My first d clone + uber prep

Hi Guys,

After more than a week of procrastination..... finally did solo

Uber Tristram today.
It's a success! Getting

Mephisto out first is certainly

Key. One

Key I do note pretty weird is that I realize at tail end, Grief seems not to be doing it's job like on d clone. Btw, I've had another practice on d clone NA server this morning (I've left my char in town last night as it's 5/6).

Clearing

Mephisto is easy with more than 300% base resist.
Hitting

Baal with

Smite is easy, but after switching to

Zeal I noticed that

Baal actually heal!
Switch back to

Smite all the way and it's done. Granted the tail end too a bit of time as CB is 12.5% of prevailing target's health. I do switch back to

Zeal to make sure that open wounds remain active (before ~8 sec is up).

Same experience w diablo.

Still kinda puzzled why Grief is not cutting like butter on

Uber Baal, Diablo. Wonder if there's any bug in my instance....

My conclusion on uber exercise,

Key elements to overcome this challenge

1.

Life Tap
2. Open wounds
3. Crushing Blow
4.

Smite
5. High lightning resist

With these 5 elements covered, one could budget build a uber character. It might take longer time, maybe each trip to town to heal before getting next boss, but definitely doable.

Many thanks to our friendly and helpful community in this journey. It wouldn't have been possible with your Insight, and also the trading platform which facilitate gathering a lot of gear that get this through.

G-face
Enigma
HoZ
Rare amulet for resist

Raven Frost
Dward star

Dracul's Grasp

String of Ears
Goblin's to a
* Grief (-25% target defense, proc open wound and

Life Tap), supposedly the ultimate melee damage. Cuts like butter even on d clone BUT in my

Uber Tristram experience seems not so effective...
* I've changed a gear from the initial description: switch of HoZ instead of a Spirit shield.

Filled inventory with charms.


This game is great, the balancing aspect of elements is just amazing. Couple with trading so that one doesn't have to farm for everything makes it really fun. I've to say I spent way too much time going through inventory over the last week in preparation for this uber challenges.
Do note I've been farming hard for last 5 weeks or so thus had quite a bit of stash to trade. Most importantly, tribute to @oOKIWIOo for his generosity and helping hand.

Cheers!

Btw, during the last week, I've build up enough materials and base item to do a dual Dragon + dual Dream build. Will feedback

* expensive build, I know. But that's what stash savings are for lol

ohptsh wrote: 9 months ago

Hi Guys,

After more than a week of procrastination..... finally did solo

Uber Tristram today.
It's a success! Getting

Mephisto out first is certainly

Key. One

Key I do note pretty weird is that I realize at tail end, Grief seems not to be doing it's job like on d clone. Btw, I've had another practice on d clone NA server this morning (I've left my char in town last night as it's 5/6).

Clearing

Mephisto is easy with more than 300% base resist.
Hitting

Baal with

Smite is easy, but after switching to

Zeal I noticed that

Baal actually heal!
Switch back to

Smite all the way and it's done. Granted the tail end too a bit of time as CB is 12.5% of prevailing target's health. I do switch back to

Zeal to make sure that open wounds remain active (before ~8 sec is up).

Same experience w diablo.

Still kinda puzzled why Grief is not cutting like butter on

Uber Baal, Diablo. Wonder if there's any bug in my instance....

My conclusion on uber exercise,

Key elements to overcome this challenge

1.

Life Tap
2. Open wounds
3. Crushing Blow
4.

Smite
5. High lightning resist

With these 5 elements covered, one could budget build a uber character. It might take longer time, maybe each trip to town to heal before getting next boss, but definitely doable.

Many thanks to our friendly and helpful community in this journey. It wouldn't have been possible with your Insight, and also the trading platform which facilitate gathering a lot of gear that get this through.

