Cold Sorc against Ubers?

[Greizer]

Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Can it be done? :scratchchin: Uber Izual and Uber Baal are Cold Immune... But their resistance is 110%, so it can be broken with Infinity! If you stat for max Cold Mastery, you can have their res at -100% just like with the rest of the Ubers.

Stopping their regen could be done with Open Wounds from a bow (for Meph at least, as your merc won't survive him). Bone Prison charges from Marrow Walk can be used to trap Izual and Duriel at least (maybe not Lilith or the 'big' Ubers). Your merc can have a Dream helm to cast Confuse on the minions for crowd control. The only real trouble seems to be that Lilith's chambers have Hell Witches that cast Blood Mana if you have more mana than life, so you cannot use ES (not that you'd have many points if you use Blizzard, as you should since it does more dmg and is easier to aim than Orb).

I'm curious if anyone's tried this and how they fared. Obviously you'd need +6 BO CtA, Fathom etc. I might soon have enough gear to try this, so now's the time to convince me not to. :wink: I've just always been frustrated with the fact that Sorcs own the rest of the game and yet get punched to death by such punk-*** low-lifes as the Ubers. It's time to show the bosses who's boss (lol that could be from a cheesy 80'ies flick), so, chime in gents. :nod:

Greizer

 

[onderduiker]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Unfortunately, due to a hidden Cold Enchanted bonus Uber Duriel (150%), Uber Izual (185%) and Uber Baal (185%) are always Immune to Cold. Uber Diablo becomes Immune to Cold (115%) due to a hidden Magic Resistant bonus, although this can be broken by an Infinity polearm's Level 12 Conviction Aura When Equipped.

A Fire Sorceress might be more viable since only Uber Diablo (110%) and Uber Baal (115%) are Immune to Fire, and fire damage per second (actually per frame) from Blaze, Fire Wall or Meteor can stop damage regeneration when applied.

 

[Greizer]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Hmm thank you for the info. This might just be my final project this last Ladder before D3. What a way to top 5 years of playing Sorcs - to kill the Ubers with a Firewall Sorc! :nod: Why Firewall? Well, it's easy to aim, it stacks, and you have plenty of points left for a full ES. If you buy organs or use a smiter to run the mini Ubers, then there's no need to worry about Blood Mana curse.

The problem then becomes Baal's manaburn, which can be deadly to say the least. Right now I'm in the process of building up my BO barb that will give me lvl 52 BO, so if I stat some life too, and have life charms, maybe it is manageable. I wonder how well the Bone Prison charges from Marrow stack up against Ubers? Meph probably destroys the prison, but how about Baal and Diablo?

Good news about the regen, btw. Would've been really awkward messing about with a bow. So... Unsorcy (Is that a word? Well, it is now that I made it up. Feel free to use it! :jig

Edit: if you only run ubers with the Sorc, no need for fcr either. Lvl 49 FW does 35k/sec... Seems pretty high tbh. I wonder why noone's done this before. Probably simply because, well, if you have a Smiter, why not use it for the Ubers too? The only answer is: novelty, and quite rightly so, since Smiters are the cheesiest cheese this side of Cheese Town, Cheese County, Cheeseland, Moon (which is made out of cheese, obviously. :wink.

Edit2: hmm right, no -fres from Fire Mastery. Phoenix gives -28%... Baal is at 99% res after Infi breaks his immunity. Not enough damage, I suspect. Faceted sword or armor maybe? Saw someone selling facet sword on Bnet. Maybe he's bored enough by now to sell it to me on the cheap. :scratchchin:

 

[Cryton]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Unfortunately, due to a hidden Cold Enchanted bonus Uber Duriel (150%), Uber Izual (185%) and Uber Baal (185%) are always Immune to Cold. Uber Diablo becomes Immune to Cold (115%) due to a hidden Magic Resistant bonus, although this can be broken by an Infinity polearm's Level 12 Conviction Aura When Equipped.

A Fire Sorceress might be more viable since only Uber Diablo (110%) and Uber Baal (115%) are Immune to Fire, and fire damage per second (actually per frame) from Blaze, Fire Wall or Meteor can stop damage regeneration when applied.

Nice to know!

Thanks for the great info. If you dont mind me asking where did you find those numbers?

And do you have the numbers for the mini ubers aswell?

 

[Greizer]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Btw, what's Lilith's drain effectiveness, if you know, onderduiker? Because if it's high enough, an Act V merc with a Gul'd Venom Ward, Um'd CoT and eBotD CB just might have enough leech to survive if I keep cursing Lily with a Lifetap wand. :scratchchin:

I'll need some more lucky finds to finance all this... Although probably there'll be a ton of giveaways towards the date when D3 comes out.

 

[onderduiker]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

I wonder how well the Bone Prison charges from Marrow stack up against Ubers? Meph probably destroys the prison, but how about Baal and Diablo?

