Uber Bosses Advice

Hey Everyone,

I just started playing about a month ago and finally collected my first 3 x 3 full Key set to do the uber bosses. I plan on running them tonight with a few trusted friends.

I'm playing a Fury druid. I have a gear question and am looking for advice.

Do you think, for the glove slot, Laying of Hands would be better, or Blood Gloves with 20% IAS & 10% crushing blow. I have both, but I am not sure which would be preferred. On the one hand, Laying of Hands gives me fire resist and +350% damage to demons, but I also hear crushing blow is important for dealing with ubers.

Suggestions from people who've done the uber bosses with a melee character would be appreciated.

Lay on Hands is def the better Gloves, but you def want crushing blow for them, they have so much health. Typical choices for CB are Goblin Toe and Guiliaume's Face and there are some nice weapons for it too - The Death runeword isn't too expensive, neither are Bonesnap or Steeldriver (you'd want to up those from normal probably)... I've never played Fury and aren't sure what kinds of weapons you use though.

hitechhobo wrote: 8 months ago

Hey Everyone,

I just started playing about a month ago and finally collected my first 3 x 3 full Key set to do the uber bosses. I plan on running them tonight with a few trusted friends.

I'm playing a Fury druid. I have a gear question and am looking for advice.

Do you think, for the glove slot, Laying of Hands would be better, or Blood Gloves with 20% IAS & 10% crushing blow. I have both, but I am not sure which would be preferred. On the one hand, Laying of Hands gives me fire resist and +350% damage to demons, but I also hear crushing blow is important for dealing with ubers.

Suggestions from people who've done the uber bosses with a melee character would be appreciated.

The better choice depends on your other gear. While it's important to have all your resistances in place, lightning resistances is the most important. In fact you should get your lighting resistance as close to 300% as possible or use a Treachery to proc Fade if you want to survive Uber Meph's level 20 Conviction, and lightning attacks. As for gloves, if your fire resistance is low then you might want to consider Laying of Hands, otherwise the one with crushing blow is the better choice. You will need a lot of crushing blow, and some open wounds to prevent the Ubers from regenerating. So if want more advice then list your gear and resistances.

An aside, consider having a Treachery armor on hand so that you can proc Fade by standing in a fire, and then swapping back to your main gear, whatever that is. Level 15 Fade will give you 60% resist all and last for 4 minutes and 48 seconds which is long enough to take out Meph.

Thank you all.

So far:

Helmet: Uppped Jalal's Mane with a 35% enhanced damage jewel in it. (I am probably going to replace this with my 39% ED 7% FHR jewel though).

Armor: Fortitude Archon Plate.

Weapon: BotD Archon Staff

Gloves: going to go with the Blood Gloves

Belt: Could do String of Ears or Nosferatu's Coil...not sure yet.

Boots: Gore Rider

Amulet: Highlord's Wrath

Ring 1: Raven Frost

Ring 2: Blood Ring with dual leach and +10 all resist (and some other good stuff).

I have druid torch, Annihilus, and some sharp charms and a shimmering charm to boost damage and resistances.

Fire Resist: 59%
Cold Resist: 41%
Lightning Resist: 79%
Poison Resist: 52%

The hardest for melee isn't Mephisto but Baal.

What's your AR ?
You want 9-10k without Enchant precast.

Death is very strong against ubers because high crushing blow.

Depends your IAS breakpoint, chose string over nosferatu.

Let me put it this way: The chances of Uber-Mephi one-hitting you is a chance, where you WOULD want to gamble your house and your life-savings on.

79% LightningResi becomes -46% because of his aura.
And his lightningattack can hit you for several thousand damage at once, which get adjusted according to your ressistance.
(Should your Ressis already be adjusted to his aura, it is a different thing of course)

just fill your inventory with lightning resistance charms and use drac gloves for Life Tap.
my smitter under uber mepho aura still has 85 to lightning resitances 20 to fire/cold.

I would chose Duress instead of Fortitude . Death or Ribcracker instead of BoaD . Draculs grasp also good because of Life Tap and open wounds . And might be consider thundergods Vigor as Belt . Other pieces seems fine .

OK, thanks for the advice.

Unfortunately, I won't really be making a Death Decapitator for now.

I have a necromancer who will be joining us for either Decrepify or Life Tap, so that is taken care of. I think my big concern right now is my resistances.

hitechhobo wrote: 8 months ago

I think my big concern right now is my resistances.

As @mhlg mentioned in his post, pre-procing Fade with Treachery will help with your resistances. Treachery comes with level 15 Fade which gives 60 All Res and 15% Physical Dmg Reduced.

