Zeal requires hit-chance to hit, and you will not have a very impressive chance to hit vs them.

Smite is auto-hit, there's no hit-check, and Drac's

Life Tap proc is on striking, so even if

Zeal may be faster,

Smite is still likely to proc it faster due to the auto-hit.

ohptsh wrote: 3 weeks ago

For Ubers my understanding is that we can’t town portal back?

You can't make town portals out of

Uber Tristram. You have to run/

Teleport back to the red portal to exit. With the risk of having a bunch of ubers and minions on your tail and then

Swarm the portal, creating an excellent surprise party when you return. Take caution!

You can, however, make town portals out of the mini uber dungeons (

Matron's Den,

Furnace of Pain and

Forgotten Sands).

Thanks for e tip!
Didn’t know PMH doesn’t work on Ubers.
Been studying on d clone, knew it works on d and assumed also on Ubers.

Will use

Smite to proc Lifetap then, safer w sure hit.

Effect,Works with

Smite?
Crushing Blow (CB), Yes
Open Wounds (OW), Yes

Life Tap (Dracul’s Grasp), Yes
Hit Effects (Knockback, Curses), Yes
Chance to Cast on Striking, Yes
Deadly Strike /

Critical Strike, No
Prevent Monster Heal (PMH), No
Life/Mana Leech, No
Elemental Damage (From Charms, Gear), No
Chance to Cast on Attack, No

Btw I’ve ask ChatGPT to generate table what

Smite procs/works

Is e above correct?
Thanks!

ohptsh wrote: 3 weeks ago

Thanks for e tip!
Didn’t know PMH doesn’t work on Ubers.
Been studying on d clone, knew it works on d and assumed also on Ubers.

Will use

Smite to proc Lifetap then, safer w sure hit.

Effect,Works with

Smite?
Crushing Blow (CB), Yes
Open Wounds (OW), Yes

Life Tap (Dracul’s Grasp), Yes
Hit Effects (Knockback, Curses), Yes
Chance to Cast on Striking, Yes
Deadly Strike /

Critical Strike, No
Prevent Monster Heal (PMH), No
Life/Mana Leech, No
Elemental Damage (From Charms, Gear), No
Chance to Cast on Attack, No

Btw I’ve ask ChatGPT to generate table what

Smite procs/works

Is e above correct?
Thanks!

If only you had made this post yesterday! Last night on NL NA there were 11 back to back one every 10 minutes Dclones.

As for shield, any decent shield can be made to work but if you're looking to maximize while staying on a reasonable budget an upped HOZ (

Herald Of Zakarum) is an ideal shield. It provides decent damage, lot of resists, especially socketed with a P

Diamond, Plus 2 to all skills, 2 to combat skills, and when the time comes is good enough to do Ubers.

I also suggest swapping

String of Ears for

Thundergod's Vigor for Ubers, its fine for dclone. The physical damage you receive in

Uber Tristram pales in comparison to

Mephisto's lightning attacks coupled with his

Conviction aura.

another tips from my experience:

- Life-Tap may not trigger as fast as you want (5%), so it's better to not rely completely on this to stay alive. Keep a lot of Full Rejuvs potions, specially for

Lilith and Meph.
- From the Uber mini bosses, I think

Lilith is by far the most dangerous. If you fight her along with those Hell Witches, you may be killed with one blow if you're Amp-Damaged.
- Once you enter

Tristram, just go 2 steps below (south). In 90% of ocurrences you can lure

Mephisto away from mid town (he goes crazy after you). Try to lure him as far as you can from

Tristram portal to northeast, then you can fight him one-on-one.
-

Mephisto spawns

Skeleton mages, you are probably going to be heavily poisoned, ultra-lowered elemental resistances and being attacked with Mephs lightning.
- If you are patient enough, go Ubers right after leveling up so you won't lose exp after (most likely) dying.

Also, create a password protected game. So if you die, you can leave and comeback. You don't need to worry about trying to get your body back, because 99% of the time you can't if you're doing this solo.

The 5%

Life Tap is generally enough to keep it up after the first trigger if you keep attacking.
Some people use a wand with

Life Tap

Charge to not depend on random for the first

Life Tap

And take out from your Merc all items with Curse triggers (have

Life Tap override by

Decrepify may have you killed )

YugoHell wrote: 3 weeks ago

- Life-Tap may not trigger as fast as you want (5%), so it's better to not rely completely on this to stay alive. Keep a lot of Full Rejuvs potions, specially for

Lilith and Meph.

