Man was that a rush! I had never done Uber Trist before, this was the only piece of end game pvm content that I never did in D2 before so I knew before I jumped into D2R that I wanted to give it a go. The conventional wisdom is to go smiter because smiter has a 100% chance to hit and at first I figured that was what I was going to do, but as I was leveling my zeal paladin I started to notice just how low his hp compared to my frenzy barb or fireclaws bear druid I’ve used to clear hardcore mode in the past years ago. I got my zealot to level 86 and started looking up budget smiter videos where the players in budget smiter setups either straight up died during their runs or came way too close for comfort to dying. I thought about maybe recruiting a Barb to BO me and give me some room for error, but I really wanted my first trip to Uber Trist to be solo. After giving it some thought I decided instead of recruiting a Barb I would become the Barb and went with what I was familiar with in the past the Frenzy Barbarian.
From what I gathered from my readings about doing Trist the main components to defeating the bosses were open wounds in order to prevent the very fast health regen the bosses have, crushing blow in order to knock off big chunks of their health every time it procs and a source of the curse life tap in order to heal off the incoming damage. Finally you need a massive amount of resistances to deal with Mephisto and his conviction aura which knocks off -125 of your resistances.
I’ll list off my gear choices which in my opinion were pretty humble. I used my 90 sorc in order to farm up a key set myself and my barb was level 88 when I killed Duriel, Andy and Izual and level 89 when I killed the big 3.
Weapons: I used dual Razor’s Edge. Between these two weapons I ended up with 100% chance for open wounds, 100% chance of deadly strike and -66% enemy defense which helps with hit chance against the bosses which are level 110. I socketed both of them, one with a shael for speed and the other with an amn a bit for life steal. I thought about using an Eth for a bit more negative enemy defenses over the amn, but I figured it might only make a marginal difference on hit chance at best.
Gloves: Lay on hands. Big fire resistance, ias and big damage against demons. I think dracs would have been much better since its a source of constant life tap, but I couldn’t find one.
Helm: Arreats Face. All res, life leech, str, dex, +skills, fhr. This helm just offers so much defensively. I have G face and thought about using it for crushing blow, but this helmet offered too much defensively to pass it up.
Armor: I used a 390 defense Lionheart runeword. The armor offers resistance, a bunch of base stats and life. I thought about using Smoke or Duress, but with Smoke I would lose out on a lot of life and with Duress I would lose both the life and resistances, so I went with Lointheart for safety reasons.
Boots: Goblin toes. My only source of crushing blow. 25%, more CB would have been better and would have resulted in faster kills, but it got the job done.
Rings/ammys. I used Ravenfrost for a source of AR and can’t be frozen. For the second ring and amulet I used angelics set ring and ammy which offers a massive boost to AR which helps non-smiter builds fighting level 110 enemies and a source of mana via damage turns into mana.
Belt: IK belt. Resistances and strength boost.
on switch: A wand with level 5 lifetap charges and a demon limb which provides a level 23 fire enchant which provides more AR and a bit of fire damage.
Charms: I didn’t have a torch before and I didn’t get any decent all res charms. I used an assortment of charms that gave me resistances and life.
Special: I used a treachery runeword armor to pre-buff Fade before fighting Mephisto to combat his conviction aura. Fade provides 60 all resistances and a minor damage reduction buff for about 5 minutes. I also pre-buffed by spamming a bunch of thawing potions and antidote potions which provide 50 more cold/poison resistances and the duration stacks infinitely for 30 seconds with each drink.
At first I was a little worried about only having 25% CB and more CB definitely would have meant faster kills, but 25% CB ended up being just fine.
For me this was a fun little puzzle to work out. Your room for error is very little when playing hardcore and you only have one life. Preparation through gearing and deciding exactly what to bring, especially as someone that never did this before, was just as hard, if not harder than mechanically playing the game. I had to really think about the mechanics of the game and get creative with my character in ways that I never had to clear any other part of this game.
As for a summary of how my run went, my first portal sent me to Uber Andy. When I finally found her I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, mis clicking my life taps, while she was slapping me around and I drank down almost a full belt of rejuvs like an idiot. I went back to town, collected myself, went back and got the rhythm of the fight and beat her down without too many issues. Izual and Duriel were much more compliant. I jumped in, found them, cast life tap a few times and tank and spanked them both for the parts.
When it came time to fight the big three I drank down and a ton of antidote and thawing potions before standing in some fire to pre-buff fade which resulted in me having a total of 300 fire and light resistance and 310 cold resistance which gave me maxed possible all res even with Meph’s massive conviction aura! I lured Meph away, smacked him around and knocked him down while consuming about half a belt worth of rejuvs. Next up was Baal who was the easiest of the three. I lured him to a corner, howl’d away his summons and basically spanked him down. Diablo was a bit more trouble. I tried fighting him in the middle of Trist and he bone prison’d me while I was surrounded by pitlords. I spammed a bunch of rejuvs, forgot I could howl when I was surrounded by pitlords for a second and I ended up saving and exiting. Now luckily being an old D2 vet, I know how perming d2 games work and I was smart enough to create my own private game before creating this particular instance for exactly this kind of situation, instead of just letting the game create my own private game named “Game102301230120051” with no chance of getting back in if I needed to save and exit. Again, I collected myself, jumped back in, lured Diablo to a corner, remembered to howl away the pitlords and knocked him down for my torch! I gotta say I put on a bit of a sweat during those fights. I’m sure for some of you Uber Trist is pretty routine at this point, but I think probably 99% of the player base never even touched it, let alone on hardcore. It was a satisfying fight and my reward…?
Sorc charm, 18 all res and 14 attributes! Not bad for my first torch ever I’d say and it turned my sorc into a serious power house compared to before. I don’t think I’d want to trade away my first charm, but if anyone could give me a rough price check in HR’s I’d be curious to know.
Also I gotta say. I’m not sure what I was more scared of. Uber Meph or Uber Blizzard with 10% chance on hit to crash your client and 3% chance on hit to disconnect you from the server. 
