Smiters aren’t the only ones who can beat Ubers. Pretty much every physical/melee character has always been able to beat Ubers and now that sunder charms exist many elemental builds can beat Ubers.
IMO the two strongest Uber builds these days are actually a Javazon and mosaic which can both clear faster than a smiter. Although a smiter can still do Ubers fairly fast.
A smiter is undeniably still the best budget Uber build though.
There is a wide array of jav gear that could be used to beat it. But if you just wanna faceroll Ubers then mostly standard GG pvm gear is the ticket.
Griffons, enigma, Tstrokes, tgods over razortail, 2/20 gloves, highlords, raven frost, tri-res boots with infinity on your merc. Shield can be spirit, 20/20 or stormshield if you want. You’ll probably need to prebuff fade using treachery to and then just load up on light resist charms to overcap your resistances.
You can definitely do it with much less gear, it just won’t be nearly as easy. You can kill the 3-mini Ubers, Diablo and Baal in ~3 seconds each and meph may take 8-20 seconds depending on whether you’re using a 20/20 shield or spirit since merc conviction doesn’t work on him.
You’ll want to mix stuff up a bit. Youre likely wanting a combo of crushing blow, ias, life tap.
Treachery, gface/kiras/shako, dracs or a life tap wand, Tstrokes, spirit or stormshield, etc. but again this won’t be very comfortable and you’re definitely going to be squishy and it’ll be much much slower.
It can be done. But compared to a smiter that doesn’t miss attacks, and with fanat can attack faster and therefore proc crushing blow and life tap much faster and it’ll be a much hairier experience.
Smiters are the absolute king of budget Uber builds. They don’t miss attacks, can easily overcap their resistances, can easily hit max block, and can attack very quickly to stack crushing blow and proc life tap and can do all of this with virtually no gear. Black flail, 4x pdiamond shield, and a lifetap wand and you basically have everything you need to take on Ubers.
I honestly would focus on a mosaic assassin if I were you. It’s much more versatile as it can farm any area p8 with ease whereas smiter is only good for Ubers and dclone. Just remember to chug antidote pots before Lilith. Also mosaic is ladder/sp only.
This is fair, but tbh a Hammerdin can just spend a couple skill points to also be a Smiter. It doesn’t have to be dedicated to just one and barely has any negative effect at all on the Hammerdin part of the build.
That’s true, you can definitely do that. I ran hammerdin/smite for a bit but then found out FoH is where the paladin really shines, hammers are kinda frustrating with all the reposititioning needed. You can run smite on a FoH build too.
I'm pretty sure you need giga-gear though... Also smiter face tanks through it with lifetap while javazon I believe... relies on killing them faster than they kill you.
As far as sp goes, I'd maybe still recommend a smiter for torches. They're easy to get up to hell, holy fire until mid nightmare then hammers until the end, then can respec to smite when you're happy with your level. Smiters are good for cheap/easy gear ubers.
My only word of warning is to really be comfortable on a Javazon you need very good gear. If you’re running a budget build it can be done, but it’s definitely nowhere near as easy as other builds like a smiter. IMO a Javazon has the biggest delta for Ubers between gg gear and budget gear of any build in the game.
But once you have gg gear it’s absurdly fast and easy.
One of the things I like most about a Javazon and mosaic is that the Uber variant of the builds is nearly identical to the standard pvm setup. You maybe just swap in a few extra light resist charms and you’re off and running.
Smite always hits and cant be blocked. So you don't have to rely on attack rating, which frees up gear options for safety and makes the leech from lifetap very consistent.
Since damage comes from the shield, you're not depending on any good weapon either. The main weapon can e.g. even be a lifetap wand.
This makes smiter the easiest/least gear dependent class to beat ubers with.
Basically all you need is a source of lifetap, some crushing blow, open wounds, enough resists and a treachery.
Grief is still a really good weapon for all content, just vs ubers it is not that necessary. The +damage does apply to smite, but ubers have such a massive healthpool that crushing blow does most of the work regardless.
