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Vessel of Hatred

99 theorycrafting and stuff like that

It depends on the character, I'll assume you mean bowazon.
Step one: put your decoy slap up in front before the wave spawns ( I highly suggest not getting valk as that requires a point in avoid, which will get you locked up by hydras ).
Step two: just kill them as fast as you can.

Make sure he has 75% fire resistance ofc, and call to arms. You might still have to pop him a purple sometimes.
Most of the time he will be dying because he got weakened from the poison from wave 2. Either use Andariel's visage ( 85% poison res ), or pop him an antidote potion/healing potion.
 
Yes, I mean my Bowazon. Since I don't have Infinity, he is currently sporting eth Obedience, Um'd Guillame's, and CoH. The theory is overstacked resists to deal with convicted nasties, high damage, lots of CB to deal with Baal, and leech (from CoH). I suppose sacrificing a column of mana pots for antidote pots might help.
 
Assuming you're using the FA setup mentioned a while back, it will help (at least a little) if you shoot Freezing Arrow just before the wave spawns to have a decent number of the minions frozen on launch. It's not too different a concept from Lightning Fury or Glacial Spike, if you've used characters with those spells before to run Baal.

Reaper's will help a bit as well, even against Baal (though Kelpie will help more in that second regard).

Aside from that, see steps 1 and 2 above. :p
 
The Merc vs Wave 3 is a problem even on high levels. Achmel's poison also does not help :p

The best way that I found to address this issue is to use Guardian Angel.

My setup for 98 Softcore Light Sorc.

Eth, upped GA with 15% Scinitillating Jewel w/ random mod
Vampire Gaze - UM
Reaper's Toll - Shael

Should work well. I tried an eth Gladiator's Bane but found it lacking
 
On the topic of CS-running again, here's a little technique I learned last year for hammerdins.

[video=youtube;cEQ37zHH7_c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEQ37zHH7_c[/video]

The technique I'm talking about is the position for pre-casting hammers before Diablo spawns. There are several others but this one offers the highest amount of hammers pre-casted that will hit Diablo. It is useful if you insist on killing Diablo on earlier levels where you don't want an experience shrine for the kill. I haven't utilized it that much myself and thus it occasionally fails when Diablo decides to immediately charge on you or your hireling upon spawning. The way to circumvent this is to teleport in melee range of him, probably ideally at his 9 o'clock just before he actually spawns. Be ware to not block his spawning position however as all those hammers will be miss then.
The video also showcases how much perfect execution matters when playing a hammerdin at clvl 98 where your goal is to rush to Diablo. I recorded the video on a PC that I don't usually use and you can see particularly in the second run how badly I mess up against De Seis causing the pre-Diablo phase to last an additional ~15 seconds compared to the first run.

The method of running I used in the video isn't recommended; Rushing seals to get Diablo as fast as possible only makes sense at clvl 98 and then I'd be focusing on getting an experience shrine after the seal-phase rather than pre-casting hammers. For lower levels its much more important to focus on killing bosspacks and getting as many of Vizier's/Infector's minions down before you pop the last seal.
 
I have looked through this thread in preparation for starting up a serious 99 attempt with my pure lightning sorc. Apart from the 5-6 pages of you-are-wrong-no-you-are-wrong bashing on which char is better there is useful info I think.

I am lvl 90 and am not really sure on how to progress. I have enough exp to reach 91 witht the ancients now but after 10 attempts I just seem to fail... I wanted to save the ancients for taking me to a new level (thus not losing the xp again when I die) Should I wait for letting them take me to 92? I would like to proceeed to Baal as well, to try running that a couple of hundred times.

My merc have Infinity. I have 125 FCR and max on all resists. What else should I focus on?
 
hmmmm also a question here

where would i level a fishymancer best - he is pat and lvl92 at the moment
 
Beating the ancients with a sorc shouldn't be too hard. Reroll if cursed, split them up with teleport and running around, spam stuff until they die.. pretty much that. Play on p1 of course.

If you are going to do Baal runs anyway then it doesn't matter when you kill the ancients. Just do them already and move on to Baal.
 
Fishymancer - pits or wsk, I think. Areas because then you spend less time raising minions, theoretically.
 
queenEm said:
I have looked through this thread in preparation for starting up a serious 99 attempt with my pure lightning sorc. Apart from the 5-6 pages of you-are-wrong-no-you-are-wrong bashing on which char is better there is useful info I think.

