I think I'm ready for my first Uber run? Or get my butt handed back to me.

Ok, so Decrep to start, then as Pally + Golem are in melee Pally can apply

Life Tap without losing the slow as

Clay Golem does the job.

Thanks for the explanation !
Side question : I assume Arachnid's mesh slow only work with melee attacks ? Does it the same (as for slow, of course Decrep also increases damage) as the two above ?

Edit: checked, Arach only does 10%. But none in real if I don't melee I guess.

Correct, your spells won't trigger the arach slow.

Only successful actual attacks trigger slow. Well, and getting hit in the case of

Clay Golem.

Though slow isn't perfectly straight forward tbh (then again, what is in this game? ).
It differentiates between velocity and attack rate. You can end up desyncing between client and server. And so on and so forth...

Overly simplified and to avoid unintended problems with it..just start with decrep before your pally even hits him.

See https://d2.lc/AB/wiki/indexeb60.html for more details.

This is a nice post worth keeping not too far...

I just reviewed it and it does have a log of useful information. I still follow most of the advice I was given to this day.

I haven't read the whole thread, so my apologies if this has been covered already.

You need 300 total resistance to be at +75 res with

Mephisto's

Conviction. How you get there is up to you.

-100 for hell
-125 from

Mephisto
75 for normal max.

There was an early question that @SnakeCharmed actually answered, but it's buried a little and maybe not obvious:

Uber Mephisto has a level 20

Conviction aura, so if a Paladin wants to negate the

Conviction issues, it needs to be at least level 21 player aura.

cristobal03 wrote: 4 months ago

There was an early question that @SnakeCharmed actually answered, but it's buried a little and maybe not obvious:

Uber Mephisto has a level 20

Conviction aura, so if a Paladin wants to negate the

Conviction issues, it needs to be at least level 21 player aura.

And it protects only him, not his merc, not his party members.

So 300 light res remains required for lots of people.

My best option is always 1p on

Salvation. Only for Meph but works really fine.

basicnecromancy wrote: 4 months ago

My best option is always 1p on

Salvation. Only for Meph but works really fine.

I have a point in

Salvation but I never use it because it really isn't needed and it requires weapon/shield swapping and loses

Fanaticism. Though I generally proc with Treachery, I've successfully done runs without it, but I suppose it depends on what you feel most comfortable with.

mhlg wrote: 4 months ago

[..] I have a point in

Salvation but [..] it requires weapon/shield swapping [..]

It...definitely shouldn't.

Schnorki wrote: 4 months ago

mhlg wrote: 4 months ago

[..] I have a point in

Salvation but [..] it requires weapon/shield swapping [..]

It...definitely shouldn't.

So go ahead and

Smite with

Salvation active in place of Fanat? I've tried activating

Salvation and then swapping back to Fanat but it only lasts a few seconds.

mhlg wrote: 4 months ago

Schnorki wrote: 4 months ago

mhlg wrote: 4 months ago

[..] I have a point in

Salvation but [..] it requires weapon/shield swapping [..]

It...definitely shouldn't.

So go ahead and

Smite with

Salvation active in place of Fanat?

Yup.

Even if you have literally 0 IAS, you're still at 9 frame

Smite as compared to typically 7 with 0 ias + fana (assuming a phase). Sure, it isn't ideal but even that will do.

At the same time, if you have 24+ IAS (so literally any Grief roll, a Kingslayer, most common smiter options apart from Death really) you drop from 6 with fana to 7 without which is hardly even noticeable.

65+ IAS (e.g. even a min. Grief + highlord + 1 ias jewel so...quite easy to hit) has you capped at 6 frame

Smite even without fana.

Sure, you lose the ED as well but since most of your dmg against ubers comes from CB anyways, the difference really isn't all that big against meph.

Schnorki wrote: 4 months ago

mhlg wrote: 4 months ago

Schnorki wrote: 4 months ago

It...definitely shouldn't.

So go ahead and

Smite with

Salvation active in place of Fanat?

Yup.

Even if you have literally 0 IAS, you're still at 9 frame

Smite as compared to typically 7 with 0 ias + fana (assuming a phase). Sure, it isn't ideal but even that will do.

At the same time, if you have 24+ IAS (so literally any Grief roll, a Kingslayer, most common smiter options apart from Death really) you drop from 6 with fana to 7 without which is hardly even noticeable.

65+ IAS (e.g. even a min. Grief + highlord + 1 ias jewel so...quite easy to hit) has you capped at 6 frame

Smite even without fana.

Sure, you lose the ED as well but since most of your dmg against ubers comes from CB anyways, the difference really isn't all that big against meph.