- Dclone is (rather) easy.
-

Uber Tristram is another level of challenge :

Über Duriel and

Izual are OK,

Lilith is way more powerful, take care. And

Uber Tristram is even above mainly due to Uber Meph being so annoying with his

Conviction and an increrdible regeneration.

- Have a look there, especially on the

Uber Tristram map :

forums/i-think-i-m-ready-for-my-first-u ... 11646.html

A lot of good advise here. U guys r rocking!
Thank you!

fredkid wrote: 3 weeks ago

Some people use a wand with

Life Tap

Charge to not depend on random for the first

Life Tap

Get that

Life Tap

Wand! Even with high-end stuff i keep it in inv and use it on every uber/clone i encounter

Another thing:
Try to get 300 Resists for Uber Meph to counter its

Conviction aura. Switching

Stormshield for a 40+ All Res 4os Pala shield socketed with 4x

Um or

Perfect Diamond gets you very close to that point if you can't afford enough charms needed. Phys dmg reduction is not that important there imo. As soon as you have

Life Tap on Meph its all about not getting killed instantly by all the damage thrown at you, and this damage is 90% elemental

Would also suggest

Thundergod's Vigor instead of

String of Ears for the same purpose, as Lightning Damage tends to be the most dangerous. My Smiter puts all remaining Skill points beyond lvl 90 in

Resist Lightning because it increases Max Resist by 0.5/pt

Just to note for other readers: You don't HAVE to have all this endgame gear. It's possible to do Ubers with very good (but not great endgame / best-in-slot) gear. It will be a pain in the ass, take forever, and give you nerves of Steel, but it's possible. I think there's a video on YouTube with someone soloing Ubers with the Sigon set ^^

Thanks again on reminder that

Mephisto is most dangerous with the lightning damage +

Conviction. My lightning resist is ~232 base and HP more than 2.1k after CTA buff. Worst come to worst, activate

Salvation aura, just longer kill time w/o

Fanaticism.

Also agreed that budget gear can work too. It’s skill + planning synergistic and effective use of gears. That’s what make this game so fun! Great gear just makes the work easier

I’ve seen a YouTube video killing Ubers in 10 min. That’s skill

Hi guys,

Just back to report it’s a success killing d clone this morning US local time. Been waiting on server (leaving it online) all night in prep for this day. In fact I was about to do a trade w @fredkid lol. He was patient enough to wait for me.

Summary:

Gear
- G face
- Enigma
- Grief
- HoZ
- Goblin’s toe (upgraded to elite)
- Strings of ears (upgraded to elite)
-

Dwarf Star
-

Raven Frost
- Rare amulet with high resistance
Alt hand
- CTA 6/2/2
- Spirit shield

Merc:
-

Tal’s

Mask (10% leech life/mana)
- Reaper’s toll (decripify)
- Treachery

1.

Zeal/

Fanaticism to proc

Life Tap
2. Switch to

Smite/

Fanaticism (ready to switch to

Salvation if resistance is not holding up from elemental attacks
3. Finish with step 1. When d clone HP ~1/3 or less

Observations:
1. Smith w 60 CB works like a charm. U can see the needle move visibly
2. Grief is no shame either, I suspect if I just use Grief all e way will work just fine. Cos tail end, it also cuts like butter
3. Only used 1 life potion!!!! (I totally didn’t expect that)
4. D clone was down like in matters of seconds (less than 10 I think).
5. Totally a different ball game when I first encountered d clone ~2, 3 weeks ago. It’s been a 2 week hard work prep (trading, farming gems, rune to gather those equipment). Do note that char was lvl 87 then, currently it’s 92 (but I didn’t restat. Was too excited that I skipped this step). This it’s only 1 point wonder:

Smite,

Zeal,

Fanaticism,

Redemption etc… focus was BH,

Vigor, BA, FoH (convenient kill during farming).

Holy Shield only 3 points. I still have some points not assigned…

* many thanks to @oOKIWIOo for gifting the starting gears
* Also many thanks to friends here in e forum who had provided valuable advise and insights to prep

I think I’m ready for Ubers now. I’ve kept those keys in my inventory for more than a week now. It’s time to use them tonight!