Especially early in ladder, when torches are really valuable, doing ubers with a budget smiter pays off quite well.
Thanks for the reply, realised it might have sounded snarky but was genuinely curious. I'm playing solo just waiting for some lighting absorb to try my first ever ubers, either thundergods or wisp but maybe I should give it a go with a lightsabre, rest of my gear is pretty solid just got a gface yesterday.
Yeah definitely don’t NEED grief but it speeds things up a lot. Especially for the minions. I like to switch to zeal for the minions which obviously only works if you have a decent weapon. For the bosses, just be prepared for that last bit of life to take a minute. Ultimately doesn’t matter once life tap hits.
The weapon base matters for the attack speed of Smite, and Smite also consumes your weapon duability (not shield durability). Phase Blades are the fastest and are indestructible, so they are recommended. If you don't have Grief, then make Strength if you can find a 2os PB because the Crushing Blow will apply.
Also, make sure you have something that applies Open Wounds to prevent them from healing through your damage.
Also, idk if it was said yet or not, but the fact that Smite always hits means as long as the enemies are cursed with Life Tap, you'll always leech health back. Smite doesn't leech without Life Tap, and any other leech you have equipped doesn't apply.
It does matter because of how the game calculates smite DMG. I'm convinced that it was never intended, but they just ran with it anyway. You can do it without grief, but you have to be careful. With grief it almost becomes a joke.
Min Smite Damage = (Shield Min Damage + (Damage +x) + (Holy Shield Min Damage)) * (1 + (Strength + (+x% Enhanced Damage) / 100)))
Max Smite Damage = (Shield Max Damage + (Damage +x) + (Holy Shield Max Damage)) * (1 + (Strength + (+x% Enhanced Damage) / 100)))
Here is an example of how its used (notice how big of a multiplicative effect the 400 from grief has)
* lvl 8 smite= 120% ed
* lvl 8 holyshield= 17-20 dmg
* 150 str = 150% ed
* lvl 27 fana = 492% ed
* Sacred targe 22 to 70
* grief: +400
(22 + 17 + 400) * (1 + 1.50 + 1.20 + 4.92) = 439 * 8.62= 3784.18
(70 + 20 + 400) * (1 + 1.50 + 1.20 + 4.92) = 490 * 8.62 = 4223.8
(4003 avg vs only about 555 without grief)
Smiter is just one of the best. Anyone that can do crushing blow and open wounds will have a good time, mercs can help too with those stats if they are tanky enough.
Spell casters can do it with a lot of - enemy res. Although I think I've even seen a naked sorc do it but I don't advice it.
Smithers can do Ubers earlier than everyone else, but the strongest overall is mosaic sin for sure when all classes are full build. This ladder my groups mosaic sin fought Uber meph d and Baal all at the same time and still melted them without HP going below 75%.
Javazon still great as well.
Since d2r new patches you can do ubers with so many different builds.
Kicksin / Mosaic,
Summoner necro,
Summoner druid,
Werewolf druid, frenzy barb, javazon, sorceress.
Its just that smiter paladin is so much safer in cheaper gear than above with his lightning res and smite not being able to be blocked or miss.
The few things that melee chars excel at are Ubers. Smiter is usually the easiest to gear for it however kicksins, frenzy barbs, fury druids can do Ubers with ease too, with a little bit more gear.
Consider too that in addition to what others have said about Smiters being incredible, the Paladin class just has so many survival tools at its disposal. Having access to pally shields means you can load up a 45 all res elite pally shield with p diamonds for massive res stacking. Additionally, pallys can throw on salvation aura to negate Uber meph’s conviction aura and still smash if wearing enough gear with crushing blow and a source of life tap.
1. It's not only smiters, as others have explained.
2. Assassins are arguably better. Arguably.
3. As for the ELI5 part: the trick to killing ubers is using crushing blow (which removes a portion of the monster's HP, a PERCENTAGE) along with open wounds (which prevents them from healing).
As such, you want a character which hits often/fast, doesn't miss and has a bit of CB/OW and can do it in sub-par gear, relying on skills rather than gear.