Thank you all. This is very good advice. I have another Blood Ring without the dual leach, but it has all resist and an extra bonus to lightning resist and attack rating. So I'll probably go with that ring.

While I do have some Duress in elite armor, I will not be using it as Fortitude has higher resist. However, my merc will be using the Duress armor.

Also, my attack rating in Werewolf form is 13k+ for both Fury and Feral Rage.

I also have a 2nd question:

I hear people saying to use Life Tap curse. Does normal life & mana leach not work against the uber bosses? I currently have over 20% life leach, and when Feral Rage charges up its ~150% life leach. Normally, this means every hit can fully replenish my life, even if I'm about to die. Would this not work against uber bosses?

Update, my uber run might not happen tonight. However, my brother (the necro who is joining) had a bunch of resistance charms he is loaning me. So now my fire, cold, and lightning resists are all above maxed in hell.

I'll post how the uber event goes on this thread once we do it.

hitechhobo wrote: 8 months ago

Update, my uber run might not happen tonight. However, my brother (the necro who is joining) had a bunch of resistance charms he is loaning me. So now my fire, cold, and lightning resists are all above maxed in hell.

I'll post how the uber event goes on this thread once we do it.

Before you make a run here's a point for you to consider. Uber Mephisto's Conviction lowers your lightning resistance by about 125%, so you have be certain you have enough in reserve to nullify the effect of his Lightning/ Charged Bolt attacks or he will one shot you. So if for instance your resistances are showing 95% then his level 20 Conviction will drop it to -30%. Here is a screenshot I took of my resistances. The 95% is what is in play and the 300% is in reserve, and it's that Bonus reserve that will stop you from getting one shotted by Mephisto. You can check your bonus resistance by using your mouse cursor.

Ok! Thank you. I didn't know you could do that.

So far, then, with charms boosting I have 80% lightning resist with +210% total.

I could boost this by +12% by using my other ring specifically when fighting Uber Mephisto, but then my other resists would go down by 5%. But it sounds like it's worth it.

hitechhobo wrote: 8 months ago

Ok! Thank you. I didn't know you could do that.

So far, then, with charms boosting I have 80% lightning resist with +210% total.

I could boost this by +12% by using my other ring specifically when fighting Uber Mephisto, but then my other resists would go down by 5%. But it sounds like it's worth it.

Don't forget that you can use a Treachery runeword armor to boost your resistances by 60% for 4 minutes and 48 seconds. It usually only takes a minute or two to drop Mephisto. Here's a map that shows Schnorki's recommended route.

Just put a Um rune in your Helm. You don't care much about ed jewel because crushing blow will do the main job (you don't have enought crushing blow).

You really have to think about Guillaume's Face with a Um rune because your crushing blow %.

Your main problem will come from Baal and high physical damage immune minions.
I don't know how your druid will manage them.
As a barb, you have Howl to keep them away.

High physical resistance monsters should not be a problem.

We will have a necromancer in the party. Decrepify lowers physical resistance by 50%, which can break physical immunity, but if I combine it with a Bone Break charm, it sets their physical resistance to 45%. I've done this before; very effective at killing them (as they typically have lower HP anyway.)

Unfortunately, I don't really have much else to increase my crushing blow right now. (I gave away the 2 Guillaume's Face helms that I found.) I think I would favor jalal's anyway for all the other good stuff that it does.

hitechhobo wrote: 8 months ago

We will have a necromancer in the party.
Decrepify lowers physical resistance by 50%, which can break physical immunity, but if I combine it with a
Bone Break charm, it sets their physical resistance to 45%. I've done this before; very effective at killing them (as they typically have lower HP anyway.)

You better have to use Terror on them so they run away and you don't waste Time at killing them.
You want to focus all your hits for Baal.

Edit : don't forget Demon Limb to precast Enchant on you.

Marrowwalk Boots can provide a safer endeavour with 10 charges of level 12 Life Tap, that totals 424 seconds of duration. Restoring charges may prove to be quite expensive, but who cares about in-game Gold when a Hellfire Torch is at stake.

I have not read everything, but here are my major points:

• Try to get your lightning resistances to +300 or at least close to this value
• For the Belt use Verdungo's Hearty Cord or Thundergod's Vigor
• If you have a Necromancer with you make sure Life Tap is always on the Boss you are fighting because you cannot leech on them - therefore Nosferatu's Coil and String of Ears are not much help in this situation.
• Try to get as much AR as possible by Enchant from e.g. Demon Limb. My Zealer gets Baal only efficiently down with Smite because Baal's defense really is a bummer

You can also let us know when you go in so maybe someone can stand by to hop in if you get in trouble.