Cheers!

P.S. when I saw “Diablo has invaded Sanctuary” I was super excited. But I took too much time preparing and overthinking, saw “

Terror gazes upon Sanctuary”. I went to

Stony Field to c if I can spawn d clone there, had encountered uniques but no d clone. I was sorely disappointed…. But then I thought, hey I didn’t leave the game so server shouldn’t reset. Why not try frigid highland. Waola! D clone is there for the taking

Any comments from old timer here what’s could be amiss? Why didn’t d clone proc in

Stony Field

Again thanks guys and much appreciated your inputs in this thread. Happy hunting and farming!

Forgot to add, merc didn’t survive at all… so reaper’s toll totally didn’t help at all

ohptsh wrote: 3 weeks ago

Any comments from old timer here what’s could be amiss? Why didn’t d clone proc in

Stony Field

The only logical explanation is that you had visited

Stony Field in that game before Dclone spawned, and caused

Rakanishu to spawn normally. Mobs are spawned off screen (2 screen distance afaik), so if you got close to the Cairn Stones that would have caused

Rakanishu to spawn, and prevent Dclone from spawning there instead. Dclone can only replace super uniques that haven't already spawned. The replacement happens as the game tries to spawn the super unique, spawning Dclone instead.
Do you remember if you had ventured to

Stony Field? Just hitting the waypoint would be enough if the stones are close.

This is also usually why you might not always find Dclone at

Eldritch the Rectifier's location, and instead might find Dclone at

Shenk the Overseer's location. Simply touching the

Frigid Highlands waypoint is enough to cause Eldritch to spawn normally.

ohptsh wrote: 3 weeks ago

Forgot to add, merc didn’t survive at all… so reaper’s toll totally didn’t help at all

Tip: Reposition yourself on the opposite side of Dclone from your merc. Dclone's

Firestorm ability will melt mercs. Quite literally. Doesn't matter if they have max fire resist. The

Firestorm does 50/50 fire and physical damage, and it's the physical half that kills you. The 25% of the fire damage that's left is nothing to scoff at either. As a Smiter with

Life Tap you can power your way through it, but try standing still and do nothing as he uses it on you, and you'll see your life drop like a rock.

Side note: Did you know that

The Rising Sun (amulet) can make you immune to Dclone's

Firestorm, depending on your fire resist? It might actually heal you.

Thanks @ShadowHeart for the explanation.
It make sense! Probably e case as game has been only for more than 10 - 12 hr and I’ve done some practice CTA to check levels, durations stats etc, didn’t fight monsters though to make sure that unique r not spawn. And didn’t know that monsters r spawn 2 screens away. Thanks for this crucial info!

On e fight w d clone, I was just too excited thus just charged in with the short cut keys planned for those skills, and prep for

Salvation back up if needed. Merc last thing on my mind lol!

On rising sun, nope totally oblivious to this fire absorb capabilities. Although I’m aware of dwardstar fire absorb 15%.
How do they compare?

Thanks!

ohptsh wrote: 3 weeks ago

On rising sun, nope totally oblivious to this fire absorb capabilities. Although I’m aware of dwardstar fire absorb 15%.
How do they compare?

Elemental absorb % is capped at 40% (per element) and can thus never heal you - 40% absorb will effectively reduce damage by 80% post-resistances, it will never reach 100% due to the cap. Flat/integer absorb has no cap, and

The Rising Sun has (by far) the highest fire absorb value in the game.

Dclones

Firestorm is tick based. It does smaller amounts of damage pretty much every frame (the fire consists of several "missiles" that damage you individually once per 2 frames if they hit you - or something like that). Absorb (just like resistances) works on every tick. And because

The Rising Sun has such impressive flat/integer absorb, the amount of fire damage it negates and heals you back can under the correct circumstances also be greater than the physical damage that you would have received, effectively healing you. Other factors play in too of course, like Physical Damage Reduction, Damage Reduced By X, and Magic Damage Reduced By X.

EDIT: And, I think I have to correct myself. I think the fire part may be bigger than the physical part, it's not 50/50. It seems complicated lol.

Amazing math mechanism man!
Again much appreciated the math @ShadowHeart !

This game depth and balancing behind the scene makes it great and long standing even after so many years!