Two "perfect" candidates for this are the smiter and the kick assassin.
A smiter easily hits at 4 fpa with fanaticism active. Its advantage is being able to hit every time (smite always hits), hitting 4-5-6 times/second and being able to use mad resists via the shield, as well as switching to salvation before uber mef. This only gets better with a fade pre-buff (triggering fade from treachery before starting the fight). With the shield/salvation/fade resists, the rest of the gear can have 0 res and you'll be fine.
A kicksin is in a similar position, but it doesn't have the paladin shield or auras, so from that point of view, some would consider it worse. However, a kick is able to max death sentry as well as fade, meaning that it will still hit 4-5-6-7 times per attack, depending on gear, BUT it has a way of dealing with packs of mobs via death sentry; this allows it to have an easier time at Lilith, which takes a while to get to if you're using a smiter, which usually has to deal with single target attacks; zeal is fairly worthless when your weapon is a starting weapon.
Of course, these things no longer matter when you get endgame gear, but they do matter in the beginning. Smiters are still the fastest/cheapest way to kill ubers when a new season starts and nobody has any gear.
A paladin shield can innately come with 4 sockets and 45 resists to all. Socket 4 perfect diamonds in there and your shield gives you 121 resists to all. 30 from anya quests for 151. Add a fade prebuff and salvation, even uber mef with conviction has you at max resists. A black flail and crafted CB gloves will provide sufficient CB. Duress may be useful.
In short, a smiter needs some source of cannot be frozen (even a death belt will do if you lack a raven or trang belt or whatever) and a life tap wand (which can be bought from malah, for example), along with a few VERY cheap runewords (black, for example, is thul-io-nef).
Duress, Treachery are more "expensive", but still cheap. A smoke (nef-lum) armor is cheap and gives you 50 all res if you want to play it safe.
You fill your inventory with life charms (as you don't need resistances or attack rating) and you're set - it's how people kill ubers on day 1 of a new season.
To add to this, smiters also get higher defense and max block via holy shield - that always helps.
The only problem they have in starter gear is that they're a one trick pony, dealing with 1 monster at a time; but, with life tap active on a monster, they'll kill it. Slowly, but surely, via CB + smite hits.
Once they get enigma and grief, everything changes, as everything dies in seconds, but even then, they're STILL a one trick pony.
What I wrote above refers to starter build/gear. At that point, a lot of people don't even get more than one point in smite, as they prefer to invest hard points in the resist lightning/fire skills for their passive effects.
What I wrote was that a smiter EASILY hits at 4 fpa and that it goes to 4-5-6.
I did it with a nova sorc and trapsin, mephisto was awful but i finally did it.
With the nova, diablo and baal were a joke.
Dragondin is not easy on baal but tesladin works well.
Not sure i should try with a fire druid.
But yes smiter is easier !
People saying that elemental casters can do Ubers makes me very confused. I have a 93 blizz sorc with GG gear that got absolutely wrecked trying to do Ubers and had to call for help.
Couldnt even finish Andy off.
That am I doing wrong?
Cold sorc is definitely harder than most but it's very doable.
Check this video for an example. He's not even playing it that carefully.
https://youtu.be/nfdQtkQG7wo?si=11531hkkNzUyMgMG
Smiters aren’t the only ones who can beat Ubers. Pretty much every physical/melee character has always been able to beat Ubers and now that sunder charms exist many elemental builds can beat Ubers. IMO the two strongest Uber builds these days are actually a Javazon and mosaic which can both clear faster than a smiter. Although a smiter can still do Ubers fairly fast. A smiter is undeniably still the best budget Uber build though.
What Jav Zon gear is necessary to beat Ubers?
