07 Oct 2005 at 23:48 - 3
By MiteeThoR
There are a lot of UW Solo builds out now and I have been putting my contributions into the huge tutorial thread along with everybody else, but it's getting to the point where the good information is buried so far back that nobody can find it.
All of the UW Solo variants are based on Protective Bond at lvl 17 using the 20% +1 offhand, but many of the other versions have some significant weaknesses. The Divine Boon/Zealot's Fire builds simply don't do enough damage for the cost, and are VERY vulnerable to bleeding and small mobs, and for the createures that they do the damage to it isn't needed. The Healing Breeze build is very vulnerable to interruption which can get you killed in UW. Anybody who wants to bring Symbol of Wrath is not using their skills effectively, because at 2 second casts and 30 second recharge for only 150 points of damage you simply aren't going to do a lot of damage and are wasting valuable space on your bar.
Finally, none of the previous builds can survive TERRORWEBS, which this one can handle comfortably, meaning you can now do every Ataxe, Grasping Darkness, Coldfire, Smite, and Terrorweb in the game. You should even be able to do the spirits that use IW, meaning you could easily get 20kxp or more solo in UW if you wanted to.
Ok, here is the new build I have been running, which can easily handle big mobs of 15+, mixed mobs of darkness/ataxes, and terrorwebs. I can sit inside 3 malestroms at once without even losing health, etc.
I realize these are all variations on the same theme but I have found this to be the most effective and highest survival of all the versions I have tried so far, and it's still just as fast as anything else, and only requires 5 buyback points to complete.
MiteeThoRs V3.0
Starting:
Healing 9+3
Smiting 8+3
Protection 12+4
Divine 4+3
tactics 2
Ending:
Healing 9+3
Smiting 11+4
Protection 10+3
Divine 4+3
tactics 2
Skills
Protective Bond
Balthazar's Spirit
Mending
Watchful Spirit
Bonetti's Defense
Blessed Signet
Balthazar's Aura
Shield of Judgement
1. Wear Protection hat and hold protection +1 offhand, cast Protective Bond until it's +1
2. Change to Healing hat for healing of 13, cast mending so it's at +4 arrows
3. Change to Smiting hat, drop 2 points of protection, add 3 to smiting.
4. Change to -50 offhand from "Cities of Ascalon" quest for 55hp and the Smiting skill 20% recharge wand from Droknar's Forge collector
5. Cast Balthazar's Spirit and Watchful Spirit
Now you are ready to fight. Notice that we have NO direct healing spells. We don't need them. At your current stats you have 6 arrows of constant regen, and only take 2 damage for each hit. Since most creatures take slightly more than 1 second to attack in melee you can safely stand inside a mob of 6 without doing anything indefinitely. What I find happens is that even a larger mob (such as 8 grasping darkness) will have enough momentay pauses that you never need to do anything when standing inside them.
However, you can take mobs of a much larger size using Bonetti's Defense and Shield of Judgement as "control rods" To put it simply, turning one of these on will reduce the enemy attack rate to about 1/3-1/4th of the previous speed, meaning the mob you can handle will scale up from 6-8 to 18-24. Please note that when fighting Ataxes, you will be bleeding which will count as 3 arrows in your mob calculation.
By having a mix of Bonetti's and Blessed signet you can have ample energy regardless of the enemy type. Signet's don't work against Grasping Darkness, but Bonetti's fills up instantly. However Bonettis doesn't work against Coldfires or Dryders but Blessed Signet works quite nicely.
As I said, all you have to do is count the size of the mob and you will know how to control them. Pretty much without fail if the mob gets overly large, that also means that Bonetti's will charge up. If I need my health bar to fill up because of excess hits I just turn on Bonetti's and it shoot straight back to the top.
Also for interruptions, starting by first casting Bonetti's will create the casting window you need to get Shield of Judgement or Balthazar's Aura. If you have both available, do the SoJ first, because it then give you 20 seconds of casting time for Bath Aura. Otherwise you can wait for Bonetti's for your next opportunity.
When fighting Coldfires, simply turn on SoJ as often as you can. When you are in a malestrom, simply move out of it and cast Balt Aura, then move back in. Also, you can use your Blessed Signet while standing in the Malestrom because you technically aren't casting. It also works against Ataxes, but the Darknesses will interrupt your signet.
Smites are so easy I don't even need to talk about them. Just cast 1 of each and they will probably be dead or almost dead. You can easily take 15-20 smites if you can find that many together in one place
Terrorwebs are a little slower but very possible. Run in and run circles around them until all 3 cast their meteors. Then activate SoJ and Balth Aura as often as you can. Once they run low on energy they start to do regular attacks which are vulnerable to SoJ. You may not get many SoJ hits the first time around but by the second cast they should be falling. The funny thing is that with +6 arrows, even when you are on fire it only drops you to -1 for 3 seconds which is 6 damage. Over that same 3 seconds you might take up to 9 hits but that's still only about half your bar, and then as soon as the fire ends it goes right back up. I have absolutely killed all the terrorwebs without a proper heal spell in a very reasonable amount of time.
One last thing about the terrorwebs - they have an attack that seems to hit for -3 energy. I haven't figured out what it is yet but something they do can potentially break your Protective Bond. The way to fight it is to never cast anything to take your energy below about 7, that way you have a buffer of at least 2 of these attacks without getting killed.