G-face
Enigma
HoZ
Rare amulet for resist

Raven Frost
Dward star

Dracul's Grasp

String of Ears
Goblin's to a
* Grief (-25% target defense, proc open wound and

Life Tap), supposedly the ultimate melee damage. Cuts like butter even on d clone BUT in my

Uber Tristram experience seems not so effective...
* I've changed a gear from the initial description: switch of HoZ instead of a Spirit shield.

Filled inventory with charms.


This game is great, the balancing aspect of elements is just amazing. Couple with trading so that one doesn't have to farm for everything makes it really fun. I've to say I spent way too much time going through inventory over the last week in preparation for this uber challenges.
Do note I've been farming hard for last 5 weeks or so thus had quite a bit of stash to trade. Most importantly, tribute to @oOKIWIOo for his generosity and helping hand.

Cheers!

It seemed you didn't understand 100% how

Smite, CB and OW works.

Smite hits 100%, never miss and can't be blocked. It can also apply CB and OW. Using

Zeal instead of

Smite will lower the effectiveness of CB and OW, because

Zeal hit chance capped at 95% max, which means you will miss sooner or later. That's why you saw

Baal heal.
CB takes out 1/8 mobs' health under single player mode, it's a percentage, not a certain number, which is why it's less effective at the end of a boss fight. Instead,

Smite damage becomes relative more effective than CB at that moment.
Conclusion: As a smiter,

Smite all the way, it will take care of everything for you.

Not only does

Zeal require a hit check, it can also be blocked.

Uber Baal has 55% chance to block,

Pandemonium Diablo has 50% chance to block,

Uber Mephisto has 50% chance to block.

Smite completely bypasses hit chance and block chance.

Here's a simple calculation -

Uber Baal is level 110, you're level 90.

Uber Baal has 3150 defense, you have 12000 attack rating (that's just an example, I'm guessing you have less?). Your Grief has -25% Target Defense which is cut to half (-12.5%) vs bosses. The hit chance formula then works like this:

2 * (Alvl / (Alvl + Dlvl)) * (AR / (AR + Def))
2 * (90 / (90 + 110)) * (12000 / (12000 + (3150 * 0.875))) = 73.1% chance to hit.

Add in

Uber Baal's 55% chance to block, and

Zeal hits effectively 32.9% of the time vs

Uber Baal. Max speed with

Zeal is 5.21 hits per second, meaning that you effectively hit 1.74 times per second, and that's assuming you continuously hit

Uber Baal.

Zeal spreads its hits over adjacent targets, so if there are any other targets (like the minions he spawns), your

Zeal hits will be spread out.

Only a successful hit will apply Open Wounds (or Crushing Blow), and Open Wounds is also not guaranteed, it's a % chance (25% on your

Dracul's Grasp). If you hit

Uber Baal 1.74 times per second, you'll apply Open Wounds 0.435 times per second. Say only 1/5 of the

Zeal hits actually target

Baal due to minions surrounding you, and that's further reduced to 0.087 times per second (11.5 seconds between procs). And this is on average, with these low numbers you're very likely to see streaks where you (a) don't hit as much as you should or (b) OW simply won't proc.

Now consider

Smite. It bypasses hit check and block chance, and thus hits effectively 100% of the time. Max speed with

Smite is 4.17 hits per second, meaning you hit effectively 4.17 times per second, and all of them hit

Uber Baal, since

Smite only hits the target you click on, hits aren't spread out like with

Zeal. You'll apply Open Wounds 1.04 times per second on average (extremely unlikely you run out before it's reapplied), no matter how many minions surround you.

Smite does apply Open Wounds.

Smite does apply Chrusing Blow.

Smite does proc Chance to Cast on Striking effects (such as

Life Tap).

There is no reason to switch to

Zeal vs Ubers. Just keep smiting with Grief.

@FlyHorse, @ShadowheartsNA

Thanks for the detail explanation with calculations and it make sense! No wonder another build is easy (relatively speaking) for going after d clone and Ubers. I guess I’m just lucky having chose a hammerdin as my first D2R char come back from old D, D2