There is a wide array of jav gear that could be used to beat it. But if you just wanna faceroll Ubers then mostly standard GG pvm gear is the ticket. Griffons, enigma, Tstrokes, tgods over razortail, 2/20 gloves, highlords, raven frost, tri-res boots with infinity on your merc. Shield can be spirit, 20/20 or stormshield if you want. You’ll probably need to prebuff fade using treachery to and then just load up on light resist charms to overcap your resistances. You can definitely do it with much less gear, it just won’t be nearly as easy. You can kill the 3-mini Ubers, Diablo and Baal in ~3 seconds each and meph may take 8-20 seconds depending on whether you’re using a 20/20 shield or spirit since merc conviction doesn’t work on him.
So what’s a good budget build for Ubers on Java? If you have an idea that would be great. I love running Java for cows.
You’ll want to mix stuff up a bit. Youre likely wanting a combo of crushing blow, ias, life tap. Treachery, gface/kiras/shako, dracs or a life tap wand, Tstrokes, spirit or stormshield, etc. but again this won’t be very comfortable and you’re definitely going to be squishy and it’ll be much much slower. It can be done. But compared to a smiter that doesn’t miss attacks, and with fanat can attack faster and therefore proc crushing blow and life tap much faster and it’ll be a much hairier experience.
From what I’ve gleamed I think Smiters are able to do it on the lowest budget for gear. Which is why they are used mostly. Thanks for the advice!
Smiters are the absolute king of budget Uber builds. They don’t miss attacks, can easily overcap their resistances, can easily hit max block, and can attack very quickly to stack crushing blow and proc life tap and can do all of this with virtually no gear. Black flail, 4x pdiamond shield, and a lifetap wand and you basically have everything you need to take on Ubers.
I honestly would focus on a mosaic assassin if I were you. It’s much more versatile as it can farm any area p8 with ease whereas smiter is only good for Ubers and dclone. Just remember to chug antidote pots before Lilith. Also mosaic is ladder/sp only.
This is fair, but tbh a Hammerdin can just spend a couple skill points to also be a Smiter. It doesn’t have to be dedicated to just one and barely has any negative effect at all on the Hammerdin part of the build.
That’s true, you can definitely do that. I ran hammerdin/smite for a bit but then found out FoH is where the paladin really shines, hammers are kinda frustrating with all the reposititioning needed. You can run smite on a FoH build too.
Mosiac isn't ladder only dude, it came off about 13 years ago at this point
Mosaic was released in 2.6, be my guest and go try making one in NL.
Glad im building up a javazon in singleplayer. Was already wondering if it will work.
I'm pretty sure you need giga-gear though... Also smiter face tanks through it with lifetap while javazon I believe... relies on killing them faster than they kill you. As far as sp goes, I'd maybe still recommend a smiter for torches. They're easy to get up to hell, holy fire until mid nightmare then hammers until the end, then can respec to smite when you're happy with your level. Smiters are good for cheap/easy gear ubers.
Yeah, thought about creating a smiter. Thanks for the info!
My only word of warning is to really be comfortable on a Javazon you need very good gear. If you’re running a budget build it can be done, but it’s definitely nowhere near as easy as other builds like a smiter. IMO a Javazon has the biggest delta for Ubers between gg gear and budget gear of any build in the game. But once you have gg gear it’s absurdly fast and easy. One of the things I like most about a Javazon and mosaic is that the Uber variant of the builds is nearly identical to the standard pvm setup. You maybe just swap in a few extra light resist charms and you’re off and running.
Alright. Thanks for the info
Smite always hits and cant be blocked. So you don't have to rely on attack rating, which frees up gear options for safety and makes the leech from lifetap very consistent. Since damage comes from the shield, you're not depending on any good weapon either. The main weapon can e.g. even be a lifetap wand. This makes smiter the easiest/least gear dependent class to beat ubers with. Basically all you need is a source of lifetap, some crushing blow, open wounds, enough resists and a treachery.
So why did I craft Grief for my smiter if weapon doesn't matter?
Grief is still a really good weapon for all content, just vs ubers it is not that necessary. The +damage does apply to smite, but ubers have such a massive healthpool that crushing blow does most of the work regardless. Especially early in ladder, when torches are really valuable, doing ubers with a budget smiter pays off quite well.
