Uber Baal help (singleplayer)

Hi folks,

Trying my first solo

Uber Tristram run. Uber Diablo and

Über Mephisto are dead. Now

Über Baal and he's driving me nuts.

My sorc is:
- level 94 relevant skills all level 24+
- I have

Cold Mastery on level 29, so -160% cold resistance on enemies, plus a cold sunder charm.
- Typical attacks would be blizzard /

Glacial Spike or

Meteor /

Fireball (have a fire sunder charm too).
- Merc is Act 5 with ethereal

Andariel's Visage, Duress

Boneweave, Lawbringer

Cryptic Sword,

Headstriker.
- I also bought a

Life Tap

Wand (lvl 6) as well as a

Lower Resist

Wand (lvl 3).

Über Mephisto died fairly quickly from my cold spells. Uber Diablo died veeery slowly but steadily from my fire skills (also certainly helped that he didn't cast any minions and my

Energy Shield was working, so I was basically standing in his face and hit him with

Meteor and fireballs).

Now what happens is when I take on

Über Baal:
- Merc dies almost instantly, so the

Life Tap is probably useless.
- My spells do little to no (visible) damage.
- He's taking my

Energy Shield away all the time.

Don't know right now how I can play this?

oh, and I have a throwing weapon with 33% chance to open wounds but don't really hit him well of course...

I'm around to help if you need it - SC NL. Just woke up - didn't read Single Player.

I

Smite the ubers, so I'm unfamiliar with sorc strategies!

On merc it would be a better but expensive option Fortitude. Helps a lot on survivability. And also Infinity, very expensive, too.

For countering the life regen of Uber Ball,

Meteor is a good solution. I have a

Hydra sorc that uses

Meteor,

Hydra and

Fireball to knock Ubers down.

For mana problems you have to have lots of Full Rejuvs to refill it.

You have to call down

Meteor quite often as it's fire damage wears off. In between meteors you hit him with your most damaging spell.

Lanceor wrote: 8 months ago

I'm around to help if you need it - SC NL.

I

Smite the ubers, so I'm unfamiliar with sorc strategies!

I think he's on Single Player, so no help possible.

you want prevent monster heal on yourself preferably.
On the A5 merc weap it will only be applied when he hits with that hand and removed when you hit him or merc hits with other hand

Yeah, single player so no help... the

Meteor /

Fireball combo works as long as he doesn't take my

Energy Shield away. When that happens, I need to retreat to re-cast it, and by then he's healed already.

I wonder if I can get those open wounds applied to him. If I remember correctly, this blocks his regeneration for a couple of minutes (?!). I had one try where my merc kept hitting him for about half a minute, so quite a number of hits (Act 5

Frenzy merc), but then the merc died and the Open Wounds from the Duress armor didn't seem to be in place. Should I try that again? Or does the Open Wounds not work if it comes from mercs?

(Prevent monster heal doesn't work on Ubers if I remember correctly.)

Consider pre-buffing both you and your Merc with

Fade from Treachery.

Knappogue wrote: 8 months ago

Consider pre-buffing both you and your Merc with

Fade from Treachery.

I'm in the singleplayer game, so I can't leave to get other gear =/

fraggykrueger wrote: 8 months ago

I wonder if I can get those open wounds applied to him. If I remember correctly, this blocks his regeneration for a couple of minutes (?!).

Open Wounds only last 8 seconds, so you need some way to continuously apply it if you want to take advantage of it. Poison is another way to prevent regen. The longer the poison duration the better, of course.

fraggykrueger wrote: 8 months ago

Or does the Open Wounds not work if it comes from mercs?

Open Wounds does work from merc, it just doesn't last very long, as I mentioned above. Prevent Monster Heal is the one that lasts a long time (more than just a few minutes too), but PMH doesn't work at all vs ubers, sadly.

fraggykrueger wrote: 8 months ago

(Prevent monster heal doesn't work on Ubers if I remember correctly.)

Correct, PMH doesn't work at all vs ubers (it does work on dclone, but that's irrelevant here).

fraggykrueger wrote: 8 months ago

Knappogue wrote: 8 months ago

Consider pre-buffing both you and your Merc with

Fade from Treachery.

I'm in the singleplayer game, so I can't leave to get other gear =/

Do you keep runes in your shared stash? Can you maybe farm for any 3os armor in the rest of the map without exiting the game? It would be just for a prebuff, not to wear while engaging

Baal.

Aye, I've got the runes, lemme check for an armor somewhere... some monster just dropped a 2os

Light Plate... oh well... ^^

Also thought about switching the merc for another Hell merc?

Found a 3os chest armor near

The Countess Treachery is done. Giving this a try now.

fraggykrueger wrote: 8 months ago

Found a 3os chest armor near

The Countess Treachery is done. Giving this a try now.

It's not going to be a miracle salve, but that alongside some Open Wounds will make a difference. Just don't forget to put your old armor back on. I may have done that once or twice

Holy f*ck!!!!!!!

It worked!!!!!!!!

While farming for the 3os armor, I could stock up on (mostly normal) rejuvenation potions. So in I go with 16 potions, merc and myself proc-ed with

Fade, all "sorc buffs" (

Energy Shield,

Enchant on merc, Chilling Armour) in place. I ignore the minions and start casting

Meteor and spamming

Fireball. Merc takes lots of hits, about half of my potions go while

Über Baal loses his first quarter of life or so. Once in a while I switch to the

Wand and cast

Lower Resist on him. When he is down to about 33%, he kills my

Energy Shield for the first time and jumps on me. I retreat, recast

Energy Shield, and resume firing. Just as I think he might actually die soon, my last potion goes and the merc dies. I go Hail Mary and just go on casting Meteors and Fireballs. And then he dies! Sent f-ing SHIVERS all the way down to my legs!! My sorc is on the last 200 life or so. Heart still racing.

I'll remember this moment for quite some time, I suppose!

Torch was a Barb torch with +12 attributes and +19 resists. Especially happy since my first and oldest char is a barb. He'll make good use of this.

Thank you all for helping, and thanks @Knappogue for the hint to farm a 3os armor. Not sure but I think 16 minutes farming is quite reasonable for an item I REALLY needed

Going to bed now. Amazing evening.

Cheers!

Awesome man, I happy you didn't give up and were able to do it!

Congrats !
Everyone says Uber Meph is the real issue (and for most players It's true) but in our party It's always

Baal the most annoying, esp. with our poor sorc.
Good advicing guys.

Btw for the pots, when we do this we usually start by dropping 20-ish full rejuvs in top right corner behind the house. We drink quite a lot

Whatever happens, if you need to flee, don't bring the 3 bad guys to the portal, having one next to it is the best way to make it impossible