First of all, thanks for the excellent guide. This post is to describe my first attempt at the ubers.
I'm a hardcore D2 player who up until today has never seen uber tristram. For a long time I played nothing but sorcs, and would struggle to make it to hell. I don't know how many times I died over the years, but it's been plenty. I was the hot-headed sorc who sacrificed resists for magic find, and always paid the price.
After many deaths I slowly started learning what was going to get me in trouble, and was able to get to hell more frequently, and stay in hell games longer without dying. I used to have only one account, and would mule items in public games, often leaving them in the cold plains near the portal there. From this method of muling I was able to save up some runes from the hellforge drops, even though my main characters kept dying. Being able to save the hellforge runes this way helped me immensely, as I was able to trade them for things like shako and occulus to keep my ever-dying sorcs going.
About a year ago I read about the ubers and decided I wanted to try to get to them. I started playing paladins a bit, and didn't like them at all. I also played summon necros because I thought that was the only way I could farm the keys on act 5.
I started gearing up a 1pt smiter before the previous patch, and died to that aura that damages you when you hit something (the aura that was removed in 1.13). It's an aura that I'd never encountered before as a sorc, and after this I disliked paladins even more.
Anyway after 1.13 came out I decided to try again, and as of this afternoon my preparation was finally finished. I had all the keys, finally was able to buy a life tap wand, and had farmed 20 or so full rejuv pots. I also had a level 70 barb on my other pc to give me some much needed extra life (total health was around 3.2k)
Anyway, here is the gear I used:
Level 85
lightsabre weapon
duress
guillaume's face with um
maras
HoZ upgraded with um
draculs grasp
thundergod's vigor
gore riders upgraded
dwarf star
raven frost
My inventory was full of a combination of life and resist charms (nothing special, a few 20 life scs).
The first task for the mini ubers was easier than I had been expecting. My act 1 defensive merc (defiance aura) stayed alive almost until the end despite having average gear (normal shaftstop, vampire gaze and bonehew). He ended up tanking the minions while I smited the mini-ubers. I fed him full rejuv pots twice against one of them.
Without pause I opened the portal to tristram, and headed to the top of the screen to lure out mephisto. Her minions were spawning on me but I ran away from them and went to smite her, without using my life tap wand. I was planning on using it at first, but decided against it after realising that it takes a bit of getting used to swapping weapons. I couldn't do it well in practise (ended up smiting bosses with my wand equipped), so decided to skip it. A number of times my life dropped alarmingly low and I ended up using 2 rows of rejuv pots. I guess I should've switched to salvation but I forgot about that amidst all the action. I think I was too busy looking a my health bar empty and fill, empty and fill. Half way through I realised that in real life my heart was pounding! It was pretty exciting stuff. Fortunately life tap kicked in reasonably quickly from the gloves, and after that it was just a matter of watching meph's life slowly drop. It seemed to take a long time but really it was probably only 20 seconds or so.
As soon as she died, I ran back to town without hitting the minions, added more pots from my stash and ran away to the bottom right of the screen. I wasn't sure where Diablo and Baal were located exactly, and ended up pulling them both together. First of all I hit Baal and meanwhile I became totally surrounded by monsters. Diablo was draining my mana and my health kept dropping quite low. Without the extra life from my barb I would've died many times, but life tap was just enough to keep bringing me back to full. Towards the end I started to realise that I was probably going to survive!
I'd read that people sometimes died from the minions after killing the bosses, so after killing Baal and half way through Diablo I decided that I would simply pick up the charm and quit the game. However, things weren't going to be so simple, because I'd forgotten to leave some space in my inventory - oops! Anyway, Baal did end up dying and I was surrounded by mobs. Not confident with the situation, I exited.
Coming back into the game I freed up some space and was able to divert the minions and claim my reward. The torch was a 14/14 necro one.. not bad!
Anyway, thanks to this guide I no longer dislike paladins quite as much. If I ever find a Lo I'm going to make grief runeword for sure, but I can't see that happening any time soon.
Even with my current weapon I can't wait to try again. I'm hoping for a sorc torch