I am lvl 90 and am not really sure on how to progress. I have enough exp to reach 91 witht the ancients now but after 10 attempts I just seem to fail... I wanted to save the ancients for taking me to a new level (thus not losing the xp again when I die) Should I wait for letting them take me to 92? I would like to proceeed to Baal as well, to try running that a couple of hundred times.

My merc have Infinity. I have 125 FCR and max on all resists. What else should I focus on?
Click to expand...

If you do the Anc. quest now Baal is the best option to go with. Pure light Sorc doesn't have much options other than Baal and Diablo, only maybe, if you are willing to respec, a p8 AT might be a good place for exp up until 97 maybe even for 98. Nihl/Diablo is the way to go when you are 98. Either way you are looking to loads of runs.


 
It's extremely hard though, with decrep cursing OK's slowing the merc down all around. Meh, even during chaos full clears with pure lite sorc, LI De seis was very annoying because he is a fast kitey thing with decrep spamming. Teleporting a bit and spamming TK to pin him against the wall helps but not much. And that's with no other monsters around to distract the merc. If he spawns with extra fast or stone skin as well.. yeah, GG.
 
Okay, another question or few :)

With help I now know that I *only* need about 10K AT runs at p3 to reach level 98 from 96 with my blizzy. I'm really tempted to go all the way, but I'm terrified of baal runs, and questioning Diablo runs. Nihl runs aren't even an option. No way I'm going down there in HC.

However, I know that if I were to just do AT runs it would be about 30K at p8 from 98 to 99, or 120K at p1 (hahahahahaha). 30K doesn't sound. . . Too crazy, but I fear the run time would be too large at that setting. . . So I'm kind of leaning towards CS runs. p1/p7, of course.

I'm wondering how many runs it takes for 98 to 99 in CS. My assumption is 3-4K, but I haven't done it.

On the off-chance that I choose to run baal, how much of the exp is gained from minions at 98? I know people normally run p8/p3, but I would rather run p1/p3 for safety. Anyone have some numbers?

It's a blizz sorc of course, but I may be willing to respec to lightning if it's the most reasonable option.
On the other hand, Ondal's Wisdom?
 
I do have some experience with running blizsorc at Baal (see anothago in the 99 runner tables). Since their can be a lot of cold immunes in the throne and the skeletons in wave 2 are also cold immune, I found a bonehew on switch absolutely mandatory. Myself I played without CTA, being SC and not having Ohm, but I guess as hc player you might want cta in cube or something. I think you will be better off with death fathom+shield as with ondals, but offcourse, next to the cta, you can also put an ondals in your cube for baal himself.

Wave 2 is done at /p1, this way you only need llike 2-4 corpse explosions to kill the skeletons. I gave my merc "cannot be frozen" (tyraels might :p) to clean the remaining skeletons. I also did wave 1 at /p1 due to laziness and the last 3 waves at /p8. Baal offcourse at /p3. It is important not to forget to switch back to /p1 or cleaning the throne can be pretty hard at /p3.
While your mf bliz sorc might feel OP in ancient tunnels, at Baal you need all the damage you can get and I would suggest deaths fathom+ blizzard ormus setup. I think I opted for harly instead of nightwings veil to have atleast some MF.

As I read, light sorc (with infinity) is much faster way to run Baal. I never did this myself.
 
Well, at the moment I don't have a blizz ormus or a death's fathom (currently using wizzy for res, anyway, as I have a 500 mf setup). I assume I'll get a fathom within the next 10k AT runs, though.
I did a respec to fix some other stats yesterday, and to also put a single point in lite mastery (I also use energy shield, so I figured a weak chain lightning is better than no attack at all).

Actually, I also telestomp the wave 2 minions for my merc to get the kill, but definitely will consider something like bonehew.

Thanks for the ideas ;)
 
The only dangerous thing in baalruns are dolls, if there's too many you simply restart the run otherwise you teleport to the stairs so they can only come from one direction guarded by your hireling.
All you need to do is roll a map with shortest possible distance from WP to throne with the least amount of bosspacks on the way and in the actual throne room for maximum safety. If your WSK 2 -> 3 is an L shape and your teleporting is sketchy at times you may want to stack sufficient light res to not get instagibbed by sudden conviction wisps.
With an infinity there's no doubt that respeccing to light sorc is a far, far better option for baal running.

I put up the numbers for exp/run on clvl 98 in an earlier post. IIRC the distribution from baal runs are 23k from minions with p8 all the way and 60k from baal himself.

CS can be done with a pure blizzard sorc but it requires very good equipment (particularly in the merc department) to flow reasonably. I wouldn't attempt with a sorc on HC in SP though, especially not without the absurd hp boost from beta versions.
 
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