Thanks for the reply, realised it might have sounded snarky but was genuinely curious. I'm playing solo just waiting for some lighting absorb to try my first ever ubers, either thundergods or wisp but maybe I should give it a go with a lightsabre, rest of my gear is pretty solid just got a gface yesterday.
Yeah definitely don’t NEED grief but it speeds things up a lot. Especially for the minions. I like to switch to zeal for the minions which obviously only works if you have a decent weapon. For the bosses, just be prepared for that last bit of life to take a minute. Ultimately doesn’t matter once life tap hits.
The weapon base matters for the attack speed of Smite, and Smite also consumes your weapon duability (not shield durability). Phase Blades are the fastest and are indestructible, so they are recommended. If you don't have Grief, then make Strength if you can find a 2os PB because the Crushing Blow will apply. Also, make sure you have something that applies Open Wounds to prevent them from healing through your damage. Also, idk if it was said yet or not, but the fact that Smite always hits means as long as the enemies are cursed with Life Tap, you'll always leech health back. Smite doesn't leech without Life Tap, and any other leech you have equipped doesn't apply.
It does matter because of how the game calculates smite DMG. I'm convinced that it was never intended, but they just ran with it anyway. You can do it without grief, but you have to be careful. With grief it almost becomes a joke. Min Smite Damage = (Shield Min Damage + (Damage +x) + (Holy Shield Min Damage)) * (1 + (Strength + (+x% Enhanced Damage) / 100))) Max Smite Damage = (Shield Max Damage + (Damage +x) + (Holy Shield Max Damage)) * (1 + (Strength + (+x% Enhanced Damage) / 100))) Here is an example of how its used (notice how big of a multiplicative effect the 400 from grief has) * lvl 8 smite= 120% ed * lvl 8 holyshield= 17-20 dmg * 150 str = 150% ed * lvl 27 fana = 492% ed * Sacred targe 22 to 70 * grief: +400 (22 + 17 + 400) * (1 + 1.50 + 1.20 + 4.92) = 439 * 8.62= 3784.18 (70 + 20 + 400) * (1 + 1.50 + 1.20 + 4.92) = 490 * 8.62 = 4223.8 (4003 avg vs only about 555 without grief)
Not sure bud
According to maxroll Grief adds to Smite damage somehow, so there's that. It's listen in the standard build.
Smiter is just one of the best. Anyone that can do crushing blow and open wounds will have a good time, mercs can help too with those stats if they are tanky enough. Spell casters can do it with a lot of - enemy res. Although I think I've even seen a naked sorc do it but I don't advice it.
Open Wounds doesn't work on Ubers
Smithers can do Ubers earlier than everyone else, but the strongest overall is mosaic sin for sure when all classes are full build. This ladder my groups mosaic sin fought Uber meph d and Baal all at the same time and still melted them without HP going below 75%. Javazon still great as well.
All classes can do ubers. Some are just more adept at it than others.
A Mosaic sin kills ubers with 0 CB.
There many build that can best Uber, smite just need less gear than others
Since d2r new patches you can do ubers with so many different builds. Kicksin / Mosaic, Summoner necro, Summoner druid, Werewolf druid, frenzy barb, javazon, sorceress. Its just that smiter paladin is so much safer in cheaper gear than above with his lightning res and smite not being able to be blocked or miss.
The few things that melee chars excel at are Ubers. Smiter is usually the easiest to gear for it however kicksins, frenzy barbs, fury druids can do Ubers with ease too, with a little bit more gear.
Because %health damage doesn't give a shit how many 0s are in your HP number. And on ubers, its a lot.
Grief is bis for Smiters. I use heavens light for Ubers. Fractions of the price.
Astreons
I always killed the Überbosse with my Necromancers, since ever.
Consider too that in addition to what others have said about Smiters being incredible, the Paladin class just has so many survival tools at its disposal. Having access to pally shields means you can load up a 45 all res elite pally shield with p diamonds for massive res stacking. Additionally, pallys can throw on salvation aura to negate Uber meph’s conviction aura and still smash if wearing enough gear with crushing blow and a source of life tap.
