I will start by saying, I have read ALL 310 pages. If you have a question, I gaurantee you can click on ANY page and withing + / - 5 pages (being generous here) your question will have been asked and answered. That is why there are so many pages. Most people are too lazy to research. JUST LOOK. IT'S NOT FAR AWAY!!! Sorry, ehem, now that I got that out. I would like to Thanks Kingdryland for this guide. I played d2 on single player exclusively, and after beating the game with every type of character, the only thing left was uber trist. I was about to make a pure smiter because I was told they are one of the few that could solo. I didn't really plan on relying on others, so smiter it would be. As I was looking up the gear for a smiter, I stumbled across this guide and found it would be way better suited for crowd control. I will warn that this post will be long, but it will most likely answer many questions.
If you are wondering if your build can solo ubers, ask yourself a few questions:
Do I have dracs and gores?
Do I have maxed block?
Do I have at least 1300 life?
If you answered yes to all 3, you can get it done. You may die once or twice, but it will can be done. HC player, excuse my ignorance, but you may be able to take something from this too. (just not the part about dying)
We all know to max sac, fanat, zeal, and holy shield, 1 pt salvation. One of the most annoying questions: Where do I put extra skill points? Answer - Defiance. Thats it. Don't do blessed aim. And for F*CK SAKE, don't put them into SMITE!!! 1 pt smiter is not a 7 or 12 pt smiter. It's a 1 pt smiter. I haven't tried any other utiliy skills. If you wanna try them, do so. Vigor could help, but I just have charge hotkeyed.
Another one that gets me. My damage is only xxxxx. The answer, which has been beat to death is that the screen is taking the damage from just a phaseblade. It doesn't see the +damage mod from grief. I personally have shown someone who didn't believe me. I told him the set up. He had an azwerath (I am not looking up the spelling). We went to the River of Flame. I used his az first and zealed a crowd. Then, I used my lightsaber (which is a fantastic weapon for poor btw, more later). Lastly, I used my grief. I asked him if he noticed the difference in killing speed. He agreed. My zeal damage with fan on for lightsaber was 2k-2500 ish. With grief it is 1k ish. Grief owns everythin but phys immunes.
I started with nothing to make follow this guide. Just starting out, I got lucky in some trades and got dracs and gore cheap and early on. My dracs were crappy lifeleech stated one, but once lifetap procs, it doesn't matter.
The first run I did with a group, my setup was something like dracs, gores, random helm or mid range kiras (most likely kira (anaother fantastic helm for poor)), duriels shell armor, tgods, din slayer, dirt shield, highlords, random rings (maybe a raven). We were all in town, an I entered the portal to uber Izzy and started smiting away and I had him to 1/4 life before others entered. The other smiter in the group mentioned that I had it covered without him. NOTE: It is slow with crap equip.
After amassing a little bit of equip, I was now looking like kira, smoke, lighsaber, gores, dracs, HOZ (borrowed until I got my own for like a pul or an ist), tgod, highlord, raven, dwarf. Look closely at this setup. The only cb I had was 15% from gores. I was able to manage. At some point I got some dirt 1 bo cta that pushed me to a whopping 1700 health (that I have now as base...hahaha)
I was able to obtain a dirt grief for cheap. I have not had reason to get better because it is quoted that the worst roll on grief wil be devastating. It is. New setup.
Kira, Duress (a little mor cb and more res than dshell, but not as much as smoke), grief, hoz, dwarf, faven, tgod, highlords, switch cta and spirit (mind you a 1 bo). And at some point I made a trechery for fade.
I soloed with this setup quite well. I did die a few time stil learning stuff. Eventually I rolled a 4 bo cta. That was nice insurance. I was in the 2k range with health now. Ubers went down a little faster also.
After aquiring a few more things, my newest gear setup is: um'ed guil, COH (I like it and I like the res better than fort), hoz (still haven't socketed anything in it), grief, dracs, gores, raven, dwark, tgod, a new 6 bo cta (bought) with spirit on switch. This setup rocks. It didn't take me a rediculous time to amass it all because basically all my wealth has gone into this guy. I have around 3k health after bo.
I will address a couple more issues:
1 - Lilith hits hardest. Hence 1300 life needed. She will 1 shot you. Good luck. If you have low health and get amped, run to town and talk to malah before engaging. Soomeone asked about the den and taking on witches. They hit hard. If you can get in there and zeal them, do stop or you will die. Take your time, always have a retreat, and don't think twice about drawing a few out at a time to thin a big crowd down. I don't like to run into the little room that Lilith is in (even if my barb friend BO's me and I have 4k health). I get her attention and then run so she will follow and I don't have to take her in a crowd, get amped, and get smoked. NOTE: Maybe it's me, but lifetap seems to always take the longest to proc when I am smiting Lilith.
Next isssue: Don't up HOZ. Not needed. Get a grief. You will kill fast. Asked, answered, case closed. Don't wasted the extra str point for a few hundred more damage.
Another issue: Last Wish vs Grief? GRIEF!!! Case closed. I had the privelage of knowing someone well enough to trust me to give backt eh LW he was tring to trade. At the cost of 3 bers and a ..... another HR, you can spend half or a 3rd of that, get a grief and be just fine. If you read through that debate, you will hear that after 1/4 health, the extra crushing blow is ineffective. This is true. This is a placebo effect when it comes to killing the uber bosses. Well, this weapon is really expensive, has loads of crushing blow, so it must be better, right? Wrong. The time you save taking the majority of the boss' life away up frony fromt he high CB gets made up when it takes 20 seconds to finally get that last little hairline sliver of life to go away. Greif does consistant damage and works all too well.
I had 1 questions that in 300 pages was never really answered. Does tri elemental resist prevent you from needing to stack your resists as much? Answer: NO. I got killed by meph before. It does help a ton, and you can see from my most recent setup, I am still runing tri-sorb.
Poor people. I will express that when I was poor, I loved my lightsaber. It was cheap, and like grief jr. It's slower, but kills phys immunes faster than grief. The only thing to be careful of in lester de whatever in chaos. His fanatic aura will surprise you. You won't kill his minions fast enough if you get swarmed. Draw a few out at a time.
Another question that is a legit one. Can this build key run? YES and NO. You can do countess pretty easily, but it's slow. Some PI's but you can run from them. Arcane sucks cause more PI souls (forget name), and if you get swarmed, you're dead. Hall = more PI most of the time. Vipers are tricky. If you do decide to go into kill nilly, get a nature's peace ring. The slain monsters RIP will negate his corpse explosion. I tried making a javazon for nilly, and found that my newest character, an orb / chain lightning with a full tals set and wearing a natures peace makes key running quite easy while I am mfing. I know this may not be an option at first, but consider it. Infinity make this really easy. (I know it costs a fortune though)
I think that's all I have for now. GL. If you have the 3 things I mentioned, you should be able to get the job done.
Normally go together with the mrs on her druid, she lures them out one by one, and I bash them to pieces with smite, seems to work wonders.