In Hell, Level 33 Bone Prison has 3,879 life, Damage Resist 50%, Cold Resist 90% and Poison Resist 200%. Although prime evil bosses (all uber bosses except Izual) apply 400% damage to summoned pets (and 200% damage to mercenaries), this modification does not apply to Bone Prison (or Bone Wall). BP cannot be cursed, but Conviction will lower its resistance even though it isn't displayed as applying.

If you dont mind me asking where did you find those numbers?

And do you have the numbers for the mini ubers aswell?

A poster called exkillerd queried uber boss resistances in the Amazon Basin's Technical Discussion forum after finding the four mentioned here took no cold damage (although Uber Diablo took cold damage when using Infinity). I then ran some tests in Single Player to establish what their resistances were, and based on those results and other observations of on-line play (like Cold Enchanted novae upon death) uber boss resistances were determined to be as follows due to hidden Unique bonuses:

UBER      UNIQUE BONUS(ES)      DR %  MR %  FR %  LR %  CR %  PR %   IMMUNE TO
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Izual     Cold Enchanted          30    75    75    75   185    75   Cold (Hard)
Lilith    Poison Enchanted        66    75    75    75    75   185   Poison (Hard)
Duriel    Cold Enchanted          50    75    75    75   150    75   Cold (Hard)
Mephisto  Lightning Enchanted     20    75    75   110    75   110   Lightning (Soft), Poison (Soft)
          Magic Resistant
Diablo    Magic Resistant         50    75   110    75   115    75   Fire (Soft), Cold (Soft)
Baal      Cold Enchanted          50    75   115    75   185    75   Fire (Soft), Cold (Hard)
          Magic Resistant

When I submitted this to the Arreat Summit and it was updated, it was also added that Lilith had the Multiple Shots bonus (which I've confirmed) and that the uber bosses are Extra Fast (which I haven't confirmed - yet).

Btw, what's Lilith's drain effectiveness, if you know, onderduiker? Because if it's high enough, an Act V merc with a Gul'd Venom Ward, Um'd CoT and eBotD CB just might have enough leech to survive if I keep cursing Lily with a Lifetap wand. :scratchchin:

Drain effectiveness is as follows:

UBER      DRAIN
---------------
Izual       50%
Lilith      33%
Duriel     100%
Mephisto     0%
Diablo      15%
Baal        20%

However, drain effectiveness doesn't apply to Life Tap (and neither do difficulty level penalties). Both apply to Life Stolen per hit, though... as does the unit damage modifier: in Hell, mercenaries only apply 25% damage to prime evil bosses (all uber bosses except Izual), so < 4% LS won't leech at all (4-7% is reduced to 1%, 8-11% is reduced to 2%, and so on).

Life Tap always returns 50% of physical attack damage as life, so the only thing which prevents leeching is a target that's Immune to Physical, or which cannot be cursed.

 

[Greizer]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Thank you for infos. So, Meph will shred Bone Prison, as I thought. But it might hold up against Lilith as it's poison immune. :scratchchin: She does hit pretty hard in melee too, though.

With all the maluses that regular Life Leech gets in Hell against Ubers, I think it's pretty useless. That does ease the gear selection, as I'll need to concentrate on +dmg alone. Maybe I'll slap my Grief on an Act V Merc... Although another thread gave me a new idea: a Kelpie Snare + Blackhorn's Face might slow the Ubers enough to make their attacks manageable! 95% slow should count for something. I wonder which approach is better, slow or + dmg? An upped eth Kelpie still does pitiable damage... Decisions, decisions. Luckily it's not costly to test the Kelpie+Blackie's combination.

Edit: Does Holy Freeze work on the Ubers? If not, then it might be best to go with a Blessed Aim merc to help the merc's hit %.

 

[magicrectangle]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Boss type monsters are capped at 50% slow, so blackthorn's is pointless. You'll probably want a kira's for resists instead.

 

[onderduiker]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

Does Holy Freeze work on the Ubers? If not, then it might be best to go with a Blessed Aim merc to help the merc's hit %.

Holy Freeze does not slow prime evils (although inconsistent with the lore, practically this category includes Lilith and uber Duriel), although level > 1 will apply -33 attack rate and velocity to uber Izual (his chill effectiveness restricts how much he is slowed).

Boss type monsters are capped at 50% slow, so blackthorn's is pointless.

Given the often inconsistent definition of 'boss', I'll just clarify that Slows Target has a 50% ceiling when applied to Champion, Unique, Super Unique and boss monsters.

 

[minuses]

Re: Cold Sorc against Ubers?

The most effective way to do ubers with a sorc is to make a dual dream zeal sorc and have either blizz or meteor as your secondary attack. The other ubers can be zealed down easily as for meph just use blizz or meteor on him until he dies. Make sure you have eternity for revives to keep meph in 1 place.