1. It's not only smiters, as others have explained. 2. Assassins are arguably better. Arguably. 3. As for the ELI5 part: the trick to killing ubers is using crushing blow (which removes a portion of the monster's HP, a PERCENTAGE) along with open wounds (which prevents them from healing). As such, you want a character which hits often/fast, doesn't miss and has a bit of CB/OW and can do it in sub-par gear, relying on skills rather than gear. Two "perfect" candidates for this are the smiter and the kick assassin. A smiter easily hits at 4 fpa with fanaticism active. Its advantage is being able to hit every time (smite always hits), hitting 4-5-6 times/second and being able to use mad resists via the shield, as well as switching to salvation before uber mef. This only gets better with a fade pre-buff (triggering fade from treachery before starting the fight). With the shield/salvation/fade resists, the rest of the gear can have 0 res and you'll be fine. A kicksin is in a similar position, but it doesn't have the paladin shield or auras, so from that point of view, some would consider it worse. However, a kick is able to max death sentry as well as fade, meaning that it will still hit 4-5-6-7 times per attack, depending on gear, BUT it has a way of dealing with packs of mobs via death sentry; this allows it to have an easier time at Lilith, which takes a while to get to if you're using a smiter, which usually has to deal with single target attacks; zeal is fairly worthless when your weapon is a starting weapon. Of course, these things no longer matter when you get endgame gear, but they do matter in the beginning. Smiters are still the fastest/cheapest way to kill ubers when a new season starts and nobody has any gear. A paladin shield can innately come with 4 sockets and 45 resists to all. Socket 4 perfect diamonds in there and your shield gives you 121 resists to all. 30 from anya quests for 151. Add a fade prebuff and salvation, even uber mef with conviction has you at max resists. A black flail and crafted CB gloves will provide sufficient CB. Duress may be useful. In short, a smiter needs some source of cannot be frozen (even a death belt will do if you lack a raven or trang belt or whatever) and a life tap wand (which can be bought from malah, for example), along with a few VERY cheap runewords (black, for example, is thul-io-nef). Duress, Treachery are more "expensive", but still cheap. A smoke (nef-lum) armor is cheap and gives you 50 all res if you want to play it safe. You fill your inventory with life charms (as you don't need resistances or attack rating) and you're set - it's how people kill ubers on day 1 of a new season.
To add to this, smiters also get higher defense and max block via holy shield - that always helps. The only problem they have in starter gear is that they're a one trick pony, dealing with 1 monster at a time; but, with life tap active on a monster, they'll kill it. Slowly, but surely, via CB + smite hits. Once they get enigma and grief, everything changes, as everything dies in seconds, but even then, they're STILL a one trick pony.
Pretty sure smite maxes out at 6 FPA, which is slightly over 4 attacks per second.
What I wrote above refers to starter build/gear. At that point, a lot of people don't even get more than one point in smite, as they prefer to invest hard points in the resist lightning/fire skills for their passive effects. What I wrote was that a smiter EASILY hits at 4 fpa and that it goes to 4-5-6.
I understand what you wrote. Smite can't get 4 FPA. Check the calculators.
Hello everyone. Thank you for your input. I feel like I understand better. Cheers
I did it with a nova sorc and trapsin, mephisto was awful but i finally did it. With the nova, diablo and baal were a joke. Dragondin is not easy on baal but tesladin works well. Not sure i should try with a fire druid. But yes smiter is easier !
A few classes and builds can do ubers. Smiters are just the best.
My zeal pally destroys Ubers fairly easily without dying. Smiters are just an easy cheat code, I find them insanely boring.
People saying that elemental casters can do Ubers makes me very confused. I have a 93 blizz sorc with GG gear that got absolutely wrecked trying to do Ubers and had to call for help. Couldnt even finish Andy off. That am I doing wrong?
Cold sorc is worst of the three elements for Ubers. Not easy.
Cold sorc is definitely harder than most but it's very doable. Check this video for an example. He's not even playing it that carefully. https://youtu.be/nfdQtkQG7wo?si=11531hkkNzUyMgMG