I'm not concerned about losing ED, because CB and OW takes care of the damage. With Fanat Drac's lifetap keeps my life full but when I've tried alternatives to Fanat the loss of IAS makes it noticeably less effective, requiring Pots. The most obvious benefit of Grief on my smiter is its IAS. So far my build hasn't died in a single Uber and I've done dozens, but there's always room for a first time.

On another note, I tried an experiment with a ladder Paly build that used a Black

Flail instead of Grief. I removed the G-Face ( I also had a Duress and

Goblin Toe), replaced it with a three socket

Helm filled it with three 15 IAS Jewels and it took down D-Clone in half the time, and Dracs proc'd often enough to keep my merc alive. So I shelved the G-face and kept the socketed

Helm.

I will give it a try and see how it works out, because now I don't have a choice if I want to keep a clear mind.

mhlg wrote: 4 months ago

basicnecromancy wrote: 4 months ago

My best option is always 1p on

Salvation. Only for Meph but works really fine.

I have a point in

Salvation but I never use it because it really isn't needed and it requires weapon/shield swapping and loses

Fanaticism. Though I generally proc with Treachery, I've successfully done runs without it, but I suppose it depends on what you feel most comfortable with.

You just spend, what, 10 seconds without fana to kill Meph? And procing

Fade takes less? I find it kind of waste of time. But yeah, how do you feel it better, it's matter of choice.

Killing meph without fana on a somewhat properly geared smiter takes about 2-3 seconds longer than with fana. Maybe a bit more if your gear is still lacking quite a bit. And even less of a difference when fully geared. Close to 0 difference if you wanna bother "being good" about it and only toggling

Salvation on for the dmg spikes while still keeping fana for the remainder of the kill.

Unless you faded randomly along the way, actively going somewhere to pre-proc

Fade takes far longer than that. And even if it happened randomly, you dropped your damage during that time clearing the way there as you were wasting your chest slot on a Treachery. That'll cost you about the same time probably. Or you dropped your travel time because you replaced Enigma (rather than fort) with Treachery in which case you lose infinitely more than 2-3 seconds by comparison.

Even ignoring that though,

Fade still wants you gearing for a fair bit of overkill res because it isn't nearly enough to outweigh meph's

Conviction (again dropping your performance overall). Plus with

Salvation, you can actually keep your merc alive no problem as well for which your

Fade really doesn't help you. Unless you pre-proc it on him as well, taking even more time and still resulting in not enough res for him in the end, meaning he'll still die. A dead merc alone will probably cost you more time than you could ever lose on meph without fana.

That having been said..I'd call this a matter of taste. Let's face it, an uber clear taking 2 seconds longer, 5 seconds longer or even 20 seconds longer makes basically 0 difference. They're not the kind of thing you keep chaining to Infinity. The real time loss related to ubers stems from not optimizing your

Key farming or from waiting around in trade games to get more keys, whichever route you go. Not from taking a few seconds longer on the actual uber clears. At least not in any significant way.

Personally, I like having my merc not die. And I don't want to over-gear on res just for one boss while having it be a complete and utter waste on everything else. And even more so, I simply hate having to switch gear to bother with any sort of pre-buffing cycle (on any char, not just re smiter/Treachery). A quick point in

Salvation fixes all of that for meph at minimal performance impact while making absolutely no difference whatsoever elsewhere, thanks to smiters having a crapton of spare skill points to play with anyways.
At the same time, if someone doesn't care about/doesn't use their merc and enjoys switching gear in and out for random proc effects...more power to ya, enjoy the

Fade approach. Or if you want neither and just overstack tons of res for him while accepting that you'll be worse off for it literally everywhere else (which is still half-way true for

Fade) because you prefer that over aura switching or gear switching, go for it.

After reading the posts I decided to go back and review my resistances. What is obvious is I really don't need to proc

Fade or use

Salvation, because my resistances without either are already 306% with +20 lightning absorb which explains why my build has never died without using either on an Uber run. It's in my nature to always add a little more than is needed to get the job done. Still the information in the above posts should be helpful to anyone who has questions about either choice.

Personally, I like having my merc not die. And I don't want to over-gear on res just for one boss while having it be a complete and utter waste on everything else.

I only use my Smiter for Ubers and D-Clone. For farming other locations I prefer to use one of my other builds and in particular my Bowazon and Javazon. I have lvl 92 Sorc all decked out, but the Zons are more fun. I think it's time to try some other builds.

"A little more"? Sheesh...

An afterthought, with

Salvation my resistances would be way over the top.

Indeed they will.

Salvation is to allow you to not gear for any res past the non-convicted

Cap. If you (like yourself) already gear well beyond that anyways for whatever reason then

Salvation is just a waste. At least for yourself.

Still great to keep your merc up. But that'll be it.